Tech teams needed - more balance please

[unmerged(35913)]

A few comment about tech teams, maybe other people made them already but just in case...

- Tech teams of France are outrageously underrated. They have one 6, two 5 I think, and all the rest 4 and below. I the same time USA and Germany hardly have one tech team under 7.

I don't see the point of giving the impression that France lived at the stone age in 1936, because it's not necessary to cripple french tech teams to recreate the defeat of 1940 : the semi-infirmity of strategists (Gamelin level 1) is enough to ensure that land doctrines will lag behind. All the other crippling merely frustrates the French player during the Cold War...

EDIT : I think especially of industrial, chemical an fondamental research teams - all fields that would not prevent the 1940 defeat. A world-reknown scientist, Nobel prize winner like Louis de Broglie is level 6, OK, why not. But every single obscure, run-of-the-mill american engineer, admiral or general is level 9. That's just frustrating...

- Please give more than one tech team to Tibet, even if they are merely level 1. Just for the fun. Please. Let me hope I can develop my Tibetan IC past 20 and have a second slot

I don't know, like, Jokhang Monastery, skill 1, traits meditation and tactical level harmony

 

[Myth]

granted, the French teams are underrated. but you're totally overrating the American teams.

I the same time USA and Germany hardly have one tech team under 7.

I count four, whereas therea are only 2 American skill 9s.

But every single obscure, run-of-the-mill american engineer, admiral or general is level 9

hardly. the highest single person teams the USA has are Oppenheimer (9), Bohr (8), Nimitz (8). they're (a) hardly obscure and (b) only one is a level 9. the rest are 7 or 6.

hyperbole gets you nowhere

and anyway, what would you place the French teams at, skill-level wise?

finally, I'll end by saying something that's been said many times--the fact that the rest of the Allies share blueprints (and are quite willing to sell them to you too) means a lot more than a couple skill levels. I've taken advantage of this and by the time war started, France's techs were behind Britain's in only some places, equal in most others and ahead in some. Germany does not have this advantage, nor does the USA.

 

[unmerged(35913)]

hyperbole gets you nowhere

and anyway, what would you place the French teams at, skill-level wise?

finally, I'll end by saying something that's been said many times--the fact that the rest of the Allies share blueprints (and are quite willing to sell them to you too) means a lot more than a couple skill levels. I've taken advantage of this and by the time war started, France's techs were behind Britain's in only some places, equal in most others and ahead in some. Germany does not have this advantage, nor does the USA.

Agreed for the hyperbole : interpret that as frustration

I am not asking for a revolution - plus I usually do quite good in my games as France, with sharing blueprints. I just think that it wouldn't be scandalous if, for example, Louis de Broglie and Saint-Gobain each had a couple more levels. Maybe Renault or Panhard also, from 5 to 7, since french tanks were not so crap for the time. When I see Saint-Gobain at 3 and IG Farben at 8 or 9 (can't remember) I develop an inferiority complex.

And I'm sure Paradox doesn't want their gamers to requier psychological attention after use of their games.

PS. Is it me or has my joke about Drepung monastery in Tibet disappeared ?

 

[unmerged(59635)]

I agree about the French teams. Isn't Curie only level 6?they made some of the most major advances in nuclear physics, while Heisenburg thought it would take tons of Uranium to complete a bomb even at the end of the war. In fact, he barely worked on the project. The game does give advantages to some countries technologically. I mean what fun is it if you have almost no chance to produce The Bomb as Germany though?

 

[unmerged(52507)]

The skill levels simulate more than just the expertise of the science bloke. They also factor in the advantages of the industrial complex behind them. This is above and beyond the visible IC etc.

 

[Ex Mudder]

The main problem with giving France higher level tech teams is that high skill temas will be used to research everything. Norfolk, Ford and a few others were nerfed a level to keep them from being uber level 9 researchers. Bascially, if you increase them by 1 for a few, you'll have to increase the numbers for all or the research will fall out of whack.

Fire up the DD editor and start playing around with the numbers. I know from trying to mod US tech teams that all sorts of strange things can happen to balance, and I was mainly working on adding specialties, not changing numbers.

Louis de Broglie is already a 7 with 2 specializations, and the Curies are a 6 with all 4 specializations. de Broglie looks more like a mathemetician (encryption / decryption) and a back up nuclear physicist. The problem with Louis de Broglie as it is is that he is second best at 8 doctrine techs, just behind De Gaulle. If he was higher, he'd be better than De Gaulle at doctrines. If the Curies were higher, they'd be better at decryption than de Broglie, rendering him useless, and better at 9 doctrines than De Gaulle.

De Gaulle actually the best at Computers, simply because he is skill 7 and has Management. Didn't France have any computer geeks in the '30s?

I have no idea why Saint-Gobain is there, or why it's a 2. Even at skill 5 it's useless. At 6 it's second after the Curies to three computer techs. At 7 it starts doing doctrines. Care to clue me in as to what it did - and how good it was?

I'd be all in favor of giving France good Tank teams, so the allies lose them in 1940. But for some reason, the programmers game SOUMA and Schnieder dibs on tanks, not Renault. Renault is the Henry Ford Equivelent - construction, machine tools, and Assembly Line. At skill 6 they start doing Doctrines ahead of De Gaulle.

At skill 6, SOUMA does everything from doctrines to aircraft. Schneider at 5 renders FAMF and SOUMA redundant.

Like I said at the beginning, you'd end up increasing the numbers of all French tech teams by 1 to keep the balance between teams constant. The only exception I found was Saint-Goban, which can be boosted to 6 without it changing much.

I can only assume that such a move would over-power France somehow in hands off AI games, or hands on human player France vs AI Germany.

 

[Myth]

I think of the specializations as a team's 'skill' and its level as a function of its funding and influence. if this were the case, the French teams are pretty skilled (their tank teams, for example, have all the armor specializations, iirc, whereas neither Krupp nor Porsche do). however, in France they were quite sick of WW1 and didn't really fund military research and, perhaps, they were also not so influential in the government, hence the lower levels. however, what would be needed in this case is a dynamic system for tech teams, such that if a pacificist government gets succeeded by a militarist government the levels of the teams rise (showing increase of funding+influence) and vice versa.

 

[unmerged(35913)]

The main problem with giving France higher level tech teams is that high skill temas will be used to research everything.
(...)

Hmm, I didn't see the problem that way. I had in mind that the specializations were much more important than the skill level, so I'm surprised that, say, Renault or de Brolie could do doctrines if they had slightly higher level, as they have almost nothing relevant about doctrines. But I admit I didn't do the math behind that...

On the other hand, i think it would add a nice touch of "roleplay" to the game to have french tech teams very good in some domains (tanks or nuclear maybe ?) so that the Allied human player would really grieve the loss of France in 1940, and try to do something before it happens during the battle of France.

 

[Solon]

Hmm, I didn't see the problem that way. I had in mind that the specializations were much more important than the skill level, so I'm surprised that, say, Renault or de Brolie could do doctrines if they had slightly higher level, as they have almost nothing relevant about doctrines. But I admit I didn't do the math behind that...

Out at WIKI, as I'm sure you know http://hoi2.nsen.ch/wiki/index.php/Research, they discuss the time required to complete research in great detail. You are correct in saying that the speciality is more important in general, as it halves the time required for that element of the research.

However, when the speciality is not part of the Tech Teams expertise, then the Tech Team's level is critical to determining the length of time required to research an element, and a high-level Tech Team can reduce the amount of time required by each element by almost one/third.

Thus, what I think Ex Mudder is saying is that when you have a difficult Technology to research, and the person or team "in the correct field" has only a couple of the relevant elements, then it may actually be faster to hand the whole project over to a Tech Team that has very high research numbers to complete the whole job.

In this way, were some of France's Tech Teams to be increased dramatically in skill level, then a whole number of France's lesser Teams could just be ignored or dismissed altogether, and this too would affect the "flavor" that you so enjoy. The only way to avoid this would be to raise ALL French Tech Teams by some "across-the-board" skill number--and then you get into the issue of play balance between the nations.

I can understand the wish to maximise one's favored country's features, and you might mod a team or two for fun, but I submit that the problems of the Republic were so deeply entrenched throughout their politics & society, that nothing was going to turn the tide significantly (other than appointing you Le Roi)!!

Solon

 

[unmerged(52507)]

I think that French teams are about right. We all want to research faster, but you don't want to win too quickly with France.

 

[unmerged(35913)]

I think that French teams are about right. We all want to research faster, but you don't want to win too quickly with France.

The idea is that France starts with such an industrial disadvantage (IC wise) that faster reserch until 1939 wouldn't change many things for the battle of France - apart doctrines (and for that, the really, really crap doctrine specialists make sure that doctrines will lag behind, no matter what).

The drastical underrating of French research teams mainly has impact on the long term, after the war, at the moment when France was historically trying to regain his "major power" status. It can be great fun to play the independant France between the 2 blocks, but sadly crapped research spoils the fun a little bit.

That's why I find it unnecessary. I am not being chauvinistic or anything, I just find that such a blatant underrating is slightly ridiculous, and i don't want that great game to be slightly ridiculous, that's all.

 

[unmerged(52507)]

Oh, yeah that seems a fair point.

 

[Solon]

Well we are off to DD land here, and in that I agree that your objection there has some validity.

Now France had been fought over and needed some rebuilding in the immediate post war era, but you might consider creating an "Event" that fires sometime appropriate, like mid-1947 as the Marshall plan kicks-in to up-rate the French industrial Tech Teams?

Solon

 

[Ex Mudder]

Well we are off to DD land here, and in that I agree that your objection there has some validity.

Now France had been fought over and needed some rebuilding in the immediate post war era, but you might consider creating an "Event" that fires sometime appropriate, like mid-1947 as the Marshall plan kicks-in to up-rate the French industrial Tech Teams?

Solon

I'm not sure how to play balance it, but having some good French tech teams that only arrive after France is liberated by the allies might make sense. Problem is, how long did it take for French research to reach pre-war levels after WWII? Was their research infrastructure rebuilt by 1950?

Sleeping and making tech teams by event would likely be the way to go. Even then, I'd model the Marshall plan as continued blueprints, not upgraded tech teams. I'd leave that (boosted tech teams, probably by 2 each) to DeGaulle's second reign, when they pulled out of NATO but kept up technologically with it (If I remember my History correctly).

Historically, I question how many blueprints and technology the Commonweath shared with France in the interwar years. I remember Churchill getting slammed for advocating an alliance with France. It might be interesting to Mod a game where France isn't part of the allies until Munich, and thus needs better tech teams due to a lack of blueprints.

 

[unmerged(60074)]

I had a lot of fun as the Yugoslav army, fighting the German advance in the Balkan war. However, while playing as them, and for the later Cold War in the case of Doomsday, there is no chance of advancement, since they only have two or three research slots. This can be quite frustrating when one wishes to improve the world status of the country.....



Just my 2 cents

 

[m_spencer]

As I have posted before, some people are ridiculously underrated, such as Adolf Galland, who devised most of the air superiority doctrines for the Luftwaffe (skill 5), and Yoshio Nishina, who made quite a few breakthroughs in nuclear physics (skill 4). Another thing is that some people seem to be misrepresented. Vasilevsky doesn't fit human wave that well, and I assume he represents all of STAVKA, something quite baffling in itself. Similarly, Manstein seems to have skills representing Human Wave, and while some of the traits he has do quite fully reflect his actual skills, they are not reflected in the German Mobility Warfare path. Perhaps a system of dualism, much like the Bradley-Eisenhower system for doctrines for the US would benefit Germany well, considering it was Manstein and not Guderian that employed some of the principles of the German doctrine fully, most likely due to the fact that he had commands higher than an army corps or panzergruppe available to him.

 

[unmerged(18602)]

I'm not sure how to play balance it, but having some good French tech teams that only arrive after France is liberated by the allies might make sense. Problem is, how long did it take for French research to reach pre-war levels after WWII? Was their research infrastructure rebuilt by 1950?

Most of the available French factories were supplying the German during the occupation, but were somewhat lightly affected (I mean compared to their German counterparts) by the bombing campaign as you know that Allies had much more important targets to look after, such as railways/bridges or noballs for instance in France, or fighters factories in Germany. Being close to the cities, anyway, Allies were a little reluctant (not that much as the railway campaign show it but still) to bomb factories in France killing French civilians in the process. Still, Fw189 assembly line was located in Bordeaux for instance. Nazis didn't really like the idea of having sensible stuff produced in occupied countries because of sabotage issues, but well they couldn't ignore the powerful industrial potential of French occupied territories, even after everything they took away to Germany after 1940. If I have to summarize, well most of the industrial destructions in France was the result of Nazi occupation and/or scortched earth, but nothing like Year Zero over our place. Thanks to Marshall Plan and US help, the rebuilding was lead at a great pace.

So well activity quickly resumed after WW2, and most of the former privately owned important industrial companies were now the property of the State, big families being punished for collaborating to German war effort. Thus, the production was optimized as the State was the main contractor - and from 1947 onwards, the war in Indochina made war industry still active in order to provide sufficient war home-made supplies, despite a very important US help in military matters too.

When it comes to technology, people like Dassault started to work actively once they were freed/recalled and soon new vehicules and concept were available. For instance, the heavy tank ARL44 was designed during the occupation by a tech team who had also to work for the Germans, but still designed undercover on their own new vehicules for France, waiting for the Liberation to release the plans. The first model was ready as soon as 1946 (!) calling for systems from other suppliers like Schneider, what shows that French industry was indeed functionnal.
The first french-made jet-engined plane flew on late 1946, first Dassault jetfighter in 1949 (researchs started in 1947) with the success we know. Indeed shortly after the sales also show that industry was both active and able to answer the orders.

French search infrastructure didn't need to get rebuilt - except certain of the people who had to flee because of their political implications, the war was just a (short) parenthesis, and provided France with new talented researchers too - in my opinion, they should be immediately available once the country is liberated, 1950 is way too late.