Germany 1936

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Balthagor
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Balthagor »

I haven't had the chance to read through it all, short week here and it's killing.

I have noted this whole thread as part of a document on the various issues with the '36 Germany campaign.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

Ah good to know. I'll try to keep my observations as concise as possible and also I'll hold on to as many save files as I can (for at least a few months). That way if you have a question it may be possible to pin down with a save file.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by UrhoK »

I think it's more beneficial to attack Netherlands before anything else as a Germany. You can annex East Indies from Netherlands quite easily, and there's oil and rubber you will need later on. Netherlands can be colonized or annexed whatever you think is better. If you need population, East Indies is much better target than Poland in that case too. I have used Netherlands as my naval power couple of times, and it has worked pretty well. I colonize Netherlands and then give them my submarines, and they will protect the sea lines just as well as I would, but I don't have to pay the submarine upkeep. If you later want to annex Netherlands to have pretty borders, just annex your colony :)
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

Now that is an interesting idea!
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

Back to playing the game a bit this Xmas season, so figured I'd bump this thread. Same as before: Germany 1936.

Is there a resource somewhere on the conditions for all the scripted events and objectives and such?

I'm up to Nov 1937, Austria loves me, and I've got . . .probably 10 or 11 each of Pioniere, Brandenburger, arty, AA, supply hugging the Austrian border, but no Anschluss.

France just declared war on Austria *sigh* . . . Italy steamrollered Switzerland before 1936 was over, and then war decked France too.
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Re: Germany 1936

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Heh . . . Once I got my infrastructure sorted out (took about 8 or 9 months I guess), I moved all my land military to a central barracks and then started unreserving them, and building more.

Meanwhile Italy had war decked France, and a couple others in Western Europe.

I have supported a revolution in Iraq and been befriending them, as well as a few other nations I consider "standard" for Germany 1936 (Venezuela, Japan, Siam). Also trying to provoke a revolution in Mexico, and a LOT of trading to build up power levels.

One thing I had noted in a couple of preceding plays is that Italy seems to have a tendency to bull doze Switzerland. It has happened in three if not four games I've started in the past couple days . . . weird. In hopes of making this less likely, I did a bit of "aggressive" trading with Italy once I had him befriended. Probably took a bit too much of his military, industrial good and/or petroleum, because now France has steamrollered him!

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Slightly frustrating to have everything go so totally off the "historical rails" so quickly after game launch, but I guess that is unavoidable?

Are there resources accessible to users which allow for scripting of stuff like this?

What would be ideal to me would be: A version of each of the existing singleplayer 1936 campaigns in which, ALL nations except the player nation declare NO WARS other than those they declared historically. That rule might need to be expanded to be : until a certain date, or until the nation is at war, etc. but seeing how it worked with just the blanket: ALL wars except those declared by the player are completely scripted might be neat . . . at least up through 1950.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by YoMomma »

This is no news to us. It's been like this for the last cpl of months. Lower volatility and you lower ai aggro.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

YoMomma wrote:This is no news to us. It's been like this for the last cpl of months. Lower volatility and you lower ai aggro.
The terminology in the UI for campaign seems to have changed a bit compared to the traditional terminology used in SR games. I think the sandbox UI might remain largely the same?

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Unfortunately it appears that "volatility" is not something which can be reset for campaigns, at least not through the in-game interface(s). Whether I start a new campaign with the above set to: Default, Passive, Defensive, Aggressive, or Unpredictable, the Game Settings window always looks the same once the campaign launches: World Volatility: "Medium"

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Re: Germany 1936

Post by YoMomma »

Oh yea you play campaign, can't change volatility and i looked at the .scenario file and cant change it there. So it is an issue that you should report.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by George Geczy »

YoMomma wrote:Oh yea you play campaign, can't change volatility and i looked at the .scenario file and cant change it there. So it is an issue that you should report.
Actually you can change the Volatility setting in the Campaign .scenario files:

Code: Select all

relationseffect: 2
It's under an older setting name called "relationseffect". The default is Medium (2), in thinking about this is should probably be set to LOW (1) for the campaigns. But changing this down will reduce the non-historical actions.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

Thanks George!
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

I hate to say it, but I'm pretty frustrated with playing the Germany 1936 Campaign which bears almost no resemblance to real history, even as early as Fall 1937. If I wanted "sand box" mode, I'd play Sandbox. "Campaign" implies to me that the major historical events will tend to replicate relatively commonly, instead of 0/5 in the case of my recent return to the game and starting and restarting as Germany.

Yes, reseting volatility to zero helped a lot

Code: Select all

relationseffect: 0 
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No odd wars at all up through Fall 1937. Italy at war with Ethiopia, and then Japan declared war on China in either spring or summer of 1937. So that was good.

I contemplated 1 or 0, and decided to go with zero. Thankfully this does seem to be the better choice [if what you are seeking is "maximum" historicity]. The obvious concern here is: Computer Opponents will not declare ANY wars at all, but that is not the case. Japan did declare war, so however that occurrence is written into the game, it seems to work. I have yet to see Japan NOT declare war on China, so: however you guys have that working, WORKS!

Unfortunately, Japan is apparently also incapable of performing at even a little league level, much less the tremendous territorial gains they had made by 1940.
Japan Getting Pawned by China
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I know from personal experience modding other games, that it is not easy to get the balance right so that the second Sino-Japanese war unfolds more or less as it did between 1937 and 1939--or even more challenging, insuring that it then becomes a stalemate through 1941.
In 1931, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria by Japan's Kwantung Army followed the Mukden Incident. The last of these incidents was the Marco Polo Bridge Incident of 1937, which marked the beginning of total war between the two countries.
Initially the Japanese scored major victories, such as the Battle of Shanghai, and by the end of 1937 captured the Chinese capital of Nanjing. After failing to stop the Japanese in Wuhan, the Chinese central government was relocated to Chongqing in the Chinese interior. By 1939, after Chinese victories in Changsha and Guangxi, and with Japan's lines of communications deep into the Chinese interior territories becoming stretched, the war had reached a stalemate. The Japanese were also unable to defeat the Chinese communist forces in Shaanxi, which waged a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare against the invaders.
But Japan getting pawned to the point of not only failing to advance, but being pushed back to the Korean peninsula?!? That is absurd. I have done nothing but help Japan throughout this game. Perhaps had I gifted Japan ALL of Germanies troops, techs and the lionshare of national resources from the beginning it would have given them enough of an edge?

If that is truly necessary then there are even more serious balance issues. Japan should be capable of penetrating significantly inland and holding on to that territory for at least 10 years (assuming no other mitigating factors). In fact, at the end of the Great Pacific War in 1945, the territory controlled by Japanese troops had changed little compared to 1941. This was also the case throughout most parts of SE Asia which the allies had not cleared in order to get close enough to the home islands to begin firebombing and eventually vaporizing in one bomb whole cities . . . Throughout MOST of the dry land in the pacific, Japanese troops remained nominally in control, although poorly supplied in most cases and with little or no air or naval support or prospect for resupply or evacuation . . . Whether it is realistic or not, I would say that what Japan needs, are a crap ton of infantry, and primitive towed AT, and ARTY. Presumably if the Japanase CO has 20 times as many of these as it has presently, and perhaps also larger stockpiles of most resources, that might fix the issue?
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by YoMomma »

These problems were from the beginning. You should check out mod from Thadwookie, havent tried it but what i read is possitive. A bit unrealistic prolly, but we players care about the game, not a game represented to be realistic, but when you press play all fails.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Nerei »

The first problem with Second Sino-Japanese war is that the representation of China is completely and utterly wrong!
In this world Chiang Kai-Shek apparently won the Chinese Civil war sowhere around around 32-33 I guess considering Mnchukuo exist but Mengjian does no.

I can argue for China being broken into upwards of 10 different nations at the 36 starting time with the KMT only controlling part of the east coast and only the small warlord state of Hunan as a true ally. The rest should basically be bickering warlords that have a hard time agreeing on anything.
Once the Marco-Polo bridge incident happens then they should make peace with each other but for most of them do little more than that.
Also only the Nationalist government in Nanjing should have any kind of standing army. The warlords should for the most part rely on just garrisons which naturally should be balanced to have some chance against the Japanese army.
I find representing the warlords in particularly mostly though Garrisons with little in terms of actual infantry would be a good way to go. Garrisons are defensive only and even if they are at war with each other they would have little chance of shifting the borders much. Considering the main goal of the warlords largely was self-preservation that makes sense.
The Chinese Civil war should be a deadlock only resolved by the KMT gaining the upper hand or the CPC getting help from the outside.
Garrisons would also allow them to resist Japan but with no real chance of ever pushing into Manchukuo.

If the KMT or CPC where to unify China then the result the game predicts is fairly accurate. They would win the war.
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Re: Germany 1936

Post by Anthropoid »

Nerei wrote:The first problem with Second Sino-Japanese war is that the representation of China is completely and utterly wrong!
In this world Chiang Kai-Shek apparently won the Chinese Civil war sowhere around around 32-33 I guess considering Mnchukuo exist but Mengjian does no.

I can argue for China being broken into upwards of 10 different nations at the 36 starting time with the KMT only controlling part of the east coast and only the small warlord state of Hunan as a true ally. The rest should basically be bickering warlords that have a hard time agreeing on anything.
Once the Marco-Polo bridge incident happens then they should make peace with each other but for most of them do little more than that.
Also only the Nationalist government in Nanjing should have any kind of standing army. The warlords should for the most part rely on just garrisons which naturally should be balanced to have some chance against the Japanese army.
I find representing the warlords in particularly mostly though Garrisons with little in terms of actual infantry would be a good way to go. Garrisons are defensive only and even if they are at war with each other they would have little chance of shifting the borders much. Considering the main goal of the warlords largely was self-preservation that makes sense.
The Chinese Civil war should be a deadlock only resolved by the KMT gaining the upper hand or the CPC getting help from the outside.
Garrisons would also allow them to resist Japan but with no real chance of ever pushing into Manchukuo.

If the KMT or CPC where to unify China then the result the game predicts is fairly accurate. They would win the war.
That does sound like promising steps to change China so it is less able to achieve ahistorical routs against Japan.

However . . . my concerns:

A. Warring factions: because the game will treat them as separate polities, they would need to be thoroughly tweaked to make sure they don't do ahistoric stuff and instead just SIT there, only joining forces to a limited degree in 1939/40.

B. Reducing China's potency so dramatically, might have the unintended consequence of turning China into nothing but a speed bump, and the "Second Sino-Japanese War" into a rout by end of 1937!

C. With "volatility" set to zero, presumably only historical wars will fire up, the ones which are scripted to happen by other means. However at Low or higher, there would be some risk that other nations would note the weak status of one or more of the Warring factions, and you wind up with stupid stuff like "Tibet at War with Tatung {~1500miles away to the north west}" or "Costa Rica at war with Chungking," etc.
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