Replace budget with man-hour from the total employees's pool and how they are spent if you wish. It is the same. Man-hours of work spent doing something and not another because of a design vision/decision.
Alternative history becoming too invasive?
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Replace budget with man-hour from the total employees's pool and how they are spent if you wish. It is the same. Man-hours of work spent doing something and not another because of a design vision/decision.
Italy wanting to join WW2 is the result of the AI is generically programmed regardless of nation/faction to assist its faction members to be "useful." To be honest, I don't care that Italy wants to join the war in 1939. I care that Italy wants to join the war when it clearly isn't ready and in historical should stall until France is close to capitulation. In ahistorical, Italy should be reluctant with the amount of industry it needs to add.
The AI needs to be tweaked for each specific nations with a unique focus tree. I don't think Paradox has the manpower to handle it at this point.
I wish they would hire the Expert AI modder and have him sort through their code and fix it.
Or maybe the guy they need is busy fixing the AI in Europa Universalis. Or maybe he tried but there were unforseen complications and the deadline was here. Or maybe they would need to hire an additionnal AI programmer but there weren't any good candidate available. Or maybe they decided it would be smarter to use a hundred hours of the AI guys to fix German convoys sailing through the Channel instead of making Italy join at the historical date even when it makes no sense to wait until that point. Maybe alt-history didn't have anything to do with this.
Now that too me is sad to see. Luckily I got into a multiplayer group that extended the lifespan of interest for this game (contrary to the gripes of many SP individuals) as it had a structured manner in which to try and instill the WW2 experience as best as possible. It wasn't always the most pretty, it wasn't the most perfect but it was a way for players to self generate a method of play that revolved around the 2nd world war. Now the fact that Paradox has neither tried to support the historic MP experience and has also embodied a stance, where A-historical is more pleasing then historical then its concerning. Especially when this chat clearly shows that people have an interest for it. Which I again argue we all came for at some capacity and expectation, even if some people stand resistant to the notion and say thats not what Paradox is about. I'll stick with the game for awhile in the hope that some more effort is put into the game, but its sad to see that you and possibly many others got turned away because of this choice Paradox has made. Hell maybe they don't even care, that might just be viewed as "acceptable loss of business." Since in their mind they can prob replace ya with people that are willing to shovel out money for A-historical fantasy which takes a lower degree of effort then the historical.
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Personally I play the game for Alt History stuff. I like have many options on what route I take in the game. To me the what if's are so intriguing that I have to take them. Besides I don't want the game to constantly turn out with the same outcome over and over. That kills replayability for me. Besides you guys have the historical route button.
I feel like there are a lot of Armchair historians in this thread saying how history could've "plausibly" been different enough to enable an Axis victory. For the most part, they all amount to 100/100 things going right for the Axis with no corresponding adjustments by the big Allied nations. That's not plausible. There was no way for Germany to win WW2. Not if they went the "Mediterranean strategy" immediately after the France of France (which somehow ignores that there would have been a corresponding adjustment by the Royal Navy), or if they took the Suez, or if they took Dunkirk faster (no explanation of how this is possible, just faster somehow) or if they took Stalingrad (whoopdeedoo, Germany adds a destroyed city it can't rebuild and a few hundred thousand fewer POWs to its cause).
Even if alllll those things happened, there would've been no path to victory for Germany. Had it really needed to (i.e. UK and USSR being bled totally dry somehow), the US could have mobilized up to two or three times the size of forces it ultimately did, which alone would have been enough to handle the Axis. The longer the war went on the less Germany was able to control its occupied territories as it simply ran out of garrisoning forces, this led to huge massive issues with partisans. Yugoslavia and Greece both basically liberated themselves from German rule with partisan activity.
Japan winning is even less probable.
Maybe someone should try and make a "historically accurate" mod that cuts the # of factories in Germany/Italy/Japan, cuts use of factories in occupied/non core land by 75%, and adds a few hundred factories between the UK/USSR/USA. Germany would definitely be a lot harder, but it would be quite a bit more accurate and might remind people on the forum just how impossible an Axis victory was.
Even if alllll those things happened, there would've been no path to victory for Germany. Had it really needed to (i.e. UK and USSR being bled totally dry somehow), the US could have mobilized up to two or three times the size of forces it ultimately did, which alone would have been enough to handle the Axis. The longer the war went on the less Germany was able to control its occupied territories as it simply ran out of garrisoning forces, this led to huge massive issues with partisans. Yugoslavia and Greece both basically liberated themselves from German rule with partisan activity.
Japan winning is even less probable.
Maybe someone should try and make a "historically accurate" mod that cuts the # of factories in Germany/Italy/Japan, cuts use of factories in occupied/non core land by 75%, and adds a few hundred factories between the UK/USSR/USA. Germany would definitely be a lot harder, but it would be quite a bit more accurate and might remind people on the forum just how impossible an Axis victory was.
That's why there is 3 and a half years of interwar period to rearm and plan out how to attack to make a hypothetical axis victory.
I think a lot of the complaints in this thread are from people frustrated with how the game is running right now with the developers seem more interested in pushing out more alt-history at the expense of the broken part of the game.
Fighting at Dunkirk would badly bloody the German army, delaying future offensives and reducing their limited supply of materiel. This would inevitably result in a weaker and/or later Barbarosa that wouldn't push as far before winter sets in.
Okay, now Army Group Center is subject to constant flanking attacks because hundreds of thousands of troops in Ukraine were left untouched. Even if they all sit around with their thumbs up their asses, reaching Moscow is not the same as conquering Moscow and the city would devour countless thousands of German soldiers.
Neither of these scenarios are conducive to an overall Axis victory and may actually hasten their defeat. The closest thing to an Axis victory that is remotely plausible is Germany suing for peace after the Fall of France, only demanding territories they have a justifiable claim on and releasing the rest. Of course, this leads to the unsustainable Germam war economy collapsing due to a lack of plunder.
Speaking as a real historian, from my comfortable leather armchair, it's pretty obvious you have no real understanding of the Mediterranean strategy or what it entailed. It would be hard, for example, for the RN to do anything if the Spanish had been induced to take Gibraltar with the Germans and the axis had taken Malta in late 1940 or early 1941. If the Germans had seriously wanted to undertake operations Felix and Herkules and place their air power firmly in the 'Med in serious numbers then it would almost certainly have worked at pretty much any time prior to 1942.
There is certainly a path to victory for Germany, it is just a matter of how likely it was to come about given the number of chance factors. No historian (in an armchair or even walking about) would make the claim for inevitability, but just the balance of probabilities.
K
Why would Germany 'sue' for peace after the Fall of France? Germany offered peace to Britain several times, publicly over the radio in a famous speech by Hitler. It was the British who were determined to continue the fighting and the Germans who wanted peace in 1940, but as a victor not a loser.
To quote Hitler from that radio broadcast: '... In this hour I feel compelled, standing before my conscience, to direct yet another appeal to reason in England. I believe I can do this as I am not pleading for something as the vanquished, but rather, as the victor speaking in the name of reason. I see no compelling reason for this war to continue. I am grieved to think of the sacrifices it will claim ... Possibly Mr. Churchill again will brush aside this statement of mine by saying that it is merely an expression of fear and of doubt in our final victory. In that case I shall have relieved my conscience in regard to the things to come.'
Now this is really as close as a head of State can come to publicly request a peace deal without humiliating himself. I would love to see the official British papers on the final offer and the British discussions around it but, although they were due for release in 2017, the date has been put back another 20 years. I am hoping to still be around and with all my marbles to read them at that stage...
K
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I'm not sure what control of the Mediterranean would change in the long term. British convoys were already going around South Africa to reinforce El-Alamein, and it wouldn't prevent the American from massing troops in Britain. What it would really take is Germany defeating the USSR quickly, or not fight it at all.
So we're also adding in the idea that Franco would throw in with Hitler while the UK was still in the fight and only a couple years removed from the end of their Civil War and the Spanish countryside not even remotely pacified in many places? Extremely unlikely.
Spain maybe could have joined the Axis with enough pressure from Italy/Germany if Suez and Malta were both neutralized AND Franco promised significant portions of French North Africa (currently controlled by a nominal Axis ally in Vichy France). Maybe. But then Vichy may have protested, and set sail with the fleet to help the Brits keep Gibraltar open...
Again, 100/100 things going right for the Axis without examining the various new problems each one may cause in the long run for the Axis is not a plausible set of scenarios.
Correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not an expert on the Battle of France, but AFAIK the BEF & French divisions bottled up in French Flanders weren't capable of offering much resistance to the German panzer divisions.
Perhaps. Although most of the various Russian divisions concentrating around Kiev were exhausted and disorganised from prior battles.
Regardless, reaching Moscow would've cut off the Russian army from their major supply and communications networks, which would've made effective resistance at least a lot more difficult.
This map, I believe from 1941, shows how all major railways ran through Moscow in those days.
Hitler had been sending such peace offers to England ever since the start of the war, and did so again after the Fall of France. England kept rejecting them. She probably would've accepted peace in 1940 after France, had Halifax been PM instead of Churchill.
Indeed, that was Franco's response to Canaris who was sent by Hitler to try to get him to enter the war (although not pacification, he certainly was not going to admit that!). Hitler had only met Franco once and after that meeting said he would prefer a visit to the denist to have several teeth taken out than meet Franco again. Franco also said that joining the war would potentially mean the loss of the Canary islands and maybe even Rio del Oro and other small Spanish overseas territories.
I's interesting, though, that this is from Canaris to Hitler. We know Canaris was hardly Adolf's greatest fan, and in a private meeting with Franco who knows what he said and, possibly more importantly, how he said it. Personally, I think Franco would have been a tough sell no matter who the Germans packed off to Madrid, and his price may have been higher than the Germans wanted to pay. What could have been possible was access: the Spanish allowing the Germans access through Spain to attack Gibraltar themselves whilst remaining non-belligerent. That would have presented the British with a tough choice of adding yet another enemy to the lists against her by attacking Spain (may not have played well in the USA either) or letting it happen and looking somewhat supine in the face of a threat to the rock.
In terms of the strategy itself the ultimate aim was oil, and British interests in Iraq and Persia. In the case of the former there was an anti-British coup which led to a British invasion and the latter had to be jointly occupied by the British and Soviets to ensure it remained firmly in the allied camp. With no ability to do either (in both cases troops came from Middle East Command) the pressure on Britain to come to terms would have been enormous, particularly if she was alone. Remember that the USSR was considered to be in the axis camp all the way through 1940, generating mad plans like bombing the Baku airfields from bases in Syria, so in London it would look very much like an attempt to link up with the USSR in the Caucasus. Then there is Turkey, whose wartime diplomatic oscillations are well documented, but surely Ankara would fall heavily on the axis side if she was essentially surrounded by axis powers who wanted her raw materials, much the same way that Sweden was.
It's also to be doubted that such a success would have encouraged Washington to increase their support for the UK. No point supporting a country that looks to be on her last legs.
It is an indirect, peripheral strategy. I think it is important to note that this was a Raeder favourite, a man who was not a nazi appointee but had been appointed in the dying days of Weimar. Added to this is Hitlers self admission that he was a 'coward' at sea, an un-cooperative Franco and Hitler's own personal desire to go east weighted things heavily towards Barbarossa.
So, certainly, the probability is small, but it is still there. When we are talking about plausible alt-history in the context of HOI the three choices facing Germany in summer 1940 should all be fairly considered and Barbarossa should not be the only game in town.
K
If nothing else, the British at Dunkirk had a couple hundred 3.7" AA/AT guns that would have done a number on the German tanks.Correct me if I'm wrong as I'm not an expert on the Battle of France, but AFAIK the BEF & French divisions bottled up in French Flanders weren't capable of offering much resistance to the German panzer divisions.
Perhaps. Although most of the various Russian divisions concentrating around Kiev were exhausted and disorganised from prior battles.
Regardless, reaching Moscow would've cut off the Russian army from their major supply and communications networks, which would've made effective resistance at least a lot more difficult.
This map, I believe from 1941, shows how all major railways ran through Moscow in those days.
Hitler had been sending such peace offers to England ever since the start of the war, and did so again after the Fall of France. England kept rejecting them. She probably would've accepted peace in 1940 after France, had Halifax been PM instead of Churchill.
The situation that actually happened where the Germans faced no further losses and captured the French forces that were pulled out a few weeks later anyway was basically the best outcome they could have hoped for. The British lost loads of materiel, the French troops were captured anyway, and Germany didn't face unnecessary losses.
With respect to peace offers, I'm not sure what exact offers were being made, but my point was that Germany could not have hoped for more than minor concessions if they hoped to end the war with Britain, which never had any reason to concede anything, as they were essentially untouchable to Germany, which had no hope of invading and which also demonstrably had no hope of winning an air battle for the skies of Britain - the Battle of Britain was a battle of attrition that the RAF was winning the entire time and how close it was played as was carefully calculated to drive up recruitment.
Ok, I did some digging.
Firstly, when the "Halt Order" was given the panzers were very close to Dunkirk and the coastline was very lightly defended, and would've fallen easily to German tanks. This would've left the Allied divisions trapped in Flanders where they would've ran out of supplies and surrendered, sparing both German and Allied lives.
The panzers were of course ordered to halt and as a result ~338k men were evacuated in Operation Dynamo.
Secondly, do you not think the capturing of the vast bulk of the British field army would've caused greater calls for peace? Perhaps even forcing Churchill to step down if he didn't accept peace, and being replaced by Halifax. Especially when Hitler could've used the captured BEF as a very valuable bargaining chip in peace negotiations.
What comes to the Battle of Britain, AFAIK the RAF was losing that battle until the Luftwaffe switched from bombing airfields, RADAR stations and other military targets related to the RAF's performance, to civilian targets. That allowed the RAF to recover and eventually cause enough casualties for the Luftwaffe, forcing the latter to call off most operations.
Had the LW kept bombing military targets, the outcome of the BoB might've been different.
You are committing the fallacy of reading history backwards. Hitler's offers were made in July, well before the Battle of Britain and at a point when the Luftwaffe looked unbeatable. Rotterdam and Warsaw stood as examples of what they could do to cities, and the people at the time saw aerial bombardment as something akin to how we see nuclear warfare now: extremely destructive, indiscriminate and unstoppable. The British had gone to great lengths to protect the country with the RDF chain and GBI but this was predicated on France and Belgium not being under enemy occupation. They also prevented people from going into the underground in response to raids in the fear they would never come back out again, presumably becoming Morlocks. The people simply bought tickets and stayed down there anyway! H G Wells had written 'The shape of things to come' in 1933 - adapted (loosely) by Korda as a film released in 1936 - that demonstrates very clearly the fears surrounding aerial bombardment.
The precise concessions that Germany were offering the UK are unknown as the papers are still under embargo. Hitler spoke of guaranteeing the British Empire in return for a free hand in Eastern Europe. France was effectively a puppet. Norway, Belgium and the Netherlands would have had no alternative but to come to terms with Germany however they could if London no longer sheltered them. In other words, German proxy control of western Europe whilst the British could claim they had compelled a German 'withdrawal', and it would neutralise a very difficult situation that looked likely to develop in the Mediterranean. Arguably it would be Musso who would look like the biggest loser as he would have no choice but to throw his lot into the peace talks and would get pretty much nothing. It is one of the reasons that Rome put the kybosh on the compromise proposed by Chamberlain just before Italy entered and Paris fell: peace would cement the British position in the Mediterranean with German backing. Churchill helped the process of continued war along by endorsing the Mers el Kebir action on 3rd July 1940.
Feelers had been put out by the Germans as early as October 1939. After all this was a war they did not want and their take was: 'well, we have Poland and you can do nothing to take it back, so this war is pointless'. Fundamentally misunderstanding that Poland was merely a line in the sand for Britain and France as a last-ditch attempt to save the old international order that they had essentially created and benefited from.
In effect the British chose the safer route; to be the junior partner of the United States than Nazi Germany, but that was a remote possibility in summer 1940.
K
If every play through was historical why would you want to play any of the Axis nations? were would be the fun in the game
You seem to not be grasping what I'm saying in the slightest. Historical foci and events need work. Content designers do that work. It's irrelevant how large content design is as a portion of overall development or what else needs work, since content design is all we're discussing. If content designers are working on alternate history, they're not working on history. Therefore, they aren't working on things that need work in favor of alternate history.
Ya way to skim over the entire point of the discussion. We aren't a bunch of singular bias individuals trying to get a leg up on one side or another pertaining to which side we play on. Were talking about integrating more key political, tactical and military choices to be laid out within the focus tree and event pop ups within the game so that it explores more of how the scenarios might play out if X was picked over Y, within the whole context of the game.
I already used a D-day example and how Churchill may have inherently changed the scope and direction the plans the allies historically went with. Thats a cool example of alternative history, that the allies may have redirected efforts to a different spot because of the behind the scenes interactions by the leaders of the time. Or perhaps they give events that allow us to more interact with key stuff that partook into WW2. Like the pursuit of breaking the german code, which might give the allies a reward of higher description in terms of a national spirit. Ya know stuff that can be directed and shaped by the player within the context of history.
The fact that people, including the Dev, continuously try to paint the war in a scope that it was a sure thing at the time it started, progressed and its inevitable outcome is so disingenuous in interpretation of the war regarding the impact and severity of the events, is just sad to me. If your all so certain in its outcome why did Paradox even make the game in the first place, and in a grand strategy setting no less? Why go to such strides to make a game that by your definition had a surety of outcome? Or better yet why did you buy the game?
I'll tell ya why because as much as you want to deny it, it falls within the line of reasoning as everyone else had when buying the game. It was due to the hope that you had in that Paradox would make the effort to reflect how it may change due to the person in charge, in regards in how to prepare, strategize and apply the same form of assets and events that were available at the time this occurred. Not to play Europa of Iron 4, not to pursue the implausible when there is no requirement for it, not to fight the game more on the basis of it not being able to work then you being able to play. But to delve into one of the most layered conflicts of our human history and allow us to explore more of how if we were the ones in charge, we may have either changed the outcome or ended up the same as those who came before us. That was the hope I had for this game, but as time goes on that hope is slipping away, because of the devs deadset mentality, the fans feeding the problem and the game just getting stacked on with more weight that it is currently not even able to handle.
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