It's back! Hooray! It's back!
And inside that was the man of my nightmares Intelligenzo Artific himself making the glass displays tremble with his snoring.
I must sadly admit that this one took me a minute to get, quite an accurate personification of the AI though! Paradox I'm sure is flattered by the character.
"Oh that's a lot of questions. As to why I am here since France is about to fall and we are about to enter a new phase in the war, I thought it would be nice if we coordinated a bit so we can decide how we will lose.”
I am thoroughly disturbed and repulsed by the thought of an AAR where the infamous Paradox AI has the tightest grip on reality of any character.
“I am not sure yet...all i know is that if we hope to win this war with that dead weight leading Germany we have to make Italy stronger.. Much much stronger!”
“So build more Pizza factories?”
I see no flaw whatsoever with this absolutely war-winning plan.
"14" divisions, lovely. If Paradox counting is any indication, we may finally have an explanation for Paradox AI. Well, we already knew this explanation, but further proof is welcome.
As to Vichy, I'm not sure if it's a feature or a bug, but there's a chance Vichy doesn't get formed. The same happened in my game in 'Odin'. Factors that could possibly influence the formation of Vichy:
France's political landscape is very different to historical. In the game in question, France is run by the Action Française.
Italy grabs too much territory, though this doesn't seem to be a consistent factor in the non-formation of Vichy. Some have suggested that Germany needs to hold the town of Vichy for Vichy to be formed, but I haven't been able to confirm this. I've seen games where Italy grabs more than half of France, and Vichy still gets formed...
If France falls too quickly, Germany may not have gotten the Vichy war goal event, which is the precursor to the eventual formation of Vichy. As you did conquer France in June 1940, I don't think that applies here though. There's definitely an element of randomness as to which option the AI goes for when that event presents itself.
In your case, I don't see the 'Fall of France' event in your screenshots. If it hasn't yet, that event could still trigger several days after France has been conquered, and result in either a historical Vichy France, or no Vichy France and full Axis occupation.
Poking through the game files, as one does, It
looks like the event that fires to allow Germany to set the Vichy war goal on France has a mean time to happen (MTTH) of 1 month anytime after FRA and GER are at war, so that should almost certainly have fired by now as there is perhaps a 0.05% chance that it hasn't (barring funniness with saving and reloading the game at odd times). However, the popup indicates that Germany enforced the conquest war goal, so somehow this event didn't fire or else the war goal was somehow invalid. If you're playing in two-month intervals, it's...
less improbable that the event didn't fire correctly, given how the event system actually works, but it still should have fired by now.
My best guess, and I'm truly spitballing here, is that the "Acquire Territory" wargoal enforced by Italy somehow interfered with the Vichy wargoal. Notably, the Acquire Territory wargoal does take a priority over the Vichy wargoal, probably specifically to deal with cases like this where human Italy demands territory that would otherwise go to Vichy. That might mean that the Vichy wargoal doesn't fire correctly and trigger the event that actually sets up Vichy France. Again, spitballing.
My last guess: if at some point the Italian player added a "conquer" wargoal (and neglected to tell me about it; I don't see a screenshot of this anywhere in the AAR), that would have broken the Vichy wargoal, based on how it is scripted. Of course, this is quite unlikely, it's not as if human players like to pop into the diplo window every month and add another wargoal just to see how much free stuff they can get out of a war...right?
...oh. Oh dear.
