Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: firepowerjohan

Commanders are very powerful in game and the cost of them could represent the HQ+leader role. In some other games you can build HQ units separately and they cost a lot of money but here we make the HQ's invisible from map so it is roughly the same thing.

quote:

ORIGINAL: firepowerjohan

Commanders do provide several units increased max effectiveness. You wont see it right away once you deploy the leader since Max Effectiveness and Current Effectiveness is not the same thing. Deploy Manstein around French front lines and you will soon see all land units within 8 hexes range having 16% higher effectiveness and also in Combat it will give grdatt +1 for the unit atttached to.

Especially for Axis, this is a good way of getting more bang for the bucks since your units get a little better while it do not cost you any extra manpower or oil.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nick R

Is there an editor that you would suggest I use?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nick R

Johan,

Sorry I wasnt fully aware of this. I did go to the manual and it does say in their Leadership range, so can you tell us what the range is?

quote:

ORIGINAL: firepowerjohan

Commanders are very powerful in game and the cost of them could represent the HQ+leader role. In some other games you can build HQ units separately and they cost a lot of money but here we make the HQ's invisible from map so it is roughly the same thing.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

quote:

ORIGINAL: firepowerjohan

Commanders are very powerful in game and the cost of them could represent the HQ+leader role. In some other games you can build HQ units separately and they cost a lot of money but here we make the HQ's invisible from map so it is roughly the same thing.

I'm not disputing that Commanders are powerful, what I am disputing is their cost. If the cost is supposed to represent the entire HQ then why does Manstein cost more than say Kluge? Asuming the HQs are the same size why does one cost more than another? And why even bother including all those French and Italian HQs when the most that ever get used are one or two and so many are the same. And why do none of the scenarios start with any of the commanders deployed? Did the Germans not have any HQs on the Russian front in June 41, was Rommel not in Afrika? My point being that in most games you are only going to be able to afford 3 or 4 HQs as the Germans and about 4 or 5 as the Allies. Sure you can build more but it is at the cost of your other units. And I don't really think the cost of an HQ Unit, even an Army Group, costs as much as 4 armored divisions.

I suppose if the cost were significantly reduced everyone would build several leaders, but I don't see the harm in that. Except I don't know if Leader effects overlap. In other words if a unit is within the leadership range of two leaders does it receive the effectiveness increase benefits from both leaders or just the higher leader?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Murat30

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nick R

Johan,

Sorry I wasnt fully aware of this. I did go to the manual and it does say in their Leadership range, so can you tell us what the range is?

commanders default range is 8 hexes from where his parent "attached" unit is, so you can make for sure "under command cover" all east front with maybe 3/4 germans generals, anyway, Johan already answer this question,

best regards,

Murat30.

is difficult to make a game to reach all people concept of perfection, CEAW is a great game, the best notice for me this year is that slitherine already is working, nothing the less than in a CEAW for napoleonics, that maybe can come on June :)
personally, the past year, the game that more fun have take on me is CEAW, both making mods and playing it, easy to mod files, do help to it,

regards.
mods...

follow these links at your discrection...
http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=1693337

and, mine... (at the moment only for 1.04, my mods)...
http://hosted.filefront.com/Alarick
global war is better, have included japanase forces based on europe, only european theater however,

enjoy!

quote:

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

Johan / Harry/ Anyone,

Can the costs be modded? Not being even a novice at modding I dont want to assume that it can or cannot be done. I would certainly like to see a mod that made them say the price of a garrison and see what the impact is and adjust from there. Perhaps even, as Harry suggested deploy say 1 or 2 at the begining.

I'm not very familar with modding either, but I do know that other mods have altered the unit costs so I assume this can be done. I'm not sure if you can deploy Commanders at the beginning of a scenario or not though. I would have thought if you could some of the scenarios would have started with some Commanders already deployed.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nick R

Okay, looks like the file to edit is leader.txt and leader_eng.txt. Not sure what the difference is, perhaps Johan can tell us????

Hmm, I also noticed that some generals dont appear to have a cost.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Murat30


greetings, take care that Commander costs are somewhat hardcoded, you can change/mod the Commander's attributes and reduce/increase cost, adding attack and defense change Commander's costs, so onwards for leadership attribute, attack is the more expensive, then is defense and then leadership, you can make cheap commanders, increasing attack and defense can be expensive as first view but an unit with a high attack/defense commander can be dangerous and worth the cost, remember to backup the files to change on other directory or make two installs, not install two times, only copy and paste the directory and edit one of them, with hardcoded i was wanting to mean that aside you see a "cost" attribute in leader.txt, aside what you set there, it do not change on any way the cost of the commander, only way is to change, leadership, attack and defense, hope it helps,

best regards,

murat30.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

quote:

ORIGINAL: Murat30


greetings, take care that Commander costs are somewhat hardcoded, you can change/mod the Commander's attributes and reduce/increase cost, adding attack and defense change Commander's costs, so onwards for leadership attribute, attack is the more expensive, then is defense and then leadership, you can make cheap commanders, increasing attack and defense can be expensive as first view but an unit with a high attack/defense commander can be dangerous and worth the cost, remember to backup the files to change on other directory or make two installs, not install two times, only copy and paste the directory and edit one of them, with hardcoded i was wanting to mean that aside you see a "cost" attribute in leader.txt, aside what you set there, it do not change on any way the cost of the commander, only way is to change, leadership, attack and defense, hope it helps,

best regards,

murat30.

If I understand you correctly you can not mod the game to have a good commander cost less as the commander cost is hardcoded in and is directly related to how good the commander is. That is too bad. I think it would have been fun to try a game where all commanders were inexpensive to see what effect this had on the game. Again I really don't understand what the historical justification was for having commanders cost so much in terms of production points. Yes, I know they may be worth the cost, but that is not my point. One of the biggest advantages the Germans had in the early part of the war is that their generals and HQs (while costing the same amount to train and equip as the Allied generals and HQs) were generally superior. This, imho, is not properly reflected in the game. Yes the Germans have the superior commanders, but they also cost more than the inferior Allied Generals, and that is what I don't agree with.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

Murat,

Your English was fine Murat. I understood what you were saying. I'm not so sure you understand what I am saying though. I agree that Commanders are important. But just because they are important and valuable doesn't mean they should be expensive and I don't think the "good" commanders should cost any more (or at least not much more) than the "Bad" commanders. If it was up to me I would:

1. Make all commanders cost the same (say 10 to 20pp);
2. Limit their effective range to 3 or 4 hexes (thus requiring more of them);
3. Have both sides start the War with their historical army (not corp or division)commanders already deployed;
4. Have it so that all other commanders are chosen randomly and with their ratings hidden (so you don't know if you are getting a Paulus or a Rommel); and once they have been in combat for a few turns you learn their true ratings.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nick R

Murat,

No worries about your english. I apprecaite the assistance. Unfortunately I dont think getting reduced leaders at a lower cost makes it better. I am still having difficulty getting past the scripted nature of the game with very limited "what if" possibilities.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

quote:

ORIGINAL: Nick R

Murat,

No worries about your english. I apprecaite the assistance. Unfortunately I dont think getting reduced leaders at a lower cost makes it better. I am still having difficulty getting past the scripted nature of the game with very limited "what if" possibilities.

Nick, I'm not sure what the "what if" possibilities are you want to explore. Are you talking about something really open ended where, for example, Germany could choose to not invade Poland or the Allies at all, but instead invade Yugoslavia or something. Keep in mind that the game is designed with only 2 players, so at some point they are going to have to go to war (well or else it ain't much of a game). Do you want it to be open ended for everyone so that, for example, Russia can declare war on the Axis in 1939 or 40? Could you elaborate a little?

One thing I think I do agree with you on is Russia declaring War in 1941. IMHO, but for Germany declaring War on Russia I don't think Stalin would have declared war on the Axis until 1943 at the earliest, if at all. However, I can see this as a necessity of the game. We all know now that the biggest mistake Germany made was declaring war on Russia at all, at least prior to knocking the Uk out of the War. But if the option is given in the game to Germany to not DOW Russia they would win every single game.