All right I've done some extensive moding recently, and basically I ran into the question: Is it possible to force the rebels to create a country if they control certain territories? The example I'm talking about is that by the time the "Russian Civil War" event fires, the majority of Russian Siberia is already overrun by partisans of all sorts. I'm wondering whether it would be possible to create SIB out of the territories controlled by them and integrate their armies into SIB army, and then just add the rest? Because otherwise SIB and the rebels will be enemies, and that's just not how it should be.
Overall, here's the picture:
-Western front, basically done. I haven't looked at the schlieffen AI yet if there is one, because I haven't gotten to that date, but otherwise the front seems to be doing exactly what it should be doing - the Germans overrun Belgium in a week, push to Paris, get pushed back, have some see-saw battles, stealmate, trench warfare event fires, front becomes stabilized for the rest of the war.
The only problem I encounter is that the German AI is impossible to convince to commit less troops to the western front than the enemy. No matter what value I put for front_ratios - 1, 0.8, 0.5, 0.3 - the result is the same, the German AI just "knows better" and attempts to establish numerical superiority on the western front even when the eastern front is about to collapse.
-Italian front. There's a problem, once again, with central Allied command. There are two options:
1. Leave the Italian army udner control of Italy. In that case it will be inactive and will do exactly nothing, but at least it will stay in Italy.
2. Let the French manage the Italian army. Under French command the Italians will actually fight, but the problem is that the French don't seem to consider the Italian front to be important enough to bother about, so they transfer like 2/3 of the Italian army to the Western Front, leaving the rest to defend Italy, which is not always enough. I haven't seen Italy lose yet, but sometimes the Austrians come darn close to Rome.
-Balkan front. I think I've got it to work more or less properly. Serbia starts losing in 1915 and collapses when Bulgaria joins the war, or at least that has been my experience in several playtests. However the Austrians sometimes have trouble finishing off the Serbs when they become intrenched in some mountanous province in Macedonia, with no supplies left. I don't know what that is about, but otherwise, fine.
-Middle East. As I've said before. The Ottomans are just waaaay to weak to resist the onslaught brought on them. I mean seriously, they barely even supply their small, technologically backward army. And this army is supposed to stretch itself enough to defend all the beaches, the Sinai front, the Caucasus front, the Mesopotamian front, and also frequently the front in Arabian peninsula.
There's just no way they can do that. After Britain finishes off the last German troops in Africa and Italy joins the war, the Ottomans immidiately get overwhelmed in numerical and technological superiority and stand no chance.
The best I've seen them do is when they managed to stay alive till late 1916 by preventing the Brits from crossing the Suez because it's just a tough region to cross. The Brits had 4 to 1 numerical superiority.
What happened then though is that Bulgaria joined the war and the "Allied command" problem kicked in. The Germans apparently decided that there was no need for the Ottomans to garrison their beaches and that in general the ottomans had _too many_ troops, so as a result the British immidiately landed everywhere and Ottoman Empire was over with. I might be able to fix the beach garrison thing, prevent the Germans from withdrawing beach garrisons, but it won't help much.
-Russian front. AI is fine, but some balancing work seems to be needed. It's very hard to make anything like a stealmate appear on the eastern front, especially anywhere near its historic stealmate region. I don't know what is at fault here - the general game mechanics, the terrain, some other balancing issues, whatever. So far I've only really seen two possible scenarios:
1. Germany is losing badly, barely able to keep Berlin.
2. Russia is losing badly, losing control of Petrograd and Moscow already in 1916.
:wacko:
And nothing in between. That is, unless I intervene directly and start suppling the losing side with loads of free troops and stuff.
Some serious balancing work is needed there, and I am far from being an expert in that area.
Also, I have not found a way to prevent the Japanese from sending expeditionary forces to France. I think they no longer send anything to Russia, which is good, but time and time again I see some Jap flags in France even though the AI file clearly says to avoid this.
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That's it for the AI. Besides that I've dome a bunch of modding regarding Eastern front - so far I've only completely recoded the period between October revolution and commencation of Civil War. Here's how it looks like:
1917 frontlines. Western front stabilized naturally, eastern front - through massive cheating campaign on my part.
New October Revolution event. Now gives a choice to form coalition government with Left-SRs or to stay alone.
Beginning of historical Ukrainian civil war. Please never mind the fact that the flag of Ukrainian SSR is totally wrong, fixing flags was not my main priority so far.
non-bolshevik Ukraine signs alliance with Germany.
Balkan front, stablized like this naturally. Notice that Ottomans have been totally beaten already.
The Baku country is called Baku Commune or Azerbaijan SSR (they will share same tag).
Eastern front just before Brest-litovsk agreement.
Russian Siberia just before Brest-Litovsk.
Immidiately after the peace treaty. Note that the treaty applies to RSFSR only. It's allies - Ukraine, Baku Commune, and soon-will-be-included Red Finland stay at war with Central Powers. In this case UkSSR is eventually overrun and annexed by non-bolshevik Ukraine with German help, and following that the borders of Ukraine in the west are fixed by German AI.
Also, the border with Finland is wrong here but I already fixed that.