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Mister Bates posted:it's been quite a while since I've played it and maybe it's better now, but in general it seemed hilariously easy to completely drain a country of any oppressed minority group by providing them a slightly better place to immigrate to
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Mar 19, 2024 02:44
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I also picked up War in the East 2 during the Spring Sale and while I'm only two turns into Road to Leningrad, I'm already seeing a number of significant gameplay improvements: - there's a "command efficiency" view that adds a highlight to every unit on the map depending on its place in the HQ structure so you know if there are units that are too far from HQs or need to be reassigned without having to click through them individually - there's a "date captured" stat for cities that tells you when cities were historically captured by either side, that you can use as a basis for pacing yourself (although obviously as the Germans you would need to exceed this pace, eventually, if you want to win) - Support Units are now categorized by type, instead of just a big long list of everything, so it's much easier to pick out, say, assault gun battalions from artillery regiments from flak detachments - the supply system, which makes use of railyards and depots interlinked with railways and roads, can be set to AI control (though the button to do this should only be pressed after you've done all of your railway repair for the turn, or effectively the last thing you do before you end the turn - there is a new mechanic called Combat Preparation Points: it starts at 100, and each point represents a 1% bonus in Combat Value. You lose points every time you move and attack (or are attacked during the enemy turn). You gain 24 at the end of your turn, and units at 100 can stockpile extra supplies (on top of the 100% bonus in Combat Value). This is a useful "one number" metric for referencing if you're pushing your units too hard, besides the raw CV to evaluate your attack odds against defenders. - there is also a mechanic whereby units start their turn with less MP, if they were attacked during the enemy's turn. When combined with the loss of Combat Preparation Points for the same reason, I think this is a way to simulate Soviet counterattacks in the first two years of the war inflicting critical delays against Axis units, without necessarily having to trigger combat results that result in outright Axis defeats. If the Axis player starts their turn with their Panzers low on MP and low on CPP and they can't attack effectively, then mission accomplished, even if they weren't dislodged from their hexes during the defense.
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Mar 19, 2024 04:59
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gradenko_2000 posted:it took most of yesterday and today, and a few mods, but I finally grasped enough of Victoria 3 to make it click and hooo boy that feeling when you successfully industrialize a nation is such a rush. I'm about 35 years into a Brazil campaign and I'm already a top 8 power. I enjoyed Victoria 3 but I found it very flawed in a lot of ways. One of my big complaints was that there was no way to turn an automobile factory into a tank factory, has that been fixed in any way?
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Mar 19, 2024 05:38
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Lostconfused posted:Migrations laws have existed in the game since launch and they prevent oppressed pops from moving anywhere. The migration laws really need some kind of fiddling, but I don't think they're going to do it--recent patches have also moved Qing like Japan to Closed Borders apparently mostly to shut off state-to-state migration before you win domestic politics. That said, StashAugustine posted:Yeah I think the biggest issue with the game is just that the AI is so incompetent that you can out compete it by just not being braindead. It also encourages autarky just because you can't actually rely on other people to produce the resources you need. Its also something that you can't put on a features list for an expansion, so idk if it'll ever really get working. They did kinda fix land trade being bizarrely better than sea trade, but I think travel costs are just something that has to be abstracted pretty hard
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Mar 19, 2024 05:56
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Mister Bates posted:unfortunately the revolt inherited all US policies, including slavery, so all the slaves were still slaves, and all the free black people in the US had once again immigrated to Haiti. it's poo poo like this which prompted the HOI4 style choose-your-own-adventure focus trees at least you clearly define what happens in X scenario so weird buggy broken poo poo like this don't happen
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Mar 19, 2024 16:17
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Typo posted:it's poo poo like this which prompted the HOI4 style choose-your-own-adventure focus trees well until the focus trees interact with other countries. then the whole system breaks down again
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Mar 19, 2024 16:19
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The Focus Trees are just the old EU2 event trees only now they tell you the requirements and consequences up front. They're fine in principle. In HoI4 they are dumb because 90% of them are loving loony tunes fantasy poo poo.
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Mar 19, 2024 18:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:I also picked up War in the East 2 during the Spring Sale and while I'm only two turns into Road to Leningrad, How does the intefact stack up to DC: Barbarossa? That game is a bit annoying in the amount of clicks it takes to do something as simple as attack a hex IMHO.
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Mar 19, 2024 20:31
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Orange Devil posted:The Focus Trees are just the old EU2 event trees only now they tell you the requirements and consequences up front. I think EU4's missions are fine in principle because yeah they're just expose event trees where you actually have to do things to get the results. But HOI4 last I played was just click a button and wait, on top of being dumb as poo poo
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Mar 19, 2024 20:57
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StashAugustine posted:I think EU4's missions are fine in principle because yeah they're just expose event trees where you actually have to do things to get the results. But HOI4 last I played was just click a button and wait, on top of being dumb as poo poo the focus trees should be event driven, where the timers are started and influenced by events you could have seperate trees going on at the same time and would not have everything from diplomatic to economic to doctrinal focuses share the same queue
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Mar 19, 2024 21:21
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One of the absolutely core issues with Victoria 3 is that it comes from a profoundly wrong mindset where being a colony is a major benefit to the colony. There is basically nothing better as a small nation than becoming a dependent of a great power, which instantly puts you into a single market with no tariffs. This means you can now build high end industry, and the major power will happily provide you with cheap resources and purchase expensive final goods. It is literally exactly backwards. The game has no concept of an extractive, exploitative relationship. That the developers were extremely proud of it and called it "Paradox's first materialist game" and that it made executives extremely angry and caused a bit of a witch hunt at the company is just  Mister Bates posted:it was very funny that I was able to successfully do Dengism in the 1880s, but the fact that it works and was so easy is not exactly a point in the game's favor, lol, it's so poor at simulating the logic of imperialism that subordinating myself to a European power as a subject was actually a net benefit to me and a cost to them I missed this. That's what I get for not refreshing the page before posting. Ironically, for all the criticism leveled at it, Victoria 2 did an excellent job of simulating how Europeans thought about and interacted with the rest of the world. In V3 they decided that representing uncolonized regions as grey instead of having a nation in them was racist, and they managed to walk into a different kind of racism that said colonialism was actually very good for the colonized. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 21:47 on Mar 19, 2024 |
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Mar 19, 2024 21:42
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Until your market controller gets into a war, your ports are blockaded, and your entire economy disappears into nothing.
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Mar 19, 2024 21:48
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:One of the absolutely core issues with Victoria 3 is that it comes from a profoundly wrong mindset where being a colony is a major benefit to the colony. There is basically nothing better as a small nation than becoming a dependent of a great power, which instantly puts you into a single market with no tariffs. This means you can now build high end industry, and the major power will happily provide you with cheap resources and purchase expensive final goods.. There is actually an example of this type of colonial relationship in real life with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact nations.
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Mar 19, 2024 21:51
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:
they also initially had capitalists pay laborers as much as they could afford instead of as low as they could get away with, and multiculturalism was immediately accessible to countries like the US in 1836 and announcing multiculturalism would literally End All Racism and it all made the game simulate some hyperidealized history of Job Creators it seems like they're getting it to a good spot now with the foreign investments and stuff, they just need to make the AI actually compete instead of apparently having every country run off the same weighted set of values to decide what to build where they don't really respond to demand and definitely don't predict it countries don't seem to make decisions directly from market conditions either & having Britain, France, US, Germany all actively trying to maintain monopolies and fuel their industries would create the meaningful conflicts that the game seems to be missing
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Mar 19, 2024 22:33
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BearsBearsBears posted:There is actually an example of this type of colonial relationship in real life with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact nations. So not at all a colonial relationship?
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Mar 20, 2024 00:24
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Yes because it's impossible for a colonial relationship to exist if the metropol does not develop higher levels of productive forces. Colonialism doesn't exist in Victoria 3 because the computer is too stupid to produce it.
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Mar 20, 2024 00:34
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Orange Devil posted:So not at all a colonial relationship? I've been repeatedly assured that the USSR was doing both colonialism and imperialism.
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Mar 20, 2024 00:56
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https://twitter.com/MadJorgen/status/1770196138420740483?t=R-hHew-Zd3wobpD6wubKBQ&s=19 I thought it was an accomplishment trying to kill US carriers in the Midway scenario with Japanese battleships but some people are even more dedicated
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Mar 20, 2024 01:12
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/MadJorgen/status/1770196138420740483?t=R-hHew-Zd3wobpD6wubKBQ&s=19 how do the japanese prevent the US from just sailing away from their battleships?
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Mar 20, 2024 02:41
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Typo posted:how do the japanese prevent the US from just sailing away from their battleships? it's the AI, so they probably just didn't a slightly more grounded answer is that carriers need to be turned into the wind to launch aircraft, so if you're running away from an enemy, you're almost certain shutting down flight ops as well, finding ships at night is difficult, so Japanese battleships can make top-speed runs towards the USN after dark, and the USN can't see it coming unless they just unequivocally and completely flee
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Mar 20, 2024 02:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:I know it's science fiction and all but Helldivers 2 conveys this feeling of firepower really well where a lot of your kills comes from "crew-served weapons" and supporting/indirect fires. The assault rifle isn't actually all that great because you need to keep reloading all the time and its main advantage is retaining mobility. https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1770118818993750372?t=rbPZTbIbKniS2WkNTpc1BA&s=19 https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1770118822944817314?t=4cLnQVcPlFcv0O1fkm9m0w&s=19 More and more people are saying this!!!
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Mar 20, 2024 11:07
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gradenko_2000 posted:it's the AI, so they probably just didn't Surely a modern carrier would carry radar able to detect ships at night, even if they are more focused on air radar? BearsBearsBears posted:There is actually an example of this type of colonial relationship in real life with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw pact nations. Interesting thing here. Some of my friends did research into the subject, although mostly focused on military gear. It's extremely common for Eastern Europeans to claim Soviets charged extortionate prices for production licenses, technology transfer and so on. My friends actually went to look for documents. Hundreds of documents. Not a single one mentioned a price other than "free". Of course the Eastern Europeans that believe the Soviet Union charged extortionate prices for production licences of military equipment think NATO is benevolent and it's super awesome how they're graciously allowed to buy F-35s at twice the price the US pays for them. Zeppelin Insanity has issued a correction as of 11:36 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 11:31
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lol that one of the biggest reasons india shifted to buying military USSR was relatively hassle free transfer of tech and production lines outright while american equipment came with a ton of riders and random chances of blackmail.
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Mar 20, 2024 11:50
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1770118818993750372?t=rbPZTbIbKniS2WkNTpc1BA&s=19 its a parody on how american soldiers/fascists in movies immediately scream AIR SUPPORT the second someone fires back at them, "future" my rear end
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Mar 20, 2024 11:55
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Bro Dad posted:its a parody on how american soldiers/fascists in movies immediately scream AIR SUPPORT the second someone fires back at them, "future" my rear end i don't blame them tbh
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Mar 20, 2024 12:04
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I've been jumping across different titles, I know, but I spent all day today playing War in the West. I started with the 5-turn Kasserine Pass scenario and got a minor victory, just to confirm to myself that I knew how to work the game, and then I jumped into the 20-turn Battle for Tunis scenario. This is a shot of the start of turn 13, right before I won.  the next move here is to attack and take Bizerte, the last objective hex, which triggers an instant major victory, seven turns ahead of the time limit. Applying lessons learned from recent books read, I took a very Monty approach to the game: - make sure your leaders all have high Initiative scores, to try and drive up Support Unit commitment as much as possible (firing Lloyd Fredendall from the II Corps and replacing him with Lucian Truscott was literally the first thing I did) - make sure you bring down all the artillery SUs from the Army level HQs to the Corps level HQs - don't try anything fancy: concentrate forces against identified low CV units and/or units sitting in clear terrain, and hit the defenders as hard as you can with division-sized attacks, relying on massed artillery to break open fortified hexes. The armor doesn't even do anything except march into just-retreated-from hexes, and only launches attacks against units that already have less than 1.0 CV at the beginning it can feel awfully slow as you're only taking one hex at a time, but then over the course the first half-dozen turns the collapse starts accelerating as the Axis runs out of units with which to fill the line until it has to defend with mere battalion-sized formations. It's especially hilarious when they try to counter-attack, and a brigade-sized force fends off the entire 21st Panzer Division because four artillery regiments activate and the combat summary says the attack halts at over 1,500 yards. It's not uncommon to have over 300 guns participating with most combats, if you play your cards right. as you can see, eventually I was able to take Tunis itself, which then cut off pretty much the entire rest of Rommel's army since they now lack any kind of supply link back to Italy. learning how amphibious operations work is going to be more of a study, but it's been a nice way to spend an evening
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Mar 20, 2024 17:00
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've been jumping across different titles, I know, but I spent all day today playing War in the West. I started with the 5-turn Kasserine Pass scenario and got a minor victory, just to confirm to myself that I knew how to work the game, and then I jumped into the 20-turn Battle for Tunis scenario. Embrace Soviet Deep Battle and abandon all thoughts of Nazi-origin maneuver war. 
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Mar 20, 2024 18:13
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I love both WitE2 and WitW, though I still feel like half of the difficulty with grog games is fighting the UI and systems not being explained very well or intuitive. Very proud of you for doing what Monty would. e: in WitW, figuring out how the amphibious system works drives me crazy. I've always wanted to try landing in southern France has the main effort, rather than Normandy, or landing on either side of Holstein, but I have no been able to figure out how to plan and organize it. I hope they make WitP 2, but for the love of god hire a UI designer! DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 19:22 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 19:19
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:That the developers were extremely proud of it and called it "Paradox's first materialist game" and that it made executives extremely angry and caused a bit of a witch hunt at the company is just Implying that the communists are good at sustaining a peacetime and wartime society would upset Paradox's core demographics.
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Mar 20, 2024 20:10
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So monty's big plan was just amassing mutalisks and just sniping the enemy?
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Mar 20, 2024 20:23
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Bro Dad posted:its a parody on how american soldiers/fascists in movies immediately scream AIR SUPPORT the second someone fires back at them, "future" my rear end people get super annoyed with the missions where your call-ins take 50% longer or are locally jammed because that means they have to actually go in themselves
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Mar 20, 2024 21:34
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gradenko_2000 posted:I've been jumping across different titles, I know, but I spent all day today playing War in the West. I started with the 5-turn Kasserine Pass scenario and got a minor victory, just to confirm to myself that I knew how to work the game, and then I jumped into the 20-turn Battle for Tunis scenario. Maybe its because I played through the same scenario in UoC 2 a bunch, but this is looking dangerously playable. Someone please help I'm considering buying a Gary Grigsby game. 1stGear has issued a correction as of 22:38 on Mar 20, 2024 |
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Mar 20, 2024 22:19
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Tankbuster posted:So monty's big plan was just amassing mutalisks and just sniping the enemy? I mean Lurkers, or really Siege Tanks, would be a closer analogue, but yes. From Bidwell's "Fire-Power":    WITW lets you simulate this pretty well: attach anti-tank regiment Support Units directly to an on-map unit* instead of an HQ, and then rig the corps-level HQ with lots of artillery SUs and a high Initiative leader (as previously described). When the Germans attack on their turn, all of those Support Units activate, and the defending unit gets to punch well above its weight. ___ * you can attach up to three SUs directly to a single unit - this guarantees that the SU participates in every fight that the unit is involved in, but it does mean that those SUs can't be used by anywhere else (where otherwise they might join in on multiple different battles with all of the units under the HQ they're assigned to)
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Mar 21, 2024 07:28
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gradenko_2000 posted:https://twitter.com/BretDevereaux/status/1770118818993750372?t=rbPZTbIbKniS2WkNTpc1BA&s=19 he should spend less time doing think pieces on helldiver and more time playing helldiver
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Mar 21, 2024 18:15
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 nine turns into the 17-turn Road to Leningrad scenario I'm thinking "geez, I've been driving the panzers forward relentlessly this whole game and there doesn't seem to be any end to this. Where does it stop?" and then it's like "oooohhhhhhhhhhhh ..." it's like trying to nail jello to the wall. you swing and swing and you catch nothing but air.
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Mar 22, 2024 04:58
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the GTS LP of Saar is done, with a decivise American victory
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Mar 22, 2024 12:13
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A while ago I posted about a Kriegsspiel game ran in Flashpoint Campaigns, in which I am in charge of divisional artillery and also just being a staffer, and got a lot of help from this thread (and especially FF) in forming the plan. The game finally began a few days ago, so here's an update. As a refresher, here is the overall op plan.  The combined slide is a bit messy, and not entirely up to date. I had revised green's route and COA a bit, especially after noticing that there are crossings to the west that I hadn't seen earlier. As the briefing was limited to 10 slides, and each regiment got their own slide, I did not bother to update the overall op plan. I'll post green's plan when it becomes relevant. Friendly forces: 79th Guards Tank Division (callsign INHULETS) consisting of 17th Guards Tank Regiment, 45th GTR, 211th GTR, and 247th Motor Rifle Regiment. Enemy forces: Reinforced 3rd Brigade, US 1st Armored Division, consisting of 2 infantry battalions, 1-2 armored battalions, and additional fire and air support assets. Objective: Seize and hold crossings over the river Main. Timetable: -6:30: divisional recon with attached DAG spotter team arrives via highway B22. -07:15: division to receive ELINT support. -7:40: 45th GTR arrives via highway B505. -7:45: 211th GTR arrives via B22. -8:15: Divisional HQ, SAM regiment and Divisional Artillery Group arrives via B22. -8:25: Divisional helicopter squadrons arrive. -8:35: Division to receive ELINT report. -9:25: 247th MRR with attached engineers arrives via B505. -9:30: 17th GTR arrives via B22. -9:55: 8th Army's Uragan battery delegated to division. -11:00-12:00: friendly electronic warfare high effort window. -13:00-14:00: friendly EW window. -14:00-15:00: friendly fixed wing CAS and fighter window. -17:00-18:00 friendly EW, CAS and fighter window. -Crossings over the river Main must be seized no later than 22:00. -Crossings must be held until relieved, likely next day. Flashpoint Campaigns has asynchronous turns, and the NATO command loop is a lot shorter than the Pact one. In this case, absent EW, NATO command loop is 32 minutes, and Pact's is variable but around 55 minutes.  The operation begins, and NATO gets its first turn to react. We don't receive a report yet. Weather forecast reported poor weather for the beginning of the operation, severely degrading line of sight. However, when we arrived, it was only partly cloudy. Other information we have may also be incorrect.  Our first report is at 7:24. As staff, we receive a .pdf generated by the game, and have to figure out what it means. So, what is the situation? As expected, divisional recon, callsign ALEXEI are the only friendly assets on the field right now. Let's look at their briefing slide first.  We need them to ensure that our first arriving regiments do not get ambushed. It would also be great if they were also able to have a quick look at edges of the forest threatening both B22 and B505. From 8:15 for an undetermined amount of time I will delegate 1 battery of 152mm to support them in case they find any enemy concentrations. The other two batteries are on counter-battery duty, and my Grad battery is to hold fire until a good target is found. From 8:25 for an undetermined amount of time, they will also receive support from the divisional Mi-24 squadron. The intent is for recon to find and fix enemy forward elements, and then the support assets soften them up before the arrival of the main columns. So, that's the plan. What actually happened as of 7:24?  I cropped the image to the relevant area. Paths are approximate, I did not track every single movement from the .pdf report. I also only tracked the companies overall, not individual elements. So, for example, I tracked "1/Div recon" but not "1/1/Div recon". That would be an absolute nightmare once a whole division is in play. The player was able to successfully scout both arrival areas in time. Alexei 3 ran ahead of schedule and not in force as I intended. At 7:12 it lost it's BRM-1K, which was the element's command vehicle. I'm not sure what happened next, as the report was not clear, but as of 7:23 the element is back in the hex where it was engaged. Throughout this, no enemies have been spotted, but it is safe to assume that something destroyed the BRM. It could have been a mine, but I think it is much more likely to be infantry on one or both sides of the forest. It is curious that only one vehicle was destroyed: perhaps the infantry fired off a single shot and retreated, expecting a larger force than a single recon company. To make matters worse, we did not receive a report from the player himself on the division radio net. Either he neglected to do so, or is out of radio contact, or happened to be riding in that BRM and is now dead. Which would not be great. I passed my report to the CIC, and issued my orders to DAG. Now we wait. Unfortunately for us, the next turn will be NATO.  And so will the next!
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Mar 22, 2024 12:31
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I've been tutoring a bunch of newbies in playing Dominions 6, one of them recorded some of his fights. I figured the new and improved Gifts from Heaven barrages might be worth showing off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3ABrlcWtCU
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Mar 23, 2024 01:09
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my dad posted:I've been tutoring a bunch of newbies in playing Dominions 6, one of them recorded some of his fights. I figured the new and improved Gifts from Heaven barrages might be worth showing off. That's one heck of a bless for EA Ulm. Gifts of heaven is definitely one of the best spells in a game full of great spells: 
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Mar 23, 2024 01:53
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Zeppelin Insanity posted:A while ago I posted about a Kriegsspiel game ran in Flashpoint Campaigns, in which I am in charge of divisional artillery and also just being a staffer, and got a lot of help from this thread (and especially FF) in forming the plan. Excellent write up
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Mar 23, 2024 02:07
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