ww_terminus_v2 - map thread
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I've added my first map to TripleA under experimental. It's a minimalist version of ww2v4.
I'm looking for thoughts on gameplay and balance. Here's some of the questions I have, and that more experienced playtesters than I might be able to answer.General:
Production before combat means that you're encouraged to leave 1 unit behind to defend every territory, and that capturing high-value territories that will be recaptured is more about denying them production next turn than for immediate production. This combined with the lower map IPC means less units being made.
Japan and Britain have tight production capacity if they want to build many ground units without building an additional factory. Does this interfere with gameplay?
All the units have been recosted to be cheaper, but some have been discounted more than others, the biggest gainer being the Cruiser (12->8). Are they balanced relative to each other?
Old-style transports. Do they feel out of place?
Both the Eastern and Western front feel more "important", so to speak, with the values in the Germany-Russian front being higher relative to other territories, and Japan easier to pressure on the mainland. Is any significantly more important than the other?Russia:
Russia lost its submarine. While historically inaccurate (russia had a small naval force, represented by the submarine), does it lead to better gameplay?
To simulate the NAP, Russia is able to stack 7 infantry on R1. Is actually doing this better than pulling the infantry west?
Heck, on R1, Russia can even attack Japan with 3 infantry against 1 fighter 1 tank. While the IPC count is unfavorable, is it ever worth doing this to set up a British attack?
sniper: Is Russia's unique unit balanced? It feels to me like something that is not very useful early, but very useful late.Germany:
Starting with three bombers, Germany has a number of potential attacks on G1. Do multiple options feel viable?
Germany has three major fronts: Atlantic, Russian, and African. The intention is while the Russian front is obviously the most important, it's at least viable to fight on all three of them. (The Atlantic front more in terms of Bombers than ships.) Did I accomplish this?
tiger: Germany's unique unit feels very powerful to me, but the AI never buys it. I've nerfed it twice already in testing, how is the balance now?
trig: This is more of me messing around with support attachments and multiple attacks than a serious unit. Still, is this remotely balanced? It feels overpowered, despite costing two entire turns of IPCs.UK:
Factory buy or no factory buy? I hoped both options are viable, but this might not be the case.
Is Japan's lone transport as much of a must-kill on U1 as I think it is?
The UK can sacrifice its pacific navy to pressure Japan and prevent pearl harbor. Is it worth doing so?
raf: How's the balance on UK's unique unit? The raf-CV pair feels to me useful but not OP. I haven't been able to make use of its land defense except in a human vs human test game where it flown to Gibraltar to protect an American bomber.Japan:
Japan is the only faction with kamikaze aircraft. Is there any strategic things that result from this? (I couldn't find much.)
yamato: As with every other unique unit, I'd like to ask how the balance is on this.America:
America can fight on the pacific or Atlantic front. It seems to me right now the dominant strategy is "Counterattack Pearl Harbor, then completely ignore the Pacific." Is this correct, and if so how might I be able to fix this?
superfortress: This unit is actually slightly less efficient at SBRs compared to a regular bomber. That said, I don't think America needs something more efficient than the bomber at SBRs. Is this unit at least usable? -
Hi. Congratulations. First impressions:
-Japanese fighter image is missing
-Hawaii/Honolulu appear in the same place
-The unncessary relief line which appear in E.USA could be removed.
-I liked cost reduction of units though I would prefer defenseless transports and battleships with 15Pu
-I liked bette cruisers and impassable Madagascar too.
-Carrier cost should be minimum 12. Sub could be 4
-Libya really does not deserve to have 2 Pu.
-Germany looks like now more vulnerable to us air raids unless there will be intercept.
-11 is odd number for a unit cost.
-Better to rotate the Russian units via GIMP, currently Russian infantries are looking to wrong direction. Sniper image is not distinguishable enough from regular infantry.
Also I tend to dismiss any WWII scenario if one of them is present.
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Lack of two ocean going USA: The leading Allies nation's sole strategy should not be limited with just creating a pipleline in Africa. Somethings should be done to make US two ocean going.
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Germany turning on survival mod while Japan is trying to rescue Germany via stemrolling Asia and Pacific? No thanks.
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Sorry about the Japanese fighter image. Will fix that.
Honolulu is the name of the VC in Hawaii. I know the font looks out of place, I don't know which one was originally used.
I notice you want nerfs to the capital ships. Are the other ships weak in comparison?
Am hesitant to buff subs to 4 cost, it seems way too easy to spam and create a kill zone, subs already are a very efficient way to do that.
I know they're a bit weaker than original ww2v4. A buff I was considering was making them 2/2 but not first strike on defense.
Reason Libya is 2 PU is to make it a bit more costly for germany to to abandon Africa.
SBRs are about same efficiency as in ww2v4. Note that for ordinary bombers, SBR damage is a d5.
Is 11 for factory too high? Too low?
I used what was already given to me for images (sniper image is marine). Can reflect images easily enough, but don't think I can make new sniper art.As for your 1 and 2, they're really the same thing. If Allies full focus on one Axis power, the other Axis power will have to carry the game. The focused Axis power is usually Germany.
That said, I did try a few things to alleviate this:- In early test games Japan empire was huge compared to Germany because Allies focused Germany. You can see to counterbalance this, Germany is now quite strong, and Japan quite weak. Germany makes more IPCs than even USA, and Japan produces only 20 IPCs to start the game. Not only that, but I slowed down Japan a lot because they only start with 1 transport which is easily killed, and instead have a mainland factory which is slower and more easily pressured.
- Also, I tried to keep the value of the pacific islands high for Japan, and added VC Honolulu to try to discourage America from ignoring pacific.
The main problem is that America Pacific fleet is very slow investment. Needs a lot of force to establish naval dominance, takes a lot of time to cross Pacific, and even if naval dominance is established over the pacific, it takes time to convert that to control over land territories.
The only remaining idea I have to fix that is to literally redraw the map to make the pacific closer. But that takes a lot of work. The base tiles aren't that hard to edit with the Map Reconstructor, but I have no clue how to get relief tiles, and polygons haven't been easy.
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@Mas-N Have you updated the fighter image yet? If so, it looks like it has a typo.
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Sorry about that. Just uploaded them to github.
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@Mas-N I just wanted to let you know. I was just looking at issues on Github trying to fix as many easy ones as i could.
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Battleship can remain 14ipc too just I do believe making battleship 1ipc more expensive than destroyer+cruiser is slighly better costing.
Carrier are seriously too overpowered which could be more problematic than 4ipc subs. Because battleship was equal to 2 fighters now its relative cost is just 2ipc cheaper. Destroyer is same. But carrier is now 4 ipc cheaper and fighters are also 2ipc cheaper. Total 8 ipc cost reduction.
Really can't say about what should factory cost be. Just 11 itself is odd number. But not much important.
The railroaded Japan that always steamroll Asia to help Germany while US totally abandons Pacific or rarely goes only Pacific is what kills all whole WWII feelings and makes all of them very repetitive games like in revised style games. I can understand balance should be always priority over realism but Japan stemrolling Asia or fighting the US for controlling N.Africa is neither new, nor interesting, realistic or fun.
Need to give reasons to fight for the Pacific for both sides which benefits should outweight the naval investments.
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On average DD + CO beats a BB in a fight, and I'd argue the DD's sub detection is better than BB's ability to bombard for 1 more. The main advantage the BB has is it regenerates so it threatens strafes. I'm not convinced thats enough reason to nerf BB, but maybe it is.
For CV, you should look at relative costs. The BB is 70% cost, CV+2 fighter is 76.5% cost, CO is 66.7% cost, and DD is 75% cost.
In fact, the only naval unit that is discounted less than CV is subs, and this is intentional - in Spring 1942, subs and CV were best warships.And I did try on the pacific. Japan doesn't have more IPCs to move to pacific (I guess I can take 1 from manchuria)
Maybe I can move some IPC production from US mainland to midway/Hawaii. But Hawaii is already quite strategically important, and I'm afraid if I move IPCs there US can build factory and have too dominant a pacific position.Also you still have not commented on Axis vs Allies balance, which to me is the most important part.
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Hard to say about balance, probably needs too many playtestings.
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Hi, I spent some time redrawing the map. The idea is as attached.
This was mostly cleaning up the sea zones, making lines straighter and merging some of them. For example, the two sea zones off the coast of asia have been merged, making it harder for japan to recover if america gets naval dominance. Do you think this would help the problem of KGF?
