New Map: World War 1 End of Empires

iratoric

I'm considering adding upkeep to units where you will have to pay 1 PU per unit at the end of your turn. I would scale up every country's income by a factor of 10 to pay for the maintenance costs. For instance, Germany would go from $31 to $310. The unit prices would scale up as well. For instance, infantry would go from $3 to $30.

Benefits:

Armies will reach a maximum size by your ability to supply them
Russia can have a large army but they will have supply problems like they did historically

Do you want to see this feature added to the game?

RogerCooper

@iratoric Upkeep costs are realistic and prevent large stacks. Try it.

Schulz

@iratoric Definitely I would. Even multiplying incomes and unit costs with 10 alone have so many benefits without any drawback.

It allows map makers to value territories more freely. For example it is not possible to value a territory 1/2. But with multiplying everything, assigning 5 will be represent just 1/6 of infantry cost.
More freedom of costing units.

First I would suggest decreasing air and naval unit costs as much as possible without breaking balance between units. The purpose of this is allowing players to purchase more different variety of units and adding more reversibility.

For examle 1 zeppelin is almos half of Germany's starting income. Losing it in r1 in strategic bombing attemp might have irreversible consequences. I can see zeppelin costs have potential to be lowered to 6-8 with correct adjustments.

After that I would definitely implement upkeep but currently I have no strong opinion what would be the best upkeep ratings for units. I would make naval units having lower upkeep/cost ratio than land units and mobile land units having slighly higher upkeep than slow land units.

BTW I would suggest using this smallMap to get maxiumum screen.

iratoric

@schulz Thank you for the small map! I am currently testing upkeep in two parts: first, createsResourcesList of -1, which means that units will cost money to maintain. Secondly, each unit has a fuelCost of 1 which makes it cost a PU to move. I was thinking that for units like battleships they could have a higher fuel cost because they burn a lot of fuel. Here is an example with an infantry unit:

Note that it produces -1 PUs per turn and that it costs 1 PU to move. The maintenance cost could represent having to feed the troops and the fuelCost could represent the fuel consumed by trains and motorcars used to move them. Even if they travel on foot they would need more food because they would use more energy marching.

One thing that I noticed is that the AI will make the mistake of spending all their money on buying units and then have no money left to move. To solve this, I am moving the purchase phase after the movement phases.

Schulz

@iratoric I would definitely make combat phase first then nonCombat-purchase-placement. I'am not sure if AI could handle fuel after making combat phase first.

If AI can't handle this feature then it could be an optional feature for PvP games.

Also strategic bombing damages and factory production capacities should be readjusted. Need 10 Pu to repair each damage and factory productions should remain the same. (Ex:Poland can produce 2 units each round not 20)

RogerCooper

@schulz Do you really need a movement cost at all? The per turn upkeep is enough and avoids messing up the AI. Most of the fuel is consumed supplying troops, not moving them.

Schulz

@rogercooper Per turn upkeep is enough for me too but if he wants to incorporate fuel as well, i can't say anything about that.

iratoric

@schulz I pushed the new code just now. Fuel cost is optional and is disabled by default. Upkeep cost is -1 for each unit you own, and territory values are boosted by 10 to compensate. Right now I simply multiplied the territory values by 10, but I think I will distribute the PUs among the lower value territories in the next update. Bombing raids can cause between 1 and 60 damage to your income, and factories can place their territory value/10 units per turn.

I also made an attempt at a better Entente victory condition: If the Allies control Metropolitan France, Belgium, Alsace and the Ruhr they win the war. If they have captured those territories they are probably going to win anyway so it removes the need to slog through invading Germany.

Schulz

@iratoric

The fuel property need to be checked because there is still fuel cost even if I don't click this optional property.

I would name the property as "AI compatibility" since as far as I understand this game meant to play with fuel in PvP and without fuel againt AI.

You need to define all unit production values of all territories. For Example;

                <attachment name="territoryAttachment" attachTo="Belarus" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.TerritoryAttachment" type="territory">
                    <option name="production" value="10"/>
                    <option name="unitProduction" value="1"/>            
                </attachment>

Also I think factories seems like expensive for this game.

Even I've never really liked A&A factory rules. I am favour of not allwing nations to build new factories and preventing using captured enemy factories. "Austria captures Rome and starts to mobilize Austrian infantries from here" does not make sense to me.

Preventing nations to use captured factories also increse reversibility since losing factory would be "less" important.

I think even "capturing Ruhr" alone would be good victory condition for Allies.

iratoric

@schulz I think the fuelCost will still appear but will not subtract PUs when you move. Unfortunately I was trying to make the fuelCost work but 2 PUs for every unit per turn ends up being too much for smaller countries like the Ottoman Empire (1 PU for each unit for upkeep and 1 PU for movement). It drains them of all their production every turn if they move all their units, which is not very fun. So I am leaving it disabled for now.

Also, I discovered that to enable unitProduction I had to enable the property "Damage From Bombing Done To Units Instead Of Territories". I am pushing the code now.

Schulz

@iratoric French and Ausrian flags here if you want to keep the consistency of the thickness of black circles of the flags. Not really important just very minor correction:

Russian land units looking to the correct direction;

That would be nice feature to see the Communist flag replacing the Russian flag after the Brest-Litovsk, not sure if it is possible.

iratoric

@schulz Thank you for those flags for France and Austria-Hungary! I just updated the map to use those flags. Also thanks for the horizontally flipped Russian land units, I replaced the old ones with those as well.

As for changing the flags in the middle of the game, I was looking at some of the XML options and saw the territoryProperty option within triggerAttachment. This option allows you to make changes to territoryAttachments after the game has started. Maybe I could make Moscow a capital of Soviet Russia when the Russian Revolution fires? I will have to see if this will work.

RogerCooper

@iratoric Why not make the Soviet Union a separate country. When the revolution triggers, place a bunch of Soviet units and change some territory ownership. Then the let the Soviets fight it out with the remaining Russian units.

iratoric

@rogercooper This is a good idea! First, though, I would like to see if I can make a new Soviet capital in Moscow. It would look strange to have the Soviet symbol over Russia before the revolution occurred.

Schulz

@rogercooper @iratoric Adding the Bolsheviks would be obviously more realistic but I would have doubts if it would be possible to incorporate the Russian civil war.

Trotsky initially refused to sign a peace treatry with CP then the Germans resume the war on Eastern Front again which ended with German success and it left the Bolsheviks no chocie but sign the Brest-Litovsk.
The Bolsheviks could still have refused to sign the Brest-Litovsk, plus the Germans seriously considered to topple the Bolshevik government.
There were also different possibilities like the Whites win the civil war but also left the war or the Bolsheviks having fighting with both CP and White Russians etc...

CP-Bolshevik relations were between War and Neutrality hence Bolsheviks should never be controlled by CP player. Luckly AI could handle the Bolsheviks well.

Overall I would be fine with either way if there will be Russian civil war or not I would certainly not set Bolsheviks neutral to CP and being controlled by the CP player like it is in NML.

Also I think it would be nice to make Karelia touching Barents Sea Zone to give Allies opportunity to fight with Communists.

BTW you could remove the unneeded technology chart from the "Players" tab by adding just this two line between
</production> and <attachmentList>.

 <playerProduction player="United_States" frontier="United_StatesFrontier"/>
    </production>
                <technology>
        </technology>
       <attachmentList>
                <attachment name="unitAttachment" attachTo="aaGun" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.UnitAttachment" type="unitType">

iratoric

I just made it so the Soviet flag appears over Moscow upon the Russian Revolution being triggered:
capital change.PNG

I have yet to add Soviet units. Tell me if you would like to see this in the game or if you would like it to focus more on World War 1 and not the Russian Civil War.

beelee

@iratoric said in New Map: World War 1 End of Empires:

I just made it so the Soviet flag appears over Moscow upon the Russian Revolution being triggered:

I have yet to add Soviet units. Tell me if you would like to see this in the game or if you would like it to focus more on World War 1 and not the Russian Civil War.

Nice work Let the Russians slay each other. Or at least the option to. "What if" is the coolest part of games imo.

A "Map Option" so the player can choose. To a certain degree anyway.

Good action here

Schulz

I would play the game without Russian Civil War feature since I don't like the idea having fixed amount of units pop up in certain territories and I couldn't came up with better alternatives. Seems like too many unneeded complexities would be required. I like TripleA with the simplest rules as much as possible. But of course nothing wrong to add it as optional feature.
Seems like "Neutrals" and "No-One" can be safely removed from the game.
I think post Brest-Litovsk territories should be strickly determinated. For example Austria really shouldn't get any territory from the Eastern Front no matter how many Russian territories are being taken by Austria. As far as I researched Austria didn't get any territorial gain on the Eastern Front.
What about making USA purple to make it more distinguishable from Italy?
Merging Morocco-Algeria-Tunisia might provide more strategic options. Like giving USA opportunity to retake Egypt-Libya or reinforce these areas. (Though USA and the Ottomans never declare war on each other)
I would really want to see Finland and Karelia having access to Barents Sea Zone.
I would prefer Ireland factory being moved to Canada.
It would be nice to add notes that what percentage of bonus income should be given to opposite alliances in single playing.

iratoric

@Schulz
I think I should explain the functioning of the players "Neutrals" and "No-One". Get ready because this is a long one.

Neutrals: When I created the Russian Revolution event, I ran into a problem. If I simply made Russia neutral, they would still produce units and move them around within their borders. This causes a problem for the Central Powers AI because they will stack a bunch of units along the Russian border as if in preparation for Russia re-entering the war, causing them to lose on the Western Front 90% of the time. If I made the territory neutral and impassable, Central Powers units could get "stuck" in neutral territory when the Revolution occurs. On the other hand, if I made the territory neutral and passable, the Central Powers can blitz through Russia and capture the territory. This is because neutral territory does not actually belong to any player, so the first player to have their units enter that territory will claim it for their country. My solution was to make a player called Neutrals (cannot call it Neutral because that gets read as neutral which means no player) which will hold the territory. I also set the properties "Neutrals Are Impassable" to false and the property "Neutrals are Blitzable" to true. This allows the Central Powers to move their units back through Russian territory without claiming it.

You are right that Neutrals can be removed from the game, but they will be replaced by Soviet Russia which will hold the neutral Russian territory.

No-One: When I created the capital change event, I ran into another problem: as far as I know, there is no way to remove a capital. If I simply added a Soviet capital to Moscow, the Russian flag would remain over Petrograd. To get around this, I made Petrograd the capital of No-One. No-One is a player with blank flags. Therefore, when Petrograd is made the capital of No-One, the Russian flag will disappear. If you hover over Petrograd, it will say that it is "A Capital Of No-One". If you have a better solution then let me know!

Schulz

@iratoric If you add <option name="canBlitz" value="true"/> to aaGun, infantry, armour and artillery they won't get stuck in impassable territories.