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.