JimmyC wrote:By the way, does capturing the oilfields in the Caucuses also stunt Russia's forces or does it just give you bonus income?
Yes it does. After the capture of the Caucasus oil fields the Soviets get about 20-25% less new units. But it does not affect those units which had appeared before the capture of the oil fileds and are still on their way to the frontline (which may take several turns). The capture of the Moscow area reduces Soviet reinforcements by about 15-20% and Leningrad by about 10-15%. If all three are taken the Soviets should get less than 50% of the scheduled units they would get otherwise. But these are just very rough estimates and depend on the year as well. Mainly new units appearing after 1943 are affected.
Also, the capture of the oil fields mainly affects tanks and aircraft and the population centers mainly affect infantry (but not only).
empedocles wrote:Hi all,
I finally managed to finish this mod and boy.... I got my butt kicked!I ended up having to use cheats (some prestige here and there) just to keep myself on track and, even with that help, I only managed to get a Marginal Victory (defeat of the russians + hold cities in germany) in the last freaking turn.
-The air battle looked pretty much won in the west by the end of 1943 but then DDay happened and my planes were oblitterated from the skies by those pesky american fighters.
Sure historically the Luftwaffe was literally destroyed in the West in the first few months of 1944 after the introduction of the long range US escort fighters in numbers. Until then they held up quite well aginst the mostly unescorted bombers. But in early 1944 some fighter units suffered 200% losses in a matter of a few weeks requiring urgent reinforcements with inexperienced green pilots, who in return had even less chance to survive.
In the mod it can be avoided in a few two ways, though:
- the successful invasion of Britain - if there are no enemy bases, there are no enemy fighters to operate from
- the early defeat of the USSR - after which all fighters can be upgraded to the latest types and transfered to the West. Then they have a good chance to resist the might of the US Air Force.
- evacuating all the air units from the West and completely giving up the air space to the Allies - in this way the figther force can be saved and used elsewhere, but as a result the Allies will cause significant prestige loss with their unmolested bombing campaign.
I will replay it again (my wife is gonna kill me, but hey, we are already married!!).
Please forward my sincere apologies to your wife, but she has to understand that conquering new lands and hearts is a very important part of our lives.
JimmyC wrote:1. I noticed that some Romanian troops have German insignia on their unit panel indicating they are part of the German army, even though the name and visual of the units is a Romanian infantry. I assume this is an error. I can take a screenshot of it if you want.
Yeah, I already noticed this silly bug and fixed in my work-in-progress next version. Thanks anyway.
2. AA now doesn't seem to be in the same upgrade tree anymore. There are so many wimpy 2cm Flak units and little else!! I assume this is deliberate. I noticed already it makes it harder on the western front...
Yes, it is deliberate, historically the singel turret 2cm AA gun was by far the most produced one with some 120.000 made, compared to the 20.000 "88"s for example. Also it remained in heavy use until 1945. I wanted to better reflect it in the mod rather than just allow/encourage every player to upgrade to the best one at a discount price.
For instance according to a source, in February 1945 the even elite LSSAH armoured divison had 45 single barrel 2cm AA, 7 quad 2cm, 15 3.7cm and 18 8.8 cm guns so they had more single barrel 2 cm AA guns than all the other types combined. And it was one of the best equipped divisions bearing the name of the Führer himself.
And yet, it is still possible to upgrade most or all AA guns to the 88 one in the mod, but only at the cost of other important upgrades.
3. AT now doesn't seem to be in the same upgrade tree (only realised this after wasting prestige on upgrading a few of them to 5cm). Again i assume this is deliberate, but it really hurts (much worse effect than the AA change)! What am i to do with all the useless 3.7cm Pak? I am unsure on what you set the total unit count, but there is strong incentive to just disband all these units if it would take you under the unit size cap. That way I could buy something actually useful. As it is i save any that are close to 2 star for upgrade to Stug when it comes available. The rest i just throw in as meat shield and don't care about. I wonder it is even worth to spend prestige on normal reinforcement for this unit? Any suggestion on how to use these units?
Hm, yeah I see your point here and I tend to agree. The aim was similar here than with the AA guns - historically the 3.7cm and 5cm AT guns remained in use until the end of the war and I just wanted to better reflect it in the mod, too. But they were usually not used in the first line in their intended role against tanks, as being ineffective, instead, were rather used against lightly armoured vehicles or bunkers or MG nests and stuff like that. So I also think I should change it back to normal as I do not really want players to disband these only to free up unit slots.
4. I noticed you changed the pill boxes to be direct fire rather than artillery style. I like this change as they now seem to pack more punch against direct assaults.
Yes, they are better now.
hugh2711 wrote:It also seems some units have less heroes or are at less strength which makes the start slightly slower and more expensive e.g. hence it is slower to remove the bialystock pocket etc the 1000 point penalty for tangier is alot for little.
I did not really reduce the strength of the starting units, maybe only for a few and I certainly did not take any heroes away. But there might be some more Soviet units at the start which makes it harder.
The Tangier penalty is mainly there to compensate for the added 50 prestige per turn given for the new important city Trondheim in Norway. (I wanted to add Trondheim to the list of important cities to make Norway a bit more important and interesting as historically a large number of German soldiers were stationed there fearing an Allied invasion which never came, whereas in the previous versions of the mod it was possible to evacuate it with little to none side effects.)
In fact, 50pp means players get nearly 5000 extra prestige in 99 turns in v1.8, which is a significant amount. Now players start the mod with less prestige, but get more during the whole war so prestige flow should be a bit more steady instead of starting reach and running out midgame. At least, that was the theory.
My impression is that many players, especially first time players, tend to overspend in the first year driven by the high starting prestige and the many easily captured cities, only to run dry mid-game, which results in them losing their interest and/or losing the war. This change attempts to partially fix it at least.
I nearly doubled the number of scripts since the first versions and many of these scripts are aimed to make the AI more challenging. There are some more (historical) restrictions in v1.8 like the fuel crises from early 1942. Make sure you always read the in-game messages as they usually contain useful hints.
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