old Potzblitz thread (discontinued)

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Robotron
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old Potzblitz thread (discontinued)

Post by Robotron »

*********************************************************************************************************************
This version of the mod is obsolete, please visit the other thread for the current version
**********************************************************************************************************************
Last edited by Robotron on Tue Aug 04, 2020 1:05 pm, edited 122 times in total.
Sabratha
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by Sabratha »

Seeems interesting, especially the events.

Please let me know in case you find a way to change the "original hex owner" parameter. I could use that a lot.
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by BuddyGrant »

Interested:-)!
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by operating »

Robotron

Were you able to make changes to the map? For instance; Tallinn port blocking way to St. Pete's and/or visa-versa if CP captures Tallinn, a port to the east of Constantinople, clearing the way for CP convoys to exit Norway in 1915 to 17 scenarios?

All in all your Mod sounds excellent! Think Zep range is too far, agree on price. manual or auto convoys? Do attacking units lose 3 efficiency during attack or after attack is resolved, (maybe I'm reading that wrong)? Is it possible for a nation to gain back NM it once lost? Can dreadnaughts hit 2 hexes inland? Are battlecruisers a buildable unit or upgradable? Has anything changed with #'s RRs, transports, ammo stockpiles (ie; to start with, costs to attain, ect.)?

Am I to understand: That there are more scenarios than stock scenarios? If so, this is going to be one massive mod! Hallelujah... :)

Congratulations,, Bob
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by Robotron »

@Sabratha: I'm just as clueless on how to edit the map as everybody else. Let's hope the devs release that editor however uncomfortable to use it might be. :|

@operating: regarding your questions:

This mod will only cover the 1914 scenario but I might have a look into the other scenarios at some point

Automatic convoys as per usual.

Unit will lose 0,3 efficiency when moving. They will use the normal amount when attacking.

Yes, national morale can be regained as usual, mostly by having a good ratio between casualitites vs. kills as per the normal rules in the script.

Battlecruiser are a new unit on their own.

Dreadnoughts and Battlecruisers can hit 2 hexes inland. I'm still not sure, if this is too much regarding game-balance. From a realism perspective it surely seems way too much.

Railroads and ammo starting values will be the same.


At the moment I'm trying to find a way to make the AI more challenging either by including more scripted moves or by readjusting the calculations for front prioritizing but those scripts are a complete hell to understand.
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by nehi »

quite interesting, but boosting navy will just doom cp more

range 2 especially inland with that navy superiority...

ammo needs to be cheaper and/or more accessible, to balance nerfed airforce or stalemate will be unevitable and forever (ok, just to the point entente will use their navy and balloons properly)
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by operating »

In reference to NM, what I meant is: When a side (nation) loses a city, that sides' NM receives a -5 NM or greater "permanently", even if the city is recaptured by its owner, or it's owner's side. Has this formula changed?
Robotron
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by Robotron »

operating wrote:In reference to NM, what I meant is: When a side (nation) loses a city, that sides' NM receives a -5 NM or greater "permanently", even if the city is recaptured by its owner, or it's owner's side. Has this formula changed?
That NM loss is never permanent, you can always regain lost NM, therefore I will not change the moral hit for losing citys.

To be more specific: NM ist calculated by the following factors:

- city loss events ("Paris Captured", "Warsaw Captured" etc.)
- other events (mostly minor effects)
- army strength VS max army strength (strong effect), meaning: build the biggest army possible to get maximum morale boost
- kills/casualties (modifier to army strength > the worse army performs, the weaker the effect of army strength)

Total NM = sum of all above.

Hope this helps.
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by nehi »

and russia definitely dont lose 5 per city, even majority of french cities do less

but "event" cities and fortresses do a lot

btw its complicated to prolong scenarios turn limit? i like kaiserschlacht (1918), but its really impossible to win it as entente in 20 turns vs any opponent (vs ai its a piece of cake)
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by kirk23 »

Robotron wrote:Hi folks!

For the last six months I've been tinkering around with the scripts to make my own mod, called "Potzblitz" (which could be roughly translated as 'cor blimey!' a favourite saying of Emperor Wilhelm II ).
This mod is for the PC Version of the game. Maybe you are interested?

Image


It features the following changes:

Gameplay:
- no free upkeep, factions income adjusted accordingly
- small garrisons cost no upkeep
- winter may begin in november and may last until april (10% chance for each)
- commanders can be killed in battle (8% chance if commander's unit is destroyed) or by events
- moving units lose 0,3 efficiency
- home port bonus and naval home region bonus halfed
- fortress bonusses slightly reduced
- new cities: Ypres, Dresden, Lublin, Radom, Byalistok, Pristina, Anzac Beach, Mainz, Ossowitz, Lotzen, Trabzon, Bitlis, Dvinsk, Polotsk and some more
- convoys now give between 10 and 100 PPs and between 5 and 20 manpower if undamaged, less if they took a hit
- every country gains 2% of it's manpower value per round as bonus to manpower (thanks to Historicon for the hack)
- as long as the North Sea Blockade is in effect, Germany and Austria-Hungary will lose morale due to hunger which will be insignificant at the start of the game but will grow worse and worse. This can be (theoretically) countered by building enough naval forces to force a decisive defeat upon the Royal Navy. Once the US enter the war this will become almost impossible, so you better win the war FAST as the Central Powers!
- AustriaHungary will start with more hitting power vs the Serbs but even less troops at the russian front. Russia will have more troops gathered at the austrian border so you will really see Lemberg and Przemysl fall against the AI!
- Bulgaria will now join the Central Powers, if AH is doing good enough in Serbia. Capturing Belgrade and Kraljevo will trigger Bulgarian war entry given enough time. No more "red" Bulgaria, but watch out for Romania's (or Greece's!) reaction.

Units:
- artillery more powerful: basic strength raised from 3 to 5 which really makes them useful now, especially after the new upgrades. more BOOM! for your bucks
- Bombers were significantly toned down: no more shock! use less ammo though: 1 instead of 3 but take longer to research
- Zeppelins have more range and LOS now and lost 1 shock and got more expensive (40pp)
- Dreadnoughts have range and LOS 2 and use 2 ammo for bombardment (as do pre-dreads and Battlecruisers), cheaper and faster to build now (60pp/18 turns)
- Battlecruiser unit (by Kirk23): stat-wise a hybrid of pre-dreadnoughts and dreads...strong enough to sink everything but real dreads, fast and cheaper than dreads and have LOS of 3
- fighters reduced to 0 ground attack and 0 shock until further techs unlocked (no more stuka fighters!)
- submarines have been beefed up (especially with unlocked sub techs) but cost is raised from 22 to 30
- light cruisers are now submarine killers with sub-attack of 8!
- armoured trains come with 2 shock and better attack and defense, cheaper too (20pp, was 25)
- Arab Cavalry has extra shock, lower ground attack but fastretreat like armoured cars now (still can only be built by Arabs or by Britain after the "Kuwait Revolt" Event has fired)



Techs:

All tech research times adjusted, starting techs modified
- industrial warfare defense bonus raised from 4 to 6
- steel helmet lost 1 aussault but gained 1 ground defense
- flamethrower gains 1 shock
- Poison Gas takes longer to research but Gas masks come earlier
- Artillery counter fire comes earlier

Events:

- 150+ new events some of which can branch out in many "what-if" scenarios according to the situation on the map or luck, including among many others:
Brussilov Offensive, Battle of Tannenberg, Siege of Verdun, Hunt for the "Emden" cruiser, German military mission to Turkey, Battle of Jutland, Hunger Crisis, Rasputin, Donation of Trento to Italy, War Propaganda, Serbian Typhoid Epidemic, War Bonds, Women in the Workforce, Spys and Counter-Spys, Battle of Sarikamis, Armenian Uprising, Arthur Bopp etc.

existing events have been totally overhauled and freed from several ugly bugs. Thanks go to Sabratha whose events I have also shamelessly included and expanded upon ;)

Commanders:
20 new commanders including Moltke, Ludendorff, Immelmann, Enver Pasha, Colmar von der Goltz, Putnik, Ivanov, Potiorek, Townshend, Liman von Sanders, Hipper, Von Spee (if he survives!), Souchon etc.
All the new and existing commanders stats have been carefully re-designed to reflect their impact on the war.


I would like to thank DanielHerr for the help he gave me to understand the scripts!


If you are interested, I will upload the mod and a PDF detailing the new events so you know what to expect.
Also I'd be glad to hear about what you think of the changes I made.

Cheers!
I have been away from the game,for a while now,and I'm very interested in your mod, is it available to download somewhere,also I would like to help the game,and its future development, so I'm open to any suggestions,and I offer my assistance,in an attempt to finally make this superb game,what it should have been from day one.
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by Robotron »

After much trying and testing (and frustration) I've decided to continue work on this mod with the aim of a 1914 scenario for singleplayer CP vs. the AI as the first design goal for the time being. I also took up chain-smoking again in the process, but this is just a side-effect of waiting for the AI to finally finish it's planning phase only to crash for the umpteenth time due to me messing with the scripts. ^^

All new features and events mentioned in the starting post are working well and will be included, apart from dreadnoughts, pre-dreads and battlecruisers having range of 2, which will be reduced to 1 again.
I'm also pondering about on whether to shorten the game to 1month/turn (with 1914 being played in the normal 2weeks/turn mode) to shorten the playtime as the game just takes too bloody long in my opinion.

My reasoning to release my mod as single player CP vs Entente AI:

- CP lost the war and everybody seems to like playing the losers, especially if they are the "bad guys", right?

- it takes more skill to win as the CP: they are the underdogs production-wise, even if playing vs the Entente AI you need more skill (or patience) to win than vice versa. Yet playing the "losing" side that is on the offensive (as in Axis & Allies, PG, PK etc.) is in my opinion always more interesting, which brings me to my next point:

- the AI in general is coded just too defensive to allow for a feasible singleplayer vs. the CP AI to be any challenge without coming up with some kind of plausible "handicap"-mechanism. Re-coding the AI is way beyond my skill, I only found some starting points adressing front bias and scripted moves...but for now it's just not working good enough. The AI-code is literally peppered with comments from former AI-coders about what would have to be altered for future releases just before said coders lost their minds, runnig off, probably screaming!

Also please consider: being unable to playtest the game without a proper two-player hotseat-mode, editor or even a possibility to show hex-coordinates and being able to move units at the same time is a cumbersome nightmare (which made me pause finishing the mod in the first place).

- multiplayer games just don't seem to happen, or do they? From what I read challenges are broken off by forgetful people or plain bad losers or never starting at all for technical reasons all the time or everybody is just exploiting any gameplay-gaps to the max, at least according to the AA-reports here on the forum. While I can't help against bad losers but can adress the exploitation things by altering units stats etc. , I personally see no point in putting effort into a multiplayer version if there are technical reasons marring the experience. Also I would like to get feedback from mulitplayer-players (yes, users nehi & operating I'm looking at you!) to come up with more ideas on how to balance things.

Call me lazy, but in my opinion there is NO way with the current state of the AI to create a SINGLE 1914 scenario that is challenging and/or balanced for both sides on singleplayer AND multiplayer at the same time.
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by nehi »

u r right about the ai, but its common (not just ctgw) that is better in defense than offense, its easier to set some rules how to do line of defense, but attacks needs more detailed planing (so i guess much more complicated algorithm, which cant be effective and fast enough both at once)

ive tried "All this madness" mod and i like its economy, u cant have there 30 airplanes and for me 10 is not spam, but maybe only way to cut through trenched infantries

i think production/small garrisons its only real problem of vanilla

as i said earlier, navy with range of fire 2 would be great advantage for entente, for example in belgium, now they can harras coastal hexes with 2 shots per turn on one hex, with longer range it could be 7 on same hex? unit there is technically dead

in my oppinion unit which need to be remastered is definitely artillery, 10 ammo per shot makes it just a bad joke

1 artillery shot vs 10 zeppelins, 1 art vs 10 cruisers, 1 art vs 3 dreads+1 cruiser = art is just too expensive fireworks (dont say its much harder set it to right position than range 16 balloons :lol: )

3 ammo per shot would be more reasonable (or some rebalancing in comparison to other ammo consuming units)

btw why are in 1.6 balloons so successful in reducing production? its almost 100%, in 1.5x it was different, dont say even ww2 carpet bombing wasnt so devastating

and last one tip, turkey is defenseless anyway, but they cant avoid coastal bombardment and it can hit their production at least by -24 (without firing theirs ancient muskets, they have to disband half army), so moving theirs production to inland cities would be nice
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by Robotron »

Finally found a way to force the Entente AI to properly use british troops to reinforce the western front and keep the russians from sending everything to the Caucasus vs. Turkey.

Further changes made:

- infantry cost 30 pp
- cavalry cost 25 pp, spotting range reduced from 3 to 2
- garrisons cost 15 pp
- fighters cost 35 pp
- armoured cars now have spotting range of 3 instead of 4
- air aces have been given a ground attack boost to compensate slightly for the reduced ground attack stats of fighters.

(bear in mind small garrisons will cost no upkeep and production values of all nations have also been changed!)

- Ammo factories have been reduced in cost as described in my other thread (formula is now 3 * (number of factories +1)) for each upgrade to compensate for the raised cost for mentioned units.

Finally got my act together and tested all the files I made changes to on a clean 1.6 .6 installation of the game. Looking forward to upload the complete mod (ca. 70mb) after some more playtesting during the course of the coming week.

Stay tuned! :)
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by AJE »

Will there be a downloadable version soon? Like nehi, I also agree that artillery ammo consumption is excessive. 2 offensive barrages should not cost your entire weekly production of ammunition.
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by Robotron »

Right now the only thing that keeps me from uploading the mod is a nasty bug in the new "kill commander"-function which was suddenly acting up (just as fellow forum-member DanielHerr had correctly anticipated) during my final testgame last night.
This has to do with the way the game stores information about the status of a given commander (locked, active, wounded or in this new case 'dead') in a table.

Below is the modified function which caused the game to crash around turn 50 after a few commanders had been killed.
The log mentions an "attempt to index a nil value" in the line reading "faction.luaData.commanders[commander.id].unit = nil" which is probably caused by altering the table structure by using "table.remove(faction.luaData.commanders, commander.id)". I interpret the error message that the game tries to set the info concerning the former unit of the commander to "nil" (nothing) but can't do so because that part of the table is no longer existing.

Code: Select all

   
function WoundCommander(commander, recoverTime)
local faction = game:GetFactionById(data.commanders[commander.id+1].faction)

if math.random(1,20) == 1 then
    table.remove(faction.luaData.commanders, commander.id)
    SetEvent("CommanderDeath", game.turn)

      else

      if recoverTime == nil then
        recoverTime = 3
      end
faction.luaData.commanders[commander.id].unit = nil
faction.luaData.commanders[commander.id].turns = math.random(recoverTime, recoverTime + 2)
end
end
Since I only have rudimentary knowledge about the inner workings of the Lua scripting language, this will delay the whole thing probably by a few days, I guess. :roll:
Last edited by Robotron on Sun May 01, 2016 8:38 am, edited 2 times in total.
nehi
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by nehi »

what about release it without killable commanders? its just minor factor
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by BuddyGrant »

Couldn't you change the code to something like this to accomplish what you are trying to do?

Code: Select all

if math.random(1,20) == 1 then
         SetEvent("CommanderDeath", game.turn)
         recoverTime = 500
         faction.luaData.commanders[commander.id].unit = nil
         faction.luaData.commanders[commander.id].turns = math.random(recoverTime, recoverTime + 500)
else

      if recoverTime == nil then
        recoverTime = 3
        faction.luaData.commanders[commander.id].unit = nil
        faction.luaData.commanders[commander.id].turns = math.random(recoverTime, recoverTime + 2)
      end


end
end
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by Robotron »

@BuddyGrant: no, or else the whole production tab would fill up with wounded commanders. :) But I think I found a solution, need only some more trial & error-testing. ^^
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by BuddyGrant »

Good luck!
Robotron
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Re: POTZBLITZ: a mod for CTGW

Post by Robotron »

Putting on the finishing touches on the mod took a little bit more time than expected because I couldn't resist fiddling with scripted AI moves (a thankless task...but I did my best) and doing silly stunts like trying to include special sound effects for events (which also proved to be an exercise in futility). But all other stuff now works flawlessly...finally! Only need a few more games for testing gameplay-balance (as in: CP AI still around in 1916). :P

new features:

- mod now selectable via scenario choice list
- hex coordinates displayed next to gameturn-counter
- game length reduced to 60 turns...starting with January 1915 each gameturn will represent a full month (tech research times adjusted accordingly)
- submarines get a D6 (meaning: between 1 to 6) bonus to attack-strength vs convoys and transports
- Air Aces can only be gained by researching techs or shooting down enemy aircraft...not by blasting air units with ground or naval units
- attacked or sunk convoys in the Baltic won't cause blockade to CP anymore
- all other CP convoys must be completely sunk to cause a blockade
- armoured trains use up 1 ammo (they are vastly upgraded and now serve as battering rams for entrenched cities and fortresses)
- ammo factories are way cheaper
- AI now forced to repair ships in ports
- certain commanders need techs to unlock
- new game mechanic: called "collapse points". Certain catastrophic events (generated by analysis of the situation on the map) now generate "collapse points". Any major nation with 10 or more collapse points really gets into deep(!) trouble. This mechanic is meant to rectify certain situations where a nation is still at high morale despite the general strategic situation indicating the contrary.
- tech research times (in turns) are now displayed in the main research panel too, not only in the small tech research tab at the bottom of the screen: no more ardous scrolling around searching for a certain nation's progress on a certain tech.
- 180+ new events
- 26 new commanders

Any suggestions where I could upload the mod? Filedropper.com seems a good site to me.

See ya!

ImageImage
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