Vietnam war broken

[Overlord]

Right at the beginning of the game France declares war on NV and soon after most of the western nations start pouring massive amounts of troops into Vietnam. NV doesn't stand a chance against this and is defeated quickly, even after I gifted them all my troops, money and military goods.

[Fistalis]

Due to the colony changes they automatically declare war with north Vietnam (instead of it being a proxy war) and once their dead you don't get any guerilla's spawning due to this issue http://www.bgforums.com/forums/viewtopi ... 66&t=18654
since "dead" regions don't get events anymore.. even if they have the keep region tag. (sadly I now have both versions installed so i could continue my modding lol)

[way2co0l]

yep, noticed the same thing in my recent game. It's like half of western Europe zerg rushes down there and it's over within the first month or two.

[George Geczy]

We did actually notice this as a side-effect of fixing some of the proxy issues. Vietnam is strange for the engine because a colony (South Vietnam) is the one at war.

The code to make parents come to the aid of their colonies more forcefully messed up this balance, and it's made even worse by the fact that the surrounding countries are also French colonies, allowing France to "drive around" the proxy rule.

We're still working on the push&pull of the colony rules and proxy rules and will try to improve this for the next update, but we thought that for overall gameplay benefits it was better to get the change out in Update 1, even though the Vietnam situation becomes a-historical.

ie "This is how Vietnam may have played out if the rest of the world actually cared" ...

[way2co0l]

LOL. Understandable. It does detract from the atmosphere of the game but I understand it's all a work in progress and very willing to remain patient while you guys decide the best way to handle it. These things can be complicated but once it's all sorted out it should be great. Especially since I read you guys are trying to work with fistalis to allow his coveted modding fun, which is just awesome to hear! Cheers and thanks for the work guys!

[Cathach]

Actually for me the Vietnam war developed into the most interesting war i've seen so far in an new game i started after update 1. With update 0 all that happened was that French troops pushed back NV except 3 spots (their 2. capital and 2 other areas where they had troops) and then it developed into a sitting war without any fights because French troops just moved back and forth along the border without attacking. So the war was more or less broken/boring for me before the update.

But this time, due to the changes in update 1, France declared war at North Vietnam and conquered the area for themselves. This DOW gave the NV some sympathy in the communist countries, leading to an alliance for NV with North Korea and China. Ok, NK got whiped out by US troops, but after a while China started to send troops in and pushed back all the NATO forces through half of Vietnam, and now North Vietnam is piling up it's own troops fast due to other countries selling/donating them troops. Its more like the historical Korea War instead of the historical Vietnam War, but i like the development.

And as a neutral country i can just watch the show while improving my own economy

[George Geczy]

Actually this is exactly the "problem", meaning that the engine treats Vietnam a lot like it does Korea. To the engine it's hard to explain the "difference" between the Korean "police action" that involved the UN sending a multi-national force and the Vietnamese action that resulted in the French leaving (for one reason, generally de-colonization) and the US entering (for a different reason entirely, generally anti-communism).

Also, it's hard for the engine to understand the difference between anti-communism in Europe (which would have had all of NATO generally supporting each other if hostilities broke out) and Southeast Asia (where the US was left on its own).

So with Vietnam we are left with one of two approaches for the next update:

a) Find a way to explain to the engine what the difference is in the Vietnam situation so that it can apply this "rule" to the ally and mutual defense interactions, or

b) Hard-wire a "Never get involved in a land war in Asia" special condition for the French and US allies, but it seems to be odd to be programming an AI using quotations from "The Princess Bride"...

-- George.

[way2co0l]

The thing I have is this.... is there any way to make it so that when a nation declares war on a colony, they in fact trigger the parent nation to decide how they want to respond. What I mean is since N and S Vietnam begin the game at war and there's no new declaration, there ideally wouldn't be a trigger sent to France to push it to war since hopefully that trigger would only be used on the declaration against the colony itself. So no France doesn't declare actual war and fights a proxy war instead as was intended.

As to the root of the problem, ideally I would like to see a system where if a nation goes to war and calls in it's allies, that it would stop there. Those allies coming in shouldn't be allowed to call in their allies also. So since a colony can only ally with it's parent nation, if they get involved in a war, only the parent nation would join the fight. Other nations would be much less likely to help another maintain it's colonial possessions afterall. However, if the nation were independent such as South Korea, or South Vietnam after they gain their independence, any alliances they build could respond once war is declared which could result in larger police actions involving multiple nations.

Perhaps you should try to find a way to control how much of a nations forces any participating nation would be willing to send so that in the case of those wars, America is much closer to both the Vietnam and Korean areas and has a much larger force to deploy then Australia or any of the Western European powers and thus would send a larger portion than any of the others. A limitation like this could help prevent the zerg rushes we see, and limit the ahistorical possibility of Western Europe sending half of their armed forces to fight in another continent while leaving their territories exposed to the soviets.

I'm not sure how plausible these suggestions are from a coding perspective, but I believe that if it's possible to implement them then it should solve the problems.

[Herbzie]

One other issue I have found is with Capitals selected as the victory condition, when France does declare war on NV, by taking Thaignuyen it causes the NV army to capitulate stating the capital was taken. I think this should only happen if Campha is taken?

*edit*
Maybe not, I just noticed the capital was changed to Thaignuyen, so I believe that is the correct behavior.

*edit edit*

Thaignuyen is now the capital but it starts off undefended, and Campha appears to have retained its forces from before the latest patch. When playing with capital victory condition, NV is almost instantly wiped out due to lack of garrison and other defensive units in Thaignuyen. Is it possible to put some sort of defensive force in there when game starts to prevent an almost instant defeat for NV?

Cheers

[TactiKill]

The entire situation in Vietnam seems bugged. I've seen UK aircraft garrisoned with North Vietnam troops in one of their villages. France is being sanctioned by the UN for their actions there, and what's more peculiar is the UN sending military advisers to help North Vietnam.

[bvb]

The entire situation in Vietnam seems bugged. I've seen UK aircraft garrisoned with North Vietnam troops in one of their villages. France is being sanctioned by the UN for their actions there, and what's more peculiar is the UN sending military advisers to help North Vietnam.

I saw this happen too, I got a large CB against France and NVA got UN advisors. Though since I'm the USSR and arming the heck out of the North to turn it into a giant meat grinder, and of course because I sympathize with the plight of my comrade Ho Chi Minh, I felt the UN decision was entirely justified.

[Martiste]

On my first game as Japan (had previously played as the UK and watched Vietnam turn into a mish mash of Sout Vietnamese and French hexes), I decided to help North Vietnam win so it would at least be one nicely uniform bordered country, so I sent what tech, money and units I could spare but all I managed to do was stem the tide of the war, and allow the North Vietnamese to hold back the French and it turned into a stalemate, until the Chinese signed an Alliance with NV. Down they swept and just outside Saigon they themselves became bogged down and so it remained for years. Suddenly South Vietnam got its independence and instantly lost the war to the North and was annexed, small enclaves of French troops remained and no one tried to do anyhting about them. The Vietnamese then drove all the units I had given them to the banks of the river in the north west, stacked them up and there they remained forever.

It seems to me the whole problem could be glossed over with a coat of paint easily as a stopgap measure by simply finding some way to stop France declaring war. Make France fight it as a proxy war, that way the French get no hexes, they can't invade from Laos, the other Europeans don't join in (I think), but you still have the war between the north and the south with France involved.

Is that possible?

[Overlord]

It's still broken with update 2, France conquers some territory for themselves and then comes the European and American horde which means NV is basically finished.

[Balthagor]

It's still broken with update 2, France conquers some territory for themselves and then comes the European and American horde which means NV is basically finished.

This has changed a lot, they don't often take territory for themselves. Restart and watch the opening 20 days 4 or 5 times and you'll see it's much improved.

[vahadar]

I aggree with Balthagor that indeed it has changed a lot. Most of the time France is taking territory for South Vietnam and not for itself anymore (or almost).

On the contrary, in the following screen, if France has some territory that's because somewhat they managed to get one hex in China (dont have the save at that moment, but i saw how it was done) when retreating, and when the border between China and SV was doing a weird turn.
After that from that single hex, they extand to what you see now (in brown color).