C.O.R.E HOI - United States of America

[JRaup]

Re: usa stalinist

Originally posted by speed
Could someone tell me why USA becomes stalinist during the 30's. In my 2 last games they became stalinist which is quite anoying I have to say. Which event do I have to erase to avoid this?

By the way I think that's quite amazing to do something like that. Who could possibly think that USA could have been stalinist at any time of their short history?

Thanxx.

Yeah, I'm seeing this fairly consistently on all levels of CORE. The USA Ai seems unable to handle the dissent for some reason, and the coup happens by 1938. I've seen this is four straight games now. It's easy enough to handle as a human player, but some of the changes seem to break the AI severely.

 

[unmerged(20271)]

what can be done then

So does it have anything to do with an event or is it just something that can't be controlled?

 

[unmerged(15066)]

US Manpower

Did a second look at the MP mod and some of the extra 0.7 stuff on Wiki. All cool but major scope creep wrt getting the USA to a historical level. Obviously moving to V0.7 begs some playtests to adjust the levels, but I don't want to usurp V0.7 integration responsibilities (I can hear Steel thinking, "go ahead and usurp away!") Instead, I'll just smack the US MP down to 10 in my existing .INC. Based on what I've already playtested, I think that will be transparant since so much of the early play is R&D.

P.S.: Excel for above posted in the Wiki in US Events.

 

[unmerged(15066)]

US Dissent

I'm wondering if there shouldn't be an AI only event to drive the US dissent to zero at the outset. That might let the AI be a little more robust in handling dissent inducing events down the road.

 

[unmerged(14683)]

Re: US Dissent

Originally posted by Engineer
I'm wondering if there shouldn't be an AI only event to drive the US dissent to zero at the outset. That might let the AI be a little more robust in handling dissent inducing events down the road.

Yes, it should. That will be definetly the easiest way (ai = yes event, not showed in the game log).

Alternatively, we can test which one of the events is so critical, that breaks US AI ability to lower dissent. Hands-off game saved every 2-3 months should give us detailed report.

 

[JRaup]

Re: Re: US Dissent

Originally posted by Copper Nicus
Yes, it should. That will be definetly the easiest way (ai = yes event, not showed in the game log).

Alternatively, we can test which one of the events is so critical, that breaks US AI ability to lower dissent. Hands-off game saved every 2-3 months should give us detailed report.

From what I've seen, it's any ahistorical option taken by the AI that breaks it. Two or more and fully expect a Communist USA. With the revised strating USA dissent levels, we probably need to review ALL the USA events, especially the ahistorical options.

 

[unmerged(14683)]

Re: Re: Re: US Dissent

Originally posted by JRaup
From what I've seen, it's any ahistorical option taken by the AI that breaks it. Two or more and fully expect a Communist USA. With the revised strating USA dissent levels, we probably need to review ALL the USA events, especially the ahistorical options.

Never played USA in 0.63, but does that problem affects also players? I mean, does any ahistorical choice means economical meltdown (dissent + supply use too high to support CG)?! No good...


BTW, Dark Angel? Fallen or Loyalist?

 

[unmerged(15066)]

Playing the US with Dissent

As a player, the dissent is a pain but you can deal with it. Essentially, when the events pop up and your dissent is already 10% or 15% you take the choice which has most benign effect on your dissent. If you want to force dissent back down then you need to budget a lot of IC to CG, but as a player you can keep your supplies intact. It basically just penalizes your R&D since that is the pot that I ususally have to take most of the IC from. With the USA I've seen about 100 extra IC in the CG gives you -0.03% dissent per day.

I agree about reviewing the US events. Looking at US behavior "hand-free" is in the next stage of testing and I fully expect that more fine tuning will be shown to be necessary.

 

[JRaup]

Re: Re: Re: Re: US Dissent

Originally posted by Copper Nicus
Never played USA in 0.63, but does that problem affects also players? I mean, does any ahistorical choice means economical meltdown (dissent + supply use too high to support CG)?! No good...


BTW, Dark Angel? Fallen or Loyalist?

I'll have to have some fun, and take a bunch of ahistorical paths in my next game as USA to see what happens. IIRC, the ahistorical 36 election almost always leads to the coup for some reason. But I'll play around with it.

Oh, and Only Cypher knows....

 

[MateDow]

Re: Depression Mod

Originally posted by Engineer

2) Replaced 1938 State of the Union with a January 1938 Message to Congress asking for money for the North Carolina class battleships (WE+1)

I am curious as to why this happened. It seems to me that these could be two seperate events. The first would be Roosevelt's State of the Union address. The second would be something representing the Vinson-Truman naval expansion act.

The Vinson-Truman act would take into account a lot of potential naval construction. The building of the North Carolina was a response to that act which mandated that the US build up to her Washington Treaty limits. The event would trigger a series of events for each of the ships to be built. MDow

 

[JRaup]

Aha!

Ok, I think I've got the problme with the USA going Communist in 1938/39 down. The problme begins with the 36 election. Any ahistorical choice, either the Alternative Election, or choosing Landon in the historical election begins the downfall for the AI. The proverbial nail in the coffin is the "Just and Fair Deal" event, which I believe breaks the AI. It isn't dissent per se that kills the AI, but the drastic reduction of WE which does it in.

If Landon is chosen as President, WE drops from 10-20%, despite what the event says. In my test run, it dropped 16% after the event, going from WE 22 to WE 6. this is followed up by the Just Deal event, which reduces WE even further, either by 30 (A option), or 15 (B option). In my game, that would have put USA WE at either -22, or -7! The change in CG demand from this is what I believe is killing the AI.

Even as a player, it is difficult to keep the USA on an even keel. You have to effectively 0 R&D plus builds, and maintain a minimum for supplies to get the Dissent down again. As I don't think the AI will do that if there are items in the ques, it under cuts the CG demand, driving dissent up, compounded by the negative WE values. this inevitably leads to the Communist Coup event ("The Revolution has Come!").

I think that we will have to review all the ahistorical USA paths, as well perhaps creating a new USA AI for them.

 

[unmerged(20271)]

Hi,

So if I have understood well, I just have to find this event and erase it and then at least USA won't be communist anymore.
Weaker USA but at least with the allies.

Won't destroy hours of game anymore.

I think that reducing the effects on WE will help as well.

Bye. Speed.

 

[unmerged(12895)]

excellent work

Dear Engineer,

I have read recent commentary on the effects of the Depression and Strike pack. I am quite impressed. My original statement, now many months ago, "Maybe dissent should be used to simulate political conditions between 36 and 39" is reaching fulfillment, at least with one country. Well done.

As far as the problem of the US going Socialist/Stalinist, if the US was grossly economically mismanaged in the 1930s it was possible (see the Seattle General Strike of 1919 for equivalent conditions). Hopefully that won't fire constantly or often. But as far as the "triangular" game goes, it does make things more curious. Perhaps a suggestion for UK of if not at war with Germany, and if the US is Comintern, and the Comintern is at war, that the Allies declare war on the Comintern? I suspect the UK and France would go to war if the US went communist /and/ the Comintern countries were pursuing war with minor powers. The most immediate threat to their empires as it were.

I quite like what you've done simulating the strikes & new deals. Have you considered adding /failed/ elements of the new deal, if any occured between 36 and 39? Or did FDR know his limits better in that period? Obviously these events would have the ahistorical option on (b) or even (c).

I am very impressed with the pre-war balance you've added to the US. Event management ought to make the US "more fun" in the long wait for War or 100% War Entry.

 

[JRaup]

Originally posted by speed
Hi,

So if I have understood well, I just have to find this event and erase it and then at least USA won't be communist anymore.
Weaker USA but at least with the allies.

Won't destroy hours of game anymore.

I think that reducing the effects on WE will help as well.

Bye. Speed.

Well, yes and no. You should keep the election events, otherwise you throw the whole historical progression out of balance badly. The "Just and Fair Deal" event can be remarked out, and that should keep the USA from spiraling towards the communist Coup. I will review the ahistorical USA options, and tweak them accordingly.

 

[unmerged(15066)]

US Dissent

Mdow: 1938 State of Union & Message to Congress

When I read through the SOU the discussion on foreign affairs didn't seem to have much meat in it. The message to Congress at the end of the month explicitly cited the deteriorating foreign situation and called for the cash for the first two treaty battleships. If I scripted both the SOU would probably rate a WE-1 (business as usual) but the late January message would be a WE+1. It seemed a bit of an overkill to script cancelling events only a few weeks apart so I made a design decision to go with the message to Congress.

Li2CO3:

Have you considered adding /failed/ elements of the new deal, if any occured between 36 and 39?

If the full event package makes it into CORE (V0.8?), there are negative effects for a variety of new taxes passed in the 1936-1938 period and I actually inverted the IC effect of the 2nd Deal Effects so it subtracts IC instead of adding IC. The net impact is that the Recession of 1938 is there and the US will see an 8-15% decline in total IC between 1/1/37 and about a year later.

While the modification is successful in scaling back the USA (my last playtest ended even closer to the historical oob), I still have to do some hands-off playtesting. I think JRaup is onto something with the very big cascading Negative WE's that can occur on the ahistorical paths. Fine tuning is in order.

BTW: Thanks for the compliment.

Latest Playtest Results: Closer than ever. The US War Entry hit 100 by mid-1941, but there was a big boost when the Eastern Front went hot in the autumn of 1940 after the Germans took France Vichy. I still think I need to tune down the WE a bit and tweak the Full Industrial Mobilization Tech to make it sequential after Quality Control. These will cut down on the IC available to the US, but if you follow a strategy of driving down the gold techs as far and fast as possible and then back-filling the individual techs for the weapons, then the OOB will be safe, just the doctrines will suffer. I also need to fine tune a couple of event scripts.

Over the holidays, I'll do some handsfree testing and try one of the non-standard difficulty levels.

 

[Mettermrck]

Hey, Engineer, JRaup, just caught up on your work with the US events and I must say I'm impressed. I coded the alternate events a long time ago (Core 0.2 I think) just to give the other Presidents some significance. But I agree with what you're saying about balancing out the effects of the events. If you need any coding assistance, I'd be happy to lend a hand. I only ask that my 'descriptions' are kept. I thought 'Just and Fair Deal' was a cool title.

 

[JRaup]

Originally posted by Mettermrck
Hey, Engineer, JRaup, just caught up on your work with the US events and I must say I'm impressed. I coded the alternate events a long time ago (Core 0.2 I think) just to give the other Presidents some significance. But I agree with what you're saying about balancing out the effects of the events. If you need any coding assistance, I'd be happy to lend a hand. I only ask that my 'descriptions' are kept. I thought 'Just and Fair Deal' was a cool title.

Hey, nice to see the author still lurking here and there. I think we need only tweak the command line effects, and nothing else. well, maybe a trigger or three. AFAIK, the descriptions won't be altered. I actually like the alternate Elections. Taft in 44! Though I may throw in a bit more complicated chain down the line where the party's pick their candidates. But that's probably waaaayyyyyy down the line.

 

[Mettermrck]

Originally posted by JRaup
Hey, nice to see the author still lurking here and there. I think we need only tweak the command line effects, and nothing else. well, maybe a trigger or three. AFAIK, the descriptions won't be altered. I actually like the alternate Elections. Taft in 44! Though I may throw in a bit more complicated chain down the line where the party's pick their candidates. But that's probably waaaayyyyyy down the line.

You mean like political conventions? That's a great idea. I agree that the balancing should be worked out first before any conventions are coded, but I'd be happy to write up any descriptive text for each of the Convention possibilities based on the historical and alternate chains. That would present some nice political depth.

 

[JRaup]

Originally posted by Mettermrck
You mean like political conventions? That's a great idea. I agree that the balancing should be worked out first before any conventions are coded, but I'd be happy to write up any descriptive text for each of the Convention possibilities based on the historical and alternate chains. That would present some nice political depth.

Ayup, that's what I'll be aiming for. I just think it would be more interesting to have some of the more interesting convention options open as well. Taft-Dewey for example. To simplify some things, the sitting President will get the automatic nomination. Will still have the historical cjoice as A, and so on and so forth.

 

[unmerged(15066)]

Depression MOD

I finished a "Pro" level playtest last week. Dissent stayed at 20% +/- 5% through 1938 so that really reduced the available IC for the first two years (about 150 points mean). At that point dissent started falling, war entry was consistently rising, and the US finally started making progress. 100% WE arrived in Q3/41. At the end of the day (1/1/42):

Air Force: OOB historical, queue historical, tech - no improved bombers, basic across the board.
Army: OOB division count matched (more infantry, less armor), queue, okay (2 armor divisions in catch up), tech: no Lee tank, Stuart was far as the US got.
Navy: This is where the shortfall on IC hit home. OOB: down one carrier, three cruisers, and half dozen destroyers. Queue: down six battleships, seven carriers, sixteen cruisers, and at least a half dozen destroyers. Tech: No Iowa, no Baltimore, no Alaska.

Still, the USA has a significant force and plenty of firepower. Also, there were plenty of opportunities to get into the war that I turned down to get to the end of 1941 to compare results to the historical baseline:
- The embargos on Japan
- After the Germans sank the Reuben James on Neutrality Patrol (occured in the spring of 1941)
- After the Japanese DOW on Britain and took Hong Kong

The overall game went remarkably close to historical: Barbarossa in the spring of 1941, high tide at the gates of Moscow, a Soviet winter counteroffensive that had a salient reaching to Kiev, back and forth in North Africa. The Japanese had most of coastal China, the Communists had a growing state in the in-land north, Malaya/Burma was falling into Japanese hands, and New Guinea and the northern Solomons were under Japanese occupation.

I'm satisfied with the main Roosevelt time line. The main thing now is to double check and document all the WE tweaks I made back in the main CORE events and get treasury ID's for the handful of events that aren't already reserved.

I also integrated most of Ghost_dk's Pol Pack. By and large that gave some more color and worked well.