Idea on historical accurracy

[unmerged(94346)]

A pretty simple idea on the historical and ahistorical outcome of a campaign.

In the options menu where there would be "full ic" takeover, there's an option for a historical campaign. This makes the user able to play a campaign (if they wish) unhindered by Germany NOT annexing Austria etc, or partitioning Czechoslovakia, meaning there is no Second World War. The option can be selected and unselected at a whim, like 'full IC takeover', 'democracies can start war'...Sometimes we may feel like having everything go according to plan, and other times, we may wish to go with the flow.

However, as I'm no expert in the technicality of coding, the implementation of the idea would be more difficult. Could there be an alternate option in the event.txt for this situation like chance of Austria rejecting annexation as 3% in the unselected format and 0% in the historical format?

Or is there a better way of doing it or does the idea suck?

 

[henryjai]

suggested before, ....


should not be hard, but if you want historic till "x" year just start your scenario in that year.

i just hope the AI make more "sensitive" decisions rather than being random in non-strict historical mode.

 

[The Balbinater]

agreed

nothing is worse then finding out you played for hours without noticing AI germany did something ahistorical

bal

 

[unmerged(13008)]

But on the other hand, what´s the reason to play a game, if everything is supposed to happen as it did. YOU being the only one allowed to change your countries war effort and/or policy.
And why should the AI not react to what YOU are doing, especially since Human build up > AI build up, after you upgraded from Noob to Vet?

 

[unmerged(44926)]

suggested before, ....


should not be hard, but if you want historic till "x" year just start your scenario in that year.

i just hope the AI make more "sensitive" decisions rather than being random in non-strict historical mode.

I always hated starting a scenario where my country was already at war. the unit deployments might be historically accurate, but, in the context of the game system, historically accurate is often mixed up and annoying. Having stacks where infantry is grouped with garrison units, or an airforce with CAS-Tacs and an interceptor squad all rolled into one is very annoying when you're expected to begin and offensive on day one.

I always wished these scenarios would have started a bit earlier. Maybe July '39, June '41 and June '44, just to give the player about a month to get his stuff together before a new front opens up.

 

[The Balbinater]

But on the other hand, what´s the reason to play a game, if everything is supposed to happen as it did. ?

people play the game for different reasons. i personally want to know if my country could have won the war given the circumstances of the historical actions of other countries. what strategy could the government of my country have enacted? what build-scheme and order of battle? what are the must-win battles? on and on. this can't be studied with a game that constantly varies...

an option to make the AI choose historical options would be greatly appreciated.

bal

 

[unmerged(79123)]

nothing is worse then finding out you played for hours without noticing AI germany did something ahistorical

bal

Aren't the best games when the AI goes ahistorical? Much better than:

Sept 1939 -Invade Poland
May 1940 - Invade Low Countries
June 1941 - Invade USSR
Dec 1941- Pearl Harbor

I'd much rather a game where the German AI convinced Japan to attack Russia in 1941 rather than the Allies. Or where Spain joins the Axis. Or where Russia DOW's Japan in 1940. Or where France went commie and left the Allies in the 1930's.

Not every game, for sure, but you as the human player you shouldn't be able to assume the AI will usually react exactly historical. That truely is the major weakness of the game - always having the gift of hindsight. I'd love to start the game up as the US and know that I could be at war with Japan at anytime - depending on their choices and how agressive I was with them - and not be 100% guaranteed of years of peaceful build up.

 

[The Balbinater]

That truely is the major weakness of the game - always having the gift of hindsight.

to me it's about what my decisions would have been as a leader of a country at the time, given the real world circumstances. if the AI does something kind of crazy, then the game suddenly is no longer "real world". the AI is already infamous for doing things no human would do, so if the events could at least be modified to accept a historical decision, then this would greatly help.

bal

 

[unmerged(7537)]

to me it's about what my decisions would have been as a leader of a country at the time, given the real world circumstances. if the AI does something kind of crazy, then the game suddenly is no longer "real world". the AI is already infamous for doing things no human would do, so if the events could at least be modified to accept a historical decision, then this would greatly help.

bal

If the decision makes sense for the situation, yes.

There's a fine line between too little and too much constraint.

 

[Raczynski]

The problem with ahistorical choices in HoI2 is that they thended to screw the game. I.E. Germany decided it doesn't want Danzig - no war. USA doesn't execute operation Torch - Vichy stays until the end of the game.

 

[Alexander Seil]

One of the most interesting games I ever had in HoI2 was as an Allied Romania. I ended up with a three-way war between USSR/*EAST GERMANY*, Italy/Portugal/Spain and the Allies in Soviet-occupied FRANCE.

EDIT: Oh, yes, I was saved by the USSR going to war with Germany, because I got into a war with Bulgaria (after Poland fell) that resulted in Hungary DOWing me and Germany joining in, triggering a firestorm in the Balkans (I was even at war with an Axis Yugoslavia for a few weeks, until there was a coup).

EDIT2: Anyway, the point is - how should this "historical" AI that you propose react to a situation where a human Romania attacks Bulgaria and joins the Allies?

 

[The Balbinater]

the

original poster was not proposing anything other then an option.

if the scenario screen with the options had a clickable option to make the AI make historical decisions this would be helpful imo. nobody would ever be forced to click it. if you like crazy ahistorical games, then so be it. don't click it...

bal

 

[blue emu]

I suggested in a different thread that the game start-up menu include a little check-box that you could (optionally) check, labelled "Force Historical Event Choices". The only effect of turning this option on would be that (with it turned on), the AI would ALWAYS choose action_a in events, as if it has a 100% assigned probability. So long as the game coders adopted a programming standard where the historical outcome was always assigned to action_a, this would result in the historical pre-war path being followed whenever you played a game with this option activated.

 

[unmerged(94346)]

I suggested in a different thread that the game start-up menu include a little check-box that you could (optionally) check, labelled "Force Historical Event Choices". The only effect of turning this option on would be that (with it turned on), the AI would ALWAYS choose action_a in events, as if it has a 100% assigned probability. So long as the game coders adopted a programming standard where the historical outcome was always assigned to action_a, this would result in the historical pre-war path being followed whenever you played a game with this option activated.

That's precisely what I was thinking but but I didn't know you'd already mentioned it. I didn't know how the option would be implemented but that sounds like a very effective way to achieve historical accuracy.

To others slurring the idea; you didn't read my first post properly; I said "option." I know sometimes I prefer to do things ahistorically but other times I do wish to to invasions of USSR in June 1941 etc. I suggested there be a choice which was flexible because it could be turned off/on like tech team takeover.

In that case, I second Blu Emu's idea started in a different thread.

 

[blue emu]

That's precisely what I was thinking but but I didn't know you'd already mentioned it.

The post I mentioned is here, from three days ago.

And here is a follow-up post on the same idea.

 

[unmerged(13008)]

...people play the game for different reasons. i personally want to know if my country could have won the war given the circumstances of the historical actions of other countries...

In my opinion it doens´t make sense to allow YOUR country to do something else while others have to stick with "historical choices".
You can´t really be proud of winning the war with France, not letting Germany break through while Germany was FORCED to attack on a given date, you KNEW beforehand. While Germany couldn´t ally with Italy, nor Spain because you don´t allow it by clicking a box. You can prepare yourself very well and beat artificial intelligence, that isn´t even allowed to react on your setup.

Yep, I think we really play games for different reasons.

 

[The Balbinater]

You can´t really be proud of winning the war with France, not letting Germany break through while Germany was FORCED to attack on a given date, you KNEW beforehand..

i don't play france. i play italy on VH/furious.

but if somebody wants to play france and see what they can do with that mess, with AI germany making historical choices, why not let them? i don't understand all this animosity to a proposed OPTION.

besides, it was no secret to the french that things were going to go bad with the germans eventually. marshal foch predicted it himself.

bal

 

[semaphore]

i don't understand all this animosity to a proposed OPTION.

This suggestion has came up several times, and each time opponents had the same motivation: waste of valuable programming resources on something that could be solved by reloading an auto-save.

 

[The Balbinater]

as

the emunater already said, it wouldn't be that difficult to implement...

bal

 

[TheDeadlyShoe]

All you'd need to do is add a flag to the 'historical' option in every event file and have the game check for it. Pretty straightforward.