Slitherine

The ARR link is for a game that was played with the CEaW_BJR-v106mod (where BJR stands for Borger, Jim and Ronnie) mod to CEaW version 1.06. This game is one of many that has been (or is being) played to test and refine the CEaW_BJR-v106mod. This mod includes both data and map modifications and a set of houserules that are straight forward, intuitive and easy to follow.

The ARR was generated from the email traffic between myself and Happycat and includes third party comments from Staffenberg. Most of this traffic and report was written "in character".



ARR - CEaW_BJR-v106mod

rkr1958 wrote:The ARR link is for a game that was played with the CEaW_BJR-v106mod (where BJR stands for Borger, Jim and Ronnie) mod to CEaW version 1.06. This game is one of many that has been (or is being) played to test and refine the CEaW_BJR-v106mod. This mod includes both data and map modifications and a set of houserules that are straight forward, intuitive and easy to follow.

The ARR was generated from the email traffic between myself and Happycat and includes third party comments from Staffenberg. Most of this traffic and report was written "in character".



ARR - CEaW_BJR-v106mod

Many thanks, it was fun to read the AAR.

It the AAR only to use in multiplayer or is it also suitable in single player mode?

And more importantly: when will you release it to the public?

Regards,
dooya

dooya wrote:

rkr1958 wrote:The ARR link is for a game that was played with the CEaW_BJR-v106mod (where BJR stands for Borger, Jim and Ronnie) mod to CEaW version 1.06. This game is one of many that has been (or is being) played to test and refine the CEaW_BJR-v106mod. This mod includes both data and map modifications and a set of houserules that are straight forward, intuitive and easy to follow.

The ARR was generated from the email traffic between myself and Happycat and includes third party comments from Staffenberg. Most of this traffic and report was written "in character".



ARR - CEaW_BJR-v106mod

Many thanks, it was fun to read the AAR.

It the AAR only to use in multiplayer or is it also suitable in single player mode?

And more importantly: when will you release it to the public?

Regards,
dooya

Thanks for taking the time to read. The mod is playable in single player mode either in hotseat or against the AI. Of course if you're playing against the AI the AI won't follow the house rules even though in the spirit of the mod the human player should. You can consider that as an advantage given to the AI that will make the game more interesting and challenging.

In terms of when this will be released I'll have to defer to Staffenberg and Happycat on this. I got involved with it in early June (2008). They had been working on it for several months prior. Since my involvement in early June we've gone through four or five rounds of play testing various refinements. We're in another round of play testing where adjustments have been made to starting manpower levels for UK, French, Italy and Russia and tech changes have been made to armor and tactical bombers. A couple of things we discovered in our last round was that German armor was almost invulnerable against allied air attacks in the late stages of the war and that the only country that ever experience manpower issues was Germany. Also, we felt that our house rules that limited couterattacks against subs (to one surface and one air attack) shouldn't apply to subs attacking into or out of ports or coastal hexes or for subs "found" lurking in coastal hexes.

Staffenberg and Happycat are better players than me. The "nicknames" I given to them that characterizes their play are the "Grinder" (Staffenberg) and the "Gambler" (Happycat). Every move that Staffenberg makes has a purpose and he almost alway achieves it. He doesn't make a mistake (tactically or strategically) and when you do he makes you pay for it. His tactics are flawless. Happycat is also very good tactically. The problem you have playing him is that you never know what he's going to do. As illustrated in the attached AAR he's very good at baiting you and then when you take it lowering the boom on you in a totally unexpected way. When he does make a tactical mistake (which is rarely) you don't know if it's a mistake or if he's trying to trap you.

This was an excellent AAR! It was a very exciting game!

You now need to switch sides and play again!

I am never happy to play house rules - if it can be done, it can be done. However you never stated what exactly was modded.

-

dooya wrote: And more importantly: when will you release it to the public?

Our mod will be released to the public when we've played through a few games with the latest mod changes to verify that these changes won't alter the game balance in any undesirable ways.

I think the reduced starting manpower levels for USA, USSR, Italy, Britain and France works well and they're in to stay.

The increased antitank values with increased tech for tac bombers have to be tested more before we can decide whether these changes will be kept or not. I think the changes will work well when it comes to addressing the almost invulnerable late game German tanks to air attacks. But I fear that the tank buster bombers might become too tough against Allied late game tanks. We won't know the answer to this until we've played a few games till 1943-1944 and beyond. I hope that the Allied air superiority at that time will mean that the German bombers will be quite exposed if they try to go after Allied armor. If the late game bombers inflict 2-3 hits against late game Allied armor then we can live with that, but if they inflict 4-5 hits per attack then it's too much.
The situation today is that the late game German armor can be attacked by 5-6 late game Allied bombers and only receive 2-3 hits.

We've also reduced the cost of garrisons from 20 to 15 and we need to see if that change will have any late game consequences. So far we've played through Case Yellow in 3 games and the reduced garrison cost didn't delay the fall of France. This is probably because we removed 2 at start French garrisons.

The main reason we reduced the garrison cost is that the garrisons were simply too expensive compared to the corps units. The corps units benefit from tech upgrades, but the garrisons only receive a small amount of antitank bonuses at higher techs. We've also seen in most of end games that the side on the defense collapse too quickly. So the game is decided in 1944 instead of 1945. With cheaper garrisons it's possible to build more of them as speed bumps. These garrisons could e. g. represent the German Volksturm units that Germany had to use from 1944 and beyond. At a cost of only 15 it means Germany can produce many low efficient garrisons to slow the Allied or Russian advance instead of building the more expensive corps units. Germany will almost certainly have lower manpower levels so late in the war and that means the new garrisons will have very poor quality. This is a good representation of the poor quality Volksturm units Germany had to rely upon in the last phase of the war.

These garrisons can also be built by the Soviets to try to halt a German breakthrough. You sacrifice cheap units for time. With a cost of 20 I always felt that garrisons were too expensive because they had no offensive value.

But it might be that we will see too many garrisons being built later in the war and that the Allies won't make the progress they should to be in Berlin before May 1945. Then we have to increase the garrison cost from 15 to maybe 17 or 18. Only playtesting will tell.

It's possible to do as Rkr1958 (Ronnie) did and request to have a look at the mod before it's released to the public. Then you have a chance to playtest it with us and give us comments. So please send a PM with your email address to either me, Rkr1958 or Happycat if you want to have a sneak peak.

Remember that our mod will alter several files so you need to make a complete backup of the vanilla game files. If you play the vanilla game against others then it might be too time consuming switching these files back and forth when you receive new moves from different people. I never play the vanilla CeaW anymore so it's not a problem for me, but I remember Happycat and I played different games with different versions and it was a pain to switch between these versions. So I suggest that people who want to try our mod should probably finish all vanilla games they're playing before they install the mod files.

joe98 wrote:This was an excellent AAR! It was a very exciting game!

You now need to switch sides and play again!

I am never happy to play house rules - if it can be done, it can be done. However you never stated what exactly was modded.

-

Mod-Screenshots (Note - 2.6MB PDF)
Mod-Log-of-Changes (244KB PDF)
Mod-Description-of-Changes (213KB PDF)
Mod-House-Rules (80KB PDF)

I think these capture the scope and richness of our mod as it currently stands.

I wonder if it is possible to have the game installed twice on my PC.

The first installation would have the vanilla game and the second installation would have this mod.

I ask the question because my current PBEM game is not likley to be complete befroe this mod is released.

Perhaps the mod testers could test that too!

-

It should be fine - the only problem might be desktop shortcuts might get confused so you might have to go to the dir and run manually or set up different shortcuts yourself.

iainmcneil wrote:It should be fine - the only problem might be desktop shortcuts might get confused so you might have to go to the dir and run manually or set up different shortcuts yourself.

The desktop shortcut usually points to a specific file in a specific directory. If you do two installs of CEAW then I would think if they are in different directories or named differently, then desktop shortcuts should still be able to discern which executable to run.

GaryChildress wrote:

iainmcneil wrote:It should be fine - the only problem might be desktop shortcuts might get confused so you might have to go to the dir and run manually or set up different shortcuts yourself.

The desktop shortcut usually points to a specific file in a specific directory. If you do two installs of CEAW then I would think if they are in different directories or named differently, then desktop shortcuts should still be able to discern which executable to run.

That's a good idea ... it never occurred to me to the possibility of two CEaW installs. One for the vanilla game and one for the mod.

In terms of the desktop icons you could create them manually and even rename and configure one or both to use a different icon to distinguish between the two installs.

Yes, but I have a feeling the new one would overwrite the old one

Is it really necessary to install twice?

One might just copy the first installation and paste it into a different folder. This works for other games too.

That would probably work.

Many of the mod files can also be used in the vanilla game. E. g. the map fix for the "phantom" river and lake just north of Stalingrad. The river is NOT implemented in the vanilla game either so taking it away from the map files would only be a good idea.

The other map files only add minor areas like Greenland and Azores. I guess you can install the mod map files and simply ignore the small dot in the Atlantic (Azores) when playing the vanilla game. Remember that the map definitions are stored in the ww2.map file so when you use the vanilla game version of the ww2.map file then you won't see the text Azores airbase, Keflavik airbase, East and west Greenland airbases etc.

It's also possible to use the unit graphics mod introduced with our mod in the vanilla game as well. We have only changed the counter symbols, NOT the unit icons (e. g. Stuka for German tac bomber etc.).

So you end up having a sub set of files to alter between the vanilla and mod games. Most of them are in the data (some txt files like general.txt, units.txt, technology.txt) directory and the others are in the scenario directory (1939.scn and ww2.map).

It should be simple to copy the txt files from the data directory and the files from the scenario directory to 2 user made folders. Make two versions of the folder structure. One will contain the vanilla files and the other will contain the mod files. This means that when you want to make a new move in a mod game then you copy the folder structure for the mod to the CeaW folder structure. When you want to make a new move for the vanilla game then you copy the folder structure for the vanilla game.

I think this can even be done with a BAT scripts so it's possible to simply click on the appropriate bat file in Windows Explorer to copy the correct files to the correct locations.

This is something Ronnie, Jim and I can have a look at so when we distribute the mod files we also make a simple way to copy between the vanilla game files and the mod files.

That is a good idea. We will probably allow mod selection in future games so that if a mod folder exist then game provide a popup asking if you want to play the default game or the mod. Thing is when I started programming CEAW my skills in file handling (and many other areas) were not as good as now. Thanks for bringing up this issue again, it will be considered

Stauffenberg wrote:[...]
It's possible to do as Rkr1958 (Ronnie) did and request to have a look at the mod before it's released to the public. Then you have a chance to playtest it with us and give us comments. So please send a PM with your email address to either me, Rkr1958 or Happycat if you want to have a sneak peak.
[...]

Many thanks for this offer, but I am kind of causal player and therefore I usually do not play Pbem, because I can not guarantee a certain number of turns per week. However, if you are interested in feedback on how your mod does in single player, I would be happy to accept your offer.

dooya wrote:

Stauffenberg wrote:[...]
It's possible to do as Rkr1958 (Ronnie) did and request to have a look at the mod before it's released to the public. Then you have a chance to playtest it with us and give us comments. So please send a PM with your email address to either me, Rkr1958 or Happycat if you want to have a sneak peak.
[...]

Many thanks for this offer, but I am kind of causal player and therefore I usually do not play Pbem, because I can not guarantee a certain number of turns per week. However, if you are interested in feedback on how your mod does in single player, I would be happy to accept your offer.

We would very much appreciate receiving info about how the mod works in single player. So please send me your email via a PM or post it here. Then I will send you all the necessary files. You can then inform us how the mod works for you.

Check out the latest tweaks in our mod. I think we're fairly close. Play balance seems good but we still have a couple of more games to finish to make sure. A few exciting tweaks we've added lately are rail capability between Iraq and Egypt, a sea lane to Kuwait (which the Allies can use if the Axis capture Port Said and shut down the African transportation loop), German oil imports from Russia prior to Barbarossa, amphibious invasion limits, naval/sub rules that require more attention to the Battle of the Atlantic and to properly escorting convoys and transports and Allied Naval Med naval presence and Malta supply rules, and a few more. I'm really excited about these changes. I feel that our Mod plays very historically and immerses one in an extremely rich WW-II corps level gaming experience.

I bought Strategic Command 2 Blitzkrieg this past summer and have tried starting a few games but I never get past early 1940. I know it has features such as paratroopers, amphibious units and grounding of aircraft (to save oil & PPs) that we wish we had in CEaW; but, I keep coming back to CEaW. CEaW to me is such much more appealing and fun to play. While I know our community is smaller than SC2 I would put the look, feel and playability of the CEaW game engine combined with the historical accuracy of our Mod up against anything that they have. In fact, I'd be so bold to say that there isn't a better corps level WW-II in Europe game or simulation out there.

Staffenberg and Happycat were the original developers of the mod. I came on board in early June of last year. Staffenberg is amazing at what he can do under the "hood" of the CEaW game engine. Both Staffenberg and Happycat have a tremendous knowledge of WW-II history that is infused throughout the mod. Also, they're both very good players from whom I've learned a lot both in terms of WW-II history and in terms of CEaW strategy and tactics. If you can't tell I'm really excited about what we've created. I think we have something very special.

Mod-Description-of-Changes (213KB PDF)
Mod-House-Rules (80KB PDF)

This looks good fellas - I sent y'all a PM requesting access to the MOD. I'm sure it will be FUN!

J

Good luck with the modding guys!
I do not have much time at the moment to test all myself but would enjoy (here on forum) an AAR or some report on how the mod is playing out in practice