Slitherine

Gah, ok, even though I have Serb territory, if any Serb units are in AH it is no good? Goinng to try again without invading France and shipping German power out east. Not very sporting, since I know the Russians will attack, but...

A quick comment: artillery units seem to reach elite status pretty easily, I guess it's because they deal a lot of damage while suffering little or none - maybe that should be revised

Good point, Zombo. I'll have experience gains for artillery units get divided by three then.

@amcelroy: in case you didn't know: every loss of city production by enemy attacks will cause a morale loss. Losing the city to the enemy might cause further morale loss, if this was so defined by the one who wrote the scripts. For instance losing Krakow will cause an additional loss of 10 morale points to Austria (plus the morale loss caused by losing the pp). Having a good (or bad) kill ratio will further affect total morale.
A good tactic vs Serbia is to lay siege to Belgrade and bombard the unit there with artillery until it turns yellow from efficiency loss and then attack AFTER you have a good general and have the "industrial warfare" tech applied to a few infantry units. Or just wait for the winter until the Serbian Typhoid epedemic wrecks the defenders.


@all: sorry for the delayed update (again) but I just discovered how the AI calculates front importances and want to test out a few things first.

Would there be a way to limit Allied intervention in Italy, or Italian intervention in Serbia? both are an optimal strategy in game, but in reality were politically improbable (with the exception of a small contingent)

Zombo,
I assume you mean singleplayer mode since I can't influence where you guys decide to move your stuff in multiplayer.

In singleplayer vs Entente there is already a row of blocked hexes between France and Italy which will only lift if CP advance too far or Italy morale drops too low. Also Italian troop shipping to Serbia should be easy to prevent with the Austrian Adriatic fleet.

What was the deal with the full quote regarding mines (from Nov.21, 15:14), did you forget to include an answer?

I assume you mean singleplayer mode since I can't influence where you guys decide to move your stuff in multiplayer.

oh, okay. I thought maybe that maybe there could be some mechanism ( similar to the "commander on the wrong front" thing) that could prevent over-representation of inappropriable troops on a particular front ( such as sending the excess back to the production queue, or something)

About the mines, yes, the answer somehow vanished. I was saying that indeed I probably hadn't taken zeps and cruisers enough into consideration, but I had subs hit mines beyond zep range ( Northern North Sea) and moving cruisers there is suicide. The problem is not really with the mine accident though, I was just surprised to see the whole 9-point fleet vanish. That seemed quite a lot.

Just assign an admiral to a fleet, that will make the fleet immune to mines.

Hi there

A little update on the multiplayer game and a few random comments:

game crashes sometimes during opponent replay, but I reload and I end up getting through;

Balance is good, the game plays well, really tense, Robotron, you did a fantastic job.

It's winter 1915/16 and Russia is still holding in Poland, in one game behind Warsaw, in the other in front of the city. It still extremely difficult to break that line, not so because the Russian units are too strong, but because Russian production is really high, so it's easy to keep rotating and feeding fresh units to the frontline. Maybe there's something to be adjusted there.

The Allies have made progress in France, wherever they can concentrate 3 artilleries against one unit + 3 infantry attacks it's very very difficult to hold but maybe it's because in both games the Germans transferred their artillery elsewhere. I haven't tested how counterbattery artillery can prevent that.

The major problem remains naval bombardment. The coast must be garrisoned to prevent amphibious invasion ( the British landed in Antwerp in one game after pulverising the garrison there with naval bombardment), but if the Germans place garrisons they are blasted away, if he places infantry that's a huge investment of manpower and navl bombardment dopes more damage to them with 2 ammo, than regular arty spending 10.

Something else ( not related to our games), since the Somme and Verdun operations are included in the game (and somehow forced upon the player, which is fine for me), shouldn't the Kaiserschlacht offensives be depicted too? (if the historical conditions are replicated of course)

I also have a suggestion regarding population. As I mentioned before, population was never a problem for any belligerent ( no country had to mobilise its 17-year old classes) . Morale drop due to losses and lack of training of new recruits WERE a problem.
I suggest a unit effectiveness cap and diminishing effectiveness recuperation for each level of population expended, including the possibility to go negative, which would represent tapping into the manpower normally too young or too old to be mobilised, with a drastic effect on effectiveness of course. this would better represent the gradual degradation of morale and training, rather than having an artificial ( and historically inaccurate) "edge of the cliff" point where suddenly you can no longer replenish your units ( it would never have happened)
in addition, because, if I remember well, some manpower is added every turn (representing the new mobilisable class), a period without significant losses could slow down the process or even invert it, while heavy losses will accelerate it, which would be adequate.

anyway, let me know what you think of it, and if you need more info on how things are playing.

EDIT; please make sea mines less lethal to subs, a WHOLE fleet destroyed every time is way too much, and I don't have admiral for each one of them

Zombo,
I'm confused about your proposal regarding diminishing unit effectivness due to losses. That's already happening in the game via the manpower ressource changing colour: once it turns light red the maximum unit efficiency is reduced to 8, once it turns dark red, the maximum is reduced to six. How is that different from your proposal? Please elaborate, if I'm missing something here or misunderstood what you meant.

About submarine damage from mines: okay, maximum damage reduced to 60% (was 150%, so there was a 50% chance that an unescorted sub fleet was sunk when hitting a minefield). Btw: an unescorted submarine has a 12% chance to hit a mine. The chance is then divided by the number of recon units (light cruisers, zeps, planes) +1.

About Russian production: while testing the new CP AI I found Russian production also much too high, I further tightened the Russian Supply Crisis effect.

About coastal bombardment: I'll have another go to see what can be done about that.
*edit* fixed! Attack strength of naval units vs land units will now be randomly divided by 1D6. This does not affect PP destruction from naval city bombardments though. I also raised ammo costs.

Well, it seems I was suggesting something that is there already
I would recommend a "negative" population level, though: there shouldn't be a point where the manpower is totally depleted.
BTW, how much manpower is gained every turn? I guess you can move up categories if you receive enough manpower ( or maybe by disbanding units)

In our game, (Winter 15/16), things have not gone particularly wild, but the CP are in dark red already. Maybe that's a little harsh.

Regarding naval bombardment, effect on production should also be seriously reduced. Currently it's a solid one hit per bombardment. within two turns of the Turkish declaration of war all Turkish Mediterranean coastal cities are reduced to zero.
And if the Turk has no counter-measures, Constantinople is also reduced to rubble at an alarming rate. I suggest something like 25% 1 morale hit, 25% one Production hit.

New update V3.31
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0N7V ... 0prd0F2dnc

Copy the Data folder over the existing Data folder in main directory. Should be save-compatible (fingers crossed).
(click on download arrow-button in top right corner!)

You need to have V3 already installed, this is just an update, not the complete mod with graphics and stuff.

Improved CP AI (way more aggressive, but still dumb). This is still in experimental stage but it's a start.
Catastrophic French morale loss bug in singleplayer vs CP bug fixed
convoys in singleplayer vs CP were sunk too often, I lowered the chance according to anti-sub techs and number of light cruisers in Entente navys
Zep ammo consumption lowered to 1 but there will be a hard limit of how many Zeps (and bombers) any faction can build (total number of Zeps/bombers can not be higher than the tech level of according research branch)
Gaza and Constantinople receive a garrison.
French small garrisons in Reims and Amiens are replaced by garrisons. To compensate, the Belgian armoured car unit will be removed from singleplayer mode too. We shall miss him! ^^
"Hotzendorf attacks" and "Attaque a outrance" cause more damage.
CP Subs in multiplayer and singleplayer vs CP gained an additional D6 of attack strength.
Cost for upgrading sea transport bug fixed (upgrade cost was lowered while sea transports were in use, for instance for Britain the cost was shown as 120 pp but only 60 got deducted when 2 transports were already in use)
Russian Supply Crisis chance and effect raised drastically
bug, where nations could have negative value for collapse points fixed
damage from sea mines reduced
less damage from naval bombardment
artillery units gain less experience
CP generals on the wrong fronts will only be suspended for a short time, not removed from the game
Bugfixes, crash-fixes, balancing issues etc.

Comments are welcome.

Great! Well done!

does the "naval bombardment" reduced damage include PP damage?

You are never pleased, are you?
No, I'll have to do this later once I figured out how PP damage from bombardment is calculated, sorry. But I raised ammo costs for bombardments so high, that the British really have to improve their ammo production (dreads need 5 ammo, battlecruisers 4 and pre-dreads 3).

Have a good weekend, folks!

You are never pleased, are you

look what you've done: now I'm embarrassed

more seriously: I've had one of the games crash repeatedly when hitting the replay button. I got it to work once, but I got the strangest bug: when I clicked on the buttons on the lower right corner (repair, upgrade, ...) it would eject me to the desktop (while keeping the game running) . Did the same when I tried to press "end turn", so in fact there was no way to close the game but forcibly.

there are no saves on multiplayer, I don't know how I can help

if you think of something let me know

Also, the regarding the pop issue, in my current game the Germans are light red ( I hadn't realised there were two shades of red), AH are yellow, and yet they have a few units at effectiveness 10
How can that be?

Yellow level does NOT incur an efficiency loss: only orange and red levels do this. Units will keep the maximum efficiency level from the moment they were committed to production. So, when the manpower level drops later, the earlier produced units will still keep their original max efficiency level.
And no: I will not change this!

About that replay-bug: maybe this happens due to some script changes of the update which conflict with the earlier scripts. That's why I "kept fingers crossed" regarding save game compatibility. Sorry, but this mod is still evolving, so I can't guarantee every savegame will work after each update. This is a one-man-project and free of charge, so please, don't sue me!

Hey dude, I'm immensely grateful for your commitment to the cause, you know that don't you?

Yeah, Zombo, I know that.

Thanks you very much for your MOD Robotron, I enjoy it a lot! You have improved many rules of the game, and adding hundreds of events make the game more interesting. Tanks again!

Hi again, I have found a bug when I try to select these arab units. When I select them, the game hang.

Hi Robo,

the crash no longer happens, so all good there, but thanks for your concern

update on the multiplayer games: in one of them ( late 1916), Austria-Hungary surrendered. Yet, I fell it was a little too late: Allied armies ( Italian-Serb-Russian) were adjacent to Vienna, Budapest, Zagreb were lost. things were going badly since the beginning, with no inroads into Serbia at all and Half of Hungary Russian-occupied for nearly a year before the front collapsed. In my opinion, if there are no reasons for wild optimism on other CP fronts, AH would probably have sued for peace as soon as Budapest was taken.

The event "Flight over Vienna" fires every turn on that game.

the Serbs were out of pop for a while, but the pop never increased. I seemed to remember that there was a slight increase of pop every turn. Am I wrong, or was it on some other mod?