Strange lack of war goals

[Kovax]

Decided to run another Hungarian campaign, took most of the Balkan peninsula before joining Axis, and answered the call to arms when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Pushed an independent narrow front all the way to the outskirts of Stalingrad, and had the Caucasus mostly under control, when Germany surprisingly managed to take Moscow after sitting on the doorstep for 4 months. I realized at that point that the Soviets would most likely surrender as soon as I took Stalingrad. A brief check of existing war goals against the Soviets showed NONE PLACED.

I had to tag-switch to Germany and then to Finland to have Germany demand Western Russia and Finland to reclaim the "Soviet Claims on Finland". A month later, I tag-switched again to have Germany demand West-Central Russia, then moved troops into Stalingrad. Unfortunately, that unexpectedly left Russia with Eastern Poland. I probably should have had Germany use the historical "Bitter Peace" war goal, or even puppeted or annexed the entire Soviet Union myself for the sheer absurdity of it, but in most of my campaigns, if I don't physically occupy something, or at least the vast majority of it, I don't claim it.

I still find it strange that Germany didn't place a war goal even after Moscow was in their hands. I can picture a situation where Germany fails to place a war goal, Finland places their historical claim to regain lost territory, and the war suddenly ends with Germany wandering back in confusion to its old border in the middle of Poland: "Wait, we won, so why are we retreating?"

 

[marxianTJ]

I've seen this happen before too Kovax. An interesting thing is *I think* there's something that will trigger bitter peace in time. Like in the massive lag that comes with the USSR surrendering the game will suddenly realize that AI Germany forgot to place any war goals. But it's been too long since I've done any Axis minor games to remember what happened when I left it alone. I seem to vaguely recall that reloading the game changed that status too - like that if I played straight through it would lead to Germany never placing wargoals.

 

[Kovax]

I seem to vaguely recall that reloading the game changed that status too - like that if I played straight through it would lead to Germany never placing wargoals.

That's certainly not the case, since I played that campaign in small bits and pieces over about a 3-4 month span. Germany had a couple dozen reloads and close to 2 years of in-game time since declaring war on the Soviets to place a war goal, and at least a half dozen of those were with troops within two provinces of Moscow.

In one Italian game a couple years back, Germany didn't place a war goal on France, which was really hilarious when I captured Paris ahead of the Germans and all of France became part of Italy; Germany got NOTHING. Normally, the player has to declare a war goal to begin a war, so Germany should be required to make some claim in order to launch Barbarossa. France is another matter completely, because Germany normally declares war on Poland by event, not on France.

 

[marxianTJ]

That's very interesting that the condition survive multiple reloads. This game always brings something new lol.

 

[HFaber]

The scripting / AI of war goals is rather underwhelming. I noticed this in a recent GER campaign. After defeating SOV and splitting it into several smaller countries and also releasing puppets and annexed countries, none of them became puppets of the winning Axis majors (Japan, GER, ITA), some were even outright hostile to GER, who initiated the release of all these countries as independent states. I went in and manipulated the savegame to make them puppets. You'd imagine that if the Baltic states, Azerbadjian, Kazakhstan, etc were released from SOV they'd be happy and at least happily agree to an non-agression pact.

I don't know what has to be done to fix that, probably a lot of scripts / events should be written. That might cause more problems than it solves however. For purely personal play and immersion I see nothing wrong with tagging over or savegame editing.