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Depends on the country - I believe Germany is the main decider of whether or not things stay historical for the AI - going Oppose Hitler will dictate if France switches tact. I don't know about the other countries though
Choosing ahistorical focuses does not invalidate the check box.
But if other country focuses depend on your historical choices, it could really throw things off. Furthermore, the AI has a small chance to make ahistorical decisions for things like the German demand for Danzig and the Munich chain.
Historical focuses work, but a "historical playthrough" is tricky to achieve because:
Players need to play historical too.
Things need to pan out operationally the same - so China needs to bog down Japan (often but not always), the Soviet Union needs to bog down Germany (this is tricky - at the moment, usually GER makes no or little progress and loses, or makes decent progress and then is never stopped), at the same time. This is super-tricky, as while the mechanics in HoI4 are good (best for a WW2 grand strategy game imo), getting them good enough to match WW2 results reliably is super-tough, particularly as the random element (some of the results in WW2 could easily have gone the other way but for [insert relevant factor here]) is hardly something we want to control for in-game.
Build decisions need to be similar enough to support operational results. This is also something that's very difficult for the game to match, as it's both tough to script, and operational divergences flow through into bulding divergences.
Last time I played historical, there were some quirks in the NF timing that meant Japan sometimes attacked in the Pacific a bit earlier than usual. There are probably a few other rough edges that could do with sanding down, given the complexity of the game.
That said, if I play historically, I usually get a pretty good, historically-feeling experience at the broad-brush level, as long as I play historically too. It doesn't match WW2 blow-for-blow, but due to all of the reasons above, this is understandable (the probability that everything that happened historically would pan out historically isn't 100% by any stretch, and it's the same in-game).
Choosing ahistorical focuses does not invalidate the check box.
But if other country focuses depend on your historical choices, it could really throw things off. Furthermore, the AI has a small chance to make ahistorical decisions for things like the German demand for Danzig and the Munich chain.
Actually, it does depend a little - the historical focus options are set out in files which have "abort" clauses if key ahistorical choices are taken - example in spoiler below (important bit is down the bottom, but the top bit left in for context - where if a player chooses "oppose Hitler", ENG doesn't play historical any more).
In terms of the random chances, I don't think they kick in while historical focuses are in play, but only after they've been disabled (either by player choice, or not ticking the box at game start), but I could well be wrong.
[/code]
ENG_historical_plan = {
name = "United Kingdom historical plan"
desc = "Historical behavior for United Kingdom"
enable = {
original_tag = ENG
OR = {
AND = {
is_historical_focus_on = yes
OR = {
not = { has_dlc = "Man the Guns" }
has_game_rule = {
rule = ENG_ai_behavior
option = DEFAULT
}
}
}
has_country_flag = ENG_AI_DEMOCRATIC_HISTORICAL
has_game_rule = {
rule = ENG_ai_behavior
option = DEMOCRATIC_HISTORICAL
}
}
}
abort = {
GER = {
has_completed_focus = GER_oppose_hitler
}
}
[/code]
In terms of the random chances, I don't think they kick in while historical focuses are in play, but only after they've been disabled (either by player choice, or not ticking the box at game start), but I could well be wrong.
In MP, we've literally seen Poland cave on Danzig after Germany deployed the focus. We've also seen the Finns cave into Soviet demands for Karelia.
In the case of Danzig, it's a minor inconvience, since Germany can justify manually to get the war. In the case of the Finns, it's a big deal, because in a historical MP playthrough, the Soviets expect a war with Finland to help them remove the effects of the Purge, which can't happen if they don't get a war with Finland. And manual justification takes a long damn time with the Soviets in this case.
We actually modded AI acceptance in these (and a few other) cases to 100% acceptance since it would cause problems with our house rules and the flow of the MP game.
Are they focuses though, or the events that flow from focuses? Iirc (and I could be wrong - I'm sorry if I'm being a silly blighter, and please metaphorically tar and feather me if I'm off ) that quite a few of the events that flow from focuses aren't scripted to respect the historical focuses option. I like the sound of how you've modded it
Are they focuses though, or the events that flow from focuses? Iirc (and I could be wrong - I'm sorry if I'm being a silly blighter, and please metaphorically tar and feather me if I'm off ) that quite a few of the events that flow from focuses aren't scripted to respect the historical focuses option. I like the sound of how you've modded it
It's the events coming from the focuses, not the focuses themselves.
I may have worded it poorly. Let's try it again:
The AI gets acceptance events when certain NFs are fired. In vanilla, last I checked, the AI, even with historical focuses on, sometimes gets a small chance to reject the historical outcome. This also applies to the "Soviets demand stuff from their neighbors" events that the Baltic states, Finland, and Romania get when the Soviets start their justification with claims on them after the MR Pact fires or the Soviets complete Claims on the Baltic focus.
We modded the acceptance events so that the AI always accepts to prevent ahistorical weirdness, and, in the case of Romania, an early war that let's the Soviets annex Romania in violation of our rules.
If you really want as close to purely historical as you can get, there are certain mods that are pretty much set up on rails to be historical. Their AI doesn't even work correctly if you leave the historical path; i.e. play it on rails, or it's not really supported by the mod author.
There are so many key historical events missing from the game that a historical run is not possible. Mods cannot solve all of these issues either since many of them tie directly to hardcoded mechanics.
E.g. you won't ever see a realistic fuel & supply-driven Pacific island hopping campaign in the game, mods or no mods, not without PDX radically reworking the way supply and infrastructure works, among other things.
Actually, it does depend a little - the historical focus options are set out in files which have "abort" clauses if key ahistorical choices are taken - example in spoiler below (important bit is down the bottom, but the top bit left in for context - where if a player chooses "oppose Hitler", ENG doesn't play historical any more).
From what I've seen the abort clauses trigger only on default settings. You can railroad the AI to pick historical focuses no matter what by specifying their focus path as the historical one.
The AI gets acceptance events when certain NFs are fired. In vanilla, last I checked, the AI, even with historical focuses on, sometimes gets a small chance to reject the historical outcome. This also applies to the "Soviets demand stuff from their neighbors" events that the Baltic states, Finland, and Romania get when the Soviets start their justification with claims on them after the MR Pact fires or the Soviets complete Claims on the Baltic focus.
We modded the acceptance events so that the AI always accepts to prevent ahistorical weirdness, and, in the case of Romania, an early war that let's the Soviets annex Romania in violation of our rules.
From what I've seen the abort clauses trigger only on default settings. You can railroad the AI to pick historical focuses no matter what by specifying their focus path as the historical one.
Aye, thanks for mentioning I was only talking about the "tick historical focuses" checkbox, not setting the paths to historical through the game rules - but this could well be a good thing for the OP to know.
