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Development Diary #12 - 14th of January 2009

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I have avoided commenting on any of the Development Diaries up until now but I absolutely love what you guys have done with diplomacy and particularly the alignment so I had to let you know!!!

keep up the good work!!!
 
Alexander Seil said:
Shouldn't the Allies be influencing Franco like he's going out of style?
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As a player, perhaps. Donno if the AI's will be doing it.

Plus there should be a consideration for the fact that Franco's war aims would not mesh very well with Petain's, which should give a Germany played by a human a very serious pause. Is Franco worth automatically losing Petain?
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How would that be represented with the current mechanic? Or are you just suggesting an AI coded behaviour?
 
th3freakie said:
As a player, perhaps. Donno if the AI's will be doing it.
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If the AI doesn't use a fundamental game system like this, we've got a bigger problem than Franco in the Axis :eek:

How would that be represented with the current mechanic? Or are you just suggesting an AI coded behaviour?
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I've edited my post. Fascist AI's with colonies should like colonial expansion. Getting into Axis makes Franco feel more secure, so instead of just sitting there he decides to pick on the nearest non-aligned neutral with large colonies adjacent to his own - what do you know, that neutral is Petain's France.

The difficult part would be making German AI understand, without scripting, that Franco in Axis is actually a bad idea*...hopefully this issue won't arise, because the Allies will keep enough diplomatic pressure on Franco to prevent him from going all-out Axis.

BTW, note that we still have no idea what threat and neutrality have to do with this. It could be more difficult than we suppose to get Franco to go anywhere.

*One consideration, though, unrelated to Vichy France, is Spain's enormous coastline. That would be easy enough to teach to the AI (it should think - hey, my enemies have large navies, so I should avoid getting into alliances with countries that have huge coastlines...)
 
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Alexander Seil said:
If the AI doesn't use a fundamental game system like this, we've got a bigger problem than Franco in the Axis :eek:
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Don't act like you've never seen national-socialist Romania/Bulgaria NOT join the axis :p

I've edited my post. Fascist AI's with colonies should like colonial expansion. Getting into Axis makes Franco feel more secure, so instead of just sitting there he decides to pick on the nearest non-aligned neutral with large colonies adjacent to his own - what do you know, that neutral is Petain's France.
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Ok that I very much doubt the AI can think of - nor would it be reasonable to expect. But if it's hard-coded to have a small chance of entering (say, half what game mechanics would otherwise dictate) it should produce the same effect, without screwing the ahistorical fun.

edit: Good points on your edits. Specially the Neutrality thing, which I'm guessing Franco & Salazar will be taking.
 
oooooooooooooooooooooooh, I like! :)
Influencing countries in HOI2 is such a drag...nice to see improvement there!
...and I'm happy to see the triangle is returning... :)

Limited war, eh? hmmm...
 
th3freakie said:
Ok that I very much doubt the AI can think of - nor would it be reasonable to expect.
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Why? What a colony means is well-defined in HoI. It's easy to teach to the AI that it wants colonial land if it is a fascist dictatorship that has colonies.

The really hard part is teaching Germany to consider the security of Petain's regime when aligning with Franco. That requires many more steps than Franco saying "Me in Axis, me strong, me take Morocco from Petain!"
 
Have Germany guarantee Vichy France independence. I would imagine the AI would take into consideration if a DoW on a country would cause conflict with an alliance member.
 
Alexander Seil said:
Why? What a colony means is well-defined in HoI. It's easy to teach to the AI that it wants colonial land if it is a fascist dictatorship that has colonies.

The really hard part is teaching Germany to consider the security of Petain's regime when aligning with Franco. That requires many more steps than Franco saying "Me in Axis, me strong, me take Morocco from Petain!"
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That's what I was talking about. But even making Franco go from seeing the beligerant axis as a threat to an opportunity would be too much to ask - remember the game has to constantly maintain 10's of parallel AIs
 
wow, I am more and more impressed! I wish I could pre order now!! :D
 
th3freakie said:
That's what I was talking about. But even making Franco go from seeing the beligerant axis as a threat to an opportunity would be too much to ask - remember the game has to constantly maintain 10's of parallel AIs
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So? Computing power is hardly a limitation here. We're not playing chess against Kasparov, we're just solving primitive optimization problems. In fact, in my suggestion, Franco isn't even solving anything. He just compares his and his allies' forces to any possible opponents, and decides that it's time to execute a very simple behavior that was dormant before this. If the AI can't do that, it could hardly be expected to manage Army Groups?*

Besides, as you correctly pointed out, it does have to maintain 10's of parallel AI's. One for each country, but, probably, also one for every formation on the map. That's actually 100's of AI's operating at the same time. The operational AI's, however, have a much more complex environment to analyze, compared to the diplomatic one that countries deal with - if computing power ever becomes a problem, it certainly won't be because of country AI's, but because of the proliferation of Corps, Army and other AI's.

*In other words, we'd be back where we started - a problem much greater than Franco ending up in the Axis. If Paradox's approach revolves around ordering formations around, which it certainly seems to, there have to be a lot of pretty complicated AI's.
 
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I sure hope success on the battlefield has a huge influence on the AI joining alliances. With the current system Hungary is no more likely to join the axis after the fall of france than before and we all know that wouldn't have happened. And with regard to Franco there is a very simple solution to why he didn't join the Axis. When Franco asked Mussolini, probably Franco's best ideological ally, about the war sometime after Italy's first disaster in north africa, Mussolini said he wished he never joined the axis. Had Mussolini accomplished what he wanted in North Africa there would have been a very good chance Franco would have joined the Axis. That being said, it is very simple just to look at what territories each country has lost or conquered in determinining success.

EDIT: I imagine limited war being something more like border conflicts. An interesting thing to do would be to have limited war, regular war, and total war. Total war can only end the total annihilation of one party. Additionally, you should be able to upgrade conflicts (never downgrade) so something can go from a limited war to a regular war and even total war, even though that is highly unprobable. A good example would be the UK after the appointment of Churchill taking a no surrender attitude, thus going form regular war to total war. Additionally, total wars can end only in unconditional surrender. On the other hand, if limited wars are what I described as regular wars then all is good :)
 
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Having a completely separate AI running for each country would be extremely redundant. Most of the AI's decision making is based on the game world, so each country is using a lot of the same overlapping data and running the same calculations.
 
So basically the stuff in the bottom left hand corner, those are just things that indicate how a certain nation is leaning to or away from your camp?
 
King said:
they can use Intellgence points to on the Comintern leader to improve their natural drift towards Comintern
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Sounds interesting. I'd still propose an intelligence alliance of sorts though, where information is shared, and you might get a bonus on generating Intelligence points etc.

King said:
Members of Comintern do not have to pay money to trabuy resources off each other
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So you need money in order to trade now?
 
Watching the screenshot again, there are two different diplomatic actions called "Offer Alliance" and "Invite to Faction" (I know, this was noted earlier). Maybe this will help to solve the Barbarossa problem: Japan and Germany might be in the same faction, but not allied in the sense of "you must help in all my wars". So Germany might bring all her (European) allies against the Soviets, but not necessarily everyone in the Axis faction. Same for Japan when the Pacific war starts. Just guessing here, of course...
 
King said:
It's a special power you get if you are a member of the Axis, you can start a war and not call in your Allies. If you were like an Italian Dictator and wanted to say conquer Greece on your own without any help from your allies you would do something like this. It also allows Germany and Japan to be aligned together but not in war together against the Soviet Union. If Germany were to say declare a limited war against the Soviet Union then each Axis member would need to decide if they wanted to join the limited war giving a staggered entry into the war and some (say Bulgaria) not bothering at all.
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Does this mean that for example if Bulgaria or Romania doesn`t declare war on USSR,there will be a possibility for the last not to declare war either?And also how will this reflect the gameplay cause its honestly extremely easy for Bulgaria to keep the allies out and continue to control Vardar and Aegean Macedonia.
 
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The Starfox said:
Historically speaking the Germans very much wanted the Japanese in the war with them against the Soviets in order to prevent the transfer of the large Siberian army to the west. German Generals were especially cheesed off that Japan did not join in the war against the SU yet Germany joined in the war against the US that Japan started.

Japan was not yet at war with the USA. It is plausable to think that Germany could have convinced them into the joint venture. As this would have eliminated a dangerous enemy on their northern front. Which once concluded would have freed up alot of guarding troops in Manchuria to fight the chinese.
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Due to the kicking soviets gave japanese in 1939 it's highly unlikely the japanese would be convinced of anything. And it's remarkable the japanese apparently didn't change their army doctrines a bit following the humiliation they suffered.
 
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