Thoughts on cheats....

[AEWHistory]

So I have been playing SRU on my old laptop after having been playing Crusader Kings for months and something began to occur to me—I think SR would benefit immensely from some of the type of cheats available in Crusader Kings (CK). Now before I begin let me state that I am not suggesting using cheats as a means of ‘winning’ the game. Rather, I have always felt like cheats are best used to mold the game down certain historical paths or recreate certain situations that the computer is having trouble with. So here goes:

1. A cheat to force a country to declare war or accept peace. This would be invaluable in creating multi-country wars like the Yom Kippur War but it would also allow for limited outcomes. As it is the game rarely allows for anything except outright conquest. After WWII this has been basically unheard of save for a few rare examples. So why not force an end to wars when one side has won? World opinion would demand this realistically. For example, Israel isn’t going to take over Egypt in one fell swoop—they’ll have to settle for Sinai at the start. So if you’re going to launch wars of conquest they should require multiple attempts and wearing down an enemy.

2. Switch country option. This is an awesome option in CK and allows players to start as one country and change nations. I like to use this is go to different nations and produce some balance. Alternatively, if my own country has gotten so powerful that it is boring now it is cool to see if I can bring them down.

3. Cheats to add (remove?) population and change loyalty. I realize this exists in the modding options, but I personally find the modding program to be something of a mystery. It’d be so nice to be able to take into account historical wars and massive population transfers through simple keyboard commands. However, an alternate to this would be some improvement to modding.

4. Add money in custom quantities. Why is it that you have to get billions when getting money? Why no just just allow for a custom request? This is important because giving (I think it is) $10b to a small developing nation just about ruins the game, but sometimes there are good reasons why you may want to give a country some extra cash. In CK there is a default amount but you can add an <amount> command to override this and get a custom number. This would be awesome.

There are more, but I have already written a wall of text and I’m hoping people will actually read some of this. Also,I realize that SR is at the end of its development cycle and these certainly aren’t going to be added to the current lineup, however, perhaps some of these might be added in a future iteration of SR?

Thanks for any feedback, Aaron

[AEWHistory]

No one? Bummer. Owell, it seems like some people are at least reading the post so I’m not talking to myself (or so I like to tell myself when I’m talking to myself).

To follow up, for number one I had forgotten that there is a cheat to force other nations to DOW on the human player, but the computer player DOWing is random. What I have in mind is something selectable.

In regard to number four, it would be nice to add an option to add money to other nations so you can balance your game. Admittedly this is something you can do in-game by simply gifting the money, but this will alter their view of you. That’s great for the player, but if you’re simply trying to make your game more competitive you may not want to give yourself wads of cash to give away—giving it directly would be better in this case.

Additions:

5. A cheat to force nations to release conquests. For example, I play 1949 a lot and North Korea usually gulps up South Korea. Getting South Korea free again would be awesome.

6. Cause Revolution, Revolt, Civil War. This would be an awesome way to spice up the game.

Anyway, I’m curious if anyone likes these ideas—I hope so. I have some other ideas, mostly modified from other games, that would really add some layers of depth to the SR series.

[YoMomma]

.

[AEWHistory]

1. No point in forcing a war, ai will declare war when it got the right stuff and think it can win, if it doesnt declare, it isnt ready at all.
2. You can do this in MP, and with that, you can pretty much do anything you proposed
3. Like you said, it exists in the modding options, not really interesting to me, if i want to lower population i have strategic bombers of US. Feels cheesy enough.
4. I dont know what you mean, if you cheat with a small country, doesnt that defeat the purpose of playing with a small country...
5. you can do this with help of 2, stuff like that leads to issues like military personel leaving your country, rather have BG working on those small issues
6. In this game its a result of bad management (not enough investment in law enforcement) i can see BG is putting effort in this in modding files, and i dont like it.

So yeah you asked for it.

I ‘asked for it’? Okay then...

1. That has never been my experience with this game, nor is it my experience to have multi-country DOWs. Have you had lots of those? You know, where Egypt and Syria simultaneously DOW Israel? If so, I call BS. And in my current 1949 game (and most of those that I have played) that Arab states are often friendly with Israel. So whether they are ready or not they won’t DOW....

2. I have never played MP and I am astonished that you can switch countries in MP. So you can play all the countries on the map in MP after the game has begun?! That strikes me as plain out game ruining, however, I am not targeting the use of cheat codes toward MP games—no one does that to my knowledge. So why in the world would you assume that is what I am talking about? This is about SP player. Can you switch in SP? No? Then what’s your point.

I’m not going to bother with the rest.... frankly, I don’t think you really read what I wrote. (I like how 6 can be solved by your suggestion from 2... except that it won’t because you can’t switch countries in SP. For whatever reason you were in a crap mood and decided to take your ire out on me. Don’t blame me for your crappy day or if you don’t understand what I wrote and if you give a nasty reply expect one.

PS- the shame of it is that ALL of the things I have suggested here are in Crusader Kings 2 in forms that are more fitting for that game. If you go to the PDX forums you’ll see that people really like the usefulness of these cheats in balancing their games. It is a shame that we can’t talk about how to better this game with a more constructive approach.