|
Post by generalvikus on Oct 7, 2018 15:00:34 GMT -6
While I think it's unlikely that this hasn't been thought of yet and at least considered by the devs and / or the community, I couldn't find any mention of this topic on the forums, so I thought I'd bring it up for discussion.
I think my suggestion is pretty straightforward. In the early game, as in RTW1, it should be normal for every kind of nation to fight and ally with every other kind of nation. While history did not bear out the potential for, say, an Anglo-German alliance or a war between Britain and France, both of these possibilities were very nearly realised in the same year - 1898. While it would be reductionist to buy into the stereotypes of ubiquitous nationalism and militarism, the fact is that the international climate of the period before the end of the First World War and the resulting Bolshevik Revolution was fundamentally non-ideological.
By contrast, I believe that during the late game, nations of the same ideology should be more likely to ally with one another, and nations of different ideologies should suffer a large bonus to tensions in order to simulate the ideological nature of politics in this period. It should of course not be impossible for a country of a different ideology to 'sound out' the player about an alliance - again, consider the various pre-war negotiations between the Soviets and the Western Powers - but it ought to be unusual, and it ought to be very unusual for war to break out between countries of the same government type.
Of course, some players may find this unnecessarily limiting, but since as far as I can imagine it would only require some simple modifiers to random chance events, it seems to me that it could be a toggle-able event. I certainly believe that at least an option for more historical politics is appropriate for the RTW2's focus on the later timeframe.
Getting into more complex territory - since we now have Allied ships participating in battles, it would be excellent to see AI nations allying with one another, so that in the later part of the game the focus will shift from the sort of wars we see in RTW 1 - two nation wars which seem more or less representative of the sort of nationalist struggles over colonies and prestige that you'd expect to see in the earlier period - to grand, ideological coalition wars. This, of course, is a considerably more involved suggestion.
|
|
|
Post by mmmfriedrice on Oct 8, 2018 5:31:03 GMT -6
One thing that this could link up with is blockading your opponents into revolution/replacement of government to force a surrender, and how that might interact with the change of government mechanic.
It would be boring and a bit deterministic to force Germany to become a warmongering state every time you well and truly smashed them in a previous war. If the game rolls for government type and leader belligerence every time you force a nation into revolution, you could potentially see a series of "too successful" wars by a player slowly turn the whole world against them, but also in a way that allows for different playthroughs.
It'd be interesting for a UK player trying to hold on to colonial holdings pissing off the United States, winning, and turning them into an authoritarian government that proceeds to ally with a fascist Germany in a future Anglo-German war.
A 'memory' mechanic might be interesting too, where previously warred nations are a bit more touchy about your geopolitical gallivanting, though the US is probably the only nation that would really recover from a huge war.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Oct 8, 2018 13:37:01 GMT -6
One thing that this could link up with is blockading your opponents into revolution/replacement of government to force a surrender, and how that might interact with the change of government mechanic. It would be boring and a bit deterministic to force Germany to become a warmongering state every time you well and truly smashed them in a previous war. If the game rolls for government type and leader belligerence every time you force a nation into revolution, you could potentially see a series of "too successful" wars by a player slowly turn the whole world against them, but also in a way that allows for different playthroughs. It'd be interesting for a UK player trying to hold on to colonial holdings pissing off the United States, winning, and turning them into an authoritarian government that proceeds to ally with a fascist Germany in a future Anglo-German war. A 'memory' mechanic might be interesting too, where previously warred nations are a bit more touchy about your geopolitical gallivanting, though the US is probably the only nation that would really recover from a huge war. I agree that this sounds like a fun idea - perhaps the AI should also prefer to plan invasions to recover lost territories, if that's possible. Either way, this mechanic could work both ways; going back to the UK example, you might turn Germany fascist, but you might also turn them into a friendly Weimar Republic which is less antagonistic towards you overall, even allowing for the 'revanchist' modifier to tensions that you suggested.
|
|
|
Post by mobeer on Oct 9, 2018 15:20:15 GMT -6
AI wars against other AIs please.
AIs that remember your previous behaviour in honouring treaties would be good too.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Oct 10, 2018 19:49:19 GMT -6
AI wars against other AIs please. AIs that remember your previous behaviour in honouring treaties would be good too. Yeah, both of those things would definitely good, but would also be much more complicated than the suggestions I made, so I'm sceptical that they would be implemented at this point in development.
|
|
|
Post by britishball on Oct 11, 2018 7:10:02 GMT -6
AI wars against other AIs please. AIs that remember your previous behaviour in honouring treaties would be good too. Yeah, both of those things would definitely good, but would also be much more complicated than the suggestions I made, so I'm sceptical that they would be implemented at this point in development. Even if it was as simply abstracted as "every 10 years there is an X% chance for a war between country A and country B, Y% country A wins, country B loses colonies R,S and T and Z ships" or something super simple it would be such a brilliant addition and go so far to making the world feel more alive. I'll always care far more about a minor war between France and Italy early on than whether or not Japan and Germany can sometimes show up in the same battle. Even if the system is basic as I say and doesn't really take into account actually moving fleets and fighting them, if it just does a quick balance of power count (5 Battleships, 10 cruisers and 30 destroyers beats 2 Battleships, 8 cruisers and 20 destroyers therefore country B loses half its Navy and half its colonial possessions) The real trick would be in making it work out how many destroyers equate to a battleship, how certain designs of ships aren't always equal 12" Battleship against a 16" Battleship, and what countries should fight and who should take what off whom, for example a war between America and Italy would be weird and America probably wouldn't even want the Italian Somalialand.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Oct 17, 2018 23:26:27 GMT -6
Yeah, both of those things would definitely good, but would also be much more complicated than the suggestions I made, so I'm sceptical that they would be implemented at this point in development. Even if it was as simply abstracted as "every 10 years there is an X% chance for a war between country A and country B, Y% country A wins, country B loses colonies R,S and T and Z ships" or something super simple it would be such a brilliant addition and go so far to making the world feel more alive. I'll always care far more about a minor war between France and Italy early on than whether or not Japan and Germany can sometimes show up in the same battle. Even if the system is basic as I say and doesn't really take into account actually moving fleets and fighting them, if it just does a quick balance of power count (5 Battleships, 10 cruisers and 30 destroyers beats 2 Battleships, 8 cruisers and 20 destroyers therefore country B loses half its Navy and half its colonial possessions) The real trick would be in making it work out how many destroyers equate to a battleship, how certain designs of ships aren't always equal 12" Battleship against a 16" Battleship, and what countries should fight and who should take what off whom, for example a war between America and Italy would be weird and America probably wouldn't even want the Italian Somalialand. I think, as you say, that a simple system, such as a dice roll for two countries to fight and then another to decide who wins, would add a great deal to the game without too much effort. The problem of which countries fight one another could be solved easily enough by making it a weighted dice roll - so, with the example of the USA, *0 for Italy, *1 for Germany, *2 for Japan, for instance. Further modifiers could then be added for a difference in government type beyond, say, 1920: *0 if they are the same, *1 if they are different. That seems to me like it could be a 'minimalist' option and the basis for a more complex system. The first way of fleshing things out would be to have the dice roll not for mere victory or defeat, but for everything from 'crushing defeat' to 'draw' to 'crushing victory,' and adjust the losses of ships and the war score given accordingly; possessions could then be exchanged according to war score as they are for the player. To make sure that the USA doesn't take Italian Somaliand, you could simply set a rule that no country will take any possessions in a region where it does not already have possessions. The probabilities of these different war outcomes could simply be weighted according to the total tonnage of either fleet. Now, the best possible option would be to have the wars actually play out turn-by-turn. At the least, I think this could be done by assigning a base random chance for a ship of each type to be lost in a turn, and then modify it by the number of ships on either side in the same strategic region as one another. However, since there is already an auto-resolve button for raider intercepts, perhaps the same system could be applied to simulate AI vs AI wars? That system could furthermore be combined with all of the stuff that happens off-screen for the player, like raider checks, ships being torpedoed or mined, etc. It seems to me that the systems for off-screen wars already exist, though I may of course be ignorant of many complexities that would be involved in using them as I have described.
|
|
|
Post by britishball on Oct 20, 2018 3:29:12 GMT -6
Even if it was as simply abstracted as "every 10 years there is an X% chance for a war between country A and country B, Y% country A wins, country B loses colonies R,S and T and Z ships" or something super simple it would be such a brilliant addition and go so far to making the world feel more alive. I'll always care far more about a minor war between France and Italy early on than whether or not Japan and Germany can sometimes show up in the same battle. Even if the system is basic as I say and doesn't really take into account actually moving fleets and fighting them, if it just does a quick balance of power count (5 Battleships, 10 cruisers and 30 destroyers beats 2 Battleships, 8 cruisers and 20 destroyers therefore country B loses half its Navy and half its colonial possessions) The real trick would be in making it work out how many destroyers equate to a battleship, how certain designs of ships aren't always equal 12" Battleship against a 16" Battleship, and what countries should fight and who should take what off whom, for example a war between America and Italy would be weird and America probably wouldn't even want the Italian Somalialand. I think, as you say, that a simple system, such as a dice roll for two countries to fight and then another to decide who wins, would add a great deal to the game without too much effort. The problem of which countries fight one another could be solved easily enough by making it a weighted dice roll - so, with the example of the USA, *0 for Italy, *1 for Germany, *2 for Japan, for instance. Further modifiers could then be added for a difference in government type beyond, say, 1920: *0 if they are the same, *1 if they are different. That seems to me like it could be a 'minimalist' option and the basis for a more complex system. The first way of fleshing things out would be to have the dice roll not for mere victory or defeat, but for everything from 'crushing defeat' to 'draw' to 'crushing victory,' and adjust the losses of ships and the war score given accordingly; possessions could then be exchanged according to war score as they are for the player. To make sure that the USA doesn't take Italian Somaliand, you could simply set a rule that no country will take any possessions in a region where it does not already have possessions. The probabilities of these different war outcomes could simply be weighted according to the total tonnage of either fleet. Now, the best possible option would be to have the wars actually play out turn-by-turn. At the least, I think this could be done by assigning a base random chance for a ship of each type to be lost in a turn, and then modify it by the number of ships on either side in the same strategic region as one another. However, since there is already an auto-resolve button for raider intercepts, perhaps the same system could be applied to simulate AI vs AI wars? That system could furthermore be combined with all of the stuff that happens off-screen for the player, like raider checks, ships being torpedoed or mined, etc. It seems to me that the systems for off-screen wars already exist, though I may of course be ignorant of many complexities that would be involved in using them as I have described. I see absolutely nothing wrong with what you said but I have equally absolutely no experience in game design. However from what I understand most of the events operate on this same dice roll system so I don't see why an AIvsAI war couldn't also be completely abstracted through a series of as you say, "weighted" rolls. I really think it would go a long way to making the world feel more alive and increasing replayability and hopefully increasing accuracy of the simulation as Britain wouldn't sit around doing not much whilst AustroHungary builds a massive fleet, stomps every European nation and then comes knocking on the Cliffs of Dover. Still its NWSTeams trainset as they say...
|
|
|
Post by rob06waves2018 on Dec 3, 2018 13:30:30 GMT -6
I think the team have ruled out AI-AI wars as the game playing itself too much. I think that it would be a good idea; it might whittle down the fleets of the bigger nations to make it more plausible for Italy or A-H to win anything.
That said, it's probably a lot of very complicated coding so maybe we should just deal with having to beat Britain and the US with submarine warfare and attrition tactics.
|
|
|
Post by ursamaior on Dec 4, 2018 15:21:07 GMT -6
This or that way a solution would be nice where AI controlled navies would also loose ships in wars between each other.
I have some suggestions.
a. (most simple) randomly sinking, damaging ships from the active fleet rosters of both navies.
b. (a bit more elegant) after checking each region runnin some simple algorythms with relative strengths, crew quality etc, and thus calculating losses
c. etc.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Dec 8, 2018 2:57:11 GMT -6
Yeah, I don't think an AI vs AI war system would need to be complicated at all; I think that between myself and Britishball a some various ideas of how the concept could work, ranging from very simple to quite in-depth, have been laid out in this thread, though of course neither of us has gone into the specifics of implementation, and speaking for myself I certainly could not even begin to do so.
At the very least, I think that my initial suggestion of adding tension modifiers for nations of similar and different ideologies would provide some good flavour and help to adapt the game very well for the new time period with minimal effort required.
|
|
|
Post by rob06waves2018 on Dec 8, 2018 13:44:26 GMT -6
Also, I think being able to go into allied ports would be useful, especially when you're fighting a battle in foreign seas.
|
|
|
Post by generalvikus on Dec 9, 2018 1:33:37 GMT -6
Also, I think being able to go into allied ports would be useful, especially when you're fighting a battle in foreign seas. This one never occurred to me, but it certainly would be a nice touch, and I can't see it being difficult to implement. I'd like to summarise what has already been seen so far in this thread, including a few modifications to my own suggestions for the sake of clarity and a few other suggestions I've added which I believe keep to the same theme: Simple, Easy to Implement (?)
- Increased tensions between nations of different ideologies, reduced tensions between nations of the same ideology. - Access to Allied ports. - Simple AI vs AI, % chance for two nations to start or end a war based on geographical /ideological modifiers, % chance for nations at war with one another to lose a given ship, winner / loser / colony exchanges decided by dice roll. - Modifiers to AIs accepting or rejecting treaty proposals based on the player's past actions (less likely to accept an alliance with the player if the player has broken alliances in the past.) Moderately Complex- Weighted losses in AI wars according to the total strengths of each fleet; (a fleet with fewer battleships than the enemy is more likely to lose battleships against them, etc.) - Keep track of war score in AI vs AI wars so that the exchange of possessions can be calculated as they are for player wars (for historical authenticity, can set a rule that no nation will take possessions in a region where it does not already have any.) - AI nations can form alliances with one another not aimed at the player, and can call allies into AI wars. Complex- Losses in AI wars weighted according to relative strength of opposing fleets in a each strategic region. - Invasions take place in AI vs AI wars according to relative fleet strength. - In either player or AI wars, the AI will remember which possessions it has lost in previous wars and be more likely to invade these or take them in peace deals. - The tension system is implemented for all nations against all other nations, so that relations between AI nations are governed by the same mechanics as relations between the player and the AI. Most Complex- AI wars play out using the same mechanics that are used for off-screen player wars; battles are auto-resolved in the same way that raider intercepts can be for players, and the offscreen mechanics such as submarine / raider / mine warfare which are already implemented for player wars are also used for AI vs AI wars. I'd be interested to hear what people think about the practicality of each of these steps and perhaps the potential for modability if you are knowledgeable enough in these matters.
|
|
|
Post by rob06waves2018 on Dec 9, 2018 10:19:59 GMT -6
Without seeing the coding, I would imagine that the first 2 categories are do-able but the possession bits may be harder than you think. The AI-AI war auto-resolving would probably need a whole new re-write, suggesting it might have to be a DLC, so to speak.
|
|
|
Post by hardlec on Dec 15, 2018 11:16:11 GMT -6
The algorithms for geopolitics would be complex, but there are existing models. Even RISK has AI versus AI conflicts. As systems become more complex, Chaos Theory suggests they become more random. This is a difficulty because human behavior is enormously complex but never truly random. Prior to WWII, nations fought over access to markets. After WWII, nations fought over access to resources. Currently, access to information and technology is a point of conflict. But at any given time all points of conflict are active to some degree. Think what would have happened if the French sold repeating rifles to Native Americans in the 1870s. Muddies the political waters, what?
Create a big table of possible points of conflict. (Hundreds) Let players create a few ( 1%, maybe 2%) Have weighted probabilities to apply them to various nations.
Italy's government is distracted by a woman's sufferage movement Japan suffers economic hardship after alcohol is outlawed A UFO hoax plagues Russia
The possibilities.
|
|