Posts made by RogerCooper

@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@The_Good_Captain I have been following this discussion with interest as I work on my East & West mod for TripleA. It is basically working, but I am using the Big World map rather than the East & West map. I have started the process of creating a new map.

I also noticed that the best of use of Nukes is to hit the counterattack force, when I playing against the AI.

Which side is nuking who and where? Be advised, you cannot attack a territory on the same turn that territory was nuked.

I have no way of enforcing in TripleA that you can’t nuke and conventionally attack. The best I can achieve is that conventional forces can’t fire in the first round.

As a player, on any side, I find nuking counterattack forces is best. This is true for other mods with similar rules like The Grand War.

The AI in TripleA does not generally buy nukes. When it has them, it generally tries to inflict the maximum PU loss, rather than integrating the attack with other tactics.

@SuperbattleshipYamato The TripleA mod does not fully implement the rules and the AI has problems (it doesn’t retreat out of losing battles during its turn). It is still fun to play.

@The_Good_Captain I have been following this discussion with interest as I work on my East & West mod for TripleA. It is basically working, but I am using the Big World map rather than the East & West map. I have started the process of creating a new map.

I also noticed that the best of use of Nukes is to hit the counterattack force, when I playing against the AI.

I have a request then. Can you make the random tech and neutrals being handed out through random events an optional rule? Or just leave it out? In this way, we can use the EDIT mode and layer them in using an independent dice roller.

Same with the Major Neutrals. Edit mode to the rescue is A-okay with me.
I will probably handle as a separate scenario without tech & gaining minor neutral control.

@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper I forgot there even was an option for AI in TripleA. I think you’re doing the lords work just to make the TripleA align with the rules. WELL DONE @RogerCooper

This is going be more inspired by East & West than a port of East & West. The complex tech & espionage rules can’t be done in TripleA. I am just randomly giving out tech & neutrals through events.

The major neutrals are also an issue. I think that it works better to make them distinct powers rather than awarding their units & territories to the major powers. Having China as Russian ally and OAS as Western ally seems natural. The problem is that whoever gets the Arab League wins. My probable solution is to give the Arab League to the Eastern alliance and suggest playing the West with an income bonus.

@FranceNeedsMorePower I doubt that it will ever be done. There are a number of mods that implement Axis & Allies: D-Day some form but no one ever made the engine mods needed to have all the rules.

You can check this thread https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/4074/north-africa-triplea-module?_=1750968264860

@The-Janus I have almost finished, the preliminary version of East & West in TripleA.

The TripleA AI does not make good use of nukes and generally will not buy them. I do see that Russia has an advantage with its cheap infantry and central position.

@FranceNeedsMorePower There are people working on it, but North Africa differs a lot from the mainstream A&A games and would require significant changes in the game engine.

To me, Axis & Allies is WW2 in afternoon. The additional play interest and historicity of every rule needs to be balanced against complexity and time burden.

I have find that the political rules in the Global game, add substantial complexity with adding much to interest of historicity. It would have been better to have political events occuring at specific turns.

The recent North Africa game was also burdened by too many rules. All though, the individual mechanisms were interesting & historical, overall there was too much going on, too many little things to keep track of.

@barnee I will use an option on the defense strength of tanks, with a default of 3. I have started working on this for a bit every day. Right now I am adapting everything to the Big_World map. When that is done I will create a custom map for East & West.

@RogerCooper East & West has a rule that allows tanks to move out of a territory in non-combat movement. As TripleA does not support this, should I just ignore it or increase the defense of tanks to 3 in compensation?

@The-Janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

is there any plausible reason to attack a major neutral except maybe USSR attacking the Arab league?

It’s kinda been theorized that USSR might want to attack China, in certain situations.

If China isn’t defending North Korea, or worse, if they’re actively letting NATO move units through their territory, the USSR might be better off attacking.
The other thing is that the complication table is weighted more toward China’s outrage than the other 2 majors, so if the USSR has the ability to send nukes, it’s also generally assumed that they will, whereas the US is less likely to use them; in a long enough game, that will swing China towards favoring NATO, so the USSR might pre-empt that at some point.

The other option is as a game-ender, towards obtaining an economic victory. In fact, such a thing is probably pretty impossible without invading most of the neutrals on the Eurasian continent.

P.S. I still think modeling neutral contributions as N.O.'s is an option to keep in mind

Implementing the complication table would be difficult. The game rules already suggest dropping the complication table as an optional rule. Note that it would be possible to use having a nuclear weapon as trigger but not using a nuclear weapon. I think that in practice the high cost of nuclear weapons is more of a deterrent than the nuclear complication rules.

Using National Objectives for neutral contributions is fine.

@RogerCooper After reviewing maps, I concluded that the East & West map is closest to the TripleA Big World map, so I will implement it first on Big World and then use the actual map.

In terms of neutral handling I see the following possibilties

• Major neutrals impassable except that Russia may attack the Arab League.

• Major neutrals are fully playable and can be allied through the diplomacy technology table.

• Major neutrals can be allied through the diplomacy technology table and are absorbed into the allying power. They are impassable until then.

@The-Janus So is there any plausible reason to attack a major neutral except maybe USSR attacking the Arab league? It sounds like there isn’t . Which is easy enough to handle in a scenario.

It seems a shame to have deployments defined for major neutrals, and not get to use them.

As always, I can have multiple scenarios which handle the major neutrals differently.

@The-Janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
Have you considered the knock-on effects of changing those mechanics?
Would you want China and OAS to become active powers?
Or would they just swing all their income, units, and territories to USSR/USA in one dice roll?

I was assuming they would become active powers on their own. But that is not the only possibility. You could have them join the power recruiting them.

The problem with E&W rules for neutrals is that they are just passive sources of income, that can also be attacked. That is not very interesting.

We could also try eliminating major neutrals entirely. The major neutrals could be handled like minor neutrals and recruited through technology or events. That is arguably more realistic and probably more interesting with wars breaking out in unexpected places.

@The_Good_Captain Tech will be optional

@The-Janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

you either get them or you don’t

You’re going to have to unpack what you mean by that.
If China is allowed to effectively be a 16 IPC swing on a random die roll, I’m calling bullshit.

When you “get” a major neutral, would you get all of their units/territories? Or if they can still be influenced back to the other side, are you basically suggesting we compress the 9-point influence scale down to just 3 (positive, neutral, negative)?

Yes, you are correct I am proposing effective a 3 point scale.

An alternative would be variable entry. China always comes on the Soviet side, OAS on the NATO side. The Arab League would still be random.

As this a mod, I could have different scenarios with different rules.

Looking at the East & West rules, it seems unlikely that you could ever bring a major neutral over. You only have a 1/6 chance to move it one step and your opponent can deploy spies to counter you.

As E&W is set in 1948, the Chinese Civil War is still raging and a Nationalist victory possible.

@The-Janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper said in “East & West” by Imp Games - Discussion:
It’d be interesting if you could also code in Nuclear Subs being able to go under the ice cap? Maybe there’s a way to model it as a strait/canal, to make that work.

I could add an ice cap territory. However, I doubt that it would have a significant effect on play

The problem that immediately jumps off the page to me, is that you couldn’t throw the two types of A-bombs into a tech pool, and have it work out with just random rolling; I assume that might tie into this comment?

I would implement nuclear weapons using the rules from the “The Grand War”.

I’m not familiar with how that game does it. I also would have to assume that the nuclear complication table is off the… well, table.>
TripleA can support tech trees. The nuclear complication table is off the table. As the Soviets would also start with fission bombs, there is not much point to creating a tech tree.

From my experience with Europe 1940, I think you would have to treat each major neutral similarly to how the “true neutrals” are modeled, in that game i.e. declaring war on one declares war on all. Activating the neutral units properly RAW is going to be the real problem, I’d imagine – just based on how in A&A games everything is dependent on moving units into those territories, whereas in E&W it’s not. The other thing you could maybe do is represent the income provided by the major neutrals as “National Objectives” that you achieve through spying… assuming there’d be a way to code those two systems to interact together.>

The major neutrals would be handled as separate countries that could be allied with. I am not going to try handle the multi-step process of getting neutrals, you either get them or you don’t. However, rolls on the diplomacy table are more likely to get minor neutrals than major neutrals.

An interesting question is what to do if you gain the support of a major neutral that is already allied with your opponent. Does it?

• Have no effect
• Go back to neutrality
• Flip immediately to the new alliance

All of these are interesting possibilities.

@The-Janus Your MSpaint version is good starting point for me.

@The-Janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

My plan is to starting by implemented East & West rules on an existing map and then using the East & West map, thereby creating two mods. I see people have tried the Classic, Revised and Global maps. I was thinking of the Anniversary map or the Big World map from TripleA.

As was mentioned here and there a few times, it appears to me that the map most closely resembles Xeno Games’ World at War (particularly the delineation of sea zones); if a map and/or module exists somewhere for that game, that would probably be the best place to start. Otherwise, of the A&A maps I’m familiar with, I’d say Revised is probably the closest; the ruleset obviously most closely resembles Classic, but there are also a few W@W-isms.

My hunch is that some of the technologies (and maybe the spying) will be the hardest to implement; the other hang-ups (also mentioned earlier in this thread) would be not allowing allies to land planes in newly-captured territories, as well as the ‘universal’ infantry placement rule. Also, tanks being able to move on non-combat and combat movement is pretty unique, for A&A; the submarine rules were also a bit of a stumbling block, since they’re not entirely clear.

Were there any specific rules questions you had about E&W?

There is World at War mod for TripleA, but the map does not resemble East & West.

The tech rules and the espionage rules would not be possible to implement in TripleA. What I was thinking of doing was using the WW2V3 (Anniversary Edition) tech model and giving some free tech tokens out to each nation.

You would select the type of advance you are looking for. Each of technologies would be padded with free units to prevent overly fast advances. For example,

Submarine Technology

• Snorkels (subs immune to air attacks)
• Nuclear Power (subs move 3)
• Cruise Missile (subs bombard at 2)
• Receive 1 free submarine
• Receive 2 free submarines
• Receive 3 free submarines

Spies would be implemented as a technology list. The diplomacy would have all 3 major neutrals and the 14 minor neutrals. If you receive that “tech”, you gain control of the neutral (as long as it still is neutral).

I would implement nuclear weapons using the rules from the “The Grand War”.