APD 2.0.8 download/feedback thread

[Naselus]

What exactly is the intention of reducing the unit size to 1000? Make soldier pops <1000 more useful?

Pretty much. With the 3000 man limit, you end up with many nations paying for 30,000 soldiers but only being able to deploy 3-4 units, and other such craziness. I figure that with AHD's new army construction and splitting tools, it shouldn't be too much problem having smaller units now.

It allows you to tailor units for very small supply limits better, and lets me move casualty rates up higher so that War Hospitals becomes a valid and useful research target, as opposed to a slightly needless one. On top of that, it makes it easier for nations to recover from wars (only need to build up soldier POPs by 1,000 at a time per unit, which with the State Capital change is much easier), and makes smaller nation's armies much more flexible (you'll always have a number of units, so you can split your 10,000 soldier pops into 2 5,000 armies, for example).

The yellow unit problem should more or less go away when I get round to homing all the units. I really need to convert a save game analyser to count available units per province to make that easier.

[Dichromate]

I understand why you're experimenting with soldiers @ state capitals, but whats the deal with unit size being 1000?
Since you can recruit a unit from a 1000 man soldier pop anyway, I just don't understand the need for it when you're already merging soldier pops.

[Naselus]

I understand why you're experimenting with soldiers @ state capitals, but whats the deal with unit size being 1000?
Since you can recruit a unit from a 1000 man soldier pop anyway, I just don't understand the need for it when you're already merging soldier pops.

Well, that's part of the problem really - it doesn't make any sense for a 1000 man soldier POP to support 3000 fighting men, but a 4,000 soldier POP to only support 6000. I've never liked the 1000/3000 thing at all, especially since any casualties to those tiny POPs mean your brigade limit plunges. Standardizing brigade sizes limits the impact of merging up POPs (all those 1000 man soldier POPs that were each supporting a unit and are now merged can still support their unit), and so prevents (for example) Russia's limit being negatively impacted by the change, and also permits a more one-to-one relationship to be built between soldiers in the POP and soldiers in the field.

As I say, with AHD's unit building shortcuts and unit management improvements, reducing soldier size shouldn't cause anything like as much extra clickage as it did under vanilla V2. The .oobs will need some extra work - like doubling the size of everyone's starting army, and homing them - but the size change itself has more advantages than disadvantages.

[Rylock]

9 might have been a mite high. Possibly worth lowering it to 8 to keep the Carlists alive.

Well, we might just need to go into the pop files and adjust the beginning militancy for pops in Spain and the USCA up to 9. Either that or use the opening event (I believe they both have one) and bump up their militancy in that one.

POPs join a movement when they reach 10% support for the issue, but get 100% support for the issue from joining up.

Ahhh, so the 100% is a result and not the requirement. Okay, that makes more sense.

Still, I specifically looked for pops that had 10% support-- there were quite a few that had 10 CON and over 10% support for Secret Ballots... and yet no movement appeared for it (even though it was indeed the next step in that reform chain). In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a movement for Secret Ballots... I wonder if it's something with that reform specifically? Same went for UH Composition-- two or three pops had over 10% support, and yet no movement. Hmm. I'll have to do a controlled test and see.

[Rylock]

Pretty much. With the 3000 man limit, you end up with many nations paying for 30,000 soldiers but only being able to deploy 3-4 units, and other such craziness. I figure that with AHD's new army construction and splitting tools, it shouldn't be too much problem having smaller units now.

It allows you to tailor units for very small supply limits better, and lets me move casualty rates up higher so that War Hospitals becomes a valid and useful research target, as opposed to a slightly needless one. On top of that, it makes it easier for nations to recover from wars (only need to build up soldier POPs by 1,000 at a time per unit, which with the State Capital change is much easier), and makes smaller nation's armies much more flexible (you'll always have a number of units, so you can split your 10,000 soldier pops into 2 5,000 armies, for example).

The yellow unit problem should more or less go away when I get round to homing all the units. I really need to convert a save game analyser to count available units per province to make that easier.

I found that it's a lot quicker to regain units now-- before you'd have to sit on a Soldiers NF for quite a while before you'd get a unit or two, mainly because you'd get soldiers recruiting in provinces which were all below 1,000 total. Still, with the lack of military hospital tech in the early game you get crazy casualty rates. Expect lots of whining on this front.

And I'll put one more plug in for the "recruitment drive" thing: players can respond to a sudden loss of soldiers much more quickly than the AI can. The recruitment drive event was meant to encourage countries to maintain a minimum size of soldier population (depending on their war policy) to prevent weirdness, and I really doubt that need will go away. And I'll drop it, now.

[Naselus]

Ahhh, so the 100% is a result and not the requirement. Okay, that makes more sense.

Still, I specifically looked for pops that had 10% support-- there were quite a few that had 10 CON and over 10% support for Secret Ballots... and yet no movement appeared for it (even though it was indeed the next step in that reform chain). In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a movement for Secret Ballots... I wonder if it's something with that reform specifically? Same went for UH Composition-- two or three pops had over 10% support, and yet no movement. Hmm. I'll have to do a controlled test and see.

There's some other factors that adjust it as well; plus PDM locks out ballots unless you have high enough democracy anyway. I should probably change the issue table for that, thinking about it - POPs can currently support secret ballots without the UH being able to pass them.

[Naselus]

I found that it's a lot quicker to regain units now-- before you'd have to sit on a Soldiers NF for quite a while before you'd get a unit or two, mainly because you'd get soldiers recruiting in provinces which were all below 1,000 total. Still, with the lack of military hospital tech in the early game you get crazy casualty rates. Expect lots of whining on this front.

I may frontload war hospitals a little so that you get 25% or so from a first line tech. Having 100% rather than 30% to play with helps a lot, and can actually be turned into a useful tech stat.

And I'll put one more plug in for the "recruitment drive" thing: players can respond to a sudden loss of soldiers much more quickly than the AI can. The recruitment drive event was meant to encourage countries to maintain a minimum size of soldier population (depending on their war policy) to prevent weirdness, and I really doubt that need will go away. And I'll drop it, now.

I suspect it actually won't be an issue now, due to the provinces all feeding into state capitals and the pop/regiment sizes matching up properly. If need be, we'll re-introduce it.

[etranger01]

So, why 1000 men per brigade (I guess it's technically a regiment now) rather than 2000? I mean, I agree that 3000 men per unit was way too big, but shifting all the way down to 1000 seems too small. This isn't based on any in-game experience; I'm just curious about the reasoning.

[Naselus]

Mostly due to the size of existing soldier POPs. I want all soldier-per-regiment numbers to be the same, rather than staggered, and there's already hundreds of 1000 man pops around. Combine that with the thousands of really tiny solider POPs, and 1000 is the best bet.

Essentially, the lower I make it, the closer the approximation between army size and soldier wage bill. I'd like them to be pretty much identical, but making each unit 1 man would probably be taking the piss. You'll notice that the USA has benefited enormously from the change, going from 48,000 men's worth of units to 62,000 men's worth; a good part of that is because of the elimination of 'waste' POPs.

[Naselus]

Ahhh, so the 100% is a result and not the requirement. Okay, that makes more sense.

Still, I specifically looked for pops that had 10% support-- there were quite a few that had 10 CON and over 10% support for Secret Ballots... and yet no movement appeared for it (even though it was indeed the next step in that reform chain). In fact, I don't think I've ever seen a movement for Secret Ballots... I wonder if it's something with that reform specifically? Same went for UH Composition-- two or three pops had over 10% support, and yet no movement. Hmm. I'll have to do a controlled test and see.

Yeah, this was definitely due to screwed up factors in the reform table tbh - there was a 0 multiplier for either not = unvicersal or not = weighted universal, so every POP should trigger that. Fixed.

[GAGA Extrem]

(1) Can't you just reduce the min soldier amount for the first brigade?
That should mitigate the lack of units in the early game.

(2) May I suggest a balance change for the "Family" inventions from "Positivism"?
A growth difference of +0.03% / 0% / -0.03% seems quite significant, while the effect on education efficiency is almost neglectible even at that tech level. Either up the education efficiency impact a bit or add other stuff.

[PSWalsh]

Trying to play as Krakow and I have been having trouble with factories. Upgrading them completely destroys their profitability. Also, if you re-open a factory it has a month of massive profits only to go back in the red again. Not sure what is causing this.

Also, the new brigade system has been working well when I play briefly as Columbia.

[keynes2.0]

Oversupply most likely. The month of initial 'profit' is where it's eating into it's startup capital. But you are trying to sell in markets that the GPs dominate already.

Everyone but the GPs has a really tough time having any industry at all it seems.

[Naselus]

(1) Can't you just reduce the min soldier amount for the first brigade?
That should mitigate the lack of units in the early game.

No, it still wouldn't correct the discrepancy - why should you have 10 units for paying 10k soldiers, when your neighbour only gets 20 units for paying 40k soldiers? His army costs literally four times as much as yours, but is only twice the size. I think the 1000-man detachment-size units actually works quite well, tbh; I got used to it quickly and it's quicker to work out, plus you can always match the supply limit.

(2) May I suggest a balance change for the "Family" inventions from "Positivism"?
A growth difference of +0.03% / 0% / -0.03% seems quite significant, while the effect on education efficiency is almost neglectible even at that tech level. Either up the education efficiency impact a bit or add other stuff.

They're likely to be scrapped in favour of a new event-driven pop growth system with trends at some point.

[Archam]

I declared war to Prussia as France and I noticed a great part of their army (at least half) simply stays iddle, guarding the Russian and Austrian borders while I'm occupying half of their country. Any idea on what could cause that ?

[Naselus]

I declared war to Prussia as France and I noticed a great part of their army (at least half) simply stays iddle, guarding the Russian and Austrian borders while I'm occupying half of their country. Any idea on what could cause that ?

The AI keeps reserves back to avoid leaving itself vulnerable in wartime. It does the same in vanilla. I suspect it was the devs solution to the AI piling it's entire army into a single endless battle.

[Archam]

The AI keeps reserves back to avoid leaving itself vulnerable in wartime. It does the same in vanilla. I suspect it was the devs solution to the AI piling it's entire army into a single endless battle.

Allright. Beating Prussia while they have 112 brigades guarding the Eastern borders and none at the front will feel like a cheap victory but I'll take it

[keynes2.0]

Experiencing starvation due to canned food unavailability as Greece. This happened whenever I didn't have domestic artisans producing the stuff.

[Naselus]

Probably due to artisans being military goods obsessed.

[keynes2.0]

Also freakin' impossible to secure any clippers or steamers. How about one-time decisions to add a few to your stockpile when you first invent the tech?