In your quest for realism, have any of you guys tried limiting the number of provinces connectors, especially in out-of-the-way areas - moreso than you have already, of course? I noticed you blocked off the highlands of Borneo (which I agree with and have adopted for my mod) and completely eliminated New Guinea (which seems a little harsh, but maybe it was an AI issue, I don't know), and even went as far as to seal off the China-Vietnam border. This latter one is the one that intrigues me the most. Certainly, I can see how a Japanese push from Haiphong to Kunming (or a Chinese rampage to Saigon) could be annoying and ahistorical, but in addition to resolving a possible AI issue, it also serves to steer the AI towards historical directions of attack. And that got me thinking:
Since China's roads at this time were quite poor, and given that much of the south and west were quite rugged, is it historical to allow anyone invading China to advance along broad fronts, attacking every province from 3-4 directions, as if you were the Wehrmacht advancing through the Low Countries or the Soviets through Poland and Germany? From what I've gathered from maps, there were very few avenues of attack open to anyone attempting to penetrate the Chinese interior. Furthermore, there is always the issue of how to make China better at defending itself without giving it a ton of units or too much IC. That's where I came up with the idea to limit movement to, through, and by areas that historically had major roads between them, except in areas (such as the Central China Plains) where movement and supply probably wouldn't be that difficult.
I understand the role that infrastructure plays in the game regarding movement speed and supply efficiency, but in my opinion, it doesn't do as much as it should. If a province has an infrastructure of 30%, that seems to imply that the roads are poor and it would be difficult to keep any divisions there in supply. But what if that province has one major road running right through it? Shouldn't it be easier to supply it, assuming you control one of the provinces the road is coming from? Wouldn't it be better in many instances to keep the infrastructure there high, while simply closing off the connections to other provinces, where the attackers would be forced to leave the major road behind and haul ass over a barren mountain range when it might be more expedient to simply advance one more province and attack the mountain range from there, assuming there's a road going up there from the new direction? Sure, there might be some sort of a road going between nearly every province in the game, but would a small dirt track support an army-sized supply lane? If nothing else, it could make the job of the defender a little easier in some places, freeing them from having to defend illogical axes of attack. Alternatively, it could make the job of the attacker easier, by making it harder for the defender to retreat to a humongous marsh province with 10% infrastructure and thus threaten four occupied provinces with a counterattack that simply could never come from that direction.
What I have done is to take China as an example. I have closed off certain province connections in the south and west (and even a couple in the southeast) in such a way that it would force the AI to advance along the major roads. Every province is still accessible by at least two others, and it doesn't turn the whole area into a maze, but it closes off the routes that I feel would have been too difficult to maintain supply through, as well as a few provinces whose cities appear to be mis-aligned (so if you wanted to move from Province A to Province B, you'd have to go through Province C, which borders them both), but only in cases where I saw no alternate routes other than to go directly through Province C's major city.
Probably the starkest example I've noticed has been regarding the path from Changde to Chongqing, which has been split into two routes. You can't just go from Changde to Chongqing in three moves anymore, you'd have to either take the northern route (Changde-Yichang-Enshi-Wanxian-Chongqing) or the southern route (Changde-Huaihua-Kaili-Guiyang-Zunyi-Fuling-Chongqing).
Changde-Enshi, Enshi-Fuling, Huaihua-Fuling, Huaihua-Zunyi, and Kaili-Zunyi have all been blocked off due to lack of major connecting roads
The province that has been affected the most thus far has been Ganzhou, which has lost almost half of its province connections, mostly because there are only three major roads leading to it, with two paths splitting just before they hit a neighboring province's city (which was a close call, and I might end up blocking those two as well).
The blocked routes and alternate paths. Ganzhou-Nanping and Ganzhou-Chao'an are close calls, since the roads run so close to Longyan and Guangzhou, respectively.
Have you experimented with this kind of setup before? Will the AI still defend provinces that are in no danger of being attacked due to a now-broken land connection? If you've found this kind of setup to be untenable or highly unrealistic, I'd be curious to know, so maybe I don't go too far with this (not that returning adj-defs.txt to default would be difficult). Or if you are curious about this system, I'd be happy to share my initial changes with you. I'm planning on extending this to Siberia at the very least (I hate it when the Soviet AI moves 20 divisions from one icy hellhole to another, forming that godawfully ugly front from the White Sea to Yakutsk across empty roadless land). I love what you've done so far with the province connections, and as I'm partly basing my mod on yours, I just thought to try something a little more with it. I'm curious to know what you think.
Since China's roads at this time were quite poor, and given that much of the south and west were quite rugged, is it historical to allow anyone invading China to advance along broad fronts, attacking every province from 3-4 directions, as if you were the Wehrmacht advancing through the Low Countries or the Soviets through Poland and Germany? From what I've gathered from maps, there were very few avenues of attack open to anyone attempting to penetrate the Chinese interior. Furthermore, there is always the issue of how to make China better at defending itself without giving it a ton of units or too much IC. That's where I came up with the idea to limit movement to, through, and by areas that historically had major roads between them, except in areas (such as the Central China Plains) where movement and supply probably wouldn't be that difficult.
I understand the role that infrastructure plays in the game regarding movement speed and supply efficiency, but in my opinion, it doesn't do as much as it should. If a province has an infrastructure of 30%, that seems to imply that the roads are poor and it would be difficult to keep any divisions there in supply. But what if that province has one major road running right through it? Shouldn't it be easier to supply it, assuming you control one of the provinces the road is coming from? Wouldn't it be better in many instances to keep the infrastructure there high, while simply closing off the connections to other provinces, where the attackers would be forced to leave the major road behind and haul ass over a barren mountain range when it might be more expedient to simply advance one more province and attack the mountain range from there, assuming there's a road going up there from the new direction? Sure, there might be some sort of a road going between nearly every province in the game, but would a small dirt track support an army-sized supply lane? If nothing else, it could make the job of the defender a little easier in some places, freeing them from having to defend illogical axes of attack. Alternatively, it could make the job of the attacker easier, by making it harder for the defender to retreat to a humongous marsh province with 10% infrastructure and thus threaten four occupied provinces with a counterattack that simply could never come from that direction.
What I have done is to take China as an example. I have closed off certain province connections in the south and west (and even a couple in the southeast) in such a way that it would force the AI to advance along the major roads. Every province is still accessible by at least two others, and it doesn't turn the whole area into a maze, but it closes off the routes that I feel would have been too difficult to maintain supply through, as well as a few provinces whose cities appear to be mis-aligned (so if you wanted to move from Province A to Province B, you'd have to go through Province C, which borders them both), but only in cases where I saw no alternate routes other than to go directly through Province C's major city.
Probably the starkest example I've noticed has been regarding the path from Changde to Chongqing, which has been split into two routes. You can't just go from Changde to Chongqing in three moves anymore, you'd have to either take the northern route (Changde-Yichang-Enshi-Wanxian-Chongqing) or the southern route (Changde-Huaihua-Kaili-Guiyang-Zunyi-Fuling-Chongqing).
Changde-Enshi, Enshi-Fuling, Huaihua-Fuling, Huaihua-Zunyi, and Kaili-Zunyi have all been blocked off due to lack of major connecting roads
The province that has been affected the most thus far has been Ganzhou, which has lost almost half of its province connections, mostly because there are only three major roads leading to it, with two paths splitting just before they hit a neighboring province's city (which was a close call, and I might end up blocking those two as well).
The blocked routes and alternate paths. Ganzhou-Nanping and Ganzhou-Chao'an are close calls, since the roads run so close to Longyan and Guangzhou, respectively.
Have you experimented with this kind of setup before? Will the AI still defend provinces that are in no danger of being attacked due to a now-broken land connection? If you've found this kind of setup to be untenable or highly unrealistic, I'd be curious to know, so maybe I don't go too far with this (not that returning adj-defs.txt to default would be difficult). Or if you are curious about this system, I'd be happy to share my initial changes with you. I'm planning on extending this to Siberia at the very least (I hate it when the Soviet AI moves 20 divisions from one icy hellhole to another, forming that godawfully ugly front from the White Sea to Yakutsk across empty roadless land). I love what you've done so far with the province connections, and as I'm partly basing my mod on yours, I just thought to try something a little more with it. I'm curious to know what you think.
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