Red Front 1-5 final beta test here!

[Colwyn]

Originally posted by DarthVeda
Have you given any thought to rebuilding Red Front on a different map with fewer units?

I've started one for Civ3 conquests have a look at my thread there.

[AGRICOLA]

I'm at the beginning of the Soviet July 1941 turn and already in need some clarification of your instruction that: "Disbanding units and incremental rush buying are capitalistic and thus forbidden."

I regret having to sound like a barrack room lawyer but do you truly mean that units cannot be disbanded under any circumstances? If so, then I'm faced with both an immediate and a possible future problem.

1. The best defensive positions against the German onslaught are cities with AT defenses and barracks. I consider it good strategy to build new cities on top of the fortified positions along the Don and elsewhere because all existing positions are in highly strategic locations such as river crossings or other choke points. Once a new city is established I have 3 options regarding the existing fortified position:

a. Disband it and PRB AT defenses.
b. Re-home the fortified position to the new city so it become part of the defenses (I've seen this labeled a cheat).
c. Wait for the Germans to capture the city supporting the fortified position, thereby killing the unit.

2. To minimize the effect of no IRB, I'm about to PRB Ammunition Plants in order to get a minimum of 40, 60 or 120 shield production from 4 or 5 cities so as to most efficiently build KV-1's that have a 120 shield price tag. In at least one case I may have trouble because the city is already supporting enough units to reduce shield production to less than the target figure. This is not of problem in summer but in winter it may take 2 or 3 turns to re-home excess 1 Mv point units. Do I:

a. Put up with the delay in getting the KV-1?
b. At considerable expense PRB the KV-1 to get it produced on schedule?
c. Simply disband the excess unit(s) and be done with it?

I presume that the ban on IRB does not preclude RB or PRB.

Please could you set me straight on the above?

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Although I've barely started playing the scenario, there are a few other, minor things I have noticed.

In the original RF PEDIA there is a problem with the descriptions of some Wonders because the key sentence is at the end of the descriptive paragraph and cannot be seen in the viewing window. It would be a great aid to players if you were to edit the PEDIA by moving the key information to the beginning of the descriptive paragraph and include the edited version in your RF 1.5 package.

I am a bit surprised that the building cost of Refugees has risen from 10 to 40 shields while the cost of Laborers (10) and Labor Brigades (20) has remained the same. I don't think that this really makes much difference except that players will make use of whatever Refugees are granted by EVENTS and wait until winter when they can build the less expensive but actually more useful LB's.

I stumbled across the revised rules for pillaging when my second attempt to pillage was on a farmland+road square. The bloody road did not disappear as I had expected. I saved the game and opened up an old save from RF and tried pillaging. Ouch, RF 1.5 doesn't give an option on what gets pillaged first. Again, I don't think that it is a major change but I think that even the most junior Soviet lieutenant would know that trampling down a wheat field will not delay the Germans nearly as much as blowing bridges and culverts.

You may wish to do a spell check on the EVENTS files and Redfront.txt before finalizing the scenario.



So far, this scenario looks like a good challenge. The immediate fall of Riga has already forced me to forget about holding Tallinn, Pskov and Luga and instead fall back to the Narva - Fortified Battery - Novgorod line, out of range of the Luftwaffe.

[Colwyn]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
You mention "Disbanding units and incremental rush buying are capitalistic and thus forbidden."

1. I consider it good strategy to build new cities on top of the fortified positions


2. To minimize the effect of no IRB,

I presume that the ban on IRB does not preclude RB or PRB.

It would be a great aid to players if you were to edit the PEDIA by moving the key information to the beginning of the descriptive paragraph and include the edited version in your RF 1.5 package.

3. I am a bit surprised that the building cost of Refugees has risen from 10 to 40 shields while the cost of Laborers (10) and Labor Brigades (20) has remained the same.

4. I stumbled across the revised rules for pillaging
You may wish to do a spell check on the EVENTS files and Redfront.txt before finalizing the scenario.

5.So far, this scenario looks like a good challenge.

1. Not allowed
2. Rush buy is ok, what is PRB
3. Traditionally it cost the SU a lot of resources to setup new cities/labor brigades that these refugee's eventually become ie laborer's. Increased to reduce players buying 100's in summer 1 to become laborer's later without city decrease.
4. Could you do it!
5. Yes its tough if you don't cheat 1 in 10 games get to berlin in 45.

[Colwyn]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
IIRC, at the beginning of the Red Front Democracy Game, the participants agreed to do nothing during the ghost turn. However, I don't recall that there was a specific reason given for their decision.

It was decided b/c traditionally the SU was surprised in June and thus were unable to do anything.

I have found that by doing things during the ghost turn gives you a extra turn which results in the german advance not reaching its historical depth into russia and the event files created for the scenario don't cater for the extra turn.

[Leonidas]

My Game so far:

1) I used Civstack on Red Front v1.5 and it works just fine. I don't think there is a need to re-balance any forces.

This should help the AI greatly - gone are the 10 units killed in one shot problem.

2) It is Oct/41:

a) In the north the Germans are on the outskirts, south of Leningrad. The Finns have taken Vipurii and are closing on Leningrad from the north. A karl bombarded leningrad. Is it new in this version?

b) The Germans are pressing hard in the centre. Kiev is about to fall, and Smolensk is being encircled. Only one city stands between the invaders and Moscow.

c) In the south the Axis have taken Odessa and are moving into the Caucasus.

So far, the AI is playing very well. I must have lost well over 200 units by now !

Well done with the v1.5 patch

[Colwyn]

What file does civstack change, is it something you have to apply to the saved game or can you run it on a scenario file?

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Colwyn
What file does civstack change, is it something you have to apply to the saved game or can you run it on a scenario file?

Civstack:

1) backup your Redfront.scn

2) Open Civstack, then look for the directory where you have red front installed.

3) select redfront.scn.

4) You will be able to apply "Fortress" to all the terrain types listed in the box you see. You simply select a terrain type such as "plains" then click "apply". Do the same for all land terrain types and ocean.

5) Then click done, and that's it! Took me about 1 minute to do.

6) Don't forget to eliminate the fortress graphic in cities.gif, scities.gif and wcities.gif. Then rename "Fortress" to "Defendable" in "Labels.txt" inside the red front scenario folder.

7) If after doing all this, you get an error when you try to start the scenario, that means you have to change all three cities.gifs to .bmp files. Don't ask me why. Once I did that, the scenario played just fine.

Cheers!

[Colwyn]

Originally posted by Leonidas


Civstack:

4) You will be able to apply "Fortress" to all the terrain types listed in the box you see. You simply select a terrain type such as "plains" then click "apply". Do the same for all land terrain types and ocean.

Cheers!

Will this then give all terrain types the 200% defence strength benifit that fortress's give?

I guess this also means its hard to see where the 'real' fortress's are now the only indication is if you highlight the location and it describes 'defendable" or is there a way around that so we can locate fortress's more easily?

[AGRICOLA]

1. I'll be glad to check the EVENTS files, zip and E-mail them to you. I'll include the revised version of RF PEDIA that I prefer to use.

2. By PRB (Partial Rush Build) I meant that you pay to complete the building project when there already are some accumulated shields as opposed to RB which to me means starting with zero shields. Likely my error.

2. I'm getting the feeling that I may be becoming a nuisance with my questions. If so please forgive me, I really don't want to waste your time. However, rather than constraining a player by more "not allowed" rules, might it not be better to eliminate the source of the problem? IMHO, most of the Fortified Positions/Batteries are absolutely useless because they're homed to cities closer to the enemy than the unit itself. Lose the city and you lose the fortification. Why not eliminate most fortifications from the scenario and get rid of one more constraint on players?

3. I have no problem with not being allowed to disband units in or outside cities in order to avoid them getting killed. However, I'm curious to see if the complete ban on any and all disbanding does not activate the "too many units" messages as this scenario is known to do. This leaves a player in the delightful situation that, unless he can kill off more enemy units during a turn than EVENTS respawns, he's not going to receive any units he's built.

[Colwyn]

No please keep it up, you have given me some ideas and a bit more incentive to even try removing the batteries from the game for the soviet player.

Your feed back is good in ensuring that the final documentation I do is clear and precise re any thing we can't fix and have to trust the player.

I'm even trying the scenario with the fortress tweak.

[Colwyn]

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
. This leaves a player in the delightful situation that, unless he can kill off more enemy units during a turn than EVENTS respawns, he's not going to receive any units he's built.

You may not know but the more you kill of a particular unit the more is created!

This is how nemo got the blitzkreig effect by spawning new german units in the front.

I won't say more as it can ruin your game.

[AGRICOLA]

I actually did pretty thorough compilations of EVENTS and RULES files as I was working out the Scorched Earth & Partisans strategy.

What I should have said in my previous post was "This leaves a player in the delightful situation that, unless he can kill enough enemy units that do not respawn during a turn, he's not going to receive all the units he's built. I'm sure you know that there was considerable discussion at the start of RF Democracy Game about how to get around this problem.

I'll get the files to you in a few days.

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Colwyn


Will this then give all terrain types the 200% defence strength benifit that fortress's give?

I guess this also means its hard to see where the 'real' fortress's are now the only indication is if you highlight the location and it describes 'defendable" or is there a way around that so we can locate fortress's more easily?

I don't believe it does, since all it will do is prevent units that are stacked from being wiped out.

NO fortresses will be visible on the map, and they cannot be built after using this tweak.

But this is realistic since most fighting was done in the fields, forests, and cities anyway during the war.

The player will now have to use the terrain (forests, rivers, cities) for defence.

[N35t0r]

The fortresses do indeed add a +100% defense to all troops stationed within. This can be overcome by altering the defense bonus inside the rules (just subtract 2 from the defense bonus part, as ithey are increments of 50%)

and you can add fortresses to all terrain but the minefields (existing) and the marshes...

[Colwyn]

Originally posted by N35t0r
The fortresses do indeed add a +100% defense to all troops stationed within.

This can be overcome by altering the defense bonus inside the rules (just subtract 2 from the defense bonus part, as ithey are increments of 50%)

Are you sure that the mod does give the def bonus of forts?? I hae played for a while and notice the ai killing my units just as easily. Vet AA's which usually are tough to kill in normal forts don't appear to be harder to kill with the fort mod.

Can someone else clarify? nt35OR double check.

If we remove 2 from def bonus many will need to be 0 is this a valid nunmber ie -100% def bonus?

[Colwyn]

NO civ stack is no good as it does give all units outside of cities the fort bonus thus +100% defence if you inrcease attack str to compensate then units in cities that don't get the +100% suffer and vice versa.

If I give airfields then all units get unlim moves (assumed)

[Colwyn]

Please let me know for those that have downloaded and played it

[AGRICOLA]

I'm afraid I've been treating the play testing as a tough problem and have been playing very slowly. It was pretty obvious that the altered unit parameters would make this much tougher than RF 1.4 and I didn't want to make any fatal errors right at the start.

It's now December 1941 and so far the German forces are doing very well, indeed a little better than historically. The Soviet defense line now runs through Murmansk, the 3 Finnish cities, Leningrad, Tikhvin, Cherepovets, Vologda, Yaroslavl, Kalinin, Fort Moscow (on river, 2 squares SW of Moscow), along the 3 old and 5 new cities along the Don, and a new city 2 squares NW of Kerch. West of this line, with the exception of Minsk, the Soviets have managed to raze all cities not captured by the Germans during their initial turn.

By November, German forces had reached the vicinity of all the present front-line cities, an excellent performance by historical standards. I don't think that the Soviet scorched earth policy I used made it any easier for them. Because the no IRB rule severely limits the number of new units and city improvements that can be built it would have been impossible to generate enough reinforcements to hold any of the cities west of the December line . The limited funds that were available went towards air force bases (22), freighters, cruisers, 152 mm howies and a few T-34's. As much as possible, money was put aside for September when the KV-1 became available for RB. The Soviet line now looks secure for winter, with 32 KV-1's and 30 152 mm howies defending the cities.

The first 2 SC's were delivered to Baku and Grozny in November. German air and naval forces did not interfere with the freighter chain.

Stukas played their usual havoc with Soviet units in the open and defending cities. The "no disbanding units" rule leads to some pretty odd tactics. Got more Red Army units in a city than are needed to raze it? Move the excess (homed to the city) eastward and hope the city is captured (thereby wiping out the units without spawning new ones for the Germans) before the Germans catch up with the fugitives. The October attack on Leningrad was a dandy and only failed because the city was stuffed full of fortified naval infantry, NKVD, AA, T-34's and whatever other units could be scraped together.

I imagine you'll be glad to hear that it's been a real SOB to develop new (to me) approaches to get to the stage where I am reasonably comfortable with the Soviet situation. This one's going to be a real challenge.

[Ramsses]

Erm, where is the .bat file?
It is not in the zip file I downloaded...

[Colwyn]

Originally posted by Ramsses
Erm, where is the .bat file?
It is not in the zip file I downloaded...

RF 1.5 is a alterned set of files for RF1.4 you will need to download that to play RF1.4 ie it has the *.bat files.

RF1.4 is at

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ2scenmod.shtml.

[Colwyn]

Has anyone had problems with the units limit? B/c the AI moves a bit quicker I was concerned that this might be reached a bit more easily in RF 1.5 I know Agricola did once anyone else Leonidas??

I'm also very keen to hear how peopel went in 42,43,44,45 and when they actuallty got to berline

[AGRICOLA]

Disregard.

[AGRICOLA]

Yesterday morning I noticed that in July, 1942 the 20+ howie crews in Kotelnikovo were ready to mutiny. The German guests to their carefully prepared welcoming party had apparently not shown up.

I have since discovered that the Germans can be persuaded to come to the party by changing "create Cossack cavalry" in Events3 to "create Motorcycle unit". Rumor has it that the Cossacks rode away at the end of Rules2 and are no longer present in Rules3.

I'll be reloading April, 1942 to resume the game.

[Colwyn]

yes your right there is a event to create the odd cosack in Siberia I'll make sure to fix this asap.

Does this cause the game to crash stop or can you play on?

[Colwyn]

Note I'm also working on a RF version for conquests, anyone want to give me a hand I am 3/4 of the way there and have a few tasks to issue if possible.

Conb?
Agricola?

[AGRICOLA]

With the present version of Events3, when you re-load RF.sav after running Redfront.bat the following happens:

1. You get a message that "There was an error detected in "EVENTS.TXT" file. Please read the manual to find out how to debug this file.".
2. The events section is properly appended to the file loaded from RF.sav but only a part of the events actually take place.
3. In this instance, nothing interesting happens around Rostov . That is the most obvious missing event; I have no idea what others don't occur.
4. Otherwise the game plays normally so it took me until July, 1942 to realise that something might be wrong and to start backtracking. Unfortunately my manual is frozen stiff in Canada so I had to do the debugging by much trial and many errors.

Sorry, but I'll pass on conquests. I have a blood feud going with CIV III and all of its misbegotten spawn. Also, I'd like to take my time finishing RF 1.5 beta. So far it has been a lot of fun to find solutions to the many problems it poses.

[Colwyn]

If you replace references of cossack cavalrty in events3+ with the exact name of motorcyle's in units3+ then the error will go.

The events files are pretty much stock standard nothing really does happen around rostov until the events spawn units on the bridge to attack stalingrad.

The way units spawn are though events were they are created and moved forwards to german occupied towns or fortress's. So if you still hold rostov? then less will happen.

Has the stalingrad attack started yet?

Glad to have you working though this one Agricola, once you have finished and we've tidyied up any bugs we'll be able to release the offical 1.5!

[AGRICOLA]

I had actually changed Events3 to Events3+, reloaded April 1942 and tested that the winter-summer transition worked correctly before my post about the unhappy howie crews.

The bridges and its defenders showed up on schedule. The southern, defended bridge and its defenders were immediately blown sky high by the howies massed in Kotelnikovo, at the cost of 9 lost howies. The crews considered it to be a fine way to welcome the Germans.

If I read your post correctly, then the forces designated to attack Stalingrad are indeed showing up every turn and, every turn, are blown to bits by one of the howies still in Kotelnikovo. A howie sorties from the city, fires one or two rounds and then returns to the city to drink vodka and boast for the next month. Also, every month, a Shturmovik squadron takes care of the Stuka and other units that appear in this area. The Stalingrad offensive has been a non-starter due to the defensive tactics employed by the Soviets.

The game is now in September and action is switching to the northern and southern sections of the map area.

I'll continue to keep you informed of significant details of the play by E-mail.

[Colwyn]

Excellent now we just need to see at what point you actually make it to Berlin! Think it will be before 45? In vanila RF it was 43/44 usually with a reasonable player.

[AGRICOLA]

I'm not certain that the following is a problem but I would like to know for sure before proceeding with the beta test.

The description of the SOVIET ARMAMENT INDUSTRY wonder states that:

"This wonder simulates the "miraculous" rate of Soviet production by upgrading older units when better units become available. Major upgrades are T-34/76 to T-34/85, KV-1 heavy tank to JS-II heavy tank, Laborers to Labor brigades, La-5 fighters to Yak-9 fighters."

Most of the upgrades have occurred properly. However, if the description of the wonder is correct, then the La-5 fighters to Yak-9 fighters upgrade should probably have taken place but has not. The time line is as follows:

December 1942 - Discover Mobile Warfare III. Got the message that "T-34/76 upgraded to T-34/85" followed by the message that " --- discovered Mobile Warfare III".

January 1943 - Discovered Advanced Flight IV, the tech for Yak-9. Only got the " ------ discovered Advanced Flight IV" message. Yak-9 appears on the "can build" list but there is no upgrade of La-5's.

April 1943 - Winter-summer transition looks OK. Labor Brigades upgraded to mechanized Labor Brigades.

I have not actually played the following three turns. I ran them quickly by putting all Soviet units to sleep and using the cheat mode to deliver a couple Supply Convoys every turn. IIRC, in normal Civ 2 there has to be a tech advance to trigger an upgrade.

May 1943 - Discover Advanced Research
June 1943 - Discover Assault Artillery
July 1943 - Discover 122mm AP Tank Gun

There was still no fighter aircraft upgrade though the Germans had a marvelous time with the sleeping Soviet units.

BTW, this also seems to occur in the original Red Front. Fortunately, the absence of an upgrade has not affected play during the winter months but I'd like to know whether there should be an upgrade or just a change in the description of the wonder. If an upgrade is desired, I'll hexedit the La-5's.