Many thanks for your feedback.
Well, PzC and (PG) is primarily about this, and the popularity if this genre is still high, after all these years, otherwise PzC would not have been born. And it seems that the success of PzC has spawned a few new titles which are in the making at the moment. And wargames (and wars in general) are mainly about "attack, capture and defend" and it has always been like this. Surely this is not everyones' cup of tea.Otherwise, the plain and simple "attack - capture - defend - repeat n times" would be quite BORING. Especially since the AI sucks at times.
As for the AI, you are right, it is truly dumb on its own, but it can be improved with careful scripting. Which leads us to my main concern with modding this game: the limited number of AI zones. For those, who are not familiar with the modding realm of PzC, advanced scripting is mainly governed by these AI zones, and there are only 32 of it. For simple scenarios, like the ones in the stock campaign it is enough in most cases, but for a complex and long sceanrio, like this mod it is just not enough. I would say ideally there should be one AI zone for each turn of a scenario.
But, the mod I am making has 99 turns, and a faily large map, so 32 zones are clearly not enough to script all the events of ww2 in a fully historical manner. Just think about the number of major battles in Europe alone. Ideally, each of them should be governed by at least one AI zone. E.g. Stalingrad is designated as zone 1, the area behind Stalingrad is zone 2. Then, all the AI units in let's say zone 3 are ordered to move to zone 2 to encircle Stalingrad (zone 1) and told to guard this area to prevent a breakout or relieve attempt. After a while they set to attack zone 1 to finish off the encircled Germans. So we already used up 10% of the available zones, and it is only a simplified presentation of a single battle of ww2.
This limitation forced me to use the zones as creatively as I could, i.e. several zones are used for different tasks. For instance, zone 4 marks the victory objective cities in England and also the area around Kursk. But, I cannot do it will all the zones as it would lead to strange events.
However:
It is already introduced, if you read back my situation reports in this topic you will find references. Also, if you observe the maps I posted you will find occasional red dots in the hinterland - they are partisan units appearing randomly and moving to random directions. The ones in the Ukraine / Belarus are particularily annoying as sometimes they block the main railway lines, and then stop and attack the unsuspected trains carrying the player's units to and from the front. Also, if they finish the turn at certain places on the map some prestige points will be deducted indicating that they blew up the railway which must be fixed. When the latter happens the player gets a message informing him about it and the screen is centered on the general partisan infected area, but not exactly where it happened. Then it is up to the player to search & destroy the partisan unit which may be hiding in the fog of war.- introduce a possibility of rebels/partisans in areas like USSR or France (of course the player should be informed in advance with information pop-ups - historically accurate - remember rebels from Total War?)
Obviously, the player can decide not to deal with these, and move away his occupational troops to the front, but then the partisans will slowly take control of the area, capturing the towns and airports. So, basically it is a good idea to keep control of these troublesome areas by positioning some weaker units there, as historically.
This mod only concentrates on the military aspects of WW2. And it aims to find out if the Germans had any chance to win the war on the battlefields had they followed a different strategy. Thus I would like to avoid making any direct references to such things, even if one might say this is euphimistic in a way. This is a dangerous trap which is hard, if not impossible to avoid when we are talking about the Germany's involvement in WW2. For simplicity, the player is given the task of commanding the army and defeat the enemy's, and that's it.- introduce some non-military units/structures* (e.g. placing a "Gestapo Office" unit into a city generates extra prestige or adds Polizei units every n turns)
Even if it was not like that, the above mentioned limited number of AI zones would make it very difficult to create such a thing as it would use up another zone. And I intend to use all the available zones to create more historical battles.
Apart from the cities, the only non-military objects on the map are the oil fields, which will generate extra prestige to its owner, though.
A few bonus units will be given, like captured equipment, but not too many. Bonus presige is also rewarded for capturing key objectives like Malta or Moscow.- let the player get unique/bonus units or structures for capturing special areas (or occupying them for n turns): a variety of options here : capture & protect Einstein, steal the V2 technology etc etc. Of course everything should be historically accurate.
By the way, "capturing and protecting Einstein" would hardly be historically accurate IMO, as he left Germany in 1933, and spent the rest of his life in the USA.
And I do not really understand "steal the V2 technology". Steal? From who? Maybe I am wrong, but wasn't it the German scientists, who developed it from scratch? And the Allies the ones, who "stole" (copied) it after WW2?
Hm.
Do not get me wrong, I see your point here, and it would be indeed nice to have some events or "quests" like these, but again, it should need some AI zones to work and I already used up all.
And still, a quest to recover the Lost Ark in Egypt, for example, would be gross, I think. (Just do not tell Indy that I am going that way
)
Never mind.
