Spanish Civil War ToT

[McMonkey]

I think we should speed up the time it takes to build trenches to say 3-4 turns. If it is too quick the map will soon be like the western front in WWI, too slow and nobody will bother building trenches. Feel free to make the change to the rules file, just let me know and I will do the same. Do you know which value to alter?

One thing that has sprung to mind is about building trenches on city squares. Would this make them too hard to ever capture? My initial instinct is to ban this via house rules, what do you think? EDIT: Looking at your observations building trenches under city squares could work out. Something we should experiment with before we get too far into the game!

Regarding your observations. Remember this is still a playtest and the balance may not be 100% right yet. Historically the Nationalists did have an edge over the Republicans (mainly through their allies helping them rather than hindering them!). It would be great if we can try and find a balance where either side has the opportunity to win if played right.

Regarding the length of my turn. I did have the advantage of being thoroughly familiar with the scenario over months of designing it. During this time I considered strategies for both sides and read a lot about the war. This obviously gave me a bit of a head start, but as von Moltke once said "No campaign plan survives first contact with the enemy".

[McMonkey]

I want to alter the rules files so that engineers can transform grassland and other terrain types into the Trenches terrain type much quicker. Currently it takes 10 turns but I would prefer it to be say 3-4 turns. Here is the line in the rules:

Trenches, 4,4, 0,0,0, no, 1,10, 0, no, 3,10, 1, no, no, ; Hil

The two tens I can see are related to irrigation and mining. Will reducing them have any effect on terrain transformation? This is one aspect of scenario creation I have always got in a mess over!

Any advice will be appreciated!

[McMonkey]

I have just run a little experiment changing the highlighted values and I have discovered they have no effect on the engineers terrain transformation speed of five turns. Settlers would take ten turns, but engineers work twice as fast. I'm looking for a way of speeding transformation up, but if this is not possible I think 5 turns is a decent enough speed. I could put a few more trenches in place at the start of the scenario at key bottle necks!

[Jerec]

Sorry, won't have much time again until the weekend to give a good long crack at this; until then I'll be chipping away in free minutes. You can change how long it takes to transform terrain from on of the values listed at the top of the Rules.txt, under @Cosmic. In the case of SCW, the line has the default value of 10:

10 ; Base time for engineers to transform terrain (x2)

Changing it to 6 would make it take 3 turns for an Engineer to transform a square to Trenches. Not sure if it takes longer to transform more difficult terrain like mountains and forest vs. grassland and plains.

[McMonkey]

Ok. Lets both change that value to 6 in the rules file. That should be realistic enough.

I'm fine with waiting until the weekend. Despite this being a test game I'm sure we will both be doing all we can to win As I said before, I have had months to farmiliarize myself with the mechanics and ponder strategies, so when I played I had a plan. I wouldn't want you to feel rushed. Take your time and enjoy!

[Jerec]

Still plugging away at the turn. A sidenote: the time required to transform terrain does increase for anything besides plains and grassland. Your call if you want to leave the transforming value at 6 or make it smaller, I'm not really familiar with what scale you're using to judge realism.

[McMonkey]

I think six is fine for this test. Terrain other than plains and grassland already has defensive bonuses and stackable terrain.

Regarding your turn. I bet the next turn will be a lot quicker once all of the organizational work is completed.

[Jerec]

Heh, no kidding. It will be far faster next time, now that I have finally sorted out city production, maximized science production, and have plans for defensive lines. Just need to finish up some unit movement.

A question for the Flak Cannon unit--would it be acceptable to make it movable, like the Flak 88 Cannon unit? It would make it far more useful, allowing trenches outside of cities to have at least some air defense, and for them to move between cities if RBed in one that doesn't necessarily need it. I don't think this would unbalance anything since the better bombers like Potez 540s and Henschel 123s can destroy a flak unit unless it is in a city behind AA defenses city improvement.

Oh, and just to check, was the difficulty meant to be on Comandante (King), or General? Because the cost of building all units is above the value in the Civilopedia, so I'm guessing General. The Civil Guard, for instance, actually costs 12 shields instead of 10.

[McMonkey]

I think it makes sense to make AA units mobile. We should both change it to be the same movement as the 88 in the rules. Good point about the difficulty level too. It would make more sense to instruct players to play at King level. I had not considered this effect. For our game it shouldn't make too much difference as the majority of units are event produced anyway.

[Jerec]

Underestimated how much time it would take to finish unit movement. I will work for getting this turn done in the next few days.

Observations: This scenario has been confirmed very offensive, along the lines of Justinian. Avila was taken with the forces you gave me in Brunette and Madrid. I had guessed the city was well-stocked with Infantry, but didn't expect the Armored Car...I was surprised that my attacking AT Gun was not destroyed. No losses taking the city or destroying the Infantry in front of it. The Infantry on the river/grassland square put up far more resistance than the ones in the city, though, I was lucky to have decided to use Mot Infantry and an AT Gun to take them down. As it was, my Mot Infantry was almost destroyed. Interesting.

[McMonkey]

It may be worthwhile improving the defensive capabilities of troops / terrain. On the other hand there are lots of event generated units and if it was too easy to defend both sides could just cram their cities full of units. I'm hoping that the old adage, the best form of defence is attack, holds true and this will turn out to be a really exciting battle of attack and counter attack for both sides. We shall see what lessons the playtest teaches us and make the changes accordingly.

BTW I'm gutted to hear about the loss of Segovia and Avila!

[Jerec]

Methinks my advantage will be short-lived; you have too many units near/around Burgos and I have too few around Madrid to manage a sustained offensive. To be perfectly honest, the attack is a desperate move to give me some breathing room before the storm.

Observations in (finally!) finishing the turn: The Sun Tzu's Warfare wonder, or Cinturon de Hierro, in Bilbao seems to be buggy, at least on the first turn. 2 different ground units did not receive vet status after winning a battle, although all others after surviving did properly receive vet status. I manually changed those 2 to vets w/cheat mode along with adding in the 5 Engineers.

There is a very vulnerable gap in the fortified line around Bilbao because of the ZOC created by Guernika. If the Nationalists take Guernika, they can bypass the Bunker by moving to the square in front of Bilbao straight from Guernika, and thereby assault/take Bilbao. Don't know if this was accidental or not. To solve this problem, I would need to fortify the grassland (urban) square between Guernika and Bilbao, or defend Guernika to the death. At present, I'm applying the former option. That way, I can afford to lose Guernika if need be.

Mmmm...I may have lost the ability to use Milicianos as rampant Partisans, but you still gave me some very interesting other Infantry-type units to use in their stead. To be specific, I'm in love with the Assault Guard, Communist Militia and Catalan Infantry units. I can almost guarantee you will rue giving me so many of those units.

And while they're not as effective, ordinary Rep Infantry do a more bland job of replacing the Milicianos too. I will find a gap in your defenses sooner or later, never fear.

[McMonkey]

I'm not sure if the Cinturon de Hierro is supposed to be an active wonder or just there for the scenario points / aesthetics. I will check this. If it is supposed to be redundant I'm cool with the cheated veterans.

I think the Guernika gap in the Bilbao defences was intentional.

Just remember that pillaging is forbidden. Using raiders to capture lightly defended rear cities is acceptable, but that would achieve little as most units are either NONE support of built in major, well defended, cities!

[Jerec]

Understood. And I think you're right, the Cinturon de Hierro is indeed non-functional, since all units I built this turn were non-vets.

Almost done with the turn, will hopefully post tonight.

[Jerec]

Just noticed something after reviewing my turn, from either a lag for the changes in the Rules.txt file or when I cheated in the 5 Engineers. In two places, my Engineers seem to have just finished building trenches. That should be impossible, since the minimum time is 3 turns, which would be next turn. I assume that I must have forgotten to delete the Engineers and put fresh ones back in after experimenting on how fast trenches can be made in the game, since these current Engineers must already have 1 movement spent transforming. Either that, or the Rules.txt changes take effect a turn later, since my transforming value was 1 (again, from testing), before changing it to a 6 after your response.

Either way, there are trenches where they're not supposed to be for another turn. If any of your units hit them on your turn, feel free to cheat them back to grassland. I'll be keeping the Engineers there for 1 more turn to simulate the time it should take to transform. They're pretty far away from the frontlines right now, though, so it shouldn't be a problem.