Military, Diplomacy/Sphere?

[Jakalak]

Alright, two stupid questions that I'm having trouble with.

How do you get your military to do anything? I've tried leaving it up to my advisor, and even when I'm at war with someone they sit around and do nothing. Is the AI not good with overseas calculations? I even went and set the Battle Zone and Theatre to high priority, and offensive, and nothing happened. The other option is rubberbanding all your units and just telling them to go somewhere, which doesn't seem to work well either. My main question, I guess, is for overseas warfare, as both of these were and I figure that might be the problem.

Second, what influences whether or not a country will consider accepting diplomatic options from you, and how do you enter a sphere? Playing as sandbox Mexico the only diplomatic deals I've been able to make were with Haiti, after their government changed to Neutral. For apparently no reason. I hadn't made any trades with them prior to this. Contrast this with the Soviet Union, who is diplomatically pleased with me, as are its people, and not willing to do anything. Help?

Sorry if these are stupid.

 

[Comrade Chaos]

AI doesn't do amphibious invasions (Landing craft and such), but will move units by sea.

 

[Jakalak]

AI doesn't do amphibious invasions (Landing craft and such), but will move units by sea.

Okay, that makes sense (at least, as to why it's been doing poorly). I should probably start learning how to use my military, then.

Any help on diplomacy?

 

[Jakalak]

Uh, also, in a game as Venezuela, for some reason none of my troops seem to have the ability to advance anywhere near the capital of Guiana. Is this because of the surrounding dense terrain? Which units can go through it and which can't, and how do you tell?

 

[unmerged(356217)]

Sounds like you have supply issues and they are out of fuel. You can resupply via airdrop, transport truck or wait for your supply line to catch up. Although unless you've captured a road from your territory to theirs its not likely to happen in dense jungle terrain.

Of course you could be out of fuel all together in which case none of the above would help until you procure some.

As to your diplomacy issues.. Imagine that the diplomacy bars are about 50% longer on each side. They will not accept alliances etc until you fill most of that "invisible" 50% up. (I've complained about this as well but ya anyway) Easiest way to get this up is bribe them with whatever you can spare.. goods, cash, techs units etc.

AI doesn't do amphibious invasions (Landing craft and such), but will move units by sea.

Mostly true.. they will under very rare circumstances do them. But more often they will try to clear out a port with naval ships and then have units land there via merchant marine. If they never clear out a port to land then they are usually screwed. Some of my changes to how the AI builds up a navy made it into the beta test of update 3 so they should perform better at clearing out ports after update 3 is released (not to mention BG did a large overhaul of how the AI handles naval units in general). Although given how long good ships take to build its not likely to make a huge difference til later in the game.

 

[Jakalak]

Sounds like you have supply issues and they are out of fuel. You can resupply via airdrop, transport truck or wait for your supply line to catch up. Although unless you've captured a road from your territory to theirs its not likely to happen in dense jungle terrain.

Of course you could be out of fuel all together in which case none of the above would help until you procure some.

As to your diplomacy issues.. Imagine that the diplomacy bars are about 50% longer on each side. They will not accept alliances etc until you fill most of that "invisible" 50% up. (I've complained about this as well but ya anyway) Easiest way to get this up is bribe them with whatever you can spare.. goods, cash, techs units etc.


Mostly true.. they will under very rare circumstances do them. But more often they will try to clear out a port with naval ships and then have units land there via merchant marine. If they never clear out a port to land then they are usually screwed. Some of my changes to how the AI builds up a navy made it into the beta test of update 3 so they should perform better at clearing out ports after update 3 is released (not to mention BG did a large overhaul of how the AI handles naval units in general). Although given how long good ships take to build its not likely to make a huge difference til later in the game.

Ah, okay, that makes a lot of sense, thank you.

It probably wasn't a complete lack of fuel, assuming fuel is petroleum and not military supplies? I'm guessing that it was a supply problem, which probably means I'll have to either get units who have a large supply capacity or perform an amphibious/airborne attack, right?

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Also, yeah, that's kind of why I was wondering. I usually tend to throw them most of my excess income, supplies, research, etc.

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Also, another really stupid question. For some reason none of my Infantry want to load into my Heavy Supply Truck. Am I misunderstanding what's going on here? It seems as if they'd be light enough to do so.