WW2: Shattered Europe
Overview
The year is 1939, Hitler has blitzed though Poland and is now preparing to do the same in France.
Map can be played in EU, NA and Korea. Published since 18/02/16.
Credits for models go to Solstice: http://www.sc2mapster.com/assets/solstices-custom-sc2-models/
Visit the wiki run by fans: http://ww2-shattered-europe-beta.wikia.com/wiki/WW2:_Shattered_Europe_Beta_Wikia
If you would like to donate, just head over to my Patreon page https://www.patreon.com/Anteep
Im confused about the manpower changes. It just made the game much harder for neutral nations. I recently had 8k money piled up but zero manpower to spend with as Finland. Neutral nations can only really afford cheap manpower intensive armies compared to the tank and vehicle armies of the majors, making them really manpower dependent even before this patch. Infantry prices were reduced as well, making the manpower shortage worse, as you can afford more infantry. Dont really think the manpower made the game any better and just seemed so arbitrary. What was your reason for the manpower change.
Manpower needs to play a bigger role, if it's going to be a resource in the first place.
I can either take it out, or attempt to change it.
Even though players can use the conscription policies, it really destroys their economies so they tend not to. What I'm going to try now is linking conscription policies to some required techs that you can research, while at the same time reducing the negative economic effects of conscription significantly. This will allow manpower-low nations to alleviate their problem at the opportunity cost of other techs. I plan to add a whole number of other economic techs too. Possible recruitment centres that you can place around cities to boost manpower output as well.
I noticed this was a big problem too, so let's see how this goes. If after this it's still not very good, I might take out manpower entirely and just modify supply to represent manpower, so implementing conscription would just boost supply instead. So those nations with conscription would be able to maintain larger armies compared to same sized nations without conscription, but at an additional cost. I actually like this idea quite a lot actually.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this and others' thoughts too.
Although tying a conscription policy to a tech in order to boost manpower might be a good idea to solve this problem, the recent updates to economy tech have required the already science starved neutral nations to tech economy in order to keep up with the economy of majors. Introducing another tech for boosting manpower wouldn't be very effective as neutral nations would not have the science to tech conscription, econ and army. Manpower honestly wasn't in a bad state prior to this, there were often manpower shortages, but not in the same degree as the current state. Manpower wasn't an early game resource and mattered most in the late game as nations started to mass produce units, nations such as EGerm and USA were worst affected by this. Your idea of creating recruitment centers around cities to boost manpower seems like an effective solution, although I suggest making it cost fairly cheap in order to allow neutral nations to afford it.
Few Thoughts
Units
Balance
Extra
Going to take these issues into account for the next few updates.
There should definitely be a change in US-USSR economies.
USA wasn't even in the fight until 1941, and even then they didn't have much and much of what they had was fighting in the pacific and elsewhere... by the end of the war though, the US military is large and well-equipped. I should do something about that which represents their situation better.
What do you (and others) think should be done with the US? Should they even be in the war until 1941? So, when France falls, should their colonies go neutral, or go to the UK?
Obviously if this is the case then the UK really will be alone for a few years. Allies will lose a lot of early game power, so the USSR needs to be made more powerful. The Axis overrun them quite quickly at the beginning of the war, but things started to change and by the end of the war the USSR's military was gigantic.
I wrote a comprehensive solution, but apparently it disappeared...
What we need in this game is space symmetry and time asymmetry.
Space Symmetry
In Africa, Italy faces UK and US alone. In Russia, SU faces WG and EG alone. This creates space asymmetry which makes Italy hard to win in Africa and SU hard to win in Russia. A risky solution is giving EG a city in Africa so forces are even in Africa. EG can choose whether to fully invest in Africa or Russia. This also accurately reflects history.
Time Asymmetry
SU and US should become war machines as time goes on. Unless US quickly win Africa, US has too few cities to build up industry quickly.
The new economy change indirectly nerfed SU. Before, SU had time advantage as all cities had 4 industry limit regardless of tier. Now, Germany actually has time advantage as high tier cities can build more industries. As a result, Germany can prolong the war and win.
The game has become too slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.
Wow this time is the US upward? The AXIS is becoming increasingly difficult, but the ALLIES is getting stronger. How about changing the AXIS to a computer?
Anyway if same ability, AXIS can never win.
I really want you to play German West Command one time.
If you have tried AXIS, you can not patch it like this.
Anteep, could you tell me your design rationale for artillery. I;m a bit confused on their overlapped function with Rocket SPA's. Previously, several patches about, SPA's just out did artillery in every single way except against heavy tanks. With the artillery being effective against tanks, they started to outshine SPA's as they destroyed Heavy tanks and Mediums, as well as all infantry. But with further nerfs to their power to power to destroy tanks, they are again in another quandary in their overlapping role with SPA. I have several possible suggestions to this problem.
1. Remove Heavy Rocket SPA's effectiveness against tanks and Nerf artillery's direct damage against infantry while giving them a slow to their attacks to tanks and infantry
This would relegate SPA's to a mostly anti infantry role, while making artillery a powerful support unit that works well when paired with other units, such as tanks and anti tank guns.
or
2. Make SPA an anti tank unit ONLY while making artillery an anti infantry unit ONLY .
Make SPA do less direct damage than AT guns, with their power residing their ability to AoE attack tanks and weaken large masses of them. Artilery's power against their tank would nerfed heavily and their power against infantry would be buffed significantly.
or
3. Make SPA an early game unit, such how you did with the assault gun, while Artillery scales better lategame
Reduce its cost and build time, but also reduce its stats significantly. Possibly remove Heavy SPA or nerf its stats as well.
Also, thanks for addressing the much needed buffs to France. I think they'll make France a playable nation again instead of just free land for Germany.
I'd thought about making artillery more supportive to existing armies, if you notice what I've done with flak giving air units an 'Under AA Fire' debuff I am thinking of doing something similar for howitzer artillery.
Problem is that heavy artillery recently was far too good against tanks, and it became an artillery war. Artillery should definitely have more of a supportive role.
I dont think that flak requires a "Under AA Fire" change, as instead of existing as a support unit, they're a primary unit for anti air, as they exist as the only way of combating air from the ground. With this patch, air has become extremely dominant as they're just too weak to properly damage them. I suggest adding in rocket AA, or giving the ability for rocket infantry to be able to attack air. Rocket AA would the primary unit type in combating air, while flak would the support unit that would weaken air. In addition to this, the amount of money from industrial improvements should be increased, MBT's are not just not affordable lategame, with major countries barely making 1.5 to 2k. The econ change deflated the amount of money given to players but did not deflate the amount of money units cost.
For some odd reason, my comments are disappearing. Anyways, Axis seems to be favored in this patch, after playing around twenty or so games. France is just took weak in this patch, just allowing Axis to steam roll them and focus on USSR. This is due to the starting army buff to Germany, their preexisting infantry researches, the city bonus damage to bunkers removing the western france strat, and the nerf to USA cities, as they take a long time to give the same amount of income as previously due to the cooldown. This essentially removes France from the game until late, allowing both Germanies to focus the USSR and used their combined forces to win due to the sheer number. A previous counter to early fall of france by Awol was building attack planes in Russia to stop the early attack due to the lack of anti air, however, with the buffing of anti air this strat is no longer as effective. Allies is quite weak in this patch, especially France.
And in the present economic system, the game can not proceed because all countries can not stack incomes only if they terror. Also, since the material incom is too low, it is hard to make adv.factory, so it looks good to turn it back.
You're forgetting about something here. The game is quite favored towards Axis right now, despite all those advantages you mention, France has been hit hard this patch and the last several as well. The Western France strat doesn't work anymore with the inclusion of more units to Germany's starting army, and the fact that cities just cut through bunkers like butter. France is near impossible to hold and France just ditches the mainland. In addition to this, the cities in the United States take much much longer to scale into a proper economic foothold due to the cooldown and the fact they're just 6 normal cities. France is awful in this patch and is eliminated until the lategame. This allows both Germanies to focus USSR, which makes the defense of USSR near impossible without help from UK.
Hello, I want to upload the ww Europe map to Korean server.Please let me know if I can upload it.I wish to continue to upload continuously, but I want to upload it to the Korean server because the manufacturer does not want to do so.
Did you check the arcade? It's been uploaded for a long time.
Thanks for the feedback guys. It's mixed on the new eco system.
Since it is a new eco system it does need to be refined, but we can't go back to the old system unless you want a high chance of the unit bug occuring every game. As for its difficulty, I am very surprised you find it harder SicnessYT, every other player I spoke to found it easier since they set some of their cities to autocast industry therefore freeing part of their mind up to focus other matters.
New countries can be added, but it's not a priority right now.
Melnan - oil is useful, and historically the allies had access to it. At the moment it is hard to call whether Axis or Allies have an overwhelming advantage against eachother. Need more feedback on that.
ChildMauler - yeah this eco system needs refining. Need to come up with something that scales, which we had with the previous system.
Im getting used to the new econ system although I still think it needs refining with unit costs as well. One thing I noticed however, was the lack of unit limit bugs in all of the games I played. I think this really helped solve the unit limit problem. One suggestion for scaling the eco system is reducing the cooldown for the industry based on the tech level researched for industrial development. It would increase material costs but also give more material and cash per economy round, thus somewhat making it better scaling and giving an incentive to actually tech industrial development.
I think i'll do that. We'll see how it goes.