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Just a few pics for those that missed it..


poland.jpg


suez.jpg



japan.jpg



europe.jpg


africa.jpg


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Fiendix said:
May I just add that we are 6 months into the war and japan has *still* not annexed them - in vanilla you just that much time to get rid of ai china. Whilst he will need more time to get to the far away vp provinces noting the slower move speeds and longer combat times.
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In the second session, Japan made China a fascist puppet in February 1939. Both countries then joined the Axis in the following month. So, when the war with Germany started over Danzig, UK also found itself at war with Italy, China and Japan plus a host of other minor nations like Greece and Portugal. This alternate history is perhaps tenable but what sticks in my craw is a fascist Israel flying a Star of David flag.

Starfire's longer combat durations doesn't seem to change the feel of the game as much as I was expecting. It doesn't seem enough to offset the unbalancing effects of the earlier start and the strengthening of the Axis. The outcome of this game already appears to be decided in 1939.

Aircraft seem quite expensive in Starfire and I've only just started my first Spitfire. I've not used them enough yet to establish whether their effectiveness is improved sufficiently to warrant this expense. Is airpower supposed to be better balanced in Starfire than in vanilla 1.2?

Andrew
 
To be honest, I do think that the current way the mod works, it is biased towards to Axis. I wonder if this remains later in the game, as we still need to feel the impact of SU and US on the game.

Looking at the UK (the only opponent at the moment), it seems it lacks the forces to put up a fight. I wonder if this is because of the higher unit cost compared to the lrge starting armies of notably Japan and Italy? Or could UK have managed it's IC differently next time?

It's to early to have any conclusions on how the mod balances out, but I think forcing Japan to DOW US the moment it gets into war with Allies or SU might help. Having the large starting Armies of Italy and Japan on top of fighting the Germs confronting the UK might be a bit to much.

Another solution might be to remove/lighten the Peacetime penalty of the Allies. I was Canada last session, and the starting IC (~19) was hardly enough to build a single Inf division at a time.

On a more positive note, I do like the smaller ammount of units in the game (mostly the smaller amount of Allies :D jk). It seems Tanks are more impressive then in Vanila as well.

I have heard people talking about the increased effectiveness of Airpower. I wonder in what way it effects the battle. So far I had a single, moving Armored Division under nearly round a clock bombing by some old type TAC's, and the effect was marginal (lost 2 Strength points in roughly 2 weeks of continous air attack). Wonder if better models and better Docs will have a more significant effect.
 
Kyril said:
To be honest, I do think that the current way the mod works, it is biased towards to Axis. I wonder if this remains later in the game, as we still need to feel the impact of SU and US on the game.
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Well the rules we have set up do favour the axis. I am generally in favour of that since usa tips the balance. However if we do add events like increasing interventionism and hawk if japan joins the axis too early this might make japan a little more reluctant.


Kyril said:
Looking at the UK (the only opponent at the moment), it seems it lacks the forces to put up a fight. I wonder if this is because of the higher unit cost compared to the lrge starting armies of notably Japan and Italy? Or could UK have managed it's IC differently next time?
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yea I dont know how many units were built but seems that uk has too little... our normal mp game usually has greece, argentina, s africa, canada and new zealand troops all over gib, suez.


Kyril said:
On a more positive note, I do like the smaller ammount of units in the game (mostly the smaller amount of Allies :D jk). It seems Tanks are more impressive then in Vanila as well.
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yea it seems much more sane then what happens in vanilla where u have 40 tanks running around :rolleyes: . I guess we have to see what happens when germany starts too attack me.

Overall I am quite happy with the way builds look - cant say much about combat though. I cant agree that the game is decided in 39 by far. If we had another player controling france, poland, canada the axis would still be battleing them. We only really needed to stack 48 units in Warsaw and the germans would be delayed by a month. We cant expect to give france and poland to ai and hope that changes "the feel of the game" as the ai is always the ai. So both counties fell as fast as they would in vanilla hoi. If we had more troops in africa and a fleet the situation would look much more troublesome for the axis.
 
Fiendix said:
yea I dont know how many units were built but seems that uk has too little... our normal mp game usually has greece, argentina, s africa, canada and new zealand troops all over gib, suez.
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Presumably you're referring to the ridiculous excess of the standard 36 scenario in which the CW countries have no peace penalty. In the 38 scenario, they do have a peace penalty. The result in this game was that the countries Canada, South Africa, Australia and NZ had no mobile land units between them on the outbreak of war. This is historically accurate and so is as it should be. Japan rampaging across Asia in 1939 with 85 divisions is not. My impression that Starfire has given Japan more IC than standard 38 but I'm not sure if there's more to it than that.

Andrew
 
Colonel Warden said:
Japan rampaging across Asia in 1939 with 85 divisions is not. My impression that Starfire has given Japan more IC than standard 38 but I'm not sure if there's more to it than that.
Andrew
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Yes i definately agree with that - japan looks and is very powerfull. Something that needs to be nerfed by Mithel.
 
Good, nice to have more useful, good feedback. Nerf Japan... ok... I'll take a look at Japan (of course I am in the middle of a complete worldwide economic rework). It would seem that Japan is normally naturally "nerfed" by the poor economic AI (trades that end up using 100% IC for CG production) so we have a totally different situation for a human Japan.
 
It is probably impossible to have excellent SP and MP experience with one scenario. Wherever you strengthen AI, you disballance MP games. What about pure MP oriented mod? Is market for it too small to find motivation to do it? Maybe dumb question :)
 
Starfire is developed with multiplayer in mind. However that's a complex and "impossible" target since we know some (most) countries will be run by the AI. Roughly nine players would be needed to have humans running the "most critical" nations. And rarely will groups of nine be able to play. My expectation is that most often HoI Starfire will be played by three to five players. Thus several key nations will be run by AI and which nations are AI will change from game to game.

I tend to not worry about German AI (other than it needs to be decent for hands off testing) as virtually every game will have a human German player.

Another thing to keep in mind is that I will not change something just to "balance" the game. If there is an imbalance I will analyze the situation and search for a historical explanation and solution. I will not induce non-historical "cheats" just to "balance" the game.

The most important conflict is the German-Soviet front. In my opinion everything else pales in comparison. Of course no single situation can be isolated. How well Germany does against Russia depends on how much of German resources are diverted to deal with England and the western allies.

Also I noticed in your game that Germany and Russia are virtually ignoring each other. This isn't realistic. Historically no matter how much they trusted a pact they would not trust each other that much, there would always be significant forces deployed to prevent a surprise disaster. (Leaving Germany with a free hand to deploy 95% of it's forces against France, etc is just too powerful and you can expect non-historical German success in such a situation.)
 
Mithel said:
.

Also I noticed in your game that Germany and Russia are virtually ignoring each other. This isn't realistic. Historically no matter how much they trusted a pact they would not trust each other that much, there would always be significant forces deployed to prevent a surprise disaster. (Leaving Germany with a free hand to deploy 95% of it's forces against France, etc is just too powerful and you can expect non-historical German success in such a situation.)
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The knowledge that
1) Russia GDE is crap
2) No cores on baltic (ie loss through lack of mr pact)
3) No cores on finland and loss of extra GDE bonus (ie loss through lack of mr pact)
4) War with Poland = war with allies

basically predetermines (esp the first and fourth) that russia is in not much shape to be a threat to germany. Germany dictates when war starts.
 
Unfortunately almost all references show maps and OOBs for a particular campaign but fail to report much about what forces were garrisoning other fronts. I should look further into what forces Germany historically had deployed against Russia during the invasion of France. Does anyone know a reference that is particularly good for this? I'll check several of mine.

Sure Germany knows Soviet GDE is crap and thus is not worried about a potential Soviet invasion while they knock out France. But somehow I can't imagine they left the border virtually undefended. (there were skirmishes between the Russians and Germans in Poland so it's not like they were the best of friends on a tactical level)

As a what if... imagine in your game what would happen if a few dozen Russian divisions (even crap ones) rolled into Poland, Czech and Eastern Germany? This would certainly panic and distract Germany. What harm would it do to Russia? I'd like the players to think about this. The German player should think about the threat and this may motivate him to leave more units to assure that any Russian offensive was slowed down enough for him to react effectively. The Russian player should think about this as a possible opportunity. Sure the Russians at that point might not be able to effectively mount an offensive against strong German forces but heck even a 1918 Inf division can move into an empty province! A possible Russian offensive should be a threat to Germany. In what manner would this harm Russia? Would the benefits outweigh the disadvantages?
 
Indeed, the MR Pact was a major factor in the development of World War II. But Germany and Russia were historically bitter enemies and a few promises on some pieces of paper can't negate the distrust and history of those two nations. Certainly Germany-Russia can't be compared to USA-Canada. Sure diplomacy brought Germany a "free hand" to deal with Poland and France, etc but I have to assume there were many divisions stationed at the border to make sure each side abided by the treaty.

I need to look up the numbers but Germany swept into France with somewhere around 100+ divisions. I'm assuming 10 to 20 divisions were stationed in Poland on the border facing Russia. (I believe in your game currently Germany has ZERO divisions on the border with Russia).

I think this is a huge flaw in the HoI2 design, the AI (and other players) will exploit knowledge of history and the game design to not garrison places that in reality would get a token garrison no matter what. It would be a huge step forward if the diplomatic AI factored in how many divisions were on a border.
 
Another flaw in HOI2 is that you have no way of finding out what is further in than the first line if you are not at war. Thus attacking blindly is not the best idea IMO especially noting the points I have already made. Furthermore some players that dont get the MR pact stop at the visla line and dont take warsaw so as not to risk an attack from the russians. In the meantime they handle france. BTW In our game we did a full MR which we have a houserule that must be honored. Thats why I could disband my 1918 army and he can leave the boarder empty.
 
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