What's new for TOAW 3.4

Norm Koger's The Operational Art of War III is the next game in the award-winning Operational Art of War game series. TOAW3 is updated and enhanced version of the TOAW: Century of Warfare game series. TOAW3 is a turn based game covering operational warfare from 1850-2015. Game scale is from 2.5km to 50km and half day to full week turns. TOAW3 scenarios have been designed by over 70 designers and included over 130 scenarios. TOAW3 comes complete with a full game editor.

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ralphtricky
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by ralphtricky »

ORIGINAL: sPzAbt653
Also why do the tracks zig zag so much rather than taking a straight ahead path?

I can't answer for all cases, but maybe in the hopes that the formation will cover some territory as opposed to heading in a straight line. The best way to try and get the PO to conquer all territory is to assign objectives to each hex. You could have objective 1 at hex 0.22, and objective 2 at hex 39.22. This will leave the PO on it's own to determine the best route to take from 1 to 2. Or you could place one objective in each of the 39 hexes, hoping that Elmer will take your advice (not always true).
When an Obj. is obtained, will the formation then attempt to move on tho the next Obj?

Maybe ! Trial and error playtesting is the best way to be sure. There is more to it than the objective placement. Formation Orders, Formation Bias and Formation Loss Settings also have an influence. Elmer also monitors the overall situation on the map.
This is off the top of my head, so the details may be a bit off, but it shoudl be roughly correct.

The short answer is that fewer objects is normally better. You also want to try things and see what works.

The original TOAW had a problem where the PO was expected to exactly take a specific objective before moving on to the next. There was code which looked towards having a relative power. According to the comments, Norm knew about it, but didn't want to change it and unbalance all the scenarios. When I took over, I used some of the good will and re-enabled that code. It's part of why Elmer is stronger now.

That's why you'll see some scenarios with track marks all over in COW versions and earlier. The designer had to do that in order to get the results he wanted. The downside of the earlier approach is that if you can flank him, you can make him 'ping pong' back to an earlier objective.

Toaw 3 doesn't have that issue. Depending on the stance and other factors, he's will look at the percent of your units vs his units within a variable radius (average about 6, I believe) when deciding if an objective is enemy owned.

To further complicate things, let me talk about how a square grid would work, If you had an objective at 1,1 and your formation center were at 5,1 then it created a perpindicular line through 3,1 and looks at everything to the right when considering whether the objective is 'owned', once you get close enough to the objective, it looks in a circle with a radius of about 3 for that.

It also only does this when the objectives are more than 3 hexes apart. I did this because people 'shotgunned' the objectives, and I didn't want to make the fact that the line between objectives sometimes went 'backwards' cause problems for Elmer.

Toaw 3 as of 3.4 has some other wrinkles, just for fun ;)

The big one is that I just added the following logic... If an objective hex is directly on a hex with a victory point value, then Elmer will try to actually take that hex, and not go around it. If it's simply an empty hex, then he'll feel free to not take it, even if someone is standing on it laughing at you;) That gives the designer a bit more flexibility.

Ralph
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Vincenzo_Beretta
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by Vincenzo_Beretta »

Well, I have my usual request - usual since 1998 actually! [:D]

Would it be possibile to have an option panel from where decide what values are displayed on units' counter on the map? I would really like to have the opportunity to set them, for example, as:

"AT Strength/Anti-Inf. Strenght" (switch) "Defense/Movement"

...And, of course, I guess that in some circumstances the player would find useful to use other combinations - i.e. the ability change the values shown even mid-game.
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by PRUSSIAN TOM »

Any idea when the update will be downloadable. This is one of amy all-time favorite games, and I love evey tweak I can give it.[:)]
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by briantopp »

This is mostly fan mail. I returned to TOAW after a long time away and happily played through a couple of my favourite scenarios. And then came here to see if there was anything new. There is a lot new -- great beta patch. I really like the HD-er graphics and the various supply and rules changes. Very very nice job. Thank you very much!

I have a question and a dumb question:

Question: the scenarios I designed myself seem to work just fine in this patch. Is that so, or do they need to be updated to avoid being broken? If so, what needs doing? (I have "Operation Barbarossa", "Operation Blau", "Operation Zitadelle", "Bagration to Berlin", and Jerusalem 2005" in there I think, and "Vietnam 1965-1975", "Battle for Moscow" and a few others posted online that didn't make it onto the disk last time I tuned it in).

Dumb question: how do you move a stack?

All the best and thanks again
Brian Topp
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by Menschenfresser »

Brian, good to see you around.

Question: Ralph and company have done a lot to prevent new changes from breaking old scenarios. I can see that scenarios carefully balanced under the old P1/P2 quirks could now be somewhat off. But broken? Doubtful. I'm sure just about every scenario could use a tweak as engineering, AA, etc have been slightly altered. And there have been significant under the hood PO changes. I'm sure Ralph or James can answer this with greater clarity.

Dumb Question: Hold down the right mouse button for a second longer. A menu will pop up with the usual group move option, IIRC
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by briantopp »

Ah so -- it had to be something like that. zank you
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by ralphtricky »

ORIGINAL: briantopp
Ah so -- it had to be something like that. zank you
Brian,
Glad to see you back!

You can also get the old behavior back by setting the menu delay to 1.

Most of the changes were pretty neutral, it depends on how finely balanced the scenarios were for earlier versions. Offense may be a little stronger, but it depends on the scenario too. There are now a lot more places where the designer can tweak values for scenarios outside of WWII like engineering rates for scenarios like your 2005 scenario, you can also set supply depot levels, which is going to open up a lot of scenarios. Elmer is also stronger even though Elmer overruns too often with the 178 build. The public patch will fix that, it should be out 'soon'.

The what's new is posted somewhere and covers most of the changes.

Welcome back,
Ralph
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fulcrum28
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by fulcrum28 »

can i keep 3.2 and 3.4 installations?
thanks in advance.
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by ralphtricky »

ORIGINAL: fulcrum28

can i keep 3.2 and 3.4 installations?
thanks in advance.
Yes. Install 3.2, copy the files to another directory, upgrade one to 3.4.
Ralph Trickey
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WayneBGood
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by WayneBGood »

Hi,
 
Thanks for the update, my question is about Elmo. I read one other post and the manual but I'm still confused about how I can move formations and set paths. Any help would be great.
 
Thanks,
Wayne
toruzo
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by toruzo »

In the Whatsnew document,
>> 1. Added .ini option to disallow mouse wheel zoom.

So, how can I disable mouse wheel zoom?
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by larryfulkerson »

In the Opart.ini file there is a line that reads:

 allowMouseWheelZoom=Y

so to disallow the mouse wheel zoom alls you gotta do is change the Y to N.  That would be my guess.  Or did you mean something else entirely?
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by toruzo »

ORIGINAL: larryfulkerson

In the Opart.ini file there is a line that reads:

allowMouseWheelZoom=Y

so to disallow the mouse wheel zoom alls you gotta do is change the Y to N.  That would be my guess.  Or did you mean something else entirely?

That's all what I wanted to know!

Thanks.
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by BigDuke66 »

Here is a fix for some railroad graphic files that have a wrong graphic at 5th row and 7th column, it should lead south-west instead of south.
Railroad Fix


To be sure those kind of fixes don't get lost here are also some files Curtis Lemay posted to correct a similar error on Fortified Line, Escarpment, and Major Escarpment graphics:
fb.asp?m=2872522
fb.asp?m=2872526
fb.asp?m=2872530
fb.asp?m=2872531


Maybe it would be useful to move this post to some kind of hotfix thread that is pinned so player know what they also should load additional to the latest patch.
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RE: What's new for TOAW 3.4

Post by bdr.mallette »

Hey
I know im behind the times a bit and haven't been around.... just been busy and travelling.
good to be back tho.

for anybody doing the update patch, 3.4 ..... you will need the security key.
I had packed mine away and its a fair drive to get it...im in Canada...., if you also by chance don't have it by your bed on the table,
you should be able to find it in your registry.
Do a search for "Matrix Games" and it is in the authentication key value.....
phew... still remember some old stuff. TG

Jason.....
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