Germany 1936

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Nerei
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Nerei »

Well preventing the game from going ahistorical can be hard and in high volatility sandbox I guess it is okay for that to happen.
If there is one thing I find that the AI is good at it is setting up garrisons in cities. Sometimes to the point it drains all manpower.

That is basically what I want to exploit. China has manpower meaning the warlords will have soldiers but if they basically have no mobile infantry they cannot do anything offensively. Yes they will be speedbumps the challenge is tweaking garrison strength which we can do through technology etc. to make them have roughly the right strength.
We can also give them junk units made for the purpose of giving them an army without them actually being able to do much.

For allying the Chinese states I think we can script that and we can probably also script the KMT and CPC going to war with each other if there is peace with Japan.

I have no idea how strong the scripting is but if we are lucky we can set the entire world to have non-aggression pacts with the warlords and CPC and if anyone attacks the nationalist government (the official government at the time) China allies and declares war. With luck government and public opinion can be used to prevent them from doing much politically.

That is my hope at any rate. I mod graphics not scripts and maps so it is down to someone else to play with this. No I do not expect this to be done officially in the near future. It is probably not worth the investment for BG anyway and to some extend I prefer if they focus on making the engine better anyway.

BG would probably have to tell us exactly what we can do.
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

Nerei wrote:Well preventing the game from going ahistorical can be hard and in high volatility sandbox I guess it is okay for that to happen.
If there is one thing I find that the AI is good at it is setting up garrisons in cities. Sometimes to the point it drains all manpower.

That is basically what I want to exploit. China has manpower meaning the warlords will have soldiers but if they basically have no mobile infantry they cannot do anything offensively. Yes they will be speedbumps the challenge is tweaking garrison strength which we can do through technology etc. to make them have roughly the right strength.
We can also give them junk units made for the purpose of giving them an army without them actually being able to do much.

For allying the Chinese states I think we can script that and we can probably also script the KMT and CPC going to war with each other if there is peace with Japan.

I have no idea how strong the scripting is but if we are lucky we can set the entire world to have non-aggression pacts with the warlords and CPC and if anyone attacks the nationalist government (the official government at the time) China allies and declares war. With luck government and public opinion can be used to prevent them from doing much politically.

That is my hope at any rate. I mod graphics not scripts and maps so it is down to someone else to play with this. No I do not expect this to be done officially in the near future. It is probably not worth the investment for BG anyway and to some extend I prefer if they focus on making the engine better anyway.

BG would probably have to tell us exactly what we can do.
You're a graphics guy!? Could you give me a souped up version of this?

DeathCarrier 2075!

Image

Imagine if two super carrier hulls were epoxied together with multiple flight decks on top of the transversal between the two hulls! :D

Just something I dreamed up for a discussion on another board full of crotchity old Grogs (I used the pic of Stennis and Charles de Gaulle sailing adjacent that is on the wiki page for super carrier).
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

WTF!?!

In 1936 China has 577 Coal firing electricity generator plants!? :P

Substantial portions of China remained without continuous electrification right up to the PRESENT! but according to this game, China had enough coal burning generator plants to supply the electricity needs of planet Earth as early as 1937! :lol:
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

Loaded up a new singleplayer campaign as Germany (this is with volatility set to 0).

Saved. Closed game. Moved the save into the multiplayer folder. Launched the multiplayer UI. "Hosted" an MP match using the save file I had just moved. Selected China.

>> Here is where I likely made a mistake: I did not set the game settings <<

Deleted a gigantic chunk of China's infrastructure. Sent a large chunk of China's military units, and resources to Japan for a pittance. Let it run a couple days to let the deals seal.

Saved and reloaded this same save as Germany mp. Saved again and closed the game back to main menu.

Minimized game, and moved the last MP save file to the main singleplayer save file.

Went back to game and loaded the Germany save.

Nice! China is neutered! Decided it would be wise to "test" a bit, and kicked it into highway speed for a while.

No later than Summer 1936 Japan decides to declare war on USSR.

So . . . I'll go back to square one. Delete all these saves and repeat and this time use the Game Settings buttons to set volatility, etc. to be what I want . . . and do this every time I select a save to load in mp.

Tedious.

I think the single most effective thing you guys could do to promote popularity and continued revenue for this game, would be to create an actual editor which would allow users to do what I'm trying to do either in-game (a sub-menu of "editor" section of in-game) or in an editor launched separate from the game
Nerei
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Nerei »

Anthropoid wrote:
Nerei wrote:Well preventing the game from going ahistorical can be hard and in high volatility sandbox I guess it is okay for that to happen.
If there is one thing I find that the AI is good at it is setting up garrisons in cities. Sometimes to the point it drains all manpower.

That is basically what I want to exploit. China has manpower meaning the warlords will have soldiers but if they basically have no mobile infantry they cannot do anything offensively. Yes they will be speedbumps the challenge is tweaking garrison strength which we can do through technology etc. to make them have roughly the right strength.
We can also give them junk units made for the purpose of giving them an army without them actually being able to do much.

For allying the Chinese states I think we can script that and we can probably also script the KMT and CPC going to war with each other if there is peace with Japan.

I have no idea how strong the scripting is but if we are lucky we can set the entire world to have non-aggression pacts with the warlords and CPC and if anyone attacks the nationalist government (the official government at the time) China allies and declares war. With luck government and public opinion can be used to prevent them from doing much politically.

That is my hope at any rate. I mod graphics not scripts and maps so it is down to someone else to play with this. No I do not expect this to be done officially in the near future. It is probably not worth the investment for BG anyway and to some extend I prefer if they focus on making the engine better anyway.

BG would probably have to tell us exactly what we can do.
You're a graphics guy!? Could you give me a souped up version of this?

DeathCarrier 2075!

Image

Imagine if two super carrier hulls were epoxied together with multiple flight decks on top of the transversal between the two hulls! :D

Just something I dreamed up for a discussion on another board full of crotchity old Grogs (I used the pic of Stennis and Charles de Gaulle sailing adjacent that is on the wiki page for super carrier).
I tend to stick with either real constructs, prototype or maybe paper designs if I find them important enough but yes I can make fictive units.

I might not go as far a welding 5 carrier hulls together but I got a fictive trimaran carrier design I made some years ago I can try and remake for SRU. It is however "only" around 375x115m. I say remake as the model I made is around a few thousand times as heavy as the ones used in this game.
Making futuristic designs are some time into the future though as my list of real world models I have on my list of models to make is fairly long.

I'll write it down on my to-do list but for model suggestions I would suggest bringing it up here also as that is the easiest place for me to find it when I look at what have been suggested.
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

No pressure! It was mostly just a funny :lol:
Nerei
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Nerei »

Anthropoid wrote:No pressure! It was mostly just a funny :lol:
Actually I have ended up taking most requests for models at face value.

This is somewhere along the lines of what I got from a friend maybe a month or two ago:

"Hey you remember that Vita game? Could you make a character based on that for me if I provide some drawings?"

Yes I have around 10 drawings to work from. Yes the character design is completely insane but fitting to the series. Yes I might very well end up doing it.
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

There was a funny as hell web page around years ago. I can no longer find it, nor even think of any likely search terms to dig it up. It was actually a small site if I recall, but it was obviously just some guys little "broom closet" to his main thing.

It had these fairly well done drawings that had been heavily photoshopped and cut-pasted together of silly WWII era spoof "what-if" technologies, along with little descriptions of them. Maybe one of you guys recall the same thing and describing it we might wind up thinking of a way to dig it up out of cyberscape . . .

It had at least one "Unknown" weapon system technology for each of the primary nations that engaged in WWII. The pic of the Russian one was this enormous bomber the size of like 10 B-52s powered with coal-fired steam engines!

The Japanese one was a bicycle with wings that flapped when the pilot peddled, and then a basket hanging underneath that was supposed to contain rabid dogs . . . **** like that.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by GIJoe597 »

Well, the allies were seriously considering an aircraft carrier made out of ice...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swUI5502KAY
https://www.youtube.com/user/GIJoe597


Older/retired gamers, who do not tolerate foolishness.
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/USARG
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

GIJoe597 wrote:Well, the allies were seriously considering an aircraft carrier made out of ice...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swUI5502KAY
Ice, ice baby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LalubIgUPMY
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

So I have been back at Germany 1936 with the latest build. Honestly I had forgotten the specifics of this thread, but reviewed most of it last night.

It seems that many if not most of the problems that existed have been addressed. However a couple of oddities that I still consider to be "less than optimal:"

I have restarted about three times now and have observed these problems in every restart. I should also note that, this is mostly with default settings; can post a screeny of my actual settings right now if that is helpful.

1. France tends to DoW Italy in late 1937/38 and steamroller them flat.
2. Japan is still fairly ineffective against China.
3. USSR and Poland have been at war since the beginning and Poland has made non-trivial progress into Russia. It seems to have reached a sort of homeostasis and stayed that way for many months (presently up to Sept 1937).
4. France just DoWed Hungary for some reason. Have only seen this once but given it is a recurring theme in SR titles I thought it was worth a mention.

Now it could be that I have one or two game settings set to "non-default" and that might be accounting for this; I don't think so, but don't recall for certain.

Anyway, if there is any actual interest in trying to balance the game still let me know.

I'd say that, at present the Germany 1936 Campaign scores a B- grade. Even if my settings ARE accounting for these ahistorical patterns, one thing is for certain, the UI in game settings does NOT make it sufficiently clear what settings a player needs to select if they wish to maximize historical patterns within the playfield. I know that getting the balance right on these things is a real challenge so I'm not trying to sound overly critical, just trying to be straightforward and helpful. This is probably the single best "grand strategy" for the WWII era in existence at this point; just trying to help it be even better.
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

I have restarted with the only settings I can imagine which would minimize ahistorical wars as much as possible. Namely, I set "Global AI Stance" (or whatever it is called) to "Passive."

Nonetheless, as in every other session I've started in the past week or so, Russian DoWs one or more of the Baltic states as well as Poland in April, May 1939.

Is there anyway I can make this NOT happen by making changes in the files?

I really do not understand why you guys have not fixed these campaigns so that they are predominantly "historical." If people wanted to play ahistorical or "loosely historical" mode then there is the sandbox. Yes, I know the campaigns have "the events" but what point are the events if they are unfolding in a context that is completely ahistorical (France steamrollering Italy; Japan scarcely making any progress in China; Poland turning into a dictatorship and pushing many hexes into Russia as a response to Russian DoW, etc.).

The fact that these things happen SO REGULARLY tells me that "something" is broken and it is probably a simple matter of changing some settings in a file.

I see that you have made some awesome changes (e.g., fixing the Bf series planes, etc., etc.) but making the historical campaigns play as historical campaigns isn't quite there yet.
Nerei
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Nerei »

For the 2nd Sino-Japanese war I will spare you all very long rant about how massively wrong the entire representation of China is and just say that a fantasy representation of China where Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is the supreme overlord of all of China is far enough from historical accuracy that you should not expect historical accuracy except by accident.
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Anthropoid
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

Nerei wrote:For the 2nd Sino-Japanese war I will spare you all very long rant about how massively wrong the entire representation of China is and just say that a fantasy representation of China where Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is the supreme overlord of all of China is far enough from historical accuracy that you should not expect historical accuracy except by accident.
:P It is a good point!

Nonetheless, I am gonna try another thing . . . based on that thread by Aragos "Making the AI more Aggressive"
http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... 79&t=24646

I've made myself a modded copy of the SR1936Scenario.CVP file

with
aiagenda 5
aistance 2

applied to ALL instances (all regions or nations or whatever they are).

Supposedly, that will cause every "AI" region to adhere to a "status quo" agenda and a "defensive" stance. Assuming that works, then the only wars that occur should be: (a) ones started by the player; (b) ones scripted into the campaign/scenario from some other file (the "events" I believe they are called); (c) ones that result from extremely tense foreign relations.

I'm assuming that the "scripted" WWII wars will fire nonetheless and if it turns out that I play this one playthrough past WWII and later decide I want some spice from some other contender like post-War U.S. I can always employ the old "load a save file as a cache file trick."
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Balthagor
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Balthagor »

I'll look for Russia's 1939 DoW. It likely has nothing to do with settings and is event based.

There are lots of things we'd like to improve but only so much time and sometimes our efforts to improve only make things worse. Those changes don't get released but do use up resources.
Chris Latour
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