Race for Germany frustration

[Strobofeuercyberreich]

Hello there!

Speaking to you is a person who has played a couple dozen games as USSR now, most of which ended up capitulating Germany and puppeting it.

The achievement in the title wouldn't fire.

"It must be Luxembourg", I read online - "that pesky little dot on the west gets cored, so if the Allies liberate it you lose!"

Very well then, let's play again making sure that Luxembourg doesn't get liberated. Let's even play some games where we cap Germany before D-Day.
Nope, it's still "Available".

Let's play again then, another game where I spend hours building up and fighting, only for that piece of #@$! achievement not to fire.

Now, I understand that achievements are meant to be hard sometimes, but this is just silly. The main frustration is that the tracking is borked: it just won't tell me at what point I failed.

Could the tracking get fixed at least?

 

[Kuzma Minin]

Looking at the game files (nsb_on_actions), it looks like there are three conditions:
1) Democratic France must fall to Germany. This is the event triggered by the fall of Paris.
2) Germany must not lose control of any core state (except the two Polish states given by Danzig or war) to any country except the Soviets.
3) The Soviets must capitulate Germany.

 

[MattZed]

Hello there!

Speaking to you is a person who has played a couple dozen games as USSR now, most of which ended up capitulating Germany and puppeting it.

The achievement in the title wouldn't fire.

"It must be Luxembourg", I read online - "that pesky little dot on the west gets cored, so if the Allies liberate it you lose!"

Very well then, let's play again making sure that Luxembourg doesn't get liberated. Let's even play some games where we cap Germany before D-Day.
Nope, it's still "Available".

Let's play again then, another game where I spend hours building up and fighting, only for that piece of #@$! achievement not to fire.

Now, I understand that achievements are meant to be hard sometimes, but this is just silly. The main frustration is that the tracking is borked: it just won't tell me at what point I failed.

Could the tracking get fixed at least?

I think the achievement is bugged somehow. I have a game where I capitulated Germany, and I've explicitly checked the save to make sure the "someone else takes a core state of Germany" trigger never fired. Still don't have the achievement.

 

[Strobofeuercyberreich]

Looking at the game files (nsb_on_actions), it looks like there are three conditions:

1) Democratic France must fall to Germany. This is the event triggered by the fall of Paris.
2) Germany must not lose control of any core state (except the two Polish states given by Danzig or war) to any country except the Soviets.
3) The Soviets must capitulate Germany.

That's clear enough. The problem is that even though I'm doing all of this, the achievement is not fired or flagged as failed.

My main frustration here is that it's impossible to track.

I think the achievement is bugged somehow. I have a game where I capitulated Germany, and I've explicitly checked the save to make sure the "someone else takes a core state of Germany" trigger never fired. Still don't have the achievement.

How do you check the trigger?

 

[MattZed]

How do you check the trigger?

First, you need to be able to edit saves. You do this by going to Pardox Interactive/Hearts of Iron IV/settings.txt, and changing "save_as_binary=yes" to "save_as_binary=no". (This won't take effect on old saves unless you save them again, so you'll need to go back into the game and load/save for this to work.)

Then, you find your save and open it in a text edit. Now it's time to check for the triggers:

1. Search the save to make sure the flag "achievement_france_surrender" is set. (This happens when the event that can create Vichy fires off; that means French needs to surrender/almost surrender, be democratic, be in a faction with the UK, be at war with Fascist/Non-Aligned Germany, and not have any of its European territory controlled by a non-German non-Axis human player.)
2. Make sure the flag "GER_lost_core_state" is NOT set. (This happens when Germany loses control of a core territory to anyone but the USSR after achievement_france_surrender is set)

If these two conditions hold, you're eligible for the achievement when Germany capitulates. On Germany capitulation, you should get the flag "achievement_race_for_germany".

When I complain about a bug, it's because I have a save where the above two conditions hold, but when I capitulate Germany, I don't get the achievement. I've attached a backup of the save to demonstrate. (Haven't yet made a bug report in case I'm missing something.)

EDIT: Seems it was Luxembourg that was getting me. Loaded up the save again, focused on taking Luxembourg before Germany capitulated, then it worked this time. I guess captured countries get their territory back *before* the achievement fires.

 

[Voigt]

The first time I played Soviet in NSB I got that achievement quite easily. But I usually push around the Baltic coast, using the sea for easy encirclements and supply when taking a naval base, while rails are converting.

So after taking Danzig, then Stettin I take Berlin for factories, but then usually push further west to Hamburg and then "liberate" Denmark to get it myself in a peace conference. Then often enough I push over the Elbe into Netherlands, Belgium, Paris, Luxembourg and cut south to Switzerland. So I can fully encircle Germany core territory so Allies can't land, I can push from every northern direction, and I can freely take occupied France for myself, to puppet France and later Italy for myself.

Because of this I never really realized that cored Luxembourg is a problem if it gets released by capitulating Germany, since I usually already have it occupied myself before Germany capitulates towards me.

 

[Strobofeuercyberreich]

Then often enough I push over the Elbe into Netherlands, Belgium, Paris, Luxembourg and cut south to Switzerland.

That's what I also tried on my last attempt. Completely occupied benelux myself (even ungrouping a division just to stay in lux for good measure) before strolling down into France and squeezing Germany. Still, the little bastard didn't fire.

I know that people got it so it's probably luck or something, but it's definitely bugged and taking the same achievement over and over and over just because the game is too drunk to detect it most of the time is unnerving.

 

[Strobofeuercyberreich]

First, you need to be able to edit saves.

That sounds like something that would invalidate achis wouldn't it? What's stopping someone from just editing the save file, reopening the game and trollface.jpg?

 

[Voigt]

Usually there was a tool like Ironmelt that made Irongame saves editable. But this mean that the save game then was not elgiable for achievments anymore.

But Irongame is somewhat seperate from Achievments though, since you also can use Irongame with checksum changing mods. Still an Irongame game, just without achievments.

 

[MattZed]

That sounds like something that would invalidate achis wouldn't it? What's stopping someone from just editing the save file, reopening the game and trollface.jpg?

Having this setting doesn't stop achievements. I've had the setting enabled for years and still get achievements.

However, IF YOU ACTUALLY EDIT A SAVE, that save can't get achievements anymore because the checksum wouldn't match.

 

[twillie96]

Hello there!

Speaking to you is a person who has played a couple dozen games as USSR now, most of which ended up capitulating Germany and puppeting it.

The achievement in the title wouldn't fire.

"It must be Luxembourg", I read online - "that pesky little dot on the west gets cored, so if the Allies liberate it you lose!"

Very well then, let's play again making sure that Luxembourg doesn't get liberated. Let's even play some games where we cap Germany before D-Day.
Nope, it's still "Available".

Let's play again then, another game where I spend hours building up and fighting, only for that piece of #@$! achievement not to fire.

Now, I understand that achievements are meant to be hard sometimes, but this is just silly. The main frustration is that the tracking is borked: it just won't tell me at what point I failed.

Could the tracking get fixed at least?

Luxembourg could be a problem, but it does not care for a peace conference. You must make sure to capture it before capitualting Germany. In my game where I got it yesterday, Italy was still in the war and the achievement triggered on German Capitulation.