Iron War: Europe - Official Thread

Frostion

OK, I have split up northern Italy and rearranged the borders a bit. I hope they could do in both WW1 and WW2.

I also made Gibraltar bigger so it has space for unit placements without being pushed into the water. If an Airfield gave +1 move to planes, then Bombers could actually fly from USA or UK to Gibraltar, and from Gibraltar to Egypt / Jordan.

I have decided to make Albania a small puppet state of Italy. Then it is not only Germany that has puppet states!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_Kingdom_(1939–43)
I imagine the soldiers of Albania could be the Balli Kombetar fascist militias. So the soldier has a white fez.
0_1496476749857_balli kombetar.jpg

Also, I am thinking of making a British presence in the Middle East with factory possibilities. So they could aid the Greeks and therefore the Greeks can become a state that Britain could support both militarily and financially.

Here are some previews:

Black_Elk

Looks pretty glorious man!

The Albania idea seems cool. I dig everything I'm seeing so far and can't wait to see it.

I have to admit though, despite my suggestion for the theater game, I've always been drawn most to the world map games. Just something about the idea of global domination hehe.
So the suggestion I made was basically for more ways to hook players into this Iron War resource and D10 scheme. Especially players coming from v5 or g40 who might find the unit roster, combat system, resources or sheer scale intimidating. But I think once they play it out and find the groove, they'll definitely come around.

Also I had forgotten you mentioned including bases or other facilities that could confer a movement bonus, so maybe my thoughts on the Air transits or transport times was off. For experience with bases I only have global A&A to go off, and for that one I find the +1 AB for aircraft kind of rough. My thought is that +2 is a more interesting movement bonus in the air (for landings). For ground or naval +1 is cool, but with air it just kind of irks me haha. But even if it was just +1 that would get a stratB that usually moves 6 into N. Africa from the US or England. With fighters I think lily pad carrier plays are more intuitive, so the fighter transit isn't as big a deal. I think it would feel a little gamey though if the only way to get bombers to Africa was off a carrier hehe. So the base solves that prob. I kind of like the idea of an AB that confers a movement or air production advantage, but I'm not huge on the way scrambling works in G40. I think its just kind of overpowered there, and is basically the main reason to buy them in that game. I think some more generic bonus to air attack or defense might be better than a specialized combat phase (the way it works in G40). I do like the idea of somehow the Air Base becomes a critical target for SBR, in the contest for supremacy of the skies!

The NB looks clean!

General_Zod

@redrum Regarding, resource list, in the End Of Turn Report. Totals per resource would definitely be helpful in the report.

Additionally a current resource totals in the economy tab would be very helpful in planning. Also, would be cool if via the xml, the map maker could choose which resources should be shown there, so as to not just create clutter with lesser data. Same concept would be cool for stats tab too.

And back to the End Of Turn Report, I also think the End Of Turn portion should be removed. So the report/summary and End Turn delegates can be placed at start or end of turn. And not look like it was repurposed. I have been using it at start of turn for some time now. People seem to like it more, and it is simply most logical position.

Cernel

@General_Zod This is the topic:
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/128/resource-system-assessment-and-improvements

prastle

@Black_Elk ExciteMENT! Begins

Frostion

@All
I am in the process of building the XML for Iron War: Europe, or I was. I have tried to start up the map for the first time, and have taken care of like 10-15 java error popups. Most errors luckily give an error report that can help determine what’s wrong.

I have noticed that trying to launch a map that has some flaws/mismatches in the naming of flags and players (in the files and directories of flags and units) can result in a launch that fails and just returns to the game setup screen without creating a java popup error.

Right now I am stuck. The map will not load even though it can be selected from the map list and it allows one to set up a game. When launching it just returns to the menu again. No error message.

Are anyone willing and able to take a look at the XML, files or know how to register what goes wrong during launch?

Frostion

Yay! Finally some progress
I got the map to run without errors and open up for the first time.
Here are some previews of the map with only flags:

As you can see, the territories are a bit bigger than in the Iron War world map. I also changed the color of the British and French a bit. Also, if the territories seem a bit strange it may be because this map should be WW1 compatible:

Captain Crunch

@Frostion congrats

Frostion

@CrazyG
Do you have the time to give me a hand again with generating the XML code (conditions and triggers) that replaces any Axis owned "SS-potential" units with German owned version?

I think you had some program and script for doing this last time, and I just gave you a txt file with all the land territory names listed, and a txt file with the code that needed to be multiplied.

I hope to get this Europe map ready for testing soon

CrazyG

@Frostion
Sure, post it and I'll take a look

Frostion

@CrazyG
Yay!

CrazyG

@Frostion
Alright I found the excel document i used to make the other triggers. I think this version should work, but I didn't get to test it

0_1501553296221_FrostionConditions.txt 0_1501553302385_FrostionTriggers.txt

Frostion

@CrazyG
The conditions and triggers do not seem to work. I can see that you used something from the old Iron War map, but this map has new players

I tried to fix it by adding some missing or cut text from every single condition (" count="1"/> was missing) but that did not do anything.
I replaced the players (Iraq:Iran:Japan:Thailand) with just (Albania) but that did not help either.

The java error message tells me that the </attachmentList> is missing, but it is not, and it wants it to be placed just after the first trigger, even though there are 186 more triggers that needs to be there before the </attachmentList>

I can see that in the old, and working, Iron War XML, every single condition is followed directly by its corresponding trigger. I don’t know if or why the engine would require this, but maybe we should try to reproduce it in the new Iron War Europe XML.

If you could use this text: 0_1501630277349_IWE-Condition&Trigger.txt
And replace all the ??? with a territory name from the list: 0_1501630307122_IWE-All187LandTerritories.txt
So that we end up with a list consisting of Condition/Trigger/Condition/Trigger and so on, maybe it will work?

CrazyG

@Frostion
I'll give it another shot. I was lazy on the first one

Frostion

Just wanted to post a teaser. I have “populated” the map with units. I changed the colors a bit and I really like the look of this Iron War version. And there is a lot of space in most territories. What do you guys think?

The snapshot is 6000x4500 pixels, 46 MB: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/91867373/SnapshotIWE.png
(Open this in a new fan and let the picture load … or just download it)

At the moment all the Balkan countries are non-playable and AI controlled. Yugoslavia is attackable (easily invaded) and Croatia (w. Bosnia) is a nation that can be liberated from Yugoslavia and will join the Axis. I think I will give Croatia PUs so that they can build a factory fast.Then Germany will not have to pay the 25 PUs for that when liberated.

Maybe all this will change, and maybe there will be a version of Iron War Europe with a “Balkan” nation instead of all these small AI nations. But as I see it, supporting these nations could be like a mini-game inside the game. Italy supports Albania. UK supports Greece. Germany supports the other Balkan countries.

At the moment Iraq is just an attackable AI neutral, but I have been thinking about adding them as a neutral that could maybe be bribed, and with chance rolls they could join the war on one of the sides. Could be maybe be fun

I think that I will start out with this layout and work it into a balanced version. The map has not been tested yet, not even AI vs AI, as I need to add a lot of stuff to the XML. It will be fun to see how this map handles.

Hepps

@Frostion Looks incredible!

redrum

@Frostion Looks great. I love the Iron War decal you have in North Africa.

Frostion

@CrazyG
I hope you will soon have an hour or so to spent I have tested out two SS-Potential replacement triggers, so it works with two territories right now. They work if they look like this: (Note that I have added Iraq as a player)

0_1501630307122_IWE-All187LandTerritories.txt

    <attachment name="conditionAttachment-A-Non-German-Axis-SS-Potential-Is-In-Territory-Tunisia" attachTo="Germany" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.RulesAttachment" type="player">
        <option name="directPresenceTerritories" value="Tunisia" count="1"/>
        <option name="unitPresence" value="SS-Potential" count="1"/>
        <option name="players" value="Slovakia:Hungary:Romania:Bulgaria:Croatia:Finland:Italy:Albania:Iraq"/>
    </attachment>
    <attachment name="triggerAttachment_The_SS_is_now_recruiting_from_Tunisia" attachTo="Germany" javaClass="games.strategy.triplea.attachments.TriggerAttachment" type="player">
        <option name="conditions" value="conditionAttachment-A-Non-German-Axis-SS-Potential-Is-In-Territory-Tunisia"/>
        <option name="placement" value="Tunisia:SS-Potential" count="1"/>
        <option name="players" value="Germany"/>	
        <option name="when" value="before:SlovakiaEndTurn"/>
        <option name="when" value="before:HungaryEndTurn"/>
        <option name="when" value="before:RomaniaEndTurn"/>
        <option name="when" value="before:BulgariaEndTurn"/>
        <option name="when" value="before:CroatiaEndTurn"/>
        <option name="when" value="before:FinlandEndTurn"/>	
        <option name="when" value="before:ItalyEndTurn"/>
        <option name="when" value="before:AlbaniaEndTurn"/>
        <option name="when" value="before:IraqEndTurn"/>
    </attachment>

Frostion

Iron War Europe is about 99% ready to go into Beta, 99% ready to be uploaded to GitHub and become downloadable. But I feel the map is ready to get tested now, before it is uploaded to github, so here it is for people who want to try it out.

The only thing that I know is not working on the map right now are the German “SS” resource income. This is what @CrazyG needs to help me out with You can play the map and not notice it, but some of the SS resource generating standards around the map tends to be removed by triggers right now.

I think the way the USA looks and functions is good and makes sense, so thanks for all the input here! Without this help, USA would be a small tiny territory in the top left corner. Much better now.

What to expect:
There are map notes, so please read them.
This version is called v0.0.1 (Alpha) and is 123 MB.
Please give feedback about the first impressions, game/xml flaws, errors, misspellings and so on.

What to expect, unhistorical wise:
Its 1940, Poland has been invaded and Germany has the first move, just like on the iron War global map.
France is a nation that will not surrender or turn coat.
France will probably not fall before 1941.

Known errors:
Because the XML has triggers that removes many types of resources from many players who cannot use them, there is sometimes errors popping up about “not being able to remove resource “some count” as the player only has “something less””. I cant see that this is really an error, and I don’t know why this has to pop up as an error. Maybe @redrum can tell why this popup happens?

Download:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/iy77jy0ca46c318/iron_war_europe.zip?dl=0
PS: You need one of the newest pre-releases to play the xml, a release that supports hidden players.

prastle

@frostion looks great! Also the new test lobby is up if ya want to try it live! Ill try to get it in one of the bots there with a program @roiex recommended.
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/268/volunteers-needed-early-release-testing-group