This is good progress but still the DLC is lacking too much, the issue people had was majorly around Iraq and Afghanistan content yet it seems like they haven't been touched at all.
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Please make it easier for Communist Austria to provoke a revolution.
For example, like in India:
Stability less than 35
Support for communism more than 30
Or like in Germany.
For example, like in India:
Stability less than 35
Support for communism more than 30
Or like in Germany.
Very good progress with India. But still very disappointment, that devs didn't expand islamic revolution path for Iran. Or add Shiite path to Iraq, because you basically have one in game files, but sadly, it’s not represented for some reason in the game. And as I can see, a lot of players also expected to see Islamic revolution path in Iran/Iraq. So why not to add it?
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AI front management seems better with this patch than before. Anybody else experiencing this? I'm happy about it
I don't have time right now to play through all the countries, so I was revisiting a country I found kind of fun in vanilla: Afghanistan. I've been dipping my toes in, reporting bugs, and keeping up with how things have changed. So when the rest of this post is complaints about one country, please understand that doesn't mean that I believe the other countries in the pack haven't improved; I don't know, but I am sure they have. I also appreciate some of the other changes you guys have made to the game in general recently. Please also understand that I'm not a super-awesome player, but I think I know enough about the game to give feedback. I've said a lot of this stuff before, but I feel like I have to say it again. So here goes:
Afghanistan in "Graveyard of Empires" is not fun or rewarding. I find appeal in playing as minor nations because you can go from zero to hero if you really walk a fine line. Afghanistan does not do that anymore. You have no large formable nation you can make anymore, unlike in vanilla. You cannot go to war early. The path with the largest reward is the safe path; the hardest paths has the fewest rewards. Many focuses are incredibly weak, and there are even entire branches that are nearly worthless.
1) Risk versus Reward. A key principle in game design is "risk versus reward." You want the player to be proactive and try their hardest, so you reward the player the most when they do that and manage to win. Afghanistan does not feature this. The absolute strongest political path for Afghanistan is to jump into bed with the USSR. That's the ONLY way to get a lot of extra cores. It's the only way to get into a war with Iran quickly, and not only that, but it's the safest way to get into a war with Iran. It's the only way to get all your MIOs. YES, "Look to Other Partners" can allow you to get a few extra Civilian Factories, but doing so costs a huge amount of PP and now also requires you to be fascist to get all of them (Italy requires over 90 approval). One path is so much better than the other that it isn't a choice at all. You might as well remove the other economic path. How come fighting and defeating the USSR is so much less rewarding than just joining them?
2) Research Slots. Afghanistan can only have a maximum of 4 research slots, or 3 if you go down the "Biding Our Time" path. This is so bad that it's insulting. Yes, you can get a few research speed bonuses, but many other minor nations have better research speed bonuses and can go to 5 research slots regardless of their chosen political path. You could get more than this with the Generic Focus Tree. And if I'm not mistaken, for several centuries, areas of Afghanistan were at the leading edge of science. There could be a revival of this spirit somewhere in the focus tree.
3) "Biding Our Time" is terrible. This path has no redeeming qualities other than quickly getting a dam. All you really get out of this path is Stability, which isn't a problem for Afghanistan, anyway. The capstone focuses are so pathetic! Is this supposed to be the focus path that the AI takes to keep them on a historical path? Then you could lock special focuses behind decisions that the AI doesn't take, or owning certain provinces they wouldn't normally have.
4) Naval Branch. Holy crap, this is bad!
- "Establish Naval Bases:" This doesn't actually establish any naval bases. LOL 70 days to get 20 Naval Exp? Like, couldn't you just bank PP and get your Chief of the Navy earlier instead? 20 Exp is nothing.
- "Naval Academy." You get two random admirals. Uh, isn't first admiral free, anyway? Are you implying Afghanistan will have 3 fleets at this point, or within *five years* of this focus?
- "Establish Afghan Shipping." The Naval Dockyard can go into a non-core state if you own one, which means you can't even use it. Wonderful. A MIO is neat, but 1 Naval Dockyard? Compare that to "Renew Soviet Trade-Agreement" [sic]. 6,400 construction points in 70 days for the former, 21,600 construction points in 35 days for the later. If we balance for time, "Renew Soviet Trade-Agreement" [sic] is worth 43,200 construction points, compared to 6,400. That's 6.75 times more value in construction points for "Renew Soviet Trade-Agreement" [sic]. Yes, you get a MIO for "Establish Afghan Shipping," but "Renew Soviet Trade-Agreement" [sic] has a Research Speed buff.
- The other focuses are just boring "Research Speed buff" versus "buy crappy ships" thing we've seen before. Nothing exciting.
You need to move Heaven and Earth to get a coastal province, and this is what you get as a reward? I'd say that "Establish Naval Bases" should give you 2 Naval Bases in a random core coastal province, and this should be a 35 day focus.
"Establish Afghan Shipping" should really be a really good focus to go for it. Consider that by the time you have a coastal province, unless you sided with the Soviets, it's already going to be ~1941. "Establish Afghan Shipping" should give you at least two Naval Dockyards and a Naval Facility. Make it a 100 day focus to make up for it if you have to, but you should be able to really dig into naval gameplay at this point. There's little chance you'd have any Facility other than this, anyway.
As for "Naval Academy," maybe it unlocks a decision that costs PP to accelerate naval research. You have a lot of catching up to do, so why not? It'd fit in with other education-oriented decisions Afghanistan has.
Do you want Afghanistan players to have any chance of naval gameplay?
5) Facilities. There are effectively no Facilities in the entire focus tree. Yes, "Afghan-Pakistani Cold War" allows this, but Pakistan doesn't even get spit out of the Raj in a normal game. So this focus basically doesn't exist. Maybe there should be a focus to foment Pakistani independence to allow this to actually happen. But effectively, "Afghan-Pakistani Cold War" and "Eliminate Pakistan" are impossible focuses. Pakistan *used* to pop out in like 1946, but now it doesn't pop out at all. And even if you fixed this, what's the point of a Facility in 1946? It's like a bad joke.
6) Too Long to War. Unless you side with the USSR, you aren't going to war with another country until at least 1939, and that first war (likely against Iran) will take a long time if you aren't part of some alliance. But ideally, as a minor nation, you want to be able do some small wars before 1939. You want to close some of them out. As Afghanistan, you *should * want to take over Iraq before the UK puppets it. You want it to be possible to go defeat Turkey before ending up in a war with the Allies AND Axis. It used to be JUST BARELY possible in vanilla. I think I can confidently say it's impossible now unless you side with the USSR. Maybe with the Sadabaad Pact, you can do some of that, but obviously you won't be attacking Turkey if you do that. The World Tension limits for "Align With the Allies," "Pursue Our Own Agenda," and "Alternate Partnerships" should be reduced. It's already extremely hard to get the required manpower for the later two into the field in a timely manner
7) Lack of Flexibility. Okay, the Afghanistan path is kind of flexible. But take a look at the USSR path. You HAVE to Support King Zahir, because that's the only way to get a political advisor that increases your Communism support to get to 20%. Otherwise, you have to wait until very much later when the USSR influences your politics. It's just that it seems like a major way to play Afghanistan could be to change ideologies and alliances, but you really can't do that to the extreme that you would expect.
8) No Big Goals. There's no way to really expand in a meaningful way as Afghanistan OTHER than sucking up to the USSR or taking over Pakistan. The first is very easy, and the second is also pretty easy. But even if you maximally expand, you're not gonna become very powerful. There are like 4 different ways to go to war with Iran in the focus tree, but no real reward for doing so.
9) Italy in "Look to Other Partners." Italy is super-annoying here because they require over 90 approval, which can only happen if you're also Fascist. Please. This focus path is bad enough. Don't make it even worse.
It just seems kind of weird that this DLC is named after Afghanistan, but Afghanistan's optimal play style is pretty passive, railroad-y, and un-fun. But it's also the country you guys have barely changed, so I guess you're satisfied with it.
Afghanistan in "Graveyard of Empires" is not fun or rewarding. I find appeal in playing as minor nations because you can go from zero to hero if you really walk a fine line. Afghanistan does not do that anymore. You have no large formable nation you can make anymore, unlike in vanilla. You cannot go to war early. The path with the largest reward is the safe path; the hardest paths has the fewest rewards. Many focuses are incredibly weak, and there are even entire branches that are nearly worthless.
1) Risk versus Reward. A key principle in game design is "risk versus reward." You want the player to be proactive and try their hardest, so you reward the player the most when they do that and manage to win. Afghanistan does not feature this. The absolute strongest political path for Afghanistan is to jump into bed with the USSR. That's the ONLY way to get a lot of extra cores. It's the only way to get into a war with Iran quickly, and not only that, but it's the safest way to get into a war with Iran. It's the only way to get all your MIOs. YES, "Look to Other Partners" can allow you to get a few extra Civilian Factories, but doing so costs a huge amount of PP and now also requires you to be fascist to get all of them (Italy requires over 90 approval). One path is so much better than the other that it isn't a choice at all. You might as well remove the other economic path. How come fighting and defeating the USSR is so much less rewarding than just joining them?
2) Research Slots. Afghanistan can only have a maximum of 4 research slots, or 3 if you go down the "Biding Our Time" path. This is so bad that it's insulting. Yes, you can get a few research speed bonuses, but many other minor nations have better research speed bonuses and can go to 5 research slots regardless of their chosen political path. You could get more than this with the Generic Focus Tree. And if I'm not mistaken, for several centuries, areas of Afghanistan were at the leading edge of science. There could be a revival of this spirit somewhere in the focus tree.
3) "Biding Our Time" is terrible. This path has no redeeming qualities other than quickly getting a dam. All you really get out of this path is Stability, which isn't a problem for Afghanistan, anyway. The capstone focuses are so pathetic! Is this supposed to be the focus path that the AI takes to keep them on a historical path? Then you could lock special focuses behind decisions that the AI doesn't take, or owning certain provinces they wouldn't normally have.
4) Naval Branch. Holy crap, this is bad!
- "Establish Naval Bases:" This doesn't actually establish any naval bases. LOL 70 days to get 20 Naval Exp? Like, couldn't you just bank PP and get your Chief of the Navy earlier instead? 20 Exp is nothing.
- "Naval Academy." You get two random admirals. Uh, isn't first admiral free, anyway? Are you implying Afghanistan will have 3 fleets at this point, or within *five years* of this focus?
- "Establish Afghan Shipping." The Naval Dockyard can go into a non-core state if you own one, which means you can't even use it. Wonderful. A MIO is neat, but 1 Naval Dockyard? Compare that to "Renew Soviet Trade-Agreement" [sic]. 6,400 construction points in 70 days for the former, 21,600 construction points in 35 days for the later. If we balance for time, "Renew Soviet Trade-Agreement" [sic] is worth 43,200 construction points, compared to 6,400. That's 6.75 times more value in construction points for "Renew Soviet Trade-Agreement" [sic]. Yes, you get a MIO for "Establish Afghan Shipping," but "Renew Soviet Trade-Agreement" [sic] has a Research Speed buff.
- The other focuses are just boring "Research Speed buff" versus "buy crappy ships" thing we've seen before. Nothing exciting.
You need to move Heaven and Earth to get a coastal province, and this is what you get as a reward? I'd say that "Establish Naval Bases" should give you 2 Naval Bases in a random core coastal province, and this should be a 35 day focus.
"Establish Afghan Shipping" should really be a really good focus to go for it. Consider that by the time you have a coastal province, unless you sided with the Soviets, it's already going to be ~1941. "Establish Afghan Shipping" should give you at least two Naval Dockyards and a Naval Facility. Make it a 100 day focus to make up for it if you have to, but you should be able to really dig into naval gameplay at this point. There's little chance you'd have any Facility other than this, anyway.
As for "Naval Academy," maybe it unlocks a decision that costs PP to accelerate naval research. You have a lot of catching up to do, so why not? It'd fit in with other education-oriented decisions Afghanistan has.
Do you want Afghanistan players to have any chance of naval gameplay?
5) Facilities. There are effectively no Facilities in the entire focus tree. Yes, "Afghan-Pakistani Cold War" allows this, but Pakistan doesn't even get spit out of the Raj in a normal game. So this focus basically doesn't exist. Maybe there should be a focus to foment Pakistani independence to allow this to actually happen. But effectively, "Afghan-Pakistani Cold War" and "Eliminate Pakistan" are impossible focuses. Pakistan *used* to pop out in like 1946, but now it doesn't pop out at all. And even if you fixed this, what's the point of a Facility in 1946? It's like a bad joke.
6) Too Long to War. Unless you side with the USSR, you aren't going to war with another country until at least 1939, and that first war (likely against Iran) will take a long time if you aren't part of some alliance. But ideally, as a minor nation, you want to be able do some small wars before 1939. You want to close some of them out. As Afghanistan, you *should * want to take over Iraq before the UK puppets it. You want it to be possible to go defeat Turkey before ending up in a war with the Allies AND Axis. It used to be JUST BARELY possible in vanilla. I think I can confidently say it's impossible now unless you side with the USSR. Maybe with the Sadabaad Pact, you can do some of that, but obviously you won't be attacking Turkey if you do that. The World Tension limits for "Align With the Allies," "Pursue Our Own Agenda," and "Alternate Partnerships" should be reduced. It's already extremely hard to get the required manpower for the later two into the field in a timely manner
7) Lack of Flexibility. Okay, the Afghanistan path is kind of flexible. But take a look at the USSR path. You HAVE to Support King Zahir, because that's the only way to get a political advisor that increases your Communism support to get to 20%. Otherwise, you have to wait until very much later when the USSR influences your politics. It's just that it seems like a major way to play Afghanistan could be to change ideologies and alliances, but you really can't do that to the extreme that you would expect.
8) No Big Goals. There's no way to really expand in a meaningful way as Afghanistan OTHER than sucking up to the USSR or taking over Pakistan. The first is very easy, and the second is also pretty easy. But even if you maximally expand, you're not gonna become very powerful. There are like 4 different ways to go to war with Iran in the focus tree, but no real reward for doing so.
9) Italy in "Look to Other Partners." Italy is super-annoying here because they require over 90 approval, which can only happen if you're also Fascist. Please. This focus path is bad enough. Don't make it even worse.
It just seems kind of weird that this DLC is named after Afghanistan, but Afghanistan's optimal play style is pretty passive, railroad-y, and un-fun. But it's also the country you guys have barely changed, so I guess you're satisfied with it.
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I preferred the repetitive image of that Iranian officer to all the Arab officers!
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IIRC this comes down to the fact that there is no "Persian" preset, so they had to go with one of the neighboring ones.
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And this is where the portrait makers should come around to fix.
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I agree in that. It's too much asked to have artists make portrait of every single general, statesman and scientist that existed during WWII. But it's resonable to ask one typical, average male portrate of each ethnic background.
absolutely that is not the point! then why didn't they do the same for Afghanistan? the answer is clear because they knew Afghanistan is not Arab but they didn't know Iran is not neither!
as I said they even could use the same pics as other countries like Turkey!
this is very important to consider the right culture for every country! almost all portraits except Arab and red hat Syrian presets would be more proper for Iran!
however as a suggestion I think there can be an option at the beginning of the game where players would be able to choose their favorite officer portraits from list of portraits pool to be used as field officers. for example some officer portraits from Sweden (creator's country!) are awesome and I prefer to have them!
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They have (or had) 1 portrait in the Persian preset, which led to complaints that every general used the same portrait, which is why they switched to the Arab preset.
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who enjoys of having lots of generals with only 1 face?! do you? and that can't justify changing that to Arab preset!!! why changing to Arab?!!! there were others as well! who the H has said Arab is appropriate for non-Arab country?! ask yourself would you like to see Arab pics for your own country?! I think if everyone could imagine the situation as it has happened to himself and the fact that what he would do in same condition, he would judge fairly and confirm that it's quite senseless and BIG MISTAKE to set pics unrelated to a countries culture! and without a doubt the players will never enjoy using them!!!
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Can you please still make an effort to replace fake advisors for Afghanistan in the DLC version ? There are plenty in the no-DLC version...
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Did you even read the post I was replying to? It said "But it's resonable to ask one typical, average male portrate of each ethnic background.", which is exactly the situation I was referring to.
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Something I would like to see for HoI5: populations, that every state has a population which defines to what extent which states can recruit from them and also how generals recruited from them will look like. So that Iran has a low chance to have an Arab general, a higher chance to have a Kurdish or Turkish general and normally just gets a persian general. Not sure if Balochis even served in the Iranian Army at that time.
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There are also some with Iran and Iraq.... its just sad.
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@PDX_Per I've run the update but my game stayed on open_beta branch. Earlier when a new patch was released open_beta was closed and the game moved to main branch. Should I now switch manually or current open_beta contains something beyond the current main patch or they're equal?
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I switched off manually open_beta, since it did not happen automaticly this time. After that I restarted the game.
@PDX_Per I actually don't see 1.16.5 in the list of my branches, the last main one is 1.16.4 marked old then comes open_beta. I have all DLCs up and including TOA. Does it mean 1.16.5 is not applicable to me or something's wrong?
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