Total World War: December 1941 3.0.0.6

[ubernaut]

@redrum i dont sorry i can say that my installation is recent and clean fwiw 10.14.4

[Shonn]

I was feeling already the Allies too strong before the changes of 3.0 frankly. Now I played a few games and German T1 is quite awful - but in general Allies are winning in -every- game I get to watch in the lobby (unless a player is quite bad compared to the other, only cases where I saw Axis in winning positions).

What I think about 3.0 changes that need fine tuning (and that in my opinion leaves the game still widely in favor of the Allies):

• SUBs should stay 4-1-2 OR Germany also gets Improved Submarines as starting Tech (It's the only really impactful one, all other nations have few subs for the difference to be felt).

• Keep Improved Submarines to 5-1-2 tech.
  UK naval plane from Central Britain to London (It cannot scramble from there)

• Improved Destroyers also add 1 to Destroyed defence (making them 3-4-2). The defines more the role of Sub as offensive unit and DD to defensive one.

• US naval plane in E.Coast to inland, Eastern Central US.

• Undo the last UK changes (Put back naval plane in SZ148, remove the 2 extra AA)
  German transport from SZ69 to SZ64 (Gives the option to ferry that resource to Morocco if they want when it's still possible)

• Italian starting technology is Special Warfare instead of Improved Hulls (They had alpini and san marco and decima mas) - a tech that at least a nation like Italy can use, more than one that works pratically for 3 of their units (and probably fated to remain 3 for quite a while). Also gives them to operate in the Mediterranean better making the theater more interesting, and threatening Malta of invasion on T1. (Operation Hercules)

UK gets already 30 free BPs in turn 1-5 in the form of the Dakar Vichy Fleet - unless miracles happen Axis cannot impede that, it's like having frozen assets there for a short while in a game that technically should span well over 10-15 turns but ends usually well before. Vichy mainland fleet is there but will disappear once Morocco falls (and the Allies can arrange that by turn 3 or 4 usually. It's a good shielding force but that's pretty much it. Germany may have a minor gain averagely by lucking out 1 or 2 of these ships, averagely. Not something one can rely on though since it's random, and even the less plan around).
I think the 30 BPs (BB + DD) that are getting given to UK in 'frozen terms' need to find a tradeoff on Axis end. 1 resource does not cut it (and that transport ferrying it in 99% is just fated to sink without chance of other support in Allied dominated seas.)
Not saying to remove the Dakar fleet (it's a good idea imo and fits historically!) - but Axis needs gains elsewhere to make up for that!

General Pre 3.0 feelings:

As of now it seems far too easy and cheap to overwhelm Italy prematurely, and stall Japan naval expansion in the Pacific that hardly reaches the expansion historically had. From Australia fantasy fleet to an undewhelming Japanese starting fleet (they are awfully short of small vessels as DDs), Japan only faces a fierce resistance in islands that are all manned (I'd empty of INFs an amount of the Dutch Indies as they were litterally scarcely garrisoned and should just be a takeover as most of the holdings of Commonwealth there) ontop of the fact that Japan life also can change a lot if they nail Special Warfare on Turn1 or not.
I think Japan needs 1-2 more DDs -and- to have all the infantry in the islands (except Formosa and Hainan) converted to marines. While that gives actually them more marines they lack shipping for most of them assuming USA plays a split between Europe and Pacific (and thus it's only a +1 in defence). BUT if Japan has a major problem (which can happen) to not gain Special Warfare in T1, and eventually in T2 too...

How things pan out in Europe is more like Germany gets hammered by Soviets in T1. In T2 both sides reorganize. In T3 Germany can try some shy offensive but in the while the Allies packed up their shit and are ready to hammer the Germany down somewhere.
Allies are far too quick to do their things as it is now - and Axis just implode in the long run. And Axis needs time too to pack their shit for Russia or wherever they want to hit. Russia can hit way too hard in Turn1 (I think Germany needs 1 more INF in each of: Pskov, Orel, Kharkov, E. Ukraine).

But math is not an opinion - Allies have higher starting TUV by a far shot, and they've a full nation (Russia like) of additional production. So it is usually just a matter of time til Axis is toppled (That assuming even skills of players).

Viable options are to:

Weaken Dutch Indies and / or (I'd do both) convert Japan INF into MARs.
Japan needs some more naval assets / Australia needs less.
Add German starting units, in Russia, and some trenches in the West / Norway (Copenhagen especially)
Tweak production some - Axis needs a bit more production over time to remain competitive. Germany in particular. Some provinces may require extra PUs per turn.
Italy seems very passive and often impotent - and if the UK and USA wants to go for the Med they can, by itself is not wrong, but it's the speed at which they can concentrate to achieve that.

In general I try to play but end up pretty much frustrated as Allies can be in parity or gain upper hand on Axis anywhere. And by turn 3 or 4 it's more a matter of gathering together your assets and producing things with the PUs you got. There is no massive swing from starting position (save as mentioned already, poor players that sleep on their feet and get some mighty army swept clean because they moved inaccurately).

Given Turn1 can be quite a variable only for Germany - not much that can be done.
Japan can roughly calculate their attacks. Soviets can calculate them with even more precision. And so is for everyone around except Germany - because Germany besides Tobruk plays lottery. Your sub sent against a transport can fail, and then gets hit with 1. That repeats all over - and thus there is a major luck / unluck swing on Germany turn1.
All other nations can pratically predict the outcome of their battles (assuming one plays with LL - I personally prefer dice but... no one or almost like dice. Then one can go play chess in general if they prefer no luck!). That can give quite a swing to Allies, doing already big invasions on Turn3, or Turn5 instead if the submarines were effective. Because if German submarines kill things AND survive they remain a threat, so Allies need to escort their stuff adequately. If in German T1 the Allies are lucky, kill submarines and their things even live in large amount ... Allies dance.
That has a -major- impact on how the game pans out in the subsequent turn (exactly as much as UK nailing Special Warfare turn1 or not, for who does not tech Logistics on T1.)

Adding: Allies also have starting superb technologies for their relative needs. Italy has a shoddy one. Germany's quite relative and in many cases only works on T1 Soviet assaults and with AT that survives that, since Germany must try to grab grounds and won't produce defensive units early on. Soviets have the amazing logistics, USA has production which is ever handy and UK has the better AA which always help! (I know National Tech Advantage is an optional - but gives an amount of chrome. I'd alter that to mirror better Axis earlier 'tech / training' advantage in various fields, giving more than 1 tech to who may deserve it - and / or adding further starting tech if Shared Tech is enabled to some nations)

[ubernaut]

@ubernaut just noticed another odd thing

[redrum]

@ubernaut you might want to delete and redownload the map as that seems really strange.

[Shonn]

Question - maybe related to a bug.

Vichy France builds Barracks in Algeria.
Then Allies land in Marocco. Algeria turns German.
Germany cannot place anymore INFs or other new units in Algeria, not acknowledging the presence of the Barracks.

Is that intended or a bug?

[redrum]

@Shonn The barracks should change to be controlled by Germany so that they can build units there instead of Vichy. If that didn't happen then if you can upload the save, I'll take a look.

[ubernaut]

@redrum fixed the dice thing. the notifications are not working, also in the 2.8 variation. pretty sure this was working prior to when i tried to start a forum game which was also the first time i started a game under this version. when i was using saved games with this version that were 3.0.0.2 it was still working.

[redrum]

@ubernaut Yeah, I recently updated all the notification image paths to not reference sourceforge. For some reason, it appears the path is incorrect for at least Macs. It tries to reference the notification images in the map zip like this:

<img src="/doc/images/thailand.png"/>

@RoiEX Do you have a mac or maybe even a linux box and could test if you can see these notifications in TWW?

[ubernaut]

@redrum thanks for looking into it. also for whatever reason that dice bug came back too . i will try to see if it goes away next time i quit.

[redrum]

@ubernaut Actually can you test something for me. Can you edit the notifications.properties file in the TWW/map folder and change this line:

Startgermany=<body><img src="/doc/images/startgermany.png"/></body>

to

Startgermany=<body><img src="startgermany.png"/></body>

Then launch a new TWW game and see if the initial germany notification appears properly.

[ubernaut]

@redrum nope i also tried "/startgermany.png"

[RoiEX]

@redrum I have access to a mac on Tuesday, what exactly do you want me to check?
I haven't followed the whole conversation

[redrum]

@RoiEX I updated TWW notifications.properties to reference local images from the map zip rather than sourceforge links: https://github.com/triplea-maps/total_world_war/commit/5984d1cec952bfc7e07fa9dde36af188a4d17a63

But it appears the images aren't showing for @ubernaut who has a mac but works fine for me on a windows machine. Trying to isolate if its a mac issue with the image path or a specific issue for him.

The notifications appear as popups once you start a new TWW game and click past the bid phase.

@ubernaut Can you make sure you don't have multiple TWW maps in your maps folder. Or clear out your maps folder and redownload.

0 ron-murhammer committed to triplea-maps/total_world_war

Fix and update notifications

- Fix USA start notification
- Update to reference zip files instead of SF urls

[ubernaut]

@redrum yeah it was clear just the one.

[RoiEX]

@redrum I dug a little bit into the code and haven't found a real reason, but a couple of places where the system could be tripping up.

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/blob/77cb757693a0a1afae028ed05b653376e23c9933/game-core/src/main/java/games/strategy/triplea/attachments/TriggerAttachment.java#L1478-L1486

This code seems to strip out html tags out of notification properties if the string is too long. Shouldn't be the case here, but still weird.

Just before the HTML is parsed and interpreted to be shown to the user the engine "localizes" the external HTML resources:

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/blob/d21ee00a40ae6faf8cf52fbb24554d8de0a3bbd8/game-core/src/main/java/org/triplea/util/LocalizeHtml.java#L71-L72

This means 2 Things:

1. It's not necessary to have the /doc/images/ prefix in the src attribute because everything except for the basename will be stripped away
2. Removing the sourceforge part of the URL in the src attribute has 0% effect because everything except for the basename will be stripped away

Also if the engine tries to search for a resource that doesn't exist, an exception will be logged and an error window should pop up.
So it's clearly not the change on your end, at least for latest master. I have fiddled around with the LocalizeHtml class in the past, so maybe on the latest stable there is actually a difference, but probably not for TWW compatible versions.

So because there is no exception this probably means that the tag gets removed at some point for some reason we don't know, but I think it's fairly unlikely the issue is cause by the OS at this point.

[redrum]

@RoiEX Yeah, I had noticed the /doc/images/ wasn't needed and that's why I asked to try without that as well. I'm going to remove those prefixes from the map.

Only thing I could think of is a duplicate map or something causing image loading issues.

[RoiEX]

@redrum
What we haven't tested yet:
@ubernaut Can you replace the whole <body><img src="/doc/images/thailand.png"/></body> with <body>Display Test</body> or just Display Test and try again?

If everything stays the same then the engine wouldn't seem like it's using the real property file.

[ubernaut]

@RoiEX the first thing did nothing the second thing seemed at first to do nothing (same blank dialog) but then a second dialog came up with the test message.

[RoiEX]

I'm even more confused now
But at least something is happening, not sure what to do with this knowledge though.

[Shonn]

@redrum For that save I think it's easier if I pass you through the lobby! But the situation of the non working converted barracks repeated in a few games. And I think it's easily duplicable as well in any game.

@Hepps Adding, I feel Armour can use at least also a +1 attack through some technology - and eventually also added defence to have a final base of 7 / 6 / 2 (Dare say diluted in 3 different techs - including improved armour giving +1 defence). Currently they're easy to hard counter with AT (that can gain through techs). I believe Armour should upgrade as well through tech to keep in tune a line of armour piercing vs armour technology race (if that ever happens). To be a 6 costing unit they have lots of penalties in many terrain ontop of having a direct hard counter if they're spammed.