Battlefield Europe v1.9 - "what if..." scenario

[panzerdim]

Turn 66

It is critical turn.

First, we finally got all British East capturing Basra and Aleppo.

Britain has only one way to replenish resources across the Atlantic.

Turn 66_Basra captured_all oilfields in our hand.jpg (380.71 KiB) Viewed 3653 times

Second, our vanguard was landed.

Turn 66_First wave landed.jpg (440.04 KiB) Viewed 3653 times

And third, Home Fleet moved from Scapa Flow to Strait of Dover but we chased it with Tirpitz and Luftwaffe.

Turn 66_Allies bombing ports_we bombing Home Fleet.jpg (357.31 KiB) Viewed 3653 times

[panzerdim]

Turns 68-70

Events are galloped.

During our hunting on HMS Resolution US troops tried to landing on Greenland second time.

Turn 68_Hunting on Resolution.jpg (341.49 KiB) Viewed 3649 times

Turn 69_US troops landed on Greenland.jpg (367.42 KiB) Viewed 3649 times

Now these are a powerful rangers btns.

7.FJ at this time moved to Ireland and probably we will lose the Greenland. But it is not so bad because these rangers cannot moved anywhere from isle and will stay here rest of time and will not participate in Battle for Britain.

Turn 70_we have lost Grunland.jpg (327.04 KiB) Viewed 3649 times

[panzerdim]

We finish the Home Fleet in the North Sea.

Turn 68_end of Home Fleet.jpg (370.82 KiB) Viewed 3647 times

At this time our U-boat discover a new military convoy with British troops. What this - aborted D-Day plan or this is a new plan? Where they are moved?

Turn 68_found military convoy far north on Atlantic.jpg (363.28 KiB) Viewed 3647 times

They moved to Norway and have been sunk here.

Turn 70_british convoy moved to Norway and destroyed here by Tirpitz, light forces and Luftwaffe.jpg (379.59 KiB) Viewed 3647 times

[panzerdim]

it's a kind of cheat observed.

You can shell London from these points by field heavy artillery 17 K18.

it is not correct at all.

You can use it or no.

But I would like if McGuba will cut range to 4 and add one more hex to width Strait of Dover.

Turn 68_longe range ARTY.jpg (437.07 KiB) Viewed 3641 times

[Intenso82]

I supposed that Gibraltar was blocked but British Navy can pass it. How?

We also encountered this in our multiplayer game.
This will be fixed in the next version.

Very interesting are some tactical decisions.
For example, with the blocking of submarines Suez Canal.

In my mod, I planned to make separate movement types for submarines in a surface and submerged mode.
To the submarine could enter the port only in surface mode and was vulnerable to attack.
Perhaps it is also worth adding that the submarine could pass through the channel also only in the surface mode

Second, our vanguard was landed.

Ambitious plan. You should try to capture London before D-day, otherwise the landing will be along with your invasion, I suppose.

[panzerdim]

Greetings, Intenso82

Thanks for comments.

For example, with the blocking of submarines Suez Canal.

First, I had plan to block entries to channel only to prevent moving of British Navy but later found that troops moving was blocked too.

To the submarine could enter the port only in surface mode and was vulnerable to attack.
Perhaps it is also worth adding that the submarine could pass through the channel also only in the surface mode

Yes, it will be a more correct.

But what with a Scapa Flow? It is a harbor but on map it is port. Germans did it well in 1939.

Turns 77_Scapa Flow.jpg (362.83 KiB) Viewed 3598 times

[panzerdim]

Kameraden,

let's finish.

Turns 71-81.

London captured May 1944, Turn 71.

Turns 71_London captured, May 1944.jpg (415.33 KiB) Viewed 3596 times

You should try to capture London before D-day, otherwise the landing will be along with your invasion, I suppose

I'm too, so we still keep defense in France

Turns 75_Still keep defense on France.jpg (414.53 KiB) Viewed 3596 times

[panzerdim]

Ireland rebelled

Yeah, good script.

Student's guys from 7.FJ landed in Ireland and secured towards airfield.

Turns 72_Ireland rebellion.jpg (375.32 KiB) Viewed 3594 times

Turns 75_Advance airfield_on_Ireland.jpg (376.05 KiB) Viewed 3594 times

[panzerdim]

Wehrmacht moved on British last defense in Scotland.

Turns 75_Advancing to Scotland.jpg (407.41 KiB) Viewed 3592 times

On turn 77 Liverpool fallen.

Turns 77_Liverpool ends.jpg (426.71 KiB) Viewed 3592 times

On turn 81 final battle started.

Turn 81_Final Battle.jpg (404.28 KiB) Viewed 3592 times

[panzerdim]

And battle ended on turn 81 too.

Turn 81_End.jpg (399.65 KiB) Viewed 3591 times

This is all.

Total Victory on Turn 81, October 5, 1944.

Keep in mind that this is a medium/colonel level.

Strategic views:

Turn 81_Strategic Map, Oct 1944.jpg (311.96 KiB) Viewed 3591 times

Turn 81_Strategic Air Map, Oct 1944.jpg (301.34 KiB) Viewed 3591 times

[PeteMitchell]

Very nice, well done!

[panzerdim]

Thanks , PeteMitchell_2

let's make a short summary

1. Very good mod. I really appreciate that one. Thanks, McGuba and team. Great work.

2. Mod have a good playability by different ways and by different gamers.

So, for example, D-Day cancelled at all and have aborted Operation Torch which results a Operations Husky and Anvil Dragoon cancelled.

3. I hope that mod will be continued and expanded.
You know that McGuba is working with next version which will be harder.
You know that McGuba is fan of realism but I really would like to see the extension of this mod to Pacific and Panama-USA-Canada.


What I would like to see in this mod:

1. Add one more theater of war beyond the Arctic Circle. This need a map extension on north of Norway, Finland and Russia and need cover territory of Petsamo and Murmansk. Hard battles were here.
It can be done by cutting map for 6-7 hexes in Africa's deserts where a many empty territories which were not used even for maneuvers.

2. New scripted events like a convoy PQ-17, St.Nazaire Raid (Operation Chariot) or Operations Anton and Lila.

3. Extension of units roster. I would like to see more Finnish units, Italian paras and combat engineers, more heavy artillery units, more naval units (probably this is under construction) and different coastal defense batteries (probably this is under construction too). Also
But here you can do it by yourself. Mapping is not so easy.

4. For me needs to add one more hex to width of English Channel and Strait of Dover.

[panzerdim]

Also let me give some tips and trick for new players this mod.

You have read some AAR's from other experienced players like PeteMitchell, Intenso or McGuba concerns such tactics like a winter offensives or build defense using rivers and rough terrains.

So, lets me give some other recommendations.

1. Playing this mod you will haven't enough prestige to do all want you want. Keep on eye on balance replacement/elite replacement/upgrades.
Most time I'm using standard replacement and keep some prestige points for elite replacements for fighters squadrons in France and AT/tanks with heroes on East.


2. Concerns upgrades can recommend do it ASAP:
- towed AA to Aht-Aht. They are good as AA on the West and as ATG on the East.
- upgrade some AA in France to mobile Flakvierling. it will be very useful create a mobile AA defense combine them with mobile radars.
- on the east you need ASAP upgrade 37mm door-knockers to 50 mm at least. Keep balance between towed and mobile ATG. It is strictly depend of your current tasks on early game. Later the differences is not so important and StuG with long barrel doing both defensice and offensive jobs well.
- you can use bf109f on the east long time. with high initiative and with heroes they are still effective long time but on the West you need keep on eye your fighters upgrading and do it in time.
- highly recommend to motorize your infantry on the east especially if you played Blitzkrieg style.
- for anti-partisan duties i recommend use more cavalry. They are have all terrain fast move and high SA values enough to deal partisans in 1-2 turns. Using them you can easy control Belorussian marches.

Turns 71_Anti-Partisan duties.jpg (410.9 KiB) Viewed 3573 times

On Balkan mountains I'm using local infantry but I recommend not garrisoned them but by place them in mtn or forest area on the possible routes of partisan. Usually partisans then appeared they are already attack your unit if see them. If you lucky and your infantry stays here few turns they are will be entrenched and partisan attacks can be destroyed in one turn.

That is all.

Have fun with this mod.

[McGuba]

Hi,

Thanks for your feedback and detailed and very nice AAR!

In the beginning you wrote something that games like this should be played at "neutral" i.e. medium difficulty, when the computer does not cheat to help any of the sides. I fully agree with this, however, in my opinion the preferred difficulty level to achieve it should be "General" and not "Colonel" and hence "General" is the recommended difficulty level for this mod. The only difference between these two is that the "AI level" is set to "1" for Colonel and "2" for General. Other than that both sides get neutral experience and prestige in both cases. Although the exact nature of the difference between the AI levels have never been clearly explained by the developer, as far as I understand, level 2 is the highest which makes the AI play the smartest. And thus I always tested and created the scenario with this AI level in mind as the AI sometimes plays quite silly even at this highest setting. In fact I have never even tried playing Panzer Corps with any lower AI level, so I am not even sure of the difference. Nevertheless, I tried to build in some tweaks and scripts to make the AI a bit smarter in some situations but some of the scripts and AI unit settings may have an adverse effect if played with any lower than AI level 2. Keeping all this in mind I am of course still very happy that you were able to achieve a total victory and proved that the mod can be fully played with AI level 1 as well.

The other thing that I noticed in some of the screenshots was that you might have played with fog of war switched off? That is all enemy units are visible on the map even if not in the actual spotting range of a friendly unit? I might be wrong, but if so, would you explain your reason for that? I would think that seeing every enemy unit takes away some of the fun and makes ground and air recon units somewhat useless.


As for your suggestions:

You know that McGuba is working with next version which will be harder.

It may not be harder, just hopefully more realistic. With other words, I will take away a few things with one hand, but will give something with the other in return.

You know that McGuba is fan of realism but I really would like to see the extension of this mod to Pacific and Panama-USA-Canada.

I seriously doubt that it would be possible at this map scale with the current game engine. That would make the map many times bigger and would cause several problems. PzC was not designed with such huge maps in mind, even this one struggles at times. For the most part I think I have already passed the limits of this game engine and it is a small wonder that it still works.

1. Add one more theater of war beyond the Arctic Circle. This need a map extension on north of Norway, Finland and Russia and need cover territory of Petsamo and Murmansk. Hard battles were here.
It can be done by cutting map for 6-7 hexes in Africa's deserts where a many empty territories which were not used even for maneuvers.

This one comes up frequently. Although it is theoretically possible with the new exe which allows 256 AI zones instead of the current 32, it would still require a lot of work, mainly as I would need to rewrite many of the scripts due to changed coordinate numbers. Increasing the map to the south is not a problem as it does not interfere with the existing scripts, but any increase to the north would mess up all the existing coordinate based scripts as all "y" cooridinates would change by the added number. And now I have several versions of the same scenario which would of course multiply this task. Maybe I will do it one day, after I retire, but quite possibly you will need to wait for that several more years/decades... The coming next version still uses the older v1.31 exe with 32 zones only (which does not allow me to add more events, convoys, etc.), and even the release of this is seemingly delayed endlessly... but not forever.

Also note that the new 256 AI zone exe is still untested and using it to its full potential may cause unexpected problems or may even break the mod at some point. Therefore I wanted to be sure that the current changes work flawlessly with the current 32 AI zones version before starting to experiment with adding more AI zones.

2. New scripted events like a convoy PQ-17, St.Nazaire Raid (Operation Chariot) or Operations Anton and Lila.

Yes these are all possible with the new exe and there may be new events if I decide to continue development later. Actually I would have more ambitious ideas than just adding somewhat local events like these. But for now let's just wait for the next version as that will bring quite a lot of other changes.

3. Extension of units roster. I would like to see more Finnish units, Italian paras and combat engineers, more heavy artillery units, more naval units (probably this is under construction) and different coastal defense batteries (probably this is under construction too).

You are right, some of these are coming with the new version, with some others, too.

4. For me needs to add one more hex to width of English Channel and Strait of Dover.

I am not going to move the whole of Britain by one hex to the north only to make the English Strait a bit wider. That would require me to redraw the whole British Isles for that purpose. The editor is not as user friendly as one would think. One cannot just copy paste or move whole areas all over, this would have to be made hex by hex. But bombarding across will not be as easy as before due to the new coastal guns on both sides of the Channel. In v2.0, Winnie and Pooh and their "friends" will make the life of a German artillery gunner near Calais quite difficult.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dover_Strait_coastal_guns

[PeteMitchell]

The other thing that I noticed in some of the screenshots was that you might have played with fog of war switched off? That is all enemy units are visible on the map even if not in the actual spotting range of a friendly unit? I might be wrong, but if so, would you explain your reason for that? I would think that seeing every enemy unit takes away some of the fun and makes ground and air recon units somewhat useless.

Even the AI might behave differently when fog of war is off... well, at least it does so on "normal" maps...

[PeteMitchell]

You have read some AAR's from other experienced players like PeteMitchell, Intenso or McGuba concerns such tactics like a winter offensives or build defense using rivers and rough terrains.

Thanks a lot panzerdim... Please allow me to add Uhu, GeneralWerner and JimmyC to this list... from what I have seen and read, they have put in more hours than I have and most likely they are also more experienced with this mod than I am...

[panzerdim]

Hi Guys,

thanks for comments.

Nice to talk with smart men.

Let me clarify some things.

I'm more like modding games than gaming itself.

A PC series is relatively new for me. I'm played all campaigns and now it is a time to start modding something.

So, the purpose oh this AAR is a test AI first. I'm very interesting to this global mod. it is a really serious modding work.

So, I'm use a normal level. I'm use a saves and other things including console codes to analyze AI.

I'm not played with WoF off but using periodically console making screenshot or tracking AI actions. it is a standard modder practice testing anything.

All rules in our minds

that games like this should be played at "neutral" i.e. medium difficulty

I'm started modding PG/PG2 series at one time and together with Lasse Jensen, Michael von Adler, Oronzo and other old school PG guys. Yeah, I'm so old panzer guy.

We spent many time trying to understand PG/PG2 battle mechanic and despite Lasse's contacts with SS staff we haven' cleared this question finally. But definitely a different difficulty levels affects only quantitative issues for gamer.

The other simple example is a Total War series. Many modders (and I'm too ) trying to correct AI using scripts based on historical "laws of war" but most of them crashed on hard levels.
Hards are given a attack/defense bonuses to AI but AI is mathematics machine firstly and simply calculate cost/effectiveness and you will have battles with hordes of peasants instead of tactics or strategy.

So, I simply follow my old way choosing medium level.

Now is a new time and I may be wrong and PC team got a more intelligent AI now.

I will test it on next version 2.0. I have other strategy to play this mod again.

...like to see the extension of this mod to Pacific and Panama-USA-Canada.
I seriously doubt that it would be possible at this map scale with the current game engine. That would make the map many times bigger and would cause several problems. PzC was not designed with such huge maps in mind....

I'm sorry for my English. I mean not whole world map but continuation Battlefield series like as Battlefield Pacific or Battlefield America.

This one comes up frequently. Although it is theoretically possible with the new exe which allows 256 AI zones instead of the current 32, it would still require a lot of work, mainly as I would need to rewrite many of the scripts due to changed coordinate numbers. Increasing the map to the south is not a problem as it does not interfere with the existing scripts, but any increase to the north would mess up all the existing coordinate based scripts as all "y" cooridinates would change by the added number. And now I have several versions of the same scenario which would of course multiply this task. Maybe I will do it one day, after I retire, but quite possibly you will need to wait for that several more years/decades... The coming next version still uses the older v1.31 exe with 32 zones only (which does not allow me to add more events, convoys, etc.), and even the release of this is seemingly delayed endlessly... but not forever.

Also note that the new 256 AI zone exe is still untested and using it to its full potential may cause unexpected problems or may even break the mod at some point. Therefore I wanted to be sure that the current changes work flawlessly with the current 32 AI zones version before starting to experiment with adding more AI zones.

we will wait patiently.

...ground and air recon units somewhat useless.

No, no. They are every time useful. I lose most of ground recons but keep all air recon. They are doing a double job - recon and a bait in traps for enemy fighters. I keep them safe from full destroying.

In v2.0, Winnie and Pooh and their "friends" will make the life of a German artillery gunner near Calais quite difficult.

Great. Don't forget about Adolf and Todt.

Even the AI might behave differently when fog of war is off

Yes, may be. Sometimes AI found my units deep in rear or far in the sea even WoF is switched on.

Please allow me to add Uhu, GeneralWerner and JimmyC to this list

Sure , I know these guys but have read your AAR and Intenso-McGuba battle reports only.

Best,

we wait 2.0.

[PeteMitchell]

Sometimes AI found my units deep in rear or far in the sea even WoF is switched on.

This could be by coincidence/mistake or due to the patrolling routes/trigger points that exist at various places of the map...

[McGuba]

Exactly, it is one of those things that I made the AI behave as a human would, that is for example actively searching for the players units at unexpected places. Then of course all the player notices is that the silly AI found his well hidden unit and thinks that it must be cheating, which is not the case.

[panzerdim]

So, this is a not original PC feature and it is your scripts?

Great, well done.