Hi S-Man
In this mod and WWI the iron resource is not used as a required resource for anything; and horses in WWII.
How about every unit (land, naval and air) requires an iron resource? Basically it would be saying that iron is in fact manpower. Yeah, I know, an air unit has nowhere near the manpower of an infantry division but there is also the behind the scenes manpower. This would stop some smaller civ waiting a few years before joining in WWII from building a huge armed forces that would be beyond it's population to actually man.
An iron resource would start at 2-4 if undeveloped and then grow by the usual 2 if turned into a mine. This would allow a civ to have a standing army. But here we add two new buildings: - the Recruiting Centre and Conscription. Once at war a civ could build a Recruiting Centre which would double/triple (?) the iron resource for that city. So the Recruiting Centre is the early rush of volunteers. At some new tech that wouldn't be achieved till maybe half way through the game the Conscription building would provide extra iron. Most combatants started to have trouble getting new recruits once the war dragged on and the casualties mounted. To reflect this maybe Conscription would only add a small amount of extra iron but be a very expensive building - leaving the player to ask if they really need that extra iron.

And now to horses. You see photos of the Infantry Divisions of the German Army invading the Soviet Union and horses are towing the artillery and supplies. Probably the same for most other nations, except for Britain which was largely motorised.
The standard infantry division and artillery regiment therefore requires a horse resource as well as the iron. These units retain their current movement rate of two. But if you had enough oil resources you could motorise that infantry or artillery on a unit by unit basis. Motorised is trucks only. Infantry would dismount to fight. Mechanised is when the armoured personnel carriers start to appear. A motorised unit would have a plus one movement rate.

So you have an Infantry Division (1 iron and 1 horse) that can be upgraded (for a minimal 10 gold maybe) to a new unit, the Motorised Infantry (1 iron and 1 oil).

The penalty for having too many units requiring iron, horses or oil (due to losing a source) could remain as is - a reduction in combat ability.

But what about the Finns you ask. They don't have a horse resource. They have their starting Infantry Divisions who will have a combat penalty until they can acquire some horses. To let them build up their infantry size perhaps a new unique unit called Ski Troops. They would only have a basic strength of say 50, but have awesome modifiers for fighting in Finnish forest and hills.

I should stop now shouldn't I?

OK, one last thing. Starting armies all have experience of nil, nada, zero. Yet you can purchase any of Barracks, Armory, and Military Academy that are needed in a city and then train or purchase new units who will have experience of 45 plus. It takes forever for your starting army to acquire that experience when they should be better than the new recruits. I have no idea how to fix this if indeed it needs fixing.

Thanks for reading all this.

Now, THIS is a suggestion! 😄

Odd you mention Iron - in the original version of this mod, a new strategic resource called 'Steel' was introduced, using the same artwork as the Transparent Aluminum in the main WAW mod. It was built in the same way - with a "steel mill" which converted 1 Iron into 2 Steel. Steel was required for Carriers, Battleships, and Cruisers. I toyed around with the idea that it should also be required for Armor units. Eventually I dropped this idea, for several reasons:

- It was quite hard to balance the correct amount of Iron
- It was moving me away from my main design criterion of changing the game vertically, not horizontally (expanding existing game features/content, not introducing completely new concepts)
- The AI never properly used Steel, with constant chronic shortages, leaving the human player with a dramatic playing advantage against the AI - and you know how little that is needed...

The last one is the biggest problem - the tools available to influence AI behavior are quite crude, like performing brain surgery with a chain saw. In many cases, they are mere 'suggestions' to the AI, which are quickly overwritten by other AI behaviors.

I've seen other mods that add a "Manpower" strategic resource, many of the main WW2 mods do this and I've had a few suggestions to do the same in the WW1 scenario, but after my previous experience with Steel, I never really followed up on it. I don't want to add features, no matter how worthy, if they put the AI at a deeper disadvantage.

If you look into the LUA code of this mod, a large chunk of it is included to try and give the AI unfair bonuses to help them at least look like they're putting up an intelligent fight.

In theory, I like almost everything you've suggested - especially the idea of the early, horse-dependent Infantry, and a later, motorized version. But what I'm afraid you'd see in practice is the human player with 20 good infantry units constantly attacking even larger civs with 5...

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Your suggestion about a new "Ski Troops" unit for Finland is quite a good one. I'm thinking it could be a replacement for the Halftrack unit for them. Would probably add Norway to the list of civs with the unit, but probably not Sweden. Highly mobile, healing every turn, but not quite the combat power of a normal Infantry unit. I'm sure I can find some decent artwork to use for it.

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The XP problem you pointed out is completely valid, and ultimately not very hard to fix. You can create the starting units with a variable amount of XP.

The problem is: when you start the scenario - and you're playing as Germany, you have 60+ units available. No one wants to start the game with 60 units to give multiple promotions. Heck, I even added a function that sets all city production to Infantry units so you don't have to cycle through all of them unless you want to.

I'd need some suggestions on a standardized promotion list for starting units - infantry, armor, aircraft, ships, etc. How many and should it be civ-dependent, i.e. Germany has better trained troops than Bulgaria?

I also think I like the idea of nerfing the XP gain from buildings. Your point about why they would produce better units than units fighting numerous battles seems a valid one.

The mod is already set up to send a promotion list for every unit it spawns. Even units in the map file can be given promotions directly. It's something that should have been done from the beginning.

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So - to summarize, here are the changes I'm adding to my "Bug Reports" post - to try and put into the next version:
1. Add the Ski Troops unit
2. Give starting units a few promotions at scenario start
3. Nerf XP gain from all Buildings (1 or 2 XP point reduction)



EDIT: way too many typos. I should never post before coffee... 😆

Hi S-Man

I only suggested the Ski Troops because Finland had no horses for it's infantry. And that's the suggestion you picked up. Ah, well, life's like that sometimes.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is nerfing? I see it mentioned here and there but haven't been able to figure out what it means.

Going back to Civ3 I think it was when bombers were able to choose between bombing the defences of a city or infrastructure (e.g. buildings, and roads). If you take the scenario of Germany having captured Holland and Belgium and knocked France out then there isn't much for the Luftwaffe to do but bomb British cities and units. If Germany isn't able to capture a city (too many naval units in the way) then why bomb it's defenses when you could re-create the Blitz and go for it's factories, cathedrals, etc.

As Civ changed this feature it's probably something you can't change.

I'm still waiting for my first Waffen SS spawning. Every 5-10 turns did you say somewhere? Is this affected by how well you are going? The more victory points the lower the chance?

OK, last thing for now. For examples sake you've got Yugoslavia at war with Bulgaria and Hungary. Then it decides to declare war on Greece!!!!! And then a few turns later declares war on Italy!!!!!! Is it a set random-ness for when a computer civ will declare war or is it modified for existing wars.

This time I'll stop now.

Regards

Steve

No worries. 'Nerfing' is lowering the beneficial numbers of a particular setting, stat, etc. It's counterpart when improving a number is called 'buffing.'

So, if I nerf the XP gain from Barracks, units will spawn with fewer XP than normal.

I agree with your thoughts on the 'defense vs. infrastructure' bombing. Unfortunately, there is no API method I can use to directly check to see if a bomber bombed a city. There are some other indirect ways of attempting this, but it introduces a dramatic increase in overhead (hence longer turn times for all civs), so I'm loathe to attempt it without some clear way of using the capability that doesn't represent a human player advantage.

There's only so much realism you can squeeze out of the Civ5 game engine...

The mod was delayed at least 1 week, as I attempted probably 50 different approaches to try and get the Germans to perform anything the even resembled a Blitzkrieg through France. Maybe 1 out of 10 test games would work. The rest of the time, it looks like WW1-redux.

Waffen SS units have a spawn formula, once Germany receives the appropriate prereq tech (Ops Research for Infantry and Modeling and Simulation for armor). Basically, the chance is the number of cities owned (implied division by 100). For example, if Germany owns 20 cities, there is a 20% chance a unit will spawn. There is a threshold, so the actual, possible percent chance ranges from 15% (minimum) to 50% (maximum). Also, it is possible for both units to spawn in the same turn.

Originally, I had these units only purchasable by Faith. Unfortunately, the game doesn't check if you have the prereq tech before it allows you to purchase, so I changed the spawn to the formula above. IIRC, the game also allows other players to purchase them with Faith, even though the units are restricted to Germany.

I may revisit this later, but it will take a lot of LUA to get it to work correctly, and I'm not sure how much it adds compared to the existing, working approach.


The odd declarations of war are by-products of all the other DoW's the mod forces on Civs. These original DoW's are required by the scenario (we have to start WW2 somehow) - and they send the normal game warmonger values skyrocketing. These values are also nerfed from the normal game settings, but there is still some in the mod. Even after a few turns, everyone kind of hates everyone else. Sort of like it was historically...

When a major combatant launches a Combat OP against a civ they are not at war with, a new DoW will be launched. There is also a small chance that any AI "friends" (civs that have a declaration of friendship, open borders, or defensive agreement) of that attacking civ may also declare war (about 20% chance, IIRC).

Additionally, during any even numbered game turn, there is a 10% chance an AI civ will declare war against any civs that any of their "friends" are at war with. There is a limit of 1 DoW per turn.

I realize this creates lots of wars being declared, but overall, I'm pretty happy with how this dynamic "feels" correct, given the barbaric nature of the times. Before I added all of these forced DoWs, often in test games, the main war would kick off, then no one else got involved at all. The game would run with just Germany, France, UK, and Poland at war. This didn't seem right either, historically. So, if it seems a little too brutal, I'd much rather it err on that side than the overly peaceful side.

No one wants to play a hard-core WW2 mod where they're simply improving their rail network, farm tiles, and trying to stay out of the war. I think... 😁

Hi S-Man

Thanks for all these replies. I shouldn't be asking these questions as it is taking you away from that next mod you're working on?

I've noticed that Adolph, when an AI, doesn't use the double attack. I'm guessing because it takes quite a bit of experience to normally be able to acquire that promotion and AI players don't tend to have units survive that long. Therefore the AI doesn't have much of an idea about what to do.

But don't change it. It's great when I play as Germany.

Standard Civ offers the option when you re-capture someone else's to Liberate it. That option is missing in WWII. Is this because the scoring is based on cities captured and to give one away reduces your own chance of winning? It just seems a bit odd if Germany were to capture Paris, say, and Britain then capture it and keep it. Not how to keep allies happy I'd think.

I've also noticed in WWI and WWII that some resources have the wrong improvement, e.g. a Sheep resource and Camp improvement. Was this done to give those lazy workers something to do?

Regards

Steve

No worries. I'm updating some older mods these next few days, so there's no problems with taking a break every now and then...

Not sure why German AI armor units don't double attack, but I'm also not sure how much normal AI units use the Blitz promotion either. There's nothing in the mod that would prevent (or even discourage) them from doing so.

I know the AI keeps track of the relative danger a unit faces (how many enemy units are nearby and how strong they are) when deciding where to move units. I'm wondering if there is also something in the AI that makes a decision to preserve some unit health for counterattacks? I'm pretty sure they know how to use the promotion. But perhaps they have some rules about when to do so.

From what I've seen of other AI behavior with other promotions, once a promotion is given, it will be used normally. Have seen mods that award Level 4 or 5 promotions to new units, and they use them just fine.

As to 'capturing vs. liberating" cities. While it seems obvious Paris would have been turned over to the French in 1944, there were thousands of other towns, cities, villages, etc., that were effectively controlled by the conquering power while combat operations were ongoing.

In the mod, I've often seen British and French civs liberate the Dutch and Belgian cities. And IIRC, I've seen the Brits liberate French cities a time or two, but not terribly often.

I think it's fair to assume that allied civs can "temporarily for the sake of operational convenience" conquer allied cities, with the agreement to liberate those cities once the war / threat is over.

I'm sure there are a few settings that could be experimented with to perhaps change the way an AI civ decides to liberate or not, but TBH, I got rather sick of working on this mod, and simply don't have the wherewithal to dive back into it that deeply. Besides, how else will America ever fully participate in a European war without some kind of local infrastructure to support those efforts?

The incorrect improvements came from the original map I used in the scenarios. The original author left a huge amount of these boo-boos all over the place. I've fixed a few when I've found them, but don't have the time/patience/desire to dive back into Worldbuilder to address them fully. The interface to do so is quite painful to use, which makes it even less likely I'll ever take a look at it.

When I'm playing the mod for fun, my workers are spending all their time working on improving the railroad networks, so I can deploy forces more quickly throughout my lands, or quickly building Trenches and Bunkers where I expect the enemy to attack from. Additionally, if there's any strategic resource not exploited (usually this means Oil), I take care of this first. Those 4-10 turns of peace at the beginning of the game are quite important for things like these. But basically, if Workers aren't building railroads and bunkers all through the game, you're probably missing an opportunity.

Hi S-Man

I've given you a couple of days off, but here I am, back again.

This may be a "feature", or it may be a bug. Coastal Fortresses. Follow these steps and get a Full Spectrum Artillery unit much earlier.
a) Build a Coastal Fortress in a coastal hex without a road or railway.
b) Once built, then build a road in that hex.
c) Voila (as the Italians would say) you now have an artillery unit with range of 3 and movement of
2. Unfortunately it has XP of 0.

The following are just observations, not suggestions for change: -
1) Paratroop units do not paratroop very often even when they are thick on the ground. But they do keep me worried that they will drop somewhere I have no troops to deal to them
2) I finally saw a German Panzer unit do a double attack. It went through a French Partisan on the way to attacking BEF HQ.
3) The current game I'm playing has Belgium and Netherlands being liberated on a quite regular basis as ownership swaps back and forward. My thought is that when a game starts there are some settings that are set and will apply for the whole game. In this case "Liberate City States" will be set to Yes for Britain. Only way to find out is to have Britain capture both cities of one of these city states.

And finally a change request for WWI if you haven't already done it. Can the populations be set higher with the very poor growth rates like you have in both the Napoleonic and WWII mods? Currently one spends a lot of time rushing around with Workers building pastures, plantations, camps and mines to give the growing population something to do.

Regards

Steve

Thanks, @Steve - your comments are never a bother - usually something actionable in most everything you offer...

The Coastal Fortress upgrade is definitely NOT a feature - a huge bug if verifiable. I'm pretty sure I tested this to make sure Artillery doesn't show up early. Will test this again this weekend. "Luckily," I've got a few more bugs to address, so it will be a good time to look at this one more closely.

The only reason the AI uses Paratroops much at all is that most of the major combatants get a bunch of free ones. If I left it up to the AI (as was originally the case), you'd never see a Paratroop unit the entire game. And who would invade Crete then??? So, by giving Germany 10-20 of these units each game for free, it means the overall "flavor" of the mod historically improves a lot, even if that "balance" thingee suffers....

I wonder if the "AI Double Attack" decision has something to do with relative combat power? I.e., they'll double up a weak infantry unit, but not against a comparable Armor unit? Well, at any rate, it's great to get some confirmation that the Germans are using one of their combat benefits. Thanks for double checking that!

The only way to implement suggestion #3 is a lot of LUA code. I think I can do this, but it begs the question of expanding the discussion to city states outside of the Rhine valley. It's a good question, and implementing a solution isn't impossible, but the relative (and dynamic) politics between conquering powers and conquered city states varies throughout the game - (think Baltics vis-a-vis the USSR) - and delving into the Civ Diplomacy System (such that it is) has been problematic when I've used it in the past.

The main problem is there is only 1 tool to use to "influence" how one civ views another. It's used exclusively in the scenarios, so you can make one civ really hate another one throughout the game. Nuance is impossible, and all civs develop/adjust their own relationships based on how you make changes yourself.

It's how in the Covert Ops mod that you'd get a denouncement from a civ you'd never met. I used the Diplo system to make Civ A hate Civ B. Magically, Civ C would also hate Civ B, even though they were completely unmet at the time. And Civ C was quite vocal about it. In a way, it was like Civ C was reading all the Notifications on the side of the screen and had a fully-developed relationship with Civ B, and this is obviously a problem.

Not so much for this scenario, but in a normal map it's quite unuseful. It really is a "brain surgery with a chain saw" level of modding that ultimately leaves no one happy.

So... to make a long story longer.... Dynamic diplomacy is quite difficult with the single tool available, and the relationship understanding is so coarse between civs that it almost is useless even when used well. So, I'm not sure how far it is possible to push suggestion #3 beyond the use of a few heuristics, e.g. "all Freedom ideology civs always liberate, all Autocracy civs always conquer, and all Order civs go 50:50..." Or something along those lines.

Your point about removing Population growth in the WW1 scenario is 100% valid, and I've added that to the list of things to correct in the next version. For Napoleon? Man, I'm not sure I even remember how to mod that one! 😁 But if I ever do, I'd definitely add this change there as well.

I almost removed Workers altogether - was going to replace them with a "Combat Engineer" unit - which could only build a few things (fortifications, new improvements, oil wells, repair, etc.). The intent was to make sure they didn't take up too much of a player's time. But, when it magically dawned on me to kill Pop growth, it seemed unnecessary to make any changes. Hopefully most players will have figured out that there's no use in making a lot of new farms - because even if they build them, the people won't come...

Great feedback - keep 'em coming!

Hi S-Man

Never say "keep em coming". A red rag to a bull and all that stuff.

Re my previous point 3, don't bother doing anything. It was just an observation that Belgium and Holland started to get liberated. In my current game (as Italy) they aren't being liberated. As it appears to do one or the other I'm going to live with my thought that this is a game startup switch and doesn't change during the game. Not a biggy.

Again this isn't a biggy but until recently when a city was captured it was automatically Annexed. Now it is offering the Annex or Puppet decision. Helpful to puppet if you've nearly built the National College.

Twice I've seen it where a city's borders have changed. BEF HQ got captured by Germany then retaken by Britain. but instead of just being the one hex it also had the three adjoining hexes to the east. In the second instance Mogilev was recaptured by Russia and the two adjacent hexes to the west came with it. Not major and if anything adds a little interest that a province can change size when ownership changes.

Another of those strange things Civ5 does is that sometimes it forgets a river is present and German tanks can make two attacks across the river, or not bring you to a halt if you've crossed it. I'll try and test it further when next I'm Germany by seeing if a follow up unit can do the same thing. But from memory in one game I attacked a city twice with tanks across a river, pulled that unit back and brought another unit forward which was also able to attack twice.

Research Agreements and Spying time are, in my opinion, too long. Seventy odd turns for a Research Agreement, and a diplomat spying taking over 120 turns (in an 86 turn game!). I just don't bother with either. The 600 gold is better spent buying 2/3rds of an experienced unit. But if I were to ask for them to be changed I'd suggest a lower time scale for the RA, maybe the standard 30 turns but with a lower cost and payoff. That lets you do one with an ally, say, and renew it.

And finally this is a Civ5 thing and I call it predestination. It seems that actions and events are decided by Civ well in advance. As an example another Civ declares war on you. You go back and load the auto save from maybe 5 turns previous and work through those 5 turns again. And again the other Civ declares war at the exact same time. You can sometimes change the result by moving lots of troops to that border and that changes the equation.

Another example is in WWII where I hadn't done a backup for three turns when it crashed. More on the crash in a minute. So I reloaded and redid what I was doing as Turkey for those three turns and AI civs did virtually the same things. I noticed this because those German tanks re-did a couple of strange moves that attracted my attention.

The crash. All my crashes occur in the diplomatic dialogue screen. Either after you've made your reply the text box disappears and you're left with just the civ leader, or the text box is still there but it ignores your cursor clicking away on your answer.

So out of all that the only suggestion is changing the Research Agreement time scale.

Regards

Steve

P.S. your Napoleonic mod already has the population growth mod.

A red rag to a bull and all that stuff.

If you say so.... Personally, I usually find 2-3 nuggets out of every one of your posts. For example - you mentions the Research Agreement pacing. This is something I'd completely ignored (tech stealing as well) - as I was trying to minimize this game dynamic due to the short nature of the scope (7 years).

This got me thinking, though - of why not re-calibrate these so a Civ could complete 1-2 RA's a game, and perhaps steal 1-2 techs? It will take some experimentation, but it's certainly doable. And after reading your comments, it may even be desirable. My biggest concern is to make sure it isn't toooo much of a benefit for the major combatants at the expense of the minor combatants.

So - I appreciate these kinds of suggestions, as I think it helps me figure out ways to expand the playability and perhaps fun of the mod.

There's little I can do about how tiles are parceled out when a city is captured. Actually, it's not true - I can completely restrict this, as I do when the USA joins the Allies. The UK hands over 4 different "RAF Bases" - so the USA can move planes from the New World to the Old. And even conduct some air operations once they get there. The the mod changes ownership, those "cities" want to take several tiles with them, so I had to introduce a function that prevents this and keep those tiles as British.

Still, even if it's possible, I'm not sure how deep I'd follow-through with it. If a few tiles of E. France go with the BEF HQ, I suppose that's OK. Heck, that city was only introduced in the WW1 scenario due to the lack of range on early aircraft. But with the more modern birds, you can reach all over France and half of Germany from bases in England. So, the need for that HQ is really no longer there. Perhaps I should remove it in the future?

The rivers on the map are often buggy. This is a residual artifact from the original map I inherited. There are probably more than a few rivers that simply aren't contiguous due to errors on the original map. I've fixed a few of these, and tried to make many of the rivers in central Europe look at least a little like they do on real maps, but TBH, there is still work to do on that...

"Predestination" is more better explained as "predictability." Remember, AI is designed as a "rules-based" design. If A is true, then do B. True, there are probably a couple of thousand of these rules, but basically if you do about the same things on your end, the AI should do about the same things on theirs. It's that coarse. Assigning any deeper machinations on the AI's part is probably not especially descriptive of what's going on inside the black box.

I've often had to use "curve balls" during testing to get around crash situations. That process works.

The thing that scared me the most, though, is this "diplomatic screen bug." I've never seen it in testing, and am struggling to figure out what in the mod could even cause such a thing. It would be most helpful if you could post your Lua.log file to the collaboration site - perhaps a smoking gun is in there to help me figure out what's going wrong.

The site link:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/smans-the-world-at-war-scenario-the-war-in-europe-ww2.641927/

Hi S-Man

Firstly the diplomatic screen bug. I take it the Lua.log you want is the one in the logs folder called Lua and is 1kb in size? I went to the site link but couldn't figure out what I should do once there. Also do you want the Lua.log immediately after a crash?

Coming back to my predestination thing. The game as Turkey I mentioned previously that crashed did so both times in the same diplomatic screen. Hitler had sent an offer and after replying the crash (or lockup if you prefer) happened leaving me looking at Hitler looking at me. When I reloaded and played through the three turns I'd lost Hitler once more sent me the same message and it crashed. Should I reload it and try a chat with Hitler from my end and see if that either triggers the crash or clears whatever the "thing" is?

A laugh on Liberation of a city. As Italy I had captured Narbonne. A British unit next door promptly recaptured it. So like any rapacious empire-builder I took it off Britain and was asked if I wanted to Liberate the city and return it to France.


As for the coastal fortress and air defense bunker producing an actual unit, I experimented today and this is what I got: -
a) build the fortress in a hex with no road/rail, then
b) build a road/rail and the shootey bit in the fortress converts to a standard unit (Artillery or Anti Aircraft Gun).
Or ...
c) build the fortress in a hex with a road/rail, then
d) remove the road/rail and the shootey bit in the fortress converts to a standard unit.

Neat huh? (Definitely a feature for the human player to combat those cheating AI Civs).


When I send my Propagandist around converting captured cities to my doctrine does this have any effect?

Research Agreements don't say what the boost of Science was when they complete. Civ5 doesn't say either and I usually forget to look when I know a RA is about to complete so I can do a rough calculation of what is was worth. But even that isn't of great use because I assume the amount would increase the further along the game is. 1,000 science in the 20th century isn't much but in the Renaissance would be awesome.

Sea areas included in the boundaries of a country can block off naval travel. For example in WWII Britain cannot move units between Gibraltar/Malta/Alexandria because the sea areas between Tobruk and Crete, and Spain and French North Africa are claimed. So without Open Border agreements you're stuffed. I have a vague memory of maps having a string of hexes that couldn't be claimed by anyone.

Another vague memory thing is that XP could be bought. I'm back to those starting units with 0 XP but a move 2 purchased unit can have 45. Not sure if this would work better than your idea of variable XP allocations to starting units.

In a recent game when I played as Germany by the end of 1942 I had captured Russia (with help from Finland and Romania), Norway (Haakon shouldn't have declared war), all of Metropolitan France except for three southern cities (Italy was working along the North African coast), half of Yugoslavia (the rest going to Hungary and Italy), had reached the Aegean Sea, and captured SE Britain including London. I wasn't going to lose so stopped and moved on to another civ.

But could there be a trigger event that gave a major civ (not the minors) a boost of troops / gold to try and keep them in the game? Thinking of Russia getting its Siberian army in the winter of 1941-42 after Germany reached Moscow. Possibly the "Empire Stands Forth" if London were to be captured. etc. Or maybe just linking it to when a civ declares an arbitrary ceasefire. That makes it safer than the player being able to game the situation by say capturing all of Russia except Moscow.

And finally why does Germany create Militias? OK, everyone seems to but why would a rampant Germany? I notice most of them are produced by captured cities. Is the Militia the default production type? I usually go for Courthouse, then Monument (2 more culture), and other buildings depending on what got destroyed. And if its a small city maybe straight to Wealth or Science once I have the Courthouse.

Sitting in front of the screen watching the AI players have their turn gives me lots of time to notice little bits and make notes for when next I write to S-Man.

Regards

Steve

Maybe add in sniper units into the game, snipers are ranged units with extremely weak regular combat but decent damage against infantry, they would also have 2 range and deal alot less damage against tanks, naval, embarked, armored, cities, and aircraft units, basicly being only useful against artillery, AA/AT guns, and infantry/paratroopers/marines. At a later tech in the game they can be upgraded to an Anti armor sniper with a little more defence strength, more damage, and a high increase in damage against everything it was weak against attacking (except for aircraft and cities). Snipers in general take alot more production/coin to produce but also gain more experience. Finland would get their own special sniper that gets the very similar buffs to the danish-norwegian ski units and a slight increase in stats/reduction in cost.

Snipers overall wouldnt be able to be mass produced due to a high cost to produce and their weak defence capabilities, however if used correctly they would be able to target specific high value targets like artillery or infantry in well defended positions, and later on able to support infantry with their attacks on stronger tanks. Just as long as they arent op i think they would shake up the gameplay a little bit, but the biggest ditractor i see is the AI being dumb and not using them correctly or spamming them and having them all be wasted.

Oh and also do you think you could have city states start with all buildings from ancient era to either the medieval/renaissance era since they pretty much start with nothing and it makes them really not useful.

Edit: mod overall is really cool and feels nicely balanced, the only thing else i have to say is that its annoying that every civ either picks autocracy or order and that none of the "democratic" nations ever pick freedom.

After my first playthrough I have a few thoughts to share...

1. This is by far the best mod I ever played in Civ 5 and I have around 5k play hours and played a lot mods. It is thoughtful, great balanced, and the flavor with all the special units is fantastic. So, congrats on this awesome work, SMAN!

2. I played as Germany and never had one Waffen SS unit..and I had all the techs needed, but not a single Waffen SS unit showed up, no tanks, no infantry.

3. I was wondering, why the population has been downgraded so much...there are so many cities and if you had normal or even better population growth, all those empty tiles could have been worked on. It would have been so much fun to figure out, how these cities would run best...with more population.

Just my 2 cents..

Regards,

Sharn

Hi All

I welcome Chad and Sharn to the S-Man / Steve discussions.

Sharn: -
I haven't seen a Waffen SS unit in any of my Germany's either. But when playing as Italy I saw they had 5 tank and one infantry Waffen SS divisions as of mid 1943.

Re population. The mod covers seven years. Populations are not going to change much in that time. But look at it from the other angle. You can take population off farms producing food only and use them in specialist buildings to boost production and science. I try to create at least 5 engineers and use them to speed the production of wonders.

S-Man: -
Hi
Re Sharn's Waffen SS observation. I think this can be summed up for all players as : - me playing Germany; Germany has Waffen SS; me wants Waffen SS. Rather than having a spawn chance how about just producing one (spawn chance 100%) every say six turns after the requisite tech is achieved. As compensation deduct say 5,000 gold from Germany's starting gold. Lose gold up front but get free units as time goes by. So if Modelling & Simulation is taken as the starting free technology then the first Waffen SS armour would appear in June 1939. I would though want to put a maximum on the number of them active at any time as there weren't all that many as a percentage of land units.

I'm playing Germany at present and to make things easy I invaded The Netherlands and Belgium early. Unfortunately WWII started soon after and I wasn't able to get myself set up on France's northern border. Should I even be allowed to declare war on these city-states?

City Defence Strengths. Putting a unit into the city increases it's defence strength by very little: - infantry by 14 (20% of it's 70 combat strength), armour by a lower % and artillery adds no extra strength. In a WWII setting a city should have a minimal intrinsic defence value - a wall and a city militia may have a value in the Renaissance but are virtually worthless in the 20th century. Can their relative values be reversed? An intrinsic defence value set by population and army units given much greater defence values. At present I avoid leaving any units in cities as they add little to the city's defence but puts them at risk of being lost if the city is captured.

Regards

Steve

P.S. Boy, does that Hitler cheat when an AI. 70 Panzers and lots of airforce. Where does all that oil come from?

Hello,

thanks for the warm welcome, Steve. *smiles*

Would like to answer some of your points:

1. Waffen SS
Would appreciate your proposal with the 100% very much and made the same observations as I was playing Italy.

2. Population
I see your point and surely you are right with the timeframe. I was just asking, because if you take it the other way round, you have a lot more possibilities. Imagine every city has a population of..say 30...you could use alle the space and often 2 or more cities have the some sqaures to work at, so you have to decide, which city may work this tile.
Another problem I saw would be solved either with this method. Often cities got captured and recaptured...and again..etc. Each time a city is captured, the population drops by 2 and if the city has 6 or 8 population at the beginning, this city is nearly useless after capture and recapture, because the growth rate is much too slow. And a city with a population of 1 or 2 will contribute very little to your cause. I surely would prefer if all the cities had much more population so you have to balance it.
(Heck, I even would do it myself, if I know how to change these values...;)

3. Steve, as you played Germany and invaded NL and BEL, did you have any buildings in the cities you captured? I played it the same way and I had no buildings at all in all the cities. I wonder if this is by default or if this is the punishment for invading so early in the game...

Best regards,

Sharn