Meme'd hard by the AI, WTT decisions and NF needs tweaking..
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Nonsense as in: Nazi Germany bringing back the Kaiser?
Kaiser, communist Japan, fascist USA and all the alt-focus trees are total nonsense, but I understand, some players don’t want to play ww2 but a completely fictional war where panzers are involved, because they like panzers. This is ok, I get it, my problem is when I can’t play historical because they didn’t set up the AI for it. So now we have 2 game modes that basically do the same thing.
I disagree - as I see it, the 2 modes are:
- "Historical Off" - nothing is explicitly ruled out and the whole thing can go crazy, but the AI is reacting to what other countries are doing
- "Historical On" - some of the wilder stuff will not happen (unless reacting, generally to changes made by the player) - again, the AI is reacting to what goes on around it
I believe the weighted averages for which choices to take in branching paths in the focus trees are different between the modes.
As has been pointed out by others on this forum numerous times, as soon as the player changes anything (with his/her knowledge of what actually happened and a grasp of the game rules), you cannot have the "real world timeline WW2" continue exactly as it is.
Even before you get to the weirder bits of the alt-history, there are plenty of branching points that mean trying to simulate an exact version of WW2 would lead to weird things happening (e.g. Allies invading Sicily in 1943 even if the Axis has helpfully covered the island in troops, because that's what history said; Japan attacking the US in Dec '41 even if it's losing in China and about to be kicked back off the mainland, because that's what history said; etc etc).
As a game, once you change the state, you are either going to get complaints that the AI is not doing what happened in real history (even though the changes you made may make the historical choice obviously wrong) or that the AI is being stupid and following railroaded history (when anybody can *obviously* see which choice should be made...).
Paradox can't win in this case.
Presumably, for those who desperately want to close off every variation from "original timeline", it would be possible to mod the focus trees to disable the offending nodes? (I know people hate the "Why don't you just mod it?" responses, but it does feel like this is a case where it's not possible to satisfy this subset of players without irrevocably changing the game for everyone else, at least at the moment)
The overall aim as I've understood it has always been to have an internally plausible experience, where it feels like the AI is reacting to the situation around it - I don't think we're quite there yet, there are still some very weird choices that get made around war declarations and alliances in particular, but those aren't driven purely by alt-history options being there, it's an underlying thing to iterate on and improve.
I assume the railroad enthusiasts who lament every ahistorical event in the game, when playing as the Axis, intentionally throw the game to produce the historical loss?
@pommiebastard i understand but let me ask you something: what if keep my game extremely historical and the AI still spoils everything. Who should I blame for it?
Why don’t you mod the ahistorical mode instead?
Yes, we want that. I want to invade Russia in 41 and being pushed back all the way down to Berlin in 45 and lose the game. Every single time.
We enjoy that as much as you enjoy a communist Haiti annexing USA and bollocks along this line.
Why don’t you mod the ahistorical mode instead?
Yes, we want that. I want to invade Russia in 41 and being pushed back all the way down to Berlin in 45 and lose the game. Every single time.
We enjoy that as much as you enjoy a communist Haiti annexing USA and bollocks along this line.
See, you were doing quite well until that ridiculous straw-man last line - nobody wants that, and I don't think anybody is seeing that.
If you're staying extremely close to history and it's gone totally ape-shit (as in doing something that makes no sense in the circumstances, not necessarily just being different from history but in a plausible way), then I'd be raising that as a bug if you think something honestly is failing, or in the suggestions forum if you think you can suggest a better balance of probabilities for a particular focus. Offer ways to improve it over time, PDS are atypically good in the games industry at post-launch support of their products.
I don't mod the ahistorical mode, as that's what the developers have allowed as enabled when they made the game - if they'd built a railroaded version, I would be looking for ahistorical mode mods to enable having a go at that when I wanted to. The overall design vision of the game has never been a railroad, though, so it's not like it should be a surprise that they allow for things to vary from history.
I love how people are now claiming that something labeled "Historical mode", which previously actually did a decent job of keeping the game proceeding along something resembling WWII, is intentionally not producing those results any more. Call me crazy, but if you're going to have a historical mode, it should not have even a 5% chance of silly meme stuff happening. People who want Franco-British unions and Communist Vichy France ruled by a black guy and Finland joining the axis during the winter war have the option of not using historical mode. Historical mode should not be doing even plausibly ahistorical stuff unless the player has interfered in such a way that makes the historical outcome impossible. Perhaps I'd be slightly more interested in ahistorical mode if paradox was capable of writing an alt-history path that wasn't silly (Communist Japan in 1936, Germany literally restarting WW1 in 1939) or indeed was capable of programming an AI that knew how to use its focus tree instead of picking focuses at random, but as it is, I just want historical mode to produce historical results.
Saying things like: mod it, post in the suggestions forum and the game is historical as it is right now means “I’m quite happy with alt history so I don’t care of you are saying”, isn’t it?
It really is, believe me.
I believe you! I hope you lose all the games you play as the historically defeated powers. Your play style is valid, just as mine is.
it’s so easy to understand. If you watch the stream you can see Daniel stating that history is not fun and all the devs immediately replay to who asks “is it possible to make USA Japanese? I want 6 different paths for Mexico” and never bother to explain why the historical has to be so disappointing.
And I cannot agree more. That’s why we have the possibility to turn the historical focus on/off, although one of these doesn’t work properly
I would be more inclined to think you agreed with me if you hadn't marked my post as Respectfully Disagree. Have you not just said, sincerely, that what I said in it was true?
Perversely, I do agree that in shifting the historical railroad to the new strategy system Paradox has made the AI overeager to abandon it. This should be fixed, and I expect it shall be eventually. But lets keep the context in mind, the scenario presented in this thread is one where the player abandoned all pretext of a historical outcome as soon as possible. One should not expect historical outcomes while returning the Kaiser in the 1930s. And one should not really expect historical outcomes when leading a defeated power to ahistorical victory.
Except that no nation ever "threw the game", they were beaten by superiority on the field.
If the AI was capable of pulling a comeback like the Soviets did, and made me actually lose fair and square as Germany, that would indeed make it for a quite interesting game.
Admittedly, the last patch has indeed come a long way into making the AI not the pushover it used to be, previously I had found the pre war part the most fun because of the whole production management (which no HoI had to this level), but since last week I've had tons of fun waging war as well.
Over are the days of just drawing a line and pressing play to win, and that makes me very happy, even if some people think that it's too micro intensive now (which disheartens me honestly).
Still, there are many improvements to be made to make the AI able to win the Eastern front against the player (or at least go toe to toe), but I'm sure the AI, and the game as a whole, will be something very different in a couple of years.
As a side note, I think fuel is also another aspect that would break it for the axis, as it was the biggest shortcoming (that they had no control over) the German war effort had to suffer through later on, and will make a fundamental addition to the game once it's actually there.
This post? The one that doesn’t mention at all your opinion about the historical accuracy? Yes and I still disagree with it.
You made your point clear on the next posts, and that’s when I totally agreed with you.
In a perfect world there would be no railroading, because the simulation would encapsulate the historical sequence of events and any alternatives in a logical manner. But this is not possible, due to the physical abilities of the computers, the technical abilities of the programmers, and even the available historical data (although we do know quite a bit about some very fine details, we will never know literally everything that happened between 1936 and 1945 and so the simulation would be incomplete). But if the demand is that historical events must always happen at the time dictated by history, regardless of context or reason, then yes, you do need to throw the game. If France's capitulation must take place according to history's script, then so should Germany's. And if the AI will not bring about the circumstances which caused it on its own, it stands to reason that the historically minded player ought to oblige them.
Well then I am a little confused as to how I earned your agreement, especially if you still disagree with my original post. I didn't think I was providing any new opinion.
To be serious, there is always a balance between realism and flexibility in any such game. You can't have 100% of both for two simple reasons: RNG and the player. A perfectly historical game would have to get rid of any randomness and take away player's freedom to do anything meaningful beyond watching. The game would also play exactly the same every time (because, you know, there was only one history). Otherwise, like @pommiebastard has said, your actions and pure luck would make many historical events impossible, unlikely or stupid. Remeber the butterfly effect? If Germany restored monarchy in the 1930s, world history would definitely change and an Anglo-French union might be the smallest of such changes.
So I don't see a point in complaining about historical mode in general. It can never be completely historical, no matter how hard PDX will try. And, for sure, you can't expect it to be historical if you don't play it historically. Discussing specific issues with it and better balance makes more sense, in my opinion.
So I don't see a point in complaining about historical mode in general. It can never be completely historical, no matter how hard PDX will try. And, for sure, you can't expect it to be historical if you don't play it historically. Discussing specific issues with it and better balance makes more sense, in my opinion.
No, when you have different situations than history making events unfold exactly like history is ahistorical.
Breaking causality is necessarily ahistorical. In a historical game, a different situation should consistently lead to a different outcome, contingent on the quality of the model.
That isn't a matter of opinion. Opinions don't alter physics.
All the alt-focuses should be locked in the historical mode, for both the player and the AI. I don’t want to win because I attack France trough Switzerland, I want to make a huge effort trying to not collapse on the eastern front before 1945. I want to have (ex) 100 divisions on the field when I actually need 150 and still being able to make an offensive (remember the Ardennes?). I want to gather all the few tank divisions left and push with a strategic purpose just to see everything failing because of the bad weather. I want to see the AI doing all the beautiful military operations that made us falling in love of ww2.
I don’t want to write history I want to play it.
@Dryhad this is explain my point pretty well. Again I disagreed with that particular post that had nothing to do with the discussion
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Again, what if I don’t change history AT ALL and I still have to face all the ahistorical events and decisions popping up?
Wouldn’t be better have all the alt history paths locked in the historical mode?