Battleground Europe - V1.0 - WWII realism

[Kharn]

Introducing a MASSIVE World War 2 Era for Wesnoth!
(Inspired by WWIIOL: Battleground Europe, a FPS MMO with the world's largest online gameworld and an obsession with realism that is taken too far.)
Includes 85+ unique units most with custom wml and animations from Germany, Western Allies and Russia. The most historically produced tanks, aircraft, and naval units were selected to be a part of the mod. Every unit can level to veteran, and most can level to elite or more.
~30 units are available for recruit by each nation, with several more unlocked via the Tier 2 Factory.
Includes a massive campaign map of Western Europe designed true to life. Shorelines are accurate to the hex, cities have real population ratios, village density is based on a population density map from 1940. Forests and Hills are based on forestation and topography maps also measured by the hex and placed. Games take 50-120 turns.
Also includes Battle of Sedan and the 3 year Battle of Leningrad with preset units based on actual division composition and strength.
Custom AI made for each map type: Small, Medium, Huge, Ocean
Every variable (hp,mm of penetration , upkeep, etc) is mathematically derived based on researched WWII performance statistics and schematics.
Value = Formula
1 turn = 1 Week
xx Cost = Dollars(1942) / 160
xx Upkeep = Dollars(1942) / 160
xx Level = (Cost+Upkeep*10)/40
xx EXP to level = Level*24
xx HP = (mm_of_armour^2)/5
xx AP Damage = mm_of_penetration@750m^2 / 6
xx ground movement = kmph / 5
xx aircraft movement = kmph / 19
An infantryman on screen is a squad. All other units represent single units.
The historic production cost of every unit was researched and converted to 1942 dollars. Every 1 gold in game is 160 dollars from 1940. This was the hardest part of researching the game was finding records of how many reichsmarks or dollars something costed to build and upkeep weekly. (For example a Flying Fortress has the same cost as 2 King Tigers)
There are great custom coded features such as: Exp from capturing villages, Carpet bombing 6 hexes, Conscripts spawning out of villages, lowered attack while swimming, aircraft unable to capture villages, Tier 2 factories unlock units after 1942, aircraft can continue to move after attacking, vehicles can skirmish but only past infantry, supply trucks can tow ATG guns and infantry, and finally an invisible spy unit called the Operator that can actually steal opponent's units and cause havoc behind the front line.

------------------------------

Some notes: It has undergone hundreds of hours of playtesting during the 6 months it was developed. For over 95% of the units the real life stats just happened to be balanced. This is a release candidate version, it is not a beta, this is past alpha and beta. I waited until I had a completed project before revealing. At this point what little remains is adding neat features like paratroopers and artillery, adding elite level to every unit, and other realism things that are harder to code like giving a tank on a hill first strike.

Village gold should be set to 5 on all maps.

It has passed the WMLLINT tools tests. The only errors remaining is code that is intentionally unusual.

The AI is quite good at smaller maps. With very large maps the AI has a hard time handling the larger maps despite all of the testing and tweaking due to the AIs shortcomings with large scale strategy across ground air and sea. If you do want a challenge on the Campaign map play as France. When I play France I usually lose Paris and barely hang on almost losing.

Here are some tips for those new to the mod: Build supply trucks on the first turn. Get a fighter plane up somewhat early because the intel is very valuable, Build an airfield (find a village good for your aircraft to retreat/rearm/heal at and put a few AA guns in the area to shoot down enemy fighters that chase), Conscripts appear to be cheap but they are terrible at combat and cost the same upkeep as trained units..don't build more than a few conscripts, Rifleman is the strongest infantry and should be about half of your infantry, flank when using aircraft or tanks so they hit the weakspots of enemies and deal double damage, keep your fighter aircraft together and in formation, keep infantry in forests or villages for cover, hide a few ATG guns spread out behind your lines in case an enemy tank breaks your front lines, When playing as Russia aim for quantity not quality when it comes to tanks. You have 2 leaders to choose between, 5 star general and Factory. Factories can survive bombings and assassinations, but the General will refund the entire cost of building the T2 factory when you build it.

Credit due to Ruglud for the graphics in Westfront, many of which were used outright or graphically modified to become needed units. Also the the developer of Modern Combat from which a few units sprites were also used or modified.

If you want to do multiplayer, ill be available for it whenever I can. I also have some friends that occasionally play the mod. The AI is pretty good as an opponent otherwise.
Skype: imkharn
Tox: F026E2B82D6B1A1DCBA9900ECAE1E690F821C7577C30303199D7EDF850ED6D6AD7D26C3DD30E

[Ravana]

http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Distributing_co ... -on_Server has correct method. If there is no publish item, then it is likely that your _server.pbl is incorrect.

[zookeeper]

The wiki page http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Distributing_content has inaccurate outdated method. There is no publish item in the addons list.

If you don't see the publish option at the very bottom of the list, then there's got to be something wrong with your _server.pbl or the location of the add-on.

[Kharn]

C:\Users\Kharn\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Battle for Wesnoth 1.12.2\userdata\data\add-ons
Add on is located here.
Server.pbl is:

author="Kharn"
icon="/whiteboard/suppose_dead.png"
version="1.0.0"
title="WWII Battleground Europe"
type="era"
description="WWII realism to the dollar. 160 dollars per gold"
passphrase="XXX"
email="XXXXXX@gmail.com"

[Ravana]

_server.pbl not Server.pbl

[Kharn]

TY! Fixed and uploaded.

[Madventurer]

Alright, some feedback:
The add-on itself seems like a good idea, with WW2 add-on being a nice thing.
However, I don't really agree with the idea of historically accurate unit costs, mainly due to how Wesnoth economy works.
Also, the different factions seemed rather similar, main differences being in the vehicles.
The amount of units was redundant, to be fair. Not a whole lot of point with so many different ones.

To sum it up:
Good if not excellent work with history...
but the result doesn't really fit into Wesnoth and how it works.

[Kharn]

Alright, some feedback:
The add-on itself seems like a good idea, with WW2 add-on being a nice thing.
However, I don't really agree with the idea of historically accurate unit costs, mainly due to how Wesnoth economy works.
Also, the different factions seemed rather similar, main differences being in the vehicles.
The amount of units was redundant, to be fair. Not a whole lot of point with so many different ones.

To sum it up:
Good if not excellent work with history...
but the result doesn't really fit into Wesnoth and how it works.

Why does matter how the wesnoth economy works? The relative purchase cost of each unit is accurate. 160 dollars = 1 gold. Upkeep is 1 week of gas, maintenance, and military personnel costs. How does the "wesnoth economy" make realistic costs impossible? Especially when compared to the alternative; making up some numbers.

Tanks of each size, ship of each small size, aircraft of each airforce role, infantry of each main type, Few ATG sizes, 2 AA gun sizes, and supply trucks. That makes up all the units. Can you give some examples of units that are redundant?

I think saying the main difference is vehicles is true but misleading. The main difference is everything everything except the infantry, which is supposed to be roughly the same on opposing sides.

My goal was to bend wesnoth as best as the AI is able to understand towards WWII mechanics. Wesnoth core is a far cry away from being designed for simulating WWII. I knew it would not completely fit in to Wesnoth, but I need something the AI is able to use so that single player can be enjoyable.

[Ruglud]

I know that wesnoth mods are under the GNU, but:
it would be nice, if you mentioned, that you use a lot of my and other sprites for your era.

[WarMan]

Sorry that is it August but I just returned to wesnoth again and noticed this mod. I have been trying to download it but it from the add-ons part of wesnoth ingame but it won't download for some reason. I randomly downloaded 18th century warfare to see if it would download any other add-on and that worked, but I can't download this add-on.

[ichbinsehselber]

Very interesting! Thanks a lot for your work.

I just play tested the river scenario playing in the middle vs AI.

The top AI performed even worse than expected. When I went there pretty quickly it didn't have recruited any units.
The lower AI did a bit better having 3 or 4 units, which is still very bad for this map. The AI does not understand that on such maps it is necessary to build several of the cheapest units in first move to kick-start up quickly.

I guess the scenario was designed for multiplayer (humans)? It is probably difficult to adapt the AI to such a scenario.

The stealth bomber has bombs in medium range. Shouldn't that attack be in the above range category instead?

[kenki]

So parden the fact that I've actually played Battleground Europe (Don't believe me I was in a wille tee video :p joke lol) anyway , comming back from a hiadus of playing wesnoth I figured I'd try your mod..

I am not getting how your mod is supposed to function in terms of combat (I've added ya on skype by the by)

In a silly non nonsensical test of your mod in the Colosseum I've found it funny that your 5 star general seems to not be able to well retaliate.

I tried your factory.. agian not able to retaliate vs fliers really so no idea. How are you supposed to work your ranged guns.

Also I noticed your HP pools., 4000 hp on units that do small bursty damage, err.. weird..

I also find it odd you use EEAW warfare style attacks but don't use the EEAW centry style combat system which would help your mod a lot in terms of some of the combat. The ability I'm refering to is the area attack that is used by the organ gun. The AAA from the factory would be better using that but meh lol.

Anyway , figured to bring that organ gun mechanic to your attention so if you wanted to put it on for turret mgs and so on.

[Sagez]

Great idea but poorly executed. Wesnoth doesn't work well with so many units and Battleground Europe just lags. The amount of villages is also hilarious... this is cool era but sadly nonplayable. A real shame as I am a fan of ''historical'' addons.

[Kunga]

Hi, i know its been 10 years since release but i want to give some feedback since I had a lot of fun playing 1v1 with some friend or another. I actually wish there were more people giving it a try online. So here it goes:

The first few games i played on a random map vs AI. This was a good thing since there are what could be considered new mechanics in this era, and with it a learning curve. So the thing that took me by surprise the most was the lvl 0 conscripts teleport being lost when they gain 1xp and turn into a lvl 0 rifleman instead, that being also the case when capturing any village by themselves.
Also i dont know how implementable it is on Wesnoth but it would be really helpful for new players to have the OP's tips for the mod visible somewhere in-game. Like starting with supply trucks for increased movement and some conscripts/riflemen to capitalise on it. Oh and the village gold in map settings is a must read as well, also that factions labeled with AI have so much more gold per village on a random map with standard settings than the non AI factions.

All that being said, when i finally worked around finding how to play it vs AI and telling my friends the basics i had learned, we had some very interesting games, so here come all the good qualities that i found very satisfying with the mod:

The fact that tanks and planes are so OP vs infantry combined with the option to go for a Tier 2 facility to get even better units makes it a highly interesting strategic game, not only tactical as i find most vanilla wesnoth games to be (which i love as well btw), but here it really pushes you to think your strategy ahead, for example (should i go T2 as fast as possible and relinquish ground on my flanks since my t1 tanks are holding the centre but i have lost air superiority which has left my flanks rather isolated, or should i grind on T1 to regain air superiority with inferior planes?; or: ok i was actually pushing hard but now the enemy has T2 tanks and my T1 tanks are starting to fall short of the task,)

Also one would assume infantry to be a waste of money later on in the game as more tanks and planes are dominating the battlefield, but that would be a fatal mistake, as artillery covered by infantry actually deal with both tanks and planes in a very cost effective way, so if you are pushing with tanks and planes you really need at least some infantry of your own to scout for ambushing artillery nearby. This is also makes the fights very dynamic and tactical, whereby there is never one unit beats all, making the recruiting and tactical decisions very balanced and entertaining.

Another cool feature i found to be that advancing to T2 not only gives you better tanks and planes but it also lets you get riflemen with semi automatic instead of bolt action rifles which is not only historically accurate but also a game changer where they get more attacks per turn at close range, making the transition to T2 a necessity at some point of the game if the other player has upgraded to T2 themselves or if you want to get a firepower advantage after sacrificing one turn of income into T2 to really help push back the enemy line at close quarters.

So in closing, i find the era to be very entertaining, historically accurate AND balanced at the same time. Yes it takes a couple of games to master some specific units dynamics but that happens with every mod including vanilla as well.
It really is worth a try if you are into historical mods.
And last but not least, i want to say again that i wish more people would give it a try online as well so we could get some games going.

Hope to see you all on the server soon and we can grab a game or two

[Argothair]

Very interesting, Kunga, thanks for your thoughts! Perhaps you and I should play a game sometime. I tried a quick game of Micro Pacific as Japan, and then the medium-sized Europe 1940 as Germany (replay attached). I found both to be trivially easy against the AI; I was in London by turn 5 and Moscow by turn 12. The AI is not at all reliable about defending its villages and seems to have a fixed recruiting order that doesn't take into account your force balance. By turn 8 or so of the second game I just filled my entire castle with Stukas, and that didn't seem to cause any of my opponents to invest in more fighters or more AA guns. It is also somewhat problematic that I could *afford* to fill my entire castle with nothing but Stukas. In the Europe 1940 game there is not really enough to spend your cash on once you get started. In particular the lack of any expensive naval units for Germany is frustrating; the only naval unit you can build is a 13 gp U-Boat. The lack of any surface warships means you have no real way of countering enemy subs (since they get 90% defense in the water against both your planes and your subs) or enemy capital ships (because they have so many hitpoints that they can shrug off u-boat attacks even if you use the backstab feature).

I do agree with several of your points about the interesting unit matchups and cost-effectiveness options. The Snipers in particular feel very themey in that they can kill each other, and kill enemy infantry, and hide well from bombers and tanks, but they are not effective at destroying enemy equipment. AA and AT guns feel appropriately priced; they're useful if you know you need to counter the appropriate type of enemy unit and that unit is close enough that you can reach it, but otherwise you wouldn't want them. I did not figure out how to build a Tier 2 facility (are you supposed to be attacking with your factories to get them to level up?), so maybe I would enjoy the game even more once I learn how to do that.

I think the grain of truth in Madaventurer's old post from a decade ago, which perhaps he did not quite finish explaining, is that you want to see some interesting tension and balance in the village economy. In the opening, there should be a tough choice about how many scouts to build -- building many scouts (e.g. Vampire Bats, Drake Glider, Elvish Rider, Wolf Rider, etc.) will get you more of the villages on the map, but if you build *too* many then some of them will have to go into areas under heavy threat by enemy infantry/archers, and will die too quickly, before the village they 'stole' gets a chance to pay for the cost of the scout, so you wind up losing money. On the other hand, building too few scouts could mean that your economy is weak because you don't capture enough villages quickly enough, and you could also lose out on useful recon that would help you plan your army composition / direction of march. I haven't seen these features in the Battleground Europe maps yet -- you only have about 8 spots to recruit on no matter how big the map is, so the correct recruiting order for just about everyone is lots of teleporting conscripts and fast supply trucks. The payoff on these trucks is very generous -- they cost 33 gp to buy, but a village is worth 10 gp/turn, so holding a village for just 4 turns will fully pay off the truck, even if the truck deals zero damage to your enemies before dying. If you can grab a village or two with a 3 or 5 or 10 gp conscript -- and you almost certainly can -- then that's obviously even more powerful. By contrast, a scout in Wesnoth mainline campaigns usually costs about 14 gp and gets you a village worth 2 gp, so it takes at least seven turns to pay off.

Similarly, in a Wesnoth mainline middlegame, a crucial consideration is what you want your 'mature' army composition to look like, because upkeep costs will rapidly approach your total income as your units level up. You might have, e.g., 20 units whose average level is 2, costing you 40 gold per turn in upkeep, and you are only earning 50 gold per turn, because you only have 25 villages, so your 'profit' is 10 gold per turn which is not enough to reliably buy new units. This is intentional and helps move the game along, and sets up interesting questions in terms of what you want your 'final' army to look like and how you plan to get there. It also raises an interesting strategic choice around when to move your leader off your starting castle to support your general attack; at some point the last dribs and drabs of further recruiting are less valuable than getting a powerful leader into the action.

By contrast, in Battleground Europe, there is always plenty of money to buy new units; you will fill your castle every single turn throughout the entire game, often with expensive units and/or high-level units. You would never delay or skip a unit purchase in order to reduce your upkeep; the upkeep on your units is not really significant compared to, e.g., the difference between a 2000 gp carrier and a 13 gp u-boat.

So, I know you've invested thousands of hours of research in perfecting your economic conversions for this era, and I'm grateful for the historical accuracy, but something is probably lost in terms of gameplay when the history is strictly implemented. I suspect the game would be more interesting to play if the economy put more pressure on the players. Some ways to achieve this include:
* Larger starting castles
* The ability to build new castle/keep hexes over time
* Additional 'regional' keeps in, e.g., Australia, India, Italy, Manchuria, etc.
* Fewer HP for Conscripts, so that they are less able to even temporarily hold a line against Level 2 troops -- because they are so easy to level, if you fail to kill one immediately there's a good chance that it heals the damage from the first attack you make against it, meaning they're actually pretty durable. If Conscripts were weaker then players would be under more pressure to build more expensive units
* Better attack stats and slightly higher prices on SMGs, LMGs, HMGs, and Mortars, especially against Level 1 Riflemen -- I find that I can mostly 'round down' and treat all infantry the same when I'm planning my tactical unit match-ups. Riflemen should be the cheapest units that can hold a line for any length of time, and that line should be breakable with the right combination of NCOs, SMGs, etc. even if you don't have heavy tanks or bombers in the area.
* Attacks for tanks and bombers that are less 'all-or-nothing' against infantry. If I have a 40% chance of doing 300 damage to a 30-hp infantry, but I only get one strike, then that's not actually a good attack for me, since I spent 200 gp on my tank and you only spent 30 gp on your infantry. It might pencil out economically, but it doesn't work strategically; if I'm using tanks and you don't have anti-tank guns or your own tanks in the area, I need to be reliably taking territory from you, or at least inflicting heavy losses on your manpower. If tanks could more reliably seize territory (even slightly rough territory) when unopposed, then there would be more reason to buy expensive tanks, so that would put more pressure on your purchasing decisions. It's fine if, e.g., tanks perform poorly in the Alps or the Sahara or the Priepet Marshes or whatever, but for ordinary rough terrain (including castles) they still need to be reasonably effective.[/list]