[color=blue]Would you kindly consider ... Middle East transi

[esde56]

Dear CEAW-GS Triumvirate & Fellow Gamers,

Would you kindly consider ... that the transit times of troop convoys (& therefore, naval movement in general) to the Middle East is currently inequitable.

Viz.
If I despatch a troop convoy from Cardiff to Port Said via the Mediterranean, it will take 7GT to arrive.
If I despatch a troop convoy from Cardiff to Port Said via the African Cape, it will take 6GT to arrive.

IIRC, the Mediterranean route was deemed to be the fastest but potentially dangerous if contested, whilst the Cape route was deemed to be the slowest but the safest route.

Whilst the advisory information upon entering the transportation loop does state that the estimated time to arrive is 1GT, I have never actually observed this taking any longer at all. This may beg the question: what are the inbuilt % chances (if any) of it taking 2GT to exit the transportation loop?

Nevertheless, regardless of whether there is any chance of the voyage being delayed by a GT, it is still far too fast even allowing for game playability fudging. Pure mileage would suggest that overall, such a sea voyage should take x3 the duration of the direct Mediterranean route. Gamers would almost certainly never use the transportation route at all if the voyage from Cardiff it would require c.21GT to arrive!

Whilst being fully cognisant that all of the naval movement is primarily based upon the relative speeds of the ship types, rather than their true distance capabilities, the duration required for movement via the Cape transportation loop should simply be longer relative to the time required for the more direct Mediterranean route.

I would respectfully suggest that the minimum time (or base time if any variation is desirable) that a troop convoy (or other naval fleet) should be off map via this transportation loop (to the Persian Gulf or Red Sea), is approximately 4GT. This would make the overall voyage time c.50% longer than taking the direct route via the Mediterranean and recreate the reality of the faster/dangerous vs. slower/safer route choice dynamic.

Additionally, if a random element of uncertainty regarding the transit time of long haul routes is deemed desirable (& the less perfect the information for the players, the better, IMHO), perhaps a simple (or variations upon a theme): 50% chance of arriving on time; 50% chance of arriving 1GT later than the ETA. Applying this to the specific route in question would result in a troop convoy arriving 10-11GT after departing Cardiff: surely a step in the right direction?

What think you?

Kind regards.

Stephen

[timhicks]

Hi Stephen, this is a good point. I've been reading some AAR's , and when the Allied players are shipping troops to the mideast, they often go via the South Atlantic. I think that shipping thru the Horn is too much of an easy option, and currently the Allies don't have a reason to contest the Central Med. If you're proposal was adopted, then the Allies would really have a reason to run convoys thru the med, which was what really happened.

There was some bitter naval and air combat in the Med during the early war years, I don't recall many troop convoys going thru the med to Egypt early in the War, it was mainly about supplying Malta. the Allies probably didn't think it was safe enough for troop ships. With your change , I think that in GS, the Allies would have some more realistic choices to make.

It follows then that the Axis would have another difficult choice , of whether to attack this shipping, and it would also bring malta into play, in a way that it isn't at the moment.

[trulster]

Agree with your points, the 1-turn transit loop around the Cape is definitely too short. Four turns, however, I feel is a bit too steep given that 1 turn is supposed to be three weeks. A nice change would be to have the transit take 2 turns with a 50% chance of it taking 3 turns. Good to add some incertaincy. This should be only for Atlantic to either Red Sea/Gulf and vice versa, all other transits should stay at 1 turn.

[rkr1958]

Whilst the advisory information upon entering the transportation loop does state that the estimated time to arrive is 1GT, I have never actually observed this taking any longer at all. This may beg the question: what are the inbuilt % chances (if any) of it taking 2GT to exit the transportation loop?

The Atlantic to Red Sea transit times are deterministic. The first three units to enter the loop will arrive in the Red Sea on the next turn. The next three units to enter the loop will arrive two turns later. The next three three turns later. So if you have nine naval units/transports enter this loop all on the same turn it will take three turns before this group finish arriving in the Red Sea.

[pk867]

Also you have limited open hexes for the naval units to arrive in the Red Sea.

You can also edit the time in the General.txt file. The one for the AFRICA_LOOP_TURNS controls the loop time from the Atlantic to the Red Sea and the Atlantic
to the Persian Gulf. The other line controls the shorter loops Keil , Suez, Red Sea to Persian Gulf. (I think this is correct)

Both players would have to change their general.txt file so that you do not get a checksum error indicating a difference.
So you could experiment with the change to 2 or 3 turns and see how that works.
You must remember to reset it if you play another player that does not have that change.

We did this so you can adjust parameters within the game without having to recode most items.

So you could tweak a general.txt file that you another player like and play your games with those changes. (I would save the original in a safe place)

[esde56]

My thanks to rkr1958 for explaining that the transit routes are ‘deterministic’ (corking term BTW) and to Tim for his contribution on this topic.

However, (wargaming) logic and history itself would seem to support the fact that the route via the Cape of Africa should be relatively longer than going directly through the Med.

I am inclined to believe that the majority of ships/convoys sent by the Allied player will often be dribs/drabs of reinforcements for the N.Africa front; perhaps only x1 unit per GT (or even less frequently) but all are quite vital to this theatre nevertheless.

My suggested increase to 3-4GT in limbo (enroute) is only 50% longer than the direct route but if that is deemed too long, I would readily endorse Trulster’s suggestion of having a 2-3GT delay (randomly determined), as a necessary and desirable improvement. Currently to achieve this amount of delay, a veritable armada of 6-9 naval units would need to simultaneously enter the transit route. As pk867 states, a large force would be hampered by the lack of sufficient landing sites anyway.

The choice dynamic of the safer/slower vs. riskier/faster routes surely needs to be present for all shipping via this route? This historical choice dynamic is absent via this ‘deterministic’ method and there is no need or imperative for the Allied player to place his convoys in harm’s way via the direct Med route.

Kind regards to all.

Stephen

[rkr1958]

Let's look at the entire journey of a transport from the UK to the Egypt via the transport loops. A transport can move 17 hexes per turn. I don't have CEAW GS in front of me right now so I'll have to base this all on my best estimates at the moment. Assuming no encounters with German u-boats how long does it take to move a transport from the UK to the Atlantic to Red Sea transport loop? 4 turns? Maybe 5 if I'm worried about u-boats? Add one more turn for the Red Sea to Med transport loop and that's 5 to 6 turns, which is 100 to 120-days. As a comparison in Avalon Hill's 3rd Reich, I can strategically redeploy a unit from England to Egypt in 1-turn, which is 90-days, and this redeployment cannot be intercepted or interfered with.

[esde56]

Dear rkr1958,

Please forgive me for reiterating what I have already tried to convey (as opposed to convoy!). The crux of the matter remains that it currently takes either the same time (or faster) to move a reinforcing unit from England to the N.African theatre via the Cape, relative to the time required to move the same unit directly through the Med. The times I quoted in my original posting are accurate (+/- my dotage factor!). This route is peril free. Historically, the Allies had a choice between a slow/safe route or a fast/risky one. This decision point is simply absent and there is currently no reason why you would risk the Med, as there is no time loss or disincentive for going the long way around. Such can only be achieved if the Cape route is either slower relative to the Med or there is some other tangible cost. If naught else, it just feels slightly odd not to have this choice dynamic. Hence my request for this historical choice for Allied player to be considered.

Whilst Trulster’s suggestion (of an enroute minimum 2GT with variables) appears to be the simplest solution to enact, it may be possible to increase the amphibious points required to ship each unit via this route, to show that there is indeed a price to be paid for this route and therefore recreate the decision point.

Whilst your remark upon what is permissible within a venerable 36 year old boardgame prompted a warm memory, it is really down to what you feel is appropriate to your specific design. However, as that door has been opened, it behoves me to remark that both of the more recent strategy games of ‘Advanced 3rd Reich’ & ‘Europe Engulfed’ have an inherent shipping/cost penalty for sending units via the Cape.

I fully appreciate that aspects do have to be fudged within all strategy games (how else could we happily square the circle of a trip through the Suez taking the same time as one around the Cape) but the simulation of essential decision points (which are indeed plentiful throughout the excellent GS design) are necessary and desirable, unless deemed too onerous to incorporate or inappropriate to the overall scale/design.

If it is felt that there is little merit in the point I have raised and that this aspect should remain as is, that is absolutely fine. I am content to have raised the topic and thank you for considering it. I know from my experiences as an occasional boardgame playtester/rules editor, that all play elements cannot always be apparent to the designer(s) until an ‘outsider’ brings such to their attention or plays the game in a different way from the play-tested norm.

My father was a CEO and used to say to his staff: “Do not bring perceived problems to my attention unless you have also brought possible solutions with you”. So, I trust that I have been sufficiently constructive.

Please be assured how much I (& my friends) enjoy all of the work the team have (& still are) putting into this project and that we will play the game whichever way the designers wish to present it, as the overall package is undoubtedly the most interesting and playable (by sane folks who do not have time/desire for minutiae laden offerings) WW2 ETO PC game available.

Kind regards.

Stephen

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I don't think any Allied player will send reinforcements for Egypt via the Med. The Axis can attack these naval en-route many places.

The problem is not that it takes too few turns to travel from Canada / Britain to Egypy via the Cape of Good Hope. Each turn is 20 days and with 6 turns it means it takes 120 days. That's a longer time than the transports used in the real war.

No, the problem is that the movement allowance of naval units is too small. E. g. even the fast DD's with movement allowance of 22 need 3 turns to sail from USA to Britain. That's 60 days or 2 months. The DD's could sail to Europe using max 1 turn. Even the convoys could get from USA to Britain / Murmansk within a turn or two in the real war.

So if we would implement true movement allowances for the naval units then we simply destroy the naval warfare of GS. There is no need to have any escorts because the transports / convoys can move from USA to Europe in one turn. There will rarely be any naval combat because the naval units from directly from port to their destinations.

So in order to have some fun at sea the movement range has been reduced so the naval units must stop at sea for some turns. I think this works very well. The Allied player must now escort his transports and convoys or the wolfpacks will attack heavily.

If we let it take too long to reinforce Egypt / Middle East then we make it harder for the Allied player to survive if attacked heavily by the Axis. I think the reinforcement time should be pretty historical (3 months). The time it takes to sail to Egypt via the Med is irrelevant because no Allied player would take this risky route i GS since the naval units must stop several turns within range of the Axis airforce and navy. So transports going to Egypt via the Med will be attacked several times before getting there. In the real war they would try to dash past the Axis air and naval patrols and once they were past they were safe. But in order to simulate that we need to increase the movement range to maybe 30 or more and that destroys the naval combat in GS.

We have to think about the following. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. We've spent a lot of time and effort to try to get the naval warfare to work properly in GS. It's NOT historical, but it works game wise. So if we start tampering with the time the transports will take via the Cape then we alter the game balance and might have to counter the undesired effects.

Remember that the transport loop time was initially 3 turns for the Atlantic loop, then 2 turns and finally 1 turn. The changes were done in the vanilla game even before we started working on GS. So I guess players found out quite early with CeaW that it simply took too long to get reinforcements to Egypt. You have to remember the main reason this is a problem. It's because the Allied player can't place any new units here since Egypt is no part of UK. So if you lose a unit it's gone and you must build a new one in Canada or Britain. We also have to consider that Egypt and even more Iraq were reinforced from India, Australia and South Africa. Britain was an empire and had many units stationed in their colonies. Some of those units were sent to Egypt when things got problematic there. Some of these reinforcements are implemented with the extra units arriving in Iraq when Iraq joining the Allies.

I think that the main units that would have to come from Canada or UK and not the colonies would be armor and air units.

We also have to take into consideration that the actual map is quite distorted at the edges. Since the game is strategic it means a considerable part of the Earth is placed on the map. The earth is a sphere and the map is 2D. So distortions are inevitable. Paul spent a lot of time measuring distances between cities when we changed the map. We got the most imp rtant part of the map pretty accurate, but the edges are quite distored. E. g. look at how Canada and USA are placed compared to Europe. The true distance is bigger and the angle is not right. But this is a compromise we have to make to have these areas on the map. These distortions mean that the distances become too big in the north and too small in the south. E. g. Norway and Sweden are way too big compared to e. g. Libya and Egypt.

Everything I've written about above has been problems with other strategic games as well. Sometimes you have to design for effect and not always design for accuracy. My claim is that GS works as a GAME, despite some inaccuracies like naval movement and map distortion.

[gerones]

I don't think any Allied player will send reinforcements for Egypt via the Med. The Axis can attack these naval en-route many places.

The problem is not that it takes too few turns to travel from Canada / Britain to Egypy via the Cape of Good Hope. Each turn is 20 days and with 6 turns it means it takes 120 days. That's a longer time than the transports used in the real war.

No, the problem is that the movement allowance of naval units is too small. E. g. even the fast DD's with movement allowance of 22 need 3 turns to sail from USA to Britain. That's 60 days or 2 months. The DD's could sail to Europe using max 1 turn. Even the convoys could get from USA to Britain / Murmansk within a turn or two in the real war.

So if we would implement true movement allowances for the naval units then we simply destroy the naval warfare of GS. There is no need to have any escorts because the transports / convoys can move from USA to Europe in one turn. There will rarely be any naval combat because the naval units from directly from port to their destinations.

So in order to have some fun at sea the movement range has been reduced so the naval units must stop at sea for some turns. I think this works very well. The Allied player must now escort his transports and convoys or the wolfpacks will attack heavily.

If we let it take too long to reinforce Egypt / Middle East then we make it harder for the Allied player to survive if attacked heavily by the Axis. I think the reinforcement time should be pretty historical (3 months). The time it takes to sail to Egypt via the Med is irrelevant because no Allied player would take this risky route i GS since the naval units must stop several turns within range of the Axis airforce and navy. So transports going to Egypt via the Med will be attacked several times before getting there. In the real war they would try to dash past the Axis air and naval patrols and once they were past they were safe. But in order to simulate that we need to increase the movement range to maybe 30 or more and that destroys the naval combat in GS.

We have to think about the following. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. We've spent a lot of time and effort to try to get the naval warfare to work properly in GS. It's NOT historical, but it works game wise. So if we start tampering with the time the transports will take via the Cape then we alter the game balance and might have to counter the undesired effects.

Remember that the transport loop time was initially 3 turns for the Atlantic loop, then 2 turns and finally 1 turn. The changes were done in the vanilla game even before we started working on GS. So I guess players found out quite early with CeaW that it simply took too long to get reinforcements to Egypt. You have to remember the main reason this is a problem. It's because the Allied player can't place any new units here since Egypt is no part of UK. So if you lose a unit it's gone and you must build a new one in Canada or Britain. We also have to consider that Egypt and even more Iraq were reinforced from India, Australia and South Africa. Britain was an empire and had many units stationed in their colonies. Some of those units were sent to Egypt when things got problematic there. Some of these reinforcements are implemented with the extra units arriving in Iraq when Iraq joining the Allies.

I think that the main units that would have to come from Canada or UK and not the colonies would be armor and air units.

We also have to take into consideration that the actual map is quite distorted at the edges. Since the game is strategic it means a considerable part of the Earth is placed on the map. The earth is a sphere and the map is 2D. So distortions are inevitable. Paul spent a lot of time measuring distances between cities when we changed the map. We got the most imp rtant part of the map pretty accurate, but the edges are quite distored. E. g. look at how Canada and USA are placed compared to Europe. The true distance is bigger and the angle is not right. But this is a compromise we have to make to have these areas on the map. These distortions mean that the distances become too big in the north and too small in the south. E. g. Norway and Sweden are way too big compared to e. g. Libya and Egypt.

Everything I've written about above has been problems with other strategic games as well. Sometimes you have to design for effect and not always design for accuracy. My claim is that GS works as a GAME, despite some inaccuracies like naval movement and map distortion.

Very convincing reply! No need to talk more about this!

[esde56]

Dear Stauffenberg,

FWIIW, I completely agree with your posting, which is entirely logical and self evidential to any veteran board(war)gamer: 38 years in my particular case.

I do not think that the specific point I raised, inferred even the slightest disquiet over the naval system, et al. Nor have I detected that anyone has suggested that GS is anything other than an excellent game which provides a good degree of historical feel and decision points. Certainly not in this thread and certainly not I: I have been fulsome in my praise of this product and the sterling endeavours of the triumvirate, both here and elsewhere.

Having occasionally been on the inside of a gaming project, I do appreciate that designers and developers are inherently protective of their labours of love and the countless hours they have lavished upon them. Polite queries should always be welcomed and hammers are rarely effective nutcrackers (except in American parlance!).

I shall end by quoting from my previous posting, thusly: “If it is felt that there is little merit in the point I have raised and that this aspect should remain as is, that is absolutely fine. I am content to have raised the topic and thank you for considering it.”

Kind regards.

Stephen

[pk867]

Hi Stephen,
Thanks for the praise. Like I posted earlier, by altering the
general.txt you can lengthen the loop time. Just you and
your friend have the same value. So you could play the game
and see if that suits you. I would suggest you increase the
value by 1 since as stated before the next group after three
units will increase by 1 turn. We haave allowed a lot of
flexibilty to mod the game without having to worry about
coding.
Regards and have fun gaming

pk867

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Hi Stephen

We, the development team, is not protective on our GS changes to CeAW. I would say on the contrary. We welcome suggestions to improvements and discuss it within our group and also sometimes on the forum. If the suggestions won't ruin the game balance and can be implemented easily then we could implement them for the next patch. Regardless of what we decide we encourage discussions about improvements so we know the reasons for the changes and also the consequences.

I've myself suggested many changes that have never been implemented. But I'm happy with that because we always discuss the suggestions first and you often forget to think of a consequence that's not desirable.

the transport loop times are not changed by the GS development group so we use the one from CeaW. We haven't seen the reason to change it even though we discussed it during the development. Others have also asked why it takes so long to travel from Britain to Egypt via the Med. But we found no simple solution to the problem.

So please keep up the suggestions. We always consider every suggestion seriously although we can't guarantee we will implement every one.