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Great game - suggestions for improvement

Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 1:46 pm
by FOARP
First off: congratulations to the Lordz development team on an absolutely awesome game. For ages I've been hoping that someone would develop a decent World War One game - one with the kind of open-ended game play that you see in Paradox's Hearts Of Iron, for example, and this game delivers that.

Secondly, having played around with the game a bit, I've got some ideas for improving the game that I hope might be taken into consideration:
  • 1. Like a lot of people, I've managed to work out how to ensure an early victory for either side, I've taken to declaring war on Spain/the Netherlands (a reverse Schlieffen plan is a beauty to behold) in order to even things up a bit and add an extra theatre to the war. This makes for a decent alt-history challenge, and I'd like to see some way of making the game throw up these kinds of challenges without having to rig it myself. This could be done through the use of diplomatic influence points given for each friendly capital held to bring some countries - but not ultra-neutral countries like Switzerland - into your alliance or something. This would greatly add to re-play value.

    2. Reduce the home port bonus range. ATM it's possible for the Austrians, for example, to dominate the Adriatic based simply on holding Split. Really, if this bonus is just a reflection of the advantages given by being able to lay minefields around home ports and so-forth, it should only be 1 hex.

    3. Make air units sea-transportable. American air units should arrive in Europe.

    4. Great Britain should send support to the Spanish if they are at war with Germany after a German conquest of France, but currently doesn't.

    5. Great Britain shouldn't pile up so many units in Egypt - ATM there are so many it can't even move the artillery close enough to the Turkish lines in Sinai.

    6. Independence events for at least Ireland, Poland, and the Ukraine, similar to that for Finland - however these states should not be neutral but should align with the Central powers.

    7. The game ends too early - it should run until the start of 1920 at least, and preferably until the start of 1921. As it is there isn't time to research e.g. railway guns from a 1914 game-start, or enough time to invade the USA after conquering Spain and the UK.

    8. Ports should give full supply to units belonging to the port-owner. As it is amphibious operations in areas without capital cities (e.g., North Africa, Ireland, any of the smaller islands) suffer from half supply.

    9. Railway guns should be easier to research - like I said, from a 1914 game start with one research lab for artillery you should have them by 1918 but ATM you don't.

    10. Consider making Canada a separate country - yes it had dominion status and not full independence, and the Canadian corps fought under British command, but it just feels wrong to have the British flag flying over Ottawa at that time.

Re: Great game - suggestions for improvement

Posted: Mon Dec 24, 2012 2:38 pm
by FOARP
An additional point:

11. Enemy capitals should not give full supply. If I've managed to cut off the entire German army in Belgium, I should not have to then fight them as if they were in full supply simply because they are holding Brussels!

Re: Great game - suggestions for improvement

Posted: Wed Dec 26, 2012 7:37 am
by soldier
5. Great Britain shouldn't pile up so many units in Egypt - ATM there are so many it can't even move the artillery close enough to the Turkish lines in Sinai.
Along the lines of this suggestion is the way the Italian AI sends many units to France. I managed to break through Italy very easily in a sort of practice campaign even though i only had garrisons in the border towns when their declaration of war came through. Even though the Italian front was collapsing fast i kept encountering Italian soldiers in France. To be honest the French were also in a bit of trouble so it could of just been a general sign of a deteriorating western front.

Hopefully the AI can improve where it sends its national units, which i think is a weak area in an otherwise pretty solid system

Re: Great game - suggestions for improvement

Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2012 12:49 pm
by marklv
I don't understand why the game has to automatically end in January 1919. Seems really stupid to me. Can you extend another year and a bit, to say, November 1920? I would also like to see a scenario for the Russian Civil War, and also the possibility of Austria bribing Italy and Romania with territory to get them to stay neutral.

Re: Great game - suggestions for improvement

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 5:12 am
by Hammer4000
If you don't want the game to end automatically at the start of 1919, you need to edit the file game_victory_conditions.lua in the folder Commander The Great War/Data/Scripts/Game (using Notepad or something similar).

About 2/5 of the way down, under the header "Terminal condition - achieving this ends game" there's a line that says
"if game.date.year == 1919 then". Change "1919" to some other year, or if you don't want the game to end at all, you can put in a really big number or something less than 1914.

Now you can have the satisfaction of actually beating the opposing alliance into submission. Hopefully

Re: Great game - suggestions for improvement

Posted: Sun Dec 30, 2012 11:13 pm
by Samhain
Now I know how to open a lua file. Thanks. :)