C.O.R.E HOI - Western Europe (France, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Iberia, etc)

[Steel]

I am strongly opposed to a "cripple them" event as it pre-supposes a historical outcome for the war. Any human player can easily throw the war outcome, either by massive expeditionary force support or (if playing Republican Spain) by using the force pool exploit. Why should Spain be ravaged if the Nationalists are confined to one or two provinces and the fighting is over in a few weeks?

 

[nachinus]

I would give them some more thechs, specially in the inf tree, as Spain already had a Spanish version of the Mauser K98 as service rifle, Hotchkiss MGs as standard in the army and in the current version of CORE Spain has nearly nothing in this tree.

I wouldnt touch the air thing, because besides from the German 'expeditionary squadrons', all Spanish air force, including the Italian CR-32 airplanes and russian I-16 and Su-2 sent to both sides, was all 'pre-war' in HoI terms.

About tanks, at first i thought it would be a good idea to give at least basic light tank tech, but Phil_K is right when he says that those German and Italian tanks wouldnt be left there once the war is over. Russian equipment is different because those tanks and cannons were not 'lend-lease', but purchased by SPR using the Bank of Spain reserve, so they were rightfully Spanish.

 

[unmerged(18738)]

I see everyone's points. I guess it depends on how high up you want to take them.

 

[nachinus]

Originally posted by Steel
Care to volunteer a revised techapps and techlevels section?

Of course!

I just would like to see first what people think it should be done. I just wouldn't like to introduce changes that nobody agrees with

 

[unmerged(18738)]

Just work something up, submit it to the thread for discussion, and then we'll debate it and build on it.

Don't worry about disagreement. That's a given. We'll work it out.

-PK

 

[McNaughton]

Originally posted by Steel
I am strongly opposed to a "cripple them" event as it pre-supposes a historical outcome for the war. Any human player can easily throw the war outcome, either by massive expeditionary force support or (if playing Republican Spain) by using the force pool exploit. Why should Spain be ravaged if the Nationalists are confined to one or two provinces and the fighting is over in a few weeks?

One thing that I have to ask, as this post got me thinking, is Spain a powerful nation after the civil war?

Was it a powerful nation before the civil war?

From everything that I have seen, Spain remains a third ranking power (behind that of Hungary and Romania) when it comes to involvement in WW2. They gained techs during the conflict, but this does not make up for the years of growth and peaceful development that they lost. In most cases they have built and lost large numbers of troops. Sure, at the end they have an impressive army, of militia, but this takes up a lot of IC for supplying, and resources were lost due to conflict and the fact that they basically lost access to 50% of their resources due to 'foreign' occupation during the war as well.

If the player fights the Civil War very well, and quickly, then they should benefit from it.

 

[unmerged(18738)]

Yes indeed, they were totally spent. I am not sure how well this is replicated after a Nationalist victory, but I would think a boost in techs with a slash in total IC is appropriate. Fact is, they had nothing left to wage war with - resources were extremely limited, population completely tired and demoralized. One of the main reasons Franco resisted Hitler's pressure to join the Axis.

Whatever they gained via exposure to foreign military doctrines and equipment should be balanced with by an economic and social penalty. It was a wasted country.

 

[JRaup]

Originally posted by Phil K
Yes indeed, they were totally spent. I am not sure how well this is replicated after a Nationalist victory, but I would think a boost in techs with a slash in total IC is appropriate. Fact is, they had nothing left to wage war with - resources were extremely limited, population completely tired and demoralized. One of the main reasons Franco resisted Hitler's pressure to join the Axis.

Whatever they gained via exposure to foreign military doctrines and equipment should be balanced with by an economic and social penalty. It was a wasted country.

Don't be fooled by the apparent strength of Spain after the SCW. Despite having 15-20 infantry, with 30-40 militia units, they are easilly rolled by any of the Allied countries. Spain is a paper tiger in Europe, unless either Germany or Italy shares more than a few techs with them. The current set up of spian doesn't allow it to exploit anything it gains from the SCW, either SPA or SPR. There simply isn't enough industry and resources to do so, and they lag significnatly behind everyone else.

 

[nachinus]

Ive played with both Spains several times and i can tell you that even with a quick war, you'll never be able to make anything great. The best ive been able to do is with SPA joining Axis via Hendaya event and taking some French and English useless provs in Africa... i only played till 42 and USA didnt enter the war, but i think that Spain is one of USA's prefered landing shores, and i dont know if i could've stop them, but i doubt it.

Spanish economy can handle 60-70 ic at its best, and if it enters the war it has very little peacetime to dedicate ics to investigation so usually as Spain you only develop the quickests and cheapests techs... and forget about doctrines!!

Playing as SPR and joining Allies Germany always rolled over the Peninsula at a incredible speed, i never had a chance

So dont worry about making a SuperPower of Spain with just giving her some more techs... it will never stabd a chance against a big country with big guns, tanks and doctrines.

 

[nachinus]

Ive finished a first version of the modifications in Spanish tech. Ive modified both starting tech and those new techs given via events.

Starting techs: (All the menctioned models and weapons were in use in 1936)
-Basic Infantry weapons and C3I
-80mm Mortar (Mortero Valero de 81mm)
-.30 MG (Spain had Hotchkiss MG as standard army's MG)
-30mm Inf gun... you know there were some cannons in Spain
-Basic Light Tank .30 cal with prereqs (Trubria 36 and Verdeja I and II, in models.csv it is Verdeja I)
-Infantry Support Tank prototype: all the above menctioned tanks were conceived as support tanks, and ive seen refered as -Verdeja-CLI: Carro Ligero de Infantería (Light Infantry Tank)

Ive left the starting tank division as Trubria A4 (late WW1 tank). Only the new formed divs will benefit from this unless the AI modernizes the div.

Events:
-Now the first intervention events give service rifle tech
-Reworked all 'commanders and tech support' events to give techs similar to real life. The only tank tech given via event is Infantry Support Tank Batallion.


Ive also thought about some very basic land doctrines, as Spain fought a long and cruel war in the 20s in Morocco, so it has recent war experience in infantry war.

 

[Zerli]

If a large number of militias crushing the economy with support burden are a problem, simply create an event that temporarily reduces manpower to 0 or less. AI will disband militia en masse to gain manpower. Then restore the manpower via an event some time later. This cool little trick was mentioned somewhere on the forums, in the Manpower thread I think.

Zerli

 

[McNaughton]

Originally posted by Zerli
If a large number of militias crushing the economy with support burden are a problem, simply create an event that temporarily reduces manpower to 0 or less. AI will disband militia en masse to gain manpower. Then restore the manpower via an event some time later. This cool little trick was mentioned somewhere on the forums, in the Manpower thread I think.

Zerli

I stumbled upon this in my MP tests, as I kept on wondering why the UK and Italy were scrapping their Militia divisions, then I discovered that they get rid of these MP hogs to be used for more 'important' things.

You could have an event that 'disbands the militia', representing the wholescale disarmament of the large Republican or Nationalist post-war armies.

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by Zerli
If a large number of militias crushing the economy with support burden are a problem, simply create an event that temporarily reduces manpower to 0 or less. AI will disband militia en masse to gain manpower. Then restore the manpower via an event some time later. This cool little trick was mentioned somewhere on the forums, in the Manpower thread I think.

Zerli

And how do you propose to restore the manpower?

 

[unmerged(18738)]

thanks on Spain

Thanks for straightening me out on the Spanish dilemma. Look forward to the events!

-PK

 

[McNaughton]

Originally posted by Steel
And how do you propose to restore the manpower?

You can do that in an event, plus when divisions are disbanded they provide MP to the pool.

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by McNaughton
You can do that in an event, plus when divisions are disbanded they provide MP to the pool.

Perhaps you misunderstand me. If Spain has 458.65 manpower and you delete it with an event, how will you restore 458.65 manpower to them? How will you cover scenarios where they already have 0 or 10000 manpower?

 

[Halibutt]

Originally posted by Steel
Perhaps you misunderstand me. If Spain has 458.65 manpower and you delete it with an event, how will you restore 458.65 manpower to them? How will you cover scenarios where they already have 0 or 10000 manpower?

This can be done quite easily. First -10.000 manpower. It will delete all of the manpower available and restore it to 0 the following day. After some time (a week? a month? a day?) another event fires giving the country it's historical manpower after the war (maybe slightly lower or even half of it). This should be more than enough, after all we plan to implement this after the war, so probably no country will need millions of cannon fodder anymore.

If testing shows that WWIII is likely to start and some country lacks manpower soon afterwards, then we can just make yet another event fixing this. You know, "Additional volunteers enrol" style.
Cheers

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by Halibutt
This can be done quite easily. First -10.000 manpower. It will delete all of the manpower available and restore it to 0 the following day. After some time (a week? a month? a day?) another event fires giving the country it's historical manpower after the war (maybe slightly lower or even half of it). This should be more than enough, after all we plan to implement this after the war, so probably no country will need millions of cannon fodder anymore.

If testing shows that WWIII is likely to start and some country lacks manpower soon afterwards, then we can just make yet another event fixing this. You know, "Additional volunteers enrol" style.
Cheers

I am clearly on a different wavelength from everybody else. There seriously is no need to tell me about basic event scripting that I could do in my sleep, my objections (which I'm clearly failing to communicate) are very simple.


The proposed events do not relate to the situation in the game. At all. Full stop. They are arbitrary. They will piss people off. When somebody does well in the game and get's slapped with a "sorry, you wrecked the country - please surrender because playing on is meaningless" after winning the SCW with zero losses, how will you respond to their complaints?

 

[Halibutt]

Originally posted by Steel
(...)The proposed events do not relate to the situation in the game. At all. Full stop. They are arbitrary. They will piss people off. When somebody does well in the game and get's slapped with a "sorry, you wrecked the country - please surrender because playing on is meaningless" after winning the SCW with zero losses, how will you respond to their complaints?(...)

Apparently there was some misunderstanding. As far as I understand it, these events should have a starting date (for most countries) not earlier than 1942-43 and fire only if either the axis or the soviets and the allies are defeated. It makes sense only if we plan final demobilisation. Peace signed, post-war events fired. Only limited wars possible since there's noone to fight with anymore (if you've defeated the Krauts, you'll surely be able to defeat any minor)

With Spain it's quite simple, because they are not supposed to wage any big wars after the SCW, so we don't have to wait 'til the end of WWII. Historically there was no way they joined the axis actively, since the country was totally and utterly destroyed. No arms, no food, no manpower, no stability, nothing at all. Full stop. If we plan to make SCW as historical as it gets, then that should be the situation after it. No matter how hard human player tries, SCW should:
-last several years
-destroy the country

If so, then the difference between 300 MP the ai had and 220 MP it recieved after demobilization seems very small. And, above all, human player will most likely disband his militia units himself, there's no need to force him to do so. This kind of events should be AI only, to ensure that the AI behaves properly.

BTW, HoI AI is relatively good, but I have never-ever heard the AI complaining about anything, even about stupid C.O.R.E. events

 

[McNaughton]

Steel's concern is...

What happens if the SCW lasts just a few months? I have seen this, occasionally with the AI, but way more likely as a human Republican Player.

Should they have a ravaged nation when the war was actually very short? Must we assume that in all cases this war was long, that it caused massive damage, when in some cases it could be short and relatively bloodless war.

However, it isn't impossible to implement some sort of savaging of the Spanish countryside should the war last long.

It is possible to have events that check to see if the both Spains exist in 1938, and in 1939. If they do, the game can assume that the war is long and destructive, and this triggers an event that in the event of one spain being annexed, the entire countryside will face MP and IC cuts through an event. If the war ends before 1938, then none of these events will fire.