Blue always wins

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Anthropoid
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Re: Blue always wins

Post by Anthropoid »

number47 wrote:
Sawedoff wrote:Interesting. Mine tends to go to Red sphere, but Blue military victories.
Could you give more info on your game? What country are you playing, how active are you in existing wars, is any of the sphere leaders in war with anyone? Game settings, etc....
Yeah, and especially:

Are you using the latest version: 7.3.1?

It sounds like, in some recent past patch versions of the game, there was a problem with the world tending (by default) to shift toward Red Sphere, but with 7.3.1 it appears that it may be working in opposite.

http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... &start=105
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Re: Blue always wins

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Ok, played an "ultimate USA a**hole" game yesterday--Very Hard diplomatic, USA broke all treaties at start, then began the conquests (Mexico, Canada, Panama, Japan, S. Korea, S. Vietnam after independence, etc.).

Right now, only USA is Blue. A whole lot of white, a few light blue, about 1/3 Red or Red leaning.

I think, if diplo is set to Normal and Blue plays a cautious/historical game, that Blue will be dominant by the mid-1960s (e.g, one Red a few light Red, most white or blue). Any variation toward negative diplomatic actions will result in more Red, less Blue.
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Re: Blue always wins

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Aragos wrote:Ok, played an "ultimate USA a**hole" game yesterday--Very Hard diplomatic, USA broke all treaties at start, then began the conquests (Mexico, Canada, Panama, Japan, S. Korea, S. Vietnam after independence, etc.).

Right now, only USA is Blue. A whole lot of white, a few light blue, about 1/3 Red or Red leaning.

I think, if diplo is set to Normal and Blue plays a cautious/historical game, that Blue will be dominant by the mid-1960s (e.g, one Red a few light Red, most white or blue). Any variation toward negative diplomatic actions will result in more Red, less Blue.
You were playing USA right? If so, cool that is a valuable comparison point = if human takes control of USA and acts like a complete diplomatic jerk, the apparent tendency for the world to slide blue is effectively reversed.

My own test with human as USSR (all normal settings) and with the USSR playing a very passive, non-antagonistic role complements your test if I understand correctly. In my USSR 'test,' I basically just set everything to auto and let it run through to about 1953; it could be run longer but I got bored with it.

With USSR sitting back and not doing anything antagonistic to anyone, and also not being particularly supportive or interactive with its allies, red sphere shrank progressively. I think it was down from about 20 total to 11 total by 1953 and blue sphere had grown proportionally about the same. My experience playing Egypt up to 1955 or so also reflects this same red sphere shrinkage, despite my not having taken much an active role at all in the sphere competition.

So assuming these few tests are representative it seems some tenative conclusions might be drawn:

1. If human plays a neutral, it appears there is a tendency for AI actions as US and USSR (whatever those actions are) to progressively lead to an ahistorically early shrinking red sphere and growing blue sphere.

2. If human plays red sphere in a passive role (my test), neither helping allies or anyone else much, nor hurting or imposing on anyone else much, it would seem that there is still a tendency for world to shift to blue. This suggests that friendly US AI 'behavior' perhaps combined with passive if not hostile USSR AI 'behavior' is driving the early expansion of blue sphere.

3. If human plays blue sphere and acts like a complete diplomatic jerk, the above noted shift to blue sphere is reversed, which also supports the premise that the imbalance is resulting from an overly friendly and attractive US AI behavior.

Obviously there were in reality quite a few tensions between the USSR and its client states and Warsaw Pact allies, so I'm not sure that making the USSR AI behave more warm and fuzzy is a good solution.

I don't know if the AI calculates the risk of provocation, but one possible thing that would be very interesting is if a country making a move in one direction or another increased the opposing sphere's cassus belli. I think that would be very realistic.

Say for example, Yugoslavia which was perhaps the most cheeky of 'Eastern Bloc' countries, and somehow managed throughout its communist era history to pull it off without getting invaded and slapped back into place by the USSR. Well, they also never did quite "align," nor for that matter even "lean" blue sphere. Despite being an apparently ardent Stalinist country early on, they shifted neutral and then the pretty much stayed there till 1989 when Ceaucesceau was ousted. During those decades they were a quite ambiguous figure within the Cold War: effectively an autocracy if not a dictatorship, a strongly centralized economy with a strong propaganda machine and certain forms of personal repression of the population. But at the same time, one of the few 'communist' countries to allow right of free travel and with relatively warm diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. The quintessential example of an initially red leaning entity that shifted neutral, and when they did, if memory serves, there was some fear that the Soviets would invade, but no, they backed down.

Had Yugoslavia taken the next step and 'leaned blue' the USSR might well have called their bluff and sent in the tanks.

If it would work in the game, meaning the AI would understand the dynamics and act accordingly, I think that making a sphere transition result in a significant increase in cassus belli might be a good way to smooth out this imbalance.

Red aligned shifts to leaning = significant risk of war by USSR
Red lean shift to neutral = non-trivial risk of war by USSR, though less
Neutral leans blue = some risk of war by USSR, etc.
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Re: Blue always wins

Post by Snowpig »

Ceaucesceau has ruled Romania actually.

+1 on the conclusion.
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Re: Blue always wins

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Anthropoid wrote:Say for example, Yugoslavia which was perhaps the most cheeky of 'Eastern Bloc' countries, and somehow managed throughout its communist era history to pull it off without getting invaded and slapped back into place by the USSR. Well, they also never did quite "align," nor for that matter even "lean" blue sphere. Despite being an apparently ardent Stalinist country early on, they shifted neutral and then the pretty much stayed there till 1989 when Ceaucesceau was ousted. During those decades they were a quite ambiguous figure within the Cold War: effectively an autocracy if not a dictatorship, a strongly centralized economy with a strong propaganda machine and certain forms of personal repression of the population. But at the same time, one of the few 'communist' countries to allow right of free travel and with relatively warm diplomatic relations with the rest of the world. The quintessential example of an initially red leaning entity that shifted neutral, and when they did, if memory serves, there was some fear that the Soviets would invade, but no, they backed down.

Had Yugoslavia taken the next step and 'leaned blue' the USSR might well have called their bluff and sent in the tanks.
Not to spam the forum, here you can find some info that will show you that Yugoslavia was never actually "ardent Stalinist country", but quite the opposite. Tito opposed Stalin from the very beggining and even tried to form "Balkan Federation" which didn't go well with Stallin as you can imagine :D . Yugoslavia was never attacked because Tito kept "playing" both sides. Never the less, the fear of being attacked by either side was pressent well up until late 70s...
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Re: Blue always wins

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Snowpig wrote:Ceaucesceau has ruled Romania actually.

+1 on the conclusion.
Tito! I was thinking of ;)

Think I was sort of mixing together Tito and Ceaucesceau

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu
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Re: Blue always wins

Post by Aragos »

I think Anth makes a great point here (and yes, I was playing USA).

There should be (no pun intended) "Red Lines" that when certain countries get out of the control/sphere of the USA or USSR that the AI controlled countries there will react.

Example:
--East Germany goes "neutral" (white). USSR should send in the troops at that point, which should in turn result in a reversal of the move toward white/blue.
--Canada or the UK go "white." USA should send troops/etc into those countries to ensure their loyalty to "the cause." Mexico goes "light red"--US should move troops in, try to overthrow the government, etc.

I think the problem is the engine/scripts just do not operate that way. Back when I was modding different Paradox titles (esp. Victoria I), I noticed the scripts had a lot more ability to shape AI behavior with 'if/then' type of actions (e.g., 'if Mexico goes Red then USA declares war' and 'if USA conquers Mexico, it will liberate Mexico'). The AI scripts for SRCW are more focused on tweaking construction of units than diplomatic or economic behavior.
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Re: Blue always wins

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Another observation on the blue always wins 'problem:' if the player plays USSR and is friendly it does not occur, at least up to early 1952.

No war decs, lots of gifting to red leaners/aligns and neutrals who are prospects to sway, developing as many treaties as possible, etc.

US Align 20
US Lean 7
Neutral 36
USSR Lean 7
USSR Align 14

That is a slight growth relative to the starting Soviet sphere if I recall.
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Re: Blue always wins

Post by Balthagor »

^ That is a good test, to run as the Soviets and try and figure out what actions the AI is taking that are costing it support.
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Re: Blue always wins

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I've found that if you strip all the treaties at the start of the game, and a human is playing the USA, the USSR tends to go war crazy at VH volitility. My guess is that this is tied (as well) to the Soviet AI aggressiveness, etc. in the AI params file or in the setup for the USSR itself. So what? Well...if you don't change anything in the game (e.g., get rid of treaties like I did), the Soviet AI is set to be generally aggressive, which in turn will scare other AI countries away from Red and more toward white/blue over time.
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Re: Blue always wins

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Aragos wrote:Well...if you don't change anything in the game (e.g., get rid of treaties like I did), the Soviet AI is set to be generally aggressive, which in turn will scare other AI countries away from Red and more toward white/blue over time.
And the underlined is manifested in game how? They never attacked anyone in neither of my games (normal or VH volitility), they generaly don't get involved in proxies. On normal, I attacked Bulgaria and Albania and they didn't respond in any way to help their allies. The provocations bar full, and they had 100% CB on me (Yugoslavia) and still nothing (I had no allies or MDP with anyone).
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Re: Blue always wins

Post by Anthropoid »

Balthagor wrote:^ That is a good test, to run as the Soviets and try and figure out what actions the AI is taking that are costing it support.
Of course, one of the problems in a sandbox game is that randomicity can lead to very different outcomes.

With that, and the fairly short play spans (couple years) in mind I think my two 'tests' (actually this second one I consider a real game as it fits my playstyle overall) suggest a tentative hypothesis:

My earlier play was a true test, in the sense that I just sat back and let it run on Auto after I had set it all up.

http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... 64&t=21133

In that run through it was like this the last time I played it:
ADDIT: July 1952 few more USSR leaners go neutral it seems

US Align 27 (21 at start - ROK fallen =20; total change in 2 yrs [TC2y] +6)
US Lean 10 (7 at start; TC2y +3)
Total US 37 (27 at start; TC2y +9)

Neutral 34 (36 at start; TC2y -2)

USSR Lean 5 (7 at start; TC2y -2)
USSR Align 8 (13 at start;TC2y -5)
Total Soviet 13 (20 at start; TC2y -7)
This contrasts with my more recent playthrough which I quote from above:
Feb 15, 1952

US Align 20
US Lean 7

Neutral 36

USSR Lean 7
USSR Align 14
This combined with other folks observations suggest that, if either the AI controls USSR, or human controls USSR very passively (does neither hostile nor friendly actions) the outcome is a shift toward blue sphere.

In contrast, the test that I refer to in the post above, I'm playing very actively, though not hostile (lots of friendly behavior). The outcome here, with virtually identical settings (Hard or VH milit but that wouldn't matter yet) is that there is a reasonable amount of shift toward red sphere, about what I would say is 'reasonable' given the amount of stuff and money and units and techs I've given away, probably something like $30B worth of stuff all together.

An aggressive AI-controlled USSR might drive sphere members out even quicker, but still, the test with passive human-controlled USSR shows that a certain portion of red-sphere shrinkage is not so much what the USSR _is_ doing to lose friends, but what it is _not_ doing to gain or keep friends.

Aragos test as a 'diplomatic-jerk' US fits in with this, though not knowing what the AI is coded to do on its own, it is dificult to know how much of the observed blue-sphere dominance is attributable to:

1. US-AI taking lots of actions to make friends combined with USSR-AI taking very little (and/or acting aggressively) versus

2. A relative balance of US-USSR behavior, but some other factor that is driving regions out of red sphere (e.g., other blue sphere members being inherent more friendly, or democracy being more friendly, the Blue Sphere researching more friendly techs or being on better terms with UN, Blue Sphere having lower military mobilizations, or higher domestic approval ratings, or higher international approval ratings??).
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Re: Blue always wins

Post by Niko465 »

And why USSR is set as agressive anyway?... They were far much acting behind the scene than USA during Cold War. USA at the reverse was very active millitary.
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Re: Blue always wins

Post by farrellmeister »

Just a thought, at the start the US is sending marshall aid to everyone. Perhaps this has an effect.
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Re: Blue always wins

Post by number47 »

Can anybody here explain to me what do they mean when they say that USSR is agressive???? |O |O |O
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