Big World 2: Balance of Power comments
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Playing it a bit for the first time against other humans, and there's some various minor issues that I'm starting a thread to collect, and for other to feedback upon. Easier to notice things that are hard to notice when you're new to a map.
Issue 1 Russian Winter game notes text should clarify that it also protects russian ships from being attacked. edit: it also prevents rocket attacks.
Issue 2 sz 55 units are really easy to miss when looking at the mediterranean, not sure there's any good solution to. I epically failed and italy got invaded twice because I didn't see transports in range. Transports are visually below the horn of africa, it's where there's the most space, but it does make them quite hard to see; (i.e. you could position to see most of ethiopia and still not be able to see the fleet)
Issue 3 another user noted that the "you can't build capital ships here" giant X'd out shipyards are quite ugly to look at. They're also not always that clear; I still forgot that it prevented building carriers to the south of italy (since it's rather unusual to say one specific location next to a capital isn't allowed but the others are, it's the only place on the map like that). There might also be a way to make it clearer visually that it means no capital ships, but doesn't affect regular ships.
Issue 4 Japanese National Advantage Battle fleets (the bbs provide support one), the game notes should specify it doesn't activate until after the first turn.
Issue 5? Objective wording? iirc last time I checked some of the objective wordings don't quite match up with their actual requirements, so it'd be good to synchronize them Leaving this here to remind myself to look at it.
Specific issues (comparing objective wordings on the objective tab, to notes, and to xml file)
German objectives 2&3, objective tab incorrect; notes and file match.edit adds
Issue 6 If Germany acquires Rockets before the national advantage that gives it to them in round 3, they appear to just get nothing. Perhaps they should either simply not have a chance of getting rockets if national advantages are enabled, or if they already have rockets then they receive some other bonus instead?issue 7 bombard casualties don't return fire is set as the default; this is despite v3 rules usually have bombard casualties returning fire.
Issue 8 Japan's national advantage that improves its battleships when attacking also affects bombards (and can improve the bombard of their other ships), game notes should be modified to make this clear)
issue 9 notes should specify which territories are required for suez canal use and when they're required.
issue 10 game notes for improved factories should specify it only improves locations with production >= 3
issue 11 kamikaze's are placed at end of japan's turn; which means that if the sz has no other allied units in the area, they can be killed by a single enemy plane with no risk. it often feels like a weak national advantage; due to its move 1, it rarely gets to attack anything; and is prone to being wiped out on a defense at a some point. additionally, on defense they fire even though they're rolling a 0. So any attack on a stack containing kamikazes will kill all of them without them inflicting any damage.
issue 12 contrary to game notes, bombers can not use paratroopers. The paradrop plane should perhaps be unavailable to build until you have paratrooper tech; since it has no purpose before then.
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zlefin,
Thanks for the input. I made this map nearly 10 years ago and I agree a lot of notes needs updating. See full history here:
http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/Big-World-2-td6541850.html
Three of the most common complaints are:
- Russian Winter
- Kamikaze
- Ugly Red X labels for capital ships.
I am planning to completely revamp the three items above; however to implement the new Russian Winter I am waiting for a stable engine update that supports negative terrain effects. When this new feature is tested and working, an update could be made and address all the notes update as well.
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potential balance changes/new features are of course a whole other story.
I haven't played a lot yet; but the one balance concern I have is that the airtechs seem kinda too good. The way air starts out is fine, but when they get fully upgraded they're quite obnoxious, and since the tech upgrades improve all the planes you started with, which for some nations is quite a lot, it's esay for the tech to be worth spending on.
A 4/5/6 for 10 is very powerful, and with a stack of them it creates a huge threatened area, and it's able to take on infantry at an almost cost-effective way (which can be worthwhile for US in particular, or if it enables can openers and such). Similarly a 4/1/8 for 11 is quite nasty, with move that high, they can cover an absolutely huge area. Trying to move new ships to join an existing fleet can become hard/impossible, as an air fleet can hit both locations at once. Italian fleet has no way to survive vs an air heavy america past the first few turns unless it hides and never does anything (and maybe not even then).One thing that might help address that would be the addition of scrambling, a la Global. I also wonder if any of the other features found in Global would make for interesting gameplay additions for a Big World 3; I haven't really played enough global, but there's a lot of interesting things there.
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@Prussia Here is also some feedback on Rise of Axis: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues/5436
open Problem with "big world2 rise of axis" #5436
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Been playing this map a bit again, and found a minor visibility issue to add
issue 13 - unit visibility in Taiwan can be poor. I missed some Jap dive bombers in Taiwan; they really blend in due to how the territory and unit placements are setup. The unit border ends up in the same place as the territory border which means its outline doesn't really show, and it overlaps with the text of the province name.
