[Abandoned] - Second Indochina War

[Industrial Helix]

The new draft looks so awesome! If I made any complaint on the graphics, it would be that the trees are a little too saturated. It has a nice theme to it and just about everything seems clear.

The gameplay, however, reminds me of my whole rise of communism series. I was gonna do a Vietnam War map, but you guys seem to know what your doing so I scratched it.

The only big thing missing is the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

[grifftron]

The new draft looks so awesome! If I made any complaint on the graphics, it would be that the trees are a little too saturated. It has a nice theme to it and just about everything seems clear.

The gameplay, however, reminds me of my whole rise of communism series. I was gonna do a Vietnam War map, but you guys seem to know what your doing so I scratched it.

The only big thing missing is the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Which I am pretty sure FD was gonna add, he was talking about it and in some of our recent PM's... guess just wait on FD

[FarangDemon]

Thanks for the initial feedback everybody!

What you're proposing FarangDemon for the continent bonuses with the building bonus (3-tiered superbonus) structure sounds workable, but perhaps unnecessary and might fill the legend up a bit much. Again, this is just a first impression, I'll take a closer look later.

Are you suggesting a standard bonus structure, like hold all of Cambodia for +7? I'm concerned that the continents are so big that no one will ever be able to hold them, like Asia in Classic.

We'll wait for your suggestion here.

The gameplay, however, reminds me of my whole rise of communism series. I was gonna do a Vietnam War map, but you guys seem to know what your doing so I scratched it.

We may have been subconsciously inspired by your maps. But once we got the idea to use portraits of the leaders, it seemed like the only way to go was to make them be the 8 starting locations, such that they each attack a corresponding region - as you've done in your communism series.

The only big thing missing is the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Voilà.

Click image to enlarge.

Attacks range 2 down the Ho Chi Minh Trail (from North to South). So one could attack directly from Khammouane to Quang Tri or from Quang Binh to Xepon to North Central Highlands.

[grifftron]

[quote=FarangDemon]Attacks range 2 down the Ho Chi Minh Trail (from North to South). So one could attack directly from Khammouane to Quang Tri or from Quang Binh to Xepon to North Central Highlands.[/quote]

just 2 down or 2 in general..? How will i write this in the key.... "All HCMT territories have 2 attack range"? i dunno...?

-griff

[MarshalNey]

just 2 down or 2 in general..? How will i write this in the key.... "All HCMT territories have 2 attack range"? i dunno...?

What might work would be to say, "Ho Chi Minh Trail regions can attack each other at a range of 2."

Are you suggesting a standard bonus structure, like hold all of Cambodia for +7? I'm concerned that the continents are so big that no one will ever be able to hold them, like Asia in Classic.

We'll wait for your suggestion here.

OK, looked this over in some detail. First, while I love the clean graphics and all, what I love even more is... an informative First Post. It helps us mods digest the map info quickly, but more importantly it helps community newcomers to the thread, especially on more complex gameplay.

So, as soon as you guys get a chance, could you update the first post with all of the relevant gameplay information? I like the historical overview, it gives a decent backdrop for the theme. What I would like to see is:

# of total regions
-- # of regions that are 'open deployment' (deployed randomly at the drop)
-- # of regions that are starting positions
-- # of regions that are neutral
(by my count, there's 60 for open deployment, plus 8 starting positions plus 6 neutral bombing missions)
Names of any neutral regions and their starting values
Gameplay framework and current ideas... this is basically this post:

Regional Bonuses

As the continents are otherwise too big and too hard to defend given a standard bonus structure, I think we could use something like Berlin or England. It would also help every starting location have a near equal chance of growing at the same rate.

This is my initial idea:


Cambodia, Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam


hold any 4: +1
hold any 6: +3
hold any 9: +6


Thailand


hold any 5: +1
hold any 7: +3
hold any 10: +6

I think this adjustment for Thailand evens out the advantage of not being able to be bombarded and having neighbors who might not go for Thailand. Though the US Army likely will go for U Tapao, they may have no pressing need to venture deeper into Thailand.

I've purposely assigned the value of just +1 army for the lowest level of bonus in order to minimize the advantage one would get by dropping it, which would happen a lot in 4-player and even 6-player trips. So it's like Poker Club, you can drop a pair but you only get 1 more army than a High Card would.

Starting Positions

We've shifted our starting positions to the leaders - each player gets one leader. Each leader would start with, say 6 troops and assaults its corresponding region. To protect them from being attacked before a player's turn, the territories they assault could start neutral.

In addition to adding to the historic feel of the map, this new arrangement protects the starting positions of Kaysone Phomvihane and Pol Pot from bombardment. Now we don't need to worry about creating a small territory within a territory in Houaphan to represent the Pathet Lao caves which sheltered the Pathet Lao HQ from bombardment, as Kaysone is quite safe from bombardment under the new arrangement.

Bombing

The numbers in the legend refer to the neutral armies you need to go through before you can execute the bombardment. Territories with planes one-way assault the color-coded bombing missions (each color has two missions it could assault).

I chose the neutral starting values for the bombing missions to match the actual chronology of the war(s). Initially it is easy to bomb Laos and South Vietnam and North Vietnam below Hanoi. It should take a bit of time before violating Cambodian neutrality (Operation Menu) and the more comprehensive bombing of North Vietnam including Saigon and Hai Phong (Operation Linebacker). For the same reason we want Tet Offensive to have a high neutral starting value....

Tet Offensive

For an added gameplay twist (which should please the history-minded) I want to allow Ho Chi Minh to conduct the Tet Offensive. He could one-way attack a large neutral "Tet Offensive" which can one-way attack any South Vietnamese region except Mobile Riverine Force and 1st Cavalry Division. Based on the below map and from what I've read, it seems that every region we have except for those two was attacked during the offensive.

Ho Chi Minh Trail
Attacks range 2 down the Ho Chi Minh Trail (from North to South). So one could attack directly from Khammouane to Quang Tri or from Quang Binh to Xepon to North Central Highlands.

And, even though you might not use traditional continent bonuses, it will help me if you include a breakdown of each bonus continent like so:
N. Vietnam
10 regions, 4 borders, all bombardable

Laos
14 regions, 7 borders, 6 bombardable

Thailand
10 regions, 3 (4?) borders, none bombardable

Cambodia
10 regions, 5 borders, 5 bombardable

S. Vietnam
16 regions, 5 borders, 4 bombardable

If you can keep the First Post tidy and regularly updated, this map should have a smooth ride through gameplay.

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

OK, that said, while I agree that the continents are too big to realistically hold for the most part, especially with the bombardment, the problem with build-a-bonus structures is that they are a headache for dropping bonuses. Given that we're talking 60 regions here, dropping more than a +1 is highly unlikely under your scheme until we get to low player counts. In 1v1 this scheme will be chaotic I think. Could you run the numbers for me so I can see the probabilities of dropping each kind of bonus for 1v1s/3 player, 4-, 5-, 6-, 7- & 8-player games?

Berlin is a bit bad in Doubles games for instance about dropping a bonus for this reason. Don't get me wrong, I've nothing against build-a-bonus gameplay, but it's hard to pull off properly, so be prepared for a lot of hard thinking.

If the numbers are not good for dropping bonuses, then the alternative I think would be to perhaps arbitrarily split each country into smaller bonus areas. You could do a 'core bonus' which upgrades to a superbonus type of structure, rather than an open 'hold any x' scheme.

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

A final thing that I'm still mulling over but I want to throw out there is further exaggerating the thematic differences between the US/Viet Cong & Viet Minh (did I spell those right?) operations. For instance, maybe making the overall US Army bonus larger, but get rid of the small bonus for holding 3. So the US operates only when it's got all of its ducks in a row, with overwhelming force (supposedly). Maybe just +6 for holding all 4 Army points, and make one of them neutral 2 or 3? It seems achievable yet not too easy. Maybe also a bonus for holding certain faction leaders and certain areas, like the Ho Chi Minh trail...

Anyway, my fear is over-complicating the gameplay, which I certainly don't want. But I'm wondering if there are a few simple ideas that could give players more of a feel of which regions/factions are 'US' and which are "Communist Vietnamese".

-- Marshal Ney

[FarangDemon]

Thanks very much for setting us on the right track, MarshalNey.

Ok there are 60 territories from the continents plus Guam and Yankee Station make 62.
Then subtract 8 from this number to get 54 (the 8 regions that are adjacent the starting locations are neutral).

Here are the probabilities that any player would drop a bonus in South Vietnam, which is the easiest to get because there are the most (14) territories that could be dropped.

I put this formula into cell F6 from Mr. Benn's tool, as it was not computing P(any player drops the bonus) correctly "=1-(1-F5)^F2"

Probability that no single player has the bonus = (probability that a specific player does NOT have the bonus)^(number of players)
So the probability that any of the players has the bonus = 1 - P(no single player has the bonus)

I've included the probabilities for the 4-territory bonus, but since it's just +1 I don't think they matter too much:

1vs1: any 4(95%), any 6(49%), any 7(22%)
3-player: any 4(99%), any 6(64%), any 7(31%)
4-player: any 4(91%), any 6(23%), any 7(5%)
5-player: any 4(73%), any 6(6%), any 7(1%)
6-player: any 4(66%), any 6(4%), any 7(0%)
7-player: any 4(38%), any 6(0%), any 7(0%)
8-player: any 4(24%), any 6(0%), any 7(0%)

So if we went by my initial suggestion, 49% of 1vs1, 64% of 3-player and 23% of 4-player games have someone dropping the second tier bonus (any 6 territories). And 66% of trips games and 24% of quad games have someone drop the 1st tier bonus.

There is so much tweaking I can do to adjust the numbers to get them to acceptable levels. So what is acceptable? I agree that we don't want doubles games to drop the 2nd tier bonus that often.

If we make an additional territory in South Vietnam neutral (1st Cavalry Division), then there are only 13 territories to drop. The numbers change to:

1vs1: any 4(91%), any 6(38%), any 7(14%)
3-player: any 4(98%), any 6(51%), any 7(21%)
4-player: any 4(85%), any 6(16%), any 7(3%)
5-player: any 4(64%), any 6(4%), any 7(0%)
6-player: any 4(56%), any 6(2%), any 7(0%)
7-player: any 4(30%), any 6(0%), any 7(0%)
8-player: any 4(18%), any 6(0%), any 7(0%)

If we change S. Vietnam's 2nd tier bonus to require 7 out of 13 droppable territories, then 14% of 1vs1, 21% of 3-player and 3% of 4-player games drop the 2nd tier bonus. Additionally, with 13 droppable territories in S. Vietnam, 56% of trips and 18% of quads games have someone drop the +1 bonus.

Please let me know what values are acceptable and I can play around with this some more and check all the different bonuses, but I think S. Viet should be the worst.

[MarshalNey]

Hmmm.... well, those numbers are worse than I expected, which might mean the build-a-bonus won't work... but I'll see what you can do without making this a conquest map (which would be terrible, in my personal opinion).

Thing is, even at 6% I'm not really comfortable. The 4% probability for 6-player is at the fringe of my comfort zone for maps (this from your original stats, not the revised ones from your suggestion). One might think this is unreasonable, but I'm looking at it from a CC site-wide perspective. That's 4 out of every 100 games where a player (or team) may howl about how unfair the drop was, how the map's imbalanced and then rant about the randomness of the dice for good measure

Probabilities that are < 3% are what I'm looking for, the lower the better. I can live with 4% if it turns out that way.

What's a killer is that the numbers that you're looking at are for the second-tier bonuses, while the first-tier look insoluble. Even with the suggestions, as you say:

Additionally, with 13 droppable territories in S. Vietnam, 56% of trips and 18% of quads games have someone drop the +1 bonus.

Which is Not A Good Thing, unfortunately. Consider how so much effort is spent to get maps to "Golden Numbers" of regions, just so that a team who goes first can't get a quick +1 advantage.

The icing on this evil cake however, is the 1vs.1 / 3-player numbers. As it stands it's just not a friendly 2- or 3- player map, when 1 out of 7 times a player can drop a 3rd-tier (for the original #'s) or 2nd-tier (for the revised #'s) bonus. The map would end up on the 'banned' list in many tournament threads, I'd wager.

As I said, I'll leave it to you to play around with the numbers, but I do strongly urge you to consider alternatives to the current build-a-bonus structure. I've not the brain power at the moment to think of a really good alternative, but if worse comes to worst, you can always fall back on splitting the map into smaller traditional bonus continents.

-- Marshal Ney

[Victor Sullivan]

Is it possible to assign neutrals and starting positions in such a way that this wouldn't be the case?

[FarangDemon]

Thanks Marshall, I'll play around with it some more.
Yes, Victor, that's what I'll do - see how many I need to set to neutral in each continent for the chance to drop 1st and 2nd tier bonuses to be within acceptable limits.

[FarangDemon]

Well one simple solution would be to require control of a specific region that starts as neutral for each collection bonus. These would be those neutrals that border each faction leader and represent that faction's power center. That way it's impossible to drop any collection bonus.

Tier 1:

Thailand - hold Bangkok and 4 other Thai regions
Laos - hold Vientiane/Houaphan and 3 other Laos regions
Cambodia - hold Phnom Penh/Ratanakiri and 3 other Cambodian regions
North Vietnam - hold Hanoi and 3 other N Vietnamese regions
South Vietnam - hold Saigon/Quang Tri and 3 other S Vietnamese regions

And I just had an unrelated idea - bombing missions over North Vietnam could lose 1 army every turn, representing the greater air defense capabilities of North Vietnam as opposed to Laos and Cambodia or VC in S Vietnam.

By the way, I've noted your suggestion re: US Army bonus. Once this collection bonus issue is settled first, we can revisit that and see what then would work the best.

[kengyin]

would it be unwise for me to consider reviving my vietnam map that i started last year seeing as this map is already serving that purpose and is in gameplay already and has experienced mapmakers?

[grifftron]

would it be unwise for me to consider reviving my vietnam map that i started last year seeing as this map is already serving that purpose and is in gameplay already and has experienced mapmakers?

I don't see why you couldn't... since this is on the 2nd Indochina war, not just on Vietnam.

[FarangDemon]

would it be unwise for me to consider reviving my vietnam map that i started last year seeing as this map is already serving that purpose and is in gameplay already and has experienced mapmakers?

I don't see why you couldn't... since this is on the 2nd Indochina war, not just on Vietnam.

Yeah you could either go in depth on the Vietnam part of the conflict or you could just turn it into a regular Vietnam map, which does not yet exist. Actually I thought it looked like a regular Vietnam map during the early stages of development, and I think the territories you originally had would serve that purpose well.

[FarangDemon]

So, I suggested we solve the problem of dropping bonuses by requiring a designated power center or 1 of 2 designated power centers of a bonus region be held in order to get the collection bonus. They would start neutral, therefore no one can drop the bonus.

Is this an acceptable solution?

[Victor Sullivan]

So, I suggested we solve the problem of dropping bonuses by requiring a designated power center or 1 of 2 designated power centers of a bonus region be held in order to get the collection bonus. They would start neutral, therefore no one can drop the bonus.

Is this an acceptable solution?

Sounds fine to me. Would make the XML easier that way

[FarangDemon]

Thanks, Victor. It'll complicate the xml a little, but nothing I can't hack. I have experience from coding HTMS Chakri Nareubet + Royal Army Regions bonus which is essentially the same.

Let's consider the Ho Chi Minh Trail again now.

I would prefer that the Ho Chi Minh Trail have attack range of two southbound only along the trail.

After all, most of the men and materiel that used the trail were moving south toward South Vietnam.

We could depict it by adding some arrows to the trail itself. Then in the legend say something like "Regions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, in addition to assaulting and being assaulted by neighbors, can assault other regions along trail at range 2 in the direction of the arrows."

While grifftron is going to be unavailable for the next 3 months or so, I'm still going to try to get the gameplay stamp in his absence. I'll just do whatever rough sketches are necessary to illustrate the gameplay concepts until the gameplay stamp is awarded. If it is awarded sooner rather than later, we discussed the option of finding a replacement graphics partner.

I only mention this to reassure the community that we're going full steam ahead with this project now, despite grifftron's upcoming absence. That is, unless the CC community rejects the map, of course.

[Victor Sullivan]

"Regions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, can assault other regions along trail at range 2 in the direction of the arrows."

Fixed The other part you included is completely unnecessary.

[FarangDemon]

"Regions along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, can assault other regions along trail at range 2 in the direction of the arrows."

Fixed The other part you included is completely unnecessary.

From a logical standpoint, yes, it is unnecessary. But when special connectivity is described, people might assume that regular connectivity rules no longer apply. Especially given the proposed directional arrows along HCMT, which could otherwise be understood as representing 1-way attacks (which they do, in a way). But someone might incorrectly assume you can't attack northbound along the trail at all because the arrows are pointing southbound...

Anyway, we'll abide by whatever the best practices would be in this case.

[FarangDemon]

So I've revised the map to show:

• Proposed directionality of range 2 attacks down the Ho Chi Minh Trail
• Incorporation of power centers in regional bonus structure to eliminate possibility to drop any bonus
• Removed hold any 3 US Army bonus, but increased output of hold all US Army
  
  

  Click image to enlarge.

  

  
  
  Remaining Issues For Your Consideration
  
  
  • Size of Neutrals for the Bombing Missions
    
    • Rolling Thunder - 3 (-1 every round due to air defenses)
    • Linebacker - 7 (-1 every round due to air defenses)
    • Barrel Roll - 2
    • Steel Tiger - 2
    • Arc Light - 1
    • Menu - 6
  • Size of Neutrals for Tet Offensive
    
    I propose allowing a one-way attack from Ho Chi Minh to a neutral called "Tet Offensive" Tet Offensive can one-way attack any territory in South Vietnam with exception of Mobile Riverine Force and 1st Cavalry Division.
    
    This should be a lot of neutrals to reflect the staggering number of VC who died in this offensive and also to balance for the fact that you can attack directly to Saigon and from there take out the faction leader as well. So 8 neutral armies is my initial recommendation.
    
    
  • Single Region Bonuses to Represent Politics
    
    The Tet Offensive was a military disaster for the North Vietnamese forces, but it succeeded in causing US public opinion of the war to plummet, hastening America's exit. We could model this by creating an additional neutral - "US Public Opinion" that can be assaulted by General Westmoreland and Tet Offensive. Like neutral 3 or 4 armies that provides a +1.
    
    We could also add "Russian Support" for Ho Chi Minh, "Chinese Support" for Pol Pot and "Vietnamese Support" for Kaysone Phomvihane, which nobody else can attack.
    
    "US Support" could be available for Vang Pao, Lon Nol, Nguyen Van Thieu and Thanom Kittikachom. That way every leader has a similar opportunity to conquer a neutral for +1/+2. Maybe US Support could be +2 as the US had more money to give, but we can create just one region that those four leaders have to fight over. Just an idea. It would be a nice way to incorporate more historical flavor.
    

[grifftron]

I will be going to the states as i have said before for 3 months, i told FD he can find another graphics person if he wanted or wait until i get back, choice is his, but if he finds someone else this could be scrapped and the new graphics person could start up a new thread. Thanks

-griff

[FarangDemon]

There aren't many maps in gameplay. Would be nice to get some feedback from foundry on this one. Otherwise I'm "dancing with my-se-elf."

[Riskismy]

Hi FarangDemon,

I haven't read the entire thread, but I think that might be a good thing in this case. I've been looking and trying to understand your map for what seems like a long time - some 10 minutes I estimate - and I have to admit I simply have no clue what is going on. Probably it all makes sense if you've read the thread and seen all the map revisions, but I sure as hell am confused. So, even though this is supposed to be gameplay talk, I'm gonna have to ask about graphics and the meaning of them.

I don't understand the bonus scheme for regional power centers... Well, actually now that I have to describe my confusion, it starts to dawn on me.
Still, I have to say it isn't exactly obvious. When you get that far, you might want to consider using a bit more space to descripe those bonuses, not grouping them together like that.

But I still don't get the bombers. Are the 3 planes in the legend in the lower right actual territories (like the the leaders), or is it simply a legend? I can tell that they're bombing some sort of subset from the bonus areas, but the names in the legend makes no sense to me. I'm very confused, hope you can enlighten me.

However, I think it looks promising. One of the more complex map, I'd say, but that may be the confusing talking

[natty dread]

What are the numbers next to the bombing missions?

[Victor Sullivan]

What are the numbers next to the bombing missions?

I believe that's the bonus for holding the bombing mission, if I'm not mistaken.

[FarangDemon]

There are no bonuses associated with the bombing missions.
Those numbers in the legend at the lower right hand of the map represent example values for starting neutrals on the bombing missions. The legend explains that regions with plane icons one-way assault the bombing missions (which start neutral). The bombing missions then bombard the color coded regions.

I'll try to make it more clear. Maybe moving the numbers to the left and making them look like neutral army digits would help.

Size of Neutrals for the Bombing Missions

* Rolling Thunder - 3 (-1 every round due to air defenses)
* Linebacker - 7 (-1 every round due to air defenses)
* Barrel Roll - 2
* Steel Tiger - 2
* Arc Light - 1
* Menu - 6