RedFront Suggestions

[DarthVeda]

First off, notice this spelling error in Events3.txt:

quote: @IF CITYTAKEN city=Tula attacker=Germans defender=Soviets @THEN TEXT ^The Germans are pushing pushing through the Moscow defense perimeter ^to the South, threatening to encircle the city. ENDTEXT JUSTONCE @ENDIF

The germans are pushing so hard they're going into labor!

Also, the NKVD troopers don't make much of an appearance after Summer/Winter 1941. I know they were involved in the war afterwards, but weren't they involved a little more than your scenario depicts after the fall of Kharkov? Did they move their headquarters?

What would be nice is 1 free NKVD every turn in X city until Kharkov is retaken, then 1 free from Kharkov. Or maybe when a Red Guard dies, it's leader is "Promoted" to NKVD status?

[The ANZAC]

NKVD Troopers are also produced in Saratov

[DarthVeda]

Saratov has awful production. Just awful. 6 shields a turn I think. Last time I checked, it would take 5 turns to build 1 NKVD.

It would take a lot of diverted resources to boost the production in that remote city.

[The ANZAC]

You are sooo right.

[klesh]

NKVD troopers are valuable enough to me that I'll just rushbuild them in Saratov. It's close enough to the main front to be of good use.

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I am the Ukrainian Anti-Pope!

There's some space between Berlin and Dresden. On the river Spree, that also runs through Berlin there could be placed Cottbus, my home town. It became important together with Dresden in 1945 b/c in the area southern of Berlin, there were "important" armies located.

Cottbus has nowadays 100.000 inhabitants, in those times maybe 50.000-100.000...
build it! N-E of Dresden, S-E of Berlin!

DO IT, Nemo and Alex

[DarthVeda]

Also, I think Red Army needs some kind of speed upgrade come late 1943. There's no way they can keep up with the panzers. Here's what I suggest:

• Change Red Army movement to 2 in Summer of 1943. Change NKVD to 3. Change Red Guard to treat all squares as road. Bump Cavalry up to 3 as well.
• I do though, build Mobile infantry to keep pace.
• Another thing is the fortified positions. I'll admit it was pretty cool moving them to hold down key locations, but it was just too easy to hold those locations. How about making them upgrade to AA guns in the Winter of '41? That would keep people from using them as a permanent buffer from the Germans.
• How about having the Siberian Regiments upgrade to Red Guards in the Summer of '43? This would free up a unit space.
• The T-28s should not become T-34/85 guards, but more likely T-34/75 Guards.
• The freighters get SLOWER after summer of 1941. Was this intended? I built the speed improvement, but I am living with 1 less movement (8 after summer 1941 vs. 9 for summer 1941)

That's all for now!

There are Refugees "escaping" from the western border of Russia into the east when the Germans arrive the certain cities. I don't know if that's already the case, but what about German refugees fleeing the territorries that are nowadays polish...
There were many refugees fleeing from Prussia when the Russians arrived.

In case this feature is included in RedFront; well, I'm sorry then...but I haven't yet checked it

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"The more I know, the more do I know that I don't know anything" - forgotten who said that...
"Within the peace, enemy attacks us..." - Kaiser Wilhelm II, August 1914
"Hell, yeah!" - James Hetfield, while singing "Master Of Puppets" on Metallica-S&M-concert in spring 1999 in San Francisco

[Xin Yu]

With the 'everybody scientist' tactic the player can get KV1 produced by September 1941, enough to hold the line with or without moving fortified positions. Tech tree needs to be modified to counter this.

[DarthVeda]

What do you mean? Make it so KV-1 couldn't be reached by september? That would be historically innacurate.

KV1 by september is a perfectly acceptable tactic. I'd really like to see somebody actually make use of it (ie build enough KV1s to spread acrost the line).

The biggest threat to your security occurs around Sermafovich (sp?) where German units love to bypass and wander off into the wilderness of Siberia.

Otherwise, AA guns can handle most everything.

Here's another suggestion:

Eliminate the road between Kerch and Sevestapol. I was move mass amounts of units from invincible Sevestapol to defend Kerch.

Airports can be used very interestingly. You may wish to consider restricting their construction...

This is because they can be built on industry to give farm-like food production in summer, or anywhere to give industry like shields in winter.

They can also be strung together to produce a railroad effect.

[Xin Yu]

Remove road between Kerch and Sevastopol won't help. A freighter is all I need to ferry the units between them.

I believe that Captain Nemo wants to produce 'nothing you can do to stop the German in summer 1941' effect in the scenario. If KV-1s can be built in large quantities this effect will disappear. To be historically accurate KV-1s can be given by events so that their numbers are limited. Or give them defense 8 instead of 9.

There is another possible approach to stop the German but more likely to produce 'too many units' bug (and also costs more money). Build airbases in June 1941, build Katyushas (July and August) for counter-attack to slow down the German troops, then build Il-2s in September (Technology can be ready by Sept). By October they are ready and they'll mow down German advancing units. Defense units will be airlifted from the East. Since KV-1s can be built more quickly I have not tried this.

[DarthVeda]

Actually I found in my last scenario, the best defense in the summer of 1941 was to leave just 1 Red Army in each city that would be taken (Anything west of the Volga). Also, disband any red army that the germans have a chance of killing. The payoff is in the 3 units that don't appear for every 1 red army death. DISBAND or ATTACK with all partisans possible. Don't let the germans kill them! 105mm are not what you want!

Also, avoid killing PanzerIVs and Werhmacht.

Go ape on Pz3 and Werhmacht SG.

Make sure to eliminate all Barracks and Airbases in danger zones.

Without those red army and partisan deaths, I found the German advance really weakened in RedFront 1.4

Another suggestion:

The germans seem to really like disbanding anti-tank defenses in 1.4... anything you did to those Nemo?

[Xin Yu]

DarthVeda: not 1 vs 3, but 1 vs 6 if you disband a red army. I have suggested it before but Captain Nemo said it was semi-cheating.

AI selling anti-tank: the German has the Great Wall wonder in RF 1.4

[klesh]

Since my "America's Involvement" thread has fallen by the wayside, I thought I'd post this idea here. With regards to The Americans not playing much of a part in RF 1.4, perhaps a pop up like this:

quote: Battle of the Bulge! American POW's are assasinated by elements of Joachim Peiper's SS Division at Malmedy. Casualties approach 100 in this massacre. However, the last German offensive of the war is halted at Bastogne as Patton's Armor releives the beseiged city. The Americans now are speeding into the Reich.

Then perhaps create a good number of Gi's and Sherman's with support from P-47's very close to German cities on the Western Front. These cities would almost certainly be taken, and if the stacks were killed, the same multipyling effect would occur. This and other pop up events could be placed in to help the US along.
Thoughts?


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I am the Ukrainian Anti-Pope!
[This message has been edited by Field Marshal Klesh (edited April 27, 2000).]

[Captain Nemo]

It's EXACTLY what I have in the summer of 1945! Not the same text, something along the lines of "The 3rd Army crosses the Rhine at..." and then a bunch of GIs and Shermans pop up on the Western edge of the map with the multiplying effect of making 3 units for each killed.
The problem must be with one of the following:
1. The US AI has made peace with the Germans somewhere in the depths of Civ2, without indicating it and without responding to the "make agression" command.
2. The stacks that get wiped out only generate 1 unit x 3 instead of many units x 3
3. The unit limit is in effect and the Americans can't get their units.
4. The human players get into the heart of the Reich in 1944 or earlier and never reach the Summer of 1945 when this happens.

[DarthVeda]

Nemo, It's not the stacks, I checked that in my MGE game. My guess was that the Americans refused to take the cities with infantry. It was suicide to attack cities with AA guns and panzerfausts, and the American AI knew this.

How high is the agression set in the Rules file?

[Jim Winchell]

Captain Nemo: Good job on getting those Germans moving east. I downloaded and played the latest version of Redfront the other night. I gave up on the first version after I was able to figure out how to stop the Germans far from their historic high water mark. I tried all of my old tricks only to have the Germans take Moscow in December of 1941. Leningrad would have probably fallen the next turn if I had continued playing due to the Germans bribing the fort south of the city.

One observation: I may have told you that Petsamo was a Soviet city, but now I think I am mistaken. It was definitely Finnish before the Winter War, and may have been given back after March 1940. Maybe a Finnish civer (not Ottok) can enlighten me.

[Captain Nemo]

It looks to me like Petsamo(Finnish town) was taken by the Soviets during the Winter War, then returned to the Finns in the 1940 peace agreement that had the Soviets retain Vipurii, Hanko and Porkkala. In 1941 it was the site of battles between the Germans advancing from Norway in an attempt to reach Murmansk and Soviets coming out of Murmansk to meet them. It was finally ceded to the Soviet Union in 1947.

[Mao]

So you can just rename the city right? No biggie

[Captain Nemo]

No, it should be a Finnish town from the beginning of the war. Anyway there are so many things that need to be updated that this is a "drop in the bucket". There will be a Red Front version 1.941! Not immediately, but eventually.

[Sten Sture]

Capt - Did you consider pre-roading the refinery squares in the Caucusas? If you backed off on their 'raw' trade arrows you could reduce the huge benefit that accues to those cities once they have roads in all of the trade squares. I assume you did this intentionally, but it seemed like I had an unfair advantage after the road/trade benefit kicked in.

[Captain Nemo]

I am beginning to become aware of a lot of "loop holes" to plug in the next version. This is one of them. These strategy threads are really helping me figure out how to make the AI tougher in the next go-around, it will be a lot better game this time.

BTW version 1.941 will have a completely new map drawn by Harlan Thompson so proportions, distances and relative locations of all cities, terrain, ressources etc... will be 100% correct and historical! The map is oversized so despite including a little more of the Ruhr district and a larger portion of Italy there is a higher map resolution within the Soviet Union too. There are a few more cities and they are historically correct in location and size...
[This message has been edited by Captain Nemo (edited April 30, 2000).]

[Harlan]

Of course, you know what a new map means: its less of an update and more of a completely new scenario, cos everything has to be redone from the ground up. And thanks to everyone telling their strategies, I know Capt. Nemo is countering the semi-dubious ones. So keep the stories coming, and now is the perfect time to come up with new suggestions for the scenario, before things get fixed into place and hard to change again.

One more detail on the map: the map gets cut off just past Urals cities like Chelyabinsk, and the entire Aral Sea area is toast. So that, combined with the 110% "oversize", means I'd estimate about 30% more detail for everywhere else. Some areas even more: Rostov to Astrakan via Stalingrad is now 23 spaces instead of 10!

[Jim Winchell]

How about mine barrages (your unattackable mine unit) that block off certain cities from attack to prevent the "back door" invasion. Like German mines along the Rumanian coast and across the Baltic Sea. Perhaps an event which puts a mine barrage from Helsinki and on down when Tallinn is captured (make Tallinn the mines homecity so they disappear when the Soviets retake Tallinn). Historically the Germans and Finns managed to keep the Soviet Navy out of the Black sea west of this barrage entirely in 1943 and mostly in 1941 and 1942.

[Case]

A good addition to Red Front would be Russian Paratroopers. The Russians used paratroopers to support partisan operations, and in river crossings, most notably the crossing of the Dniper Bend.
To prevent overuse of paratroopers, set the drop range to something small (eg 6) and make them only advailable via events (eg capturing a city near the Dniper triggers a paratrooper unit to be created in that city)

NEMO!!!

Insert Cottbus!!!

Pleeeaaaaaaasseeeee!!!

It's on the same river as Berlin is, in Northeast of Dresden and Southeast of Berlin!

City size about 5 or 6!

Also, there are some geographical mistakes...

I think there's a city called Galati, the eastmost city of Romania in your scenario. But in this scenario it's on the coast, which it isn't in real!
Galati is a non-coast-city!
Constanta would be a coast-city!

But there's a lot of space for Cottbus!
You inserted Umea, so please insert Cottbus!

When will the next version appear?
Has 1.5 already been released?
I haven't been visiting a long time, so I'm not up-to-date with my information...

[Captain Nemo]

ALL MAP MISTAKES HAVE BEEN SCIENTIFICALLY ELIMINATED BY HARLAN!
VERSION 1.941 which is the next version after 1.4 has not been released and is still far away. Cottbus will only appear if it falls in the correct size range... Many undersized cities are gone and missing historical cities have been restored. Location errors have been corrected. The new map is superb!! Makes mine look like a cartoon.

[DarthVeda]

Can we at least preview the map? Could you make it available for d/l so we can have a look?

[Sortub]

Just got through v. 1.4 to my own capture of Berlin in May '45. In the spirit of this thread, here are what I hope are some constructive comments for the next version.
[*]Ruins squares: Because they are technically Soviet units, German tanks and Panzerfausts in the late stages of the game kept on hurling themselves up against them. As much as I despise the Germans on AI, it seemed unfair in my favor that they kept on doing this because of the computer's stupidity. I realize that there may be a shortfall in terrain squares, but something needs to be done about this -- IMHO the only glaring weakness in RF v 1.4. Having them as Soviet Units just isn't right.
[*] The pontoon bridge units after Stalingrad. The spot where the pontoon bridge was just turned into a dormant German armour unit where I just couldn't pass the rest of the game. Was it supposed to represent a downed bridge or something?
[*] Come to think of it, the first two points are related. Couldn't you just make the ruins squares impassable, as the remnants of the pontoon bridge are?
[*] Persistant partisans. I had partisan units in my forces up until May '45, even though the events file after the fall of Kiev states that partisan units have been integrated into the regular army. Couldn't they just turn into Red Guards after a certain date or event, just as has been proposed with Siberian infantry units? That way, it would free up a unit slot for the special-events created Russian paratroopers (can't wait to see those ).
[*] Starving cities in the East: Tashkent and Petro... something, on the Eastern edge of the map, had serious food-shortage problems during the wintertime simply because some of their squares were in "black" zones. Could the new map be extended a little bit to the east to account for this?
[*]The Germans developed Volkstrum several times, when they only needed to once. Hmmm... This seems like a correctable issue with the events file.

Otherwise, Red Front 1.4 ROCKED!

Thoughts? and Thanks...

[This message has been edited by Sortub (edited May 14, 2000).]

[DarthVeda]

quote: Originally posted by Sortub on 05-14-2000 03:27 PM Ruins squares: Because they are technically Soviet units, German tanks and Panzerfausts in the late stages of the game kept on hurling themselves up against them. As much as I despise the Germans on AI, it seemed unfair in my favor that they kept on doing this because of the computer's stupidity. I realize that there may be a shortfall in terrain squares, but something needs to be done about this -- IMHO the only glaring weakness in RF v 1.4. Having them as Soviet Units just isn't right.

Think of it as German production lost to the raids. Making them American units wouldn't help, and making them German would make them suicidal to attack.

quote: The pontoon bridge units after Stalingrad. The spot on the Volga where the pontoon bridge was just turned into a dormant German armour unit where I just couldn't pass the rest of the game. Was it supposed to represent a downed bridge or something?

The events are supposed to eliminate that problem. It is supposed to dissapear before it becomes a tank. Something didn't load right.

quote: Come to think of it, the first two points are related. Couldn't you just make the ruins squares impassable, as the remnants of the pontoon bridge are?

That would be rediculous and you know why.

quote: Persistant partisans. I had partisan units in my forces up until May '45, even though the events file after the fall of Kiev states that partisan units have been integrated into the regular army. Couldn't they just turn into Red Guards after a certain date or event, just as has been proposed with Siberian infantry units? That way, it would free up a unit slot for the special-events created Russian paratroopers (can't wait to see those ).

Again, something failed to load properly. Partisans should stop appearing after Summer 1944.

quote: Starving cities in the East: Tashkent and Petro... something, on the Eastern edge of the map, had serious food-shortage problems during the wintertime simply because some of their squares were in "black" zones. Could the new map be extended a little bit to the east to account for this?

I can promise you that won't be a problem in 1.941

quote: Otherwise, Red Front 1.4 ROCKED!

Yep. Bow to me as I had tankers in Berlin in August of 1944. I practically met the Allies on the beaches.