old Potzblitz thread (discontinued)

[mhl67]

Continued writing the event descriptions, almost two thirds completed, about 40 pages by now...might be finished at the end of the week. Hope someone will actually find this to be of any use at all.

No bug reports from you guys? I'm surprised!

Well to be fair, I haven't gotten to play it yet since I'm still trying to get it to run on wine since having to use my mac for the time being.

[Robotron]

@mhl67: as I already mentioned in the general CTGW forum: if the game at least produces a crash-log that might give a hint about what's wrong.

In other news: got to the letter "T" with the documentation. Not sure about how to order the events though: one big list for all events or a separate list for each faction?

Corrected city names provided by TripleCP got implemented too as well as another overhaul of most events. I guess this warrants a 2.6 release with the events-PDF included once it's finished.

Again, any suggestions on what you want to have added to the mod gameplay-wise are welcome as are bug reports, AARs, corrections about city placement or new ideas for events/commanders.

Cheers!

[nehi]

for each faction (or nation) sounds more reasonable

ottomans empire was up until 1922, without it its far from to be realistic ww1

[Robotron]

ottomans empire was up until 1922, without it its far from to be realistic ww1

So I guess you'll be happy to hear I drastically reduced the chance for Persia to join the war in V2.6. ^^
Besides: the mod is not meant to follow the historic course of actions by the letter but rather to improve playability (with a focus on singleplayer mode at the moment because of bad AI) and re-playability by offering a modest element of chance.

[cwaters23]

Robo, this mod looks fantastic... been looking forward to a comprehensive one like this for a long time! Any chance you can re-upload the patch files to FileDropper? I've tried to download the 2.5 full file a few times, but it keeps coming back as 0 bytes.

[Robotron]

Both links updated. I guess filedropper deletes files that were uploaded "for free" after about two weeks so get them while they last. ^^

[Zombo]

A friend new to the game has tried your mod but he came up with a strange comment (forwarded here)

started a game at lunchtime and was really enjoying it, threw the germans out of belgium and rtreated frm verdun to form a line with the british, took konigsberg and danzig and sank the whole fucking german north sea fleet and france surrendered!!!!

this is crazy but still! ) i know verdun was important but not surrendering important!

Could that be some kind of bug?

[Robotron]

The penalty for losing Verdun is 10 points of morale for France and a collapse point (plus a second one if a roll of D100 is higher than French morale). Without a savegame I can only guess why France suddenly surrendered in your friend's game (assuming French morale was well above 10 and France was not already collapsing due to collapse points). Anyway, the script looks alright, couldn't find any connections between giving up Verdun and a (as I understand it) sudden and catastrophic loss of morale.

[nehi]

what about french dreadnought and serbia? it can lower morale quite well if lost

[Robotron]

what about french dreadnought and serbia? it can lower morale quite well if lost

In Potzblitz Serbia's surrender will cause a morale loss of 5 points, a sunk dreadnought 2-5 points.

[nehi]

no collapse points? its now implemented that losing morale for pointless hexes?

maybe he left many hexes to germans southeast from verdun, i cant imagine how german ai could take verdun anyway

[Robotron]

its now implemented that losing morale for pointless hexes?

No, it wasn't implemented because I never got the "losing morale for breakthroughs" modifiers working in any satisfactiory way.

i cant imagine how german ai could take verdun anyway

Well, he reported he retreated from Verdun, leaving the Verdun hex empty.

I assume Zombo's friend just didn't stop the German advance into France soon enough and did not pay attention to French morale.

In singleplayer vs CP there is a hefty morale loss for France for every French hex occupied by Germany (until Moltke gets fired), much like the "Cossacks" event for Germany vs Russia but much more severe to compensate for bad CP AI.

[Moreau]

any news about 3.0?

[Zombo]

I assume Zombo's friend just didn't stop the German advance into France soon enough and did not pay attention to French morale.

In singleplayer vs CP there is a hefty morale loss for France for every French hex occupied by Germany (until Moltke gets fired), much like the "Cossacks" event for Germany vs Russia but much more severe to compensate for bad CP AI.

that might be it. Yet, it could be something leading to unrealistic situations, since, if I understood well, there a penalties for losing hexes ( for France and Germany) but you don't regain anything from recapturing them. I actually think that historically, even a partial victory could be spin-doctored to moral effects as to compensate largely for previous moral damage ( the Marne, Tannenberg). So yes, it can be weird to have the French collapse due to early war German advance into France, at a time the French are actually advancing into Germany

I know Robotron tried to implement some "recapturing hexes" moral bonus hat would have solved to problem. re there not other ways? If the number of homeland occupied hexes can be calculated for penalties, can they not be calculated to regain morale if the differential is moving in your favour? Or considering every West front hex as a fictitious VP location? (dunno, just asking, I don't know anything about code)

anyway, talking about differential, maybe surrender should only happen at a certain morale level AND a certain morale differential with the enemy. It would also be weird to have the French surrender when they are at, say, 10% morale, while the Germans are at 12%, which would mean surrendering while aware that the enemy himself is on the verge of total collapse.

BTW, Robotron, could you give as a quick list of what changes from single-player to multi-player?

Thx a lot!

[Robotron]

BTW, Robotron, could you give as a quick list of what changes from single-player to multi-player?

Thx a lot!

Sure. In multiplayer the following changes apply:


- Britain loses its coastal garrisons at the start of the game
- The "Austrian Siege Howitzer" event always triggers in turn 3
- the Russian Supply Crisis might start sooner (neither Warsaw being captured by CP nor Rasputin being triggered nor Turkey still being neutral are prerequisites)
- it is harder for the Entente to maintain the British Sea Blockade (Entente warships' strength-points in the Atlantic are divided by three not two when calculating Entente naval superiority)
- Germany loses no morale to the "Cossacks are coming" event
- retreating Prittwitz west of the Vistula will prevent the "Victory at Tannenberg" event and bring in Hindenburg for a morale penalty of between 18 to 33.
- French General Gallieni will always spawn with a garrison instead of a possible infantry

[Zombo]

Thx !

I'm about to start playing with a few friends!

do you think there is something that can be done about the morale damage of earlier events lingering on ( and possibly causing the weird surrender described above?)

[Robotron]

The best way to increase morale is to build as large an army as possible and have a good kill/casualties ratio. This will boost morale and make most morale losses by events close to irrelevant.

As for your friend's sudden surrender of France in singleplayer: I suspect he just forgot to keep an eye on France's morale but without a savegame this is just speculation. Anyway: the said loss of morale per hex captured by Germany in France only occurs in singleplayer.

[cwaters23]

Seems there is a problem with the "Shackled to a Corpse" event card being drawn. In every otherwise successful run as the CP I've had so far, there comes a point (anywhere from Jan 1915 onward) where the event triggers and AH's national morale immediately drops to zero. Of course they're out the next turn. It never seems to happen when AH's morale is at a naturally low point where they're actually losing; it's almost always when they're at 70% NM, Serbia dead, Galicia coming back under control, no Entente units on AH territory. It's feels like instead of the event triggering as a result of AH NM hitting zero, the event itself triggers randomly and drives AH NM to zero as a result. Very frustrating. Sometimes a reload from the end turn autosave will give normal results instead (i.e. NM goes up or down normally based on actual events happening), in which case the game can go on. Other times, the event seems to be hard-locked into the end-turn save and then the game is basically done. Any ideas? I would imagine others have seen this as well.

[Robotron]

@cwaters23: again, a savegame (autosave.endturn) would be very helpful but this issue should be fixable without one. Thanks a lot for reporting!

This is what this event is supposed to do (excerpt from the forthcoming detailed description of events)

Conditions
Year is at least 1915 and “Death of Franz Josef” has not yet occurred.

Either Austrian morale has fallen to less than half of German morale or German morale has fallen to less than half of Austrian morale.

If a roll of D100 is equal or less than √(number of the current gameturn) multiplied by √(4 + the total of German and Austrian collapse points added together).

Effect
German and Austrian morale is set to the average of both values.
The nation which had the higher morale will then gain up to √(sum of German and Austrian collapse points) morale.
The nation which had the lower morale will then lose up to √(sum of German and Austrian collapse points) morale.
The nation which had higher morale suffers a collapse point
The nation which had the lower morale loses a collapse point.


Please try the preliminary V2.6 update linked below and report back (it's meant to be copied into the data folder, replacing the "lang" and "scripts" folders).

http://www.filedropper.com/v26

[cwaters23]

Thanks! The 2.6 update fixed the AH catastrophic morale plunge issue, and the game proceeded normally to the bitter end on Turn 58 (May 1918). Final result was a loss for the CP in an extremely challenging and close playthrough with all of the major nations on the brink of collapse. The two things that prevented a CP victory were the entry of Switzerland for the Entente (creating a continuous and problematic front from Venice to Amiens) and Russia managing to stay in the game via its event chain despite almost total military annihilation. Definitely the best single-player WWI experience I can recall from countless playthroughs of most of the titles out there.

You've really breathed life back into this title with your work on this mod. Even though balancing requires a lot of "unfair" tweaking for the AI side, e.g. being able to maintain much larger than normal forces, the end result is an almost perfect single-player game for the CP player. If you can somehow manage to do the same for the Entente side, that would be seriously impressive. Thanks again for all the effort that's gone into this one, and I look forward to 3.0!