The Front Line

[EarlyDoors]

Very often it is tempting to encircle an opponent's unit, like i the Chinese have done here to the Japanese unit

[EarlyDoors]

But then, when you click End Turn, the front line re-organises and they have a supply route

Whilst I can guess that Units and Resources have an area of effect that defines this Front Line, I am often caught out

How is it possible to determine the Front Line after the End of Turn?

[Hubert Cater]

Hi EarlyDoors,

At the end of the turn, the front line will be recalculated for your opponent (in preparation for the beginning of their turn) relative to their current holdings of cities, towns, etc, measured against your current unit positions.

So in the case above, the city of Tsinan would want to regain control of the empty adjacent hexes to it for Japan for the start of the Japanese turn. Which is what you are seeing above.

However, your Chinese unit positions there should prevent those hexes from swinging back to the Japanese, e.g. as their zone of control should then counteract that automatic behaviour of empty hex reclamation by Tsinan.

What you've shown me here is a bug that I will correct for the next update, thank you for the report.

Hubert

[EarlyDoors]

Wow, awesome. This has been happening for ..always. I assumed it was a feature

So, I guess in my example, 2 chinese corps are exerting a ZOC on the hex SW of Tsinan, so that should remain chinese but the hex South of Tsinan may flip because there is only a weak ZOC there?

[pjg100]

Something like this happened to me in my last game, I ran a CH unit across to Tientsin and parked another one in the hex north of that pass through the mountains such that the rail lines from Beijing to the south of China were both cut at the end of my turn and all of the CH controlled hexes were covered by either a unit or overlapping ZOCs. At the end of the turn the front reorganized to give JA control of the rail line down to Tsingan and my unit in Tientsin was cut off. I assumed that this was an intended effect of some nuance in the code for determining the front.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Wow. I've seen this too at times (other circumstances, but same behavior)...but wasn't quite sure of what was going on with the hex vis-a-vis unit z.o.c. vs enemy town and control radius. Thought is was by design. Its not real common and sometimes not noticed I bet.

[Chernobyl]

Oh dang I thought cities/towns were SUPPOSED to always "win" the zone of control wars.

Are you proposing giving unit zone of control priority over city/town ZOC? Not sure if that's what you mean, but if so, I can immediately think of a few game balance issues this would cause in SC:WWI (able to cut certain Russian rail lines on the first turn)

[The Land]

It would definitely be interesting to hear more about the logic of how this works!

[BillRunacre]

ORIGINAL: Chernobyl

Oh dang I thought cities/towns were SUPPOSED to always "win" the zone of control wars.

Are you proposing giving unit zone of control priority over city/town ZOC? Not sure if that's what you mean, but if so, I can immediately think of a few game balance issues this would cause in SC:WWI (able to cut certain Russian rail lines on the first turn)

Can you explain which rail lines, and, taking into account changes made in the most recent WWI patches, is it now as important as it once was?

For instance, previously Russia might not receive all her units if this was done, but that is no longer the case.

There have been other changes too, so I just want to check if there are any potential issues here still, or not. Perhaps if so, start a new thread in the WWI forum, or PM me. [:)]

[Hubert Cater]

ORIGINAL: EarlyDoors

Wow, awesome. This has been happening for ..always. I assumed it was a feature

So, I guess in my example, 2 chinese corps are exerting a ZOC on the hex SW of Tsinan, so that should remain chinese but the hex South of Tsinan may flip because there is only a weak ZOC there?

Correct, this is exactly what should have been happening, and was coded to behave this way, but there was as mentioned a bug in there and as a result likely behaving in game incorrectly (as you've noted above) since near the beginning of this series.

This is a "you win the prize" bug find as it is probably a 5 year old bug, at least, that hasn't been properly caught up until now.

I should add, and just to clarify the full setup in the code/rules, that if there was let's say a city (hypothetically) that your Chinese units held two hexes directly south of Tsinan, that city would also prevent the hex directly south of Tsinan from flipping back to Japanese control as well.

So, ZoC would prevent the automatic flipping back, as well as any two conflicting resources that are fighting over empty adjacent hexes, e.g. whomever controls that hex in conflict maintains control until it is either directly captured, or the conflicting town/city is captured as well.

[pjg100]

Thanks for the explanation Hubert. In order to further clarify, is there some effect based on the number of conflicting units adjacent a contested hex, or the size of the units (corps v. army) as well? In the example that started this thread, as I now understand it the hex SW of Tsinian should have remained in CH control, but the hex south of Tsinian should have flipped to JA control. Does that correctly reflect how the game is supposed to work? And if so, why does the hex south of Tsinian flip to JA control when the CH have a corp exerting a ZOC over it? Is it due to weak (CH corp) v. strong (JA army) ZOC contesting the hex?

[Hubert Cater]

Hi pjg100,

The idea here was simply one on how to treat empty hexes around your own friendly resources when it came time to cleaning up the map control areas.

In this example, the Chinese end their turn and there are several empty hexes around Tsinian that are not under Japanese control. The game engine looks at Tsinian, Japanese held, and tries to exert control over any adjacent empty hexes prior to the start of the Japanese turn.

If there are no enemy units (relative to Japan) around Tsinian, then Tsinian would reclaim all the empty hexes around it and render them to Japanese control. The exception is if there are enemy cities and towns also competing for control of these empty hexes and if there are any enemy units adjacent to the empty hexes also competing for them via zone of control.

To clarify, Japanese units do not come into play in the example above when going from a Chinese turn to a Japanese turn, rather it is just the Japanese control of Tsinian trying to exert control back from China, and whether or not the Chinese units will retain control and stop Tsinian from taking back the empty hexes.

In this case, the two Chinese Corps, together, exert a weak ZoC on the hex southwest of Tsinian and China will maintain control of that hex as a result. But the one Chinese Corps alone is not enough to hold onto the hex directly south of Tsinian, so Japan wins control of that hex back. If however there was a Chinese army adjacent to the emtpy hex south of Tsinian then China would retain control of that hex then as well.

Hopefully this helps to clarify it?
Hubert

[The Land]

So Hubert, to summarise:

Axis turn: Axis units moving through hexes immediately claims them to their own ownership.

At the end of Axis/start of Allied turn (after supply is calculated?): Allied-held resources reclaim all territory next to themselves UNLESS it is under a full zone of control (one Army or 2 Corps).

Have I got that right....?

[Hubert Cater]

Essentially yes, this is how it is supposed to work, but there is a bug in there so there is at the moment some inconsistency here until the next patch.

The additional point is that if there is an empty hex between two competing cities/towns, then the empty hex does not change control, or at least it should not change control in this case.

[pjg100]

Thanks Hubert, this is very helpful.