Info for Modders : Imagine a World Market with No Idiot Trades and . . .

[Bolt]

. . . the various national economies functioning at full capacity . . .


Its possible.

In fact, I did it.

I've run test versions of Bolted 1.02c (in development) with the following results :

All major nations are NOT executing idiot trades.

All major nations have economies functioning at FULL CAPACITY.

Most minor nations are NOT executing idiot trades, and also economies functioning at full capacity.

Best of all, even by 1939 after 3 full years of running a hands-off game, the WM is still displaying 1000+ surplusses in Rubber (which means that minor nation trades are going through, getting the goods, and supporting their economies).

Bolt, you ask, how did you perform this miracle? Are you a genius? Is Paradox giving you a pile of money for this?

Answers : I'll tell you in a sec. Evidence suggests otherwise. Uh, Great Big No.

1. I set all major nations to perform "idiot-prevention" trades. This means I took their surplus and entered a hardcoded trade designed to give them all rubber needed to support their IC capacity at the start of the game. This keeps their rubber reserve above a minimum level where idiot trades become a risk. For example for the US I hardcoded trades so that the US would be trading alot of oil and coal for 428 rubber -- but not so much that this would cause either an oil or coal shortage for them.

2. I made sure that all nations that have mucho rubber surplusses are importing the rubber to their home territory, and selling the surplusses on the market. For the UK, this means they are selling something like 350+ rubber on the world market. Even countries like Siam and Brazil have HC trades for these purposes.

3. I went through a number of the minor countries and where possible hardcoded surplus resource for rubber trades. These nations included Poland, Finland, Sweden, Canada, Australia, etc. etc.

Presto, bingo, WM actually functions rationally now. Only a few "basket-case" economies, such as Czecholslovakia, still do idiot trades, but since the overall thing is in balance, it doesn't affect much anymore.

More importantly, since world economies are functioning now, even minor countries (with a bolted ai file or a bolt-modded default ai file) are building units and researching through the tech tree at reasonable progress.

[Seabass]

Thanks for keeping the patches coming and keeping the half of the people that bought this as a single player game interested.

[GeoZero]

This is awesome.

Now, why didn't paradox do this before releasing the game. And what happened to Beta Testing?

Bolt, I really think Paradox should be hiring you for V.2

[Ibn]

Nice! I'm glad to see paypal is working for you as well, you deserve it

If you need help beta testing the economic fixes, or help modding all the tiny countries, drop me an email.

I've given up on the navy adjustments, the AI is just to damn stupid to deal with having their ships sunk, it goes into a tizzy and tries to rebuild the whole lost fleet from the ground up, uggh. In short, making the ships actually sink, ensures the ai does nothing but build ships... Oh well.

[Trip]

Bolt, it's good to see you still cranking stuff out as I tone my work down. Good stuff.

[DarthMaur]

Coded that trades and they are working? What about your bug report? (well, i admit it was convoy one, but related)

[jchastain]

Imagine there's no bad trades,
It's easy if you try,
No weak AI to face us,
Troopers in the sky,
Imagine all the people
playing HOI today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It's not now hard to do,
But economic changes,
make total conquests few,
Imagine all the players
Suing for a peace...

Imagine less militia,
I wonder if you can,
No need to swap the countries,
French troops make a stand,
Imagine efficient people,
working throughout the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll be challenged,
And HOI will be number one.

[Bolt]

Originally posted by DarthMaur
Coded that trades and they are working? What about your bug report? (well, i admit it was convoy one, but related)

My first attempt to "fix" the economy was to use the convoy system to send goods from the UK to all CW / Allied countries.

That failed because the AI did not keep those convoys going (they are not persistent).

The second attempt was to hardcode idiot prevention trades. That succeeded.

[Bolt]

Originally posted by jchastain
Imagine there's no bad trades,
It's easy if you try,
No weak AI to face us,
Troopers in the sky,
Imagine all the people
playing HOI today...

Imagine there's no countries,
It's not now hard to do,
But economic changes,
make total conquests few,
Imagine all the players
Suing for a peace...

Imagine less militia,
I wonder if you can,
No need to swap the countries,
French troops make a stand,
Imagine efficient people,
working throughout the world...

You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll be challenged,
And HOI will be number one.

Truely beautifuly honorific parody.

command = { type = sheds a tear which = BOLT }

[Single Malt]

Congrats on the pre war trade work around but won't all the economics grind to a halt as soon as war breaks out and no goods makes it home.

HOI 103 IMHO needs to fix their world market just as badly if not more so than the AI.

[Bolt]

Originally posted by Single Malt
Congrats on the pre war trade work around but won't all the economics grind to a halt as soon as war breaks out and no goods makes it home.

HOI 103 IMHO needs to fix their world market just as badly if not more so than the AI.

Good question and this is precisely what makes it so interesting.

The pre-war economy now, as opposed to default HoI, stays balanced.

Once war breaks out, however, the have-not nation Germany must either conquer quickly or have adequate industry tech to compensate for non-access to resources. This was precisely the grand strategic situation facing Germany. With the Bolted AI changes, heavy weighting of industry techs means that by 1942 Germany will either have conquered sufficient European territory AND gained industry techs to supply them with rubber and oil through coal / oil / rubber conversions, or they will be crushed by the massive AI allied / Soviet strategic counter-offensive. This is how the Bolted games play out, and what I am striving for and have nearly achieved now.

[Tenryu]

Excellent, Bolt!
I was considering giving every damn country half the resources they need in their capital provence to try and fix this somewhat, but that avenue was too full of what-ifs. I think your idea a stroke of genius!

And Ibn, yeah me too on the naval stuff. it's totally fubar. Hopefully the patch will help some.

[Single Malt]

My personal view is that the problems with the world market are only exasperated by the war time reduction of resources.As a player it is quite easy to avoid shortfalls but the AI is by no means able to conduct a long term war effort.I sometimes wonder if any play testing was done befor this game was released, Bugs aside how could they miss the lack of production of non player countries due to lack of resources.I still think they should hard wire full production for the AI and leave the World market for the players.

P.S. Darn nice work on the mod

[Bolt]

Originally posted by Single Malt
My personal view is that the problems with the world market are only exasperated by the war time reduction of resources.As a player it is quite easy to avoid shortfalls but the AI is by no means able to conduct a long term war effort.I sometimes wonder if any play testing was done befor this game was released, Bugs aside how could they miss the lack of production of non player countries due to lack of resources.I still think they should hard wire full production for the AI and leave the World market for the players.

P.S. Darn nice work on the mod

Thanks.

I would disagree with you on your point here, but that's only because I've been running tests you haven't seen.

With the latest changes, I ran the game to 1945. Guess what happened?

Germany was able to SUSTAIN the campaign in Russia, and was still holding about 80% of her maximum expansion into Russia. Basically, Germany was holding a line from Talininn and down along the Dniepr river. And, holding their own, I might add. Russian counter-offensives were happening, but they were slow and didn't always succeed, and occasionally the Germans executed a counter-attack and took a new province only to be pushed out again. It looked like another year of war at least. But, the Russians had been on the ropes in terms of nearly losing Moscow and Stalingrad, but *pushed the Germans back* (mid-1943). It was now clear they *would not lose this war*.

To be honest, in all the Bolted tests I've run in all versions, I had never seen this level of sustained fighting power on the part of the Germans, even with my added manpower in Bolted 1.02a.

So, I save-loaded various countries to check the real sitch out.

Point 1. The AI German economy was functioning at a FULL 1095 ICs. It was NOT sinewaving. Reason : they had researched through the ENTIRE industry tree. It was no problem now for them to convert coal to oil to rubber, so if they didn't have any rubber (which they didn't) it didn't matter. They had also researched through the ENTIRE infantry, armor, and artillery trees.

Point 2. Why were the Germans able to research through the trees? Because the world economy never broke down, and the German AI obviously had gotton the cheap conversion techs early enough to save her economy.

Point 3. Nations like Finland and Turkey had 50 divisions. !!!

Point 4. Both the SU and the Germans had SUPER HEAVY TANKS with 120mm guns in the FIELD as well as being PRODUCED. They had good aircraft available to produce, but due to a known bug refused to produce them. They also had defense factors of 32 in mech and armor units (some of them anyway).

Point 5. So now you might be saying "Sounds like a stalemate Bolt". Nope. The Germans only had 395 manpower left. The Soviets had 4000. The war would be over within the year.

All of the above points are the *fallout* of a functioning prewar economy that was achieved without doing cheap-ass things like just adding resources to the pools. I just forced the nations to do trades, using the resources they had.

BTW, the World Market Rubber Reserve in 1945 was 9999.

[Single Malt]

I know that the World market is screwed but I did not think that a mod could fix it.My own impluse was it scrap it.

If you have managed to lock Rubber into the market The people at Paradox owe you their thanks and a very large drink,because you will have changed their very enjoyable tec research game into a ww2 simulation without weeks of reworking code.Sometimes the simpliste is the best answer.

I look forward to your 102c

[Bolt]

Originally posted by Single Malt
I know that the World market is screwed but I did not think that a mod could fix it.My own impluse was it scrap it.

If you have managed to lock Rubber into the market The people at Paradox owe you their thanks and a very large drink,because you will have changed their very enjoyable tec research game into a ww2 simulation without weeks of reworking code.Sometimes the simpliste is the best answer.

I look forward to your 102c

They owe me a beer. A Swedish beer. In a Stockholm bar. With paintings of scantily clad ladies on the walls.

[DarthMaur]

Have you though of deleting world trades for countries at war? They seem reluctant to set up new, from my experience.

Obviously, it would need some program, and exiting the game, but its not my problem

[Bolt]

Originally posted by DarthMaur
Have you though of deleting world trades for countries at war? They seem reluctant to set up new, from my experience.

Obviously, it would need some program, and exiting the game, but its not my problem

Oh, I'd like to do much more with the WM, but unfortunately hardcoded trades are persistent. I have the choice between a non-functioning world economy with no hardcoded trades or a functioning world economy with 50 hardcoded trades. I opt for the latter, but they can't be deleted once the game starts, except by manual editing of the savegame file.

[DarthMaur]

Originally posted by Bolt
Oh, I'd like to do much more with the WM, but unfortunately hardcoded trades are persistent. I have the choice between a non-functioning world economy with no hardcoded trades or a functioning world economy with 50 hardcoded trades. I opt for the latter, but they can't be deleted once the game starts, except by manual editing of the savegame file.

Thats what i meant. Except by automatic program, not manual editing (i do it periodically and its indeed a bit tiresome...)

EDIT/ Let me clarify. A program which searches for countries at war and deletes all trades set up by them. Used on player whim (ie, when HOI crashes or its time to sleep)

[Winkelried]

Originally posted by Bolt
Oh, I'd like to do much more with the WM, but unfortunately hardcoded trades are persistent. I have the choice between a non-functioning world economy with no hardcoded trades or a functioning world economy with 50 hardcoded trades. I opt for the latter, but they can't be deleted once the game starts, except by manual editing of the savegame file.

If I understand you correctly the hardcoded trades cannot be cancelled by the player (without altering the savegame that is). Now if I as the UK don't manage to transport 350 + what I need rubber home but I have that trade running will I have to synthetically produce the rest or will the trade deal not be served? In other words: who has higher priority on getting rubber, me or the world market?

PS: To the guy using "fubar": I feel like Cpl. Upham asking this but wtf does it stand for?