Thats actually a good idea, didn't think about it that way. I guess we could also mod it via Event that when any Chinese faction goes to war with Japan or Manchukuo that Taiwan and Manchuria get added as cores then.
The Yellow River is running a completely different course... and the coast is extremely poorly defined... HK and Macau are the same size; half of Ningbo is eroded away, etc... But, there seems to be the Clio project for HOI3, which should alleviate these deficiencies.Right. And has anyone looked into the game or played already? The Chinese map looks pretty awesome to me then the game crashed due to my crappy computer that barely ran the game.
Firstly, I doubt that any nation got an expanded leader list, so the playing field is level there, so to speak. Secondly, there are now no maluses for nameless leaders, which is quite a big plus. Ditto with minister list.Armed Forces: The distribution of them for all Chinese factions seem ok , though they seemed to have followed the OOB of Hoi2 rather than Armageddon. Leaders are the same from original Hoi 2, thus severely lacking due to the sheer amount of divisions you have to churn out. NatChi starts with 2 garrison, 65 infantry and 18 militia brigades total. 1 tac air and 1 Int. 4 light cruisers and 2 destroyers plus 1 transport.
Ministers, same as hoi 2, minimal and boring
Events : Tumble-weed aka zero . Marco Polo bridge auto fires on Jan 1st 1937. No other events, no Xian incident, moving industry to interior, Rape of Nanking etc. No United Front event either.
Decisions : zero.
Because, like you said, the NatChi experience should focus on the historical SJW, I'm of the persuasion that yeah, NatChi should get some 36 infantry. As JAP is the only intended opponent for NatChi, it shouldn't matter how CHI infantry matches up with, say, German inf, only that they are adequately strong (or weak) for portraying a prolonged war with Japan. At the same time, allowing for 36 infantry gives greater possible attention to detail to the various Chinese divisions in the game-start OOB, so that it is possible to use these details to deliver a more nuanced overview of the Chinese armies as wildly varying forces full of... personality, as opposed to the homogeneous horde of identical, faceless mooks that they are in popular imagination.About technology I was actually thinking about it while HOI2 was around...The problem is did CHI deserve to even have 36 infantry troops at gamestart? I mean the Japs were weak enough as compared to the West, but the Chinese were almost too unable to defend the Japs. The best solution I've had so far is creating hordes of 18 militia and maybe just a few 18 infantry for CHI, not only will this make modernization of the Chinese armed forces much more difficult, but it will also require much more time, either in HOI2 and especially in HOI3, so we won't see China being able to take on the Japanese or even the Soviets extremely early.
Thats actually a good idea, didn't think about it that way. I guess we could also mod it via Event that when any Chinese faction goes to war with Japan or Manchukuo that Taiwan and Manchuria get added as cores then.
mib said:Because, like you said, the NatChi experience should focus on the historical SJW, I'm of the persuasion that yeah, NatChi should get some 36 infantry. As JAP is the only intended opponent for NatChi, it shouldn't matter how CHI infantry matches up with, say, German inf, only that they are adequately strong (or weak) for portraying a prolonged war with Japan. At the same time, allowing for 36 infantry gives greater possible attention to detail to the various Chinese divisions in the game-start OOB, so that it is possible to use these details to deliver a more nuanced overview of the Chinese armies as wildly varying forces full of... personality, as opposed to the homogeneous horde of identical, faceless mooks that they are in popular imagination.
Which is entirely untrue, just compare the performance of the original German divisions at the start of the Shanghai battle with the performance of the later "German" divisions... in August when they had been reinforced by provincial troops. The German training, more than anything, provided a junior officer corps that was capable of giving and receiving orders, something that is really the weakest link in the Chinese army...It's unfortunate that there seems to be nothing between 1918 and 1936. Many historians referred to the 1937 era Nationalist elites merely troops wearing German helmets.
I haven't read the manual in its entirety, but I don't think there are stacking penalties in HOI3. With an appropriately high level general, the front width is expanded and units are cycled in to fill the front and cycled out when they are no longer able to. Not sure if they recover org while 'in waiting'.Consider the number of divisions both side threw in Shanghai(more than 70 on CHI side). A battle there in terms of the game would probably last even longer than 3 months, if we do pull 70 divisions, even if they are all militia(I did put consideration in stacking penalties), and of course with superior number I think it's plausible that China could survive and manage to take on Japan for a long time. The hardest thing to achieve is to make AI Japan to change its course of invasion if a CHI player stacks huge number of troops on the coast, so Japan should try to attack where China wishes to defend the most. But well that's another question there.
I've been poking around with the files. It seems we can edit starting units from Chi 1936.txt file.
regiment = { type = infantry_brigade historical_model = 0 }
0= pre 1918 infantry, All NatChi and other Chinese factions all start with this level. 1= 1918 , 2=1936, 3= 1938. So i guess we can edit in the 'German divisions'. As with all infantry will be level zero, the elite divisions can be level 2.
However, 1 big problem i spotted is that Japan has zero infantry techs also and start with all their infantry level zero in the 1936 scenario. So having these divisions for China might cause imbalance if the Japanese infantry aren't buffed (which is wierd as even in Hoi2 they started with a combination of 18 and 36 infantry).
There are stacking penalties, its 1% for each combat brigade in combat. There is also province combat width space, so at best it will be on average of 10-15 Brigades in most combats, 20-25 if encircled or being attacked from different provinces. Units that are waiting do not recover Org. Unit cycling is random, modified by Doctrines but not sure whether the General skill or rank contribute.
As for the Amphi invasion problem, my temporary solution is to change the
SUPPLYPOOL_DAYS = 30, variable to 15, which will allow invasions to be bottled up and destroyed easily after 15 days if they don't take a port which is needed for supplies. This though has a side effect of having normal divisions have only 15 days of supply which will cause balance issues in land pockets.
P.S. a kind soul has edited the Chinese cores here http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=419356
P.S.S Another kind sould has Excelled all the provinces and its a good database reference.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=419429
P.S.S.S Yet another useful tool, OOB editor, tested and works http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=418702
Ai problems : this is for all factions not just NatChi, the ai will happily guard allied borders or sit around doing nothing even if you give them orders e.g. defend these provinces etc. They will respond to invasion only after the provinces are taken, that is once you already lost the province and the enemy is already pouring in. This to me is a problem as theres way too much to micro, Hoi 2 was hard but ok, this is way way worse. The whole of China has 3-4 times more provinces than Hoi2 and just as many new beaches. The whole of China is considered 1 theatre and you cannot subdivide it, so the ai will happily distribute all its forces across the whole of your territory even though you told it to defend the beaches. The other Chinese factions don't have this much problems as their theatres cover smaller territories so the AI can manage to an extent.
The Yellow River is running a completely different course... and the coast is extremely poorly defined... HK and Macau are the same size; half of Ningbo is eroded away, etc... But, there seems to be the Clio project for HOI3, which should alleviate these deficiencies.
As for the Amphi invasion problem
Actually, the game was designed to have the Chinese mostly use the Militia Branch instead of the Infantry Branch. So we could have the "German" divisions be 1918 Infantry (maybe 1936), and the rest be 1918 (or 36) Militia.The major problem is that they refused to put in some other models between 18 and 36. And seriously the so-called German divisions were that good as many thought. Right, there had been almost 100 German advisors yet none of them had the experience during the rearmament of Germany, which was a major revolution in modern war. China's been sending men to Germany prior to 1933, so it is better to say that these divisions were built following the Weimar ones than the Nazi ones. And as mib mentioned China's enemy should be Japan and getting them 36 is way to take on Japan. Right. But problem is what if a player wants to ally Japan(by cheating or something else I don't know) and turns against Britain and France? We might have to think about implementing an enhanced tech tree, but it'll be very tedious and complicated to do.
Setting all the rest to pre-1918 infantry isn't appropriate though. China's army was just too complex and not unified enough, thus wouldn't be fair to get all under that level. If we had like 50 different models that could probably fix that problem. But, nah...
And leading the project? I think anyone, especially mib, could and should take the job. I guess none of us are professional game modders and everyone has to work or go to school. We could discuss how and where we people want to get the mod to and do it step by step. No big problem.
OK, I've taken a look at this, and we could handle this a couple of ways.The lack of events and the Marco polo firing on Jan 1st is a travesty. There should be a cool chain of national decisions between Japan and Nat Chi that lead to war. Also, the Xi'an incident should be moved to the correct date.
Actually, the game was designed to have the Chinese mostly use the Militia Branch instead of the Infantry Branch. So we could have the "German" divisions be 1918 Infantry (maybe 1936), and the rest be 1918 (or 36) Militia.
Just make them Infantry '36, but have the Chinese be behind the Japanese in Doctrines (plus the Chinese should be on the "Human Wave" path, can't remember what it is called in HOI3)Right. This is the point I've been trying to make, although obviously those(36D, 87D, 88D, Jiaodao Zhongdui) were better that 18 infantry. Judging from their historical performances, maybe lowering their organization is a better way to do. The thing is I don't know if this could be done by event or something else. It wouldn't make sense if they survived the war after some years and all of a sudden became much inferior than the rest of the newly-built Chinese divisions because they have lower organization.
Well, plans can be laid, and assignments given. But I wouldn't feel comfortable sharing even my modified files with people who haven't registered the game.Oh yeah, I wanted to open a thread in the HOI3 section but like you said no game yet. And I'm assuming modding won't start til some of us are pretty familiar with the game right?
Hmm, not sure what this is about. OK, you are talking about Porkman's maps...I thought Hainan had fallen before this also...And wait? I thought Canton area was occupied way before Pearl? So why is it that they wanted to occupy it again? Maybe just to secure Hong Kong?