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I'm hopeful rather than confident about my Japanese entries. Not having the language pretty much locks me out of the original sources so I've had to spend a lot of time scouring mainly English language campaign and battle accounts - and as you suggest there's an obvious potential for bias there. Of course, 'native' sites can be equally biased, so when I'm trawling through these I look for extracts or quotations from official combat reports.

Thinking on your earlier point about AI use, I reckon a better fix might be to keep the trait modifiers as is but to come up with an alternative characterisation of the kind of leadership that such traits represent. That is, simply replace the tag and its descriptors with something more directly observable. Currently pondering on just what that might be.
 
Epaminondas said:
Thinking on your earlier point about AI use, I reckon a better fix might be to keep the trait modifiers as is but to come up with an alternative characterisation of the kind of leadership that such traits represent. That is, simply replace the tag and its descriptors with something more directly observable. Currently pondering on just what that might be.
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where's that moddable?
 
The guts of it should just be a matter of changing the description given to players of what the trait represents. I'm assuming that's just a simple script floating about somewhere with no connection to game play. Changing the OG tag might be a little more problematic but if that can't be easily managed it can be left unchanged. The important thing is that the characterisation of the OG trait be changed to comprise readily recognisable performance descriptors (e.g. poor march discipline, lack of initiative, delay in response) that would allow us to more accurately identify who should have it and who should not.
 
as for official combat reports you mention in #363: be aware that at least a Wehrmachtbericht is 100% propaganda. i would expect the same for other nations.


if its only for the description, i wouldnt care at all. neither ai nor human player read this anyway. i just thought it could be moddable maybe in DH. i found nothing but even if - when the ai is not understanding this its pointless.

as for the OG, etc: if you spot somebody let me know please. i'm occupied with finding and painting all these people so there's no time left for much research afterwards. even the hunt for promotion dates for the US admirals was difficult here and there. so bug reports are always welcome if you spot some.
 
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bestmajor said:
as for official combat reports you mention in #363: be aware that at least a Wehrmachtbericht is 100% propaganda. i would expect the same for other nations.
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As would I. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to be gleaned from there - particularly in the form of formation after-action reports. I know that you're familiar with Lexicon der Wehrmacht, for example, and buried within the Personenregister there are many extracts taken from such reports and evaluating the performance of particular leaders in the action. Granted, those selected for presentation on the site are almost invariably positive, but they nonetheless do provide first-hand testimony as to the particular skills of the personnel concerned and so contribute to an empirical base for decision-making.

bestmajor said:
if its only for the description, i wouldnt care at all. neither ai nor human player read this anyway.
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I haven't made my point clearly enough. I'd argue that the descriptions do matter enormously - because they point us to the empirical data on which we can decide which leader should be tagged with which trait. If we want to know whether a given officer should be considered eligible for the PL trait, for example, the first thing we do is check his record to see whether he commanded a major armoured formation. If it's the Engineer trait we're considering we similarly look for appropriate appointments in his record. For the OD and DD traits we track the nature of the battles he figured in and the type of contribution he made. And so on. But where do we look and what do we look at to find out whether someone deserves the OG tag or not?

You've answered that question by pointing to the 'old' component and using a blanket determination that anyone over a specified age is ipso facto Old Guard. I believe you've been forced into that because the description of Old Guard leaders, either read in the game text or intuited, is so diffuse as to prevent you from doing anything better. What I want to do is produce a description of the OG trait that is grounded in directly observable (and reported) behaviours so that it can be applied selectively and verifiably.

bestmajor said:
as for the OG, etc: if you spot somebody let me know please.
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You bet.
 
Epaminondas said:
You've answered that question by pointing to the 'old' component and using a blanket determination that anyone over a specified age is ipso facto Old Guard. I believe you've been forced into that because the description of Old Guard leaders, either read in the game text or intuited, is so diffuse as to prevent you from doing anything better. What I want to do is produce a description of the OG trait that is grounded in directly observable (and reported) behaviours so that it can be applied selectively and verifiably.
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well OG reduces the XP points leaders are able to accumulate. Experience in this case is assimilated (not sure if right expression, i mean the product the learner gets after having made the actual experience). this is also determined by intelligence (slow learner and fast learner). now its a platitude that this steadily decreases after the mid-20s (Fluid Intelligence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_and_crystallized_intelligence#Development_and_physiology). so labelling somebody as OG does not mean that he wasnt a good commander. its only that i dont expect him to get much better.
and yes this is physically determined and related to age. wether or not he was a good or bad commander (you named it poor march discipline, etc in # 365) is IMO base skill, which determines actual ingame performance more than the OG trait. OG is just an assumption of the future career/skill-development of a general and as such related to age and maybe to rank as well.
the point is that the OG trait is not the only determinant, there are many more. and using OG trait rather often will (as a gamey point) make ai and human player more equal since ai is unable to train its leaders properly.

Epaminondas said:
As would I. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to be gleaned from there - particularly in the form of formation after-action reports. I know that you're familiar with Lexicon der Wehrmacht, for example, and buried within the Personenregister there are many extracts taken from such reports and evaluating the performance of particular leaders in the action. Granted, those selected for presentation on the site are almost invariably positive, but they nonetheless do provide first-hand testimony as to the particular skills of the personnel concerned and so contribute to an empirical base for decision-making.
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yes i meant this site. maybe also look up the date of the report and compare it to the phases listed in Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmachtbericht

September 1939-May 1940 - cautious restraint
Western Campaign 1940 to end 1941 - exuberance from victories
1942 to Autumn 1944 - camouflage the setbacks
Autumn 1944 to war's end - sober liquidation report
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if there's truth in this, it means the reports from 1940 onwards (probably after the fall of france) should be doubted.

Epaminondas said:
You bet.
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good!
 
I don't think it would serve anyone's interests if I prolonged the debate in your thread here, major. At best it's a diversion and I certainly don't want to distract you from your greatly appreciated labours. So I'll send any further argument to you via PM, but make just one further observation here for the benefit of anyone else crazy enough to try to shake the historical data into their own csvs.

That is that there are two types of report in play here. The first (represented by the Wehrmachtbericht's efforts) were intended for broad public consumption and so, as you rightly note, need to be assessed in the light of their propaganda objectives. The second (those I've referred to in the Lexicon der Wehrmacht) were of a different order altogether. They were commentaries generated by the command staff of the engaged formations and passed up the chain of command for internal use only. It was on the basis of these that most - though certainly not all - of the awards referred to in the last paragraph of the Wiki article were made. They were a type of report card if you will and, while those receiving high grades were often used for propanda purposes, the 'marks' that elevated them to celebrity status in most instances represented the relatively untainted professional judgement of the officers' peers and superiors.
 
Again, for those who've been following. The major's just discreetly pointed out to me that while I'm correct in distinguishing between the two types of report, my identification of Lexicon der Wehrmacht as a source for the latter is ill-founded. Put more simply, I've ballsed-up completely. Bugger!
 
preview:


Note: I did not intend to make new germans. it just happened :(.
 
bestmajor said:
preview:


Note: I did not intend to make new germans. it just happened :(.
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If I'm not mistaken there are 6 new German leader pictures in that preview, correct?

Great work as usual, btw
 
line 2: 1
line 3: 1
line 4: 2
line 5: 1
makes 5, where's the 6th one?
 
That's why I've started the sentence with that "If I'm not mistaken..." :p .

My fault. I thought the 5nd one in the 5th line was a German as well, thus making the tally rise up to six. Upon looking better, though, I realize he's definitely not a member of the German armed forces.
 
still alive


at least a few new japanese land leaders. the commander in last row, center, Yoshio Tachibana is known for...

and the 1936 cabinet of NZL is done

 
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