Cold War 1965 - Official Thread
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Please can someone confirm recommended AI setup for a 2 human game? Eg is it AI Hard for China and Sinopact, with AI Does Nothing for the USA-Neutrals and USSR-Neutrals?
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And should Trucks be able to LandTransport?
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@Cernel said in Cold War 1965 - Official Thread:
@Lord-Bevan However, now that I think about it, you may be right that this is a bug. If an ICBM alone attacks a territory with an ICBM (and possibly other units), the defending ICBM has no actual targets to fire at (since suicide units can never target other suicide units, normally), thus it should not fire (for nothing), thus not suicide, in this case. Opinions on this? Is this a wrong behaviour?
CC: @Panther
@Cernel
I am not familiar with this game and its units., so I am not sure I understand this. So an ICBM is a nuclear weapon intended to attack an enemy territory and while doing so is removed? A defending ICBM on the other side is not intended to attack a territory but attacking units instead? Except that it can't hit the attacking ICBM so it has no valid target to fire at (in the situation in question)? And in case it had a valid target would be removed after shooting?
Is the attacking ICMB something like strategic or tactical bombing? When and how does it fire? And the defending ICMB is always a tactical weapon intendend to fire when? -
I note there's a duff link between SZ10 and SZ13 if anyone has time for repairs please.
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@mattbarnes Yeah, I would recommend setting AI-China and AI-Sinopact to Hard AI. The other neutral players probably just set to Does Nothing AI (but doesn't really matter since they don't have any phases so won't do anything no matter what).
Trucks are just used for cheap, high movement fodder units and don't have isLandTransport currently.
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@Panther said in Cold War 1965 - Official Thread:
A defending ICBM on the other side is not intended to attack a territory but attacking units instead?
FWIW, a defending ICBM when attacked always suicides and is removed. It's in part meant to represent nuclear first strike. There can be a house rule whether AA fire can prevent this or not. It introduces a dynamic where producing an ICBM can in turn cause the opponent to use any they have in stockpile thereby trading them. If someone can get ahead by more than 1 ICBM then they have an advantage. Being able to place nuclear bombers (which have quite massive range of 10 IIRC) in position to be able to strike at a factory that could build a ICBM is a valuable suppression technique to trade an expensive nuclear bomber for an even more expensive ICBM, typically preventing an opponent from building one in that case (which makes kamikaze even more potent of a setting, which AFAIK is somewhat often toggled to on for this map)
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@Panther ICBM can indeed perform bombing raids, but this is not relevant to the matter at hand. Therefore, I'll ignore such ability, from now on.
Aside from bombing raiding, the ICBM, both when offending and when defending, is a suicide unit that fires before all other units, but after AA attacks (thus doesn't fire if shot down by AA), being able to target all targetable (non-targetable are only aaGun and factories, as usual in any games before v5) enemy units except other ICBM (an ICBM can never target other ICBM). All units taken as casualties or removed because of hits from ICBM are removed from the battle before they can fire back.
Assuming using an ICBM on a territory containing one or more enemy ICBM and other targetable units, and that the territory has no aaGun units (or all AA defensive attacks miss), what should be the behaviour of defending ICBM.
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The defending ICBM don't fire, since they have no targets, but are lost anyway for being a suicide unit involved in a battle (this appears to be the program's behaviour).
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The defending ICBM don't fire, since they have no targets, thus they don't suicide, thus surely survive the battle (as the territory is being attacked by ICBM only, that are unable to hit defending ICBM just like defending ICBM are unable to hit offending ones).
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The defending ICBM fire, despite having no targets, thus they suicide (while actually hitting nothing).
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@Cernel @LaFayette Thank you for the explanation.
I would tend to option 2. I would understand a "suicide unit" as being a unit that "commits suicide" by taking any 'fighting action'.
In the given scenario the defending ICMB cannot take such an action (it is simply present), so there is nothing that would cause 'suicide'. -
Hi everyone. This is Dave Ball... I am the original author for Cold War: 1965. Unfortunately, due to personal commitments, I abandoned this map and Triple A years ago. However, I am pleasantly surprised to see that Redrum took it upon himself to update it to the latest version of the game engine.
I am also glad to see play testing has been done. That was one thing that I lacked early on in order to address game balance and bugs. Reading through the posts, I can see much though has gone into making the map usable. Somewhere, I have all of the original graphics files stored and notes if needed.
I will go through the posts and respond where I can. Thanks for not letting this map languish forever.
- Dave
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@Cernel Indeed, the helicopter unit was intended to transport one Infantry unit in addition to being offensive. That being the case, perhaps the Helicopter should cost more or the Tank made 4/3/2 or slightly cheaper (or both).
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@mattbarnes My original design was to allow China and Sino to sweep through South Korea and South Vietnam with US forces as a stop gap. The original thought, inspired by Mao's threat that he could raise an army of 100 Million, was to have China armed with a ridiculous number of infantry, but little else. Unfortunately, game mechanics would allow the AI to overwhelm any combination of forces. Thus, the machine gun unit to allow a stronger defense but waves of 1-point fodder.
Side note... I had toyed with the idea of allowing China to invade India. Not sure what that would do to game play.
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@mattbarnes @Cernel The concept was for both sides to be able to launch nukes in response to each other, thus, ICBMs would need to survive the initial strike in order to retaliate. Think of them being in hardened underground silos.
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@redrum @mattbarnes You are both correct. China and Sino set to AI Hard and all neutrals set to AI Does Nothing. This was to allow a territory to be neutral but allow move through to one side but not the other (without combat).
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@DaveBall068 Welcome back! Please, rather refer to this post for an analysis of the game:
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/1532/cold-war-map/13I want to point out that I've never played this game. So, these are opinions from someone that never actually played the game.
I just think it's a rather major black spot that TripleA is missing a "Cold War" game listed in its "High Quality" category.
Regarding the nukes, I've the following questions:
- Is it preferred for them to be destroyable by AA fire before they can hit?
- Is it preferred that defending nukes always fire (thus are lost) when defending? If so, is it preferred that they can hit attacking (thus flying) air units too?
- Is it preferred that defending nukes are lost (for nothing) when the territory is attacked by enemy nukes only?
All the above are the game's behaviours. I'm wondering if they are actually wanted. Say, if you would not be dealing with a virtual program, or could anyway have the nukes working however you want, how would they work?
I'm also curious what made you define productions values. Some things, like Yugoslavia more productive than Italy or Australia more productive than the sum of France, Western Germany, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg are really impossible to agree with. Some zones, like Papua, New Guinea, Solomons, Aleutians, and so on, I would imagine as non-productive. Also the fact that the United States of America are much more populous on their eastern side is hardly represented (and back then this difference was much more pronunced than nowadays).
Finally, I much prefer games with not too many units on the board, so I suggest to do what feasible to reduce the total production on the map (like possibly to about a quarter of the current total).
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@DaveBall068 said in Cold War 1965 - Official Thread:
@mattbarnes @Cernel The concept was for both sides to be able to launch nukes in response to each other, thus, ICBMs would need to survive the initial strike in order to retaliate. Think of them being in hardened underground silos.
Well, good to know and it makes sense (this is what I would say it should happen too if I were the mapmaker). However (as you can test it), this is not what it is happening. A pretty mandatory opening on this map, actually, is to use the USSR ICBM to attack Northeast United States. As long as the AA fire fails to kill the ICBM, this implies killing the two USA ICBM for free! Actually, they will suicide even if the attacking ICBM is destroyed by AA fire (but this is clearly a problem with program)! And this makes the map rather non-serious as playability, since hitting that 1 on the AA fire, when defending against the USSR ICBM, makes a huge difference (a huge lucky shot right at the start of the game) (but at least the bug that makes the USA ICBM suicide anyway tempers this).
Still, if defending ICBM would not suicide (for nothing) against offending ICBM, but would still defensively suicide against other units, then, as long as you are in range, you would send 1 air unit to cause them to suicide (as they are more costly of any air unit, comprising the movement 10 NuclearBomber).
