Domination 1914 - Meat Grinder

[scallen1]

@hepps The Mexico neutral nation idea is a goal. But I'm prioritizing the combat changes first. So militarizing the border is a band-aid.

If I go all the way to putting all my stretch ideas into a game, it'll be a second game because it'll involve a lot more alternative history possibilities than the game I'm making first which has historicity as a major goal.

[scallen1]

@general_zod said in Domination 1914 - Meat Grinder:

Start USA neutral and give USA a peacetime economy and production until they officially enter the war on the allied side. Perhaps 25% of normal income and only basic production ability. And no tech research. Maybe movement restrictions close to the war as well. Basically make USA very limited and force them to think hard about their moves and purchases during this period.

I like the version of US entry I'm building. I think of spending on tech tokens as the US leadership trying to encourage the US population to support war. The US will be encouraged to be spending all of its income on getting itself into the war though depending on which "Enter the war" tech they unlock first, they might want to start producing units before they've gotten everything set up for war.

Create some conditions to allow USA to enter the war. Ideally they should be based on Centrals conquests and or a combination of Entente position. You can even create a scenario where USA sea vessels can be accidently sunk by the Centrals. This would require some creative new units owned by Entente but (just a technicality, so they can actually be sunk before USA is at war). Maybe a non combat sea transport that can be randomly killed if the sea zone containing it is attacked by Centrals. If this vessel is sunk USA automatically enters the war. Design it so Centrals may have to avoid the attack into a so called shipping lane to prevent such a thing from happening. But must not provide Entente a exploitation at same time.

It would be nice to give Germany the option of avoiding Unrestricted Submarine Warfare and thus keep the US out of the war but nah I'm not about that. I'd have to make USW something so desirable that the German player would choose it despite its consequences. As for German conquests bringing the US into the war, for balance I would have to make this highly probable that the German player would achieve these conquests - which I would considerable undesirable - and it really doesn't bare any historicity. So no, us inevitable entrance but slow entrance is the way I'm going.

Mexico should simply enter war on Centrals side if USA attacks them. Or can go further by creating some prerequisite condition as well that can allow Centrals to pull them into the war on their side.

This is a stretch goal. After I accomplish making my new artillery system and make my Meat Grinder high historicity game I want to expand on it with one with solid alternate history options. This will include making Japan, Mexico, and China potential full combatants in the war. (I have ideas written out called "late politics" and some early WW2 techs that would be unlockable late in the game)

Russia was manipulated by Germany historically. A master move by them. Lenin was exiled by Russia for stirring up discontent and a revolutionary sentiment. The Kaiser bankrolled Lenin and sent him back to Russia to continue his plans. This succeeded beyond Germany's wildest dreams. Try to replicate this scenario somewhat. Allow communists to form in Russia and allow Centrals to supply them with additional funds in form of user actions. Possibly allow them to share tech and give units if territories are bordering Germany and Communist.

A German political tech they can attempt is called Lenin in my game and it significantly weakens Russia's ability to wage offensive war (it doesn't noticably change their defensive abilities)

[scallen1]

To all - anyone know of a way to have a tech add a territory to your country.

Example I want - Serbia I'm going to give free tech tokens to but all they can use them on is bringing Greece and Romania into the war (on their side). So every turn Serbia rolls their tech tokens and if they get a hit (will be designed so they should quickly hit both) Greek territory and units will go from Neutral to being Serb or Romanian territory and units will do the same.

I'll probably figure this out but if anyone already has an XML example of how to attach a territory and its units mid game to a new owner that'd be great

[scallen1]

@redrum I'm running into a big obstacle. How do I make an artllery only able to produce ammunition?

My current workaround is to make it so it can produce units with no limitation but give EVERYTHING except ammunition the restriction that it requires a factory to be produced. That'll work I think

[Hepps]

@scallen1 Yes that should work.

[Hepps]

@hepps You will probably have the style of setup for things like barbwire as well.

[scallen1]

@hepps barbwire is going to be pretty simple (writing that rn). It'll be like a trench (construction) and require infantry (or equivalent) to be present to build it)

[scallen1]

@redrum have a unit that I need to die either at the end of every turn or alternatively if no artillery present. Do you know how to do this?

[Cernel]

@scallen1 Turning non-neutral units from a player to another is a bit complex, but if you are into reading really complex stuff, you can find an example of such code into Empire (when a Caesar is captured). To get there, in your case, you need a custom tech and then you would test the ownership of such tech (instead of testing the ownership of a capture Caesare). If by Greece and Romania you, instead, mean that they are not actually powers (players), but just neutral territories (assigned to the neutral player), instead the example you are searching for is Mongolia turning Russians in WWII Global.

[scallen1]

@cernel I meant the latter so I will look at that game's XML. Thank you very much

[scallen1]

Here is the XML for my first shell (ammunition for artillery) that I have created

I will very happily accept suggestions and answer questions

<attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="explosive_shell" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type="unitType">
  <option name="movement" value="1"/>
  <option name="attackAA" value="1"/>
  <option name="offensiveAttackAA" value="2"/>
  <option name="maxRoundsAA" value="1"/>
  <option name="defense" value="0"/>
  <option name="transportCost" value="1"/>
  <option name="isSuicide" value="true"/>
  <option name="damageableAA" value="true"/>
  <option name="isAir" value="true"/>
  <option name="mayOverStackAA" value="true"/>
  <option name="isKamikaze" value="true"/>
  <option name="isAAforCombatOnly" value="true"/>
  <option name="maxAAattacks" value="2"/>
  <option name="typeAA" value="shell"/>
  <option name="placementLimit" value="allied" count="2000"/>
  <option name="canNotMoveDuringCombateMove" value="false" />
  <option name="targetsAA" value="infantry:colonial:british_veteran_stormtruppen:conscript:artillery:tank:fighter:late_fighter:bomber:barbed_wire:trench:bedouin:machine_gun:scount_plane" />
</attachment>

[Hepps]

@scallen1 Look at the last target for your shell.

Says scount_plane... doubt that is correct.

[Hepps]

@hepps You have the "canNotMoveDuringCombatMove" included... however the attachment defaults to false. Not sure you really need to include it in the unit attachment.

Also, you may need to re-examine the "typeAA" to be more specific since you are designing 3 different shell types. Otherwise you will run into complications because the engine will try to group them together when attacking if they are of the same type.

[Hepps]

Also out of curiosity, why include the placement limit if you are essentially making it infinite?

[scallen1]

@hepps yeah I caught my typos after posting

[scallen1]

@hepps didn’t know the typeAA thing

I’m not worried about being redundant and was worried that if I didn’t explicitly state it could move during combat it’s AA status would make it not work in combat moves.

The build limit is just a placeholder in case during balancing I decide to limit it to a realistic number.

[Hepps]

[scallen1]

I love that image and will find a way to incorporate that into the game oh my god

Update - This is going way better than I anticipated. I have significant entry level coding experience so I expected I'd get through this eventually but with the help from this group and the very useful guide material you can find here my progress report is pretty good.

Every unit I wanted to make is coded in. Most map changes I wanted to make are coded in - the ones that haven't been coded in are things that will be affected by balancing questions and the politics tech category. And work has begun on my revamping of the techs.

What I have left to do:

1 - Figure out how to make one tech unlock another tech - I'm sure I can find this in the XML for TWW so I'm not worried - and then build my tech trees.
1 B - get the politics tree set up. I got good suggestions here and only a nasty cold has kept me from getting this step 1 done over the past weekend. Will likely have step 1 and 1B done tonight though my cold hasn't gone away.

2 - Make sure I have an image for each new unit (this will start with me really just reusing existing images from existing games). I assume this doesn't take long.

3 - Try to run the game and start finding bugs. Debugging in every other coding project I've ever done has been my strong suit so I'm confident in this one. I'm expecting bugs with how artillery and politics techs work. Hopefully I won't see them.

4 - Balance the game by playing against myself until it feels like the two sides are even when they are both in my hands and that the game fits my theme.

5 - get someone to play test it with me to see how it works in an actually competitive game.

[Hepps]

@scallen1 said in Domination 1914 - Meat Grinder:

I love that image and will find a way to incorporate that into the game oh my god

Was just a quick doodle. I can do something much nicer if you want.

I also have a bunch of WWI unit images.

[scallen1]

I'm also going to publish my balancing goals and expected problems and resolutions here

• Allies are too strong
  If this is the case (probable) I have a couple planned fixes.
  1 - if they are too strong on water I will strengthen the sub techs of germany and the starting fleets of Austria and the Turks.
  2 - if they are too strong because defense has too much of an advantage so the US's entry comes invariably before the Centrals make any significant gains. If this happens I will make artillery ammunition less expensive. One way I might do this is by adding an infrastructure unit that produces an ammunition resource which can be used to purchase artillery shells. I might do this idea anyway. In addition, I might just give the germans a better starting hand and change trenches from being a 2 hit cannon fodder unit to a one unit that lends defensive support to infantry. Or something like that.
  3 - if something else I will cross that bridge when I get to it But here I will list another idea I have that would effectively weaken the allied powers and I like very much as a balancing agent - making transports slower and more expensive.

• France/Russia infantry spams and Germany artillery shell spams
  I'm ok with this. It fits the meat grinder pursuit of the game. As long as units keep dying its all good.

• Techs are OP
  Again this is ok I will just have to make sure that this doesn't advantage the allies and their greater productive capacity. I might make research token prohibitively expensive but also automatically generated by each nation's capital city. Note - this is not ok if the game just comes down to who gets the best tech rolls. But I do want good tech rolls to give momentary advantages

• Techs too weak
  I'm not ok with this but the solution for most of them is simple

• France doesn't build Artillery. Germany doesn't buy trenches
  I don't like this. I'd like there to be a balance between France striking a defensive pose and France using some artillery to counterattack Germany. Basically - I'd like western front armies to be at max efficiency when both are being used even if the germans use more offensive units and the french more defensive ones.

• Russia doesn't build artillery. Total infantry spam
  I'm just entirely ok with this.

• One form of artillery shell is just so much more efficient than the other 2
  This would be immensely easy to solve if I institute the ammunition factory system by basically being able to just fiddle with prices of the ammunition until there's balance. It is only likely in the case that one makes multiple advances on the poison as tree and even then poison gas only affects bio units so you'll still need explosive shells.

• new techs lead to spamming newly available units
  The syngergies that units have in supporting each other and the general usefulness of infantry as cannon fodder should make this not happen but I have an eye out for it. Tanks are the thing most likely to be spammed.

• Centrals are OP
  LOL this won't happen

And with all this remember game goals

• casualties every turn and in large numbers from artillery
• sea battles matter and persist through the game
• centrals have between a 45 and 55% chance of winning if players are evenly matched
• tech arms race gives you temporary advantages that over time strengthen the offensive position on the battlefield. Tech arms race shouldn't usually decide the game though.