Not quoting an entire post helps with brevity yourself Wminus. Don't call the kettle black
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I can't see why you are complaining about units then, because to be frank all the units in HoI3 do have their place for being useful. Any player worth his salt will know when to build the more specialised units. Of course the weapons of WWII were 'unbalanced' and that reflects in the concept that some of the units are in general, far superior in the general sense compared to others. All that your argument appears to be based on is; '
A gamey player will only build X, Y and Z, when there is also A,B,C in the game; y u no luv A,B,C Paradox?'.
I make a joking comment there, but the jist of it is like the punch line; if units A,B,C were not historically '
that useful' then they shouldn’t be
'that useful' in HoI either. Since units like AT, Engineers, Battlecruisers, Cav, Militia etc.
do have their place for certain nations and strategies. Then they are; "...useful at least in some circumstances." which is what you claim you want... ¬.¬
This 'lack of depth' in knowledge with respect to HoI3 appears also to reflect in you knowledge of AI design. I know this will sound pretentious and patronising to you, but its the impression you make. An AI script, as opposed to AI coding are two very different things well understood in terms of getting computer to 'play the game', and were defined in previous posts by me. So why you claim to have 'changed terminology' and also
not defined what you are changing it to, as for why I didn't understand something, is beyond me. It just strikes as being argumentative for no apparent reason or trying to cover up an unthoughtful post.
AI script is precisely telling the AI how to behave i.e. 'If [this] do [this]'
AI coding is uses call statements i.e. 'Find [state], [state is] do [act on state*]'
The former gives no flexibility in roll, the latter allows you to develop a set of behaviours for an infinite set of states which are defineable outside of the games intrinsic parameters.
This latter form of coding in used in nearly all modern games with a complex AI, indeed even HoI uses it from what I know from my modding. The difficulties arise when trying to mix the two together, because on the one hand your trying to look at absolutes i.e. invade Poland 1939, while on the other your trying to get the AI to balance itself i.e. build list, without knowing that the 'invade Poland' command is coming, because its not in the intrinsic dynamic AI hence not part of the [state is] part of the AI design. Hence the build plan is not tailored for that war unless it was scripted to be.
The Civ series of games has all its AI coded in the latter format, hence why it acts like it does. When the call statements are easily modifiable or added to, then you have a great AI structure, and a great game. If however you have to code every single behaviour from singular IF commands the AI will play the game in jumps in a clunky manner in a yes/no factor.
The games 'complexity' means nothing in all of this since a call statement can use as much or as little information as you want from the game, and define variables in ratios as opposed to absolutes.
*This is where logical statements act
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Chess is more than complex enough for humanity's finite intelligence, and thus there is plenty of challenge. Thus any more complexity thus in no way provides addition challenge, and thus simplifying HoI3 wouldn't dumb it down.
Right then, take tic-tak-toe on a 3x3 grid. I think off-hand there are 10 different combinations of moves that can be made, and 5 strategies for player 1, two strategies for player 2.
Expand tic-tak-toe to a 4x4 grid with as your game. The number of different combinations of moves jumps up into the hundreds of thousands, and the number of strategies is similarly large.
We can take this analogy further with games like Connect 4, we introduce a larger grid, and the rule that moves can only be made cumulatively from one side and you get a vast myriad of strategies beyond that of either of the other two preceding games.
Additional complexity, provides additional challenge.
Watch some videos on game theory on youtube, there is a great series for a beginner there, it may help you understand where I am coming from on this point and why additional complexity provides additional challenge. Note: I do not relate this to AI behaviour.
I do understand that you are making specific comment to the challenge and the human mind; that we can't really explore all the possible strategies out there, so a suitably large enough number (again known to be about 60 between all players) should suffice for creating a good enough game. True. Hearts of Iron already surpasses that number, and I think it is a suitably complex enough game as is. But I wouldn't like to see it 'dumbed down' because if I
feel restricted compared to an earlier incarnation, even if it did have more strategy, I'm still going to feel a short changed. After all, with a 'simulation' you want the nitty gritty details, not an abstraction. If I wanted an abstraction of WWII then I might play Axis & Allies board game.
Since HoI has goal of being a simulation as good as it can be, rather than some abstraction of WWII, then I want it to stay with all the nitty gritty, and I'm sure many others like the detail as well, even if it the game is buggy and clunky.
This was mentioned ealier.