WW2 Path to Victory - Feedback Thread

@barnee said in WW2 Path to Victory - Feedback Thread:

I thought BM had incentives,

Indeed but that could also be considered bait.

I agree though that there isn’t a big downside. Don’t think I said that there was a downside.

@barnee said in WW2 Path to Victory - Feedback Thread:

I know Gamerman1 has a rule that it turns friendly neutral after rd 1 if not captured.

Haven’t heard that one, interesting idea. Which then gives a huge incentive to take it.

One other feedback point is that I’m finding China more challenging to play than in BM, even though it has been beefed up. I think the main reason for this is the Szechwan <-> Hunan connection. This makes it really hard to hang on to the Burma Rd even if you get Yunnan. Also cuts off the retreat into the bowels of China.

I’m not sure why the map was redrawn in this way actually, wanted to make China forced to withdraw early to the west?

@simon33 Yeah, the Siberian factory is in a very strange spot. It’s on the coast of SZ 5, which Japan can conveniently reach from its main sea zones, from the Formosa/Hong Kong sea zone, or from Guam. Once you capture that factory there’s nowhere else in Asia for Russia to build another one, but if Russia leaves its troops in Siberia proper to defend the factory, then you might as well not have them, because you’re not adjacent to any Japanese territories, so you’re not threatening Japan.

I guess it’s nice to be able to build some artillery to support your infantry stack – but any troops built in Siberia on R1 will still be behind (east) of the main Siberian infantry stack, so they can’t actually help those troops, e.g., attack a German stack in Kazakh on R7. You could theoretically build some mechs and tanks in Siberia on R2 or R3 and have them catch up with the infantry on the march, but you’re never going to have the cash to spare for that; you need the money in Leningrad/Moscow/Stalingrad.

It’s nice to be able to build a transport or whatever that could simulate a Russian invasion of Hokkaido ala a 1946 Operation Downfall if the atomic bomb was never developed, but that’s really just fluff at that point – if a Russian fleet in the Okhotsk Sea can survive a Japanese air attack, then Japan has already lost.

Bottom line is I just don’t see these changes as giving Russia any practical ability to either resist a Japanese invasion or force Japan to heavily garrison Manchuria. I like the spirit of the changes but I’m not convinced that they solve the problem of having Russia be impotent in Asia.

I’m trying this out for the first time; it’s pretty interesting so far. I like the islands in the middle of sea zones, and I like having some of the extra sea zones to maneuver in. I also like the larger Lake Ladoga and the revised stats for mechanized infantry.

I used a variation of simon’s Pearl Harbor attack and it seemed to work fine against the AI; I got Hawaii itself on J2 and was able to hold it for a couple of turns, although I think I’ll let it go on US4 to focus on India/Australia. US has been building nothing but DD/ftr/CV in San Diego since the game started, so that’s a win in terms of distracting the US and reducing its income. Obviously a human would do better than an AI, but, you know, I’d do better if it weren’t my very first time on this map.

I saw what I thought was a bug – I activated Vichy on F2, and most of the French colonies went pro-Axis, as they should, but Southern France stayed bright blue. It looked like the French were able to attack Northern Italy out of Southern France if they wanted to. Is that coded differently than it is in Global Bal Mod, or am I missing something?

2022-4-7-WW2-Path-to-Victory.tsvg

@argothair said in WW2 Path to Victory - Feedback Thread:

I’m trying this out for the first time; it’s pretty interesting so far. I like the islands in the middle of sea zones, and I like having some of the extra sea zones to maneuver in. I also like the larger Lake Ladoga.

Yes, the larger map definately makes it more interesting in the Pacific and Russian theatres, I get lost in the 3D chess match and lose whole fleets in the Pacific but it is a nice change from the G40 map and with the carrier scramble mechanic you have to really think about how you position your fleets.

I saw what I thought was a bug – I activated Vichy on F2, and most of the French colonies went pro-Axis, as they should, but Southern France stayed bright blue. It looked like the French were able to attack Northern Italy out of Southern France if they wanted to. Is that coded differently than it is in Global Bal Mod, or am I missing something?

Yeah, looks like something didn’t quite go as intended as far as I know. All the land units in S.France should go pro-Axis neutral (although cannot be commandered under the “Zone Libre” rule). Looks like the units which started in S.France changed but not the one moved in from Normandy, then it persuaded the original two units to change their mind and join the Free French!

I was able to recreate this - Vichy combat.tsvg.
Maybe this situation hasn’t come up before?

@flyingbadger One more bug, I think – as UK Pacific, I was unable to place a minor factory in Kyushu even after controlling it for two full turns. It works fine on edit mode, just not as part of the normal unit placement. I feel like Japan should be part of the Pacific economy, no?

Has anyone thought about making a 3-faction 1939 version of Path to Victory, with Liberals, Communists, and Fascists as three separate alliances? I think the extra territories would be very helpful for simulating Communist vs. Nationalist China, as well as for the historical division of Persia. You could add a new territory type called “pro-Communist” for areas like Baltic States, East Poland, and Northwest Persia. (Not that these areas actually liked the Soviets in any kind of democratic sense; just that the Soviets were able to successfully pull off coups there.) And then you could add a second Chinese-style nation for some of the northwest Chinese provinces that was allied with Russia instead of with the Liberals.

That’s a pretty cool idea indeed! :)

@argothair said in WW2 Path to Victory - Feedback Thread:

@flyingbadger One more bug, I think – as UK Pacific, I was unable to place a minor factory in Kyushu even after controlling it for two full turns. It works fine on edit mode, just not as part of the normal unit placement.

I think that a minor factory should be placable on Kyushu, at least with my understanding of the rules, certainly Japan can, suppose UK pacific should be able to as well.

@flyingbadger Yup, I checked the XML. It’s a bug; the territory is being assigned to Europe instead of Pacific. The maintainers need to add

<option name="changeUnitOwners" value="British"/>
<option name="whenCapturedByGoesTo" value="British:UK_Pacific"/>

to the Kyushu territory attachment.

Two more bugs – Rio de Oro should connect to French West Africa but doesn’t, and I’m not able to win a triggered victory with the Axis for controlling 13+ Victory Cities for a full turn (see attached saved game). The Axis had 14 VCs at the start of G9, and they still have 14 VCs at the end of G10, but the game isn’t showing any kind of victory message.2022-4-26-WW2-Path-to-Victory.tsvg

@argothair said in WW2 Path to Victory - Feedback Thread:

Two more bugs – Rio de Oro should connect to French West Africa but doesn’t,

I actually don’t think the first one is a bug. You shouldn’t be able to cross the Sahara via Rio De Oro.

Secondly, hasn’t the change to divide SZ38 off Malaya killed at least 75% of the interest in this game? To me, that raises the question that perhaps there would be interest in a variant which reverses this mistake.

@simon33 I mean, reasonable people can disagree about whether an army could have crossed the Western Sahara in the 1940s. In terms of both rainfall and population density, the Rio de Oro area is actually less desolate than northern Sudan, where the game does allow you to cross.

That said, I’m primarily relying on the TripleA map here. You can see that Rio de Oro is clearly adjacent to both Morocco and French West Africa. If the map designers want that area to be impassible, then I believe it should be marked as such in the basic map, not just after you apply the graphical overlay.

As far as your second question, I have no idea why people have stopped playing this game. I enjoy it and I plan to continue playing, even though the developers have ignored my bug reports for the last year.

Moreover, I do not agree that dividing SZ38 is a mistake. The sailing distance from Bangkok (in SZ 132) through Singapore (in SZ38) to Calcutta (in SZ40) is about 3,000 miles. This is also roughly the sailing distance from New York to France. The standard Global map models the NY-France trip as requiring a naval move of 4 spaces. I see no excuse for treating that trip as 4 spaces wide while treating the Bangkok-Calcutta route as only 2 spaces wide. Any invasion of India would have required some staging grounds on the western coast of the Malayan peninsula – it would have been totally unrealistic to try to attack India using forces based out of Bangkok or Saigon, yet this is exactly what Global encourages players to do. I am thrilled that the Path to Victory map corrects this problem; it is one of the main reasons that I find the map interesting.

Well, I don’t think that was intentional. You raise a valid issue in that if Rio de Oro should not connect to French West Africa it should be drawn to show that, although I would be very surprised if a connection was actually intended. There is no connection in G40 or BM.

Classic had the Sahara as being completely passable. G40 had it completely impassable. I don’t think anyone would argue for a middle ground of being able to go around it at the western end as well as the populated eastern end.

Regarding SZ38+SZ132, you raise some valid points here but the effect on gameplay is very dramatic and it was never discussed. Also later discussion fell on deaf ears. If such a dramatic change is contemplated I think Japan should be beefed in some other ways. I think it just makes Japan too weak and makes it a 3 turn sail from Tokyo to Calcutta when previously it could be done in two if a naval base were built.

@regularkid said in WW2 Path to Victory - Feedback Thread:

People haven’t stopped playing PTV. To the contrary.

Oh yeah?

16 league games completed in the first 5 months of 2023 for 3.2 games per month
87 league games completed in 2021 for 7.25 games per month

I give you the first few days of June as a bonus.

@simon33 Would need to divide both by the respective amount of total games played to account for player count for a proper analysis.

339/12mths in 2021
84/5mths in 2023

28.25/mth in 2021
16.8/mth in 2023

So even if you adjust for less total games being played, as a proportion PtV is less popular than it was. But I have a real problem with that argument. PtV is the newest and shiniest version and I would expect as a proportion that people would gravitate towards it.

Anyway, I consider my point proven. But you don’t seem to care.

@simon33 You are indeed free to consider your point proven. Critical minds may differ.

@adam514 said in WW2 Path to Victory - Feedback Thread:

Critical minds may differ.

Not sure about rational ones though.