Iron War - Official Thread

[Frostion]

I have decided to release the new fuel version of Iron War for download via the game engine. The new version works with the newest TripleA releases. Here are the changes:

v0.2.2 to v 0.2.3:
• Corrected a typing error in the notes (Kamikaze pilots are obtainable from round 9, not round 6).
• Fixed a graphical error that could occur when South Africa captured a convoy zone.
• British Colonies Colonial-Infantry now looks different and is now more distinguishable from the normal British Colonies Infantry.
• Tank-Destroyers are now listed in purchase screen before the Light, Medium and Heavy Tanks, not after.
• The Anti-Air unit now costs 8 PUs, not 7.
• Japan now gets 1 Kamikaze recruitment poster in round 9, 10 and 11, not only 1 in round 9. This means that Japan can recruit 3 pilots per round from round 11 / early 1945.
• Aklavik (in North West Canada) renamed to Fort Norman
• The map uses the resource option “isDisplayedFor” to keep nation specific resources only visible to certain players.
• Fuel system has been changed. Now ships and land vehicles use 1 fuel to move one territory, and planes pay half of their full potential movement in fuel when moved.
• Other minor changes.

Old Colonial-Infantry: New Colonial-Infantry: Normal Infantry:

This release is not closing down work on the new fuel balance, and more changes will be made. But I have decided to let this new version have some play time, and in the mean time I can work a bit on the Iron War Europe version and copy over the fuel changes to this map also.

@Black_Elk said “One suggestion I have would be to give all the minor powers an Aid phase and the option to send 10 or 20 PUs to one of the major nations.” I can see what you mean and that it would be nice for the colonies to be able to send resources back. It is something that might be worked on in the future. Maybe also resources like oil and iron. And thanks for the bug report. The problem was a wrongly named convoy picture file. I guess it was first noticed now, as South Africa hardly ever conquers any convoy zones, so the error never showed before.

@Black_Elk what is you impression on the Kamikaze planes? Do you use them? Do you see forward to them as they unlock? I think they are like long range lucky strike missiles.

[zlefin]

is there a way to set bonus resources by resource type? I didn't see one that was obvious, didn't look that hard though. I wanna give the ai players extra fuel (sinc ethe ai doesn't know how to handle fuel), but not extra PUs.

[Frostion]

@zlefin Unfortunately the bonuses you can give the AI and players during game setup only applies to PUs. It would be nice if it could apply to other resources also, but this is not supported at the moment. Maybe @redrum can tell us when/if this will ever be possible

[prastle]

@frostion updating bots it should be there now shortly good stuff

[redrum]

@frostion I believe that's incorrect. The resource bonus % should apply to all resources: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/1791. But flat bonus is only available for PUs.

@zlefin There is not currently away to set different % per resource. I considered doing that but didn't know if it would be useful for enough maps and enough players would use it to make it worth it. Given that the AI doesn't really understand fuel yet, it might make more sense to consider it now that fuel has been revamped.

[Frostion]

@redrum Nice! I would say that the option to give extra percentage to all kinds of resources covers most needs, for most maps.

Maybe an option to give flat rate of certain special resources would also benefit some maps. But then, as maps may have a lot different resources, an option like that should come with the ability for mapmakers to enable/disable certain resources from showing in the start menu. Maybe some resources do not fit as resources that ought to be "increasable".

How about XML options for the resource list like:
ShownAndAffectedByFlatRateBonus
ShownAndAffectedByPercentageBonus
or something shorter and simpler?

[redrum]

@frostion I think the better approach is actually to allow map makers to just define difficulty levels with specific percentages/flat bonuses for each map in addition to the basic bonuses we already have. So on Iron War, for example, since the AI doesn't really understand fuel maybe you have the following:
"standard" - "25% fuel bonus"
"hard" - "50% fuel bonus and the rest 10% bonus"
"very hard" - "100% fuel bonus and the rest 50% bonus"

I think that probably makes it easier for the average player to understand and keep the game setup UI simpler. Otherwise you could end up with a lot of input boxes on the screen.

[Frostion]

@redrum Would your described way then replace the percentage and flat rate totally? If so, then an easy, medium and hard should maybe be supplemented by a "custom"? I agree on keeping the menu options simple, and letting mapmakers preset values.

[Black_Elk]

Just went a dozen rounds vs Hard AI Allies at 125% and it felt pretty good. In every game I've played vs the AI there invariably comes a point when you break away, and then it doesn't really matter how much of a bonus the AI has received, because they can't recover, but up until that point the extra PUs and Resources make a pretty big difference in the feel of the difficulty level.

I also like the idea of default difficulty settings of the sort redrum just mentioned, mainly because I think the average player is more likely to click a simple difficulty setting, than they are to pop the hood and start tweaking a bunch of complex values at launch. I think they are more likely to say, "ok, last time NORMAL was too easy, so I will click VERY HARD this time and see how that feels" as opposed to going in and assigning bonuses nation by nation. It would also give us a chance to really cater the bonuses to the AI's current ability. So for example, I've just been picking a universal number like 110% or 125% etc and giving each AI nation that same bonus, mainly because it felt clean and easy to replicate. But maybe some nations need more? Perhaps some need less? With a default setting you could get more nuanced with it.

That said, I still think its important that the player be able to adjust this stuff on the fly, via a CUSTOM difficulty or whatever. And its definitely important that they be able to see it all charted out somewhere (so that the difficulty tweaks for the standard levels aren't invisible.) Until then though, I'll just keep trying to tease out a number that I feel works alright for the AI Allies until I hit one that kicks my ass consistently hehe. Next I'll try like 130% or thereabouts.

Oh also this last time I did try buying a couple Kamikazes at the end there, but I only used them in one attack so far. I haven't made much use of those or the V rockets or nukes, somehow I felt like it was probably a cheapshot on the AI. But as the difficulty of the AI bonus levels increases, then I feel less sporting and less likely to cut the computer as much slack. Probably at the 130% bonus level, stuff like strat bombing will be necessary to maintain parity with the machine? Will have to see

Anyhow, here is the last one...
0_1523315918556_Elk vs Hard AI Allies 125 Germany round 13.tsvg

[redrum]

@frostion I'd leave the custom settings we have now and just add the preset values per map.

@Black_Elk Exactly, my thought as well. Make difficulty settings simple and easy for users. Also gives a way for players to compare games. I'd definitely look to provide a read-only summary of what each difficulty level actually is doing.

[Black_Elk]

Sounds good to me. I guess to zlefin's Q, it would probably make sense to have a mode that just gives the AI nations like 9999 fuel so that it wouldn't botch their movement.

Just finished a game vs hardAI Allies at 133%. They were pretty formidable.
Russia is still active even after a dozen rounds, and the Allies have quite a few aircraft and ships parked off South America and Australia. India held out a lot longer this time around, and Africa took a concerted effort from both the German and Italian fleets before we finally knocked France out after like 13 rounds hehe.

The TUV and PUs are about even for both sides, even though Axis control twice as much production and all but 6 of the VCs. Not sure how much longer it would take to mop up what remains of the Allies, but probably a while. Here is the situation for Japan in 1946...
0_1523488540596_Elk vs Hard AI Allies 133 Japan round 13.tsvg

[Black_Elk]

ps. regarding Edit Mode, I was trying to figure out earlier how to change the starting fuel on the fly, but didn't see any options for that. I guess it would require an xml edit?
I can add in the actual oil drum units, but I was thinking more along the lines of what I mentioned above. Just giving the AI nations a huge starting reserve so it would never run out of fuel and they wouldn't get stuck, when they invariably by more aircraft or ships than they can support hehe.

[Hepps]

@black_elk Couldn't this be achieved via a game setting?

[CrazyG]

What would be useful for triggers is a conditon that checks if a nation is being played by the AI. This would let us automatically give AI extra resources, and could also be enabled by a game option

[zlefin]

I'm pondering other ways to let the ai play while not giving it infinite fuel.
setting up an alternate production frontier with units that drain fuel per turn like the old system could work; though it'd require a lot of work to maintain.
something similar could be accomplished with a series of triggers to modify fuel for ai players; though again a big nuisance.
I'll keep thinking, maybe there's a good way to do it that's not too hard to maintain and create.

[Hepps]

@zlefin I just think you could achieve this via a trigger. Something that fires each turn based on whether a nation is controlled by the AI or not.

I'm not saying that and "easy" "medium" "hard" and "expert" setting isn't a cool proposal... just that you could make AI controlled players playable in regards to fuel.

[General_Zod]

@CrazyG @zlefin

Checkout Feudal Japan for ideas on confirmation that AI being played by a nation.

[wc_sumpton]

@general_zod, @CrazyG, @zlefin
In 'Invasion USA', I use 'userAction' and 'switch' conditions to detect and change setups for AI players. 'userAction' are ignored by the AI.

Cheers...

[Black_Elk]

Yeah a game setting, trigger, user action, each of those would probably be more user friendly than an edit. Though it would be cool for basic functionality if all the starting resources could be edited the same as PUs, just so everything is consistent/accessible via Edit Mode.

I tried another game vs HardAI Allies at 133%. This time they rocked me pretty hard. Even though my Axis were able to sneak a technical knock out for the VC win, the situation on the ground is looking pretty grim here. Probably overextended myself with Sea Lion to Africa ambitions. The AI Soviets are still at full strength, and about to roll up on East Germany. Finland fell a while back, so now it seems that the Russians have their sights trained on Berlin.

I thought my Japanese opener felt solid, but a less than stellar performance in subsequent rounds had us stalled up trying to defeat India. In the end it was left up to the Italians to finally crush India on the double team, after the Japanese spent their whole wad trying to soften them up. Unfortunately that allowed for a resurgent British Colonies, so now the Italians are sweating too. Its kind of cool to see how the AI makes pretty good use of its bonus. In this case it was the French Colonies and KNIL who conspired to screw us with their boost, drawing out the fight for the Indian sub-continent and forcing a bloodier affair than Japan would have liked hehe.

I think its safe to call this one for the Machine, just based on the TUV and production totals. Allies are pulling away for sure. Nice work HardAI!...

0_1523567850726_Elk vs Hard AI Allies 133 bonus Germany round 8 TKO.tsvg

[Frostion]

@Black_Elk Just a few questions on the strategic level
Could you have saved Finland by supporting more with PUs?
Would you have a won more if you had skipped one of the Sea Lion or Africa Ambitions?
If the AI valued VC more, would it have meant that you would lose?
Do you always, as Axis, focus on taking out India with Japan?