Flames and Steel (official thread)

RogerCooper

@Vendetta If you want to prevent unit spamming, TripleA has a number of straightforward solutions.

You can set a maximum number of units built
You can set a stacking limit
You can have units that launch AA-style attacks against every unit

KurtGodel7

@Vendetta said:

That was helpful to see. Your new rules on air combat systems are particularly interesting.

The conscript spam problem is one you might have several ways to address. Fundamentally, you have two routes to look into: making it easier to kill them, or throttling the production pipeline.

The way to make them more killable would be giving some of the higher value units multiple attack rolls so they can potentially kill two or three of them at a time. However, that’s going to have severe ripple effects on the balance of the entire combat system, so it’s probably the least attractive option.

You could raise the MP price by 1, or lower the MP budget for the presently overpowered nations. Raising the MP cost may of course make the unit no longer economical to produce, and nerfing Soviet and Chinese MP too much may handicap them from building enough of their normal units if those are also using MP.

Putting a flat population cap on them is the simplest band-aid fix that won’t fundamentally alter the balance of the game. I included a Militia unit based on the House Rules one in my draft of a total overhaul of the A&A research and tech system, which I’ll be posting a thread about sooner or later. It has more or less the same combat profile as your Conscript (A0/D1/M1) but can’t get artillery support, and a 2 PU cost. I decided to impose a flat production cap of 12 on the map at a time per nation to control spammage. The use case for them in my meta is emergency defense - the enemy is sitting one territory away from your major factory and you want to put the maximum amount of cannon fodder there at the lowest possible price - that and I tied them in to the mechanics for Chinese and Soviet partisan spawns. The difference here is that I explicitly wanted to make sure my Militia would never became a mainstay unit that would displace Infantry from its role as the backbone of your army - but you actually want your Conscripts to do that for your select group of countries. The main downside of flat population caps is that they feel very artificial and arbitrary for the players, like running into an invisible wall.

One more solution that might work for you is separating conscripts from standard Factory production infrastructure to keep a tighter control on the number players can place per turn. Consider this: Conscripts are built out of a separate building altogether (call it a Recruiting Center, Training Ground, Army Base, or whatever else suits your fancy).

Recruiting Centers are cheap (maybe 4-6 PUs) and each one allows 3-5 Conscript placements. The Soviets, Chinese, and Italians would start with a few on the map, allowing some immediate Conscript placements, but not enough to just dump their entire surplus MP budget into Conscript buys every turn. They can do that, but they’ll have a bunch stuck in the queue because they don’t have enough spawn points to place them all. They can solve that problem, however, once they buy some additional Recruiting Centers - but that requires a PU investment, so they need to divert some of their budget from normal units in order to achieve their maximum potential on conscript spawns.

It also gives enemy players some options for counterplay against Conscript spamming - they can try to bomb or overrun your Recruiting Centers to limit the spawns.

That option seems like the most promising one to me, but you’ll have to do some experimenting with how much the Recruiting Centers should cost / how many conscripts can spawn at each to figure out what would play best.

An important facet of this game is its tech system. There are 55 techs the Soviet Union can research, 52 for Japan, 65 for Germany. A number of those techs require multiple stars to research. I will grant that not every nation needs every tech. The Soviets, for example, do not need fleet carrier tech.

Even so, my goal is for the outcome of the game to be undecided on round 20. This will give the tech system time to unfold. If someone concedes on round 7, that means I have failed. The effect of tech is small for the early game and grows over time.

In my test game, Japan was slowly conquering China. That was exactly what I'd wanted. The Axis needs to expand to counteract the Allies' advantage in early game income. But I didn't want the expansion to be too rapid.

The way I've conceived things, some territories produce manpower points--but only for their original owners. As Japan took Chinese territory, China's MP income was slowly reduced. This meant Japan's invasion was starting to gain momentum. I want the Axis to conquer enough to keep it in the game economically, but not so much that it delivers a quick knockout punch.

The European theater of my test game was a different story. Despite the Soviet Union's ability to spam massive amounts of conscripts, Germany was able to stack Smolensk on G4. Smolensk is two spaces away from Moscow. Barbarossa was a little too strong. What was required there was a little bit of a nerf of Germany's starting units. As the Soviets lost territory to the Germans, their manpower points declined. By round 3 their MP income had been reduced to 22, or 22 conscripts per turn.

I'm perfectly happy with the Soviet Union or China spamming large armies of conscripts. There is nothing at all wrong with that. They had large armies in the real war, they may as well have large armies in this game. The tricky part is balancing the game, such that the game lasts a long time before the outcome is decided.

Infantry-type units
Conscript. Cost: 0 PUs, 1 MP. Move 1, attack 0, defend 1.
Infantry. Cost: 1 PU, 1 MP. Move 1, attack 1, defend 2.
Sturmtruppen. Cost: 3 PUs, 1 MP. Move 1, attack 2, defend 3.
Mobile infantry. Cost: 3 PUs, 1 MP. Move 2, attack 1, defend 2.
Mechanized infantry. Cost: 5 PUs, 1 MP. Move 3, attack 2, defend 2.

Conscripts can only be built by the Soviet Union, China, and Italy. All nations except China can build infantry. Sturmtruppen are Germany only. Mechanized infantry can be built only after researching the appropriate tech. Tech can also be used to upgrade your mobile infantry to movement 3 and defense 3. The "assault rifle" tech for Germany adds +1 to the attack and defense of its Sturmtruppen. All infantry-type units can receive support on both offense and defense.

The nation with the most MPs is the Soviet Union. But even the USSR, with its massive MP income, ran out of MPs before it ran out of a need for cannon fodder. That's why there's the anti-tank gun, available for all nations to purchase. Cost: 3 PUs. Movement 1, attack 1, defense 1, receives support on defense only. Anti-tank guns can receive support on attack also, if you research "unrelenting attack" tech.

Let's say the Soviet Union is on defense. It has lots of conscripts as cannon fodder. It has some anti-tank guns to provide additional cannon fodder. But then it needs something to "crown the stack" as it were. Something with really good defensive firepower. That's why there's the heavy gun. Cost: 7 PUs. Attack 2, defend 4. Provides support on defense only. Its defense value can be upgraded to 5 with rail guns tech. Its cost can be reduced by 1 with working women tech.

Another good defensive unit is the trench. Cost: 3 PUs, movement 0, defends on a 0, takes 2 hits to kill. Trenches can be placed on any territory you owned at the start of your turn. They do not count against factory placement limits. A maximum of two trenches per territory per turn can be placed. Their defense value can be upgraded to 1 with bunkers tech.

Let's say I'm the Soviet player and I'm defending Moscow. I'd want lots of trenches. Lots of conscripts and anti-tank guns to soak up hits. Heavy guns, both for the defensive firepower they offer in and of themselves, and also because they provide support on defense. If I have 20 heavy guns, that means 20 of my conscripts or anti-tank guns are getting +1 to their combat rolls on defense. If I need to bring in units from a distant factory, and if I need to get them to Moscow quickly, I'm bringing tanks. A tank costs 8 PUs, attacks and defends on a 3, has two hitpoints, and a movement of 2. If that movement of 2 is a must-have, tanks give you good hitpoints for the money, and give you good firepower on both offense and defense. Soviet tanks can experience a 1 PU cost decrease with the "simplify the T-34" tech. British tanks can gain +1 to offense and defense by researching the "Comet" tank tech.

Vendetta

@KurtGodel7 Fascinating. My own tech system overhaul plays closer to vanilla but has 45 universal techs and 48 national exclusives (4 each for ANZAC/China/France and 6 each for Germany/Italy/Japan/UK/US/USSR). It would be interesting to compare notes on that once I've finished getting it all written up.