ADDIT: just had a little lunch break glimpse at "Unconditional Surrender" in Wikipedia, which led me to pages about the WWII Conferences of the allied powers. The first places the term was used in WWII context was the Casablanca Conference, but the Yalta Conference, which happened very close to the end of the war had as a central focus wringing Germany into unconditional surrender. Thus, I think the Diplomacy enabling Wonder, which I was calling "War Crimes Tribunals" could better be called "Yalta Conference." However, the resource that requires it I think should remain labelled as "War Crimes Evidence" and I think the locations are probably just about right (Nurnberg, northeast Ukraine, and b/w Hiroshima and Kagoshima), in that they represent a good balance b/w (i) the actual geographic locations where a corpus of the fascists atrocities were commited (though granted least of all for Japan); (ii) a location that will not be easy for any of the democracies to take control of in order to have the resource to build the diplomacy win enabling structure; and (iii) deep enough into the territory of each of the war criminal nations that controlling will necessitate that the nation is effectively military defeated.
Actually I just had another idea, there should be TWO resources required (European War Crimes & Asian War Crimes), and the location in USSR should have one copy of each! Yeah, that's the ticket! This will make the level of military victory needed be more realistic! in that, it will be necessary to control Nurnberg AND the one in Asia, as well as both being tied to cities that have air transport
Okay this is making me think . . . maybe the one in Japan should not be in Japan at all, but in Manchuria where it belongs. More thinking to do on this, and would really like to think what others think of this, since I explain the whole concept at length in this post . . .
I trust your knowledge more than mine with respect to war weariness. I guess having grown up after Vietnam, I just tend to assume that the profound squemishness about war that I grew up experiencing in the U.S. has biased me about the truth of history. That is very interesting to hear you say that it was the Huns in WWI whose populations suffered from it more. I do not doubt you at all, and it is a point well taken. Amazing isn't it, how the game has sort of "revised" some of use youngsters ideas about history?
To respond to all your responses about my proposed modifications it sounds like you think that all of them MIGHT be effective, but like myself, think it hard to predict just what the AI will do. If it doesnt' give satisfactory single-player game results, not a big loss, cause I enjoyed thinking it through, and making the changes. I'll try to get the last few things I want to make changes to (the Japanese island holdings) done in a day or so, and then post it, and play-test it myself (and encourage otherse to do the same!). I probably won't play Italy, but will try Germany and Japan. Again, if any of it works, I'll keep what does work, and use it to then test the "Allied Human Version," then test GB, and Soviets, and US and possibly also France. It'll take a while, but it'll be fun
Re: the "Delhi Wonder:" in the course of changing the whale and saltpeter resources to be required for various structures, and then resetting all of them on the map in order to try to create a trade interdependency for b/w US-GB (oil for whales) and US-France (oil for saltpeter), I added a couple of new "city-specific wonders" (Belfast Wonder, Bombay Wonder, perhaps one or two others). None of these "stuck," and I only noticed that after I restarted and then went back to the editor. Thus, what I wrote about deleting else changing a couple of the very low significance structures to make room for the "Colonial Treasure Depot" and the "War Crimes Tribunal."
Before I play test it, I need to go through the entire list of structures, make sure that they have not gotten bugged up by me deleting some and renaming some, and then make sure that each city has the appopriate one. It looked like when I deleted League, it caused all the structures to shift UP in the list one notch, so that instead of Calcutta having "Calcutta Wonder" it now has "Belgrade Wonder" or something along those lines. I think that this is a brilliant way to have some, but limited air trade at various strategic locations around the map, so I want to make sure that I have not messed this up in my altered version before playtesting it. I see that, some of them have slightly different functions, and I am guessing that this was highly intentional.
With respect to the "Diplomatic" Victory conditions: the AI's actions are highly dependent on the VP conditions that are flagged on. For example, if you leave ONLY diplomacy on, they will be very hesitant to go to war at all. The effect of having say ONLY Conquest on is also different than having both Domination and Conquest (I hypothesize, I have not actually tested this premise). Also, if VP is activated, I do believe (again just anecdotal based on playing the various scenarios that use the different Victory Conditions) the AI will again act differently depending on the math. It would be nice if Firaxis provided, or would provide more info on exactly what the AI seeks to do in SP games (e.g., does it seek to win, or does it seek not to lose?), and whether the tribe characteristics are conditional, additive, multiplicative, or actually separate in the algorithms that derive from how the AI behaves as a result of Victory conditions. For example, only Conq victory is turned on. The only way to win is to survive with higher points, or take over the entire planet. How will Spain (religious, expansionist) TEND to handle this compared to Japan (relig, and milit) compared to Portugal (expansion and seafare) compared to Mongols (expansion and milit)? Or, do the civ attributes ONLY shape what the civ builds, what Techs it goes for first, and how it priortizes structures and build queues in general?
Maybe eventually Firaxis (or whoever owns it!) will reveal the code, or at least provide more insight into the modularity, and intermodular linkage in the AI brain. Or maybe there are already resources of this nature about which I am not aware. For me, at present it is largely guess work.
Anyway, my GUESSes are this: Domination, provokes ANY AI to want to take advantage of an opportunity to take territory, thus it will tend to prompt wars that may have a rather "random" or senseless appearance to the human. I do believe that when these "stupid" AI wars ensue, it is because the AI has been doing the math about relative risk and gains, and has decided, for whatever reason that this is a prospect to challenge the human player, by either (i) complicating diplomacy by declaring war on another AI; (ii) gain long-term advantage relative to the human by declaring war on another AI; or (iii) putting the human into some sort of strategic "bind." This is actually not a lot different than what we humans do, it is just that the AI knows EVERYTHING, ALL THE TIME, and we humans only know what we can see via the interface. Moreover, we unconsciously tend to "presume" that our "opponent" (the adaptive algorithm running everything in the game, including what our "various" AI opponents are doing) works with the same state of incomplete knowledge. But then, many of us have also come to the realization of how easy it is to actually MANIPULATE the AI as a result of its ominiscence. For example, you are at war with the Turks. You leave a city that is back behind your border with no defender, unerringly the Turkish soldiers begin to plod toward that city. You move a strong defender that is in a nearby city over to the defenseless city, voila! the Turkish soldiers do an about face. One can continue these dance ad infinitum, or at least until a new value gets entered into the equation, for example, the Turks get another unit or five built, THEN, it will start to act differently. In short, the AI is actually extremely predictable, and it only really when we do not think fully about the mathematical implications of some new development in the course of the game that its actions might seem "illogical." I have no doubt that it ALWAYS does what it does for good reasons, it is just whether or not those reasons are silly.
Given this predictability, what I am trying to do is setup the Victory conditions to prompt the AIs to go along general decision-paths that more or less are like those which they would have started out along at the outset of the war. If cumulative events lead to very, VERY different outcomes, very fun! That is what makes it fun in fact. BUT! I would just like to get all the starting values set up, so that at least the initial predispositions and trajectories of all the various players closely resemble the actual course of the war. This is part of why I want to try with US not in the Euro alliance.
In actual history, there were some rather pro-Nazi interests in ALL the western nations, and it is an interesting what-if to consider what MIGHT have happened if minor historical events had happened differently. For example Henry Ford (from what I've heard) was quite friendly with industrial interests in Germany, I wasn't aware of this Lindbergh speech about which you refer (will have to check that out!), but in any event, I think it is not unfair to speculate that, US MIGHT possibly have simply stayed out of the war entirely, had Japan not attacked it, and had Axis agreed to a more concessionary armistice in say 1941 before the Battle of Britain. GB was replete with appeasers, and had the Nazis agreed to a sort of half-way withdrawal from some of the land it had taken, who knows what might have happened?
Thus, the Victory Points: the point is to prompt the aggressor nations to take territory, but not ANY and ALL territory. Having the VP locations on the map, along with other strategic points (e.g., saltpeter under Hong Kong that, if linked by road to rest of China allows advanced growth structures in Chinese holdings by Japanese) is an intent to provoke the Japanese to try to get Hong Kong before they go off and declare war on US, or Soviets, or Brazil! Likewise the VPs in Dutch New Guinea and Indonesia are also to provoke the Japanese to strive to occupy THESE territories FIRST, before it starts getting distracted by trying to invade Vancouver, or Rio de Janiero. It might STILL pull such a "stupid" stunt, but hopefully, only after it has taken a firm grip on the most immediately available low-hanging fruit FIRST. Indeed, once it has taken the territories it actually DID take in the war, the next best targets (for a VP win perspective) are Australia and India. There is not much point with this setup I've concocted for Japan to declare war on either Soviets or US, UNLESS it has already conqured so much, and become so powerful that fulfilling the VP conditions is less of a risk and it can start to focus on total domination. Thus, in the Axis Human version, there will be no Locked in mechanism (the invisible unit scheme, developed by Surtur) to automatically bring US into the war. Maybe US will come into the war anyway (though most likely not until it has Democracy, i.e. post Air 1941), but maybe Axis can with good diplomacy keep US AI out of the war entirely! Same intent with the other VP locations in ME and Russia: provoke AIs that play these positions to try to achieve what these nations actually sought to achieve through aggression, as a first step that might then lead them to seek domination, else total conquest.
For the allied nations, the point really is about surviving, then getting the US into the war so they can ultimately triumph. It will be interesting to see how the allied nations handle the lack of locked alliance with US in this regard. Hopefully, given the complete lack of VPs in New World, and Britain, as well as the affinity between governments, and the interdependent trade, war b/w them will not be likely except perhaps under extreme circumstances. Only playing can tell. For France, GB, or Soviets, the VP win is also a prospect that goes hand in hand with them surviving Axis aggression, and then pushing back hard enough to take back those tiles. Hopefully, the effect of this (as compared to when only Domination and Conquest are flagged as victory options) will similarly be to focus all the AI on the most immediate threats and opportunities. For example, let say a human is playing Japan with unaltered victory conditions with ONLY Domination & Conqeust win turned on (but with all the other changes I've made on): it is 1940, France is Nazi occupied. Germans have pushed deep into Russia, GB suffers under a fierce air and naval attack from Germany. US is still enfeebled by its Federal Republic isolationism, and the Fascists have been more intent on taking the low-hanging fruit than on attacking US which is quietly striving toward Air 1941 over there across the waters. The human is methodically de-flowring British and Neth holdings in Pacific, and edging toward Australia, and it is a slow but steady path of loss for the AI GB in Pacific. All the AIs are trying to achieve Domination if not Conquest, and they are thus constantly calculating the "best" current options for taking steps steps toward that eventual outcome. Thus, with its lost territory in Pacific, and poor prospects to hold out, GB AI decides: "time to expand in other directions" and declares war on Brazil, or even more amazingly US!! True, while this could have happened, it is not particularly realistic. My intent is that the VP win, which is generally MORE accessible than the Domination or Conquest wins, will tend to prevent these sorts of AI decisions, and focus MOST of the action on the areas of the world where the war was primarily fought in actual history.
"Diplomatic Victory." This is not in actual fact a "Diplomatic Victory," but simply a fait accompli sort of victory, and the Diplo flag is the only one that really suits this sort of accomplishment. If some building, available in a late game hail-Mary development provided some ridiculous amount of culture or something, then it could alternatively be set to Culture Win. But the nice side effect of the Diplo win being turned on (hopefully), and ONLY available to the Democracies, is that it will prompt all the democracies (whether AI or human) to generally play nice with one another (after all, they may need those "votes" someday! if a VP, Domination, or Conquest win eventually seems unattainable).
The idea here is not that anything like the U.N. is formed, or that the whole world is otherwise suddenly engaged in a massive popularity vote. Rather, the idea is to simulate the way the U.S. actually "won WWII," i.e., she sat it out as long as possible, while all the Old World nations pounded each other in an attempt to gain a VP win, or perhaps (if any one of them had actually done better than they did) even go for a Domination or Conquest. Once everyone was pretty much depleted, and US had built itself up to be the relative super-power unequaled, she came in, and mopped up. When human plays positions OTHER than US, this should be a real risk. When human plays US, this approach to victory should be an option. In short, the US should not have to act like the Fascists or the Communists in order to "win," and really neither should the other Democracies. Achieving a late-game victory that is largely contingent on militarily defeating the aggressors but IS NOT dependent on controlling 70% of the world, or even on having a massive pile of victory points (tiles occupied, and cities conquested) should remain an option for the the Democracies. This is the actual point of the "Diplomatic" victory flag being on.
Only Democracies can get it, and it will be contingent on them being liked by a majority of nations on the planet (i.e., they'd better not be unfriendly to too many other nations, unless they intend to simply extinguish those other nations, but in even THEN they are going to alienate the other democracies). Moreover, it is ALSO contingent on lasting until at least 1945 (requires Air 2 1945 Tech), it is contigent on building an Atom Bomb (read, deploying the A-bombs that Truman deployed to establish to the world that, "resistance is futile," surrender unconditionally [to Japan] and/or stay behind YOUR side of the line [to Russia] else we'll nuke you some more/also. And lastly, building the "structure" (which may not actually be a structure so much as it is a Conference, a Treaty, and Plan, that takes its name from the city where it is constructed) is ALSO contingent on taking control of ENOUGH of either Germany, Japan, or Russia (because of where I put the three "War Crimes Evidence" strategic resources) that they have control of the necessary resource and can then build the "War Crimes Tribunal" structure (aka, United Nations). This is not meant to equate with actual War Crimes Tribunals, but with the state of uncontested victor that can be achieved by simply: (a) being ahead, or at least not behind in Techs; (b) taking a huge bite of an aggressor's territory; (c) controlling that territory long enough to use the resource there (War Crimes Evidence) to "build" a global public relations case against the aggressor nation to make ANY action against them (even armaggedon devices) acceptable in pursuit of achieving unconditional surrender; and lastly (d) building said armaggedon devices, which means that they could be demonstrated, and used to evoke the Unconditional Surrender.
Perhaps I should call the structure "Unconditional Surrender" (aka United Nations= "diplomacy" victory) instead of "War Crimes Tribunal" and perhaps call the resource necessary to build, something like "Final Democratic Resolve To Win At Any Cost" or something like that. That is a real mouthful, so if you can recommend something else please let me know.
This is too much fun, and with my prof job interview coming up Feb 19, I _REALLY_ must get back to work!!!
