Slow/No help from NATO

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jks_AsPac
Warrant Officer
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Joined: May 05 2012
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Slow/No help from NATO

Post by jks_AsPac »

Hi guys! Just got around to playing Supreme Ruler again and I thought why not give SRU a try. So I've logged in quite a number of hours in the game particularly the 1949 start and one thing I noticed (which really bugged me) is that the US or any other allied nation for that matter, can't seem to help both Japan and South Korea when they are attacked by China/North Korea/USSR. The US tried but it only sends a couple dozen South Korea's way and can't seem to land at all. They don't send any troops Japan's way. In Europe, the USSR just steamrolls through West Germany (once it gets a lot of troops into East Germany, which takes quite a while which is good) because the US and even the UK can't seem to put enough troops on the ground in West Germany.

This is in comparison to SRCW before where lots of foreign countries allied to the belligerent nations would help out and successfully push the enemies back. Any way or mod that gets around this problem? Cause in the end, the USA loses all of its allies in Asia and Europe because they can't seem to find a way to help them or land troops in their country.

EDIT: Also, is it possible to remove the "Allow merchant marine to pass through neutral regions"? It's game breaking to say the least. If players and AI need to move through neutral regions, they'll need a transport/amphibious ship to do so. So at least until the AI learns to use transport ships, it won't cruise through St. Petersburg and the Russian or Canadian Arctic to get to Northern Asia.
way2co0l
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Re: Slow/No help from NATO

Post by way2co0l »

lol. Yeah, the merchant marine march of death has been a thing for awhile sadly. :/

As for the behavior for allies to send units to help each other out, I believe it's a complication of trying to cover so many eras. I believe it was changed around the time of 36 to try to keep allies from sending forces unrealistic distances and failing to secure their own direct interests. But while they should probably do it more in the cold war, the problem is that they still do it too much in the great war. Like, I'm observing the Ottomans and Italians sending their troops into Europe to fight for Germany and Austria-Hungary despite neither being in the war and Italy will probably won't the troops it's throwing away when it goes to war with Austria.

I'm not currently sure how to control this behavior. I plan to spend some time researching the event types to see if I can find a way. My short term solution for the GW is to just remove the alliances as Italy doesn't fight with the central powers anyway, and the Ottomans will just ally with them when they declare war on Russia so the actual alliances, while realistic, are unnecessary.

It doesn't solve the problem for the cold war sandbox though. I have plans to dig more deeply into hotspot and theater controls, and I assume that a modder could likely use those to encourage the AI to send forces more seriously into the desired areas but I definitely need to do more research before I can say this with 100% certainty. It seems likely though. Would just need someone willing to take on the task. My hands are going to be full with the GW mod for awhile so I don't expect to be able to do it myself, but it shouldn't be too terribly difficult if anyone else wants to try it. :)
jks_AsPac
Warrant Officer
Posts: 45
Joined: May 05 2012
Human: Yes

Re: Slow/No help from NATO

Post by jks_AsPac »

Yes please! I'm willing to help but I'm not a modder and have limited knowledge in coding and stuff so I might not be of much use. I can learn but I don't really know where to start.

I actually noticed the AI turning ON the "Merchant marine through neutral regions" even if by default it's turned off for all. Maybe somehow we can make them turn it on only when they notice they are losing a lot of men through that path (e.g. France and UK through Leningrad), or turn it off for them entirely and not allow them to path through neutral regions if they are using merchant marines. At least then, they'll have to use other transportation options to pass through neutral territory. Of course, if they have a treaty or it's their colony then their merchant marines can pass through anytime. That's the easiest way to get around it at the moment. Any clues on how to do that?

To push it a bit further, since the AI sets its own hotspots and military priority in different theaters, maybe they can be coded to send more units into theaters with a higher military priority and/or hotspots. One thing I was thinking of is to have the USA and USSR (and even other opposing regions e.g. UK & Germany, China & USA), increase priority in theaters that they have allies/mutual defense treaties with, and also in theaters where there is a bigger percentage of the opposing sphere so that they can increase their influence there. For example, in Asia, when the USA gets an alliance with Japan or South Korea, they increase military priority there to High and start sending more troops, while say in North America, since there are no wars there, they can set military priority to Low. I know it's a lot of coding but it really makes the game feel a lot more alive with that kind of AI. Can any devs help out on this?
way2co0l
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 687
Joined: Nov 29 2010
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Re: Slow/No help from NATO

Post by way2co0l »

Well, for the merchant marine pathing through neutral territory, it looks like you can use event type 67 with the i0 field set to 6 and i1 field set to -1 would turn off pathing through neutral territory without transit treaties. You'd need to create an event for each country you'd want to block it for.

As for hotspots and military priorities in theaters/battlezones, the AI really doesn't change them. The player does, or you can create events to do this. For example, you can create events for America that increase the military priority for the Western European theater, as well as the South Korean battlezone to try to increase the number of units that they send. Event type 33 is used for editing battlezones and 25 is used for theaters. You can also use event types 12 and 68 in order to call on units with specific purposes in mind, such as offensive or defensive goals. I'm still new to modding, so I'm not yet familiar with how the game handles theater transfers so I can't say that this will work entirely as desired, but my expectation is that it should. This would still take quite a bit of work to create events for each country, and for each individual theater, battlezone, hotspot, and setting you want to set, but it should definitely result in the desired behavior if done right.

A lot of information for events can be found here: https://supremeruler.gamepedia.com/Events
jks_AsPac
Warrant Officer
Posts: 45
Joined: May 05 2012
Human: Yes

Re: Slow/No help from NATO

Post by jks_AsPac »

Weirdly, according to this thread about merchant marines: http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... 72&t=24711, this issue about merchant marines going through neutral regions shouldn't be a problem. But somehow it's still happening in my game. The UK is not at war with the USSR and has a mutual defense treaty with South Korea so that should only end in a proxy war shouldn't it? The French AI seems to be the smarter one now that it's at war with the USSR, using the Suez to get to North Vietnam (though they're still getting badly beaten there which is historical I think).

I'll try that event edit and see how it goes.
jks_AsPac
Warrant Officer
Posts: 45
Joined: May 05 2012
Human: Yes

Re: Slow/No help from NATO

Post by jks_AsPac »

UPDATE: I tried the event but it doesn't seem to work. France still sends merchant marines to the USSR even if they aren't at war. Do I have to recache the sandbox?
way2co0l
Brigadier Gen.
Posts: 687
Joined: Nov 29 2010
Human: Yes

Re: Slow/No help from NATO

Post by way2co0l »

jks_AsPac wrote: Jul 09 2018 UPDATE: I tried the event but it doesn't seem to work. France still sends merchant marines to the USSR even if they aren't at war. Do I have to recache the sandbox?
Yes, you definitely need to recache for new events to be used. :) You can find more information on that here. https://supremeruler.gamepedia.com/Creating_a_Cache

The simple explanation for what you've done is to first, create backups of files for safety, and then go into your cache folder and delete the cache for the sandbox you're editing. For the cold war sandbox, the cache file is conveniently called ColdWar. From there go into the game and try to start a basic game. Nation and settings don't matter. It will look like the game gets hung up but just let it do its thing and understand that it can take a considerable amount of time. Once you hear the music go silent and then restart, check the game to see if it's made it back to the main screen. If so, go into the folder where your saves are kept. You'll see a file with a name making it obvious it's a cache file. Move that into your cache folder, and rename it to ColdWar. And from there you'll be able to start the game with your new events included. It's a fair bit of work for just a few events, but the cold war scenario has a lot of units and it takes a considerable amount of time for them to be placed and then cached. Trying to do a no unit option really is kinda counter productive because then you'll need to wait for units to be constructed and then sent to actually see if it had the desired effect, and the AI might change its behavior with fewer units anyway so you'll really just have to deal with the long cache time to find out if it worked.
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