Planning: Alien Invasion MP Game?

[Chaingun]

If you ever read this AAR you maybe see what I have in mind (actually, I did not read it in detail but I saw the possibilites a while ago ):

Link To 'WAAR of the Worlds'

My idea is basically to play a 1419 MP game through the mod dir command, and let one player be the maxed 60/60/10/10 teched aliens starting out on some remote island with cores all over the world. The other players would then form then start in the usual countries and cooperate to contain the alien invasion.

There is an obvious problem with the player selection. A very good player would have to play the aliens to be able to cope with all micromangement in order to fight the world and the combined forces of other players. It might be very lonely and ultimately boring for most players to have such a role of world conqueror, so it would take a certain mindset for the person to lead the aliens to victory. He would also need to be able to invest a lot of time in AAR writing since the alien commander's view is undoubtly the most interesting one.

Furthermore there are some issues with the game engine. The aliens' cutting-edge technology is doomed to spread to whatever tech group they're in. Thus I propose that they start out in the exotic tech group to minimize impact. The second problem is that of inflation since the aliens would not be able to do invest in anything else but treasury for about 400 years of gameplay. Eventually the inflation would be horrendous unless edited out. The question here of course is whether inflation should be let to achieve these high levels; it could simulate the aliens weakening over time and giving them an incentive to crush the other humans as quickly as possible.

Who would win? I believe this must be answered before any signficant planning was done for this game. If the aliens' starting position allows them to rampage across the word at a great pace leaving little time for the humans to defend then there is little point of playing except to have one's sadistic pleasures acted out upon. On the other hand, if the alien invasion is stopped dead in its tracks it will definately kill off the point of the game.

Of course, the modification would include the scenario changes. Additionally, I imagine that the alien graphics set could be adopted for the U00 tag. Someone would have to do that since I'm not that familiar with graphics editing in EU2 to a great extent. Everything else I could handle.

What do you say, do you think this would be a fun game? :rofl:

Excuse any spelling mistakes, I'm tired while writing this.

 

[Chaingun]

just remember that the aliens if you put them on hawaii or someplace like that won't have any significant manpower.

True. Remember I did not spend a very long time thinking this over yeasterday before I posted it; the idea is to think about the setup in this thread which you indeed do. Remember the aliens will have access to conscription centers and weapon manufactories to improve their manpower, as well as any grain provinces they capture. I really need to go through the manpower FAQ again since I feel my memory about it is a fuzzy.

Another option is to either let the aliens move their capital to anyone of their provinces between sessions, or to set up specific events for a few provinces of the type "if this province is conquered, move capital here".

I suppose giving them a perm Causi Belli on everyone and after the attack a civilization that civilization should also get a perm in return but I am not sure how much of a fight this will really be. LT60 against LT9 wouldn't even be a fight would it?

I think the only way to test this is to actually play it for a bit first in SP and see at how a quick peace the advance can be made. It must be remembered that humans will put up much more stiff resistance from the AI, so the aliens should be able to win in SP but with certain difficulties.

There may be a huge problem in the number of revolts. I don't know about most WC games, but I do believe they are often paused to deal with excessive numbers of rebels. The rebels will be an annoying distraction for anyone facing 6-12 human enemies; thus we should try to optimize the situation as much as possible. One strategy could be to give the aliens the all the cultures in the world. This combined with the cores all over the world should keep revolts down to a manageable level.

This sounds like a....CRAZY idea

You volunteer to play the aliens then? No seriously, we should have a time for this first provided it's even possible...

 

[Chaingun]

If you're going to do this I suggest considering spreading the players around the globe rather than having them all bunched in Europe. It will both give everyone a chance to expand a bit before meeting the aliens and also mean the aliens won't have a free ride against the AI by simply avoiding Europe. Of course it MAY mean the aliens can then simply pick the players off one by one but them are the breaks .

Indeed. I was thinking of letting quite a few rule Asia (most notably China and probably the Timurids/Mughal Empire as well). On the other hand, if the aliens start somewhere in Oceania (the 'continent' in EU2), they are very likely to pick off China early on. Other possible starting locations I have in mind except Tahiti or Australia are St.Helena or the Bermudas (now Bermuda would be a good spot).

Sounds like real fun . Would be even kewler if the players were allowed to scheme, european-like in the face of danger, maybe taking the opportunity to swat France into a blue mess.

It might be. However, I'm afraid that if only 33% of the humans or more decided to ally with the aliens the remaining defenders of Earth will stand no chance (especially if the aliens start funding the remaining humans). Like already established I expect the natural restrictions for the aliens to be the manpower issue, inflation and revolts; these can be overcome with allies.

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One thing which could greatly change the balance of the game would be a later starting date than 1419. Essentially, technology will have more time to develop in favour of more even battles for the humans.

 

[Chaingun]

The problem I have with delaying the starting date is that before the aliens are able to do anything whatsoever, they must explore their surroundings which undoubtly takes some time, and establish some basic outposts (colonies) to prevent massive attrition in case they start in Occeania. I'm just afraid that once they've picked up steam they will expand very fast - careful balancing needs to be done here.

I also repeat that Bermuda may be an interesting select for their starting spot, considering that this will allow them to draw considerable manpower from North America. This is a much better starting position though (just think of how close to Azteks), and therefore I think it should be accompanied with a 1492 start.

 

[Chaingun]

I was thinking of perhaps making some kind of "victory events" as well. The aliens would lose if they do not control their capital any time (with an exclusion of rebels). They would win if all major capital provinces in the world had been conquered. These are just ideas of course, I'm not sure how they'd play out.

 

[Chaingun]

About the leaders - why shouldn't the aliens have leaders? It's just a question of whether we want them to have an additional advantage in the form of an ever-living 10-10-10-5 leader or something similar.

About the micromanagement issue: I think it might just work, if 1) the alien player is not disturbed by events in his regular life, 2) has a stable connection, and 3) has the number of monotonous gameplay issues cut down to a minimum (this means decreasing number of revolts by all means possible because they tend to prove a serious distraction for any global empire).

 

[Chaingun]

As for your manpower problem: They will need massive manpower (high tech or not) to take on the world. Couldnt you just edit in massive mp (lets say 50) to their home province as a starting point. they could then draw more from colonies etc ?

I'm not sure how to do that (I assume it's in the province = {} tags in the .EUG file). But you're right, if it can be edited like that without any limitation that'd solve the manpower issue in a way.

 

[Chaingun]

If you start in 1419,
Give them land tech 14, that'll give tham a good start and still make it possible for the human players to defend themselves

The problem here (except that it defeats the purpose of the aliens altogether), is that anyone starting at land tech 14 in 1419 is not going to advance anywhere is tech due to the ahead of time penalty as well as the fact the aliens will start out in pagan techgroup to minimize neighbour teching.

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I'm open to suggestions about playing times, I find this very hard to coordinate considering people from several continents want to join. In order to allow this the day would almost certainly have to be a weekend one. The problem here is of course that I already got a game on Friday, the Saturdays I want to save for various reasons and Sundays I know many of you have games at pretty much the best hours (not taking into account that I'd like to keep Sundays free but I see that's impossible).

 

[Chaingun]

Several notes not posted in any particular order:

- Tomorrow I won't be in school so I expect to get some work done on the scenario setup by then. I will probably make two different setups: One in 1419 and one in 1492, and I play it a bit myself to see how quickly the aliens are able to reach Europe and Asia. I'm still leaning towards 1492 though because it will probably reduce some technology tedium for the humans.

- It would certainly be interesting with a secret alien starting location, but I'd know about it so for me it'd be hard keeping quiet. However, their start position may be randomized (from a set of good province IDs). We must first decide on whether we want them to access the American landmass or though, because if they do they will be able to increase manpower by colonizing.

- For all you North Americans, what time would be good on Sundays? Basically, we can choose to either put it in the evening (in which case Wyvern and someone else may not be able to attain), or in the morning here in Europe. I need to check a time-zone converter to see what is most workable (western US time will always be much more troublesome than eastern US time).

 

[Chaingun]

So, what do you think will be the best DP settings for aliens, so far I have:

Aristocracy (diplomats), I'm not sure of this one
Centralized (less likely civil wars)
Narrowminded (stab costs, colonists, missionaries)
Free Trade (more merchants and colonists)
Offsensive (no need to siege, assault shock), not sure here either
Naval (oversees penalty)
Quality (extra fire), not sure here since MP may be important
Serfdom (stab costs), also unsure here

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Also youd probably need a stab hit rule or something . Else there would probably only be 1 war unless that is the idea?

Yes that'd be great so that aliens can force peace people in order to save them from destruction due to WE.

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Does the moddir command work in MP without complications nowdays? (Except that the alien mod obviously needs to be installed on any computer joining the game.) We will to use moddir in order to access the alien graphics if we don't want to backup everything in our EU2 directories.

 

[Chaingun]

you gonna do graphics too, nice one. I can think of some cool events BTW

I think new random events and historical would be nice. As for sliders i dont think you should be too generous. Just leave them all in the middle.

Essentially I just plug in the standard Paradox ALI sprites for the graphics of tag U00, it still requires a moddir though .

As for the sliders: They will take a long time to change, and also remember that the aliens will get a bunch of decentralizing random events because it's so early in the game; hence I think they will be busy merely fighting the effects of random events, let alone trying to adjust their sliders.

 

[Chaingun]

I have edited the rudimentary basics into the 1492 scenario and it works. I was able to conquer Incas and disover most of SA by 1499 until AI Spain and Portugal decided to block me off by the simultaneous colony cheat. Also, when I tried to save it crashed; I will lock into that tomorrow.

I need to disable whiteman penalty because right now aliens cannot build ships or cavalry. Anyone know how to do this? whiteman = yes does not seem to work.

An interesting observation so far is that though the aliens were able to finish off the Incas, they had a tough time doing so because of attrition. I calculated that approximately 20% of their losses were combat losses and 80% attrition losses, and many aliens were dead before that figure could be determined. The difference in tech levels may mean that aliens win every battle per se, but it certainly doesn't mean that the opponent is chanceless (even more so because the aliens need to amass > 5k to assault minimal forts and they only possess 14k MP at start, which did not grow when Incas were conquered).

 

[Chaingun]

The problem is the aliens won't by swimming in money actually. In my test they were only making around 40 ducats a month after the conquest of the Azteks. Whether we want them to explore or not is rather a question of game balance; instant knowledge of the world will most certainly allow to to make early raids into Europe, as well as it allows them to immediately colonize all of the most profitable colonies in addition to be able to send traders to each and every CoT.

As for the player spread I will probably go with Wyvern's approach. Europe should not be that packed that player wars are bound to occur, but it should contain enough players to effectively fend of an alien invasion. Other players go to China and the Timurids I guess. The reason to why I don't want Inca & Co to be played is that they stand no chance with minimal forts, because I noticed yeasterday a key requirement in defeating the aliens are fortresses that prevents assaults unless the aliens amass sufficient concentrated forces.

We still need to do something about their low manpower. Was BOTH the same continent and land connection a requirement to draw manpower from colonies? I thought they were independent, both it didn't seem like that yeasterday.

Victory conditions could be anyone except rebels controlling the alien capital, that should be difficult enough. Since aliens are also Pagan you can more or less annex them in one stroke anyway if you manage to find and capture all their provinces. What the aliens should do to win is a more difficult question. I don't believe a full WC is possible at this scale of MP (problems with pace of gameplay and no pausing). I suspect that it should be enough to "defeat all human nations", where the meaning of "defeat" has to be determined.

 

[Chaingun]

Strange, no MP from Incas. May be due to culture. Anyhow I found out that manpower is editable, while writing this I tested it by giving the aliens 100 MP, which is at least to say interesting.

 

[Chaingun]

If you started on an island you have no land connection. This does make a difference iirr. This is why the new strait in the english channel is supposed to be good for enlglish mp. Also the culture makes a big difference.

As i say give their starting prov about 10mp. This would represent the initital alien invasion force. You should make a little story about their colonising. Like maybe body snatcher events where european humans loose mp and they gain it If you can be bothered writing new events then there is lots of potential there.

I'm not sure if the events are flexible enough, what would really have been needed here is a true executable scripting language. That's because there is no way to specify corelations between triggers and commands in random events, and in historical event there is very little one can do (some conditions and some commands have special IDs that allow you to specify more advanced actions than otherwise would be possible).

I forgot to add that they do not start out on an island, they start at the southern tip of SA to at least have a chance to develop better MP over time. 10 starting MP may be too little actually, if you think about all the horrible attrition the aliens will have to endure, and that they in theory needs to fight the entire world. Like I said, it seems we did overestimate the aliens' fighting capabilities. Sure, they win every battle, but every battle without an assault is a Phyrric victory to them due to attrition (and some combat losses do still occur even against natives). Myself I'd like to give them well around 50 MP, or I fear they will not be able to scare the Euros like they should be able to.

 

[Chaingun]

Regarding manpower, 50 sounds far too much to begin with - it would effectively put them on par with the middle sized european nations.

The thing is we want them survive a longer war without killing themselves with war exhaustion. I really wonder how fast alien progress will be; I'll edit them to 20 MP for now though. Does it sound better?

 

[Chaingun]

Just give the starting province like +10 manpower. They can work the rest by them selves I think its a good rule to go that they would assimilate the provinces they conquer making them their own culture.

I just put them to 10 even before reading this. The reason is, once I finally figured out how to edit out the whiteman penalty (yay I succeeded), those fleets explored the seas outside SA very quickly. I think they could attempt an early landing on Europe if they would have enough manpower.

The other second thing I learnt is that aliens have micromanagement hell coordinating their fleets sailing everywhere etc. (no surprise really). However, on BN it should be playable.

Quick how to start as alien list:
1. Build maxium number of cavalry or infantry (infantry might to better in the long run due to much better stats at land tech 60).
2. When troops finish, start building maximum number of warships or transports (which ever is faster for exploration).
3. Meanwhile you wait, start exploring with those troops (use very small concentrations).

 

[Chaingun]

Beta version 001 is temporarily available for download here:

Link

Unzip and extract into EU2 dir.

I would be happy if you could play test the aliens to 1500 or something to see how much you have time to explore.

 

[Chaingun]

Things I got to add to the scenario that is not included in that download:

1. Eternal great monarch.
2. Some leaders maybe? Evently distributed with 10 years apart?
3. More country slots.

Additinal suggestions about what to add would be welcome.

As for cultural assimilation, I'm afraid that it'd be difficult to track how long each province was owned. I think a more simple rule would be better, like "let the aliens convert 3 provinces of their choice to their culture every ten years between sessions, but no accumulation is allowed except for cases where a session saw multiple decades".

I don't think micromanagement will be too bad IF we can get the revolts to stay at a low rate. Like Cheech said, it would be fairly unsmart by the aliens to take on simultaneous fronts at the same time.

One little question from an anti-admiral (I never liked navies in EU2 and I prefer land powers), do ships at naval tech 60 receive any attrition? I think someone mentioned they don't. It would be very good for the aliens in terms of killing micromanagement if they could just place a small detachment of ships on certain locations when at war to continously block them.

 

[Chaingun]

One word - nationalism. Simply use the inbulit 30 year nationalism (assimilation?) rule to change the culture to alien. Can be easily worked out after each session.

I never cease to be a newbie . I thought nationalism was 10 years. I guess some of it remain then. Do you know where in the save file this will show up? I assume it is in the province = {} sections and not in the city = {} sections?

Why do you assume only aliens would DOW or be active party in deciding when and where the war will take place?

I don't, but the aliens can decide at what land fronts they want to fight at. If for example China decides to land a fleet in SA it risks to fail for several reasons. First is that the aliens' fleets rock, at least initially. Secondly I assume the aliens' fort will be incredibly hard to assault because of the CRT difference. All of this means I do not think any big human counter-invasions efforts will take place until in the late game where tech levels have evened out.

Ah yes 1 more thing.. I think that the humans should get CB on the aliens

They will once the aliens capture their cores. I do believe the most efficient way among humans will be to make one big alliance.

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I am in favour of enabling map sharing among the humans, but of course no sharing between the aliens or anyone else. The reason is I think it'd be hell annoying for Sweden if it did not know any alien territory when it tried to help Spain.