Pretty straightforward question, but is there any difference between setting the "Historical Focus Mode" toggle, and editing the custom rules to make every individual country follow the historic path? Is one more railroaded than the other?
Historical Focus Mode Vs Custom Rules
- Thread starter Ecclesiasdeez__nutz
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Actually I think yes, because ‘historical’ can fly off the rails depending on who youre playing as and what you do.
For example, I went kaiser Germany on historic and France goes Commie and Britain (I think) went Fascist. Locking them down to their historic paths (ie keeping them democratic) can make them play more historical than choosing “historic”, if that makes sense.
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I had an experience where I set UK to go historical, went imperial germany, (I wanted Victoria) and UK went communist regardless. I don't think the game setup dictates these cases where AI goes ahistorical in response to an ahistorical player, it's something else like an event. This was a patch or two ago, so it might have changed.
I believe UK and France has coded in chance to go ahistorical regardless in reaction to Germany opposing Hitler, as doing so makes most everything out of wack for the British and French AI anyways.
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Yeah i did a new game set on historical, except with Germany set to go Kaiser and me going Ottoman Turkey. Basically everything has gone 'historically', except France going fascist and China starting the United Front slightly ahead of schedule. The only other country that had a big ahistoric swerve is Latvia going fascist.
Interesting question. I had the experience in NSB up to 1.11.4 beta (haven‘t played much since then) that some countries do not behave historically if I set their custom game rules to historical behaviour. Two culprits I noticed most where Turkey (which at times kept the Bosporus demilitarized) and especially Greece, which more often than not went the ahistoric democratic route which led to an inevitable war with Turkey but usually refused to got the Metaxas route. This happened regardless of having historical focus settings activated or not.
Maybe I am misunderstanding how the custom rules work since I have yet been unable to find the effects of these settings in the game files.
Maybe I am misunderstanding how the custom rules work since I have yet been unable to find the effects of these settings in the game files.
The Greek one is a bit of an oversight by the devs / a bug. In that the Greek AI can and will fail its initial timing of decisions and events, thus is unable to proceed its historical political path. Leaving it able to only proceed ahistorical path.
With Turkey there is some % chance for any one of the various choices to happen, with extremely low chance of Soviets and Turks going to war, (though I think the chance of this happening has been reduced further).
Unironically if Soviets and Turks go to war, this leads to stronger Soviet even at the hands of the AI so go figure.
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One thing I wish would be historical when 'historical' is enabled is the Anti-Comintern pact. Currently it's completely random. Often Japan doesn't even join. I know it does basically nothing (slight opinion boosts/malus) But it should be historical on historical mode, I think.
It is a bug. I just did a search and found the confirmed bug report. I guess, it just will take a bit longer to fix this.
HoI 4 - Greece attacking Turkey in completly historical setup, making Turkey join Axis [v1.11.4.69fb] [b4f8]
Description of issue Greece attacking Turkey in completly historical setup, making Turkey join Axis [v1.11.4.69fb] [b4f8] Game Version v1.11.4.69fb Enabled DLC Together for Victory, Death or Dishonor, Waking the Tiger, Man The Guns, La...
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I think with Britain you can wait a few focuses before doing Oppose Hitler. By then Britain is locked into its Steady as She Goes historical focuses. France should be the same once they complete Review Foreign Policy which locks out communist and fascist paths.
You can use that time to justify on Netherlands and Poland, complete industry focuses and then launch the German civil war.
I've not tested this but that's the theory.
Yeah, it does (mostly) work like that, Ive tried it before. Youd have to be really, really good on the timing justifying on Poland though, I think they might get guaranteed once you win the civil war.
I think France going communist is almost unavoidable though even doing that, the AI takes forever to do the Review Foreign Policy focus that locks them out of the Communist path.
There are pretty significant differences in how the AI plans and performs. While they may end up following the same focus trees, they will not be as 'nudged' into declaring certain wars, performing historical invasions, etc.
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@Arheo
in these regards I would like to inquire: if the custom game rules for a country like Greece for example are set to historical, what makes them act a-historical then, even if historical focuses are active?
Which files govern the custom game rule behaviour?
In my experience, if you set most countries to go Historical via Custom rules, this is what happens:
Romania is slow to end the Little Entente guarantees
Germany is slow to annex Czechoslovakia
Italy gets its claims on Yugoslavia
Italy justifies on those claims
Italy overestimates its ability to take on Yugoslavia + Romania and starts WW2 early
The spike in WT allow France and England to mobilize real early and bypass the Italian border
By the time Germany gets involved, Italy is mostly dead, European war is hugely truncated, African war is already over, WW2 becomes Allies vs Soviets because Poland doesn't fall
Romania is slow to end the Little Entente guarantees
Germany is slow to annex Czechoslovakia
Italy gets its claims on Yugoslavia
Italy justifies on those claims
Italy overestimates its ability to take on Yugoslavia + Romania and starts WW2 early
The spike in WT allow France and England to mobilize real early and bypass the Italian border
By the time Germany gets involved, Italy is mostly dead, European war is hugely truncated, African war is already over, WW2 becomes Allies vs Soviets because Poland doesn't fall
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sorry--is the historical focus checkbox the one that "nudges" them more strongly?
That's almost impossible to answer. The AI has to be able to react to things in a convincing way, regardless of whether the world situation is 'historical' or not. If at any point, something diverges (and this can be almost literally anything), it can set off a butterfly effect. It is possible that sometimes this happens too specifically in individual cases, and we have regular handsoff testing to pick up common failure points, but there are sometimes rarer cases where things go awry. Additionally, anywhere a player gets involved is more likely to result in an 'a-historical' outcome.
There are many places this is taken into account, but I suspect you want either the on_actions files, ai_strategy, or ai_strategy_plan.
Yep!
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Thank you. The ai_strategy_plan was the one I was looking for.
The scenario I was describing was an attempt at historical gameplay as Germany by me with all custom game rules set to historical. Therefore the Balkan and Bosporus region was hands-off in the pre-war period.
However since this a-historical focus behaviour was mainly conducted by AI-Greece and to a lesser extent by AI-Turkey and the historical focus list is part of ai_strategy_plan for both countries, I have to assume that it is indeed related to the confirmed bug-report I quoted earlier in this thread.