Germany has a 1.3888...% chance of Opposing Hitler

[Enriador]

[Edit 08/10/2020: Thread got necromanced. A similar, more recent discussion can be found here. Original post bellow:]

Shouldn't it be higher on Non-Historical, at least with a decent chance? It makes for a much more interesting and varied gameplay experience.

Normally, Fascist Germany pulls up some World Tension and ends up attacking Poland, France, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, while remaining friends with Italy and Hungary.

Non-Aligned Germany in the Restore the Kaiserreich/Focus on the True Enemy path also pulls some WT (25-40%, could easily be made even higher) while attacking France, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union, with good chances of attacking Poland (Danzig for Guarantees). They also remain allied with Italy and (Austria-)Hungary.

In the name of greater diversity, I believe Germany's aggressive monarchist path should be made much more common than it is nowadays, as it ends up with a very similar geopolitical setup to their Fascist counterpart.

 

[starcos77]

Just select restore the kaisereich in the game rule tab before game start

 

[Dlin369]

I think the Restore the Kaiserreich option only really works as an interesting game if Soviet Union had an aggressive expansion path to create urgency to build up a Central European alliance (hopefully coming soon) and France + UK have alternative paths to balance things out (which they do now but needs some fine tuning to work with Kaiserreich Germany).

Italy getting a rework would also be a boon because it further allows Europe to realign in a way that is balanced but fun.

until then the game is balanced around a Fascist Germany and I think it’s okay for the weighting to be highly in favor of Occupy Rhineland

 

[Gyrvendal]

The problem is that the ahistorical paths are not really set up to interact well with each other. So if you give the ahistorical paths say 20% chance for every country, you are very likely to end up with an ungodly mess.
The solution is to use the game rules feature as starcos77 suggested. Of course you then have to give up on achievements...

 

[Geeh]

The problem is that the ahistorical paths are not really set up to interact well with each other. So if you give the ahistorical paths say 20% chance for every country, you are very likely to end up with an ungodly mess.
The solution is to use the game rules feature as starcos77 suggested. Of course you then have to give up on achievements...

Meaning that an unhistorical setting makes things unpredictable? Who would have thought...

 

[TheKillingJoke]

Thats the great thing about the unhistirocail focus option! It turns into an ungodly mess and thats awesome! I love the Chaos!

I just wish it picked the Facist optino for America more or communist, or Oppose Hitler, or a facist/communist poland. i never see Poland in unhistorical do anything but the miedzymorze.

 

[Gyrvendal]

Meaning that an unhistorical setting makes things unpredictable? Who would have thought...

It's less about unpredictable, and more about buggy/nonsensical interactions between focus trees, but whatever.

 

[TK421ImperialHero]

It's less about unpredictable, and more about buggy/nonsensical interactions between focus trees, but whatever.

Isn't that more the fault of the devs? This doesn't mean Oppose Hitler should be so unlikely. Also, no. 9/10 of the trees would interact quite well, with the only real conflict coming into play when countries get cores on the same territory.

That isn't to say everything would be perfect, by no means. As an added thought, though, what would stop the devs from fixing this issue? The few trees that would conflict wouldn't exactly be hard to change.

 

[Mr_Dimento]

They need to make Oppose Hitler have a higher chance to happen. All the other focus trees (Besides USA) have a decent % to happen.

 

[Iskulya]

If you set the German AI to oppose Hitler it usually majorly screws up the game. It's pretty common to see Germany end up in the Comintern, actually, because the AI takes so long in actually forming a faction. It's pretty annoying there is no custom rule to prevent faction joining outside of focuses.

You can tell that there was never really any testing around a proper AI focus strategy or putting proper focus rates for AI Alternate history paths. It's common to see the AI countries set for alt history delaying their political focuses for years, causing them to inevitably be attacked without having formed or joined a faction through their focus tree with the result that they usually join the Comintern since the comintern is one of the few factions that is guaranteed to exist no matter what's happening with alt history. This also happens just about every single time you set Nationalist China to not join or create the United Front. Super annoying.

 

[kettyo]

Monarchist civil war in Germany will greatly hamper his strength just like communist civil war in Japan so these routes are set to be very unlikely. USA is also almost always goes for the neutrality path because all others are greatly suboptimal.

 

[TK421ImperialHero]

If you set the German AI to oppose Hitler it usually majorly screws up the game. It's pretty common to see Germany end up in the Comintern, actually, because the AI takes so long in actually forming a faction. It's pretty annoying there is no custom rule to prevent faction joining outside of focuses.

You can tell that there was never really any testing around a proper AI focus strategy or putting proper focus rates for AI Alternate history paths. It's common to see the AI countries set for alt history delaying their political focuses for years, causing them to inevitably be attacked without having formed or joined a faction through their focus tree with the result that they usually join the Comintern since the comintern is one of the few factions that is guaranteed to exist no matter what's happening with alt history. This also happens just about every single time you set Nationalist China to not join or create the United Front. Super annoying.

Yeah, but all this says is that it's entirely the dev teams fault. The ai should be going for those political focuses way sooner.

In fact, as I said, the dev team needs to focus on this more due to how conflicting these things can get. Oppose Hitler should happen more often, because it's alt history. I'd would argue, though, that the new trees should make the game less reliant on Germany. Again, this is the dev's fault.

 

[TK421ImperialHero]

Monarchist civil war in Germany will greatly hamper his strength just like communist civil war in Japan so these routes are set to be very unlikely. USA is also almost always goes for the neutrality path because all others are greatly suboptimal.

Yes and no, to Germany. So do many of the other alt history paths, but that doesnt matter. They shouldnt also happen a lot.

Japan? Fair, but, again, its alt history. It's what we want out of the non-historical mode, no?

I dont think the US goes down that path solely because it's the most optimal...

 

[Enriador]

the game is balanced around a Fascist Germany

On Historical mode, absolutely. On non-Historical, I challenge the notion that the game is balanced at all. To give an example from my last playthrough: a game where Britain, France and Japan all turned communist and ganged on Fascist Germany is perfectly possible.

It's less about unpredictable, and more about buggy/nonsensical interactions between focus trees, but whatever.

Unfortunately the game is full of "nonsensical interactions" already when off Historical mode. You have Republican Spain joining the Axis, Canada choosing to be loyalist while the UK chooses to Decolonize, Communist China hunting Japan when the latter is communist, etc.

Making Non-Aligned Germany more likely will not change the current scenario balance-wise for better or worse - which, despite being chaotic, is actually quite workable.

If you set the German AI to oppose Hitler it usually majorly screws up the game

Nah, the game goes alright as long as it is Restore the Kaiserreich - the game plays 90% the same. Wanna see the game truly screwed up? Wait until Britain goes with the King's Party and join forces with Hitler. Oh boy...

It's pretty common to see Germany end up in the Comintern, actually, because the AI takes so long in actually forming a faction.

Never saw that. From what I see in the code and recall from past games, Germany actually rushes the Central Powers branch and easily manages to coup Mussolini before war fires in 1939. But I know similar instances of weird faction joining and I can only hope PDX improves on it along the lines of what you said.

Monarchist civil war in Germany will greatly hamper his strength just like communist civil war in Japan so these routes are set to be very unlikely

Japan's communist route is not "very unlikely", ironically. It should happen around 20% of the time (democratic is 20%, fascist is 50%, non-aligned is 30% IIRC) which beats 1.38888...% by a long shot.

And if a more interesting, alternate AI Germany is weaker because of the civil war the devs can always slightly buff it up if controlled by the AI, like they did with Japan's AI behavior against China.

 

[kettyo]

Japan's communist route is not "very unlikely", ironically. It should happen around 20% of the time (democratic is 20%, fascist is 50%, non-aligned is 30% IIRC) which beats 1.38888...% by a long shot.

I can't look at the focus files now but i'm sure commie Japan is much more rare than 20%, just like capitalist Japan.

 

[hangry]

I personally like alt-history, but it wasn't a huge focus for the hoi dev team until they realized how popular it is. The way they approach alt-history isn't optimal imho. If we ever get a hoi v, alt-history should be implemented in a unique scenario like the kaiserreich mod. You have the standard world war 2 scenario and then one or more alternative histories.

 

[kettyo]

I personally like alt-history, but it wasn't a huge focus for the hoi dev team until they realized how popular it is

I'd like three options, historical, ahistorical but realistic, and ahistorical fantasy (the current ahistorical).

 

[schuyguy]

I remember playing an Italy game where I set Germany to "restore the Kaiser" because I wanted to do my own thing in Europe. I learned the hard way that Germany has a focus that kills Mussolini and forces Italy to join their faction. Clearly this was meant to be an option for a player as Germany to unite Europe, but it seems like no one working on the new focus tree ever considered how absolutely infuriating this could be if the AI did it to an Italy player. Another time trying this same scenario, I ended up at war with Germany because of the Danubian Membership focus. I was at war with Czechoslovakia because they'd guaranteed Romania or something like that. Germany and I were both at war with the Allies. Despite having their entire army busy conquering France, Germany suddenly invited Czechoslovakia into their faction, getting themselves into a two-front war with the enemy of their enemy.

In general, it seems obvious that the alternate history focus trees were designed to be fun options for the player to experiment with, but there was no thought at all put into how they would interact when the AI is in charge. It seems like the AI goes down its focuses either randomly or according to a fixed path, but in any case without any consideration at all for what other nations are doing. There are basic conditions for each focus determining whether it's possible to take, but these are completely inadequate to the task of informing the AI whether it's a good idea to take them. Because of this, if you play with historical focuses off, then you see utterly bizarre interactions every game. And I don't just mean surprising, but completely nonsensical.

Though I guess this happens even on historical mode, but it seems to have less of an impact. For example, every single game I play, the UK will at some point in '44 or '45 go down "Benelux Intervention" focus, even though Belgium and the Netherlands are completely occupied and already members of the Allies. It doesn't make any sense, but at least it doesn't break the game.

 

[TheKillingJoke]

I remember playing an Italy game where I set Germany to "restore the Kaiser" because I wanted to do my own thing in Europe. I learned the hard way that Germany has a focus that kills Mussolini and forces Italy to join their faction. Clearly this was meant to be an option for a player as Germany to unite Europe, but it seems like no one working on the new focus tree ever considered how absolutely infuriating this could be if the AI did it to an Italy player. Another time trying this same scenario, I ended up at war with Germany because of the Danubian Membership focus. I was at war with Czechoslovakia because they'd guaranteed Romania or something like that. Germany and I were both at war with the Allies. Despite having their entire army busy conquering France, Germany suddenly invited Czechoslovakia into their faction, getting themselves into a two-front war with the enemy of their enemy.

In general, it seems obvious that the alternate history focus trees were designed to be fun options for the player to experiment with, but there was no thought at all put into how they would interact when the AI is in charge. It seems like the AI goes down its focuses either randomly or according to a fixed path, but in any case without any consideration at all for what other nations are doing. There are basic conditions for each focus determining whether it's possible to take, but these are completely inadequate to the task of informing the AI whether it's a good idea to take them. Because of this, if you play with historical focuses off, then you see utterly bizarre interactions every game. And I don't just mean surprising, but completely nonsensical.

Though I guess this happens even on historical mode, but it seems to have less of an impact. For example, every single game I play, the UK will at some point in '44 or '45 go down "Benelux Intervention" focus, even though Belgium and the Netherlands are completely occupied and already members of the Allies. It doesn't make any sense, but at least it doesn't break the game.

They need to finally bring in a Italy dlc with a monarchy path to go with the assinate Mussolini.

Though id much rather their non aligned path push towards roman Empire with mussolini at the helm since ot was one of his desires.

 

[bitmode]

Shouldn't it be higher on Non-Historical, at least with a decent chance?

How do you get 1.3888%? Or was it just figuratively speaking?

Maybe there should be a ahistorical-path-probabilities thread, because the same points get rehashed time and again in these threads.