Victory Ahoy! (A Let's Play AAR with AHOI-Mod-"Treasure-Chest")

[Cardus]

....
I hope you enjoyed the update and let me know how I could improve this AAR. As it is my first there might be much to improve.
Maybe I should add a small narative part to make it more fun to read? Ot stay with just facts and what happend?

Cheers,
Chromos

Nice update but I feel that all the mods regarding the USA make the same error of them vanilla game: too much IC at the beginning and too low when the war starts. The IC should be the industrial production allocated to "defense" (+ the productivity*) and the USA budget was very limited in the 1930s as the country was in a deep depression.


By productivity I mean, for example, that 1m $ spent for building new merchant ships/airplanes in 1940 had as output 1000 units but the some money invested in 1945 had as output 10000 units. In HOI3 it's something you can replicate by practicals

 

[Chromos]

Nice update but I feel that all the mods regarding the USA make the same error of them vanilla game: too much IC at the beginning and too low when the war starts. The IC should be the industrial production allocated to "defense" (+ the productivity*) and the USA budget was very limited in the 1930s as the country was in a deep depression.


By productivity I mean, for example, that 1m $ spent for building new merchant ships/airplanes in 1940 had as output 1000 units but the some money invested in 1945 had as output 10000 units. In HOI3 it's something you can replicate by practicals

Hi Cardus,
your feelings is maybe misguiding you this time.
I made some pics of current USA in Sep. '39
They're mostly only poducing buildings by now a it is scripted that way in my Lua files. When the world heats up also US start build more military stuff.:


By now, they have only small Army, but acceptable Air-Force and good Navy:



They have plenty of MP and also Ressources to build new stuff when they enter war.


Note their current IC, they use way less now because of the laws in effect. When they enter war, they can not only use all of the available IC but also have to pay less for Consumer Goods too. And that does not take in to account the new techs they can research up to then in automation of production. IC efficiency should lower overall ressources need for building stuff, with that the output/productivity is even bigger as the amount of IC could make you think. Now they gain practicals faster because more stuff is being build faster and.. -> Arsenal of Democracy is born..
US is a big player. With the amount of IC build up until joining historically the war in '41, they have build up huge IC capacity wich will then be send as Lend-Lease to Allies in need, as also still enough to build up a decent Army and invasion force. They need some time to do so like they did historically.
So gamewise, When US enters war, Axis will have ~1 year until the US will be able to start and take full action on all fronts. Before they will wage war already with their fleet/planes and aid their allies.
There is still much to finetune as you can see that US has ~400 rares homeproduced. So it could sustain ~800 IC with that without further research that will get them more rares or trade for rares. Metall should be enough at hand too, but Energy would run out much faster by now. Also it has overall to much in everything, but overall the US should be able to play its "role" as a mass supplier of weapons and also be a technology advanced country. At the moment they can spend most Ls(~35 points) on research wich puts them in a good starting position when they start building units.

Thanks to your question, I noticed that US has again ist vanilla OOB used, I might have to fix that in the save now, as they should start with way less transports and subs in the pacific to not go to early on conquest and give the JAP ai some time to move to DEI..

 

[Cardus]

Hi Cardus,
your feelings is maybe misguiding you this time.
I made some pics of current USA in Sep. '39
They're mostly only poducing buildings by now a it is scripted that way in my Lua files. When the world heats up also US start build more military stuff.:


By now, they have only small Army, but acceptable Air-Force and good .....

Hi Chromos, in reality the USA started to build new factories when the country entered in the war not before. Historically almost all the IC should be devoted to CG and some infra. Nothing more. Anyway did you try to replicate in your game the amount of stuff produced between 1936 and 1946) by the USA year by year?

 

[Chromos]

Hi Chromos, in reality the USA started to build new factories when the country entered in the war not before. Historically almost all the IC should be devoted to CG and some infra. Nothing more. Anyway did you try to replicate in your game the amount of stuff produced between 1936 and 1846) by the USA year by year?

Hi,
I agree that in the best case you would give a "bigger IC malus"(nearly all) to countries at peace.
I didn't implemented my ideas on industry so far, as they also change some more stuff like adding food as "main ressource" for a country. Food rationing was one of the first things many countries had to think of when joining the war. Also complete new politcis section is not ready. I had a big stop on inplementing things last year due to EvW.
And so far I did only "a short gap solution" to have US "play out" more historically without trying to have to change much more.

I tink you agree that in HoI3 IC spendings etc.is kind of hard to simulate anyway as the IC represents overall IC of a country(thus the sliders for CG). The military prodcution etc. will be way better with the new system in HoI4 hopefully from what I read so far. Sliders are way to easy to change in HoI3.

And for stuff being produced, as US gets like others all its available IC once it enters war, it is free to share between new units and lend-lease or buildings.
Afaik historically US used up pretty soon all its steel production for war efforts, also rationed food and such to be able to sustain a propably prolonged war.
Output of steel production was initially land units(tanks) focused amd that shifted later to ships(e. g. alone ~50 CVE in one year).
So the answer is partly yes/no, as the potential of producing more in later years is depending on the stuff US builds and the amount of that for the practiacal gain on one side, and on the research it does on techs that raise the productivity on the other.
So they improve the output year by year but not by buiding new production facilities, but by improving the current ones.


A note on the AAR:
I hopefully should be able to finish the write up for the done research in all 21 sections this weekend.
Then we could go on and engage in a first fighting.

 

[Chromos]

Up to Danzig- Part 2 - Nation related research

Lets start with the four main country related tabs.

Nation:
Here I try to have the newest as possible techs for nearly all of the techs.
Agriculture/Civil Medicine(Gain in MP as some other techs reduce MP gain)
Industry(Gain overall IC as some techs lower the IC bonus)
Education(To gain more LS as some techs lower the LS available)

The Roads/Railway/Harbour/Airport is also giving a nice IC efficiency bonus. You have less overall IC but a way more efficient one.
And that helps in saving ressources as each IC is using less ressources then. Good for hightech nations.
And better supply throughput will maybe help in later wars too.
For an extra buff you can still research the logistic techs below that area(Supply Transportation/Supply Organisation).

The Society techs in the middle are all researched by GER. They help in getting a country developed quicker as they add a big bonus to quite many game areas.
So if small countries try to research those, they can gain a overall better status in many areas(MP/LS/IC..)
It should work that way, that initially "unmodified IC" is more important and you get with later techs more IC efficiency wich represents smarter production capabilities.

Combat Medicin is to reduce casuality trickleback and First Aid to help with province attrition for units. Last tech combines both. Nice in helping to not losse to much MP..

The construction techs are mandantory techs for some others so you need them to be able to reserach others.
Same for the other theorectical engineering techs below. Different tech lvl of them are needed to be able to research other techs in othe areas.
So theorectical techs have not only a light research benefit, but are mandantory for quite some area. It is not that easy to get to Nukes or Jets etc..

Heavy AA guns and rocket interceptors now increase the AA efficiency of AA in provinces.(Rocket Interceptors have been point defense planes anyway, so an easy choice to put that is a short gap solution here.)

Civil Defense is repair capabilities for buildings etc..

And Improved Security Units tech helps GAR and Para-Military units to suppress revolters. You might want to research that one a lot if you go for bad occupy policies..





Production:
In this tab we have all about producing stuff. Some techs need a certain lvl of the engineering techs of the nation tab as a prerequisite.
Needeless to say that you might to want also here be on time with as many techs as possible.
But if you are a ressource rich nation, you might to want to skip some of them. If you have enough IC atm, you might want to focus on other aspects like new units too.

The industry techs raise normal IC output and the other IC efficiency again.

The Assembly line and Segmental building techs on the other side give a direct discount to some units production time and cost. Mass buildng of Subs or CVE countries would like to want this techs..

On the right side we have some theoretical techs again that are prerequisites for some units techs. So Jet engine research is of course needed to finally research jet engines wich are needed for the research of the final jet. So you see that there is a bunch of steps needed before yo can go to that superunits. No way for little countries to like Panama to spam the world with jets easily. With the society techs of the nation tab, they could catch up and field some good units, but will not be able to have super tech that easily, while it is still possible if they spend the amount of time needed.

The resource techs on the left and in the middle are for gaining more of that type of ressource. The ones in the middle are only placeholder unitil I finishg the search events around that. But until then, they will also provide a small buff to your ressources.

Plating and Metallurgy tech gives you a bonus for some units that use steel. So tanks and ships get tougher with this ones.

Diesel is a requirement for overall Diesel engines. Deutschland Class ships. I have this tech for cruisers etc. but not for BB's etc..
Shipyard is a prereqisite for the ability to build ships.
And Lightweight of course important in that way for more advanced planes. No jets without advanced lvl here.

The last three give so far "only" another bonus for prodcution for a cost in other areas.

I spend quite much effort here to keep my industry leading. Also the ressource techs seem obviously very important for a country like GER.




Electronic:
Also here we have a mix of techs that are only prereqisite for others and have some bonus on their own.
As a major you want at least the spy related stuff and improve you RADAR if you are a naval depending nation.

Decryption/Encryption should be self-explanatory, and the coumputing machines also add a bonus to both fields next to give a research bonus.
A speciallity is here, that once you research electronical computing, mechanical will be unavailable. The best time to switch is around 1940 maybe. But electronical gives you a higher bonus, so I decided to research that one right ahead.

The RADAR/SONAR/Nighfight techs will allow to reserach direct unit related techs in other tabs, but also add some bonus already.
Eg. The Air Warning RADAR help in getting your RADAR buildings better already and also the ART RADAR hekps your ART units directly.

For my game I focused on having most as possible as I really want a top notch navy with RADAR and also keep the Allies away from my techs. They should not have an easy time stealing my techs with spionage. "Enigma will be replaced/not decrypted in this game"..





Secret:
Like in Std-HoI, we find here the Rocket and Nuclear stuff.
Here we can finally research jet engines wich enable us to research jet planes later.
Also with early rocket research we can already research bazookas and with much more also early "Stingers", better known as "Fliegerfaust" back then.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fliegerfaust

Air to Air missles as also ICBM will be the final end of this area.

Civil nuclear research adds more Energy to your country.

While not much is to say in this tab, the impact can be quite big as this weaponry had in history.

I stay in the historical path here. Historically GER had nuke research, but that topic is discussed controversly as some believe they even had the bombe before the allies.
So maybe I try to make the same move, but don't let the allies "get their hands" ony my bombs with conquering me before I can use them.
Next to that I want of course jets, only earlier and maybe mighty rockets to bomb UK and USA.. We'll see how uch LS I can spend here.
"Fliegerfaust" would be nice to have too for my Infantry, but propaganda wise I might regret it if I degrade the 88 gun in any way?


So thats the first four screens.
Next will be the land units related technologies.

Cheers,
Chromos

 

[ente214]

very nice. keep it up.

 

[GermanKaiser]

I read RADAR for big ships and started to laugh

 

[Chromos]

I read RADAR for big ships and started to laugh

Yeah, the naming sounds a bit odd maybe.
What it should represent though is the progress of making the technology smaller so it could be used with smaller vessels.
I went down a different road when I redefined this area of the techs for the 1001 techs project.

 

[Cardus]

Is this thread dead?

 

[Chromos]

Well, it is of course on hold for too long already.
I still have the save and all pics.
Just the time is very rare atm to make another update.
But I'm still hoping that I can continue this.