A few thoughts after a game on hard/aggressive

[acantoni]

Hello!
First of all let me say i'm enjoying my game so far, i've been using Italy (hard/aggressive , tech team takeover) to try out the mod and the experience was quite fun. [ Core 0.3.15 ]

However i've a few thoughts :

1) I'm now in december 1943 , and well the wars have been not global as i would have liked.

I , as italy , immediatly joined the axis , after a while austria become a germany puppet , then in quick succession many other balkans country (not the cecoslovakia) , germany invaded succesfully belgium/netherland/france with also my help while england only did some minor air bombing.. nothing mayor to prevent it

So far the game played like most others (ah nationalist spain won the war thx to my direct help too )

However in 1941 japan DOW Usa , however japan didn't join the axis nor usa joined the allies.. so sine then they're fighting their own private war.

Germany attacked ussr as usual and steamrolled it since it has no enemy left except a uk bombed to ashes by my air forces , for some very suicidal instinct ussr who was losing badly the war agaisnt germany in 43 also DOW japan and lost on that side aswell! in later 1943 ussr signed a peace treaty becoming virtually a minor country ( like 70 IC left , landlocked ) , we now have axis vs uk basically and japan vs usa

Is this.. normal?

2) This is something i've experienced in other games aswell .. nationalist spain! is a fascist state, we helped it win the war but no matter what he never joins up the axis !! i've also tried to log in with germany, relations around +190 but still 0 chance to bring them to wars.. we have to invade them to get gibraltar ?

3) There seems to be a wide shortage of raw materials in the game, that is not a problem for a human player but for ai it severely cripples them especially rare materials , oil (later in the game) , and money

4) I've left deliberatly ALL my home peninsula + jugoslavia+greece without 1 single garrison troop for more than 1 year before having uk assaulting crete with 1 single tank.. (which got destroyed soon later..) , while i was having fun conquering africa i expected some drop on me or at very least some attempt to land troops
[i didn't have a great naval fleet patrolling the mediterrean nor naval bombers there]

5) air power.. for what i've seen so far , especially since there is no usa in the war yet , air power effort from the ai is insufficient [and naval bombers are still overpowered]

6) I've an hard time finding out prerequisite for certain techs, especially if they're in another tab.. is there a txt or some file i can easily check them ?


Don't get me wrong, it's not a complaining thread actually i really like your mod and the first battle for northern africa was a blast (mostly for my lack of experience.. i guess ) , however the inability of the ai mostly to adapt and to take advantage of obvious weaknesses on my part is making the game a lot less interesting in the long run !

I think if the usa joined the war it would have been all different.. now the axis has like 500 victory points! allies around 160 and comiterim around 50 lol!

Any comments are very welcome!

Thank you

Fabio

 

[Piggy]

I think the makers of CORE state that it should be played on normal/normal, changing it might upset the balance. AI being lazy/dumb is something with HOI2 and not really related to CORE as far as I know.

Ive only played one partial game, starting my second last night on the new 0.3.15 update/patch so I cant really comment on the big picture.

 

[Hagar]

I think the makers of CORE state that it should be played on normal/normal, changing it might upset the balance.

Well it's designed for normal/normal, basically. And as such it's recommended.

AI being lazy/dumb is something with HOI2 and not really related to CORE as far as I know.

The AI is a COREd Vanilla AI as of now. We do have plans to upgrade the AI further for the next version. Lothos kindly provided us with the AI TRP is using, so we're as of now looking/deciding how to incorporate that within CORE.

 

[unmerged(65036)]

However in 1941 japan DOW Usa , however japan didn't join the axis nor usa joined the allies.. so sine then they're fighting their own private war.

That's actually a reasonable thing. Japan's attack on the US was likely to happen. Japan was not allied with Germany in the sense that Hearts of Iron uses 'alliance'- the Japanese did not fight the Soviets just because the Germans were.

If Hitler hadn't honored his treaty with Japan by declaring war on the US several days after Pearl Harbor, it is quite possible that the US and Japan would have fought a 'private war' in the Pacific.

Did Japan attack the Allies? Their real historical targets during this operation were the rich resource areas of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, after all.

Germany attacked ussr as usual and steamrolled it since it has no enemy left except a uk bombed to ashes by my air forces , for some very suicidal instinct ussr who was losing badly the war agaisnt germany in 43 also DOW japan and lost on that side aswell! in later 1943 ussr signed a peace treaty becoming virtually a minor country ( like 70 IC left , landlocked ) , we now have axis vs uk basically and japan vs usa

That's called the Bitter Peace. The event exists in vanilla, too. When the Soviets are effectively defeated they sign a cease-fire with the Axis powers, giving up a large area of land in exchange for a peace treaty that lets them survive in Siberia... for a while.

2) This is something i've experienced in other games aswell .. nationalist spain! is a fascist state, we helped it win the war but no matter what he never joins up the axis !! i've also tried to log in with germany, relations around +190 but still 0 chance to bring them to wars.. we have to invade them to get gibraltar ?

Historically, Franco was very reluctant to join the Axis. Remember, in the real war he didn't do that; Spain stayed neutral during World War Two.

There were good reasons for that. Spain was a total mess after the Spanish Civil War and was in no position to fight another war, and Spain's long Atlantic coastline made it very vulnerable to Allied attacks. So Franco wisely decided not to pick a fight with the Allies.

In the game, it's hard to get Spain (and Vichy France) to abandon their neutrality even after the Axis have effectively won the game. To get Spain into the Axis, it helps to get Portugal in first. At least, that was how I did it.

3) There seems to be a wide shortage of raw materials in the game, that is not a problem for a human player but for ai it severely cripples them especially rare materials , oil (later in the game) , and money

When you think about it, that makes sense. The limits on national industry during this period were defined by resource limits, and once the major industrial powers (Germany, the USSR, and the US) really get going their war machines can suck up practically all the resources in the world.

As for money, money is short because everyone is in wartime deficit spending mode. Money is generated by consumer goods, and no nation wants to 'waste' IC on consumer goods that could instead be spent on building tanks.

5) air power.. for what i've seen so far , especially since there is no usa in the war yet , air power effort from the ai is insufficient [and naval bombers are still overpowered]

Does the AI use air power effectively in vanilla?

 

[acantoni]

Good answers
And points well taken!

Look forward for improved trp ai then , i have a question still

Well it's designed for normal/normal, basically. And as such it's recommended.

That i've read from the very beginning, my interpreation was that it was designed and balanced to be played on normal/normal (since the game i guess should be more difficult than vanilla)

Is my interpretation correct so if i want a challenge i can up the difficulty more at my own peril

OR

it is specifcally written to be played on those settings and if i don't use them i have a completely different experience with ai behaving strangely, custom settings not applying ecc?

Sorry for this 'dumb' question , english is not my native language and i have some trouble understanding the exact meaning

 

[Hawk_345]

So does that mean that my game im playing now in normal/agresive, will my game end up being little, easy, because its set up for normal. its my first game and i always play like that in vanila.

 

[Hagar]

Playing the game on other difficulty settings should work (as far as I know that is). But it isn't extensively tested or tweaked, basically, nor formally supported. So we try to be as historical as possible based on normal/normal settings.

 

[Hawk_345]

It sure did not get easy, russia is at war with germany, the allies, and japan, they are loosing badly, spain is with germany along with portugal and the stnadard axis powers, the allies are at war with japan, but the US will not join allies so its japan vs allies and US seperate. its really weird, guess i beter stick with normal settings next time.

 

[Piggy]

It sure did not get easy, russia is at war with germany, the allies, and japan, they are loosing badly, spain is with germany along with portugal and the stnadard axis powers, the allies are at war with japan, but the US will not join allies so its japan vs allies and US seperate. its really weird, guess i beter stick with normal settings next time.

Stalin really screwed himself in that game!

It could just be a very A-historical game your having though and not have anything to do with the settings.

 

[HistoryMan]

Changing the AI "aggressiveness" probably won't affect the game too much, in terms of balance issues. Changing the difficulty setting will affect such things, since it reduces IC and resources, etc - this can make some economies in the early years practically impossible to run, since they only just scrape by on normal difficulty.

Tim

 

[unmerged(65036)]

Is my interpretation correct so if i want a challenge i can up the difficulty more at my own peril

OR

it is specifcally written to be played on those settings and if i don't use them i have a completely different experience with ai behaving strangely, custom settings not applying ecc?

Sorry for this 'dumb' question , english is not my native language and i have some trouble understanding the exact meaning

It's not a dumb question. It would only be a dumb question if you knew everything about how the CORE AI worked, and only the CORE designers or someone very good at reverse-engineering their work could possibly know that.

Your English is good, although you've been forgetting to capitalize.

In English, you capitalize letters at the beginning of sentences, such as "Potatoes are tasty." You capitalize the first-person singular nominative pronoun "I," as in "When I eat potatoes, I feel happy." You also capitalize certain abbreviations, such as AI, short for Artificial Intelligence.

As for the actual question, I suspect the answer is that the CORE AI may act weird at higher difficulty settings, but might not. If the game testers didn't test it at those settings, there is no way to know.