Destiny of the World News

I am excited to report that the Early Access version of Destiny of the World is now available on Steam!

Please remember that this is an Early Access version. There will be bugs. A Game Manual is included, but there is no tutorial yet. DOTW is a complex game, so please plan on at least skimming the manual. Although more features are planned, the Early Access version will let you play through the full length of the war.

I’m looking forward to your feedback and suggestions for making DOTW even better. The world is waiting, go forth and conquer!

Dave Visti
Fiddlyware

Work has been focusing on the AI for the different systems in DOTW. Recently, the primary focus is on the Trade AI, after some extensive work on the production AI. Combat Losses from convoys sunk were causing the production AI some real problems. It seems to be adapting and reprioritizing production much better when resources are in short supply. The trade AI is getting better at looking for resources on the market to address convoy losses.

One of the major tasks remaining is the balancing of the game, and tuning the world economy. The game uses a database containing dozens of tables and thousands of rows of data. Following the tuning and final testing, I will begin work on preparing for publishing.

Welcome to Destiny of the World (DOTW) Community Update #2. As game testing and tuning continues, I'll be providing some additional information about the game while you wait for release. In this update, we will be discussing how supply works in the game. I hope you find it interesting.

Supply Design Notes

Destiny of the World (DOTW) handles supply in a very detailed manner. In many traditional wargames, a unit is considered in supply if it can trace a path to the country’s capital. In DOTW, you must produce supply and fuel for your units, and you must also physically move it to your Land and Air units. If the supply moves across an ocean, it also needs available convoy transport ships as well. Naval units use a different, simpler process described in a later section.

This document refers to both supplies and fuel for units, but for conciseness, we’ll just refer to it as supply in this document. Just remember that the same rules apply for fuel.

Land and Air Unit Supply

Because supply was such a critical factory during World War II, DOTW models supply for land and air units in quite a bit of detail. Much of this is automated for you, but it is still important to understand the process, because supply can be intercepted and captured in transit.

DOTW divides the world into the following theaters: Europe, Mediterranean, Africa, Asia, America, and Oceana. Units receive supply from a depot in their theater. As units use supply, replacements will be automatically requisitioned into a convoy from the theater depot and will be sent to the unit.

To issue a requisition, a unit must be able to trace a path back to the theater depot. Each unit also has a local depot attached to it that contains up to 4 weeks of supply. The unit draws supplies from this local depot. Thus, a unit can be out of supply for a couple of turns without ill effect, as long as its local depot has some available.

The requisitioned supplies move from the theater depot to the unit’s attached depot. Depending on how far the unit is from its depot, this can take several turns. Enemy units can intercept supply during this travel, if they move into the region it is traversing. (Note: Sea convoys must be detected by enemy ships in the convoy region, which can be affected by weather, and technology such as radar).

When supply is requisitioned from a theater depot, the theater depot will request resupply from the global depot which is located in the country’s capital. A convoy will then be created and sent from the capital to the theater depot, which can take several turns, and can also be intercepted.

Note: DOTW keeps track of where the supply is produced. When a depot is looking for supply, it will utilize supply produced in that theater first, before requesting supply from the global supply depot. To minimize travel time, and convoy usage, you should try to produce supply in the same theater the unit is operating in, whenever possible. If insufficient supply was produced locally in the theater, the theater depot will requisition a convoy to meet the shortfall from the global depot at the country’s capital.

The following diagram illustrates this process:


Naval Supply

Naval units have a much simpler supply process. Ships can carry up to 12 weeks of supply. However, they do not get resupplied while at sea. To resupply, a ship must return to a friendly port. As long as the global supply depot for the country has sufficient supplies available, this ship will be resupplied once in port.

Supply Impact

Units that lack supply have reduced combat effectiveness and will suffer attrition, and eventually destruction, if the out of supply condition persists long enough. Air units cannot operate without fuel. Armor units cannot move without fuel. Ships without fuel are limited to move one sea region per turn.

As your panzers move deep into Russia, or your D-Day forces advance through France, or your Troops try to operate on remote islands, I think you will find that you face the same issues as actual World War II commanders, in protecting your supply lines and considering supply needs in your offensive operations.

Community Update #1

As Destiny of the World gets closer to completion, I wanted to start providing some status updates to let you know where we are at. The game has been feature-complete for several months now. The current focus is on tuning the AI and balancing the various game systems.

The game is simulating all aspects of World War II (Production, Research, Espionage, Combat, and Trade). Military units are modeled at the division level for land units, Air groups of 300 aircraft, and naval units are modeled as individual historically-named ships (for Aircraft Carriers, Battleships, and Cruisers), and 6-ship squadrons for destroyers and submarines.

I spent a couple of years just researching the data used by the game. As such, there is a tremendous amount of data. The data is stored in about 30 database tables with thousands of records. I want the game to provide a good simulation of World War II, but at the same time this is a game, so I will use creative license to ensure it is fun to play while still remaining true to the historical themes.

When I first started testing the early AI, there were a number of amusing bugs that I encountered. In a very early test, Germany was invading Poland. They had captured a Polish port containing two ships. When the port fell, the two ships escaped to sea. The German AI was determined not to let them escape and sent several infantry divisions in an attempt to chase them into the sea. This did not end well for the German Infantry. To my surprise, the Germans continued to send wave after wave of divisions to pursue the ships. I will emphasize that the AI and game was in a very early raw state at the time. 😊

Currently, the AI uses a multi-layered approach to managing the war. There is an overall AI that attempts to manage the resources of the country as a whole. There is a theater level AI that manages the Strategy for each theater in the war. And there is a tactical level AI that attempts to implement the plans set by the Strategic AI.

Production AI starts with historical data, and adapts it based on inputs from the combat AI, Trade AI, and Research AI.

For testing the AI, I am using several computers. I install the latest build on a PC and set the AI to play all countries. I have extensive logging in the debug builds. After the game completes, I can examine in detail what happened during each week (game turn) of the game and make adjustments as necessary.

I also wrote a post-mortem program that allows me to load the historical data into a modified version of the game that allows me to graphically view the game state on the map each week of the war.

The strategic AI for Germany, Japan, and Italy are executing their plans of world domination pretty well, and so far, have been able to equal or exceed their historical performance against the Allied AI. I am currently focusing on the Allied AI (China, France, UK, USSR, and USA).

Once the Allied AI is working as intended, I will be balancing the game further, by tightening the economies, adjusting production costs, adjusting combat losses, etc.

As I test the Strategic AI, I continue to tune the tactical AI as well.

Going forward, I will be providing further updates on different aspects of the game. If you have any areas of interest, please let me know, and I will try to address them in a future update.

I’m having a lot of fun building the game. I think you will enjoy it.