C.O.R.E. Province.csv modifications anyone?

[Zerli]

I've been thinking, and there might be a way to address the discrepancy between peacetime standing army and mobilized reserves. We can probably agree that mobilized reserves are generally akin to militia units, with poor equipment, poor organization, and mediocre leadership at best. So, how about putting an event in for Yugoslavia (and other likely targets of Axis agression) that creates a number of militia divisions in case Axis DOWs them?

That way, we can have our 10-20 divisions of real standing army, and another 10-20 militia divisions ready to pop out in case of an attack. This way Yugoslavia gets the historic numbers and gets their historic use out of them (ie. they break in 5 minutes and retreat).

This approach probably works best for those European nations such as Yugoslavia, Greece, and possibly Turkey, that had large populations and large army reserves.

Zerli

 

[Mithel]

Zerli, I don't think that would be accurate. My understanding was that Yugoslavia never successfully mobilized it's reserves. Neither did Poland.

As another example how would you account for France going from 900,000 men in Sept 1939 to 2,680,000 men (plus 1,640,000 men in the "Army of the Interior") in 1940? Surely you don't want to consider most of the French army as militia? And yet this was true of all nations.

For instance Germany had "waves". Their first wave consisted of 35 top notch divisions ("well trained and well equipped regular infantry"). The second wave (16 slightly smaller divisions) were formed of reservists, the 21 divisions of the third wave were reservists with only limited training, older men and lacked full artillery and other support. The fourth wave (14 divisions) was basically reinforcements.

It's my understanding that Germany's "first wave" did almost all the offensive fighting. The other divisions more or less just following along and filling gaps.

Surely we'll never be able to model (in HoI) the difference in first rate "active army" divisions vs reservists or hastily mobilized divisions.

We could give some thought to improving militia and using them more often as "second rate" divisions.

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(13241)]

The problem is, militia units are crap, while reserve units, after a while usually become as good as regular one, this is the WWI system of mass armies, white large % of the army being called up for service.
The drawback isn't that there isn't enough weapons (those are usually stored somewhere) but that it takes his time (3-6 weaks) to be ready to wage war.

The best solution would be to have divisional hulks, and the nations cut of a mp unit war is declared. (and then an event pop's up, and you get a lot of mp) However the problem is that the montly increase will probably be enough to reinforce those divisions before the war starts.

 

[Mithel]

That's very much along the lines of what I was thinking. Countries should probably be stripped of their starting manpower pools, manpower gain should be tuned to be more historical (as a constraint to building nearly at the pace of historic growth) then upon the outbreak of war a large manpower gain is made to allow for the "rapid call up of reserves". I'd also favor a slight industrical handicap from the start of 1936 until the nation goes to war then a slight boost in industry to help allow the country to build those "reserve units".

Unfortunately three months to build an infantry division is often longer than a campaign might take. A couple things might help this:
1) Slow movement to even more historic figures (probably reduce Infantry from speed 5 to 4).
2) Raise overall org a little to stiffen the resistance of Poland, France, Russia (and any minor country) and slow down the Germany blitzkrieg just a bit.

However a large part of the concept of Blitzkrieg was to defeat the enemy BEFORE their reserves could arrive. So we don't want to go too far.

There should be a lot of pressure on Germany to win fast as soon as they go to war. Germany historically couldn't afford to stall and delay, nor should they in HoI. (How do we stop them from rolling over Russia in 1939/40 though? The answer is probably that conquering Poland and France must take well into 1940 - assuming historical German play)

And back to militia... I'm suggesting we THINK about using HoI militia more as garrison/reserve troops (some training) vs hastily armed rabble incapable of facing armor. Thus tweak up the militia values a bit (including cost). Keep in mind we don't appear to have any control to tell the AI to build militia.

- Mithel

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by Mithel
That's very much along the lines of what I was thinking. Countries should probably be stripped of their starting manpower pools, manpower gain should be tuned to be more historical (as a constraint to building nearly at the pace of historic growth) then upon the outbreak of war a large manpower gain is made to allow for the "rapid call up of reserves". I'd also favor a slight industrical handicap from the start of 1936 until the nation goes to war then a slight boost in industry to help allow the country to build those "reserve units".

Unfortunately three months to build an infantry division is often longer than a campaign might take. A couple things might help this:
1) Slow movement to even more historic figures (probably reduce Infantry from speed 5 to 4).
2) Raise overall org a little to stiffen the resistance of Poland, France, Russia (and any minor country) and slow down the Germany blitzkrieg just a bit.

However a large part of the concept of Blitzkrieg was to defeat the enemy BEFORE their reserves could arrive. So we don't want to go too far.

There should be a lot of pressure on Germany to win fast as soon as they go to war. Germany historically couldn't afford to stall and delay, nor should they in HoI. (How do we stop them from rolling over Russia in 1939/40 though? The answer is probably that conquering Poland and France must take well into 1940 - assuming historical German play)

And back to militia... I'm suggesting we THINK about using HoI militia more as garrison/reserve troops (some training) vs hastily armed rabble incapable of facing armor. Thus tweak up the militia values a bit (including cost). Keep in mind we don't appear to have any control to tell the AI to build militia.

- Mithel

About movement reductions I know that Copper Nicus did very careful tweaking of this because of the new org loss rule. It is already completely impossible for China to carry out an offensive against Sinkiang (org hits zero before troops reach their target) and this will also affect Ethiopia, Finnish Winter War etc if movement is slowed further. This can of course be partially balanced by increasing org levels across the board. Have you done any testing on this, ie are we talking +10, +50 or +100?

About reducing early IC levels and removing manpower, the AI doesn't seem to handle low manpower very well and I'm very concerned that such a change would ruin the MP aspect of C.O.R.E. play for non-Axis nations unless they go for ahistorical options (ie invite a PA nation and get them to DOW some third world country in order to boost IC/MP).


Don't get me wrong, it's an interesting discussion but just be aware that there's limiting factors at play here.

 

[unmerged(18738)]

Sorry to throw this in here out of the context of the conversation, but could someone please let me know where I can get a masterlist of all the province/seazone ID numbers? I've looked around and I know it's right under my nose, but I am somewhat burnt out at the moment in my quest to grasp "all that is HoI".

Well, that's my Friday excuse anyways.



Now back to your massive, HoI-overhauling discussion! (just kidding)

-PK

 

[Gwalcmai]

Don't know about a list, but you could fire up HOI, start or load a game, press F12, enter 'showid' (or is it 'show_id'?). Then, when you hover the mouse over any province/river/seazone, the id shows up in the lower right corner.

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by Phil K
Sorry to throw this in here out of the context of the conversation, but could someone please let me know where I can get a masterlist of all the province/seazone ID numbers? I've looked around and I know it's right under my nose, but I am somewhat burnt out at the moment in my quest to grasp "all that is HoI".

Well, that's my Friday excuse anyways.



Now back to your massive, HoI-overhauling discussion! (just kidding)

-PK

The hint is of course in the name of the thread - province.csv contains the full list It's in the \db directory (not under mod-CORE).

 

[unmerged(13241)]

Originally posted by Mithel
Sure, I've got the GDP figures on my website at:
http://www.mnstarfire.com/ww2/history/economic/GDP1938.html

As I understand it the way Maddison calculated GDP (specifically for nations for which there are no good numbers) was to figure out a per capita productivity value and then multiply by population. So in a way the GDP figures are a reflection of population.

As I understand it GDP very much includes agriculture. But the HoI economic system doesn't really account for agricultural production and trade (everything revolves around four key resources and a "world market" which in my opinion is virtually worthless).

I plan to review the initial OOB now that I've discovered that inaccuracies seem to be rampant. (I had expected the OOB would be one of the more accurate parts of HoI)

- Mithel

There is one big problem I have noticed after doing a bit of research on the matter, that there were huge difference in the % of speanding for most nations.
Now, HOI, does include that with the goverment type model and the speaning on consumer goods, but it isn't nearly accurate.
So, the question is, are there any total defence speanding avaible?

 

[Mithel]

Steel, please excuse my failure to notice that CORE already has infantry reduced to a speed of 3!

My tendency generally is to make minor adjustments (the more your work on modding HoI the more you appreciate how well Paradox did in the first place!). As for org my thought was just an additional +5 or so (but I'm also looking at reducing the very high values Germany starts with) essentially I'm thinking of raising the lower end and lowering the upper end a bit.

Steel, could you elaborate on what types of difficulties the AI has if it's manpower isn't "unlimited"?

madner, That's exactly the biggest flaw in my GDP approach to an economic model, there was a huge variance in % of a nation's wealth spent on military (and those figures are misleading because of "hiding" funding). Unfortunately other than the USA and Germany I've seen very few military spending figures. With some digging I might manage to come up with the figures for the major powers but I think it'll be nearly impossible to come up with those figures for any smaller countries.

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(13241)]

It might be possible to backtrace it, my military encilopedia, while somehow old contained the strenght of almost all peacetime armies, I will compile and post a list asap (in a weak), as those numbers are strong indicators. Also, like in the case of Yugoslavia I have stumbled upon those numbers. (30% of the GDP in the case)

 

[JRaup]

Before going hogwild on modding the Province.csv, I think some definitions are in order. As I pointed on in the CORE framework thread, we need definitions as to what exactly each startegic resource is supposed to represent. Without that, we could be making some incorrect modifications. Can people hold off on making those changes until those defintions are done?

 

[unmerged(18738)]

what freakin' program do you use to view CSV in spreadsheet fashion? I am on WinXP.

 

[Steel]

OpenOffice handles semi-colon separated CSV files with no problems at all and is free. I strongly advise against editing province.csv where an INC file edit can do the job, we have been down that path and it is a complete nightmare.

 

[unmerged(18738)]

Thanks, Steel. Actually, I just want to reference the province/seazone ID numbers for some AI scripting. I have no vested interest in altering that province file, if only because I am clueless about any of it.

 

[Mithel]

madner, I've posted some of the % of GDP for military spending for some of the major powers on my website (individual country pages). This brings up another issue, how much do we tie "defense spending" (HoI ICs) to historic values? Clearly as the rates for a single country (Japan) shifted from as low as 15% to a high of 76% this means very radical changes to that country's economy. Most likely the high figures (like Russia's 61% in 1942 and 1943) probably were not sustainable.

In my opinion we should use these figures as something more like a "curve fitting" tool than as hard numbers. i.e. Use each country's 1938 GDP as a hard basis for the "potential" of that country's IC. Then use figures like we are seeing to trim that spending (reduce available ICs) in the pre war years.

- Mithel

 

[unmerged(13241)]

Originally posted by Steel
OpenOffice handles semi-colon separated CSV files with no problems at all and is free. I strongly advise against editing province.csv where an INC file edit can do the job, we have been down that path and it is a complete nightmare.

But, at least those changes are final, and don't disappear with units moving in. It's very frustrating and not realistic at all.

In my opinion we should use these figures as something more like a "curve fitting" tool than as hard numbers. i.e. Use each country's 1938 GDP as a hard basis for the "potential" of that country's IC. Then use figures like we are seeing to trim that spending (reduce available ICs) in the pre war years.

This could be done with tech, those nations with % spending would get -% on they IC output, and then trough events (either with a choice or not) the nation would gear up and get more and more IC avaible.
Most importment is to set the referent IC point in such a fashion that the minors are still playable, (so the relations will be the same, but with higher % for majors)

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by madner
But, at least those changes are final, and don't disappear with units moving in. It's very frustrating and not realistic at all.

Then add your comments here to get moderator or Paradox feedback on this.

Remember that mod-dir does NOT work with province.csv and that as far as possible C.O.R.E. should not break vanilla HoI. The changes discsussed here would significantly change vanilla HoI if put into province.csv.

 

[Mithel]

madner, that's basically what I'm intending to do. The most important thing to making minors more playable though is to eliminate the economic "meltdown" due to lack of resources. (second in my opinion is to rework the tech tree to have some cheaper lower end techs for them to research).

And because "minors" are the majority of countries they'll have a slight (economic) advantage as it's unlikely we would put in all the events to adjust their economies over the course of the war.

- Mithel

 

[Steel]

*bump* Given the recent discussions about editing province.csv I'd suggest people read through this thread.