Cold War map
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@LaFayette Yeah, I would say anyways TripleA lacks a very good/interesting/balanced Cold War game, which is a pretty big miss, as World War 3 is probably the next thing you want to explore after World War 2 (I believe there are also some mods that use the Classic map for a World War 3 scenario right after the end of World War 2). Personally, I'm a picky person, so I don't feel any of those games are good or interesting enough for me to play them, but I would be surely open to play some, if a good Cold War game would be finally made or fixed up.
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@Cernel That's a pretty good list; 1965 has a number of issues. One thing to mention is that ICBM's always die in a nuclear strike unless there is an AA hit. It was interesting then to have one on hand and your opponent none. It then creates an incentive to not build any, if you do, the opponent would just wipe it out. Nuclear bombers have this first-strike capability as well, typically russia on it's first move would sacrifice a nuclear bomber to take out one of the US ICBM's.
Trucks were completely underpowered, basically never used.
Cargo planes did have balancing problems, probably should have been more expensive. Allowing kamikaze really increased their attack potential.
The mentions with China are good, it was not well documented. I did play a 3-way human player game and had China gang up on the allies, mostly for the lulz; it was really annoying.. Having the AI play china does add a nice level of tension/non-determinism as you are never really sure if china will take the opportunity to attack allied units.
Figured I'd mention those points as they were some of the more interesting and subtle aspects of 1965.
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@LaFayette Right. I suppose I should add the ICBM behaviour on defence as another issue with the map, as I cannot believe that is wanted, or makes any sense whatsoever. That can be easily fixed by setting that units suicide in attack only (as you don't blow up your ICBM in your own territory...).
I'm surprised trucks are considered underpowered. They cost as much as infantry, and have 0/0 att/def, but they are still movement 3 fodder. I would say they may be pretty good, tho those cheap cargo planes really are the best for rushing fodder to the frontline at a very convenient price.
I assume nobody ever bought any tanks right?
Isn't the nuclear bomber overpowered? It costs 50 PUs, but has offensive power 20, that is a 2/5 power/cost ratio, thus better than a WW2v3 bomber, that has a ratio of 1/3, plus it moves 10 (amazing, but historically correct), and it is also a very good bombing raider (tho the risk of losing 50 PUs on a AA roll at 1/6 is very scary).
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@LaFayette said in Cold War map:
@Cernel That's a pretty good list; 1965 has a number of issues. One thing to mention is that ICBM's always die in a nuclear strike unless there is an AA hit. It was interesting then to have one on hand and your opponent none. It then creates an incentive to not build any, if you do, the opponent would just wipe it out. Nuclear bombers have this first-strike capability as well, typically russia on it's first move would sacrifice a nuclear bomber to take out one of the US ICBM's.
I'm not seeing that move, actually, but now I see that Russia on round 1 can send 1 ICBM to New England to kill a fair amount of stuff plus also getting 2 American ICBM wasted for nothing. That is definitely a very bad dynamic, and shows how the game is still very much in an alfa state, as the maker could have had least assured that suicide units worked in attack only (though this way you can use them as fodder in defence, which for an ICBM really doesn't make sense, tho you are not going to use an ICBM as fodder unless you must).
It would be cooler if the NuclearBomber paradrops a NuclearBomb, but that way it would not be able to raid or drop it on naval units, so that would need some engine changes, to make it more in line with what it should be.
I also wonder if 1 ICBM for Russia and 3 for USA, all in the national territory, is historically consistent for the time. I'm looking around, I don't see any other rockets anywhere.
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AFAIK the 'first strike' was intended, if an ICBM lands on another and is not shot down via AA, then it auto-kills the other ICBM. It's been some years, so I forget if the bugginess was fixed with edit or if ti actually worked.
The nuclear bomber I think was more imbalanced on LL games. I recall 1965 typically was played with dice! Rolling 10 dice and hitting at 2 added a good amount of variability. You're also right about it being really scary to bombing run a 50 PU value unit with 1/6 of being shot down. I don't think it happened too often that someone would risk it unless you had the PU to spare.
Tanks were not bought too often. I think mid or late game Russia would start to buy them to get better punch power when it was ready to start making a breakthrough into europe.
The idea of a nuclear bomb paradrop is pretty appealing, I like that idea.
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I was just trying the "Cold War" and found the graphics look terrible.
For reference, here's what the map looks like:
https://github.com/triplea-maps/cold_war/blob/master/map/map.pngIf you look closely, border lines are very pixelated and sometimes lines are 1px in width and other times 2-3px.
I was wondering why that was. I used TileImageReconstructor to just draw the polygons - and looks like there are simply gaps between all the territories. So instead of them bordering, the polygons are such that they often don't match for borders. And I think what was done to make the image is just fill all the gaps with black.
I was wondering if that's generally the case for maps (that their underlying polygons don't match and the image background just fixes that) and that appears to not be the case. The "Great War" map has no such problem when I draw its polygons.
So anyone have any idea of what happened to "Cold War" polygons such that they don't match? Can it be easily fixed? Was it some weird conversion process that upscaled things badly - and if so, how did this get fixed for other maps?
I'm interested in trying the map but just can't get over how ugly it is.
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@Alexei-Svitkine Clearly they took the Domination map and cut and resized it. Yeah, probably this is one of the least polished map in the repository, as a matter of the skin. Normally the borders never match, as the mapmaker tools oblige you to leave at least 1 pixel between the zones. You don't need the base tiles to fill anything with black, either, as black is default for anything not having a zone assigned that is a land territory in the xml. You can leave more than 1 pixel between the zones; look at "World At War", for a polished yet simple example of that.
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@Cernel I meant, borders will visually match at 1 pixel wide borders in the original map drawing, but practically there is still that 1 pixel of no zone in between, that is completely or partially filled with the 1 pixel wide black outline of the territory: they don't touch each other.
As a curiosity, you can find "none" pixels in "Great War" too; for example, the single pixel between the SZ 10, 11, 12 and 13 or the one between 27, 38 and 39.
EDIT: It looks like the final effect, instead, is them touching each other. Looks like that territories overboard of 1 pixel into the black outline leftwards and upwards, but not rightwards and downwards. So, yeah, in practice you don't have any "none" border between 1 pixel theorical bordered territories, except the occasional pixels here and there, like where 3 or 4 zones meet; I never realized this is how it works, that when you have a 1 pixel border, the border is considered part of the territory to the right or down, but I don't believe this is necessarily the right practice, even though I remember than Veqryn suggested going this way (drawing the basic map at 1 pixel borders).
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Played around with some image processing filters and got a result that looks a bit better than the original.
So maybe can be OK just changing the map image and leaving the polygons as is. The sea zones still need to be re-colored in and numbered, but that's probably not too much work.
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@Alexei-Svitkine The Cold War map can easily look better, and I'm sure the admins will easily accept skin only changes for the better, but you will need to learn how to mapmake and, then, learn how to push changes in Git.
As far as that image you posted goes, you need to have that being pure black and white (no grey pixels) only to use the image to create new polygons, that is mostly what you are seeing in that map, lacking details (relief).
There is no "changing the map image and leaving the polygons as is" in this one, as you only have the base tiles, that are always drawn underneat the polygons image.
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@RogerCooper @Cernel Isn't Cold War 1965 this github repo: https://github.com/triplea-maps/cold_war-1965
Are there any changes from that in the linked zip?
TripleA Developer with a Passion for AI: https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/105/ai-development-discussion-and-feedback
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@redrum The two are distinct maps:
Cold war: https://github.com/triplea-maps/cold_war
Cold war 1965: https://github.com/triplea-maps/cold_war-1965Cold war is kinda 'basic' in the units, uses very classic units; has a monster russia and US that needs to rush to get into the fight, and a number of minor powers that tend to slowly fall until the US is able to engage and open a new front on the USSR. It's a european only theater.
1965 has nukes, nuclear bombers, and is full world theater, no minor powers. 1v1 are kinda interesting as well, there are three major powers, 1 player takes US, the other player USSR, and china is classically set to be an AI.
I heard that Cold War was once a pretty popular map but fell out a bit. '65 I think was always a bit of a niche map.
@Alexei-Svitkine Indeed the graphics are crude! The gameplay I've thought helped make up for it. I like seeing the efforts and discussion to improve it, the map has a lot of potential IMO.
edit fixed 1965 link
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@redrum I was not aware you have it in the repository. Why is it not in download list? The reason should be documented in:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/wiki/Broken-Maps
I guess the decision of adding it to the repository but not to list was taken by @Lafayette?
I mean, not that I'm advising adding it too strongly, tho it would not be the most broken map the DL has ever seen, and fairly average with what you can already find in experimental...
I haven't downloaded that from GitHub, but I'm pretty sure it must have got there years after everybody stopped working on that one, so... I also see that the GitHub one has the version as 1.0.5 (definitely doesn't deserve to be past version 0...), that is the same I have for TripleA 1.8.0.9, so, as long as it was updated correctly, I suppose it should be it.
It's sad actually, because the skin looks really like a legit very good Cold War game, except only for the big miss (historically unacceptable after WW2) of not having mechanized infantry. -
@LaFayette Yeah, I'm just looking at the second one as it appears it has a git repo but isn't in the download list.
@Cernel Yeah, it appears to be latest. I did a quick game XML compare vs the zip linked here and they are pretty much the same (github version actually has a few additional fixes).
I think I'm gonna look to make a few fixes to CW65 and add it to the download list.
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@redrum Ok, but things like ICBM or actual rockets are not really supported. Assuming they suicide in attack only, as they should, if you make them infrastructures, then you cannot use them alone (that makes no sense), but if you don't make them infrastructures then you can take them as casualties in defense (that makes no sense), if you can. They would need not to be infrastructures (so you can send them alone in attack, and start a battle), but being subjected to a special last-casualties rule like the v3 transports.
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@Cernel Well, of course, you could hack a sensible behaviour by having them suicide in attack only and def=0, then making a set of triggers that makes them infrastructures only when it is not that player's turn.
Not sure if ICBM should be destroyed upon captured or not, as anyway it wouldn't really make sense that happening (they could be launched wherever minutes before being captured). -
@Cernel So at the moment I'm looking to just fix issues not go changing how units and things function. If the map would become played again then I would consider making further changes.
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@redrum ICBM are maybe the biggest issue... On round 1, Russia will send its only ICBM to Northeast United States, to risk a AA shot that, if failing, will allow the Russian ICBM to kill 2 American ICBM for free, plus a lot of American units. That's seriously unplayable, mostly due to the randomness of the AA hitting or not. I guess the randomness element alone can be fixed by making ICBM immune to AA attacks, that would anyway be balanced, since ICBM are clearly overpriced.
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@Cernel I don't recall why '65 was not in the DL list. It perhaps was not hosted in the standard SVN location; FWIW I tried to include as many maps as possible, it was as script that generated the configuration file.
The ICBM suicide when being attacked is part of the game dynamic. It is a standard move to ICBM Northeast US. The AA shot hitting makes for a less fun game due to the odds, but not quite a deal breaker. US likely would only use one of the 2 nukes keeping the second on reserve for its own first strike. If you have 1 nuke, and the other has zero, it would be often held in reserve. The reason is if you build a new one, the 1 nuke being held would often be launched to take out your new nuke.
I recall there were some updates to the map that changed the balance and made it less fun. Without the history, I can't quite tell you what those were. @champ73 I think played the map, do you remember the history of Cold War '65 and how it got to be where it is? SirCharlesTheScot I think also played the map quite a bit, if you catch him in the lobby it would be worth asking him if he remembers the history.
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@LaFayette I'm actually guessing the reason was the map name was messed up as it had a dash which caused it to not download and launch properly.
It is now updated and available to download in TripleA. I'll create a separate map thread for it tomorrow.
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