Fall Weiss II - Pre-Release Thread

[crispy131313]

Over the weekend I've completed porting over Fall Weiss II onto the world map, making adjustments for the games unit scale etc. The mod was a big hit in SC WiE (over 76,000 reads on the forum) and I'm looking forward to playing on a world scale in PBEM.

The mod at this point is focused on:

- Building on the sandbox element of the game by increasing interaction with major-minor neutrals such as Spain, Turkey, Sweden, Portugal, Switzerland & Vichy France through trade agreements, military exports and what-if alliances.
- Focus on German economy, increasing the ability for the Allies to launch an economic war.

To date I have focused only on the Western Theater, and have a few ideas for the East which I will script as I play test to include in the initial version or version 2.0. I will have to play test for a bit before I find the right balance for diplomacy chits and research speed that fits with the mod.

As I begin play testing, I am open to any new ideas, particularly decision events that could be added into the game. Please feel free to throw out any idea!

[crispy131313]

Below are the 78 new (Yes/No) decision events to be included in Fall Weiss II. There are about 10 new ones that I still need to finish as part of updating the mod at a global scale, they are highlighted in italic. Some of the decisions can alter the course of the war significantly. For example the decision event An Alliance with Greece triggers 16 additional scripts, some of which can trigger additional scripts.

Truthfully it makes me really appreciate what Bill and Hubert have done! Overall I have written over 20,000 lines of new event scripts, and it is only a fraction of what the game already has, and I'm only able to have done it after recycling and slowly growing the mod since SC2.

UK:
The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance
Blockade American Imports To Spain
Reaction to the Blue Division
The Allies Jointly Pressure Turkey
Military Exports to Portugal
Military Exports to Turkey
Relations with Switzerland
Switzerland Ends Axis Relations
Relations with Portugal
Blockade Turkey
Training Norwegian and Danish Forces in Sweden
Upgrade Malta Garrison
Trade Agreement With Greece
Military Support of Greece
Deploy 1st Canadian Infantry
Secret Irish Protocol
Invasion of Norway
Mobilize the Whole Commonwealth
Crush Burmese Independence

USA:
Allies Jointly Pressure Turkey
Military Exports To Turkey
Commitments to Turkish War Entry
Military Exports to Sweden
Swedish Convoy To Germany
Lend Lease to Saudi Arabia
Oil Embargo on Japan
Unprovoked War Entrance

USSR:
Allies Jointly Pressure Turkey
Non-Aggression Pact - Military Imports From Germany
Stalingrad Reinforcements
Civilian Engineers
German Soviet Commercial Agreement
Non-Aggression Pact with Turkey
Non-Aggression Pact with Japan


India:
Improve Assam Infrastructure

Germany:
Spanish Blue Division
Collaboration with Switzerland
Relations with Portugal
Trade Agreement with Portugal
Switzerland Seizes German Gold
Recapture Swiss Gold
Treaty of Friendship with Turkey
Trade Agreement with Turkey
Non-Aggression Pact - Military Exports to USSR
Civil Aid To Spain
Deliver Modern Tanks to Romania
Military Exports To Spain
Development of Spanish Mines
Repayment of Spanish Debt
Vichy Collaboration Policy
German-Soviet Commercial Agreement
Fall Blau
DAK Reinforcements
Offensive In the Ardennes
Relations with Greece
An Alliance with Greece
Trade Agreement with Switzerland
Transfer Troops Through Sweden
Operation Sealion
Oil Exports To Italy
Coal Exports To Italy
Schwerer Gustav Gun
German Naval Strategy
Naval Infantry - Abandon Kriegsmarine
An Alliance with Vichy France
Iraqi Reinforcements
Motorized Garrison - East Africa

Italy:
Military Exports to Sweden
Civil Aid to Spain
Military Exports To Spain
North Africa Reinforcements
Sale of Naval Assets
Aircraft Industry Investment
Egypt Offensive
BETASOM Submarine Base
Revised Decision - DOW Greece

Japan:
Non-Aggression Pact with USSR
Response to US Embargo
River Kwai Railroad

[BillRunacre]

Overall I have written over 20,000 lines of new event scripts

That's a very impressive list and amount of work! [:)]

[elxaime]

Some thoughts for additional Pacific Theater events:

Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere (GEACPS): Available from August 1940
The Empire of Japan forces its puppet regimes (the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China, the State of Burma, the Provisional Government of Free India, the Second Philippine Republic, the Kingdom of Thailand, the Kingdom of Kampuchea, the Empire of Vietnam and the Kingdom of Laos) to strengthen their political and economic cooperation with Japan against the "western colonialist powers." The scripts would allow a decision to join the GEACPS for each nation once that nation had been conquered or allied itself with Japan. The impact of joining would be a one-time award of MMP to Japan for each country (pro-rated to the size of the economy of the nation joining) to represent the pillage and exploitation by the Japanese military (which used the GEACPS, despite the political propanganda, solely to further Japan's military interests). A strength 1 pro-Japan local garrison would also appear in the capital, if held, to represent local nationalist forces supported by the Japanese army. However the downside would be that pro-Allied partisan activity hexes would be triggered by another decision once Allied forces occupied a "trigger" (e.g. holding a nearby city or cities) to represent pro-Allied partisan movements.

COMMENT: to my mind, the vanilla Global War could use some additional scripts to represent the various occupied countries. This would present Japan with some options: ruthlessly exploit for short-term gain or build trust and political stability over the long term? The model would be some of the FWII decisions dealing with how Germany can treat Vichy

Imperial Rule Assistance Association: available from October 1940, this decision allows Japan to evolve a "statist" ruling political party aimed at removing the sectionalism in the politics and economics in the Empire of Japan to create a totalitarian one-party state in order to maximize the efficiency of Japan's total war effort. This results in a one time MPP and morale gain, but if this option is chosen, the more liberal options to create GEACPS become unavailable.

Kido Butai: This allows the Axis player, in lieu of manually-controlled operations, to implement scripted initial Japanese military operations in parts of the Pacific during a limited time frame (December, 1941 - March 1942) similar to how Germany can treat the Norway and Denmark campaigns. The upside is a basic level of achievement, although some randomness can be built in to allow greater or higher levels of success for each operation. The downside is that Japan would forgo more ambitious or creative attacks, as the prerequisites for the events firing would be spending some MPP and keeping key units off-map for a specific time to simulate their use in the scripted campaigns. COMMENT: I have found that, with historical hindsight, the Allies can too easily thwart early Japanese expansion. I am thinking the scripts would be:
- Pearl Harbor/Wake Island Attack
- Dutch East Indies Attack
- Malaya/Thailand Attack
- Aleutians attack

KMT and Chinese Warlords: Most of the Nationalist government forces in China were actually a cobbled together shifting alliance of former warlords. The central authority was weak throughout the war and additional allied assistance was often bled off through epic levels of official corruption. In the vanilla game, China, aside from the CCP forces and their associated units and rules, is represented in a standard fashion when the reality was far from that. There are several ways to go, but maybe the best approach is to consult how games like World in Flames handled China. One approach might be to break China into several components, with most starting neutral and entering pursuant to diplomatic choices and scripts.

South Pacific Mandate: This was a League of Nations mandate given to the Empire of Japan following World War I that included the regions around Palau, the Northern Mariana Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Marshall Islands. While the terms of the mandate required Japan not to fortify the islands, these terms were ambiguous and poorly-defined. From 1921 the Japanese military began making plans so that rapid military deployment to the islands would be possible in case of war. During the 1930s, the Imperial Japanese Navy began construction of airfields, fortifications, ports, and other military projects in the islands controlled under the mandate, viewing the islands as "unsinkable aircraft carriers." To reflect an increased commitment to these areas, scripts can be added to place Japanese fortifications, troops and aircraft on these areas pre-war.

Kwantung Army: by the beginning of 1939, the Japanese Kwantung Army in Manchuria was well-established as a semi-rogue force with significant influence in Japanese politics and military strategy. The Kwantung Army was a stronghold of the radical "Imperial Way Faction", and many of its senior leaders overtly advocated political change in Japan through the violent overthrow of the civilian government to bring about a Shōwa Restoration, with a reorganization of society and the economy along totalitarian state fascist lines. However, as the war went on, they were more or less brought under control and by 1945, when the USSR invaded, most of the best Kwantung troops had been sent to other theaters and replaced by lower quality forces. You might consider some scripts to allow the Axis player some options on how to treat this theater. In the vanilla game, the Axis always strips this region immediately.

Disease: some of the areas in the CBI-Pacific theater were some of the most pestilence-ridden on earth. You may want to add, for some regions, periodic random losses similar to Russian winter effects, exempting troops native to those regions.

Australia/New Zealand: Not sure what changes or events are needed here, but it feels like Australia/New Zealand aren't fully developed as allies compared to their real WW2 contributions in the Pacific theater.

Oil: likewise, it seems like the oil issue isn't fully developed. FWII has some considerations for Germany on access to oil. Likewise, Japan relied on imports of oil to function. Some of this is reflected in MPPs from conquered lands. But you may want to delve further, as lack of oil was what spurred some of the late war Japanese air and naval suicide strategies. For the allies, the oil convoys to Australia were essential to building that area up for offensives and kick-starting the war economy there (as any player of WITP can attest)

[steevodeevo]

Maybe a silly question Crispy, but if I DL the mod from your link to the original mod forum from the previous SC release, will it play on the new SC or indeed should I wait?

[crispy131313]

Hi Steve I will upload a version that works with new SC soon.

[crispy131313]

Thank you elxaime for the contributions, I will have to brush up on these topics for sure. I am going to tackle this theater by theater, with the goal of creating more variability and sandbox effects. I spent some time working on South American this evening to come up with these events.

[Cantona66]

Good work Crispy

[crispy131313]

New hypothetical event, thoughts on game balance for this?

[taffjones]

I like the look of those DE's so far Crispy.

It's my experience that Diplo in WaW is used a lot less than in WiE, but this could be that both sides need to pour Mpp's into research so have less to spend on Diplo.

Will you be making small MPP increases for both sides initially to get the Diplo game rolling?

[crispy131313]

I will certainly be making some tweaks to MPP and diplomacy, though it will take a few play throughs to get a feel.

[crispy131313]

Another big what if decision, this time for the Pacific theater. I notice some grammar mistakes, I'll fix those! This was inspired by World in Flames, a mod from SC2.

[ThunderLizard11]

Looking forward to it. Hope you can improve naval AI performance as you did for WiE.

[steevodeevo]

Hi Crispy and all. I notice latest posts seem to be around mid April, I appreciate these conversions at this scale are huge undertakings, so I just hope teh project is still alive as I noted from teh Mods pages that the Map is 'very much in Beta' and the latest version is April 2019.

[crispy131313]

ORIGINAL: steevodeevo

Hi Crispy and all. I notice latest posts seem to be around mid April, I appreciate these conversions at this scale are huge undertakings, so I just hope teh project is still alive as I noted from teh Mods pages that the Map is 'very much in Beta' and the latest version is April 2019.

Hi Steve, the project is still alive I had undertaken conversion and had only done some hotseat testing, and then returned to WiE to update Fall Weiss II after the latest patch and other changes I had wanted to make. I am now currently doing a play-though of the World Map mod vs the Allied AI to make sure there is no glaring errors before I release, I’m currently post Pearl Harbour. The updated Europe mod is not released yet either, as I still need to do a play-through based on all the changes made.

[steevodeevo]

Thx Crispy, makes sense, and thanks for answer in other thread too.