Enhancements

[unmerged(681)]

Suggestions for HoI : Part 2

.. a couple more enhancements / fixes :


5. Production : The ability to put transports and destroyers on/off convoy duty (at least the transports).

6. Production : The trade agreement seems to be missing, according to the description in the manual (however in the 1939 scenario Germany is transporting steel from Lulå in Sweden). Should to be included to promote non-conquest based production expansion

7. Research : I would like to see the ability to request "share research" from your allies, especially when playing minor countries. There could be some kind of penalty included - or a high cost on diplomacy points.

End of Part 2

 

[Jon Shafer]

Couple things on strategic re-deployment:

When you decide to strategically re-deploy, you should select a province you want to send it to, and you'll get an ETA for how long it would take to move it there based upon distance (balances out Estonia to Mongolia issue). Should that province be occupied then the destination will be moved to the closest unoccupied province and the time adjusted accordingly.

Other things:

Units should only be 'auto-upgraded' when in supply. Otherwise this leads to the infamous '6th Army in Stalingrad recieving new Marder TDs out of the blue' discrepancy.

Bombing missions should reduce the organization of the units conducting the strike by a fair amount (20-30% of max organization), and they shouldn't be allowed to conduct another bombing run unless their organization is at a certain level (50% of max). Otherwise, this leads to the infamous 'bomb units until they have no organization' tactic. I'm sure this is being worked on, just wanted to give my input.

I'm sure this is a bit of a challenge and probably just a drone from a fan with ideas, but AI priority (besides fixing obvious loopholes) should be to establish and maintain a front at all costs. As I said in a thread in the main discussion forum, any time a country's front broke, disaster ensued (Soviets at Kiev, NEARLY the Germans after Stalingrad, Falaise, the aftermath of the Battle of the Bulge... the list goes on). This may seem obvious, but it's pivotal that the AI try to do this, otherwise it's fairly easy to push enough forces to roll their entire front up and punch a hole right through it (without Zhukov's brilliant re-establishing of the Soviet front before Moscow in '41, some people speculate that Moscow might have fallen).

Probably have more later.

~ The endless rants of the comp sci-history major HOI programmer wannabe...

 

[Rickuh]

Another inhancement I'd like to see.

The Diplomacy screen doesn't refresh when you are able to perform another diplomatic function. You have to click to a different nation or screen then click back on the original nation to refresh the diplomacy screen.

 

[King]

Originally posted by Trip
Units should only be 'auto-upgraded' when in supply. Otherwise this leads to the infamous '6th Army in Stalingrad recieving new Marder TDs out of the blue' discrepancy.
[/i]

I do not devote as much attention to this as I should but his one caught my eye. It is a beautiful idea in theory but a nightmare to do in practice. The game would need to keep track of all the units that have not been upgraded and what level they have been upgraded too. Then it would need to keep checking when it was in supply and upgrade. A lot of work. The other problem is of course how long does a unit need to be in supply for it qualify for an upgrade (1 hour, 1 day, etc.) . The current system may produce strange results but it does have the virtue of being simple. Simple things don't crash as often as complicated ones.

 

[Steel]

Originally posted by Trip
establish and maintain a front at all costs.

That's the kind of reasoning that creates a totally predictable AI. Half an hour after the "front integrity AI patch" there would be a complaint from somebody saying that the AI is so pre-occupied with maintaining a front-line that it 1) never attacks 2) never exploits an opening 3) can't defend against amphib landings... and so on.

I like some of the other points you make, but don't call for "hard-coded" AI behaviour. Perhaps it can be tweaked, perhaps there's AI mods that the fan community can work on... I don't expect the AI will ever be a match for an experienced human player though so I hope Paradox focuses on providing a stable, enjoyable multi-player game experience.

 

[Smirfy]

IC's

The ic level for The Republic of Ireland and Scotland need reviewed. Glasgow in particular was one of the major shipbuilding regions in the world yet it has only two more ic's than Dublin???

To explain it in another way
You have heard of Hendrik Larsson
He is Swedish
He plays for Glasgow Celtic
This team was founded for Irish Immigrants
That came to Glasgow in their tens of Thousands
In the 19th and early 20th century
To work in the numerous Shipyards Mills and Foundaries
If Dublin had the same industrial base as Glasgow
Would there be a Glasgow Celtic?

The other provinces in Ireland are also way to high the Republic of Ireland was largely an agricultural based economy.

Belfast is also way to low compared to the rest of Ireland (and others) in the IC level. Belfast was a major shipbuilding and aircraft manufacturing area with various heavy industries.

 

[King]

Originally posted by Steel
That's the kind of reasoning that creates a totally predictable AI. Half an hour after the "front integrity AI patch" there would be a complaint from somebody saying that the AI is so pre-occupied with maintaining a front-line that it 1) never attacks 2) never exploits an opening 3) can't defend against amphib landings... and so on.

I like some of the other points you make, but don't call for "hard-coded" AI behaviour. Perhaps it can be tweaked, perhaps there's AI mods that the fan community can work on... I don't expect the AI will ever be a match for an experienced human player though so I hope Paradox focuses on providing a stable, enjoyable multi-player game experience.

I can exclusively reveal that Paradox is working on imporving the AI. If you have suggestions on the AI the please feel free to discuss them here. However I need a very clear focussed idea to pass up the line as an enhancement. The try to maintain a front is not really focussed enough. The AI does try to do that anyway and the AI is being tweeked to make it better at it. IF you suggest something like Country X is declaring war at the worng time and the triggers shoudl be Y & Z then this is soemthing I can work with.

 

[unmerged(11774)]

Originally posted by King
The game would need to keep track of all the units that have not been upgraded and what level they have been upgraded too.

Doesn't it already do this? The military screen for every unit has an upgrade button that is either on or off.

 

[King]

Originally posted by el Flamingo
Doesn't it already do this? The military screen for every unit has an upgrade button that is either on or off.

Yes and no, it does keep track of the units but only those who require manual upgrades. Auto upgrades are just done and that's it. It would add complications to the code.

 

[unmerged(681)]

Map enhancements

8. Map : I would like to see a map which would color the map depending on how the Infrastructure is in a particular province, and based on the nbr. of IC's in each province (e.g. 0=white, 1-5=green yellow, 5-10=green,10-15=light yellow, 15-20=yellow, 20-30=orange, +30=red)

Makes the management of the province upgrades easier and also on which provinces to "go for" (besides the ressource map, but which only have the dominant ressource / not IC or infrastructure)

 

[unmerged(11567)]

Message Options - 2 "other nation land battles"

In the message settings, Battles and Military Section - there are two occurrences of "When another nation wins a Land Battle" and no instance of winning an air battle.

I would like to be able to see when each province is taken over (at least for now). This is not feasable because of the UK continuous fighter attacking issue, there is just too many pop ups.

 

[King]

I'll move this over to the enhancement thread because this is not a bug. Please wait.

 

[Windoze]

The strategically movement feature need some serious tweaking, now you can remove all your air and land unit from the map in 36. This means very low supply costs and put all thoose ic in research. When you think it's time for war you upgrade them and then deploy them on the front line. My wish would be that you pay the normal supply for forces in the force pool as well.

 

[unmerged(11958)]

Smirfy's right about Ireland and Scotland. Ireland should have low, low, low IC's, except for Belfast, which should have a high IC, the same as Scotland.

Lower Ireland (except Belfast) and raise Belfast and all of Scotland, please.

 

[unmerged(12009)]

From my experience, England doesn't do jack squat to try to retake France or other mainland European countries that have fallen to the Axis jackboot, other than sending in tiny little piecemeal divisions and wave after wave of bombers. This is an aspect of the AI that definitely does need to be addressed, IMHO.

 

[unmerged(9625)]

Government Selection

When you have to change your government, the game lists the Ministers that the new government will have. However, it does not list the style for the Ministers (i.e. Apologetic Clerk). Needless to say, this is tres annoying. Everything becomes a gamble, unless you want to go look it up in the scenerio file.

 

[unmerged(9625)]

Production & Research Rollover

I'm not sure if this is a bug per say but:

When you research or build units, any remainder from the turn is lost.

I.e. I am Czechoslovakia researching Mechanized Warfare Doctrine which requires 30 IC per turn. I am putting 29.9 IC per turn into research. On day 1, 29.9 IC goes into the doctrine research, leaving 0.1 IC left. The next day, 0.1 IC is used to finish the research "unit". Then the remaining 29.8 research ICs vanish into the big sky. This similarly applies to building units.

I'm not sure if this is a bug but if it is intentional it's a dreadful feature. All it does is punish smaller countries and incourage micro-management of the resource sliders, which the game already has too much of. I do NOT want to have to manage my sliders daily in order to have an efficient economy.

It really doesn't make any sense given research is calculated at a daily rate.

 

[Jon Shafer]

Good suggestions from everyone on this page.

I suppose suggesting that the AI "maintain a front by all means necassary" is a bit vague and hard to work with.

A few other suggestions for the AI: (some more vauge-ish than others)

AI should protect its capital better... sometimes you'll see a large force there, but then as your units approach they'll head off to somewhere else.

When the AI holds a strong force advantage over an adjacent province, it should attack if it doesn't jeopardize the front. There have been quite a few instances where I'll look and see 10 AI divisions in a province next to one of my provinces with 1 (or no) divisions that could easily have cut off my supply or really screwed up my offensive. However, the AI seemed to ignore it.

I know, too vague probably, but they'd be good improvements.

Other improvements:
Somehow China ought to be VERY difficult for Japan to conquer... I'm sure the addition of Partisans will make this much more difficult. Ideally, China should have TONS of troops, always popping up all over the place. This would stretch the Japanese invaders to the limit, as was the case historically.

More stuff, as always, later.

 

[Soapy Frog]

It would vastly improve things to assign air groups regularly scheduled missions, such that you do not need to micro-manage them so much.

Ideally you should be able to assign air groups to support army groups, etc. and then forget about it.

Also it would be nice if there were some GUI enhancements so that it is a little easier to manage 100+ divisions. The scrollbars should not reset to the top of a list every time you make a new selection, frex for production or strat. redeployment.

Re-org time for air-units should be longer (afetr a mission) and air units should not be able to fly missions at all if their org is too low. This would eliminate the 1-2% org bombing raids the UK seems to rely heavily on...

 

[Soapy Frog]

Carrier air wings should probably be limited to only certain types of aircraft (fighters/dive bombers, frex).

Historically actually limitations were much greater... certain sacrifices in design had to be made to make a plane carrier operable. You can't just stick a P51 on a carrier, much less a B29!!!!