Flames and Steel (official thread)
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@KurtGodel7 Yeah, players are relentless optimizers, so min-maxing is always a tough problem to try and get rid of. The one thing you really want to prevent is players feeling too railroaded, where it feels like there is only one possible strategy you can use if you want to win. If the Soviets can only survive by playing a very specific build order, people are not going to have as much fun playing them as they do with another nation that gets more choices.
One more idea... have you tried testing what happens if you reverse the order on your air turns? What if everyone does a blind allocation on their fighters first, you reveal those, and then you commit your bombers once you've seen where the fighters are? That would allow players of a weak air force to do some misdirection (send your fighters one way but your bombers another) , or take advantage of vulnerabilities where your opponent didn't send enough fighters.
Or, since you've included heavy fighters alongside normal fighters, you could further differentiate their roles by having one type get allocated in the first round, and the other type in the second round - the fighter is an aggressive unit you commit blindly, the heavy fighter is a reactive unit you send after you've seen where some of the enemy air force is going.
You could also split the different bomber types between the two rounds - medium bombers and strategic bombers go in the first round so that strategic bombing raids are telegraphed and easier to respond to, but dive bombers and torpedo bombers get to sneak in on the second round and become harder to defend against.
Not sure which particular combination would be best, but shaking up which types go in which order seems like a good approach to investigate.
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I would recommend using better unit images.
It's better if each nation's non-naval units look different. Especially NWO/WaW infantry—it doesn't even look like infantry at all.
I'd go with something like this as German infantry:
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@KurtGodel7 How are you going to enforce "Sticky Hits"?
I've used AI to make a few tweaks to the engine. The modified version of the engine lives only on my computer. The modified engine allows me to do the following:
Sorry if this was already asked, but I guess you are planning to make a pull request to have all new features you developed to support this map added to the official TripleA release once you have the map ready. Right? Are you confident that the main developers will accept them? Maybe you should open feature requests (assigned to you) in advance (one for each new feature which your map needs) so to try to understand if there is the willingness to accept the feature additions? I mean, what happens if you finish the map and then the feature requests needed to have it playable are refused?
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I am sure everyone will want to review all features separately before adding them in. Even if they are working in your mod, there can be bad interactions with other features.
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I now believe that a good German opening involves taking Leningrad on G2
This is always a good opening for GER but it is impossible in many other games
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- My planned solution to this (once my weekly usage limit resets).
Just for curiosity, once your weekly limit resets, how do you interact with AI ?
You just write what you posted here on the forum in teh propmpt and AI understand everything at your 1st attempt ? -
Normal Soviet behavior varies depending on the map. If you're playing Revised, the Soviets would maybe buy fighters for back-and-forth battles.
I play Total World War (hard) recently
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I would recommend using better unit images.
It's better if each nation's non-naval units look different
100% agree !!!
I started WorldAtWar 22 nations and it is a hell !
22 powers are too much and colour palette is not enough, some powers have almost the same colour so it is hard to ditinguish a chinese inf from a russian inf (and they are also close in some part of the map).
Also I found very hard to understand if a fighter is normal or advanced, when you purchase them it is almost clear but once in teh map together with oter units it is very very hard, the thin white lines I circled in blue are almost invisible !
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Even WaW's 14 nations are too much, let alone 22.
Turns take forever to complete, and that's not even the only issue with this map:
- Units too small.
- Insufficient unit spaces and unit skins.
- Mega stacks.
- Anticlimactic endings.
- Immortal air units.
The only good thing about it is Japan being split in two, which prevents them from railroading into China and/or putting heavy pressure on Russia.
This isn't specific to WaW, though—it's more my general distaste for maps with too many nations or units. I feel like the standard rules stop working when a map gets too big.
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@KurtGodel7 How are you going to enforce "Sticky Hits"?
I've used AI to make a few tweaks to the engine. The modified version of the engine lives only on my computer. The modified engine allows me to do the following:
Sorry if this was already asked, but I guess you are planning to make a pull request to have all new features you developed to support this map added to the official TripleA release once you have the map ready. Right? Are you confident that the main developers will accept them? Maybe you should open feature requests (assigned to you) in advance (one for each new feature which your map needs) so to try to understand if there is the willingness to accept the feature additions? I mean, what happens if you finish the map and then the feature requests needed to have it playable are refused?
You ask very good questions.
I've come up with what I believe are some good ideas. But do these good ideas gel into a good game? I'd like to think the answer to that is yes, but until I get closer to a finalized version of my game I won't know that for sure.
My thought process here is as follows.
- I need to develop this into a fun map to play.
- Then, I need to go to the main developers and show them the finished product. Or at least the somewhat finished product.
- Hopefully by that point there will be some users willing to speak up in favor of this map. "I've played this, it's really fun, and it's worth adding these new features to standard TripleA."
- Is it possible for the AI to create a developer-friendly version of the engine changes? If so, that's what I'd like the AI to do before I would ask for anything. But I don't know the specifics of what the developers would want to make the AI's engine changes developer-friendly.
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- My planned solution to this (once my weekly usage limit resets).
Just for curiosity, once your weekly limit resets, how do you interact with AI ?
You just write what you posted here on the forum in teh propmpt and AI understand everything at your 1st attempt ?There are two different AIs I've been using for this. Cloud Claude and desktop Claude. Normally the interaction is as follows. I will have a conversation with cloud Claude. I will tell it objectives I have, or things I believe aren't working as intended. It will give me ideas on how to solve the problem. I will take the best of Claude's ideas, the best of my own ideas, and the best of ideas I've seen elsewhere. I will tell cloud Claude to do that. Cloud Claude can change the XML file directly. There have been nearly 100 versions of the XML file.
If I want changes to the engine itself, cloud Claude creates a change document. It's written in plain English and is several pages long. I will read this document over. Then I pass it along to desktop Claude so it can change the engine. Engine changes don't always go as planned. There can be GUI problems (most common), there can be bugs. Solving that requires a follow-on engine change. Desktop Claude has implemented roughly 25 engine change requests so far.
The things pushing me towards my weekly limit are engine change requests (which can take a long time) and creating the map itself. Tweaking the map a little here and there isn't bad; building the initial map was. For three straight weeks I've gotten very close to my weekly limit.
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Even WaW's 14 nations are too much, let alone 22.
Turns take forever to complete, and that's not even the only issue with this map:
- Units too small.
- Insufficient unit spaces and unit skins.
- Mega stacks.
- Anticlimactic endings.
- Immortal air units.
The only good thing about it is Japan being split in two, which prevents them from railroading into China and/or putting heavy pressure on Russia.
This isn't specific to WaW, though—it's more my general distaste for maps with too many nations or units. I feel like the standard rules stop working when a map gets too big.
You're making me feel happy about some of the good things of my map.
In my map, neither Japan nor the Soviet Union want to wage a huge early game war against each other. Partly this is due to the map shape, and partly due to priorities. Early game Japan wants to focus on China and the south Pacific. The Soviet Union wants to focus on Germany. But, the USSR wants to be strong enough in the east to prevent Japan from feeling too much temptation. It achieves this by building conscripts for Vladivostok.
Japan conquers China slowly. China resists by buying large numbers of conscripts. As China loses territory its ability to buy conscripts slowly diminishes. While I haven't taken this to the late game yet, I'm guessing China can hold out at least ten rounds. Maybe more.
I've achieved all this without dividing Japan. Japan is one nation, not three or four little Japans. The Soviet Union and China are able to defend using manpower points and conscripts.
In this map, I would want the United States to divide its efforts between the Pacific and Europe. What I don't want to happen is a WaW-like situation in which the U.S. always goes kill Japan first. I am willing to contemplate extreme measures to avoid that outcome. I might even divide the United States into two nations. One of which would be anti-Germany, the other anti-Japan. But I'd prefer to avoid taking things to that point.
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The Soviets and China having cheaper cannon fodder than Japan is a nice thing that prevents the Soviets and China from being too appealing targets. It's probably enough to diversify Japanese strategies.
I would suggest keeping the United States as one nation. Make Germany at least two times stronger than Japan, and make the Soviets doomed to fall if the US doesn't put significant pressure on Germany.
Personally, I can't stand seeing Japan outproduce Germany (this must be an extremely rare case, not a regular thing). I would make sure Japan is still weaker than Germany even if they take China and the Far Eastern Soviets.
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