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HRose

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Aug 8, 2009
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HoI 2: Can declare war on anyone. It's a world war wargame, in fact.
HoI 3: Can declare war only after bringing down neutrality to 0, using domestic spies.
HoI 3 FTM: The game decides arbitrarily the way you play.

Imho, this progressive erosion of player's choice is BAD. Very bad. From the "game" perspective as well the simulationist one.

I understand these changes are made to force historical outcome, but they are badly conceived. Ideally what one wants is that if one runs an "hands-off" game then that game goes historically.

The fact is that this is a GAME and not a movie. If it was a movie then it would play "historically", meaning that it plays always the exact same way. The fact that this is a GAME, means that we have choice and can play things *differently*. As different as we decide. Removing choice is BAD. The AI should play historically as long pre-conditions are met. If they aren't then the AI should play adaptively to those specific changes that the player brought to the war.

It's the PLAYER with his choices that determines if the game goes historically or a-historically. Not a script that forces the player's choice.

Now, in HoI 3 the neutrality feature may have had a justification. But it was for BALANCE reasons, not historical ones. If one started the war much earlier then he'd gain an unfair advantage. So the "neutrality" could have been a (crappy) way to limit player's choice in the name of the game's balance.

The new changes instead seem simply about removing the player's choice without bringing ANYTHING useful to the game.

You got everything wrong: it's the REST OF THE WORLD that should play historically, and the game coded to do it. NOT MY OWN ACTIONS. Or I would watch a movie.

So, can we at least get a clear explanation of the new rules? What is affecting neutrality now? You can't tell me it's a "number of factors", I need to know specifically the rules of the game or it's a game that is unplayable.

Is there anything I can do specifically to affect neutrality?
Say, as Italy I want to declare war on Yugoslavia ASAP, what is the best pattern? Just prioritize spies on Yugoslavia and rise their threat?
Is that all I can do to accelerate the process?

I faithfully bought the expansion but it goes always the same way: buy HoI3. Get horribly frustrated and raging at the worst design choices. Go back playing HoI2.
 
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I think you're overreacting a little bit, this is a World War II simulator. If you want to play your own War, then just a quick noneutrality and you can do whatever you please.

However, if you want to play a tad more realistically, you use spies and with the time you've got, reorganize your troops on the border and prioritize the production and technology. Or, if all else fails, read a book for 2 minutes.
 
I got my neutrality to zero by May '36, okay, it was as germany, but still, raising threat in your biggest neighbour should do the trick, if I continue to raise French threat at the same Level Switzerland will be able to go to war against them by '39 which is just all kinds of messed up and wrong...
 
i did not do ANYTHING except replacing divisions and reorganise leaders. it was multiplayer. i didnt want to go down my neutrality, and UK was able to activate war eco in may 36, we all did NOTHING except japan and italy aligned to axis. so what happened? why did my threat go up and my neutrality go down?
 
i think there is a bug (due to be fixed in fridays patch i gather) that causes any "increase threat" spy missions to cause WAY to much threat too quickly - which in turn i think reduces neutrality

if someone can explain how things are supposed to work and what sort of strategies they use to either make declaring war easier or harder then it would be very helpful :)
 
I faithfully bought the expansion but it goes always the same way: buy HoI3. Get horribly frustrated and raging at the worst design choices. Go back playing HoI2.

LOL
You can think HOI3 as an Experimental program. No raging, no frustration no nothing...just experiments :)

AoD + DH + IC + Countless mod options = WiN
 
I kinda agree. The new system is making it annoying to play minor nations now. Let me expand on this by saying minor nations are meant to be tough to play as, but I should still be able to so what I want. I still think HOI2 had the better diplomacy and espionage system. There are flaws in both but HOI3 gave the player the freedom to do what they wanted as long as they are willing to deal with the consequences. Now the neutrality acts like a wall against consequence and freedom. I understand the reason for it but I just don't agree with it.

Players should be allowed to do their own thing while the rest of the game remains historical. The current system forces players to Major's only. You might have well as just cut out all the minors. I understand minors are meant to be tough to play but why should I have to wait till 1940 to DoW somebody outside of a faction and then wait another 4 years to do it again? The only real freedom left in the game is to play a major other than the UK or Germany and see what happens if you swap factions.

I read the just use noneutrality cheat but anyone who's used cheats before knows the problem with this. It feels hollow and depressing. I want to play a game they way it was meant to be played not to be forced to use cheats just to get what we originally thought we would get. The Diplomacy system in HOI2 was better because you could do what you wanted with it, but you were going to have to deal with the consequences. an example is dowing a nation and receiving a huge dissent increase by not having enough points in intervention. Another is that if your nations attacked too much eventually another nation would try to curb stomp you.

I don't know an easy answer to this problem faced and I doubt we'll see it until HOI4 or at all.
 
I read the just use noneutrality cheat but anyone who's used cheats before knows the problem with this. It feels hollow and depressing.

The problem is that it's unbalanced. HoI 2 is much better balanced than HoI 3 + cheat. At least before one had control after the initial delay but now it's just completely scripted.

I don't know an easy answer to this problem faced and I doubt we'll see it until HOI4 or at all.

HoI4, will be a game on console where you play a video with some QTE ;)

It's like Dragon's Lair, but about WWII!
 
@HRose and @Fire and Ash: I cannot agree more.
I don't have FtM so guys please correct me if I'm wrong. In SF I could both lower my neutrality and increase a threat of my opponent. Now I'm left with the second option only, plus I can hope for some scripted event lowering my neutrality to occur? For instance with SF playing as Poland I was able to DoW Germany after c. 16 months. Would I need twice as much now?
 
We don't know for sure yet as there seem to be bugs & still not given a good explanation by devs.

What you see right away is that you can no longer use domestic spies to lower neutrality. How neutrality goes up and down is a mystery and there's nothing in the interface that explains it or has a direct effect on it.
 
-Nations are made up of people, people who have their own desires, culture, history, societal cohesion, values, motivations, etc. With the end of the feudal system, governments could no longer be force the people to do anything the king/emperor/oligarchy wanted done; the people had to be manipulated and not all goals could be accomplished. Few governments have the capacity to motivate a nation into an unprovoked, conventional, conquering, subjugating, exploiting war and many historians can attest to the presence of a "right mix" of circumstances which allowed the governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan to lead their nations to do just that.
-Since it would be difficult and tedious to model this politicking into a strategy "war" game the abstraction is what you get instead. An improper game abstraction would be to permit you as a sovereign leader (elected or pseudo-elected) to arbitrarily mobilize any nation to war against any other nation for no reason other than "Germany and Japan are doing it". A system built on "I want to do what I want, when I want, with whatever nation I want) is so far from even coming close to the process for leading a nation to war that it's silly to even think about it that way (yes, that's what Hitler did, but can't you see that's the exception to the rule because of the circumstances which put him in power). You can't run Chile or India like Germany, the people of those nations would have never stood for it. A-historical shouldn't mean completely contrary to what was even remotely possible.
-This isn't Risk.
-Rules or game mechanics clarifications, yes, I like those too, especially in a single source, downloadable, "official" format. JMHO

The Marshal
 
Very good explanation Marshal. I however think that it was better if this whole component was modelled with more detail (since it was so important, just think about how difficult it was for America to actually join the war)
 
-Nations are made up of people, people who have their own desires, culture, history, societal cohesion, values, motivations, etc. With the end of the feudal system, governments could no longer be force the people to do anything the king/emperor/oligarchy wanted done; the people had to be manipulated and not all goals could be accomplished. Few governments have the capacity to motivate a nation into an unprovoked, conventional, conquering, subjugating, exploiting war and many historians can attest to the presence of a "right mix" of circumstances which allowed the governments of Germany, Italy, and Japan to lead their nations to do just that.
-Since it would be difficult and tedious to model this politicking into a strategy "war" game the abstraction is what you get instead. An improper game abstraction would be to permit you as a sovereign leader (elected or pseudo-elected) to arbitrarily mobilize any nation to war against any other nation for no reason other than "Germany and Japan are doing it". A system built on "I want to do what I want, when I want, with whatever nation I want) is so far from even coming close to the process for leading a nation to war that it's silly to even think about it that way (yes, that's what Hitler did, but can't you see that's the exception to the rule because of the circumstances which put him in power). You can't run Chile or India like Germany, the people of those nations would have never stood for it. A-historical shouldn't mean completely contrary to what was even remotely possible.
-This isn't Risk.
-Rules or game mechanics clarifications, yes, I like those too, especially in a single source, downloadable, "official" format. JMHO

The Marshal

Agreed for the most part. A-historical doesn't mean completely unhistorical. For instance just because a player wants to doesn't mean they can play Uruguay and be able to conquer the USA. I still believe the player should be given the choice to go to war though.

Also the period before the war begins is a great time to change ideology. There are events already in game that can change political parties and supports. In the HPP mod they've added events that give the player much more control of political parties through careful management. In HOI3 there are already events that effect a party's popularity and organisation. As Canada I've gotten the Fascist party elected. It's not exactly far fetched.
 
@ alex0809, I have no idea how it should be modeled and frankly there are people out there who are probably more creative than I am but a free-for-all system just doesn't meet the historical benchmark for a WWII game. It's possible in the future the mechanics will be enriched with more detail but I worry that I'll become so burdened with micro-ing everything but the military that I'd be more of an bureaucrat than a General. There has to be someplace in-between, I don't know where that territory is but I hope the game designer finds it. It's hard not to become OCD with this game. I do agree there are mechanics in the game I'd like to be able to manipulate more, I just don't know if I'd ever be 100% satisfied. I'll settle for moderately close enough.
 
@ Fire and Ash
The HPP is an excellent example of being able to play a WWII game and having the freedom to direct history in a different direction but still have some sort of realistic restraints on what might have been possible. Any more off course than the HPP and you get Risk.
 
TBH i think you can actually lower your neutrality faster. Just need to spend more leadership into spies and increase the threat of all your neighbors, that will lower your neutrality.