old Potzblitz thread (discontinued)

[Radar8717]

Great mod! Looking forward to your next version; is it possible to design over strength units ( more than 10) to simulate experienced units with more survivability or staying power?

Another small idea: when your GERMAN OFFENSIVE HALTED event fires about Dec 1914, the only penalty is a national morale drop, which is good, but maybe not enough. How about adding an effect (applying only to German units inside France) similar to your HOTZENDORF ATTACKS event that removes strength points from some Austrian units along the Russian front. There is little incentive for the Germans to retreat as they historically did once their advance was halted on Paris with over-extended supply lines. Or have the Allied units receive some offensive bonus to push the front back closer to the Belgium border. In all my games as CP it is easy to advance near Paris and then stay there, but there is no penalty for staying put next to Paris for these troops.

[Ohf]

Thanks for this great mod ! Just won as CP in 1918. Focused heavily on Russia and took them out by 1916, then shifted to France, out early 1918. GB, Italy and minors surrendered two months later. I've been trying several times to take out France by december 1914 but never achieved it. I usually get one or two unit in front of Paris but can't take it : my "spear" is too narrow to bring more than one arty and its not enough to get Gallieni out.

How do you do it ? Do you bring back the AH arty from Serbia to France ? More infantry ? I usually spam garrison to hold on the Eastern Front and thats pretty much it for production until winter.

[nehi]

How do you do it ?

if u move ah arty northwest from frankfurt, u will smash liege fortress like nothing and u can capture brussels in same (first german) turn
then just push as hard as possible dont use all production for new units, but some for more ammo, with 3 arties u can keep storm storming

special hint: rape entente fleet and bombard coastal cities

[Ohf]

I don't understand, how do you use the AH arty on the first (german) turn ? Because you can't move it in german territory before. And if I get it in between the two german arty it cant fire this turn because it moved. Usually my opening move is to bombard Liege with the two german arty, move the rear infantry to take it, then I can get Von Kluck and Von Bulow in front of Brussels but its not enough to take the garrison out (it usually still have 2 strength points).

But yeah taking Brussels on german turn one has been my objective for a long time...

Edit : just got it by using the cav and putting Von Kluck north of Brussels once Liege is cleared.

So next phase : do you ignore Antwerp or take it down ?

[Robotron]

@Ohf:
AH can transfer its starting artillery to the German Western Front deployment zone, resulting in the "305mm siege mortar" event to help blasting Liege, using up all of AHs ammo.
(put the AH artillery west of Frankfurt to automatically trigger this event in turn 3 when firing the German artillery at Liege.)

[Ohf]

Oh nice ! Will use this on my next try

[nehi]

So next phase : do you ignore Antwerp or take it down ?

when u use bottom arty on liege, u can move next german arty in fine position, first can help to breaktrhough southern direction, then to take down antwerp, meanwhile other 2 arties can advance southern, first ignore reims, take down paris and turn back reims-verdun, or if possible this direction and some units in direction lemans-nantes

except "event" locations like paris or verdun other cities are as conquered when their production is just depleted (its not neccessary to be seized to do maximum hit to morale level) - for example nancy is hard to get, but its production can be nullified by ground attacks = its like conquered

but taking down france in 1914 is maybe not possible without coastal bombardment

ai has priority to cover transports and convoys, its mediterranean fleet can be sunken quite easily, without dreadnought ai usually wont attack your ships even in its homewaters

[Zombo]

My friend is still experiencing a crash as soon as the game starts ( after the opening screen)
he's doing every thing right and using the bugfix 64

any idea what is causing it? he's been dying to play your mod, and is wailing in frustration

he gets a script error and ctgw.exe stops working and that's it

What should he do?

thx

[Robotron]

@Zombo: If the game keeps crashing please arrange a way for me to have a look at the log file, it's called "ctgw.log" and should be in your friend's "games" folder. It's the only way for me to find out what is going wrong.

[Robotron]

Finally finished typing the PDF explaining the events....100 pages, go figure!
Will add a list of all the changes made compared to the vanilla 1.66 version of the game (as listed in the opening post) and an extra section explaining game mechanics like collapse points and North Sea Blockade.
Once I'm done with that I'll stuff it into the new V3 Potzblitz and upload that beast (TONS of new stuff!) to GoogleDrive before Remembrance Day (Nov 11th). Word!

Have a nice weekend

[Zombo]

Hurray!

[amcelroy]

Hey Robotron,

Nice mod. I really like the way the AI handles itself.

My main feedback is with the country morale. It seems like it is lost way to easily and even harder to regain, and other enemy countries don't seem to suffer as I do. As the CP, AH won some nice victories agianst Serbia, and lost a bit of ground to Russia with Garrison level troops. The strategy was to shut down Serbia and buy time against Russia, however AH morale slowly dropped, even as Serbia collapsed and the Mediteranian fleet scored big wins as well.

Germany scored big wins early on against England's navy, but again, morale slowly dropped and seemed impossible to regain, despite not losing territory and holding most of Belgium and holding off Russia, again mostly with garrison troops.

By 1916, AH has just surrendered, again having conquered 95% of Serbia and starting a strong counter offensive into Russia.

It is really disheartening to play as CP and hold off on both fronts, have Turkey and Bulgaria join the war and have AH surrender even as the offensive into Russia is under way and the army seems strong and well maintained.

Conversely, the military output of the Entante seemed to have no problems. Russia kept spewing out troops and seemed to suffer no ill effects of rationing.

Suggestions:
Perhaps each battle victory or unit destroyed can add morale to the country, with prestige units like dreadnoughts adding even more.
Make each combat, regardless of unit type, consume ammunition of a country. This will require a change in factory output, but seems to better reflect the logistical realities of WW1.
Add positive morale events or some way to reclaim country morale.

[Zombo]

Hi Robotron

I must say I have had comments from my friends (playing solo) expressing the same concerns.

Anyway, I play multiplayer, and it's working really well.
I have a couple of comments, though.
1) The Hoetzendorf offensive events are just great, but it would be nice to have a similar one for the French plan XVII. The attack into Alsace-Lorrraine was as mindless an attack, and it accounted for the bloodiest days in the history of the French army, so it's a bit sad to see that prominent event left out ( and these French armies poised for attack sit nice and passive until redeployed - 'cause no player is stupid enough to replicate their historical counterparts obstinacy and shortsightedness, of course).
2) Because the AH has the initiative by playing first when war breaks out, it can automatically destroy that French Battleship in the med, without the Allies having a chance of doing anything. Now, unless I'm mistaken, that's nothing anywhere near an historical event, so maybe pushing those French sitting ducks out of reach on the first turn would be a good idea.
3) I tend to find shore bombardment a little too powerful. The damage it can do to garrisons is quite surprising, I had a couple German garrisons finished of by British naval firepower, that's seems a little exaggerated.

Anyway, looking forward to the V3!!!

[Robotron]

double post, sorry.

[Robotron]

Hey Robotron,

Nice mod. I really like the way the AI handles itself.

My main feedback is with the country morale. It seems like it is lost way to easily and even harder to regain, and other enemy countries don't seem to suffer as I do. As the CP, AH won some nice victories agianst Serbia, and lost a bit of ground to Russia with Garrison level troops. The strategy was to shut down Serbia and buy time against Russia, however AH morale slowly dropped, even as Serbia collapsed and the Mediteranian fleet scored big wins as well.

Germany scored big wins early on against England's navy, but again, morale slowly dropped and seemed impossible to regain, despite not losing territory and holding most of Belgium and holding off Russia, again mostly with garrison troops.

By 1916, AH has just surrendered, again having conquered 95% of Serbia and starting a strong counter offensive into Russia.

First, thanks for the kudos.

1. Have you broken the British Sea Blockade to prevent the Hunger events from happening?
2. Have you ensured an early Victory at Tannenberg?
3. There is a major bug in the last version that keeps penalizing Germany for not having taken Paris in 1914. This will be fixed in V3.

Conversely, the military output of the Entante seemed to have no problems. Russia kept spewing out troops and seemed to suffer no ill effects of rationing.

The "Russian Supply Crisis" did not fire for you and the Russians did not replenish effectiveness for about half a year while this lasts?
You should also build at least 4-5 submarines to hunt down those Entente convoys.

Suggestions:
Make each combat, regardless of unit type, consume ammunition of a country. This will require a change in factory output, but seems to better reflect the logistical realities of WW1.

This would mean a major rewriting of code to have the AI grasp the new importance of ammo and I'm unable to re-script the AI files (for now), sorry.

Make each combat, regardless of unit type, consume ammunition of a country. This will require a change in factory output, but seems to better reflect the logistical realities of WW1.
Add positive morale events or some way to reclaim country morale.

The game already gives bonusses for a good kill/casualitie ratio, so there is no need for this. The low morale in your game is mostly caused by the bug I mentioned above.

1) The Hoetzendorf offensive events are just great, but it would be nice to have a similar one for the French plan XVII. The attack into Alsace-Lorrraine was as mindless an attack, and it accounted for the bloodiest days in the history of the French army, so it's a bit sad to see that prominent event left out ( and these French armies poised for attack sit nice and passive until redeployed - 'cause no player is stupid enough to replicate their historical counterparts obstinacy and shortsightedness, of course).

In case nobody noticed, that is exactly what the event "Attaque a outrance" is about. But it's nice to see your friend got the game running after all. What exactly was the problem?

2) Because the AH has the initiative by playing first when war breaks out, it can automatically destroy that French Battleship in the med, without the Allies having a chance of doing anything. Now, unless I'm mistaken, that's nothing anywhere near an historical event, so maybe pushing those French sitting ducks out of reach on the first turn would be a good idea.

I guess the author of the original setup wanted to refer to this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adriatic_ ... of_the_war but failed to come up with a proper solution. I'm open to suggestions about a new setup of the Entente fleet in the Med.

3) I tend to find shore bombardment a little too powerful. The damage it can do to garrisons is quite surprising, I had a couple German garrisons finished of by British naval firepower, that's seems a little exaggerated.

Strangely enough all warships have a lousy ground attack value so I guess they use their strategic attack value for shore bombardments on land units. I'll lower those by 33%.

[amcelroy]

Thanks for responding so quickly!

Yes the blockade was broken, as far as I could tell, the Russian Supply crisis happened, and the victory at Tannenberg event went off as well. What about the AH morale deteriorating over time and not being able to come back up, or is the bug you talked about apply to all the CP?

Also, ran into a bug that was tied to the game_move.lua file. There was an issue where the hex.unit was nil, so I added a check for this and return result if hex.unit is nil. Dunno if this is correct, but it let me play on and disembarking seems to still work. Sorry, don't have the log or the savegame anymore, as I usually play with only the Autosave on.

New DisembarkUnit function in game_move.lua:

Code: Select all

-- Have to pass actual disembark function because it differs between AI and player(UI)
function DisembarkUnit(unit, hex, disembarkFunc)
  disembarkFunc(unit, hex)
  local result = unit.state ~= unit.STATE_EMBARKED

  if result then
[b]	if hex.unit == nil then
		return result
	end[/b]
  
    hex.unit.ap = 0

    -- Sound effect
    if playerAlliance:IsVisible(hex) then
      PlaySample(sDisembark)
    end
  end

  return result
end

Edit: marked my changes in BOLD

[nehi]

The attack into Alsace-Lorrraine was as mindless an attack, and it accounted for the bloodiest days in the history of the French army, so it's a bit sad to see that prominent event left out

but there is some similar event, when many attacks are done in first turn or turns as french and its commented like something too quick and unprepared and it lowers some units strength/morale which are not involved in that attacks

[Robotron]

@amcelroy: interesting, I've never ever experienced a crash concerning disembarking. You said you don't have the log or savegame anymore but maybe you can recall some details when that bug occurred? Player or AI turn?
Thanks anyway.

[nehi]

@amcelroy: interesting, I've never ever experienced a crash concerning disembarking. You said you don't have the log or savegame anymore but maybe you can recall some details when that bug occurred? Player or AI turn?
Thanks anyway.

there is one in vanilla, when embark and then try to undo move, its crashing instantly i guess

[amcelroy]

@amcelroy: interesting, I've never ever experienced a crash concerning disembarking. You said you don't have the log or savegame anymore but maybe you can recall some details when that bug occurred? Player or AI turn?
Thanks anyway.

It was on the AI turn, for sure.