Crazy Europe: House of Habsburg

Cernel

@crazyg A thing I noticed is Corsica should be "Venetian" or Genoa should be neutral.

I'm thinking, for this timeline, in a 1v1, both Venice and Genoa should be allied with the Habsburg.
Still, I suggest having them as different players:

Genoa may even be just part of the Habsburg, really. It was a war-traded territory between the French and the Spanish.
I would say that "Italy 08" would be worth a 4 PUs.

General_Zod

@cernel Nah, who says you need to name them all that way, can mix and match as it reads best.

Hepps

@CrazyG

Missing connections....

Romania 11 <----> Romania 14
Sweden 5 <-----> Norway 9

Villages shouldn't be able to move (but they can)

CrazyG

Keep these little changes coming, I'll update tonight.

I also will add a city to Venice's capital

@Cernel
I'm not adding Genoa as another player. I don't want a tiny separate army in that location. Venice is named Italian States to represent its more than just Venice.

Hepps

@crazyg BTW when I did Spain I added the Pyrenees Mountains in formally rather than as a decoration.

CrazyG

@hepps
The reason I didn't do that on the Spanish-French border originally is because I thought maybe I would want a map where the mountains weren't impassable, just represented by terrain (I have a rough draft of terrain for the map)

Hepps

Musket man miss from the Dens.

Cernel

@crazyg Realistically, mountains are full of passes, and, even in such a detailed map as this one, most mountain borders would have one of more passes each. So, as long as realism is concerned, absolutely impassable mountains maybe belong to Lord of the Rings, but not really to an European scenario.
Mountains are a great opportunity for the defender to ambush an invading force, moving through a pass, though. That is a simple tactic, an expected one too; but it works damn well.

General_Zod

@crazyg

So we played a 4 player multi today. I like it. But it needs some tweaks here and there.

Here's the game save. But I must warn you it was learning session for first couple rounds for all. And villages were moved all game by Hapsburg player.

I have some suggestions, which I will post later. Since I'm tired atm.

0_1520223735308_HOH_multi,4p_03.04.2018.tsvg

Oh player teams were as follows.

Hapsburg+Italy

Poland+Sweden

Russia+Ottomans

France+Denmark

Overall, I think the mechanics are cool, nice job.

CrazyG

I accidentally named the Danish muskets "musketeers" rather than musketmen.

@cernel
Yea buts its not realistic to move 15 knights through a mountain pass, and the Spanish-French border becomes a fast moving front if there aren't mountains there.

Currently it plays out quite well in my opinion, its hard to get past the mountains but if you do you can often take a lot of land. I'm not implementing terrain at this time.

@General_Zod
Cool, I'll look at the save.

Hepps

@crazyg Map is really solid. Lots to discuss with this map and loads of potential as it gets further along.

Had a great time with it. Lots of really neat ideas and unit interactions. Look forward to what else you have in store for this. Couple really interesting suggestions came out while we were playing.

Thumbs up!

Hepps

@crazyg said in Crazy Europe: House of Habsburg:

@hepps
The reason I didn't do that on the Spanish-French border originally is because I thought maybe I would want a map where the mountains weren't impassable, just represented by terrain (I have a rough draft of terrain for the map)

Well I figured you could do what you did for the Swiss Alps.... you can set them as Impassable for the game. But then if you want a version where they can be entered.... you can change those territories to passable. But even if you want them passable.... you'd probably want the territories in there since it would be consistent with how you've handled the Swiss Alps.

I'm easy though. Removing them again would not take much.

Cernel

Another thing is that, during winter, you can walk over Sea Zone 40, thus moving to and from Finland and Sweden on foot/horse.
This is something that is missing in all maps, like even the Napoleonic Empires one too.

CrazyG

Ok, I've looked over that savegame. Some thoughts-
It looks like the Habsburg alliance dominated. However, in my games, Russia is beating Poland-Lithuania 1v1. I think France goofed its opening, and the moving villages definitely helped Spain invade. So I'm not changing anything in those areas.

Ideally Austria cannot push them back while spending that much in Spain and Italy. More castles and cities were build than I wanted.

The soon to be uploaded update-
Ottomans get some more stuff, including some castles.
Lots of connections added, especially in Romania
Venice is getting a city
Villages no longer move
Can no longer build cities
Castle cost raised by 10
Denmark has musketmen image, gets 1 musket in Norway

Feedback from experienced players is exactly what I want to see, thanks. You can only learn so much from playing with yourself

@Cernel
I wouldn't have a clue how to implement crossing that sea zone (reverse canal once every 4 turns?) and it doesn't seem that useful anyways, its way faster to just transport the soldiers via navy.

CrazyG

Update is up.

@redrum
I attempted to update the YAML so that it will notify players of the new version. Please let me know if this was done correctly.

redrum

@crazyg I don't see any pull request for updating the version in the YAML file?

Agree with most of your changes, the only 1 that concerns me is 'can no longer build cities'. That means after say the first 5-6 rounds when most of the starting villages are gone, the game will come to a crawl as most of the cities aren't close to any of the front lines. I think there needs to be a way to build either villages or cities to avoid the game slowing down in the mid/late stages. I'd say its hard to tell on the castles cost as I think they were probably overused and I wasn't convinced that they were underpriced but also depends how many you expect players to build.

Balance wise, from what I can tell Poland can overpower Russia and at least in our game Sweden overpowered Denmark. Given those 2 things plus Hapsburg being very powerful across the map, I don't think France/Ottomans have enough to combat those advantages. IMO, Hapsburg either needs broken into 2 nations or major/minor like TWW to limit the flexibility of spending all of its PUs anywhere on the map. Alternatively, if you like letting it have that flexibility then the Ottoman-Franco alliance needs to have more of a production/TUV advantage.

Hepps

@crazyg Oh and you may want to adjust the mountains colour.... looks scarily like the Ottomans colour.

CrazyG

@redrum
I might make castles take two turns to build using triggers.

I buffed up the Ottomans considerably.

France can do a lot better than he did, the first turn was weak and allowed himself to be bullied. Even if that player did everything else expertly, messing up that early play sets him back really far. I think attacking Spain turn 1 was a bad move and attacking that italian neutral was a bad move.

redrum

@crazyg Yeah, from what I could tell France could definitely have played better and buffing the Ottomans would probably help put more pressure on Hapsburg Austrian area.

One other thing we noticed is that North Africa is kind of a huge wasteland. Not much there from a PU or city perspective, just a bunch of lonely Ottoman units staring at the water with little to do.

Castles are interesting and I'd be careful not to nerf them too hard as they are one of the more unique elements of the map and it would be a shame to see none getting built unless you placed more on the map to start. I think the question for me is when/how should castles be used? Primarily just in choke points and cities? Along fronts? As I think that factors in to how expensive and how long they should take to build.

Hepps

@crazyg Undoubtedy. I was initially playing France as a test without considering any sort of strategy. Really the save game does not reflect a proper strategy.