CORE 03 First Impressions

[dec152000]

Hi,

The events are somewhat scripted the way you are suggesting. It's just that the overriding principal is that nations go FM when involved in a major war. This in turn kicks off all of the lower effects. Now it is quite possible to generate RI well before you go to war. But honestly we don't want USA being able to do this by just making a few slider moves. We assess that the American public wasn't prepared for this level of defense spending and foreign involvement without a real external threat. So, while what you did "worked" in game, I too agree it wasn't within the realm of real options for FDR and we'd actually prefer to prevent a player from doing this rather than "fixing" the RI/PM/FM event for this scenario.

AI: For the most part the AI is still very much like Vanilla in how it sequences. So you probablly got the same result you'd get in Vanilla with an aggressive USA. I'd actually be interested to see how you do vs. GER with their forces free from having to deal with the SOV.

mm

 

[HistoryMan]

How is it wrong? I didn't cheat. I used my annual slider moves in 1936, 1937, 1938, and 1939 to move toward interventionism, and I got one move toward interventionism from the Nanking event. Those are legitimate moves, and the events should be able to cope with them without producing weird results.

What is the point of having the sliders under the control of the player if you don't want them used?

It is "wrong" in the sense that it is producing a result that could not be matched historically - the reason it is a problem is that it unleashes the USA's productive capacity far too early to make the game of interest to anyone but the USA - and even then, it makes it rather a cakewalk for the US player. This is not our intention, so we will be reviewing this situation.

Tim

 

[ShadoWarrior]

Bug: Volksgrenadier '39 shows 8 possible attachments on-screen, none of which can be selected by the player.

 

[Hagar]

1) Obviously, there are some typos and messed-up images in the tech files. A couple of them show jet aircraft in place of, for example (IIRC) the Hs-123. Minor stuff.

Not all of the tech images are covered as of yet (probably around 80% or so). Could you verify the image in question is actually a COREd image or a Vanilla image?

 

[dec152000]

Bug: Volksgrenadier '39 shows 8 possible attachments on-screen, none of which can be selected by the player.

Hi,

Let me guess, you are playing with ARM? I've personally attached/detached all of the various attachments from RES '39 units as SOV using DD. So I don't see why this would be happening unless it is a bug with ARM.

mm

 

[unmerged(53093)]

But honestly we don't want USA being able to do this by just making a few slider moves.

Fair enough. To play Devil's advocate, it wasn't just a few slider moves... it took a conscious choice over three years and used 4 slider moves that could have been used elsewhere. I'm not sure that the USA player would be getting much more from RI in 1939 than he would have gotten if he used those slider moves to become more hawkish, for example.

We assess that the American public wasn't prepared for this level of defense spending and foreign involvement without a real external threat.

Aren't the sliders intended to reflect the mood of the public? Your point above explains why the USA starting condition is completely isolationist, but giving the player the ability to adjust public opinion over time is what the sliders are for.

I just think that the events could do a better job of taking into account the player's reasonably foreseeable legal moves.

So, while what you did "worked" in game, I too agree it wasn't within the realm of real options for FDR and we'd actually prefer to prevent a player from doing this rather than "fixing" the RI/PM/FM event for this scenario.

Hmmm. Okay. That seems a little out of synch with events that allow the UK player to keep Edward as king, allow the French player to go to war over the Rhineland, allow the UK player to get tough at Munich, and a whole host of other historically improbable choices. But I see your point. You guys did a great job of keeping the USA balanced in the first third of the game, and changing the RI and PM events would undo some of that, no doubt about it.

I'd actually be interested to see how you do vs. GER with their forces free from having to deal with the SOV.

Actually, I quit that game and started over as the USA. When I saw the USA starting conditions, I really did panic and made ALOT of choices in that game under the assumption that Japan was going to outrun me and they would have all the Pacific bases and the Philippines fortified and be into India before I could get moving against them. I also assumed that I would be spending 90IC building my rocket site and nuclear plant... imagine my surprise there! All in all, it was a game where I made alot of bad assumptions at the beginning and it just wasn't going to be much fun from that point on.

Invading Europe would not have been difficult. NatSpain and Portugal had given all their forces to GER as exp and GER had promptly moved them all to the Russian Front. The whole Iberian peninsula had about 5 land units on it. I would have built a huge army, massed it in Morocco, and then ferried all of it into Seville in less than two weeks. The only real challenge would have been choosing between a race with ARM and MOT to cover as much territory as possible, or setting a trap for the Germans to encircle and destroy their armies when they arrived, or to stabilize a front and bomb them to death as they moved West to engage. Any one of those would have worked.

At the time I had quit, I was actually leaning toward leaving Germany alone (after all, it wasn't like it was going to do anything) and invading USSR through Mongolia and Manchuria. But, you do that anyway when you play Japan, so it isn't like that would have been new...

 

[dec152000]

Hi,

Well it would have been interesting to see what the GER AI would do with no active war vs. the SOV. I'm not sure what sort of deployment they would have made. Previous reports have been so so about how GER handles an invasion once they are busy in the East. Have fun with your new game, though I'm not so sure USA is the best choice just yet. It's just so dependent on how the AI performs up to USA war entry that a lot can go wrong and make playing USA less than the challenge we'd like. Guess you'll see.

mm

 

[ShadoWarrior]

Did it actually take, historically, 10-11 months to build a U-boat from the keel up? Seems a bit high considering how many of them Germany really built.

 

[unmerged(53093)]

It is "wrong" in the sense that it is producing a result that could not be matched historically - the reason it is a problem is that it unleashes the USA's productive capacity far too early to make the game of interest to anyone but the USA - and even then, it makes it rather a cakewalk for the US player.

Well, you are singing two different songs here.

If you want it to be historical, then the game is going to be a cakewalk for the USA player because the war was a cakewalk for the Americans (meaning that the result was never in serious doubt). There is no plausible set of choices for the other players that results in a defeat for the USA, unless you go wildly ahistorical (I mean like alien lizards invading ahistorical). Forget about an ahistorical game being of no interest to other players, why would a historical game be of any interest to anyone but the USA? Like Yamamoto, in a strictly historical game any other player can "have no expectation of success".

If you want the game to be of any interest at all to other players, then you are going to have to rob the USA of most of its historical advantages... which this game does. You'll have to make it possible for an enemy surface ship to get within 1000 miles of the mainland coast. You'll have to make the USA much less aggressive than its generals were as a historical matter. And you are going to have to say that the USA can't do things that historically it could have done, but chose not to do.

Do you want a historically accurate game, or do you want one that is of interest to non-USA players? Because you really can't have both. An Axis country surviving past 1945 "cannot be matched historically" either. Not much fun for the players who like to play as Germany or Japan or Italy.

Having it set up this way to balance the game in an ahistorical way in order to keep the USA from winning every single game is a good reason for having the initial setup and the events like they are. But you can't really maintain that it is done to make the game more historically accurate. Even if the USA is given its historical starting position, makes its historical choices, and has its historical level of strategic military aggressiveness once the war began, the game's conclusion is still foreordained every single time. No set of historical choices available to any of the other players would stop the USA from winning. But you want the game to be interesting to other players, so you can't be historical, can you?

I don't want to come across as being argumentative about it, because that really isn't my intent. I do understand the need for gameplay balance. But WWII was not historically balanced. You simply cannot have it be historical AND balanced. I was just reporting my observations from my first game, where it seemed that the choices relating to balance we leading to some odd results.

 

[dec152000]

Hi,

I'd argue that in 1942 the soldiers and sailors fighting in the critical battles of the Pacific didn't think that winning was inevitable. A reversal of fortunes at Midway (not likely, but not exactly impossible either) would have set the USN back badly, possiblly resulting in the loss of Pearl Harbor. With no forward operating bases any counter attack would have been much more difficult and Japan would have had a far better chance to consolidate it's gains.

In Europe the war wasn't a done deal at this point either. SOV manpower reserves, while deep were not limitless. A loss at Stalingrad (again, not likely, but not exactly impossible) could have set the stage for a much more prolonged European conflict where the GER mobilization efforts would have been far more effective.

The end result of this might not be an actual Axis victory, but instead merely a much more protracted defeat. In game this is a reasonable goal as the Axis, especially on harder difficulty settings. Probablly my favorite game from HOI1 w/HSR involved holding off both the Allies and SOV as GER. I was constantly moving reserves to push back the enemy and scraping for MP and IC to keep my divisions in combat shape. I was certainly never going to win the war, but it felt like a victory when the summer of 1945 rolled around the game map looked more like early 1944. So I'd say that playing out the destiny can be fun even if you are on the receiving end.

mm

 

[dec152000]

Did it actually take, historically, 10-11 months to build a U-boat from the keel up? Seems a bit high considering how many of them Germany really built.

Hi,

GER had an awful lot of u-boats under construction at the same time, which explains the large numbers. But in general it did take a long time to build one. I randomly selected the following u-boat from the master list:

http://www.uboat.net/boats/u603.htm

As you can see, production was 10 months, which is pretty normal for a VIIC boat. This was then followed by an 11 month training period before the boat began operational patrols. We really don't model this aspect at all, so if anything I shoot for longer production times rather than shorter ones.

mm

 

[ShadoWarrior]

Given the U.S. industrial capability, even had the U.S. lost its Pacific carriers, Japan would eventually lose the war. Consolidating its gains would have done little to alter the inevitable. The only thing Midway did was shorten the war by at least 1-2 years. The interesting side effect of delay in U.S. Pacific conquest is that the Soviets would have ended up controlling Japan -- after a horrendously-bloody Soviet invasion of mainland Japan -- with a radically-altered postwar global picture.

Enigma/Ultra aside, things could have gone far differently for the Allies. Imagine the Japanese invading Hawaii (a la Harry Turtledove's alternate-history series). Then imagine Hitler not declaring war on the United States. American public sentiment at the time would not have allowed the U.S. to declare war on Germany with Japan being viewed as the "real" threat. Moreover, assume Hitler doesn't micromanage the war, and you have Germany winning in Europe, a lone Britain unsupported by a U.S. not involved against Germany negotiating for peace with the Nazis, and a Pacific war that lasts until 1947 or 1948 with a massive nuclear devastation of many Japanese cities. The end picture is the U.S. as one superpower, and Germany as the other.

 

[Thistletooth]

Forgive me if any of these questions have been addressed so far, but I wasn't up to perusing nine pages of text at this hour. Feel free to be curt in your reply.

1. I notice that some nations (SPA, ARG) start as neither Semi-Industrial or Agricultural. How does this differ from an Agricultural start, beyond the immediate effects of the Agricultural tech?

2. I notice that many nations now start with <5 IC. Are these nations able to do anything now?

3. How do Semi-Industrial nations get 1943 Fighters, since they can't research 1937 or 1941 Electronics? Is there a loophole that allows them to research 1941 without being able to research 1937?

4. Has anything effectively changed regarding air doctrines and how they relate to your ability to build modern (i.e. not "Training Mission") aircraft?

5. Is the new Land Doctrine system exactly what it looks like: a total free-for-all, where you can research anything you want, but where each tech alone has very little effect?

6. For Germany, I notice that some techs, such as 1940 Rocket Artillery, and a number of the ASW techs are completely disabled. Is there some tech that is disabling these, or is Germany's tech development customized this way?


I haven't yet played CORE (I just d/led it now), but I nevertheless would like to learn a lot about its inner workings ASAP, and I figure it would take me a while though gameplay alone.

 

[ThomasStockheim]

Hi,

Have fun with your new game, though I'm not so sure USA is the best choice just yet. It's just so dependent on how the AI performs up to USA war entry that a lot can go wrong and make playing USA less than the challenge we'd like. Guess you'll see.

mm

Which country do you suggest as most fun to play ?

 

[gosam]

Which country do you suggest as most fun to play ?

The Soviet Union, a great challenge. The first time I actually felt fear in a Pdox game.

 

[baylox]

Forgive me if any of these questions have been addressed so far, but I wasn't up to perusing nine pages of text at this hour. Feel free to be curt in your reply.

1. I notice that some nations (SPA, ARG) start as neither Semi-Industrial or Agricultural. How does this differ from an Agricultural start, beyond the immediate effects of the Agricultural tech?

2. I notice that many nations now start with <5 IC. Are these nations able to do anything now?

3. How do Semi-Industrial nations get 1943 Fighters, since they can't research 1937 or 1941 Electronics? Is there a loophole that allows them to research 1941 without being able to research 1937?

4. Has anything effectively changed regarding air doctrines and how they relate to your ability to build modern (i.e. not "Training Mission") aircraft?

5. Is the new Land Doctrine system exactly what it looks like: a total free-for-all, where you can research anything you want, but where each tech alone has very little effect?

6. For Germany, I notice that some techs, such as 1940 Rocket Artillery, and a number of the ASW techs are completely disabled. Is there some tech that is disabling these, or is Germany's tech development customized this way?


I haven't yet played CORE (I just d/led it now), but I nevertheless would like to learn a lot about its inner workings ASAP, and I figure it would take me a while though gameplay alone.

1. There are minor differences regarding access to the rest of the industry tree and also armor/infantry treees.

2. Probably not a lot more than they historically did, which is what we were aiming for.

3. Semi-Industrials should be able to research those Electronics, just later than a Fully Industrialized nations can. Research 1939 Heavy Industry for starters.

4. There shouldn't be any such connections between the air tech and air doctrine trees, apart from the fact that you need domestically produced aircraft (license-building or military designs) to fully access the air doctrines.

5. Yep, it is. Beware of wasting valuable research time on poor matching - you'll lose out on something else.

6. Some/many/most of these techs should open up either when fully mobilized and/or at war - though perhaps not immediately following that.

Hope that answers your questions - have fun playing!!

 

[ThomasStockheim]

The Soviet Union, a great challenge. The first time I actually felt fear in a Pdox game.

I allready tried. Really hard, low IC, low resources.
Unfortunately germany never attacked me, I think because the US got into the war really early.
What I found hardest feeding all my divisions - In 42 I was using allmost half of my IC on just producing supplies for them. Was the upkeep costs increased, or is it because there are less industry efficiency - supplies modifiers available then in vanilla ?

I'll try again soon - this time I'll probably disband all divisions I have at the start, they eat up so much IC in upgrade, reinforcement and supplies over the years.

I liked how harsh the purges were, and actually chose to not go through with them - the bad slider moves were what I couldn't take anymore.

 

[Chaplain]

Hi,

I'd argue that in 1942 the soldiers and sailors fighting in the critical battles of the Pacific didn't think that winning was inevitable. A reversal of fortunes at Midway (not likely, but not exactly impossible either) would have set the USN back badly, possiblly resulting in the loss of Pearl Harbor. With no forward operating bases any counter attack would have been much more difficult and Japan would have had a far better chance to consolidate it's gains.

In Europe the war wasn't a done deal at this point either. SOV manpower reserves, while deep were not limitless. A loss at Stalingrad (again, not likely, but not exactly impossible) could have set the stage for a much more prolonged European conflict where the GER mobilization efforts would have been far more effective.

I agree wholeheartedly, and this is why I have been arguing for several years that the game needs a dissent penalty formula for battlefield reverses. Each time a nation (especially a democracy) suffers a major battlefield reverse, there should be significant dissent hits. If the USN loses all 3 of her carriers at Midway, for example, and if the Marines get subsequently overwhelmed at Guadalcanal, war weariness could have set in.

Now the argument could be made that the public was so incensed by Pearl Harbor that there could be no turning back no matter what ... but in the game Japan isn't tied to Pearl Harbor. So if PH never happens and the Japanese just rumble around in SE Asia, I could see the isolationists arguing successfully to keep the USA out of the war.

Or what if D-Day was a total defeat AND a horrific bloodbath?

We need a dissent penalty for gaminess as well - the old "pull back from Gibraltar" to get the AI to come out and fight is one example. Surrendering conquered provinces should create problems on the home front. To further illustrate, if a democracy suffered the kind of losses and major strategic reverse that Germany suffered at Kursk, there would be huge outcries.

IMHO, this is the best way to reflect the USA's situation in the 30's. Paradox needs to provide a programming trigger to allow for such a connection.

 

[unmerged(38177)]

First impression - frustration.

The first impression was "OMG", the game on 1-1-36 us acting like it's 1940+. HOW SLOW IS IT GOING TO GET? :wacko: Performance issues in 1936? As much as I want to play, I don't want to even think what 1941 is goig to feel like.

Second. there are too many "Cross Panel" tech dependancies without explanation. For example, the entire naval tree is dependant upon destroyers, which is in tern dependant upon two industrial techs. This is fine but THERE IS NO REFERENCE TO THESE DEPENDANCIES. I had to go into the tech files to find the dependancies. Solution: would you PLEASE add the "Can lead to xxxx" lines to each of the techs that are a dependancy on another??? o I discovered this problem trying to find a way to build destroyers as Poland.

Third: can you please explain the constant toggle between Int-F and Ftr in the aircraft research panel? When one looks at this it seems like unnessasary overhead. Since each yearly progression is dependant upon the two prior years tech (one Int-F and one Ftr), it makes a great deal more sense, based upon this model, to combine Int-F and Ftr into a common tech research that uses 2x the time currently needed and is available every OTHER year. You have to research them anyway, and the current model is just busywork.

Finally, a minor note. The GFX pack puts a Core2-Dummy image into the HOI2-DD GFx-Tech file for tech 1370. This deletes an actual Tech image for DD. you should remove this dummy image.

Hope this helps, and receives attention.

 

[ShadoWarrior]

Why do multi-role fighters have roughly half the org level of comparable interceptors? Considering they cost twice as much, I'd expect these elite air units to be better instead of worse. Also, shouldn't they have a minimal soft and naval attack of 1? After all, the same bombs used to kill tanks can also work on other targets.