The Road to War - Ultimate Edition!

So lacking of patience?

Pretty much :p

About your problems with AI suicide in open maps, I have no skill for mod making and cannot help. But as a player I know (and you certainly know it too) that there are two major things that involve enter in war:
- Same religion or not, in this case it's same ideology or not.
- Culture threatening. Have you check that everything was as good it can for that point?

As for religion/ideology, even with the religious difference they're still at "pleased" for the nations they DoW...usually both Germany and Italy at same time. So I thought my tweaking in LeaderHeads would fix that.

I suspect it could be something about culture threatening (tho that still doesn't explain the AI's total disobeying of the LeaderHeads specs). I turned off "our close borders spark tensions," cause it didn't seem to make much sense in this context. My opinion. But I don't know if that's stopped the AI from getting aggressive cause of its neighbor's borders. How do you think I could make everything "as good as it can be for this point"?
 
Some of it might be individual leader aggressiveness. Or maybe the initial weirdness that causes some cities to starve if you don't adjust things just so ("we need lebensraum"??).

While playing my last few Global/Open games as USSR, China, and Japan, each game has had 1) some baseline amount of early warfare amongst the various powers in central Europe, and 2) a later weird DoW against several non-allied countries in same turn. This is usually Italy or USSR, and in Italy's case seems very-suicidal. USSR may have been prompted by my sending a merchant his way (they DoW'd the turn the merchant crossed the border), but doesn't explain why they would DoW multiple countries who are not allied with each other.
 
Oooo, I wonder if you're right Veteran, if the starvation's the issue. Would that make them DoW on even a friend, cause they just need food? I'll look into it. I thought I fixed the aggressive AI...I made some (like Japan and Germany) a bit more aggressive, and actually made lots of others more passive. Thanks for all the help! I'm betting it's the food thing, but I'll check it out
 
Yeah, I know, but I think I compensated for it elsewhere. I'll see if there are other effects I haven't canceled out tho. Thanks again for this help!
 
Some more feedback about UE 1.1 Europe 1939, well nothing I feel that important, eventually the first point isn't clean:

1 - Coal Plant : Now they only bring negative point ie some pollution, no positive point. It's a little weird. Plus a town captured could be better just because the Coal Plant has been destroyed.

2 - The Civilization changer is really cool, some comments about possible values in the xml file would be cool.

3 - About the civilization changer, I noticed that when I change to another civilization that it doesn't bring the difficulty level. At least I noticed that for towns that keep a health bonus that doesn't match the difficulty level. Well that works like that but if that's possible it would be cool to have an option to have or not the difficulty setting bring to the civilization you switch to.

4 - Battlefield and bonus: Is really wood and hill bonus is working when defending such area with a battlefield? I noticed strange thing like in a wood with battlefield, an infantry with 2 woods bonus, another with 3 drill bonus, they get attacked by an Italian medium tank and it's the second infantry that defend. They was French infantry with Str 19 and no other bonus.

5 - About German Medium Tank : By playing Germany more I realized its special bonus of 15% against siege was almost a fake because of the strong Tank Destroyer. Unlike other medium tanks it doesn't have a bonus against gun units. Eventually to keep its originality its bonus against siege could be raised a little. I try a little with 25% Against siege, well not really a big change but still good to take.

6 - Some countries abuse often of Paratroopers despite they have strong Improved Infantry. I know I already report it but I noticed more things. I could be wrong but I notice this abuse more for Germany and France, eventually less for Italy and USA. For countries like USSR it's justified to use them more. I noticed for Germany that the AI was using their improved infantry more for defense and for attack more the Paratroopers and Marines. I also noticed that the AI abuse much less of Marines but the point is that for some countries it shouldn't produce any.

7 - I noticed once that Germany (perhaps some other country too) was producing many Anti Tank when Tank Destroyer was already available. In older versions they was upgraded to Tank Destroyer and this problem couldn't occurs. Is really this change improved anything?

8 - Air transport: The AI seems unable to use it to transport troops to an ally town when the player can.

9 - Air transport: The AI is able to use it to transport unit to one of its town but it seems it can't use it for 3 like the player, I'm not sure of this one.

10 - About Air transport I feel it doesn't match the context of the mod. It allows huge air transport that doesn't match history. For example it makes relatively easy to help Yugoslavia defend when in reality that support through air transport wasn't possible. It isn't realistic and makes the task more easy but it open more choice and add dynamism so instead of removing it, an option to enable it or not would be cool (strict history or not).

11 - About Germany less aggressive during the first events of the map Europe 1939 : I made many testing by using USA, tried with the old 317 (non beta) and with UE 1.1:
* One first point is that unlike some said here, it was far to be perfect in old versions. For example I noticed in v317 that USSR tend to be sleepy. I also see sometime Poland resist a long time, up to one year.
* But in average it's true that Germany was more efficient against Poland and later also against France.
* But there isn't only positive point about that in older version. For example now Italy and USSR behave much better in term of aggressiveness with EU 1.1. With the 317 I even saw once Finland take one USSR town and Italy often quite passive and for example never attack Nice.
* I tried change some values, for example use the new units with the 317 version. The result was totally weird. The problem is that older units wasn't that good with for example Germany improved infantry a lot too strong with 25, USA light tank slower and less powerful than the medium tank but with same cost, and many other point. In no way I'd like go back to the old units.
* Also for Poland specifically it's not historically accurate that they fight with Germany and USSR. In practice they didn't so for historical accuracy it's not that Germany take by fight some Poland towns fast enough but just they take some with no fights. The best would be to have this if the player doesn't play Poland, units removed and eventually some given to British one month later. Or even more funny use a system like Genghis Khan mod, a Civilization with no towns but a unit that produce units. Ha well the AI is probably unable to play that.
* So in fact when USSR enter in war Polan fighting units should be disbanded. And eventually few Polish units could be provided to British.
 
Dale's combat mod is completely unbalancing, annoying, buggy as hell and slows the game down unnecessarily. It's the 'advantage fire' that kills off units, and the face that artillery gets to bombard, attack, and get free shots. Artillery has gone from being overpowered to ridiculous. How can I turn it off? :D
 
\The Road to War\Assets\XML\GlobalDefinesAlt.xml
 
Dale thank you for your patience, I only carp on because I play the mod a lot.

Here is what I was seeing, just for reference, before I try disabling your Combat Mod. Two things to notice: enormous German stack sitting doing nothing, maybe because it doesn't like getting advantage fired, and Germany's huge number of available units, which (looking at the date) it has not used to mop up Poland all this time. The German AI very commendably goes for Rzeszow quite quickly after capturing Warsaw, in fact it beat me to it and I was highly prepared, then ... stops.
 
However - I did an autoplay right through the whole game (300 turns) and found out that Germany dominates, Romania captures a lot of cities in Africa, Italy doesn't capture Nice but goes up towards and gets Paris, and thankfully British isles managed to stay alive, not of all of this might exactly play out in other games, so it seems the AI is managing okay with a few strange behaviours.
 
Ah, that XML file looks promising! I can even turn off ranged bombard. :)

Now I am going to test again from 1936 using BTS standard settings and see if it cleans things up a little.
 
I disabled ranged/bomb buildings/stack/fighter engagement/opp fire/active defence (set to 0) and tried the game above, Germany finished off Poland within a few turns. My theory was that the AI couldn't handle these features particularly well, looking good so far.
 
I'll second the question about defense bonuses maybe not being handled properly. I have given some infantry city defense promotions, yet they are not the ones that are attacked first nor do they show up first in the list-of-units for the city. Contrast this with a regular game of non-RTW CIV, where such units are the first to defend because of their bonuses.

BTW, is RTW compatible with the World of Civ mod-loading facility? I've not tried any of that yet, but it sounds promising.
 
For Laurier and others who notice the AI waiting before attacking cities, or not even attacking them. I've played as China and watched Japan's attack strategy: they seem to wait until aerial bombardment has made significant headway -- China has a very large (if underpowered) army and they should not want to take them head on. This can take a very long time because the Japanese airforce is underpowered, and not very much stronger than the Chinese. Also, the strategy is scattered (bomb a factory here, bomb a ship there, bomb an improvement over here, strafe a unit over there) but eventually they tilt things in their favor if their airforce is up to the task. Why they don't use the artillery in their stack is a mystery, but probably for fear of damage. However, if they aren't going to actually attack, it is a waste of money to leave their own borders.

That doesn't explain Poland/Germany/USSR, since Poland is drastically undermanned compared to China/Japan. As for Germany, I noticed in my game as Japan, where China seemingly inexplicably didn't respond to my invasion of their coastal cities and held infantry in reserve in Tibet -- the AI is also aware of other potential threats and does guard accordingly. It may not always do so wisely (guarding Tibet against the UK is a waste since the UK cannot cross the Himalaya except in the east) or adjust strategy if a current war is going poorly, but it seems to have a reason for doing so. Germany may be holding units in reserve to counter UK/France in the west (or Italy et al. in Open Mode).

This may also be a difference in how we humans handle the timeline of Historical Mode -- e.g. presumably AI-Germany does not know that it ideally must dispense with Poland quickly so that the Russians do not grab all of it, and so that it can be ready to attack Norway a few turns later. But as I said above for my games in Open Mode, the AI is likely guarding against other potential threats.

I do wonder if the AI overvalues forts -- sure it is better than defending open ground, but unless it is a chokepoint it may not be wise. If forts had minor AA capability it might make it worthwhile to hole up there, though there would still come a time strategically when they would be better off defending their cities instead.

To follow up on the potential defense glitch mentioned above, I also wonder now if it extends to air units and naval units. I got 'curious' results, losing stronger/promoted Japanese Zeroes to China's early-level air units. Similarly, battleships being sunk by cruisers. Sure, some randomness is to be expected, but it makes me wonder.
 
In the case of Battleships vs. Cruisers, Dale did not put a wide enough gap between their strength levels to make them worth building IMO so a Battleship dying to a cruiser isn't really too odd, at least for me.
 
I disabled ranged/bomb buildings/stack/fighter engagement/opp fire/active defence (set to 0) and tried the game above, Germany finished off Poland within a few turns. My theory was that the AI couldn't handle these features particularly well, looking good so far.
You said all previous versions was working and now you say that those feature doesn't work... those feature but the stack was activated on all versions!

It's not just launching the game once that you can deduce anything. Test ten time each version and then eventually. But my advice is stop look at the computer play and play yourself, you'll perhaps discover that it's not that important if the Germany take this town the week after the DOW or the month or six month after. Plus that for any version it isn't so predictive.
 
...I got 'curious' results, losing stronger/promoted Japanese Zeroes to China's early-level air units. Similarly, battleships being sunk by cruisers. Sure, some randomness is to be expected, but it makes me wonder.
Quite standard in any Civilization IV game or any Civilization IV mod. It's just that it happens but not that often. If you have 95% you still have chance to loose. I even saw few time in standard civ4 some death with 97%. Not sure I've seen it when it's above.
 
Top Bottom