Red Sun Over China (RSOC) - Official Thread

redrum

@mattbarnes there is but the canal is causing it to be blocked. I'm planning to fix it in the next version.

mattbarnes

Does the game still have the auto declaration of war at turn 4? I’m only on turn 2 in my PBEM so don’t yet know. It would help if the Game Notes could please make this clear in the next version.

redrum

@mattbarnes Yeah. And good catch. I'll look to add that in the notes.

mattbarnes

I don’t know if others have played the game yet but I’m finding the Nationalists are effective by spamming Fighters+Conscripts. Do others do the same?

And Axis has a fair chance of squashing a weak UK by around turn 7 if they direct their focus that way. True?

redrum

@mattbarnes Conscripts are definitely strong and essential to Nationalists defense. I actually used tanks+heavy artillery as the attack power rather than fighters as they are a lot cheaper. But fighters do have more flexibility.

I think if Japan focuses on UK then they can probably take them out around 7-8. But they probably sacrifice a lot of pressure on the Nationalists if they do.

mattbarnes

How do you use tanks&arty as nationalists exactly? I see two problems: (a) you can’t produce them fast enough unless you waste funds repairing all the factories and (b) they die in counter attack which is an expensive loss. In contrast, the fighters kill Japanese troops while the conscripts are fodder and one or two survive to take the ground. The fighters live to fight again every turn. Note I’m describing how to preserve a no mans land across the whole front to stop the Japanese advance. I agree that tanks/arty late in the game would be necessary to attack any main Japanese army.

redrum

@mattbarnes For trading, fighters are definitely better. I guess I found I needed to build up attack power in order to counter the main Japanese stacks. I mostly just use conscripts to trade back and forth along with the few starting fighters. Guess it depends somewhat on how the Japanese are playing and if they are trying to have a doom stack march through the main cities or if they are trying to win on a wide front.

Hepps

@redrum What do you think on these for the 2 different cavalries for Manchuria?

0_1543707260521_Proposed cavalry.png

I had designed the other cavalry for a WWI game designed loosely on... but it might work well for this scenario as well.

redrum

@Hepps I think they look good.

mattbarnes

Hey, I don’t seem to be able to place Fighters on Carriers when building new Fighters. Is that deliberate?

mattbarnes

Observation from current games: I think the balance favours Japan at the moment. I crushed my opponent when I was Japan whereas he’s giving me a good game with him in Japan (and I’m the more experienced player). In particular, Japan has a strong chance of knocking UK completely out of the war and still its PUs. The Nationalists are having to send supporting troops to help India which seems a bit counter-historical. Should UK be slightly stronger?

redrum

Just pushed the latest version live and here are the changes:

v3.1.0

Overhaul many unit images (credit to @Hepps)
Fixed Calcutta to Chittagong connection
Added several starting British infantry (make it more difficult for Japan to take the UK out early)
Removed a few bombers/fighters from Japan (decrease Japanese air power as Axis seem a bit OP)
Added political clarifications to notes

@mattbarnes Here are the current fighter/carrier placement rules:

    <property name="Produce fighters on carriers" value="true" editable="false">
      <boolean/>
    </property>
    <property name="Produce new fighters on old carriers" value="true" editable="false">
      <boolean/>
    </property>
    <property name="Move existing fighters to new carriers" value="false" editable="false">
      <boolean/>
    </property>
    <property name="Land existing fighters on new carriers" value="true" editable="false">
      <boolean/>
    </property>

I agree that v3.0.1 seems to favor the Axis powers. I made a few balance adjustments to give the UK a few more starting infantry and remove a few fighters/bombers from Japan. I think that should help ensure the UK stays alive a bit longer and reduce the insane starting air force for Japan which should force them to decide whether to invest in more air units vs land units.

mattbarnes

Red rum, thanks for your efforts on this and consideration of the feedback. My carrier/fighter fail related to a new fighter on an old carrier, so according to your code ought to have been true, but wasn’t.

beelee

@mattbarnes sorry to jump in but Red rum just needs recognition : )

redrum

@mattbarnes If you have the save game then I can take a look at the fighter/carrier placement. If not then I'll start up a game and see if I can place new fighters on old carriers.

I'll be interested in your thoughts on the updated images and the balance changes.

mattbarnes

0_1544738870400_M&M2.tsvg

@redrum Thanks again for supporting this fun map and dealing with all enquiries.

See the attached saved game. I'm afraid you need to wind back to see the Turn 6 history for UK where I couldn't place the fighter and had to Edit it in. Thinking about it, I wonder if the issue could be a broken link from Chittagong to the sea??

By the way, I think there's another broken link: from East Assam to Manipur. Do you agree?

I'm keen to look at the new images and game balance but I can't load the new map till I've finished my current game on the old map. Hopefully by the weekend.

redrum

@mattbarnes Correct on both of those. I just added the missing connection for East Assam to Manipur in the latest map version.

The fighter placement on carrier issue was actually an engine bug as since the map uses advanced placement rules with "requiresUnits" attribute, that attribute didn't work properly with placing new fighters on carriers. This will be fixed in the latest pre-release: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/pull/4433

Cernel

@Cernel said in Red Sun Over China (RSOC) - Official Thread:

The movement through cities is a bit strange in the moment you consider retreating.
If all your units are moving through, you can retreat to the starting territory but not to the city, that really makes no sense.
If all your units are from the city, you can retreat to the city but not to any bordering territories, which doesn't make sense as well, since units moving through the city from more far away would be able to retreat back more, and there is no reason why the ones only coming from the city can't.
Maybe this game would be better with 1 combat round only, not only for solving the above. Practically, the scenario is almost a late WWI army (Japanese) against poor WWI army (Chinese), and it was indeed grindy.
Moreover, if it is true that Japs are OP, 1 combat round may be what's needed to rebalance.

Now that territory effects support movement cost, cities can be reworked as having a "urban" territory effect giving -1 movement cost, so that entering cities is a free move, since using canals is substantially a workaround (and it makes no sense that a unit moving through a city to attack doesn't retreat to the city, while a unit attacking from the city does). However, since movement costs are charged upon entering, this would imply that enemies can attack cities with a free movement if you can move into a movement cost 0 territory when you have remaining movement 0, or friendly units could reach it if exhausting movement in a nearby territory, that would be a major departure from the current rules. So this may be feasible only either if units with remaining movement 0 cannot enter territories requiring 0 remaining movement or by making urban giving -0.5 additional cost and having a property that allows moving into the movement cost 1 territories (that are all territories not having the "urban" effect) when you have 0.5 movement capacity left.

Cernel

@Cernel In any case, this would change the current rules in that, then, you could move for free through a city that you captured on the same turn.

Cernel

@redrum said in Red Sun Over China (RSOC) - Official Thread:

Just pushed the latest version live and here are the changes:

v3.1.0

Overhaul many unit images (credit to @Hepps)

Fixed Calcutta to Chittagong connection

Added several starting British infantry (make it more difficult for Japan to take the UK out early)

Removed a few bombers/fighters from Japan (decrease Japanese air power as Axis seem a bit OP)

Added political clarifications to notes

I've just updated my "Big Skin" map-skin of this, also to take advantage of the new units by @Hepps.

Everyone can download it from here:
https://github.com/Cernelius/red_sun_over_china-big_skin

The map skin is just a 200% zoomed game-board version of the original, mostly to leave more space for the units and also to have the units about 48% bigger (the units themselves are zoomed at 0.8333, instead of 0.5625 for the original).

Anyone let me know what you think. Might this be something worth adding to download list?