Tokyo, '45, An Australian AAR

[37th Armoured div]

Was this a historical change or something else? I'm afraid my Australian history is not very good.

Historical. His tenure as Governor General ended on the 22nd of January in 1936, but his replacement has exactly the same personality, so it’s mainly flavour

 

[RustyHunter]

Historical. His tenure as Governor General ended on the 22nd of January in 1936, but his replacement has exactly the same personality, so it’s mainly flavour

I suppose that's one downside of HOI3, it doesn't really model politics very well unless events are set up to change leaders. It doesn't really matter, but having polish is always nice.

 

[El Pip]

Australia and BlackICE, not a classic combination but it appears to be going well. Not sure it is working well as an effective advert for the BlackICE mod (for a mod so obsessed with detailed units the inclusion of OMG Island and what they are doing with BIS just seems odd) but it is fun to read along with.

I am also 100% supportive of Governor Arkwright's plan for war with Saudi.

 

[37th Armoured div]

Sorry bout the delay, got a bit busy with other things; more coming tomorrow

 

[37th Armoured div]

A minor humiliation: 1/02/36 - 2/03/36

---

At the front of the agenda, according to Alexander Arkwright was preparing for war with Saudi Arabia. According to his council, the agenda was to prevent war with Saudi Arabia. This rare unity among the cabinet. The Silent Lawyer, Thomas Patterson was the first to speak "I highly doubt you have the authority to declare a war against any nation. You are merely a Governor General, and while you may have been selected by his majesty, According to the rules of the commonwealth, we are still a subject of his majesty, and that gives only him the right to declare war!"

"Is that so..." Isaac trailed off, before running into his study. He emerged with an envelope. "Sealed in this envelope, I have a letter from his majesty that allows me to declare war on his behalf!" The cabinet started at this revelation, before Parkhill cynically asked to see the paper. Arkwright opened the envelope, and pulled out a letter, glanced it over, and put it back in. "Sorry, this one's personal mail, I'll just grab the actual envelope" He ran into his study, from which sounds of scribbling were furiously ignored by the cabinet, before Arkwright came out with another letter. He passed it around.

"Ah, I see."

"Well, I suppose that settles that, He has permission, right, Parkhill?"

When Parkhill leaned a little closer, he exclaimed "Hang on just a minute! What is this! There's no date of signature, no seal, no signature, and whoever wrote this didn't even spell hereby correct!"

What is this indeed?
Before Arkwright could respond, George Pearce answered for him "I suppose he wanted to send this letter quickly, so he couldn't add those details onto it."

"Wait, it's spelt hereby? Why didn't anyone tell me that! The chaps at the airfield must think me a right fool now!"

"Alright, I can buy that he's busy, but, George, please explain to me how King George can misspell his own name!?"

When George Pearce heard this, he pulled a sheet of paper out of his wallet, and sadly handed it to Parkhill, who, once he read it, simply said "Oh".

"Oh"

Having had enough of of this attack against his ability to declare war, Arkwright decided to end this by convincing his cabinet. "Are there any more questions as to the veracity of this document?"

"Seeing as there are none, I would like to proceed to planning the war with Saudi Arabia!"

The cabinet, realizing that Arkwright was now a step closer to war, began to push back harder, with Colvin leading the counter attack. "I do not believe that we have the naval strength to launch an invasion of a region so far away as Saudi Arabia!"

Arkwright had prepared for this beforehand with vital intelligence from the intelligence war. "Naval Strength? Saudi Arabia has no navy! All we have to do is sail in a fleet and claim victory! By conquering them, we can allow our fleet to maintain a safe sea all the way from Egypt to new guinea! We must protect our trade!"

Colvin, the largest proponent of the open seas doctrine in the Australian fleet found himself frozen, as he considered the proposal in new light. Meanwhile, Lyons, seeing Colvin's resolve crumbling, attempted to reinvigorate with a new argument. "Our Army is still too small to launch an invasion of any nation! We only have 4 combat prepared divisions, the 3rd and 4th are being rearmed! What kind of suicidal plan is it to invade another nation with about 60,000 men! We couldn't even hope to hold a coherent line with that!"

Arkwright was no slouch, however, and pulled out a polaroid.

"Using our intelligence, we have determined the size and disposition of the "army" of Saudi Arabia. They have less combat capable divisions than we do, and I would hesitate to even call them combat capable. We most certainly can beat them in an instant. However, if you don't fancy those odds, I can invest in increasing the size of our army, using wartime mobilization laws? Of course, We can only implement these laws if we feel that it is likely for to enter conflict."

Another cabinet member fell, this time considering a possible increase in the size of the army. Parkhill however, had analyzed the situation and would not be swayed so easily. "Well, why do you want to invade Saudi Arabia anyway? There's no resources anywhere in that country!"

Arkwright, having read some basic reports on the resources situation in the middle east had a response "Oil, of course! Everyone knows that there's Oil in the middle east! We have no natural resources to speak of, except a diminishing stockpile! If we can take the oil in Saudi Arabia, we could sell it to other nations for a valuable profit!"

However, Parkhill had done his research. "Oil? What oil!? There's no oil in Saudi Arabia! Look at this resources map! There's some near Saudi Arabia, but none there! Its an empty, desolate wasteland!"

"Unfortunately there were no old miners who lived in Saudi Arabia to discover oil"
Arkwright himself went silent, considering his options. Then, he noticed a province. "I have it! We must invade Iran!" he bellowed. "Prepare some spies to enter Iran, and learn more about their army and navy!"

Parkhill, still the resource industrialist, was not finished, however. "Here is information about the Army and Navy about Iran" he said nonchalantly, passing around a report, as well as a polaroid.

Arkwright, along with his cabinet was surprised by Parkhill's newly found enthusiasm for war. "How come you have information on Iran? I didn't even think about invading it until now?"

"I just keep notes about all countries with valuable natural resources. It's the prudent thing to do."

"We should reconvene, and come up with an actual war plan; it looks like Iran has enough troops to actually withstand an invasion with our four divisions." Lyons said, Having had his perspective suddenly flipped onto its head twice, he wanted some time to think.

Colvin spoke up. "If we aren't planning on invading saudi arabia after all, could we send them an apology? It seems we have been quite the nuisance."

A rather dumb end to the intelligence war.

 

[37th Armoured div]

I constantly feel like I cannot write any coherent dialogue.
If anyone has some tips, could you tell me?

And, yes i did prepare a war plan to invade saudi arabia, only to find out there was no oil

 

[Bullfilter]

I constantly feel like I cannot write any coherent dialogue.
If anyone has some tips, could you tell me?

And, yes i did prepare a war plan to invade saudi arabia, only to find out there was no oil

Perhaps prepare a little character description for yourself for each character in the conversation, give each a point of view or objective for the topic to be argued, then pretend to argue each one in turn.

And don’t try to make it too long or complicated at first: use conversations sparingly, just to debate key points, rather than trying to make the whole chapter a long conversation (The rest can just be reports): trying to put almost everything into conversational expression can get a bit difficult and sometimes contrived. That’s all I can think of to start with.

PS: how about an invasion of something closer to home - like New Zealand!

 

[37th Armoured div]

An espionage microupdate

---

Colvin turned the page of the espionage report. It seemed that a Filipino had been arrested in the ACT, while taking photos of the Sydney harbour bridge for "Espionage". While the guards were reprimanded for this overreaction, it was discovered that the Filipino was actually spying on the Australian political situation, and was incarcerated. It also seems that an Australian explorer, while exploring a nameless island in the pacific ocean had apparently been attacked by penguins, or some similar cause, and thus died.

 

[37th Armoured div]

An espionage microupdate

---

Colvin turned the page of the espionage report. It seemed that a Filipino had been arrested in the ACT, while taking photos of the Sydney harbour bridge for "Espionage". While the guards were reprimanded for this overreaction, it was discovered that the Filipino was actually spying on the Australian political situation, and incarcerated. it seems that an australian explorer, while exploring a nameless island in the pacific ocean had apparently been attacked by penguins, or some similar fate.

No, I didn't send this spy. I think it just got sent at the start of the game.

Perhaps prepare a little character description for yourself for each character in the conversation, give each a point of view or objective for the topic to be argued, then pretend to argue each one in turn.

And don’t try to make it too long or complicated at first: use conversations sparingly, just to debate key points, rather than trying to make the whole chapter a long conversation (The rest can just be reports): trying to put almost everything into conversational expression can get a bit difficult and sometimes contrived. That’s all I can think of to start with.

PS: how about an invasion of something closer to home - like New Zealand!

Thank you, Bullfilter for the two tips. I will use conversation's more sparingly from now on (Mainly for jokes). However, I feel that as much distance as possible should be kept from the kiwis; they licensed produced a lot of cruisers and fighters from me, so I want them alive, and paying me, rather than not alive and annexed.

 

[El Pip]

Something similar to Bullfilter's advice is a good idea. I've seen it recommended to write a very brief description of every main character without using their job or what they look like, it can be just a short sentence but there has to be something about them beyond the standard blurb from the minister description. If they don't stand out beyond that, if there is no real character there, then what's the point of giving them dialogue at all?

Of course you could take the standard description and expand it - why is the character a weary stiffneck, what are they weary about? Why does the former oilman Prime Minster always smile? Or take it and twist it, the Navy Minister wants Open Seas so the Tea imports can continue as he is a tea addict, the Army Chief believed in Guns and Butter literally and keeps trying to make a machine gun out of cheese. Or completely ignore the game and use their actual personality. Or entirely invent a new one personality that suits the story you want to tell. The important thing is to adjust the blurb to fit the style you are aiming for, is it all out madness, sane men in a mad world or completely straight no madness at all.#

Once you've got those initial traits down I find it is a lot easier to do dialogue as you can just lean on them, is the over-excitable angry man shouting about the news? Or is he not? Either way it is something for the other characters to react to. And as you do bits of dialogue you are also adding to the description of each character, fleshing them out and making it easier to do the next bit as they are more complete characters.

 

[37th Armoured div]

Something similar to Bullfilter's advice is a good idea. I've seen it recommended to write a very brief description of every main character without using their job or what they look like, it can be just a short sentence but there has to be something about them beyond the standard blurb from the minister description. If they don't stand out beyond that, if there is no real character there, then what's the point of giving them dialogue at all?

Of course you could take the standard description and expand it - why is the character a weary stiffneck, what are they weary about? Why does the former oilman Prime Minster always smile? Or take it and twist it, the Navy Minister wants Open Seas so the Tea imports can continue as he is a tea addict, the Army Chief believed in Guns and Butter literally and keeps trying to make a machine gun out of cheese. Or completely ignore the game and use their actual personality. Or entirely invent a new one personality that suits the story you want to tell. The important thing is to adjust the blurb to fit the style you are aiming for, is it all out madness, sane men in a mad world or completely straight no madness at all.#

Once you've got those initial traits down I find it is a lot easier to do dialogue as you can just lean on them, is the over-excitable angry man shouting about the news? Or is he not? Either way it is something for the other characters to react to. And as you do bits of dialogue you are also adding to the description of each character, fleshing them out and making it easier to do the next bit as they are more complete characters.

Time to flesh out my characters then, so that the jokes can grow a bit.

 

[RustyHunter]

@37th Armoured div , I nominated you for WritAAR of the week, so congratulations! I've been enjoying your AAR so far, and I'm excited to see how it goes as you refine your style.

 

[Wraith11B]

Somehow only just got caught up because it had apparently fallen off my radar...

Awesome, I feel tanks are severely underrepresented on these forums...

Paging @El P--- oh, he's already here...

Australia and BlackICE, not a classic combination but it appears to be going well. Not sure it is working well as an effective advert for the BlackICE mod (for a mod so obsessed with detailed units the inclusion of OMG Island and what they are doing with BIS just seems odd) but it is fun to read along with.

I am also 100% supportive of Governor Arkwright's plan for war with Saudi.

(to use @nuclearslurpee 's penchant style when describing HPP) *record scratch* I think the OMG nation is the same way that HPP has the "GOD" nation, which keeps the historical events (the Hindenburg, Amelia Earhart, the Olympics, etc) occurring at the same time for everyone.

 

[nuclearslurpee]

Somehow only just got caught up because it had apparently fallen off my radar...


Paging @El P--- oh, he's already here...


(to use @nuclearslurpee 's penchant style when describing HPP) *record scratch* I think the OMG nation is the same way that HPP has the "GOD" nation, which keeps the historical events (the Hindenburg, Amelia Earhart, the Olympics, etc) occurring at the same time for everyone.

I'll be catching up on this thread and others soon, and will address what I'm certain have been stimulating and engaging updates in my absence, but someone @'ed me so here I am:

What Wraith has said is exactly correct, and unfortunately for El Pip the inclusion of a "GOD" or "OMG" nation (although in HPP it has been renamed to "HPP" which I consider less flavorful) is an unfortunate necessity of the limitations of the game engine and particularly the events system, and thus cannot be taken as a particularly pertinent criticism of the mods (of which, of course, there are plenty). It is not terribly important in the case of the historical flavor events, unless you are playing BICE and are still secretly enraged that the events do not happen at the historically accurate hour let alone day, but for some other events it is needed particularly given how inflexible MTTH is and how saving and reloading messes up event timers (it is frankly impressive how many bugs are instantly fixed by never quitting the game, though this would doubtless be eclipsed by the number of bugs which would be introduced by doing so, of which we mercifully remain unaware). The start of the game also tends to require this kind of intervention.

HPP I believe uses the GOD/HPP tag for the start-of-game extravaganza, the Spanish Civil War, and the Russo-Japanese border clashes as well as a number of periodic bookkeeping actions. Frankly even this is an almost criminal underuse of that tag, as there are any number of other events which would in a perfect world be controlled by the GOD tag due to the impact they have on the game when they don't fire correctly.

 

[El Pip]

Excellent summoning work @Wraith11B and a fine explanation from @nuclearslurpee . I suppose I should have explained that while I was familiar with the small island for events modding method, it was the strange trades that threw me. I can absolutely understand that creating OMG island and using it to balance the trade system has an appeal, easier than trying to fix the actual system, but it just throws me. That and the blatant misuse of BIS for another hack to balance the money/supply system (though I conceded I am likely one of the very few who would notice or care about that one).

As I said I do get that the HOI3 engine does a terrible job of such things and maybe these trades are the best solution within those limits, but even a generic 'world market' as the counter part would have been better and less immersion breaking than trading with OMG Island.

 

[37th Armoured div]

The omg island normally has no impact on trade, unsure if it even has a real port. It’s not intended to trade, as it has no convoys and no IC to produce them. But because it’s part of Oceania, it can offer me trade deals anyway. I’m not dumb enough to reject the only trade deal available to me, because for what ever reason, no one else will trade with me

 

[nuclearslurpee]

The omg island normally has no impact on trade, unsure if it even has a real port. It’s not intended to trade, as it has no convoys and no IC to produce them. But because it’s part of Oceania, it can offer me trade deals anyway. I’m not dumb enough to reject the only trade deal available to me, because for what ever reason, no one else will trade with me

This much is honestly I think a hiccup on the BICE modders' part, as it is not difficult to put the OMG island on its own "continent". Not to mention that I'm pretty sure the AI scripts should be written to prevent the OMG AI from offering trades anyways... I have seen in HPP that Germany will sometimes try to influence the GOD country but as far as I know that island does not try to make trade deals.

 

[El Pip]

This much is honestly I think a hiccup on the BICE modders' part, as it is not difficult to put the OMG island on its own "continent". Not to mention that I'm pretty sure the AI scripts should be written to prevent the OMG AI from offering trades anyways... I have seen in HPP that Germany will sometimes try to influence the GOD country but as far as I know that island does not try to make trade deals.

If you told me that no-one on the BICE mod team had ever played Australia or New Zealand, apart from maybe starting it up once to see if everything loads in, I would not be surprised.

As above, so below.

 

[37th Armoured div]

Large update 2/03/36 - 2/06/36

---

Large update because I expect to be very busy doing the IB in a matter of days, wish me luck~
The briefing started with some confusing news from the King:

Prime Minister Lyons was seen to be very confused by both the claim that Australia was now at war, and that Isaac Isaacs had just retired, as both seemed to be rather old news; War had been declared back in 1914 after all, and Australia was currently in a state of peace.
However, Isaacs was dutifully informed of his retirement, and his name removed from the list of names that could be used to fill the position of governor general.

The Intelligentsia had finally returned, with some valuable weapon designs. Research would soon take place into methods of distributing these new weapons to soldiers, as well as writing instruction manuals on how to use and repair these tools in the field. This was placed at top priority, as the sooner these were researched, the sooner that these weapons could be distributed to the front.

An intelligence war between Iran and Australia was also developing, with Australia eliminating a significant portion of Iranian spies. When Colvin decided that it was a good decision to recall Australia's spies in Saudi Arabia, He received a hail of denial, with all 10 spies stating that they had truly come to understand the Arabian way of life. While they would continue spying for Australia, they would never leave. This month, Iran had excecated 6 Australian spies, with 5 Iranian spies being neutralized in return.

It seemed that a few penguins were captured in Tasmania. They had made a right nuisance of themselves, having destroyed some election day posters, as well as wandering their way into a research institute. They were sent to a zoo in Turkey named the "Midnight Express".

In less good news, Abyssinia had finally surrendered to the nation of Ethiopia. Australian volunteers in the conflict have been repatriated after some brief negotiations with the Italian government. These volunteers were debriefed, giving their insight into the best method to design submachine guns and rifles, as well as anti tank warfare. Australian historians are still researching the method to which these volunteers were able to learn so much about anti tank guns from Ethiopia, as the entire nation only had 12 anti tank guns. The current theory is that the most buff and manly Italian soldiers were seen as light tanks, and through defeating these men, Australian soldiers gained experience in anti tank warfare.

In other news, a heat wave was spreading across northern America at the moment, with temperatures reaching as high as 28°C. A telegram of sympathy was sent to the embassy, with one thoughtless Australian including last summer's average temperature, presumably as a joke.

 

[37th Armoured div]

more coming after dinner, I played out up to august