Campaign Events for the 1936 Campaign(s)

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Anthropoid
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Campaign Events for the 1936 Campaign(s)

Post by Anthropoid »

I have a thread called "Germany 1936" where I've talked about some of these topics, but since BG seems to prefer that every topic get its own thread and are more likely to pay attention to such topics that way: a thread to discuss historical events as they are INTENDED to occur within the "Campaign" scenarios in Supreme Ruler Ultimate.

My reason for starting the thread are as follows:

1. I suspect that many of the events are not working as designed

2. Although I have cursory familiarity with the external files used to configure things like events (and map configurations, OOBs, etc.) I would not say I have an exquisite knowledge of these matter, and so I feel my capacity to dive in and try to "fix" things is rather limited. Yes, there are lots of documentations on modding SR games scattered hither and thither on the internet, but some of it is pertinent only to SR2020 (and some even to 2010), some pertinent to the original SR 1936 title or the SRCW title--though perhaps NOT to their "integrated" reversioning in the most up-to-date SRU.

Essentially point 2 is a request for documentation or at least a set of links that can provide a starting point, for understanding the file dependencies (and/or redundancies, deprecations) in SRU, particularly as they pertain to the implementation of "scripited" or conditional historical events.

[ADDIT: addendum . . . in an older thread by Aragos,

"Making the AI more Aggressive"

He described "how to get the AI to declare more wars." The method he arrived at was to change two variable value assignment statements in one of the external config files, I believe it was a .cpv file and the two variables were something like "aistance" and "aiagenda."

For the title he was modding (either SR 1936 or 2020), his changes to this file resulted in dramatic and readily observable changes to game play. He was able to transform the computer opponent(s) from passive into warmongers.

For me, changes to the (apparently) analogous files for the Germany 1936 campaign did nothing to stop computer nations from declaring "ahistorical" wars during the 1936 to fall 1939 period. There are a number of reasons why this may be the case, but all of them orbit around the general issue of "how the external files are used by the application," i.e., documentation]

3. The specifics of what historical events ARE versus ARE NOT intended to be inevitable or at least highly probable given a player follows play patterns very close to actual history is not clear, and some clarification on that would be welcome.

As an example of the sorts of issues I have puzzled over: Almost all of my experience with SRU has been playing the Germany 1936 campaign. Some irregularities I have observed as they pertain to the latest version of SRU (9.1.38 ?? . . . will correct that if it is wrong)

I should note, ALL of these irregularities occur in the context of a human player doing NOTHING particularly out of the ordinary with respect to real history. Meaning: no human player wars declared prior to the invasion of Poland; no flagrant use of provocations using espionage or other diplomatic means; regular participation in trade and general good relations with virtually all foreign regions by the human German region, and very limited (if any) use of any "Condemning" actions or backing of proxy wars/revolutions.

A. USSR invades Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, almost without fail sometime in 1936 to 1937

B. USSR goes to war with Poland also sometime in 1936/1937 and this war soon evolves into a stalemate

D. Anschluss, Sudeten Crisis, and Munich Agreement events all fire and seem to function as intended. Specifically, the positioning of the 20 ground units as described in the info pane associated with each event leads to the annexation of Austria (for the Anschluss event) and the annexation of the border regions of Czechoslovakia for the Munich Agreement in Oct 1938.

E. Despite having played through to Spring 1940 many times, I have NEVER seen anything like a "German Occupation of Czechoslovakia" Event, which, would reflect the tragic events involving Emil Hacha in mid-March 1939 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_oc ... hoslovakia.

F. France almost without fail declares war on Italy in late 1937 early 1938. Sometimes GB joins in and the end result is always the same: Italy is destroyed.

There are some other irregularities that occur less consistently on replays but that is a good set to get such a thread started.
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Re: Campaign Events for the 1936 Campaign(s)

Post by Balthagor »

I'll start reviewing A. I'll need to do this one thing at a time.
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Re: Campaign Events for the 1936 Campaign(s)

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Balthagor wrote:I'll start reviewing A. I'll need to do this one thing at a time.
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Kewl. Happy to do any legwork you can direct me to do.
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Re: Campaign Events for the 1936 Campaign(s)

Post by Anthropoid »

The Annex Czechoslovakia event DOES WORK PROPERLY.

As far as I know, in real history, Germany did not actually enter Czechoslovakia (not past the new boundary that had been established in October with the Sudetenland annexation), but massed at the border. This combined with the threat of war compelled Hacha to give the order to surrender.

In the game, the conditions to cause the annexation to trigger appear to depend on having 20 battalions within some region inside Czechoslovakia. The event popup text describes this as something like "position 20 or more battalions in the north of the country" vis a vis reference to the already completed annexation of the southern half of the country as Slovakia.

In truth, I had never paid any attention to that popup or had simply missed it. When I noticed it today, I moved probably something like 40 battalions across the western, and southern border of Czechoslovakia and waited a bit but nothing happened. So I moved them further toward the interior and closer to Prague. All of a sudden there was a colored yellow outline around Czechoslovakia and a day or two later a *Bloop* Czechoslovakia has been eliminated message.

So you can scratch that one off the "doesn't seem to be working as designed/intended" list. However, I do think the description could be a bit more clear. Happy to help out with that, but not sure what the specific conditions are, nor where those files live.
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Re: Campaign Events for the 1936 Campaign(s)

Post by Balthagor »

A) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupatio ... tic_states

The USSR should DoW on the Baltic States sometime around Sept 1939. There are a series of 37 events tagged AD 1301 in the comments which would push things forward around that date.

If it's happening before that date, then it means that the relationship between the regions is poor enough that the USSR AI decided to DoW on it's own. The game AI does still make choices.

If you'd like this reviewed a bit more, try and get a savegame from the day before they declare. Since autosaves alternate, it should be easy to go back at least one day when you see the declaration. If you can provide us with the savegame, we can see if those relations should be further controlled based on historical events.

There does not appear to be anything "broken" in the events related to this, the AI just gets over eager I expect.

B) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_invasion_of_Poland

Sounds about right. It was the German blitzkrieg that made the Poles capitulate. If that happens the Soviet stalemate should be resolved.
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Re: Campaign Events for the 1936 Campaign(s)

Post by Anthropoid »

Okay thanks Balth. I will go back and grab a save for you because the regularity with which war ensues between USSR and the Baltics is pretty much 99% and it is always well prior to 1939. I may even HAVE such a save handy. I certainly have quite a few with games already "setup" and an early enough date that I can set it to run on auto for a bit.

I would guess that the Italy DoW on Swiss and French DoW on Italy are likely to be similar "stochastics which might need a bit of parameter tweaking?"

With that in mind, I'll see if I can also grab you a save or two before those ahistoric events.

Totally agree that a certain amount of randomnicity in a "campaign" is a very good thing, and I'm impressed that you guys have managed to set this stuff up with as much of a balance between "on the rails" historicity and sandbox as it has already.

After much observation, I conclude that the USSR DoWs on Baltics and Poland are fairly "minor" in the extent to which they throw the ecological balance wildly out of whack for a Germany player. After many restarts, generally playing up through Fall Weiss but in a few instances into summer 1940, I haven't observed any dramatic changes in balance of power in the immediate eastern Europe-western Asia area. The fact that they are likely resulting from random computer-opponent conditionals further buttresses that conclusion that they are likely not a "big deal."

However, I think that in the case of the France DoW (and inevitable steamrollering) of Italy, the problem IS more serious. I'd say that in the 6 to 10 playthroughs in which i made it to Fall Weiss, I have yet to see this NOT happen. In sum: Italy is not surviving to participate in WWII proper, and this is not with any exceptional meddling by the Germany player. The effect that this has is apparently to weaken France. In the one playthrough in which I completed the conquest of France I found they were even easier than I expected them to be and they had very little in the way of reserves. The fact that Germany gained: all of France, all of Italy, and all of Spain (France had steamrollered Spain sometime prior to 1939 as well) pretty much meant that WWI was over: Germany wins as of spring 1940. I shelved that playthrough as it seemed pointless to continue given victory was seemingly a foregone conclusion. I think I still have those saves achived however.
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Re: Campaign Events for the 1936 Campaign(s)

Post by Anthropoid »

Here is a link to a .7z folder with two saves inside. One is from an Autosave (with periodicity set to 1 per day) on 1936-04-16 _before_ USSR DoWs against Estonia, the other is after the DoW (I had it on max speed, and when I heard the alert about war paused it and saved it) but the exact same date. The one from before DoW is named: "1936-04-16 preDoW from Auto.SAV"

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RnAVd ... JN2DZvbZtr

Let me know if this is helpful, or if some other configuration would be better, and if you would like to have similar sets of saves for other ahistoric events that are worth looking at and I will be happy to help out.

Other events, I would suggest you look at would be:
1. USSR DoW Lithuania (will happen very briefly after the saves linked here I trust)
2. USSR DoW Latvia (also will happen very briefly I think)
3. USSR DoW Poland (again, I believe this will transpire if you let it run for a while).

4. Italy DoW Switzerland
5. France DoW Italy
6. France DoW Spain
7. France and/or GB DoW Hungary and/or Danzig

I strongly suspect that if you just let the save run for a few days, you will see items 1 through 3 above happen within a week or so.

These saves are from my currently ongoing play, which is up to about spring 1937. I typically keep autosave on once per week and make manual saves on average about every month or so. For the ongoing play-through, I have not yet pruned the folder of save files (delete ever other save) and then move them to an "archive" folder and compress, which I tend to do eventually. I'll usually keep the archives for at least the preceding play-through. I still have a bunch from my previous play-through where I went all the way to summer 1940 and conquested France and then quit because it seemed Global victory was a foregone conclusion. That one was also on Med,Med,Med difficulty. This new one is on Hard Military, Hard Diplo and Med Econ difficulties . . .

If this system of providing you with saves is helpful, I'd be delighted to open up those archives for the preceding play-through that went till summer 1940, and provide you some save sets to fit items 4 through 7 above. Let me know!
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