Probably this is the biggest issue currently. Some of the guys here warned me not to implement the air war as the Allied air forces would cause too many prestige penalty and/or too many German fighters would be needed to counter them and then those could not be used on the "more important" Eastern Front. And now it seems that the Allied efforts are next to utterly ineffective.Ceek wrote:The air war that wasn't. While three fighters have been kept from assisting the Eastern front, they have not been significantly taxed by the Allied air force. For the most part, their bombers are not interested in the cities, but attack fortifications and radar stations. I have only had three allied bombers ever end their turns above objective cities.
As I see there are two problems here:1. Allied Air forces are not strong enough over Western Europe in 1942-43. This could be easily changed by adding more and/or more experienced and better Allied aircraft. However, it would force the player to deploy even more Axis fighters to the area, which would mean less fighters to support the Eastern offensives. Historically, as I understand, in 1941-1942 a relatively low number of German fighter units could hold the Allies at bay, causing heavy losses to the unescorted bombers. While the British could make several much hyped "thousand bomber raids" in which (nearly) one thousand night bombers attacked the same night, that intensity could not be sustained for long. In 1943, with the arrival of the USAAF things had started to change as both air forces could attack with 600-800 heavy bombers day and night. Consequently, the Germans were forced to allocate more and more fighters for the defense of the Reich, and thus Allied losses continued to remain high, mainly due to the lack of a long range fighter escort. And most of those German fighters were transfered from the Eastern Front. Even then, they could not stop the Allies from literally destroying Hamburg and some other cities. And then, in 1944 the Luftwaffe deployed some 1000 interceptors for the defense of Germany, which meant about half of all the available fighter strenght. And even those were unable to protect the cities and to prevent the D-day landing and were eventually defeated.
In game terms, I think if the player is able to defend Germany with 3-4 fighters in 1941-42 then it is quite all right. However, in 1943 he would need to deploy some more fighters to achieve the same success. And from 1944 onwards the successful defense of Germany should require just about all of the available German fighters (8-10), which obviously means there could be no fighters deployed to the Eastern Front any longer.
2. Allied strategic bombers do not attack victory objectives, even though they would have to. This is a harder nut to crack as it seems that even if an AI unit is set to "patrol" or "move to" zone x (the victory objective cities), if there is a visible and juicy target within their movement range they prefer to attack it instead of moving on against their designated zone (target city). Which is not good. On the other hand, when it comes to Allied bombers patroling the North Atlantic convoy routes it is a desirable AI behaviour as those bombers are more than happy to attack any visible U-boats instead of just patroling their zone. However, in the target reach area of Western Europe they would never reach their objectives as there is always another target of opporturnity for them. And thus the player has plenty of time to destroy the bombers. So all I could do here is to somewhat reduce the number of those juicy targets in the area, i.e. mainly fortifications and radar stations, and hope that at least some bombers would get through as a result. Also, and it is in connetion with problem no. 1., if there are more bombers attacking at the same time, while some would continue to go for those targets of opportunity, others might get through as there would be no more visible targets for them.
Thanks for this report, the bonus for the Caucasus somehow became bugged, so I have fixed it. However, there was no bonus for Stalingrad in any of the previous versions, and even the in-game message box says: "Our analisys shows that the key for the defeat of the Soviet Union lies in the capture of its main industrial and political centers. We believe that if we manage to capture and hold the Caucasus, Moscow and Leningrad, it will deliver a fatal blow to their war economy, virtually ending their capability to produce and field new units..." The reason for doing so is very simple: I have no more free AI zone that I could assign to Stalingrad. And basically all AI scripts, such as giving bonus or penalty, are based on AI zones.1. Prestige bonuses for capturing Stalingrad and the Caucasus Oil Fields never fired!
Also, as I understand historically the capture of Stalingrad was not so important, it was only set as an objective in order protect the northern flank of Army Group A which was going to the Caucasus, which, in turn, was the main objective of the whole operation. And Stalingrad had only become more and more important during the long siege as it was named after the Soviet dictator and hence both dictators were determined to hold it at all cost.Oh, I have just realized that secondary objectives give only 50 prestige instead of 150. And for some reason I made those objectives secondary ones instead of primary. So I should have to provide some explanation in the game. I think it makes sense that the player gets less prestige for the capture of those relatively lightly defended desert cities than for cities like Kiev or Minsk. However, I make those Russian cities in the hinterland primary (Archangelsk, Petrozhavodsk). Anyway, just capture all objectives and that's it.2. Victory objectives in the Middle East currently only award 50 prestige.
There is such a fighter, but it only appears if the player loses more fighters, I guess. So I have changed the counter a bit, so the player would get a reinforcement fighter after losing one or two (depending on the time it happens) fighters.3. Did you elect against giving the player a fighter reinforcement? I lost one early on in the West and didn't get a replacement.
As Leningrad has its own AI zone, I could give a penalty for the player for using the Finns in the direct assault on the city. From a historical point of view it would really make sense as Mannerheim made it clear that the Finns would not take part in the siege of the city, and it happened exactly like that. On the other hand, it would make a smart player to use all the Finn units elsewhere to circumnavigate this restriction. So I would rather opt not to do so.1. Taking Leningrad is still too easy and determines the rest of the campaign.
I think there should be some units trying to lift the siege, once the Axis takes the first flag. Also, after the capture of the city there could be some, but not too many units trying to recapture it.Instead of losing all their reinforcements in the north, maybe it's just reduced to infantry and artillery and they have to come from further north (Archangelsk)?
In this case it is not that they disappear, but rather they do not even appear. Again, due to game mechanincs - lack of AI zones. But, what I could do here is to add some extra British units if the Axis capture Cairo "too early", to substitute for the lack of those later reinforcements. The trick here, is that those "early" reinforcements should have earlier equipment too, as the US Grant and Sherman tanks only arrived late 1942. I am also thinking about some more randomness in the Middle East which would indeed be nice, but without AI zones I cannot do much about it.2. I understand why the El Alamein reinforcements don't fire if you capture Tobruk quickly enough. However, rather than make these reinforcements disappear, I think they should simply be moved to Cairo and the Suez.
It is a difficult problem. AI units on the attack always move towards the nearest enemy victory objective. On smaller maps it is quite all right and managable, but on a large map like this it is not. For example, if the player captures Archangelsk in the far north with just a few Finn units, from that time all new Soviet ground units would try to recapture that city as that would be the closest objective to their spawing point in the Ural. And they would indeed recapture it with overwhelming power, but in the meantime they would simply forget about some other "minor" objectives like Moscow or the Caucasus. And after that all those units would be trapped in the dense woodland of the north. And the same would happen if the player captures the Caucasus and decides to move on to the Middle East, leaving only a few units to defend the Caucasus. Thus I have decided to "send" all new Soviet reinforcements to the middle of the map and only when they reach it they are set to attack the nearest Axis held objective. What I can do here to make everyone happy is to set some Soviet units to attack right after they spawn, but not all. This would fit in well with your other request: " My only suggestion is to make this level of managed randomness a part of the Middle East and Eastern Front battles as well (see above for specifics)." Also, if there were more AI zones, I could add even more randomness to the mod, e.g. British desert rats patroling the Middle East and North Africa and such. But, the limited number of AI zones (32) is a great restriction.4. Russian reinforcements are pretty predictable in how they get vectored to the front. They never come from the northern or southern extremes of the front, making it easy to concentrate my forces in the center.
I have added such a ditch to v1.4 in case the player captures a part of the Caucasus (a few Soviet units try to recapture it), did it work? I could make the same with Moscow and Leningrad as they have an AI zone. However, as I stated above Stalingrad has no AI zone so I cannot do that with that city at the moment. Other than that I like the idea.6. I think there should be "last ditch" defense triggers that should fire if/when the Axis player captures a major objective in the East (e.g., Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad).
EDIT:
I have accidentally found another bug: until now the player was given penalty for the partisan attacks a maximum of three times as I forgot to set the run counter... So starting with the next release it should happen more often...
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, and since I am on my well deserved holiday I do not have the time to continue any further. Thus there will be no 'official' 42 starting savegame for v1.4, I am afraid. Mainly because I have already been working on v1.5 which will hopefully fix some more issues, like the missing air war. In the meantime I made some more research in the subject and found that the Western Allies should have considerably more air units on the map at the current scale of the mod. From v1.5 a German air unit will represent a historical Geschwader (with historical name), the equivalent of a US aviation wing or a British air force group, with 100-150 aircraft. And I will set the maximum number of British and American air units (air wings and groups) possibly appearing on the map according to their historical numbers. Which, in effect means about two times more Western Allied air units in v1.5 from 1943. 
