Just doing another run, this time as Germany solo with everyone else controlled by the hard AI.

I think the strongest play from Germany is to slam into Russia, either pressing the Leningrad pocket via amphib or darting to Stalingrad with mech, then redirect West after the Russians are handled. The runner up would be doing it in the reverse order, with Sea Lion first to control the western approach by sea, then redirect East to focus entirely on Russia before they gain the upper hand. But just for kicks, and since it was a solo, we opted for a third way: launch an expeditionary force to mess with the minors! haha

Takes probably 4 or 5 transports to have much impact against any of the other Allies, and a fair amount of fuel just to move the transports, but its pretty entertaining. Fuel management I think is the most important thing to pulling it off, without just handing the game to the Soviets on a silver platter lol. I tried to build up the synth stockpile early on with a dozen or so additional green barrels to keep from burning out, since the first few rounds will tap all the reserves for sure.

After the North Sea Zone I think the Freetown Sea Zone is maybe the strongest for Axis to occupy with a transport fleet.

Takes a few turns to set up, but from that position Axis can threaten 6 Allied Factories and a couple Rally Points from a single sea zone. Hard for the Machine to defend all of them, so whichever ends up the weakest, Germany can just sweep them and then use production to set up a little colony to mess with Team Allies heheh.

In this one we sent 5 transports and the Battleship out to the South Atlantic and used the rest to shuck units towards the Soviets since we knew they'd be fierce. G had just enough juice to crash the party in Stalingrad, but then had to strafe back home to safety in East Prussia. Our AI Axis buddies are bit unreliable, so we've been planning to go it alone for the most part. Finland is probably toast without some reinforcements at the last possible minute. We'll probably have to save them, or maybe not lol. But anyhow you can see the lanes down there off the coast of West Africa in the save below... Basically gives G the choice to disrupt South America or Africa, whichever is the more weakly defended. Here I think South America looks like the juicier prize, so probably will go that way to stomp! But its fun for a change of pace on this map.

I noticed that AI Japan did purchase a new factory in Shanghai, so that's good to see. Probably most AI nations have more production than cash on hand so they don't really buy new factories, but I like how the rally points open up more possibilities and make some regions of the map and minor powers viable even if their main factory gets smoked hehe

2021-4-8-Iron-War Germany Solo Transports G5.tsvg

@malmessi trevan has a PR to fix the error

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/9098

trevan created this issue in triplea-game/triplea open Show the sub retreat step even if a destroyer is present #9098

@iratoric My concern is that 2 turn battleship builds will never be built by the AI. It is worth mentioning that the Americans had no need for more battleships by the time they entered and neither British or Germans build any battleships during WW1 (British finished off ships already under construction), so perhaps the AI is correct in not building battleships.

Actually 5 sea zones between America/Canada-Europe is better since it is easier to calculate movements.

National Borders2 - Kopya.png

So I am starting to examine AI suitability for some randomly picked scenarios.

Great Lakes War All these scenario are fine for AI

Great War The only problem for the AI is the odd blockages for the US. This is an old scenario before events were introduced into TripleA. The large numbers of units and sprawaling map also slow the game. The actual units are straight-forward and the game can be played with Fast AI. Combat movement is before purchase.

@djabwana @GenerationKILL Any possibility to reconsidering some of the unit images? As much as I like the unit images, I would want to see slightly altered versions of some of them.

For example I would definitely prefer infantries that points their gun to a direction parallel to the floor as much as possible like Russian (my favourite infantry image on TripleA) and American ones while standing shooting/assault position.

I would prefer to see artilleries with the same aspect.

Also I would prefer all nations having their state flags. The Ottoman flag was actually different than the Republic of Turkey's flag. Though never standardized in the Ottoman era as much as I know but

Ottoman Flag

ottoman-empire-devlet-i-aliyye-i-osmaniyye-empire-1299-1923-flag-1844-1923-11530968.png

Turkey flag

220px-Flag_of_Turkey.svg.png

@beelee Ah, okay.

@wc_sumpton @Hepps

TO REPAIR OR NOT TO REPAIR that is the question...

Okej, personally in my ideal map, repairing all constructions as well as 2 hit units is done by a pop-up at game start, so that one has the choice to spend PU's on that and certainely not done for free. .
For now constructions can be Repaired by this popup and Battle Units have the option to be autorepaired in the presence of a repairing unit.... for free?

There are situations that for example a battleship is involved in battle and automatically takes in the first hit to avoid loss of other navy. I like the consequence used in f.e. Hepps Total War where the ship gets a less powerfull damaged stand-in.

But if this ship would lay next to a home factory it would immediately be auto-repaired for free , in end of this turn or start next turn , depending on setting. That seems to out of ballance for me.

For this I started making a Repair Damage -token, which can be bought to repair 2-hit units. (in my case Battleship carrier geavyArmour and Heavy Battleship )

Works fine : I let a trigger replace the damaged unit and the repair token with a healed unit.... but with one exception: I don't manage to get it functioning in PLACEMENT PHASE, for BOTH sea and land units. ( to avoid too many options / units to choose from in Purchase screen.

And placementAnySeaZone' option only seems to work player connected, not unit. 😞 Any idea anyone?

got bid purchse
but no bid placement

@zlefin just make sure you aren't reusing other people's IP. 🙂

@cernel Git remembers all files that were ever added, you can delete them and retrieve them easily. If the files are not used, what value do they have? There is a saying in programming YAGNI - you aren't going to need it. There is also the 'sunk cost fallacy' that says it's hard to give up on something after an initial investment has been made. I think you probably can safely remove the unused stuff. It could be done automatically one day via a script to clean up map repositories. To another extent, a published map is not a place to maintain a scratch-pad of useless items. We have a whole repository available for anyone to upload useful but not used map assets, perhaps those items would do well uploaded there. In the meantime, any useless items is adding to disk space requirements, slowing down how fast the map runs, slows down the download, and slows down a number of operations performed during map maintenance. So it's a bad idea to put unnecessary artifacts in a map repository.

I've enhanced the flags please consider to add them;

Arabia_large.png Arabia.png Arabia_small.png Austria_large.png Austria.png Austria_small.png Britain_large.png Britain.png Britain_small.png Communist_large.png Communist.png Communist_small.png France_large.png France.png France_small.png Germany_large.png Germany.png Germany_small.png Italy_large.png Italy.png Italy_small.png Russia_large.png Russia.png Russia_small.png Serbia_large.png Serbia.png Serbia_small.png Turkey_large.png Turkey.png Turkey_small.png USA_large.png USA.png USA_small.png

@rogercooper

It has some understanding, but not a complete understanding; from what I've been able to tell. It does, at least partly, recognize the movement bonuses units will get in terms of avoiding counterattacks, though I'm not sure it does so fully.

In terms of strategic bombing, I'm not sure to what extent it specifically targets harbors/airfields that are relevant right now, vs simply targetting anything in the area that's raidable that it's not already invading. (and of course bombers often have regular combats worth doing as well).

It does not seem to preferentially move units on/next to harbors/airfields so as to get the movement bonus.

I was trying out Global recently, and some of the moves quite clearly showed the ai not 'getting' the impacts of those bases.

@lafayette said in 270BC Wars - Official Thread:

@Cernel why is there a '+' folder in the map? Seemingly it's making the download size quite a bit larger than it needs to be.

The "270bc" map has several such useless items too. The main difference is that I group them externally, leaving inside the "map" folder nothing but what is or may be used by the program.

Completely useless items of 270bc (I would keep without the "map" folder):
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/misc/Legend.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/territoryNames/Saria.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/territoryNames/Heraclea.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/alt/RomanRepublic_unit_development.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/alt/archer_hepps.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/alt/archer_with_marker_at_55pt.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/alt/ballista_with_marker_at_55pt.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/alt/hoplite_with_marker_at_55pt.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/alt/legionaire_hepps.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/alt/warelephant_hepps.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/alt/warelephant_hepps_hit.png
https://github.com/triplea-maps/270bc/blob/master/map/units/Neutral/longboat.png

Other maps have a lot more useless items than this one.

@schulz Hej Schulz, you asked me to use Soundfiles I made/ adapted for the recently released WW2 Oil & Snow project, which is fine, ( except the intro tune , I prefer to keep that unique ) nice to see another 1941 map and I like your ingredients...

I also like a lot this map, but when trying to game it people said it has many problems and bugs. Could be great if can be fixing as a normal map... Thanks forwardly

So I have had some time away from the forum because of real life issues and work. But I can see that the Warcraft map has been play-tested regardless of my absence 🙂 Nice! Thanks for the feedback @bel246 @zlefin. Constructive feedback always motivates a mapmaker to keep on working on and fixing maps! To quickly state what engine is best:

For PvP I would recommend this version:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases/tag/2.6.22436
as it seems to be the last version with the - soon to be removed - “NEXT” and “PREV” unmoved unit buttons. These buttons are very good for ensuring that ALL unmoved units get attention during a player's turn, also allowing the player to shuffle back and forth between units during movement phase. (On a side note, I personally see this upcoming removal as an unnecessary setback for TripleA’s UI and play experience. But I might stand very alone with this opinion.)

For play against the AI, I see this version as best:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/releases/tag/2.6.22444
as this version (released just after the above) is the first engine with the important AI-update that prevents AI from stacking units in Horde capitals (and other territories with land canal attachments). An issue that always made the AI lose in the long run. Sadly, this engine version is also the first to have the “NEXT” and “PREV” unmoved unit buttons removed.

Q&A:
Anyway, to follow up on the development of this map, I can say that Warcraft War heroes is practically 99% done. The map notes are about 80% done and I am running out of map specific map issues to tackle. Let just try to address some of the recently posted issues:

@bel246 said:
“still quite a few items without tooltips and I can't figure out what they do. For example: Energy-Shard”
ItemTooltip.jpg
I don’t get it. There ARE tooltips for the items? Maybe they are not as self-explanatory as I think? Fore example the energy shard gives 1 Mana resource to the player each round. Perhaps players think that every item does something very special, but this is not the case. A few items are just resource generators that, unlike buildings and territories, can’t be lost to the enemy.

(Factories that are up for grabs) “If I capture them they get the maximum amount of raid damage even though I didn't attack with any shots set to bombard. Is that intended? Capturing factories built by players doesn't do that.”
Yes it is intentional. This is because it would be unrealistic that an enemy would let a fully functional production facility fall into the hands of an opponent. Also, it would be a too strong advantage for a victor to be able to build in a place just captured from the enemy. This rule/map behavior is also stated in the notes of "Bombardment", but not under "Factories", where I guess you might have looked, and where it is perhaps more logical to look 😉

“25 PU's to repair a factory seems quite harsh (…) Thats a lot more then the average unit I buy (20 for footman). A new factory costs 30 PU's.”
Well it is still cheaper than a new factory. Factories are meant to be cheap and destructible, unlike standard WW2 A&A. I hope this will let the “front” be more dynamic and get the players to make choices between bobarding the enemy factories or try to capture them.

“I played Alliance and I think they are a lot stronger then the Horde” “If you can get sea superiority before them they have a hard time taking it back because they are limited to one ship per turn. They have quite a few flying units but here I have another observations. The AI doesn't seem to take into account that they can land flying units on water. I have never seen them do that.” “If you control the sea you also have the advanced tactical option of naval raids”
Yes. The unequal access to sea seems to be a returning problem. I am not sure that the problem is big during Human vs Human play, but the AI clearly has problems handling the situation. I have been thinking of updating all map resources to only give the player 1 resource per turn, not 3. So a fish would give 1 food, not 3, an Oil Rig 1 Oil, not 3 etc. Maybe this would make controlling the sea leas important. However this would not help the AI in regards to tactically exploiting the sea. Any input on how to handle this would be nice.

“its not fair that all the Alliance factions have air units but not all of the Horde factions”
I hope that the unbalance in access to Air Units can be countered by adjusting unit prices and strengths of units. This will be ongoing balancing work.

“The level 3 trap of Ayanna reads: Lays a trap that kills one enemy unit. That sounds like a suicide attack. But actually isn't, you can kill 20 units with one trap if you get lucky with the dice.”
I can’t explain that. The code of the trap should only let it kill 1 enemy and then die if it actually has a hit:

<attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="Trap" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type="unitType"> <option name="defense" value="1"/> <option name="isSuicideOnHit" value="true"/> </attachment>

There is not really any other code attached to the Trap unit. I wonder what could influence the trap?

“Frost spell of the gnomes is overpowered”
Maybe you are right. I guess I have to experience this in action to see it as a problem. I guess if you are not the player with the stuck units, it is just a comical situation 😛 But seriously, this is an issue to keep an eye on. My fist thought is, "but this also requires the the gnomen hero to keep pretty stationary and keep casting his Frost Spell at the same territory for the rest of the game."

@zlefin said:
“It seems odd how many of the territories are wholly undefended; it makes the early stage very much about sending out single units just to land grab as much as possible, at least for stuff that's not too near an enemy. And often even then just to grab artifacts.”
Well, this map clearly has inbuilt “stages” of play progression. A player starts out land-grabbing and also fighting lesser AI players, before finally meeting other major players. It was the hope that the player during early game would look at the map and go “that item is a must-have, therefore I ride towards it ASAP”, “That building is essential to reach before the enemy gets it” or “OK, with those buildings at my disposal, I will chose this and that Origin Skill”. There is a lot of randomness affecting early game, but I hope that it is ok and works.

“It seems weird that regular units generate a 'veteran' currency that gives free veteran units rather than upgrading regular units to veteran ones”
I struggled and still struggle with how to best implement a veterans and elites system that both made sense and could work for real. I did at one point want to have regular units upgrade to higher tier units by placing the upgrade on them, but I “dumbed” down the system for the current one. Honestly I can’t remember why, but I guess that I reached a wall (of a nature that I can’t remember. Probably a practical hindrance?) in regards to making the concept into reality. If anyone has an example of a working system of another map, please point at it.

“Found an odd bug … I have an outpost and a watch tower in my set of items to build. At StormGarde keep, it won't let me upgrade the watch tower into an outpost”
I managed to load your save game, and I see what you explain. But I have no explanation why one can’t have both types of units in the bank (a simple factory unit + an upgrade unit) and therefor not be able to place the upgrade. It would be cool if a developer could investigate. If I get around to it, I will at some point make an official bug report. But before this it would be nice if a person more experienced in XML could maybe identify if this is actually an XML or engine problem. (???)