Commander Europe at War characteristics.

[firepowerjohan]

I found some old questions about what separates CEaW from other games out there so it might be good to repeat and a nice read for those who would like to know just a little bit more about how CEaW works i.e telling abit more than what is shown in official announcmenets and feature lists.

CEaW Characteristics:

- Resources (city, capital, mine, oil field, sea port, fortress) take splash damage when u attack them, so if you defend a city several turns taking heavy casualties then the city (and its prodution) will be in ruins.

- Different terrain (clear, forest, rough, mountain, swamp, desert, dune) have not only different movement rates but also different armour vehicle slow down rates which means a corps will move faster than an armour over a mountain. Furtermore, terrains have vehicle fighting penalties that apply to both an attacking vehicle or a defending vehicle meaning a armour unit will not be 100% efficient if defending a city.

- Logistic problems in the game are represented by oil, manpower and railroad capacity that means you can have your air/tanks unable to attack when lacking oil, you get worse quality recruits when having low manpower and you will have to pay extra production points if exceeding railroad capacity.

- Weather is modelled both by severe winter effects that reduce fighting ability but also by a continuous (several turns) of slower movement rates and vehicle movement rates (= snow or mud)

- Resources on the Map are individually set, meaning Alexandria is worth alot less than Kiev and Kiev is worth alot less than Moscow. A Oil Field also produces (in addition to production points) Oil points which can be used for vehicle, air, navy move/attack.

- Convoy units emerge on the map and head for a destination to unload its value to the corrsponding country. Sinking or damaging the convoys will mean less value or no value will arrive so an active sub warfare by Axis can hamper UK and USSR economy.

- Subs will have special invisibility meaning you cannot spot them other than when stepping on them or if the sub attacks something (convoy for instance)

- Strategic Bombers will attack enemy Resource despite enemy garrisoning it which means there is no way of protecting resources just by placing ground units on them, instead you need AA tech or air units to intercept.

- Unit Efficiency takes different penalties when using railroad, upgrading, deploy, moving, unloading from transport which means you need to plan ahead when organising offence and defence.

- Reparing and upgrading units are done in a special repair mode and upgrade mode (that you reach with just one mouse click) meaning to repair 10 units you do with just 11 mouse click (one for switching to repair mode). The amount received when repairing a unit is limited by its current supply and upgrade means getting it to the maximum held tech level. They both cost some Production Points and upgrade also reduces the effectiveness of the unit largely!

- Units need to be upgraded to reach the new tech levels while newly built units ofcourse get the highest available level. The upgrade cost some cash and reduces the effectiveness for the unit alot. This creates 2 problems for the players.

No.1 is that upgrading each single tech will be expensive so it is better waiting and make one big upgrade (since a small and big upgrade cost the same). Unless you gonna use the unit right away, might be better to leave it and then upgrade later on when you get more than one upgrade in one swoop.

No.2 if you try to upgrade your entire front line at the same time, it will be weak and vulnerable to counter attack due to the effectiveness penalty (effectiveness regains over time though).

So, for instance using (4 PP+5% unit value) as upgrade cost means:
For instance roughly could the Garrison cost ~20 PP to buy and ~5 PP per upgrade
and a Carrier cost 100 PP to buy and 9 PP to upgrade

- There will be a Tutorial that will enable new players to easily learn the most basic actions.

- There is a attribute for units called survivability which reduces taken damage. Doubling the survivability means halving the damage taken. This opens up for technologies and units that are tough to kill. Armour will get a large increase to survivability (simulating their increased armour) with tech levels.

- There is a attribute for units called quality which determines how easily a unit maintain high morale (losing less and gaining more). A unit with low quality will drop more in effectiveness when taking casualties. This means for instance that air units could be made lower quality to make interception duels a good counter and way of slowing down enemy air.

- Quality and Survivability increase with experience while new recruits can have penalties to these values if a country is overrecruiting (running out of manpower)

- There is a special Anti-Tank Bonus attribute to units that is used when attacking/defending against armour, meaning an infantry with high AT Bonus will not benefit from it when attacking infantry. Actually, when using the AT Bonus instead of increasing the fire it reduces the enemy Tanks survivability.

- There are deploying limits of one unit per city surroundings (max 1 hex distance to city) per turn meaning you cannot place hordes of new units to block enemy advance.

- Research will be in 5 areas, where each area contain 3 technologies each, and each technoloy has levels. For instance does Air Research Area have "Dog Fight", "Close Air Support", "Strategic Operations" each with 5 levels. To add further twist to it, there is a research focus in each tech area that you can set to "Balanced" or switch it to any of the 3 technolgies. Research focus in for instance Dog Fight will give much higher progress in that tech and lower in the other 2. Techs also have different diffulty meaning some techs take much more time to get. There is a limitation to how many focus changes you can do determined by how many focus points you have left. Another twist is that when a technology reaches the max level it will still get research points that will be wasted! Meaning if you focus on Dog Fight and reach max level then any further research in Dog Fight will be wasted Research which puts abit of long term penalty for massing a single tech. you can ofcourse reduce the waste by shifting the focus away from Dog Fight.

- Research is semi-random which means unless you have loads of laboratories in a tech area you cannot advance in one turn, but you can still get lucky result and get a big boost to your research, for instance your advance in a tech could be (turn for turn), 5%...10%...15%...45%. You notice the jump from 15->45, thats the semi-randomness which will make it impossible to predict exactly when you get the next advance. Since you always get a certain minimum progress per laboratory, you can know the maximum time it will take (with minimum luck).

- Commanders are unit attachments so are always deployed into an existing unit, meaning you can for instance deploy Rommel in your favourite tank. Beware if your unit gets destroyed or retreats, because the Commander will then be injured and out of action for a random long time. Commanders both have leadership atribute which will increase effectiveness of nearby units within range and some of them also have special combat bonuses (ground attack, ground defence) affecting only the unit they command.

- There is one shock phase and 2 fire phases in battles. Shock face is made prior to the fire phases with the attacker using its shock value on the defender reducing defender effectivness. After the fire phases, there is a retreat chance if the defender lost alot of effectiveness and has low effectiveness. This means combined arms work best by first softening up the defender using air units and then the main attack might easier cause it to retreat. Another fine thing is, retreat is dependant on terrain and impossible in some places (City, Capital, Fortress) so you cannot just use 8 air units on Stalingrad shocking the enemy and then just march in with a weak corps. Garrisoned units will fight to the last man.

- Phases exist in battles (shock, fire, fire) and there is a sequence of fire meaning in ground battles the defender shots first and damages the attacker then the attacker fires back. This actually means a high firepower will also help in defence since it will damage the attackers before they can fire back. Furthermore, this benefits combined arms where your air units first weaken enemy effectiveness so that your ground attack faces less enemy fire so can attack stronger.

Battle Sequences:
Normal battle : Attacker Shock , Defender Fire, Attacker fire
Navy vs Navy (=Naval Battle) : Attacker Fire, Defender Fire
air vs air (=Dog Fight) : (attacker+defender fire simultanesouly)
Strategic Battle : Defender fire, Attacker fire

- AI will use semi-random routes so for instance even if you know the position of a convoy in the north atlantic, you will never know if it will take a more northern or southern route.

[borsook79]

Have I said before I can't wait for to game to be out? If not: I can't wait for the game to be out.

Anyway:

- There are deploying limits of one unit per city surroundings (<1>45, thats the semi-randomness which will make it impossible to predict exactly when you get the next advance. Since you always get a certain minimum progress per laboratory, you can know the maximum time it will take (with minimum luck).

Seems that the info starting with "(<1>45" was meant for other point...

[firepowerjohan]

Thanks, have edited the errors now

[firepowerjohan]

Thanks, have edited the errors now

[canuckgamer]

Looks like its going to be a very interesting game. Looking at the battle sequences, I was wondering about naval battles where it indicates that the attacker fires first. I thought that it might be simultaneous like air combat.

[firepowerjohan]

Edit:
- Research will be in 5 areas, where each area contain 3 technologies each, and each technoloy has levels. For instance does Air Research Area have "Dog Fight", "Close Air Support", "Strategic Operations" each with 5 levels. To add further twist to it, there is a research focus in each tech area that you can set to "Balanced" or switch it to any of the 3 technolgies. Research focus in for instance Dog Fight will give much higher progress in that tech and lower in the other 2. Techs also have different diffulty meaning some techs take much more time to get. There is a limitation to how many focus changes you can do determined by how many focus points you have left. Another twist is that when a technology reaches the max level it will still get research points that will be wasted! Meaning if you focus on Dog Fight and reach max level then any further research in Dog Fight will be wasted Research which puts abit of long term penalty for massing a single tech. you can ofcourse reduce the waste by shifting the focus away from Dog Fight.

- Research is semi-random which means unless you have loads of laboratories in a tech area you cannot advance in one turn, but you can still get lucky result and get a big boost to your research, for instance your advance in a tech could be (turn for turn), 5%...10%...15%...45%. You notice the jump from 15->45, thats the semi-randomness which will make it impossible to predict exactly when you get the next advance. Since you always get a certain minimum progress per laboratory, you can know the maximum time it will take (with minimum luck).

- There is a attribute for units called quality which determines how easily a unit maintain high morale (losing less and gaining more). A unit with low quality will drop more in effectiveness when taking casualties. This means for instance that air units could be made lower quality to make interception duels a good counter and way of slowing down enemy air.

- Quality and Survivability increase with experience while new recruits can have penalties to these values if a country is overrecruiting (running out of manpower)

[syagrius]

Very detailed description of the game Johan, thanks. Wow this game has everything I want for a WWII game, can't wait to get my hands on it!!