Say I'm playing United Kingdom, and I want France on my side. Please tell me there's something I can do to make sure France picks my faction over Comintern, Axis or Little Entente.
Does AI pick its focuses sensibly?
- Thread starter kviiri
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From what I gather the AI has two different modes historical and ahistorical in historical mode I think that I will always pick the more historical decisions whether they make sense tactically or not in ahistorical that is more variable I believe.
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There's a setting called "historical focuses" in game setup which makes the AI much more likely to pick what it did historically.
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Sorry, that's not what I mean. Please tell me I can influence the AI to pick my side (through diplomacy) in ahistoric mode too.
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You can boost party popularity and ultimately stage a coup that might result in a civil war in foreign countries. The focusses that let the nations join different factions all require a certain dominating ideology before one can pick them, so it can't happen that they run completely wild unnoticed by you if you follow the party/ideology popularity of that country closely.
In the case of Great Britain wanting France in the Allies, it should be sufficient to maintain good relations and watch out if they stay democratic or get too much communist support. If they are democratic and like you, they should be gladly willing to go with you. Don't forget focusses are more like a shortcut, you can invite them to your faction yourself, they don't necessarily need to pick their own focus for that.
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There is a diplomatic action to improve relations. That should be enough to ensure UK invites France to their faction, as long as both remain democracies.
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Sure it should, but I'm asking if we know it will. Of course with UK and France this isn't such a big deal, because they're well set for the alliance from the get-go (same ideology, probably historical friend bonuses too), but the ability to influence AI focus choices will be very relevant when trying for ahistoric alliances. For example, as Fascist Poland I would want to push Germany towards the "Danzig for Slovakia" focus instead of "Danzig or War".
So for obvious reasons I haven't seen the code but since HOI runs on Clautzwitz we can infer from previous Clautzwitz games how options (which are scripted) are analyzed by the AI.
Pretty much every option in the game (events, decisions, diplomatic actions, etc) have an ai_will_do factor that usually takes into consideration the strategic situation at least to some degree. It's entirely possible that PDS might overlook relations and/or is_facist etc, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it's unlikely that they would. If they did, however, it would be trivial to mod (like, barely a line) and almost certainly patched soon after it was brought to PDS attention as a serious issue in the suggestion forum.
My guess is that without modding, the only way how a player can affect what focuses AI picks is that he denies certain prerequistes for certain focuses and on the same time make sure that all the requirements for the alternative branch are met.
Join the Axis. They wants it, it's their precious. Don't play Poland if you want to avoid war with Germany, and remain outside their faction.
It does - you can probably deny Germany from attacking you if you join their faction. Given that even a guarantee by the Allies won't usually stop Germany, then you don't have many choices.
It might not be the answer you want to hear, but Poland's not often a country with a long lifespan in this game. Why would you expect anything different? Germany wasn't interested in Danzig per se, they wanted to destroy Poland completely. And the Soviet Union, having already fought one war with Poland, had the same motivation, against the "ugly product of Versailles".
It might not be the answer you want to hear, but Poland's not often a country with a long lifespan in this game. Why would you expect anything different? Germany wasn't interested in Danzig per se, they wanted to destroy Poland completely. And the Soviet Union, having already fought one war with Poland, had the same motivation, against the "ugly product of Versailles".
The question I asked was whether being friends with Germany would make them prefer "Danzig for Slovakia" over "Danzig or war" and you didn't address that at all. I didn't ask about general Polish survival strategies, I want to know how the AI picks its focuses.
If France is couped by fascists or commies, that's just bad luck on your part. It's good alt history though 
perhaps you could make a German alliance to fight against socialist France and Russia?
perhaps you could make a German alliance to fight against socialist France and Russia?