Sandbox vs Determinism

[Alexander Seil]

It bothers me because what you're suggesting is that the constraints imposed by the supply system should be something like a house rule that a player could choose to violate. Or, somehow, that supply (or the political system) is optional for the players, but not the AI.

Again, Brazil cannot conquer the world in 1936. Logistical impossibility. Not to mention a political one. I don't get why that's so hard to accept. This isn't supposed to be Risk with nukes.

 

[wolfing]

for older games (CK2, EU4, and to some point V2) I'm all for sandbox, as the periods they cover are long so the deviation from what happened in our timeline has time to grow significantly. But in HoI4 that is not the case. Now, I'm not opposed to some randomness, like Germany not starting WW2, maybe there is some revolt against Hitler and France grabs the opportunity and *they* start WW2, stuff like that, but the major players are the major players. Maybe you are able to make a medium player into a major player or a minor player into a medium player, but within the constraints of realism.

 

[Axe99]

You guys simply didnt understand what i said. The AI wont do the things I as a player can do. It shouldnt bother other players if I can take Brazil and conquer South America because it has no bearing on your games, because if you choose not to do so it will never happen in your games. Im not talking about when a game is broken like HOI3 was at the beginning, Im talking about how people get generally upset with what other players choose to do in their own games, that is what i cannot understand. If i take Cuba and conquer the world why should anyone else care?

Part of the issue, I think, is that if there are a range of things the player can do that the AI can't, then there are game design issues at play which, in a perfect world, wouldn't be there. In my experience, it's impossible to eliminate all the cheesy tactics, but at the very least a game should attempt to as best as possible. For example, when playing HoI3 I don't want to keep at the back of my mind a list of things the game mechanics allow me to do, but the game can't handle - I'd much rather play the game to the best of my ability against the AI.

It's important to note that this is a completely different issue in terms of sandbox vs determinism, but rather a discussion of historical plausibility vs fantasy scenarios. Sandbox is that Brazil can do what it likes with its limited resources it has, and the world will respond accordingly (and, hopefully, that the world won't do the same thing every time even if Brazil does). Historical plausibility is that Brazil only has very limited resources with which to act (although, if supplemented by lend-lease from a Major, could be considerably more dangerous militarily), so when it takes those actions it can only expect to go so far.

For all the people that want to do crazy silly things with Brazil or Greece or what-have-you, in the case that PDS is successful in reducing the range of potential cheeses, there's always the 'very easy' mode (which is essentially what players are doing if they cheese in any event, it's just not called that), and if that's not enough, they can mod in their own adjustments to those nations to make it possible and play that mod - so it's not as if people that want to play fantasy scenarios can't if PDS take the historical plausibility route.

Edit: (Sorry, this just popped into my head) - importantly, if the game is built to be historically plausible it's far easier to mod in fantasy scenarios. On the other hand, if the game mechanics make plausibility difficult or impossible, it's very, very difficult to mod plausibility in. Given this, a historically plausible base game provides the greatest potential for pleasing the widest possible audience.

 

[21oliver]

Again, Brazil cannot conquer the world in 1936. Logistical impossibility. Not to mention a political one. I don't get why that's so hard to accept. This isn't supposed to be Risk with nukes.

But my point is this....The AI will never accomplish this, You will never attempt it if your so against it, why should it matter if other players make it happen. Does what happens in my games at my house or someone elses really matter to you that much? If so then we have other issues here

IMO the real issue is the exact opposite. The Majors in HOI3 were hard scripted and didnt react well to any non expected move by the player and the minor nations basically just sit there. To me PI has made HOI3 a huge contradiction. They allow you to veer from history and yet the game cannot handle it, they hard script the game so it cannot react to you taking the game off the rails a bit. Just because things didnt happen in WW2 doesnt mean there wasnt a chance they could. They already have crossed this line by allowing Nat Spain and Turkey to join factions much easier then before and with the random start date for the Spanish Civil War and the 10% chance the czechs will fight. who is to say a Balkan war cant break out if the conditions are right? There were several wars during the period before/during/after WW2 in the Americas and no it didnt lead to US intervention (The Monroe doctrine is poorly portrayed in HOI3). Everyone is so used to Vichy France but whose to say that they didnt simply try a dunkirk and get off the mainland and continue the fight. Im sure back then no one dreamed of a puppet state being formed.

The game / AI should allow for chance deviations from history if circumstances are met and a random determination is made, as long as they make sense. The player then on their own has the ability to exploit the game in all their silliness if they desire on their own.

 

[Alexander Seil]

But my point is this....The AI will never accomplish this, You will never attempt it if your so against it, why should it matter if other players make it happen. Does what happens in my games at my house or someone elses really matter to you that much? If so then we have other issues here

You absolutely refuse to argue the details and keep hammering on this "who will do what." I don't care. What enables them to do it? How can Brazil invade Tibet if the supply, production and politics systems are well-made?

Though, I will say one thing about "AI never accomplishing this." This, to me, indicates an AI scripted to avoid known exploits. However, an AI that doesn't use viable exploits is a stupid AI that needs to l2p. The developers' job is to make the best AI they can, and game systems with the fewest exploits they can.

EDIT: As I'm enjoying some flight sims nowadays - if HoI were a flight simulator, alternate history would be like using aircraft in flight regimes that no one in their sane mind attempts in real life, mostly because they're almost certain death. That's the point of a game. What you're suggesting, however, is strapping afterburning jet engines to every prop plane and scripting the AI never to touch the big red button. This is not the point of a game, unless it's Garry's Mod.

 

[21oliver]

The player will always always be able to exploit the game, thats just the nature of the business. Also for every player that wants to play historical there is an equal number that want to play total sandbox, we have seen that on these forums in recent years and with the influx of new players to the game. PI will never totally eliminate these options, in fact from what i read this version will be more sandbox then the past. I think your fears are unfounded really. The initial version of HOI3 had alot of issues, not intentionally and many were fixed or attempted to be fixed. Except for an occasional blip it seems to me the AI always plays the game as can be expected, so the only issue is what the player does. This will never be a perfect game, its a small company with minimal resources trying to make a game that appeals to a broad range of player styles. It will be entertaining anything more is a bonus.

 

[Alexander Seil]

For the nth time. I'm not saying anyone has to play historically. My first play-through will probably be an Axis South Africa, the same I did in HoI2 to learn the ropes. What I'm saying is that calling the "I'm now PLAYING AHISTORICALLY Lol" card should not be like a cheat code that suddenly sweeps away all restrictions of common sense.

 

[FOARP]

for older games (CK2, EU4, and to some point V2) I'm all for sandbox, as the periods they cover are long so the deviation from what happened in our timeline has time to grow significantly. But in HoI4 that is not the case. Now, I'm not opposed to some randomness, like Germany not starting WW2, maybe there is some revolt against Hitler and France grabs the opportunity and *they* start WW2, stuff like that, but the major players are the major players. Maybe you are able to make a medium player into a major player or a minor player into a medium player, but within the constraints of realism.

To reiterate: Sandbox =\= randomness. Sandbox is the human player doing as they like within the confines of what is possible, and the AI then making realistic decisions based on the prevailing circumstances in a fashion similar to a player roleplaying that country's leader. Randomness is the AI making decisions regardless of whether they make sense in the context of who it is playing as and what its circumstances are.

I think a lot of the people who oppose sandbox do so out of a misunderstanding of what it actually is.

 

[joe9594]

EDIT: As I'm enjoying some flight sims nowadays - if HoI were a flight simulator, alternate history would be like using aircraft in flight regimes that no one in their sane mind attempts in real life, mostly because they're almost certain death.

That is stupid. Saying that if people had acted any other way it would have been like directly contravening the manual of an aircraft?!? Really?!?. you dont think there is any way that people could have done other things and had the war turn out better for them. For example I feel the war would probably have gone a lot better for germany if they used more peacefuleconomicdevelopment-krieg than blitzkrieg.
Saying that the game should punish you by massively increasing the difficulty if you try to do something differently is absurd. The difficulty should change depending on the decision you make. That is rather the point of a grand strategy game.

 

[Alexander Seil]

That is stupid. Saying that if people had acted any other way it would have been like directly contravening the manual of an aircraft?!? Really?!?. you dont think there is any way that people could have done other things and had the war turn out better for them. For example I feel the war would probably have gone a lot better for germany if they used more peacefuleconomicdevelopment-krieg than blitzkrieg.
Saying that the game should punish you by massively increasing the difficulty if you try to do something differently is absurd. The difficulty should change depending on the decision you make. That is rather the point of a grand strategy game.

That would, indeed, be absurd

 

[Denkt]

Well I think that in HOI4 you can "potentially" do an invasion of Tibet as Brazil however how possible it will can be guessed because you need to do all this:

Build up a large stockpile of military equipment which will be hard with Brazils 5 military factories.
That mean you need to build more military factories.
However you will also need to build convoys and transports for the invasion. But with only 2 dockyards production of ships will be slow so you need to build more dockyards which means less military factories.

Then you need to develop an mountain division for which you will need land experience which in turn you need to do field training to do costing you alot of equipment setting you back.
Then you also need to do research with only one tech slot but if you focus only on infantry you can probably do decent in that regard.

To do invasion you need a friendly country in the area, improving relations will cost a decent amount of political points. You also need a great deal of points to get your war against Tebet. Then you need to conscript your population to get the manpower needed for the invasion.

Then you eventually win the war, losing millions of manpower.
But everyone knows that you sent most part of your army to Tebet they are not happy that you attacked Tebet so they decleare war. As you did not leave much for defence they defeat you with little trouble and in the end annex you.

 

[FOARP]

Well I think that in HOI4 you can "potentially" do an invasion of Tibet as Brazil however how possible it will can be guessed because you need to do all this:

Build up a large stockpile of military equipment which will be hard with Brazils 5 military factories.
That mean you need to build more military factories.
However you will also need to build convoys and transports for the invasion. But with only 2 dockyards production of ships will be slow so you need to build more dockyards which means less military factories.

Then you need to develop an mountain division for which you will need land experience which in turn you need to do field training to do costing you alot of equipment setting you back.
Then you also need to do research with only one tech slot but if you focus only on infantry you can probably do decent in that regard.

To do invasion you need a friendly country in the area, improving relations will cost a decent amount of political points. You also need a great deal of points to get your war against Tebet. Then you need to conscript your population to get the manpower needed for the invasion.

Then you eventually win the war, losing millions of manpower.
But everyone knows that you sent most part of your army to Tebet they are not happy that you attacked Tebet so they decleare war. As you did not leave much for defence they defeat you with little trouble and in the end annex you.

Largely agree, but the military output of Brazil, a country which produced zero major weapons systems for land warfare during the period, and (at most) only small amounts of antiquated small arms and artillery, should be much less than 5 military factories. 1 military factory is a more appropriate number, at least as a starting figure - and the same goes for every other minor which did not produce tanks and military aircraft in significant numbers.

Really, most of the world should have either 1 or 0 military and naval factories at the start.

 

[wolfing]

To reiterate: Sandbox =\= randomness. Sandbox is the human player doing as they like within the confines of what is possible, and the AI then making realistic decisions based on the prevailing circumstances in a fashion similar to a player roleplaying that country's leader. Randomness is the AI making decisions regardless of whether they make sense in the context of who it is playing as and what its circumstances are.

I think a lot of the people who oppose sandbox do so out of a misunderstanding of what it actually is.

I think I didn't explain myself well. When I said 'randomness' I wasn't talking about in-game RNG. I was talking about history randomness, meaning things deviating from what happened in our timeline. I'm ok with that as long as it's realistically possible. In CK2 and EU4 you can deviate a lot from history as the covered periods are very long, less so in V2, but in HoI4, covering only a decade or so, game shouldn't deviate too much.

 

[21oliver]

The thing is when you take the game off the rails we cant use history as a guide because you are now playing in the world of make believe. Remember in how short a period Hitler turned around Germany? Whose to say it couldnt have been done in another nation under the right circumstances? Take the exact same Hitler and put him in charge of Brazil in the early to mid 30s and they would have been very scary to deal with for their neighbors im sure. Its hard to say what could or couldnt have happened unless if the subject is something way way out there. In the mid 1930s many nations used biplanes, a decade later rockets and nukes were used. Possibly the most advancement in technology in a single decade in history.

 

[LTPugh]

However, most of those changes came about only because of how WWII worked out and were from the major powers, the USA and USSR for the most part along with the UK.

Your example of Brazil is spurious, because it had no existing heavy infrastructure like Germany did, it was mainly focused on agriculture for export. Even before WWI they'd had to buy ships for GB and not build their own. The situation in Germany only worked out like it did because of pre-existing conditions that happened nowhere else in the world.

 

[Kovax]

If Hitler increased Germany's military production by 200%, at the expense of other aspects of the economy, that's scary. If a Hitler-equivalent increased Brazil's military production by 200%, who would notice, aside from its smaller neighbors? Minor countries should be able to achieve limited goals, not be forced to just sit there until some larger country decides to steamroll them. On the other hand, if garrison requirements, supply costs, and other "realistic" limitations make it difficult or impossible to do some things successfully, or have negative secondary implications, that's a positive. The game should allow you to try things which are "within reason", but eliminate absurd exploits, like placing wargoals to annex countries when you didn't commit a single division to the effort or occupy a square inch of ground.

I don't think that a lot of the industrialized nations in Europe should be limited to 1 factory, because a lot of them did produce infantry equipment, artillery, and small numbers of armored cars, aircraft, or even a few tanks in some cases. I don't know what GER is getting, to make a reasonable guess as to what other countries should have in comparison, but if the smaller industrialized nations like Czechoslovakia, Netherlands, Hungary, Romania, or Sweden are getting 1 factory, then there's no point in playing them, because they can't even field what they did historically, and are merely "speedbumps" in the game. If "historical" means "impossible to achieve as much as they actually did", then I want no part of it. If there's no way to achieve anything, why bother to play the game, or why not just set it all up on AI control and watch the "WWII movie" unfold the same way every time.

 

[Peekee]

So there are three/four different things here :

1. What is a player allowed to do out side of historical context?
2. How succesful would a player be if doing things out side of historical context?
3. How well will the AI be able cope with non-historical situations?
4. (Related to #3) Will the AI on its own accord do something non-historical

Ideally my answers would be something like :

1. Easy to do minor things, but increasingly more difficult as things get bigger. E.g. Germany not building submarines : easy. Germany taking France into an Alliance and attacking Italy together : Pretty much impossible.
2. Obviously you want things to have some historical base in reality. However, a good human player on this type of game is always going to be much better than an AI player. So it is only reasonable that a good human player could do things that historically would actually be impossible. If every country was played by an equally skilled human player who was not biased to doing anything weird then hopefully things would actually remain fairly historically plausible.
3. Hopefully well but obviously again it is not going to be able to cope as well as a (good) human player would.
4. Hopefully it would stick close to history but on the other hand be smart enough about how to cope with non-historical situations in a realistic way.

So do I think IRL that Brazil could go on a rampaging conquest? No. Do I think that in HoI4 it is reasonable that a good player could take Brazil and go on a rampaging conquest? Yes. However, there is obviously a scale even to that some of which might be governed by hard game situation and game logic and some by the AI's ability to deal with non-historical situations.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

Drawing on Peekee's four-fold division of the question, I think allowing the a.i. to behave in a significant way outside of what most people would consider historical plausibility, for example by having Brazil begin conquering South America, would be looked on unfavorably by the majority of the community. I suspect that for most people, the extent of what they would want frmo the from the a.I. would be that it chooses between two or more viable strategic alternatives, such as the Germans focusing Barbarossa more in the south, or the Japanese forces making a more concentrated push against Australia once the war begins. Stuff like that.

 

[FOARP]

I think I didn't explain myself well. When I said 'randomness' I wasn't talking about in-game RNG. I was talking about history randomness, meaning things deviating from what happened in our timeline. I'm ok with that as long as it's realistically possible. In CK2 and EU4 you can deviate a lot from history as the covered periods are very long, less so in V2, but in HoI4, covering only a decade or so, game shouldn't deviate too much.

I have to disagree there a bit: yes, you should not get too many more entirely new states coming into being that historically did, or too many more civil wars breaking out, but the basic fact of the game is that it centres on one of the greatest conflicts that every happened which would have to a radically different world had it turn out differently. Different civil wars should break out, different campaigns should be fought, different countries should join different sides: the gold standard is not what happened historically, it is what plausibly could have happened.

 

[safe-keeper]

Compare it to a car racing game.

Should I be allowed to drive my car off the track? Sure!
Should I be allowed to just hold my accelerator down and never brake before turns? Of course!
Should I be allowed to keep driving, without pit stops, until my car runs out of fuel? Absolutely!

But here's the big question: if I do, should these actions have consequences?
Yes.

If I go off the track, my car should be slowed down or skid on the grass or sand, or crash into the tires stacked as a barricade. If I never brake, momentum should prevent me from making tight turns. If I run out of fuel, my engine should go out and friction and air resistance should brake my car.

Of course you should be able to try wild things. But these things should be within reason, and have reasonable consequences, otherwise you're playing Big Rigs. Face it, conquering the world as Haiti was the HOI3 equivalent of winning a race by glitching through collision meshes where the other cars had to stay on the track, or driving back and forthover the finishing line until the game thought you had completed three laps. Fun? Apparently some players got something out of it somehow; but I'd rather there were proper mechanics and obstacles in place.