Armageddon 1.3 Beta 2 (24/04/2009) is now up (general comments/questions only please)

[unmerged(63461)]

I don't know if somebody experienced this issue but it seems that this command (adding a cag brigade) doesn't work correctly anymore :

command = { type = add_division which = "USS Yorktown" value = carrier when = 2 where = cag }

When the unit arrives in the pool stack the cag is added with the carrier, BUT at the moment you' are deploying the unit in any harbour the CAG disappears.
I've never notice it before the patch.
So is there a solution to fix it?

 

[Aethis]

I just got bitterpeace ... and ... got absolutely nothing for it?!

 

[unmerged(74599)]

I will issue a DB fix within a couple of days...

The currently offered patch is it updated from the original one posted, or not? I understand there were a few errors that might be corrected immediatly. Is that the case, or is it the same as the one available when the 1.3Beta-2 was released?

 

[ozman2]

They are not the only ones to have Strength caps... alot of the other Chinese factions do.

Nat China has only 3 of these IIRC, GC has a few, Shianxi has a few...

Wrong. CHI has 5 and Shanxi has none. Xibei San Ma has one. But I think you make the case even stronger by pointing that out. If CHI annexes Guangxi then removing the strength cap might increase China's gain. And since China is doing too poorly against Japan in AI vs AI play, I think removing all the strength caps may be in order.

Also you never explained why they are capped.

 

[unmerged(74599)]

Well, how poorly is it doing? I ran that program through 20 odd times and China was getting to 1941 and beyond at least 50% of the time. What more is wanted? You had better set your objective first.

How often should China survive? Should it always win? Should it win 20% or the time or 50%? My view is that is should be getting to 1941 about 50% of the time, about the time that the USA is involved in the war and distracts Japan from its objective.

There isn't anything wrong with ahistorical results unless they are consistently a-historical and disrupt the rest of the game programming. It really is ok for Japan to win.

As well, there is the balance of the game in terms of results with human China. If you make China so strong that it easily is defeats Japan, you are creating another set of headaches, and the same goes for play balance with human Japan.

 

[ozman2]

My sample size is not as great as yours, but in mine the Japanese usually steamroll. It may just be my bad luck. No I don't want China to win very often (Fading Sun) unless guided by a human player. There are additional things I think should be done when the US gets involved but that's beside the point. Instead of surviving only 50% of the time it should be more like 60 - 80% of the time.
The Sino-Japanese War should generally stalemate, although I WOULD be receptive to a greater chance of Japanese victory (increasing the challenge for the US) at the higher difficulty levels.
As for human Japan, they have an excellent chance for victory with this simple formula:
1) Listen to their demands in 2-2-6
2) Dow Guangxi when the Guangxi war occurs.
3) try to eliminate as many Guangxi units as possible
4) Dow China next, or just wait for Marco Polo. Victory will happen in about a year.
Removing the strength caps is not going to change this.

I just got bitterpeace ... and ... got absolutely nothing for it?!

Who were you playing?

 

[CharonJr]

China tends to do fine in my games, too.

In my recent game it looks like the Japanese advance is stalled before it could even begin (last screenshot of the thread: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=404009. Basically it looks the same 3 month later (I just stopped at this point) and my intel guesses 200 Japanese divisions vs. 170 Nat.Chi. (mean values, fairly likely to be true IMO).

In previous games I was bombarding Nat.Chi. with smears and/or had to get directly involved after BP and taking out India as Germany. IMO Nat.Chi. is actually doing too good.

CharonJr

 

[unmerged(74599)]

As for human Japan, they have an excellent chance for victory with this simple formula:
1) Listen to their demands in 2-2-6
2) Dow Guangxi when the Guangxi war occurs.
3) try to eliminate as many Guangxi units as possible
4) Dow China next. Victory will happen in about a year.
Removing the strength caps is not going to change this.

Sure. Rolling China is easy for any human player who wants to game the system. But really, it should be executable historically, and I believe it is.

What I was really interested in was the play results other people are experiencing, since I did some of the work with Gormodoc to optimize the Chinese ai, which was just getting wacked consistently (100% of the time) in the last version of the patch. So, any test results are interesting.

I don't think your solution will change much really in the overall picture of the ai, though I don't think it would be a bad thing either. There really is not much more you can squeeze out of that ai. Everything else has been optimized for land warfare against Japan: removing the strength caps would be probably close to the last possible buff that I can think of.

China grabbing the brass ring 50% of the time is a substantial improvement. I am wondering if that is what is going on.

 

[MartinBG]

The currently offered patch is it updated from the original one posted, or not? I understand there were a few errors that might be corrected immediatly. Is that the case, or is it the same as the one available when the 1.3Beta-2 was released?

1.3 (beta 2) has not been updated from its initial release (yet).

I don't know if somebody experienced this issue but it seems that this command (adding a cag brigade) doesn't work correctly anymore : When the unit arrives in the pool stack the cag is added with the carrier, BUT at the moment you' are deploying the unit in any harbour the CAG disappears.
I've never notice it before the patch.
So is there a solution to fix it?

Thanks for the bug report. This bug is new to me, but can be reproduced in Armageddon 1.2 too, so it isn't something that we broke in 1.3. There is no problem adding brigades this way to land and air units but only to ships.

 

[Aethis]

So is there a problem with the Bitter peace or what? I conquer all the way to Baku and am still pushing into the Soviet Union whilst Japan has taken Vladivostok. When the event fires as normal all it does is a white peace with the Soviets and puts Beria as head of Soviet government... I'm sure the Germans were looking for lebensraum when they invaded Russia so why don't I get any??

 

[unmerged(74599)]

Why not upload the save game file, so that people can look at it?

 

[coreymas]

I don't know if somebody experienced this issue but it seems that this command (adding a cag brigade) doesn't work correctly anymore : When the unit arrives in the pool stack the cag is added with the carrier, BUT at the moment you' are deploying the unit in any harbour the CAG disappears.
I've never notice it before the patch.
So is there a solution to fix it?

This is a known bug in 1.2 Armageddon (it was in the 1.2 Cumulative Buglist thread).

1.3 (beta 2) has not been updated from its initial release (yet).



Thanks for the bug report. This bug is new to me, but can be reproduced in Armageddon 1.2 too, so it isn't something that we broke in 1.3. There is no problem adding brigades this way to land and air units but only to ships.

Absolutely right and there is no plan to fix it for this patch.

 

[Aethis]

Why not upload the save game file, so that people can look at it?

I don't know i'm looking in the txt file and the result of the event seem to be to add cores to 'everything west of the Urals' for all the Axis nations?! But I checked and none of us get any cores, maybe the lines should read 'secedeprovince' instead of 'addcore'??

 

[MartinBG]

I've encountered an odd problem, one I don't recall encountering before. Not saying the patch caused it, but it would be great if it could fix it.

Noticed in my current game that West Germany was done researching techs in 1949, but still flying prop planes. This was a shock to me, since I wrote the DFR AI file to do just the opposite.

Here's the list of ignored techs from the actual DFR AI file:

ignore 		= {
		# Strategic bombers
		4220 4230 4240

		# Nuke Stuff
		5500 5510 5520 5530 5540 7170 7180 7190

		# Battle Cruiser
		3190 3200 3210 3220 3230 3240

		# Battleship
		3250 3260 3270 3280 3290 3300 3310

		# Carrier 
		3320 3330 3340 3350 3360 3370 3380 3390

		# Light Carrier
		12100 12110 12120 12130 12140 12150

		# Marines
		1150 1160 1170 1180

		# SP Rocket Artillery
		2260 2270 2280 

		# Rocket Artillery
		2370 2380 2390
		
		# Armoured Cars
		2150 2160
		
		# Strategic Air Doctrines
		9150 9160 9170 9180 9430 9440 9450 9460
	}

And here's what the game loaded:
ignore = { 5140 5150 5160 5170 5010 5020 5030 5040 5190 5200 5210 5220 5230 5240 1110 1120 1130 1140 1070 1080 1090 1100 1150 1160 1170 1180 1190 1200 1210 1220 4250 4260 4270 5550 5560 5570 5580 5590 5470 5480 5490 5500 5510 5520 5530 5540 5410 5420 5430 5440 5450 5460 1230 1240 1250 1260 1270 1280 1290 6210 14080 14090 2020 2030 2040 2050 2060 2010 2070 2080 2090 2100 2110 2120 2140 2170 2180 2190 2200 2210 2220 2230 2240 2250 2260 2270 2280 2450 2460 2470 2480 2490 2500 2510 2520 2530 2540 }

As you can see, the game went into business for itself and added the golden techs to the verboten list. The rest of the file loaded as written, as far as I can tell.

A hardcoded solution would be best, but if y'all don't want to do that for whatever reason, listing a tech as a "preference" in the AI file seems to do the trick.

Hope you guys can solve this!

Hi CSABadass,

So the problem is that the old ignore research section is not replaced, but the new one is added to it instead, correct? There are no changes in 1.3 code that could have any effect on that (to be honest I didn't tested it by myself in either 1.2 or 1.3, but I'm expecting exactly the same result in both versions). Most probably there is a similar problem with endgoal and preference AI tech research sections. It is strange that no one noticed that bug so far...

BTW I fixed a similar bug with AI spy preferences that was very annoying to me because after few AI files switching one could end with X entries for the same country.

EDIT
Hm... There is something wrong here. Some of the techs in the ignore list you provided are missing in the ignore list from the save-game file (9460 for example). Are you sure you're loading the correct AI file in your game and that you're comparing with the correct part of the save-game file?

 

[unmerged(74599)]

I don't know i'm looking in the txt file and the result of the event seem to be to add cores to 'everything west of the Urals' for all the Axis nations?! But I checked and none of us get any cores, maybe the lines should read 'secedeprovince' instead of 'addcore'??

The version of the USSR.txt file I am looking at only secedes provinces. Are you playing with a mod of some kind or something? What is the checksum?

ETA: I just redownloaded the patch from the original source and checked the USSR.txt file again. Looks good. Very strange that your file has addcores there. How did that happen?

 

[Aethis]

The version of the USSR.txt file I am looking at only secedes provinces. Are you playing with a mod of some kind or something? What is the checksum?

LOL I found out what I did stupidly now,

when I was editing the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to give the Soviets cores on the bit of Poland they get instead of just seceding the provinces I clicked 'replace all' when replacing 'secedeprovince' with 'addcore' LOL :rofl:

 

[ozman2]

Take the event and paste it into a NEW notepad file BEFORE you replaceall.

 

[CSABadass]

EDIT
Hm... There is something wrong here. Some of the techs in the ignore list you provided are missing in the ignore list from the save-game file (9460 for example). Are you sure you're loading the correct AI file in your game and that you're comparing with the correct part of the save-game file?

Hello friend Martin!

It is in fact loading the proper AI file. The AI file and the DFR block in the save game file are a match except for the "ignore" block.

And yes, I am comparing the correct parts. If you review my narrative, I was put onto this problem by the ultimate proof: West Germany wasn't researching the techs it's scripted to.

Godspeed on fixing this!

 

[Aethis]

Take the event and paste it into a NEW notepad file BEFORE you replaceall.

Yeah that's how I fixed it :rofl:

all good now, bitter peace works fine everything is smooth!

 

[ozman2]

Re: West Germany not researching techs on minor default ignore list.
I'd say we have a problem. There are several possible fixes:
1) Take EVERYTHING off the minor default ignore list, and only put in preferences
2) Modify the executable so that loading a new ai wipes the ignore list clean, enabling a new ignore list to be loaded
3) Modify the executable so that anything on the preferred list wipes out the entry on the ignore list.

Coreymas and MartinBG,
Could you just give the community some guidance as to your plans to fix this.
To the community:
Probably the best interim solution is a minor_default ai with nothing in the ignore section.