Crazy Europe: House of Habsburg

CrazyG

@hepps
The reason I didn't do that on the Spanish-French border originally is because I thought maybe I would want a map where the mountains weren't impassable, just represented by terrain (I have a rough draft of terrain for the map)

Hepps

Musket man miss from the Dens.

Cernel

@crazyg Realistically, mountains are full of passes, and, even in such a detailed map as this one, most mountain borders would have one of more passes each. So, as long as realism is concerned, absolutely impassable mountains maybe belong to Lord of the Rings, but not really to an European scenario.
Mountains are a great opportunity for the defender to ambush an invading force, moving through a pass, though. That is a simple tactic, an expected one too; but it works damn well.

General_Zod

@crazyg

So we played a 4 player multi today. I like it. But it needs some tweaks here and there.

Here's the game save. But I must warn you it was learning session for first couple rounds for all. And villages were moved all game by Hapsburg player.

I have some suggestions, which I will post later. Since I'm tired atm.

0_1520223735308_HOH_multi,4p_03.04.2018.tsvg

Oh player teams were as follows.

Hapsburg+Italy

Poland+Sweden

Russia+Ottomans

France+Denmark

Overall, I think the mechanics are cool, nice job.

CrazyG

I accidentally named the Danish muskets "musketeers" rather than musketmen.

@cernel
Yea buts its not realistic to move 15 knights through a mountain pass, and the Spanish-French border becomes a fast moving front if there aren't mountains there.

Currently it plays out quite well in my opinion, its hard to get past the mountains but if you do you can often take a lot of land. I'm not implementing terrain at this time.

@General_Zod
Cool, I'll look at the save.

Hepps

@crazyg Map is really solid. Lots to discuss with this map and loads of potential as it gets further along.

Had a great time with it. Lots of really neat ideas and unit interactions. Look forward to what else you have in store for this. Couple really interesting suggestions came out while we were playing.

Thumbs up!

Hepps

@crazyg said in Crazy Europe: House of Habsburg:

@hepps
The reason I didn't do that on the Spanish-French border originally is because I thought maybe I would want a map where the mountains weren't impassable, just represented by terrain (I have a rough draft of terrain for the map)

Well I figured you could do what you did for the Swiss Alps.... you can set them as Impassable for the game. But then if you want a version where they can be entered.... you can change those territories to passable. But even if you want them passable.... you'd probably want the territories in there since it would be consistent with how you've handled the Swiss Alps.

I'm easy though. Removing them again would not take much.

Cernel

Another thing is that, during winter, you can walk over Sea Zone 40, thus moving to and from Finland and Sweden on foot/horse.
This is something that is missing in all maps, like even the Napoleonic Empires one too.

CrazyG

Ok, I've looked over that savegame. Some thoughts-
It looks like the Habsburg alliance dominated. However, in my games, Russia is beating Poland-Lithuania 1v1. I think France goofed its opening, and the moving villages definitely helped Spain invade. So I'm not changing anything in those areas.

Ideally Austria cannot push them back while spending that much in Spain and Italy. More castles and cities were build than I wanted.

The soon to be uploaded update-
Ottomans get some more stuff, including some castles.
Lots of connections added, especially in Romania
Venice is getting a city
Villages no longer move
Can no longer build cities
Castle cost raised by 10
Denmark has musketmen image, gets 1 musket in Norway

Feedback from experienced players is exactly what I want to see, thanks. You can only learn so much from playing with yourself

@Cernel
I wouldn't have a clue how to implement crossing that sea zone (reverse canal once every 4 turns?) and it doesn't seem that useful anyways, its way faster to just transport the soldiers via navy.

CrazyG

Update is up.

@redrum
I attempted to update the YAML so that it will notify players of the new version. Please let me know if this was done correctly.

redrum

@crazyg I don't see any pull request for updating the version in the YAML file?

Agree with most of your changes, the only 1 that concerns me is 'can no longer build cities'. That means after say the first 5-6 rounds when most of the starting villages are gone, the game will come to a crawl as most of the cities aren't close to any of the front lines. I think there needs to be a way to build either villages or cities to avoid the game slowing down in the mid/late stages. I'd say its hard to tell on the castles cost as I think they were probably overused and I wasn't convinced that they were underpriced but also depends how many you expect players to build.

Balance wise, from what I can tell Poland can overpower Russia and at least in our game Sweden overpowered Denmark. Given those 2 things plus Hapsburg being very powerful across the map, I don't think France/Ottomans have enough to combat those advantages. IMO, Hapsburg either needs broken into 2 nations or major/minor like TWW to limit the flexibility of spending all of its PUs anywhere on the map. Alternatively, if you like letting it have that flexibility then the Ottoman-Franco alliance needs to have more of a production/TUV advantage.

Hepps

@crazyg Oh and you may want to adjust the mountains colour.... looks scarily like the Ottomans colour.

CrazyG

@redrum
I might make castles take two turns to build using triggers.

I buffed up the Ottomans considerably.

France can do a lot better than he did, the first turn was weak and allowed himself to be bullied. Even if that player did everything else expertly, messing up that early play sets him back really far. I think attacking Spain turn 1 was a bad move and attacking that italian neutral was a bad move.

redrum

@crazyg Yeah, from what I could tell France could definitely have played better and buffing the Ottomans would probably help put more pressure on Hapsburg Austrian area.

One other thing we noticed is that North Africa is kind of a huge wasteland. Not much there from a PU or city perspective, just a bunch of lonely Ottoman units staring at the water with little to do.

Castles are interesting and I'd be careful not to nerf them too hard as they are one of the more unique elements of the map and it would be a shame to see none getting built unless you placed more on the map to start. I think the question for me is when/how should castles be used? Primarily just in choke points and cities? Along fronts? As I think that factors in to how expensive and how long they should take to build.

Hepps

@crazyg Undoubtedy. I was initially playing France as a test without considering any sort of strategy. Really the save game does not reflect a proper strategy.

CrazyG

North Africa is awkward. I'd leave it as a neutral to be ignored if I could (like the far east areas of Russia). But historically its Ottoman controlled. I put a bunch of territories to zero because I didn't like that the Ottomans had so much income just for having so many territories, most of which would never see actual combat or units moving.

Venice or Habsburg both have the option to raid Africa, the forces there are meant just to be a token defense in case they choose to do so. I don't know how much I can do to make it more important without doing weird things. Its historically not important, and its really far away from all other important areas.

redrum

@crazyg Yeah, my thought was actually to add 1-2 port cities like Algiers, Tripoli, Tunis, or Alexandria so that it had more value and allowed the Ottomans to potentially build a navy there so it could raid southern europe. That opens up a lot more options in the Med and potentially threatens Hapsburg Spain/Italy. It also gives the Hapsburg alliance more reason to raid/capture parts of North Africa.

Cernel

On the "castles", that are probably representing these things:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastion_fort
I don't understand why not using the "Citatel" image of AoT:

Or, for a more typical design, the Fortress of Napoleonic Empires can be adapted thus:

Also, of course, looking at the map, if 1 turn cannot be more than 3 months, then they should take something like 8 or more turns to build, but I guess you already considered this, and excluded it for personal gameplay preferences (but they can be playable, if instead of costing 30 PUs in 1 turn they would cost 8 PUs over 8 turns, I guess (of course, not sure; it would need to be playtested)).

If knights is so called because the units doesn't represent, like, a reiter for sure, I can say that unit can totally be representing a "gendarmes", that would be much more fitting than knights, especially since, as you say and Cyprus shows, this map might go as far back as about 1550.

General_Zod

@crazyg

First off, I took another look at the save, and Russia+Ottomans were moving all villages on round 1 as well, I didn't even look further. Village confusion for Hapsburg+Italy all game and partial village confusion for others as well as general noobness to map really torpedos the balance testing aspect on this particular game.

Although I did make a few observations in other areas.

Game notes improvements, so one can jump in relatively informed:

Villages lacks mention that only one per territory can recruit pikes, regardless of total number of villages. Also should read, allows one pikeman recruit unit.
Cannons lacks mention on that attacking cannons also get captured if alone. Also the critical point that cannons can never be used as casualties in either attack or defense. This might even screw with bc since it lists hp for them. At the very least confusing for player.
Castle clarification would be nice since this is never been used before in triplea games. Cool feature.

Suggestions:

Castle cost at 30pu seems low. Also 2 turns build seems right. No triggers needed for this, can create a castle under construction unit for 20pu and a castle for 20pu that consumes it.
Should not remove city build yet. Although a 2 or even 3 turn build time may be prudent.
Allow torch villages. Allow village torch on a 1:1 basis for 6pu, however must own the territory one turn to do it. Can do this by creating a torch unit (0 movement) that is built by a village, it consumes one village on place, then after place phase, it is itself triggered off via a simple <option name="removeUnits" value="all:torch" count="99"/>. This removes all torches from map.
Destroy castle and city. Same general idea as above, but the unit to destroy should cost a lot more (12pu minimum to start). For cities, can build the demo unit in the city. For castles allow build of demo unit in castle (0 movement for demo unit). (also allow demo of under construction castles via same exact mechanics)
Shrink minimap. I don't think many use it anyways. More room for game map.
Consider Hapsburg split into 2 to 3 economies (Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Hapsburg Home) versus beefing up ottomans and others. Look at TWW style minor nations where the minors build german units for Germany. This just doesn't allow Hapsburg to throw all pus in far off areas.

You can even create a condition and user action that allows Hapsburg central to either receive or send pu from or to the minors. This is a bit more complex, but not too much.
North Africa, maybe add a neutral city somewhere that is relatively easy to capture. In reach of both sides within a couple turns. This can be the key to all of North Africa, so will be desirable to both sides.
Swapping castle for a citadel is not a bad idea. With everything else the same. Exception my above build suggestions.
Naming convention suggestions. The number actually not so good. If you wanna keep it simple use a lot of east, west. north, south and central prefixes to major areas.
Some of the amphibious landing beaches could be drawn more plainly. Meaning the way they don't extend to end of boundaries, or extend into another slightly.
LL may ruin the dynamic for cannons. I think it will stack the 2 rolls. Maybe create a setting that will recognize LL property. Then make a set of units that work for LL specifically.
Consider a victory condition as optional. Maybe vc style.

Ok, so these were my main observations and suggestions. I like the map a lot thus why I am offering up so much. I would like to see this become a nice Sunday multi as nap once was. Nice job so far. Hopefully improved units images can even be made once it catches on.

One last thing on adding units for balance. Try to do this very sparingly, as it will diminish the early castle importance and advantages. Lower units counts are good for the game imo.

Btw, I would be happy to provide you with the necessary units for the above ideas, won't be pretty but will be effective.

Frostion

@CrazyG
I am probably way ahead of your plan, but I could not help myself and wanted to put some Scandinavian names on the territories of Denmark-Norway and Sweden. So here they are. I hope you have the time to plot them in at some point

To add to historical correctness of year 1600, Holstein is now danish and the territory east of Christiania (Name of Oslo 1624–1924) is now Swedish, not danish as in your map.