Comments - Karl_XII

Never mind. Minor user obtuseness was all.

Keeps crashing on launch. Error is "unable to open file ....textures_face_gen.brf"

Also, should be noted WSEL v3.2.0 is the included version, if that matters.

I was wondering if you guys have given any thought to forcing more historical corps/army organization? 5 subordinate divisions/corps is ~ double real organization. Same-same for the crazy number of divisions countries are able to field.

The new Free French rules are interesting. A couple of notes.

1) Belgian units who went to the French on the fall of Belgium should probably go to the UK instead for ease of future book keeping. Regardless, upon the fall of France they should probably go over to the UK.

2) Kinda bizarre having a CV go over to Britain, yet the CAG went Vichy. CAGs should probably automatically go to the nation who receives the CV. If not, at the very least the CAG should leave the CV. I now have a CV with a CAG I cannot give orders to, cannot destroy and will not receive supplies (organization is 0).

Getting to the point where the handling of the British Empire is a real deal-breaker. Making all these imperial dependencies puppets instead of occupied territory makes operating within the Empire problematic to the point of impossibility. Cannot build bases or infrastructure. Supply lines cannot be maintained. For the love of whatever you deem holy, Alexandria NOT in UK control? It's bad enough one can't build in allied territory. Staging air power in the UK as the US is a friggin' nightmare. The AI doesn't build additional airbases and a player can't do it for them. But now a UK player can't built bases in huge swathes of the British Empire. Also, it seems the choices were made arbitrarily. I mean, are you going to make a serious case that Malaya had more autonomy than Newfoundland?

Parsed this one. Seems the effects are temporary - mostly. For some reason the UK starts with 111 IC, and quickly goes down to 110 without recovering that 1 IC.

Why do events like the Anschluss, the Munich Treaty, etc., not impact UK neutrality?

OK, happened again. I'm thinking it has to do with effects springing from dissent? If so, I never saw this while playing the US. Losing base IC permanently is pretty friggin' extreme, if so. Particularly when it results from a random event.

Very strange. I'm playing the UK, and my base IC has reduced by 2 from 111 to 109 in the first 5 months of the game. What's going on?

Actually, given the support brigade's existence, the 5th slot is superfluous. Aside from the 2 US armoured divisions organized on a "heavy" org basis, it's hard to figure out a division TO that isn't representable. Pity game limits make proper corps and army level support unrepresentable.

I took a run at playing Spain to see why the AI seems almost invariably to result in a quick Nationalist victory. Shocked to find that the air and naval forces go Nationalist.

Feeling a bit lost. Are 5 brigade-slot divisions a thing of the past?

Well that's interesting! Cross-country sailing boats.

Very "Martian Chronicles".

Any correction to archer units not having power draw?

Dealing with the New Deal:

When does the game test for alleviation of the Depression? If it's on the 1st of each month, this causes some problems because despite religiously invoking the New Deal the day it comes due, frequently it runs out on a 1st. Is it possible to just have the New Deal be fire-and-forget, rather than manually renewable? Exacerbating this is the constant "alert\" that I can look at ship models when I really can't. Alerts on diplomatic events or laws (I'm NEVER going to use "higher taxes", yet that perma-alert stays up) wind up being missed, or not acted on in a timely fashion. Maybe a button that shuts off the alert until a new event comes up?

Incredibly minor point, but what do I have to edit so that engineer brigades report lower on the pecking order? I find it disconcerting to have an infantry division with an engineer brigade report as an engineer or "assault" division.

From a real-world geopolitical standpoint, French and British colonies had no independence whatever. I refer you to the Statute of Westminster and the ancillary Colonial and Imperial Conferences leading up to it. Self-government was limited to Australia, Canada, South Africa, South Rhodesia, New Zealand, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland. Newfoundland put itself back under direct crown control in '34. By not being covered explicitly as members of the Commonwealth of Nations in the Statute of Westminster, the rest of the Empire was implicitly understood as directly subordinate to Whitehall.

On a related note, Siam's position is ridiculous. Yeah, I get that Siam was a non-belligerent in the war, but in game terms a Japanese army gets itself an unassailable haven. If the Allies ran into this situation, undoubtedly Siam would have pulled a Bulgaria. The FTM solution of making Siam a puppet of Japan may be "historically" inaccurate, but given the limitations of game mechanics seems the most workable solution.

BTW, no need to place hard caps on production of types of units. Limiting practical experience to 10 functionally caps unit builds.

I've come to terms with a lot of the game mechanics. Reading the scripting answered a lot of my questions. 2 items though.

By "premature", I mean Germany jumps into the USSR right after the fall of France pretty often and gets its *** handed to it. I find Germany regularly committing suicide a detriment to an enjoyable game.

I'm at a loss to understand how making colonial possessions puppets rather than wholly controlled territories of the metropolitan power is in any way historically realistic. The idea that Malaya, Palestine or India could forbid the UK to build military installations is, on the face of it, absurd. Further, such units as were raised in the Empire were wholly integrated into the British military establishment. Whitehall decided which Indian Army units deployed to the Western Desert or Italy, not Delhi.

Even worse in game terms, it totally distorts supply restrictions. An unlimited number of troops can be fully supplied in a puppet, so long as a minimal convoy "trades" supply and fuel from the metropol to the colony. This then flips over to complete supply starvation in captured territory as soon as the first enemy port is taken. Far better historical effect to force the metropolitan power to treat the whole area as a typical overseas block of ports.

5) Also, it seems going over to heavy industry emphasis from civilian made my industry 20% LESS efficient, rather than the other way around. Everything in the queue got radically MORE expensive to build. If I go to the build screen, however, new build cost what they should.

6} India operating as a UK puppet makes a degree of sense, after all the Indian Army and Navy were both run as separate establishments despite their being fully integrated, but operating the mandate in Palestine or Malaya as puppets is a bit strange. This gets to a greater problem with HOI, the inability to build base facilities in allies or puppets. I find when playing the US that building up a large operational air force in the UK is hobbled by the limited air base situation, and cannot follow the historical solution of building up bases myself. Similarly, leaving Egypt and Palestine puppets makes it problematic for the UK to build up in the region and leads to what seems inevitable for HPP, Italy and Iraq conquering the Middle East. Same thing for the US in the Philippines. The option to build up there would be nice.

7) One thing I always do as the US which should be disallowed somehow is building up Guam, Wake and Midway as forward bases. Historically, Japan got wind of US plans to do that in the 30s and threatened the US out of it. That's why Guam and Wake fell so easily. They were practically undefended. The US backed down to placate Japan, seeing Europe as threat enough. Perhaps an historical event that fires if the US tries to build up there? My "Fortress Guam" at the start of the game ahistorically hobbles Japan in the Western Pacific.

3) The AI seems to have a distressing tendency to have Germany attack the USSR prematurely. That happened more often than not in the tests I've run. Perhaps additional requirements applied to the AI before it is allowed to open a second front?

4) The mobilization thing still leaves me perplexed. I hacked the destroyers for bases decision and letting that happen seems to deduct enough neutrality for the US pre-war mobilization to progress as expected, so no worries there. However, I now find myself at war with the entire Axis {Japan finally attacked in Jul 42), yet I am stuck at full mobilization. If I understand the Great War event flag, it seems that even a perfidious sneak attack is not enough to shake the country out of its torpor. Perhaps, in keeping with the "day of infamy" motif, Japan opting for the surprise attack should automatically apply the great war to the US.

OK, a few more quibbles...

I've done several dry runs as the US up through Nov 41 and found a few things that raised a Spockian eyebrow:

1) I like the progressive random event factor of losing the effects of the great depression. However, despite religiously using the new deal decision, I once got all the way to Nov 41 without it abating at all. Currently I am in a game I've let run and in Aug 42 still have the depression running at 2/5 strength. That seems a bit odd. As a sidebar, shouldn't the US either start with the new deal firing automatically at game start, or with enough money to enact it immediately? Also, and I have no idea if this can be done, but couldn't the new deal be set to automatically renew every quarter unless turned off?

2) Shouldn't the negotiate with investors decision be available from day 1?

I get it, across the board. You had mentioned a different screen and I was confirming that it was the same in all cases.

What is the purpose of "effective" neutrality? It seems a meaningless stat. It shouldn't (and seems not to) be used in war declarations against any but the threat it references and the one thing it makes sense to use it for, mobilization, doesn't reference it.

Nope, no deletions and no hacking the OB to change brigade names. It didn't happen in the previous rev, so I reckon someone made an oops and changed to two brigades not in the OB. If memory serves, the offending units are the 41st and 42dn Destroyer Divisions. If I read the decisions file correctly, this option deletes these DDs from the US OB? You guys know that the 50 destroyers turned over to the Allies were all from the US mothball fleet and not active service vessels, right? Caused fits for the RN and RCN when they were working them up. As I understand it, the ones the RCN got didn't even have enclosed bridges, which is less than ideal on the Halifax-Liverpool run. Anyhow, deducting them from the US force pool might be less than optimally historically plausible.

One other note. The neutrality I was reading was off the intel screen. I don't recall that previously showing anything but base neutrality. Has that changed?

OK, I get the reason why I was seeing what I was seeing, but I'm not understanding why there is a distinction re: mobilization.

Logically, wouldn't a nation's decision to mobilize hinge on the juxtaposition of perceived threat and a notional sense of bellicosity in the population, rather than simply the latter? I mean, that's what historically happened to the Western powers in WWII. France and the UK didn't suddenly get more warlike as a result of Munich or Germany's annexation of the rump of Czechoslovakia. Rather, they bumped up mobilization in both cases in response to the greater threat Germany seemed to pose. Same-same with the U.S. introducing conscription in the fall of '40.

A question about the mod in particular. Why does the Destroyers for Bases decision hinge on the existence of specific named destroyer units? I got hung up unable to enact the decision because despite having built destroyer, the specific ones called for didn't come up in the luck of the draw.

And now neutrality 44 and unable to enact basic mobilization...

OK, I'm convinced. The new research methodology rocks.

Meanwhile, unable to mobilize despite a neutrality of 65...

I understand the governmental differences reflected in mobilization, etc. The featured bug I'm seeing is that despite the tool-tip showing that getting neutrality below 70 is adequate for non-totalitarians to get basic mobilization, the law doesn't unlock until neutrality is below 60.

A last word on the NG thing. There is a tendency for wargamers to get bogged down in comparing equipment rosters as a form of objective comparison. For a lot of people that's the "sexy" end of the stick. The reality is that function is dictated by the doctrinal role, which in turn is shaped by the politico-military realities of the state. An example from a couple of thousand years ago is Alexander the Great's Companion cavalry. They weren't any more heavily equipped than the Persian cavalry they faced, but they swept them from the field because they were doctrinally committed to shock action rather than a more firepower based way of fighting. Similar to the evolution of European cavalry in the mid-17th century. Just a convoluted way of saying that the state of equipment doesn't dictate troop-type, but rather usage does.

Once again, I reckon it all comes down to achieving the desired effect. Even if inelegantly (cf the "God" player...:P). I've only today tried you're latest upload, so I'll defer judgment until I've played around with the research a bit more. As I'm thorough (a bit obsessive?) concerning doing the math to get maximum result for effort, I'll probably come to see it your way.

I can't strongly enough recommend shifting all the support brigades to artillery practical. Otherwise, you have the nuttiness of a big spiffy mechanized army with an artillery practical of 0.

As for the effects of doctrines, its been my experience that many WWII-era gamers have an unrealistically high regard for the German Army's doctrine. In this case I think that's reflected in a reflexive decision to assign anything with armour on it to the decisive breakthrough doctrine, aka "Spearhead" in the game. Remember also that doctrinally, the Germans made little distinction between tank destroyers and tanks. Functionally, jagdpanzers were just turretless PzKWs and realistically are covered in the armoured brigades. Tank destroyers as a separate class of equipment with a doctrinally distinct support role were reflective of US combined arms doctrine. Just 2 cents worth in favour of moving the support equipment.

As for Canadian units not being able to get trucks, I just had to chuckle. The latest Conservative government defence procurement screw-up here was completely mishandling the purchase of replacement tactical trucks for the Canadian Forces. Maybe you've accidentally stumbled upon a deeper historical truth?

If the issue is equipment rather than function, that's a matter of equipment upgrading. Seems to me that unit types are functionally descriptive rather than descriptive of the tech level of the equipment carried. As such, the function of NG units was combat infantry, not local militia. Militia in game terms has far more penalties vs. infantry than the tech level of their weapons. Throw in the ridiculously high cost of upgrading non-mobilized unit types (as distinct from paying to "upgrade" equipment via the sliders) and the only sensible position for a US player is to scrap all the NG divisions and build reserve infantry from the get-go.

I agree that the reserve/regular divide as represented in the game is a bit daft, but the solution is to minimize the effects. As such, treating ALL the divisions as reserve infantry with the understanding that the regular army would be effectively broken up as cadres in the event of mobilization. Deciding to call the NG militia seems an artifice which distorts both its intention in US plans and its real historical role as the frameworks to be filled out in time of mobilization. There was no real functional difference between them and European reserve formations. To include worse equipment than the standing army formations. The difference was the US having a much smaller pool of trained manpower available than the other major powers, at least relative to the size of its population. Functionally, this is handled by the manpower penalties under the depression/new deal events/decisions.

Do the law requirements obtain for all countries, or just the US?

Oh, and a kudo with a quibble-
I LOVE the way you've changed the tech research. Both the land doctrines and naval classes of ships. Much better "feel". Also, reducing the amount of practical experience from building things is a pragmatic solution to the problem of the huge building frenzies I used to indulge in. It should be remembered, for example, that the US goal in WWII was the "100 Division Army". Hard to proxy reasonable land force limits, though. A difficulty is getting artillery practical. Perhaps ALL support brigades should give an artillery bonus, not just the horse-drawn ones?
I HATE completely eliminating getting theoretical experience gains from researching related techs. The principle I suspect behind this change is because the size of increase for tech cannot be tailored the same way it is for building units and you don't want theory ratings in the 30s and 40s. Perhaps a good compromise is selecting a few techs to give theoretical bonuses? For example, increases in airframes and design principles could give aeronautical/naval engineering bonuses? Tank chassis can give automotive. Infantry, mobile and artillery are more challenging as they don't have centralized progressively unlocking techs. Perhaps select some emblematic techs (small arms, heavy artillery, SP artillery, etc.)? Also, shouldn't the doctrinal theory impacting the SP and TD techs be superior firepower (combined arms proxy) rather than spearhead?

Very enjoyable. One quibble, one question.
Quibble- US National Guard units should be reserve infantry, not militia. The NG comprised the operational formations of the US Army's reserve structure. A simple edit for those who want to change that.
Question- When playing the US, mobilization laws lag by 10 points of neutrality. i.e., one has to get below 60 for basic mobilization. Bug or feature?