I have played around with August Storm a bit, and if you want to know what it changes and its features here is a short video describing it all.
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August Storm Mod Review
- Thread starter FlyingRoss
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Looks promising but just Nato counters and the Sahara is not blocked off are deal breakers for me. Not to mention does the AI actually research and produce up to date equipment along with putting together strong division templates which is a major issue with the base game right now? Or use it's navy to defensively cover all of it's shores and in supporting their offensives? Or use STRAT/TAC/CAS properly?
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It seems all the nations have modified division templates that are stronger than vanilla. To comment on the Sahara not being blocked off, I do not know if that is able to be modded. The AI does research the new Tech.
Thanks for the review Ive been wondering when to jump in and try this mod. I will play it now.
It is honestly a very well done mod. There is something on these forums about its development but I have yet to find the link to the thread.
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What is all the hype about the Sahara being blocked off?
It is a desert - it was able to be crossed by camel trains ever since camels were invented.
Railway construction is achievable as engineers have been able to;
1. Cross Siberia - also a harsh and forbidding landscape, yet the Trans-Siberian was completed by 1904-5.
"The whole project was hampered by harsh climactic conditions. Almost the entire length of the railroad was built through thinly-populated areas in the impassable taiga. The huge Russian taiga included additional challenges in the form of the many large rivers that run through Siberia, many lakes, and districts that were either extremely waterlogged or filled with permafrost."
2. Cross Australia - The Trans-Australia railway was completed in 1917, also built through a hostile environment.
"The railway’s construction operations were unique because, due to the lack of developed infrastructure along the route, the constructing authority had to arrange the complete supply logistics for up to 3000 men working on the railway, in addition to the supply of all the engineering plant and materials and the care of hundreds of horses and camels."
Build the railway [up the infra values] and then move the troops via strat redeployment.
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It prevent the AI to send all his troops starving to death in the desert
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Why on earth are the NATO counters colored? The training list shows a red (hostile) tank div and then green (neutral) divs. That's just... completely wrong.
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You're being serious, right ?
Tell me why the desert war was fought in a narrow stretch of land close to the Sea in North Africa.
Tell me why Rommel didn't just send his panzerarmee into the desert to outflank the commonwealth forces and invade egypt from the south.
Please, tell me. I'm all ears.
This is wartime. Sure you can waste your money on building up infrastructure.. but it was NEVER an option. Those projects you describe were major peacetime initiatives, costing vast sums of money. Investment in the future, something that would benefit the country for years to come. Not something to enable an army to pass once or twice.
Plus, the maintenance would have been horrendous. The shifting sands of the Sahara have swallowed whole towns before, never mind a flimsy railroad track.
Also, what level of infrastructure does railroad sit at ? At level 1 I would imagine a few dirt tracks. So where would railroad be ?
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You just have to put a "#" in front of the owner tag of the state you want to be "blocked" (what they did in this mod)
C:\Users\Yourname\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV\mod\auguststorm\history\states
We didn't want to do this in AS because we consider it as an "hack", and could possibly break some other game features (AI).
But in the coming version of AS we have added some province blockers (impassable edges).
We also have added French State as a country ( = no more instant war with Axis), Operation Torch, Fall Anton events and many other stuff (mainly balance, bug fix and Historical accuracy improvements).
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https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/august-storm.942523/
You have to register and link your Steam account with PI to see the "User Mods forum"
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Well then Atom+ - you won't need your ears, but eyes and an open mind will certainly be of immense value.........
The story of the Trans-Saharan railway begins in the 1880's with a French expedition to survey possible routes.
Camel trains had been crossing the Sahara for years and the Tuareg People were the traditional guides and custodians.
Here is what happened - the Tuareg did not want European encroachment into their lands and the expedition was wiped out.
NB: It was not the "shifting sands" you describe that stopped it.
It was the Tuareg.
As a reminder - the game begins in 1936 - there is no war - so infrastructure projects like this can happen.
Fast forward to the 1960s.
The Mauritania Railway - crossing the Western Sahara - was completed in 1963.
As you can see, the rail lines have NOT been swallowed by those treacherous "shifting sands of the Sahara [that] have swallowed whole towns before, never mind a flimsy railroad track" that you describe -- and the railway still operates today.
This 2014 article in a British newspaper clearly proves that railways CAN be built across deserts.
Here is a great video with Michael Palin on his trip across the Sahara.
So yes, Atom+, I am serious.
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We use NATO counters with common waffenfarbe colors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corps_colours_(NPA)
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I see. But those are insignia/patch colours, aren't they? For example, in the finnish defense forces the insignia colour of artillery regiments is red, while jägers use green and combat pioneers use purple. That doesn't define the colour of the NATO symbols used on maps.
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There is an enormous difference between what you describe and modern armies travelling there. Seriously, there are whole galaxies between the railroad you describe and the ability to send armies through the Sahara.
No one dared to send anything beyond a tiny recon force further into the desert than absolutely necessary. Everyone kept to the coastlines, because those where the only areas that were at least somewhat capable of supplying combat forces, and even that was very limited compared to even average infrastructure elsewhere.
Look at all the combat that actually happened in Africa. No one dared to outflank the enemy through the deep desert, it simply wasn't possible. There were some attempts to outflank the enemy, but they were always near the coast as well, never going for vast swings through the desert. There is a reason why both sides bashed their heads into well equiped defenses and minefields, it certainly wasn't because the leaders thought moving straight into the enemies' lines was the way to win.
Having an odd division try to pass through the Sahara was already impossible. The unit wouldn't have been able to fend off any sort of enemy afterwards. Having both Axis and Allies send dozens of divisions and turn the Sahara into the main battleground of the war is simply nonsense that should not be possible. Since the AI is too dumb to recognize how attrition hurts it's unit, and since it is incapable of realising that the Sahara should not be a battleground at any times, closing it off is the only proper way. No infrastructure-project, no matter how large, could have turned the Sahara into an area that could support entire armies duking it out. Nor would anyone have attempted such a thing, because the land was worthless for the strategic situation. It could - in theory - have been possible to build a railway that could transport (read: not combat-ready) smaller units through the Sahara, provided you spend a giant amount of money and industrial output on it, and were in control of the entire area. No such situation ever existed, because either the control was lacking, or no one saw any need to transport troops through that area. The French could in theory spend lots of effort to be able to send troops from Tunisia/Algeria to the (south-)western coast, or the other way round, but no one would have thought that such a move could in any way be necessary, as a situation in which such a move would be necessary would be catastrophic, and very few troops would be available to make such a move.
Any other situation would make it impossible, because you couldn't just unload your troops in the middle of the desert and send them off into combat. As soon as the troops would deviate from the built railway - which is something they have to do if they are supposed to attack the enemy - they would be screwed, as there is no way to supply them away from that railroad. You'd have to waste an enormous amount of resources to set up multiple railroads, roads, camps and supply-stations in the middle of the desert, for no good reason whatsoever. All in the hope that the enemy would, for some unknown reason, think that fighting in the middle of the desert was worthwile. You wouldn't accomplish anything with such a move, only weaken your lines tremendously.
And even then would you never be able to support the amount of troops that run around in that area in HOI IV.
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I remember this mod from HoI3, though I think I never played it. Looks interesting, especially with the focus changes and battleplan AI improvements.
Would you recommend August Storm for multiplayer? I don't play much of SP.
This is true.
I've seen other mods do coloured symbols too though, like GGA for BICE in HoI3. I think it might be one of those cases where a modder thinks it "looks cool", without having any real life basis behind it.
Generally speaking if any colour is applied to NATO symbols, it is blue for friendly and red for hostile.
On a more local tactical level colours are in my experience always used, and these colours are blue (friendly), green (neutral), red (hostile) and yellow (unknown). But this is generally squad to company level stuff, so it's well below the scope of the game.
It's not a coincidence that the Sahara didn't play a role in WW2. The British didn't outflank Rommel on his way to Egypt through the Sahara. Rommel didn't push south towards central Africa (which is what HoI4 German a.i. does) etc.
The "No Man's Land"-mod is a functional solution for the current a.i. problems. I haven't played the game without the mod in quite a while. Does it work properly with "August Storm"?
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