03-06-2005 13:22									#31
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I am now playing the game that will create the save files for jumping ahead to 1940/41. So last call for comments, I am about to finish up on the final release of the 1.x series.

	03-06-2005 17:35									#32
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Please hang on and check your PM in a couple of hours. I'm part way through doing a somewhat lengthy write-up of my comments.

	03-06-2005 17:57									#33
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oh it won't be for a few days yet, so I'll be waiting.

thanks you've been a great help.

	09-06-2005 20:16									#34
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Yes, probably anyone who was going to play this has already had his fill but for completeness sake...

version 1.3, the final bug free, balanced etc. version is now available.

GO HERE TO DOWNLOAD FILES

note the sound zip is the same and there is no need to use the patch.

Changes made -

. a. Cost of Resources which was improperly set at 30 changed to 1
. b. Icon for P-38 lightning fixed
. c. 6 public schools added to Allied(E)
. d. One more Civil Defence unit given to Japs
. e. Expiry of certain Allied wonders changed to make AI build them
. f. Accelerated start allowed with new save files
. g. Road multiplier changed to 4, 3 railroads added
. h. More free U.S. cruisers, light carriers and merchant marine
. i. Pollution correctly renamed to fire storm
. j. Home cities of Chinese ships set to none
. k. New techs to distract pre-war Allies
. l. Misc text corrections and changes
. m. Improved the production capacity of several British cities
. n. British Navy starts off with a carrier
. o. SETI Wonder available to U.S. as 'Foreign Scientists'
. p. Copernicus Wonder available to Japan as 'Rikken Institute'
. q. Trigger European unit for Embargo event changed to flak
. r. Merchant Marine given attack of 1 so they will carry marines to attack enemy cities.
. s. Japanese(P) city reduced to one and garrisoned by immobile unit
. t. Several interior Russian cities given Army Reserve units
. u. Objective cities changed to include Guadalcanal and Surabaya

Last edited by kobayashi on 09-06-2005 at 20:21

	13-06-2005 21:37									#35
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Unexpectedly, the story does not end here....

The turn of the tide in the Pacific is fine tuned based on my lastest version and even knowing how the upgraded scenario works to the last detail, I have been unable to keep the Japanese Navy from surcumbing to attrition by late 1944.

You may recall the discovery of the submarine transport with attack factor of 1. Alas, not nearly enough U.S. marines are boarding their transports and this is an imperfection I cannot live with.

I have even tried terraforming existing coastal cities into ocean (as units would be forced asleep and therefore board transports) only to discover that land units cannot be spawned on water even if there is a city there.

But my latest attempt appears to be working. I have been able to coax marines into transports by spawning them in cities on single tiled islands. And so my solution...for the time being anyway... are new staging depots on the islands of Maui and Tasmania.

Stay tuned...

	14-06-2005 01:41									#36
	Increase Your PM Length

Just a brief question about the many excellent changes that you have made. Is there supposed to be a break in the RR immediately north of Tokyo?

Although the two fast games are probably historically very accurate, IMHO most players would do considerably better, both in terms of the number, type and quality of Japanese units as well as the amount of territory conquered, if they started the scen in '37. To me, the fast games contain the ingredients for an early Japanese defeat.

I did run the Doolittle strategy to '44 without any trouble as long as the Japanese were careful to let sleeping dogs lie.

	14-06-2005 06:35									#37
	Remove this text

[Is there supposed to be a break in the RR immediately north of Tokyo?]

No. Did you find this in one of the fast saves? I had to manually put in the railroads, so which one is the break in?

[Although the two fast games are probably historically very accurate, IMHO most players would do considerably better, both in terms of the number, type and quality of Japanese units as well as the amount of territory conquered, if they started the scen in '37. To me, the fast games contain the ingredients for an early Japanese defeat. ]

Agree with you, that's the price you have to pay for fastforwarding - but then again...it would make victory even sweeter if you could some how manage it.

	14-06-2005 08:13									#38
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quote: I had to manually put in the railroads, so which one is the break in?

The square immediately north of Tokyo has only a road in both fast saves.

quote: Agree with you, that's the price you have to pay for fastforwarding - but then again...it would make victory even sweeter if you could some how manage it.

That's a very challenging idea. I'm going to have a hard think about whether it is doable.

	14-06-2005 12:06									#39
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: Originally posted by AGRICOLA That's a very challenging idea. I'm going to have a hard think about whether it is doable.

wait for the version with the landing force generators before trying

and after checking, yes the missing railroad in the saved games is an oversight. I'll have to play another set of saved games anyway....sigh!

	15-06-2005 04:25									#40
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I've been playing DST for a few days now. First, I'd like to say that the scenario is very well done, with lots of unique aspects, making it a lot of fun to play. I do have a few criticisms as well, though...

In general, I feel as if the industrial development of Japan is a bit off at the beginning of the game. For instance, there is no city which can reasonably build a carrier or battleship (it takes 16 and 10 turns respectively). I'm not saying there should be cities able to build those units quickly. I'm just pointing out that the shields available to Japan at the beginning of the game seem too few. How did the Japanese build up an incredible fleet if the highest number of shields in a city is 18 (Tokyo and Nagasaki)? Even with the resource units coming in, I found the Japanese to have too few shields in my game.

More civil defense units!

I found the Japanese tanks to be almost useless because of their movement. The reason I say this is that a tank cannot move into position and then attack in the same turn without its attack factor being reduced. Infantry, however, are able to move into position and attack in the same turn without any reductions. I think this situation is very unrealistic and negatively affects gameplay. A movement rate of 2 without treat all as roads would be much better than the current rate of 1 with treat all as roads.

Another point on industrial development, is that it seems the home islands are too underdeveloped in terms of improvements. Shouldn't there be more banks, public schools, and military bases if Japan was able to militarize? To make the point more vivid, Saipan, an island outpost, has more improvements than Takamatsu, Sendai, Akita, and Sapporo, which are all main cities on the home islands.

Also, making the Kongo obsolete and the Nagato obsolete after the Yamato, means any further building of Japanese ships, other than carriers, will be of extremes. There is no real middle ground between cruisers and the huge Yamatos, something which does not seem realistic.

Lastly, and this has been mentioned before, I think the loss of the Long Lance cripples the Japanese navy. However, I am not really opposed to this. What I don't like, though, is that the Long Lance is lost after the first Nagato is destroyed, which basically means you lose the Long Lance once you attack the allies, let's say around 1941 on average, which I think is way too early for the navy to be made virtually immobile. Have you considered making the Long Lance obsolete via an event after a certain date? Losing it at the end of 42, beginning 43 might be better in terms of playability.

Alright, now I'm back to playing DST...

	15-06-2005 09:16									#41
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization: The Boardgame

KugelR, Thanks so much for your comments, you are one of the few people who bothered to post at all.

Battleships

It actually takes maybe two - three years to rush build a capital ship in real life, not including training and shakedown, and your quoted figure of 10 to 16 turns is actually already too fast. As the war economy firms up, the industrial capacity actually builds up fast. I believe many of the major cities can potentially reach shields of 50 or more. I unfortunately cannot have the ships cost much more as there is the issue of negative cost for rush building so the best option is to initially depress productivity.

The ‘incredible fleet’ took twenty years to build and you start off with exactly the number of battleships Japan had for WWII minus two Yamato class (the only battleships coming into service in WWII) and any Nagatos you manage to build is a bonus. Same reason why Nagato etc become obsolete – to try to keep things accurate. There was no middle ground as the older ships were the result of treaty limitations.

Long Lance

The intention here is to deter you from using your battleships in operations where there is a significant chance they will be sunk – because they couldn’t be replaced easily in the real war. This is definitely true from the historical point of view. I have managed to prevent long-lance expiring myself late into 1943 by protecting them from torpedo bombers with air-cover and bringing them in for repairs the moment they are damaged. It is the way they operated, or else they would have used their battleships in many more operations.

Tanks

Unlike in Europe, tanks were not used as offensive weapons and infantry were used mainly for attacks, with tanks occasionally providing some support. Too much jungle and stuff and no open ground to speak of. It is my intention to remain true to this for the Pacific and thus the limitations for the tanks. There are not meant to be huge numbers of tanks and think of them as defensive units. When dozens of chinese units attack repeatedly in the second half, you'll appreciate your elite tanks. The best way to use them is is to park them outside an enemy city and fortify, then stack on top with artillery for a final assault + think of the marines as your blitzkrieg units, they do have 'A movement rate of 2 without treat all as roads'.



Infrastructure

As you can see from all my comments above, everything is designed to keep with the higher level realities of the Pacific War as opposed to the micro accuracies. From a historical point of view, your criticism of the lack of infrastructure in Japan is justified, however, from the angle of balancing different aspects of the scenario, it’s a tradeoff I’ve had to make. As its not an ‘all out fight to the death from the start’ scenario, I have not had the luxury of making things realistic at the micro level. If there were militaty bases, they would simply be sold off immediately because of the warrior culture wonder. Just think if I put a bank everywhere there should be one at the start, that would make Japan far too rich. I could of course rename banks to ‘$10mil in banking assets’ to make it micro accurate but …you get the picture. I will of course keep your comments in mind and if there is further tweaking required, I will change the names of some of the improvements to make them war related (warteffort donations? factory conversions? volunteer workforce?).

Thank you for your understanding, and I eagerly await any further comments you might have at the game’s conclusion.

Last edited by kobayashi on 16-06-2005 at 09:32

	07-07-2005 08:01									#42
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Is there any way to change the terrain under a city without razing it? Some little utility that someone made maybe?

There is a city in Cambodia that is on jungle and river at the same time, a little oversight and overly difficult to capture.

	07-07-2005 08:37									#43
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In the Rules, under @Terrain, change irrigate under Jungle from 'yes' to the type of terrain you want under the city, and set the # of turns to irrigate to 0. Add an engineer to the city and set it on "irrigate". It should change immediately, then delete the engineer. You should be in business.

	07-07-2005 08:48									#44
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Alternately, change byte 100,188 from the present 89 (jungle + river) to

00 Desert
01 Plains
02 Grassland
03 Forest
04 Hills
05 Mountains
06 Tundra
07 Glacier
08 Swamp
09 Jungle


Put an 8 in front of any number if you want a river (e.g. 82 = grassland + river).

	07-07-2005 10:15									#45
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I use Mapcopy all the time for that purpose. It's a magical utility, extremely easy to use: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=112618

Used it extensively for my Mafia scen, and I'm currently using it to change terrain under cities in an update of Blitzkrieg 1942.

Last edited by Eivind IV on 07-07-2005 at 11:37

	07-07-2005 14:32									#46
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All nifty solutions..thanks.

Tally HOOOO....version two with revamped AI and a HTML guide is on its way

	07-07-2005 16:51									#47
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quote: Originally posted by techumseh In the Rules, under @Terrain, change irrigate under Jungle from 'yes' to the type of terrain you want under the city, and set the # of turns to irrigate to 0. Add an engineer to the city and set it on "irrigate". It should change immediately, then delete the engineer. You should be in business.

yes this worked out fine. I was trying with transform instead of irrigate and after setting 15 engineers to the task, I thought it was impossible. Irrigation just took one engineer and was immediate.

	07-07-2005 23:14									#48
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you do know that only two engineers can be put to to any one task at a time, right?

	08-07-2005 00:04									#49
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Sorry, but I don't quite understand what you mean.

Obviously you don't mean that it is impossible to put more than 2 engineers/settlers to work on any task. However, some tasks can be completed more quickly if 3 or even 4 engineers are put to work. Here's the link to the relevant thread.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=90129

	08-07-2005 06:18									#50
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quote: Originally posted by H Tower you do know that only two engineers can be put to to any one task at a time, right?

er...I wrote there I used 15 engineers at the same time, on the same spot. (with transform time set to 0 )

what I think is transform cannot be done instantly while irrigation can

	10-07-2005 13:21									#51
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Hi Koby,

I've just finished playing through the scenario. V. tired though, so have attached last savegame instead of critical analysis. Very good set up; I enjoyed it considerably. By selling off naval bases early on an setting the slider to 1:7:2 and focusing on resource production I'd still completed most of my research by 1941. When I got Heavy Bomber I switched to 7:1:2 to rake in the cash. It would be nice to have some extra settlers later on, perhaps linked with progress in China?

BTW,how do you propose to beat the Army Reserve unit? Damn thing kept chewing up everything I threw at it.

Attachment: 1945aug.sav
This has been downloaded 3 time(s).

	11-07-2005 03:00									#52
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

quote: BTW,how do you propose to beat the Army Reserve unit? Damn thing kept chewing up everything I threw at it.

Use vet Artillery and expect to lose ~8-12 for every Army Reserve killed. I know that the Peggy bomber has A/D = 12/4 whereas Artillery has A/D = 10/2, yet the Artillery definitely does a better job because the Army Reserve unit has the Aegis flag.

	11-07-2005 07:32									#53
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

Answer in more detail later but at some point the US AI will start moving the Army Reserves out by merchant marine and they will be lost at sea. Of course you won't know when but it should be about 43 or 44.

Should I home them to some inland city like Denver to give some hope of conquering the U.S early? I never considered that an option and there are no objective cities in the U.S. but hey if people want to try it....

I am doing some final revisions before playing the fast start games so now is a good time (but of course after you are fully rested) for your comments. The version I have now is no longer compaitble with saves from the release version but I'll try looking at the save game anyway.

The game looks the same but the Allies have a new V-12 engine under the hood now and should make for a much better game.

One other thing I've done is replace the P-38 with a carden llyod tankette for the Dutch and Chinese. Also, two of the 6 Nagato have been swapped for WWI battleships (the Fuso pair sunk at Leyte). There are occassionally free colonial infantry from Taiwan and Korea...I really shouldn't ramble on....

If you think the Japanese are still too rich, i can consider upping the cost of some improvements again but in my 'orthodox' games, they seem pretty poor.

Last edited by kobayashi on 11-07-2005 at 09:23

	13-07-2005 21:01									#54
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Originally posted by Panda Hi Koby, I've just finished playing through the scenario. V. tired though, so have attached last savegame instead of critical analysis.

Just had a look at your saved game. Very original. err..... the idea was to attack the Allies, you knew that right?

	13-07-2005 22:24									#55
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Anyone who gets playtested by AGRICOLA is in for a mind altering experience!

	13-07-2005 23:54									#56
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quote: Originally posted by kobayashi Just had a look at your saved game. Very original. err..... the idea was to attack the Allies, you knew that right?

Well...actually no I didn't, and I read every word of your intro text before playing. I thought that Japanese foreign policy was domination over China, rather than anti-colonialism or a showdown with the United States. Purely for reasons of national survival

Anyway I was too busy battling the Soviets to worry about the Allies at that point. Maybe you should have further events triggering an Allies[E] intervention.

	14-07-2005 00:58									#57
	Increase the size of your Attachments

@kobayashi

It appears that you have run into either

a. Two cowardly playtesters
b. Two cold-eyed realists who see that neither attacking the US in Dec '41 nor actively waging aggressive war against all imperialists is in Japan's best interests.

I think that Panda's save is a highly interesting and successful effort at making the best of a bad situation. One thing that dismayed me in the save was that the AI was building city improvements rather than units. Might it be a good idea to put Military Advisors in charge of city production?

You may have to force players to fight, whether they want to or not. Form the Pearl Harbor attack force in Dec '41 and have a popup inform the player that Japan is at war with everybody. Leave it up to the player's discretion whether he actually attacks PH or sails for home. Unfortunately, that does not guarantee a Japanese attempt to expand southward. Is there any way that you can balance things so that Japan either moves south or automatically goes broke?


BTW, I eventually would have attacked the #$@(&! imperialist colonizers. I was just waiting for the proper moment. The chicken entrails clearly indicated that July '44 was going to be an auspicious month for such a military endeavour.


@techumseh

quote: Anyone who gets playtested by AGRICOLA is in for a mind altering experience!

Thanks a lot . . . . . . . . . . . . . for scaring off other members of the Designers Guild. I do not, repeat, do not perform lobotomies.

	14-07-2005 18:28									#58
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Well the three of you (including Eivind who went straight out to conquer West Coast America) won't be able to try your crazy tricks anymore in the next version.

For one, the Allies will start researching their war techs by Pearl Harbor time whether you attack them or not. Also, killing a Russian flak will result in Oil Embargo.

Actually the Allies were pretty easy to subdue in the v1.3 and you should have done some Allied bashing while you had the chance, but not anymore for 2.0.

One final question.

Has anyone come across the phenomenon where the 'When scenario loaded play this wav' event stops working. Its happened to me in several scenarios (like this one) and there seems to be no way to restore it once the bug occurs, not even removing the event and then putting in a new identical one.

Last edited by kobayashi on 14-07-2005 at 21:08

	14-07-2005 22:04									#59
	Full PM-box? Change here!

Yes, I've struggled with that bug many times. It happens when you start your game as a scenario instead of using the savegame you're working on, and then save that as your new savegame. It imbeds the save file with 'has triggered' for events which have SCENARIOLOADED as the trigger. Once that happens, I'm not aware of anything short of hex editing that would fix it. If you still have a back up save file, go back to that.

In cases where it's just a matter of a turn or so has accidentally elapsed while you've been tinkering with the scenario, you can fix it. Try going to the 'Set Game Year' tab under Cheat Menu. Make sure that # of turns elapsed is set to zero.

	15-07-2005 07:42									#60
	Put an end to popups!

ah but its supposed to (and used to until last week) play every time a save game was loaded as well, irrespective of the turn interval.

I have the previous save game used to make the scn file but too many changes have been done for me to even begin to replicate them.

I need the turn interval to be one so can I change it to zero save and then change it back to one and save again? WOuld that work?

I suppose if it comes to it, someone can volunteer to hex edit the damn thing when its finalized.

Thanks for shedding some light on the subject.