Historical vs. unhistorical events in the game

[Mario78]

Don't worry, I agree with PI and I will NOT comment on LURID events.
However, I think in the rightly closed thread III.Salem had a legitimate point

I think some events like Operation Barbarossa, Attack on Pearl Harbor, Iraqi Revolution, or July 14 Plot can trigger on the exact date. Also AI should response to the events historically. ONLY HUMAN PLAYER SHOULD BE UNHISTORICAL VARIABLE IN THE GAME.

and I wish to comment on this.
IMHO, in a "perfect game", each and every time a major event could change the world (e.g. Munich 38 : Will Deladier and Chamberlain bend over or will they come back to their senses and make a stand?; Pacific '41: will the Japanese succeed in launching a surprise attack on Pearl Harbour or will they be detected by USA's assets ?;Germany '44: will Operation Valkyrie succeed or not ?) the human player, IF NOT DIRECTLY INVOLVED, should have the choice to either go with the historical outcome or accept a random one for a less historical but more re-playable game. I understand this would likely be difficult to implement, but I think that this should make everybody happy.
Another thought : in real life, during a battle one loses manpower for three different reasons : 1)soldiers are killed or permanently injured,2) they are wounded and/or shocked but they are able, after some time, to recover; they remain, for whatever reason, trapped behind enemy lines and can join their Country only at the end of the war.
In the HoI series, the first are simulated as "permanent loses", the second through "trickle back" mechanisms, but, AFAIK, there is no way to deal with the third group; do you think it would make sense, at the end of a war, to give back each involved Country a certain percent of their losses, simulating people who are at last able to join again their Country ?

 

[Wildcat_PL]

I must agree on the unhistorical things. I would like a an option to select unhistorical/historical game. But I strongly hope there will be mods when the game will be released. They will cover things like alternate history, different munich agreement, different ribentrop-molotov, maybe seelion, german plan-Z, and other stuff like this.
About letting human player make decisions, this would be hard to do, however few human controled events that change AI scripts might be helpfull here. Like an event for human player to decide if germany goes with uboots or plan-Z and carriers.
About the returning of PoW, this is an iteresting think, however historicaly only democratic countries would treat well and release the PoW so i guess it would be unfair.
I hope they dont decide to close it because of PoW discussion, but returning manpower to the pool after the war is over would be a valid think, however hard to implement.

 

[kunadam]

Just recently I had a game with France. I tried to save Poland by sending them a large number of infantry. But Poland did not joined the allies, thus Germany took them but that was all for WWII (so it was just German-Poland war not WWII). I was a bit dissapointed. However, it always feel a bit gamey to prepare for a 1939.9.1 start of WWII. I can happily go around with 1918 infantry knowing, that they will upgrade in the last 200 days. Things like that.

Would it be more challenging not to know everything in advance?

I think that the only thing that events should make sure that WWII does happen.

 

[Wildcat_PL]

I think that the AI should make sure the WW2 will happen. Events should be covering stuff that is hard to do. Like sending legion condor to spanish civil war. Surrender events. etc.

 

[Mrdie]

What's wrong with the way it is now? Events generally fire as historically, but sometimes there's a chance that alternate outcomes occur.

 

[qqqqqq666]

Who likes to play a game that is totally deterministic?

 

[Rocket88]

However, it always feel a bit gamey to prepare for a 1939.9.1 start of WWII. I can happily go around with 1918 infantry knowing, that they will upgrade in the last 200 days. Things like that.

Exactly. Knowing what is going to happen - and in some cases when - allows me to plan ahead in a totally unrealistic way compared to the political and military leaders of the 30s I am trying to 'improve' on - who were obviously influenced by perceptions of threats (Douhet etc) and political uncertainties.

I guess we can play the 39 scenario to get closest to this - but we all appear to like the planning and research and buildup which the 36 scenario gives us (and for mods is usually the only option) - or can go the MP route.

I know some mods have explored this (CORE / Cueball's EIR I know about) - so I for one would welcome this - and if it was possible to choose historical / variable - then even better!!

 

[III.Selim]

I disagree. I'm not saying all events should be historical. I say major events and AI should be historical. It's not logical that Britain doesn't support her ally France in game. It's not logical to see Germany conquer whole russia.

Some minor events like "support Nationalist Spain" or "release slovakia" are not changing the flow of the game. AI can go ahistorical on those events and they can also occur different time period than exact historical date.

 

[unmerged(87183)]

I think let the events be as they are. If WWII dosent happen, will, it's not like WWII was a given, there were so many chances for it to happen. And if you really want the war, declare it yourself.

Giving people the option of determining the outcome takes away all the anticipation, it is like a scripted game, none of the excellent moments in HoI, when the Czechs decide to join the Axis (happened to me 4 times), or Hitler decides to Back Off of Stalin.

 

[Mjarr]

It's not logical to see Germany conquer whole russia.

But it is entirely logical for human player to exploit it as you know that sooner or later german AI will lose the war in the east and it turns into a match of "who hoardes most of german territory before the surrender event kicks in" ?

We all know that a wargame without any sort of war is bit boring, but the debate between what happened vs potential of what could happen is often going out of bounds. Considering how downplayed diplomatics are in HoI2 (and probably are somewhat similiar in AoD) other than the fact it would be logically very bad thing (E.G. UK doesn't support France), it doesn't penalize anyone. Warhungry Germany that goes for early conquest of USA in '37 doesn't get any real penalty other than maybe minor dissent as UK and France are not really giving shit about it.

Or you could invade UK with Sweden and ½ of the europe won't really give a damm about it, only UK and its allies. Or pick Russia and start declaring wars in 1936 and steamroll half of the Europe as you know how things are going to end up 99,999999% of the time and you know exactly how AI is going to work after few games.

 

[Conanteacher]

If you want an ahistorical Sandbox game, try HoI 3.
HoI 2 should be tied to events as it is...in AoD also.
So as not to ruin the last remnant of a good game recipe!

 

[DesertSnow]

If you want an ahistorical Sandbox game, try HoI 3.
HoI 2 should be tied to events as it is...in AoD also.
So as not to ruin the last remnant of a good game recipe!

I was under the impression that AoD was about changing game mechanics, not events. If that is really the case, most threads about "Japan shouldn't steamroll China in 1938" and "The Wehrmacht in 1941 didn't have 200 division in 1941" are irrelevant. Game "balance" and events are things that modders will have years to work on (in my sino-japanize example, a modder would add IC to China or reduce Japanize IC, or make all of southern china a big mountain range :rofl Since AoD doesn't change the way diplomacy works, or the the degree that the AI depends on events, i expect it to be as historical as HoI2 was.... HoI3 was based on a different principle from the start, so this is a different beast.

So my idea is: let the developers do their work and make sure that the changes they made to the code don't lead to game crashes. Furthermore, i want the AI to be capable of using these new mechanics.

In the case of HoI2, you could easily change the degree of historical determination by changing the % chance that the AI would make the ahistorical choice in an event, or write new events. If i don't want to have the advantage of knowing beforehand that the allies will not bother me while i annex Sudetenland, i can always make the "chechs refuse" alternative more probable.

 

[Mjarr]

If you want an ahistorical Sandbox game, try HoI 3.

HoI2 itself was never too much hardcore WW2 historical documentary in the first place despite being far more historical than HoI3 when it comes to basic events. Even in HoI2 you could see that German AI doesn't want to press for Anschluss E.G., it's just really rare sight to see.

We all know that HoI3 is really random to the point it's obnoxious, but simply having small odds for something weird happening is not really a game breaking.

As much as I do support that player should be mostly the one that decides if you go ahistorical or not, I dislike the idea of AI being made as "well historically germany lost in russia so german AI should always lose war in russia aswell" or "Overlord happened in june 1944 so AI should be coded for that aswell" or so. As long as it is within reasonable possibilities given the country's capabilities having something that is not written in stone is a good thing. Anyone ever had war breaking out after Treaty of Munich as Czechs didn't want to give Sudetenland? It was one of the best games I've ever played as I was caught totally off guard as UK and I had to scrap few plans I had avaible for the too well known 1.9.39 date.

 

[Conanteacher]

I didn't mean I like stone scripts! It's obviously good that the AI sometimes wins Barbarossa as Germany, or accomplishes Sealion, or even Argentina joins the axis... Of course I like it and makes the game much more interesting, but who wants to see something like "Axis Mexico invades Communist Burma"

 

[Teodor]

I like how it is handled in FTG.

An option in the scenario settings where you can choose:
Historical (AI always choose the A-option)
Normal (As it is now)
Random (All event choices have the same percentage)

 

[Walter Raleigh]

I like how it is handled in FTG.

An option in the scenario settings where you can choose:
Historical (AI always choose the A-option)
Normal (As it is now)
Random (All event choices have the same percentage)

Agreed. Could add historical with historical dates and with flexible dates too.

 

[unmerged(27839)]

What's wrong with the way it is now? Events generally fire as historically, but sometimes there's a chance that alternate outcomes occur.

If WW2 is absent, without UK and France being involved, the game becomes appeased and not much will happen. In fact it will become boring because the AI hardly starts a World War on its own.

I tried to do the same thing as kunadam did with France and my game went historical until the only province that could hold out was Warsaw. Now with Germany never annexing Poland the AI acted weird. Germany never attacked Benelux countries and I never had to do anything against them except holding the lines. In fact Germany had problems to annex Denmark and lost Norway to UK after a feew weeks. Well it could had been worse

I like how it is handled in FTG.

An option in the scenario settings where you can choose:
Historical (AI always choose the A-option)
Normal (As it is now)
Random (All event choices have the same percentage)

+1

 

[Teodor]

Agreed. Could add historical with historical dates and with flexible dates too.

Even better!

 

[Mjarr]

Even better!

Might be interesting feature to be added in a patch in case if it doesn't make it for the release