Slitherine

You told me no one seems to want to play you, and maybe that's because no one wants to lose But I say to anyone who is reading that the challenge is well worth the probability of defeat! Though I still say I will beat you next time...

I doubt it's because people don't want to lose - everyone loves a good game....but why play vanilla when BJR mod is out there and is far superior? I guess that's why not many responses.

jjdenver wrote:I doubt it's because people don't want to lose - everyone loves a good game....but why play vanilla when BJR mod is out there and is far superior? I guess that's why not many responses.

Thanks. Also, we're in alpha testing of BJR Mod version 2.00, which eliminates ALL house rules. All "former" house rules are implemented within the CEaW game engine. It's really nice and because of the transport limitations imposed by the game engine we now allow (again) for the transporting of garrisons.

rkr1958 wrote:Thanks. Also, we're in alpha testing of BJR Mod version 2.00, which eliminates ALL house rules. All "former" house rules are implemented within the CEaW game engine. It's really nice and because of the transport limitations imposed by the game engine we now allow (again) for the transporting of garrisons.

If you have hardcoded all house rules nobody in the near future will play the vanilla game... Allowing garrisons to be transported by sea again is good now that in the new BJR mod armour and air units cannot be transported by rail anymore and rail movement limitations. I think garrisons units in CEAW represent a low level kind of infantry forces and not necessarily these units have to stay in a city or territory without moving anywhere along the game...

leridano wrote:... armour and air units cannot be transported by rail anymore and rail movement limitations..

Armor and air can still be railed but at a much higher cost. The rail system that's implement now is based on points. For example, the Axis gets 11 points per turn and the cost in points to rail units are: garrison (2), infantry corps (3), tank corps (5), air unit (4), motorized / mechanized corps (3 or 4?). So Germany could for example, rail 5 garrisons for free (with 1 point left over) or two infantry corps and a tank corp (no points left over) in a turn. Once you run out of points you can continue to rail but at a cost, which increases by 1 PP for every extra point railed. So lets take the example where Germay rails (in this order): infantry corps (3pts), tank corps (5 pts), garrison (2 pts), air unit (4 pts) and tank corps (5 pts). After the garrsion the Axis have 1 rail points left (i.e., 11 - (3+5+2) = 1). The air unit rail, which cost 4 points would cost Germany 0 (last free rail pt) + 1 (first pt over the free) + 2 (second pt over) + 3 (third pt over) = 6 PPs. The last tank corps rail would cost 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 30 PPs. The extra two rails cost a grand total of 36 PPs! Another way to figure this is that Germany used a total of 19 rail points, which exceeds their limit by 8 points. The cost for these extra 8 points railed is 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 36 PPs. In effect, this PP cost represents the impact on Germany industry for diverting rail assets to move military units over and above the assets normally allocated for that (i.e., 11 rail points).

rkr1958 wrote:Also, we're in alpha testing of BJR Mod version 2.00, which eliminates ALL house rules. All "former" house rules are implemented within the CEaW game engine.

I'm exceptionally pleased to hear that. While I've only just installed and started playing the mod, it seems to me you've done an excellent job with it and the one (reasonably big) turnoff is having to remember and keep track of a fairly large amount of house rules. Of course, I realize one would get used to this and it would be less of an issue after a while, but implementing everything as game rules instead is a far, far better thing. Just as one small example, when I play against a mate via TCP/IP we tend to take a while doing our rounds, and I don't always watch the screen at every moment while he's playing, meaning for instance with the retaliation house rules for and against naval units, I wouldn't know when I'm allowed to attack and not! Hardcording solves this issue, and that of convenience, and I imagine it also makes it somewhat more feasible to play against the AI; in the current state, I have a hard time convincing the AI to read the PDF and stick to the house rules.

rkr1958 wrote:

leridano wrote:... armour and air units cannot be transported by rail anymore and rail movement limitations..

Armor and air can still be railed but at a much higher cost. The rail system that's implement now is based on points. For example, the Axis gets 11 points per turn and the cost in points to rail units are: garrison (2), infantry corps (3), tank corps (5), air unit (4), motorized / mechanized corps (3 or 4?). So Germany could for example, rail 5 garrisons for free (with 1 point left over) or two infantry corps and a tank corp (no points left over) in a turn. Once you run out of points you can continue to rail but at a cost, which increases by 1 PP for every extra point railed. So lets take the example where Germay rails (in this order): infantry corps (3pts), tank corps (5 pts), garrison (2 pts), air unit (4 pts) and tank corps (5 pts). After the garrsion the Axis have 1 rail points left (i.e., 11 - (3+5+2) = 1). The air unit rail, which cost 4 points would cost Germany 0 (last free rail pt) + 1 (first pt over the free) + 2 (second pt over) + 3 (third pt over) = 6 PPs. The last tank corps rail would cost 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 30 PPs. The extra two rails cost a grand total of 36 PPs! Another way to figure this is that Germany used a total of 19 rail points, which exceeds their limit by 8 points. The cost for these extra 8 points railed is 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 + 8 = 36 PPs. In effect, this PP cost represents the impact on Germany industry for diverting rail assets to move military units over and above the assets normally allocated for that (i.e., 11 rail points).

I think I missunderstood this:

Here are some explanations to each change.

1. Research restrictions
• The game could prevent players from building more labs in an area than determined by the game year. This should be
easy to implement.
* 1939: max 1 lab in each category
* 19410: max 2 labs in each category
* 1942-1942: max 3 labs in each category
* 1943-1945. Max 4 labs in each category

2. Rail movement restrictions
• The game should keep track of the free rail movements per turn (all units can use these).
• When the number of free moves are used up and you must pay for rail movement then the game should keep track of
which units are sent when paying for. Then armor, motorized and air units will NOT have the rail movement icon lit up
when activating the unit.

The game should only allow for the following overload of the rail capacity:
* 2 corps units
* 1 corps and 2 garrison units
* 4 garrison units

which is a thread started by Stauffenberg on 17/06/09 with the title "BJR-mod future changes on the to-do list". Reading quickly what I´ve red marked it seemed to me he meant no armour, motorized or air unit could be transported by rail anymore... Anyway, I think it wouldn´t be bad for the game to implement a total rail limitation for these units: let´s think that in WWII all these units were transported to the respective fronts by themselves and not by rail... If you do so, only infantry corps or garrisons units would be railed which seems to be more realistic. Another question would be to implement limitations in rail transportation range: if each turn represents 20 days of war, as you know in CEAW you can transport an unit from Moscow to Paris in this time period which it´s not much realistic too... Anyway, I like that PP´s cost system for extra rail movements you are going to implement...

I'll take anyone on BJR once the version 2.0 is operational

supermax wrote:I'll take anyone on BJR once the version 2.0 is operational

Holy Cow! Aren't you the guy that "smoked" Joe or am I'm confused.

supermax wrote:I'll take anyone on BJR once the version 2.0 is operational

Why don't you become a betatester? Then you can try to play Joe and anyone else NOW.

Right now we have implemented almost all we want for v2.00. The big task ahead is to check for play balance past the fall of France. We need input data to make the 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944 scenarios. So far the mod is well balanced till the Fall of France at least. We would certainly need a guy with your skills to iron out flaws in the game balance.

Yesterday I changed the production panel at the top so the transport capacity, invasion capacity and Axis Malta supply in Africa are shown there.

Remaining on the to-do list are the following:
* Fine tune game balance
* Review the messages shown so we combine messages that can be combined and remove unecessary messages.
* Fix a bug in France due to southern France being native Vichy. That means reinforcements can't be placed in southern France.
* Fix a vanilla bug so it's possible to attack units on the easternmost hex column. The capital Omsk (Siberia) is located here.
* Fix a vanilla bug so it's possible to attack naval units occupying a port after the city controlling the port is captured by the enemy.
* Change the unit icons so we no longer have US unit icons with Spitfires using British emblems etc.
* Make the 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944 scenarios
* Write documentation for everything so the BJR-mod rules are all explained.

While we betatest we make changes all the time to how we end up implementing certain things. The no armor, air or mech rail movement unless they can be moved for free was part of the v1.06 house rules. But Timothy came up with a better idea with different rail capacity costs for different unit types and a different way to calculate overuse. Before the overuse was fixed (5 PP's per unit). Now the overuse grows exponentially so you can't e. g. pay 50 PP's to move strategically 10 extra units to e.g. France from the east. You can only move a little and therefore need to plan ahead better.

The Axis initial rail capacity is 8. So it actually takes awhile to get units railed from Poland to the west. The capacity increases to 11 when Italy joins the Allies.

So early in the game the Germans can rail 2 corps and 1 garrison or 2 mech or 1 armor and 1 corps without paying anything. I think the v2.00 rail system works very well.

One of the biggest changes between v1.06 and v2.00 is to the map. The map is changed almost everywhere so you need to rethink your playing strategies. E. g. there are more cities, rivers etc. in Russia. So there are more possible defense lines to use there.

Stauffenberg wrote:One of the biggest changes between v1.06 and v2.00 is to the map. The map is changed almost everywhere so you need to rethink your playing strategies. E. g. there are more cities, rivers etc. in Russia. So there are more possible defense lines to use there.

Also, winter in Europe (i.e., Hex row 50 and below), transport and invasion limit models have a big impact.

Yes, i am the one that beat joe 3 times already, twice with Germans, once with Allies.

Looking forward to get him again as the allies in our fourth game.

I do need a new challenge, i wanna try BJR. So i guess I install it and then find a guy to play agaisnt?

Anyone up to the challenge? We would also do a AAR on it, i love following the other games!

Ah Stauffenberg thanks for the great offer of becoming a playtester, altough i have never been one in any game i've played so far.

But i am definitly good at fiding weak spot or stuff you can exploit in a game...

So how do you want to work this out?

And why dont we play a game of the working BJr (version 1) while at it? I've never played it, but it must not be more difficult than Vanilla. I hate house rules so you'll have to remind me how that works.