Mod playtest

[trekaddict]

Playtest report: The Draka AI needs some serious work. It never builds anything but Factories and forts until 1945, which is kinda stupid since they almost always go to war with someone around 1942-43.

The other big issue is the absence of the Bitter Peace events. I have admittedly never read the books, but from what I gather in canon the Germans had the Soviets defeated, quote: "Nazi Victory", meaning that IMO the BP events should be in it.


Another small issue is that while I haven't tested Japan yet, Germany and the US are the only non-Draka countries that have any chance at defeating the Draka, and that Britain needs at least a few small boosts to be even competitive against Germany. Also, the British ORBAT lacks the ships of the Mediterranean Fleet from Vanilla. They have probably been reworked into Draka ships, but still.

 

[cplhicks]

Draka AI is getting worked on, they ought to be roughly as powerful as the US, but not a great deal more so.

Japan is more or less a super-sized version of the one from OTL, and given that they're facing a truncated Britain along with a super-sized USA and Australia, this fits just fine. In a slugging match, they'd beat anyone in the region, but they don't have much going for them besides a large pool of natural resources and manpower.

As of mid-42 in the books, the Soviet resistance hadn't completely collapsed, but their army was effectively gone. It wound up being moot, however. They had a smaller industrial base and manpower pool with which to fight a Germany that had its Anschluss and Sudeten takeover early, but the Germans were the only Europeans that could stand up and fight the Draka and not be laughed at.

The Royal Navy is necessarily smaller, in no small part due to a smaller empire to protect. Australasia is more independent in this timeline, and India is better suited to take care of itself. Without any major American or African colonies, the country would be considerably poorer in resources as well.

I really should pack up and release my later work, I've been meaning to get back to this for a few weeks.

 

[unmerged(90027)]

Good mod. However, after my conquest of france as Germany, 90% of my army got erased after i granted the Vichy French freedom.

 

[gianlucad]

Good mod. However, after my conquest of france as Germany, 90% of my army got erased after i granted the Vichy French freedom.

Wasnt it simply redeployed to berlin?

 

[jose1357]

check the coding for the surrender event, I think it has VIC but I believe that they use a user defined nation as Vichy france due to some CTD issues in the Hoi2ARMA version of this mod. Anyway, if you do it properly you should choose the military occupation since you get all of france and only 2% revolt risk, ditto w/ nearly every other nation you conquer, unless you splurge for SPR and of course USSR. I noticed the AI IC building prob too, so I just changed it to ICendyear=1939, reordered their building priorities, and they eventually built up the world's 2nd largest army

 

[cplhicks]

There's virtually no reason for the German player to want to release Vichy France anyhow. France had no overseas colonies of consequence in this timeline that needed a French government to report to, so the Germans were free to occupy using any means they wished.

We've left the Vichy option in the game, but as I recall, the VIC tag was broken in the hoi2 exe, and possibly in the AoD one also. I had intended to use a Uxx tag instead for the replacement French State at that time, but I've left that virtually untouched since altering the event chains for AoD.

 

[jose1357]

Actually, is the story line being tweaked? ITA invading GRE must be moved back, it doesn't make sense to me, especially since the event text says this is supposed to happen after FRA falls. I could definitely see that happening, but having ITA go to war with GRE, YUG, and ROM seems a reach. Also, since this isn't the wanked out Draka, is there going to be an interlude between them pwning SOV and starting the Eurasian war?

 

[cplhicks]

The story line has been tweaked by conjecture, mainly, since the books didn't spell every action of the war out in detail. I've set up (as I recall) Italy eating Greece following the fall of Poland, more or less to flex some muscle and dissuade the Germans from attempting to retake Tyrol, much as Italy historically invaded Greece and stirred up the hornet's nest in Africa following the fall of France in 1940.

I've somewhat arbitrarily dictated that Germany would get the north of Italy and the Balkan possessions, as well as the Dalmatian coast, based largely on the Austrian Empire's former claims. The Draka would be satisfied in the short term with Sicily and most of the boot, as this offers them a relatively small front to protect in the event of a future land war with Germany, as well as having the central mountains of Italy for use as a defensive battlefield if need be. As for going to war with Yugoslavia, Romania, and Greece at once, the real goal was to take Greece quickly and possibly Yugoslavia in the longer term, since they figured Romania would sit it out. Mussolini was always one for biting off more than he could chew, since in OTL, the Germans were called in to settle matters that Italy had started in Greece, Crete, and North Africa.

Ideally, Germany ought to take Moscow in late 41 and press on to the Urals as able. Balancing this is not yet complete, however. The Soviets ought to be abandoned by the Allies in this case, and bitter peace called. Around this time (spring of 42), the Draka should DOW Germany. Forcing the Draka AI to take the proper invasion routes instead of a Balkan/Italian strategy is the real challenge, along with making sure everything else happens on time.

As for IC, the Draka ought to be roughly equal to the US, with significant bonuses to most combat and movement. Germany in spring of 42 should be in roughly the same IC class, with the second most capable army in the world.

 

[jose1357]

Ok, was a bit perplexed when I saw the ITA/GRE war event is dated for mar 1939, so it just needs to be set back w/ FRA falling trigger. The splitting matches cannon so I dig that, and well since vanilla GER can force the BP in about 2 years it shouldn't have any problems w/ a weaker SOV. IC wise I don't think it's an issue, because of the whole gearing up for war chain USA has till about '40. The real prob. is lack of resources when U00 surpasses about 320 in base, since modifiers make it go up to like 500 IC, and they run out of rares so I just added a bunch of them to the provinces file. Also, fyi the models for Draka still use the SAF tag, (and in the draka AI file SPR isn't in the embargo lists) but when I changed them all to U00 for some reason at the load menu I still get the vanilla '36 scenario text for the EU???