Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

Fixing Commonwealth Expeditionary Forces

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
McNaughton

McNaughton

Wallet Inspector
6 Badges
Feb 2, 2003
2.283
0
Visit site
  • Europa Universalis III
  • Hearts of Iron III
  • 500k Club
  • Hearts of Iron II: Beta
  • Pride of Nations
  • Hearts of Iron IV Sign-up
I posted this on the regular forum, but nobody replied.

RECAP:

There is a major problem in the game not allowing you to load expeditionary forces on transports. This results in most of the Commonwealth forces sitting on their own doing nothing for the entire game.

I have a temporary solution for this until it is addressed in a patch.

Have events fire for these nations when they join the UK in any war.

For example, when UK goes to war and Canada joins in, when Canada sends an expeditionary force to join UK forces, an event is fired that MOVES the Canadian expeidtionary force to mainland England (simulating these troops being sent over to England). When England lands in France, and secures certain bases (i.e., enough that the landing is somewhat stable), an event fires that sends the CEF (Canadian Expeditionary Force) to one of the Liberated Bases.

The same can be done for Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, however, instead of being sent to England they are sent to North Africa or the Middle East, then to Italy (in the same way the CEF is sent to France).

I perfer this to the other option (make all Commonwealth nations a direct part of the UK).
 
Workarounds

Try this:

- Form a transport squadron, 2 flotillas will do but 3 is better


expf1.jpg


- Send it to your allies coast and transfer it (expeditionary force)

expf2.jpg


- Wait until your ally loads up a unit and then you override the transport move order and bring the unit where you want it

expf3.jpg


- Or even better take control again over the transport fleet and load up all the Exp. Forces offered - it will work

expf4.jpg



Voila! No teleporting troops and only a bit more cumbersome than transporting your own troops.
 
The only problem with your solution is that the AI cannot use it.

The UK AI can REALLY use extra troops in England and North Africa. The Commonwealth was heavily represented in North Africa, and the Canadians so important for the defense of England, that the main reason England AI does so poorly is because they are totally without this critical support.
 
I'm pretty sure this can be fixed with AI file parameters. If they don't start with transports there might be a need for some UK transports being transferred. Also there will probably be a need for 3 different AI files for the Commonwealth countries

- Early war send troops to Egypt and UK Home Isles
- Mid to late war send troops to invade Europe mainland
- If UK Home Isles fall, garrison homelands.
 
also i think that if the british island is invaded all the commonwealth should send troops to defend the isle, so you need to change the AI all the commonwealth to start building troops and send them to britain to fight against the invasion.
but i do not know how to tell the AI to send troops to some place...
maybe we can implement a magic trick...
we add a specific AI event that tooks 2 units from all the commonwealth Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and build 2 units for every country in London , so you magically transported units from all the commonwealth to England...
It is the only way i see to make the Commonwealth protect the island against invasions... :(
There is no command to magically move a unit on the map? right? :(
 
Last edited:
Originally posted by Generalisimo
but i do not know how to tell the AI to send troops to some place...
Click to expand...

I'm thinking of the target = { } command in the AI files, I've successfully edited Japan to consistently make them land at Kota Baharu and take Singapore as a high priority but I don't know if this would work for landing in friendly territory.
 
Originally posted by Steel
I'm thinking of the target = { } command in the AI files, I've successfully edited Japan to consistently make them land at Kota Baharu and take Singapore as a high priority but I don't know if this would work for landing in friendly territory.
Click to expand...
well, we will have to try it... :D
maybe with that we can made the AI Commonwealth to land at britain to defend the island against attacks (just after the fall of france maybe? )
 
I've been doing a fair bit of work on the AST/NZL/CAN/SAF AI, and have it to the point now where they all get actively involved in the med. I've had no luck whatsoever though convincing them to garrison UK areas by setting province specific garrison targets. Something related to this is the number of transports before countries that need them to fight really get involved - both AST and CAN do nothing early, but build significantly more TPs than their build prefs suggest they should, and then stop building TPs and get back to normal - I need to do more investigating before I find out how this works, but I suspect more starting TPs will square it away.

Most of the success was had through tweaking the invasion AI (low distance, of 0.1 to 0.4, random of 3, coastal, beach, pocket of 2, island of 1.5 and both enemy and adjacent enemy of 2.5), and upping the number of starting TPs.

What would be really good would if we could get some control over the AI's propensity to send CW expeditionary forces to the UK - as this would allow the UK to co-ordinate the use of it's CW allies - as it is, the Aussies make one invasion, the Canadians make another and the UK invade somewhere else. I've found that the UK AI uses CW Exp Forces for Garrisons in the UK and for invasions and all sorts of stuff. This wouldn't exactly be unhistorical, as most of the troops were under UK control in Europe at the strategic level anyways.

Early on, the CW could send a significant number of them (probably need to up the number of UK starting TPs, but that's not so tough). Further, when the Pacific war kicked off you could have an ai trigger for AST/NZL that stopped sending expeditionary forces so they could defend themselves.
 
I've had minor success with these settings.

invasion = {
#for evaluating specific province target.
base = 30.0 #Relative modifier.
#(lower = specific targets much more important.)
random = 1.0 #How big a random range. (1.0 = 1%)
coastal = 400.0 #increase to avoid coastal forts more.
beach = 100.0 #higher, avoid worst beaches.
distance = 1.0 #higher = avoid long distance.
pocket = 1.0 #prioritise pockets, ie provinces with no
#adjacent controlled by same.
island = 1.0 #prioritise taking pure islands.
enemy = 1.0 #higher = much more vary of troops in province.
adjacentenemy = 1.0 #higher = much more vary of troops nearby
#specific provinces can be targetted to get special bonuses..
target = {
531 = 1000 # Invasion of (#prov) has high priority.
948 = 1000
}
}



Next thing i try is to set friendly french territory as target...
 
Originally posted by Generalisimo
anyone have tried what happened to the CW if you put the british island as garrison?? :confused:
or in the target section?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I wrote an ast.ai (Australia) and ran a couple of games for a year or two. They didn't move anything despite having southern England provinces at various priorities. More testing is needed before I'm convinced it can't be done though :D
 
Yeah - the overseas garrisons are a strange one - for instance I've got an AI file for AST with a high Port Moresby Garrison value, and it won't garrison Port Moresby to save it's life. Same goes for Singapore and Alexandria. This is with defend_overseas_beaches = yes, as well. Like you say, though, I'm not convinced it can't be done - I think we've just got to find out what the block is and get around it.
 
Commonwealth Forces

I believe there was a post by Marlborough addressing this issue. His solution was to unite UK, South Africa, Canada, and Australia as one Commonwealth country. I am assuming that this is beyound the scope as we are primarily concerned with events here. A solution needs to be found however. Australian and Kiwi forces were critical to UK's success in North Africa. Also how about some events concerning East Africa. I will begin researching Ethiopia events. These events obviously involve Italy first but quickly impact UK strategy. :D
 
well, i have tested my new AI parameters so i invaded UK in 1937 with 4 divisions and you want to know who kicked me out? a mix of 2 Canada division and british troops, also some South African army landed a minute later in the isles too...
i will add it in the next update so you can test it too.

:D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back