Well to be honest I'd like if you kept us more updated on your work, I myself and GoodWinSon have had to go back and forth and backtrack with Dengist and Go4 Speer content because we didn't coordinate and keep each other in the loop.
Can you give us an update on your Italian/Triumvirate content? @GoodWinSon By the way, can you explain why you made it so the Battle For Italy result in a detente instead of Italy joining a faction?
Well off the top of my head there's a few reasons.
1. If Italy has the entire OFN or Sphere on its side, that severely unbalances the future Med War plans. It introduces a level of complication that doesn't need to exist
2. The AI is stupid and Japan would rather dump troops in Italy then protect its colonies
3. The superpower rank is partially determined by number of allies in the superpowers alliance, so Italy joining the USA's or Japan's sphere screws up the ranking system
4. Italy joining the sphere or OFN should realistically really shake up geopolitics but it doesn't really mean much as the foreign policy of Germany, USA, and Japan remains unchanged. Again, accounting for that adds a level of complexity that is avoidable.
5. Because Goering code is rubbish, there's a scenario where Japan and USA are dragged into an unintended war against Germany which would break Goering content.
6. I think mighty Italy would not wish to lower itself and become a junior partner of the USA or Japan. That isn't to say they cant be friendly with those nations, just that they'd assert influence over their own sphere.
7. Admittedly extreme long term, but my Vic2 rip-off economy plan uses factions as economic spheres. Two superpowers in one economic sphere is too overpowered.
8. I also want Italy to act potentially as a rival to the USA and Japan, especially in Africa.
Basically I want Italy as a major power and not as a secondary.
mittedly extreme long term, but my Vic2 rip-off economy plan uses factions as economic spheres. Two superpowers in one economic sphere is too overpowered.
That's just shortsighted, COMECON wasn't just the Warsaw Pact and France and Britain had their own spheres in the early Cold war. TNO already models EconSpheres fairly well post-TT, so there's no reason why we can't backport that into the mod.
1. If Italy has the entire OFN or Sphere on its side, that severely unbalances the future Med War plans. It introduces a level of complication that doesn't need to exist
2. The AI is stupid and Japan would rather dump troops in Italy then protect its colonies
3. The superpower rank is partially determined by number of allies in the superpowers alliance, so Italy joining the USA's or Japan's sphere screws up the ranking system
4. Italy joining the sphere or OFN should realistically really shake up geopolitics but it doesn't really mean much as the foreign policy of Germany, USA, and Japan remains unchanged. Again, accounting for that adds a level of complexity that is avoidable.
5. Because Goering code is rubbish, there's a scenario where Japan and USA are dragged into an unintended war against Germany which would break Goering content.
A potential idea could be where the OFN and Sphere send volunteers to Italy's opponents, concealing their involvement while also avoiding any potential public backlash (I believe there would be some form of this if either happened to enter a war with a great/major power).
I haven't thought much about it but it could be interesting to do some sort of standoff or contest in Africa between the Italians and OFN if German Africa collapses.
That's just shortsighted, COMECON wasn't just the Warsaw Pact, France and Britain had their own spheres in the early Cold war. TNO already models EconSpheres fairly well post-TT, so there's no reason why we can't backport that into the mod.
Regardless, there are still numerous reasons why Italy joining another faction is a difficult proposition. I also see how it has much gameplay or narrative benefit.
Italy wouldn't exactly be warm to the USA either, considering they were enemies in a war that ended in a humiliating defeat for the USA. Italy and Japan are geographically isolated as well, so Italy would hardly be rushing off to join an alliance half a world away. But friendship and cooperation? Sure why not.
A potential idea could be where the OFN and Sphere send volunteers to Italy's opponents, concealing their involvement while also avoiding any potential public backlash (I believe there would be some form of this if either happened to enter a war with a great/major power).
You underestimate how hellish map modding is. Making Antarctica a pure GUI is the easier option. It's not a huge priority anyhow so we'll cross that Rubicon (or not) when we get to it.
This is an old post but I want to comment anyways due how relatable it is and regarding the idea purposed. So many hours were spent adding new states in the Mediterranean build and then having to manually configure the buildings of these new states along with pre-existing states to try and keep the map faithful to the original in gameplay.
Adding Antarctica onto the map would be pure hell and (in my opinion) would be extremely underused by players, a diminishing return.
This is an old post but I want to comment anyways due how relatable it is and regarding the idea purposed. So many hours were spent adding new states in the Mediterranean build and then having to manually configure the buildings of these new states along with pre-existing states to try and keep the map faithful to the original in gameplay.
@GoodWinSon I guess I should speak up now so we don't inevitably have to talk about it later, but I can't help but disapprove of your plan for post-SAW Africa. It seems like it's arbitrarily limiting the player for no good reason when it just shouldn't logically, like locking Germany out of Africa in an OFN-leaning ceasefire. There's also the meme path as South Africa where you can crown Elizabeth Queen of Africa, I call it a meme path because it just is something straight out of Kaiserredux or Disaster Death of Peace, same as the Indonesian Dutch path you talked about.
On the flipside, Germany holdong onto Africa totally in the case of a Pakt victory just limits gameplay too much, where a proxy for the Congo would be enough. I also don't get why PanAfricans would be NatSoc/Ultranat when they're preaching the same anti-colonialist liberation rhetoric, to use a TNO subideology, they should be revolutionary nationalists, not outright NatSocs. Free France expanding into formerly-German Africa also feels rather unrealistic, like I said it feels like having a war for the sake of having a war, since Free France's ultimate goal in TNO is reclaiming the Metropole and not colonialism. If it's to expanded the French Community for once they reclaim the Mainland I can understand, but from how you worded it it seems like it'll be full annexation.
Really, I feel like you're more concerned with adding gameplay without considering that we're making a cold war simulator at the end of the day. We can balance fun without pouring unnecessary schizo paths into the mod, like for example I had the idea where the OFN still supports democracies or apolitical strongmen, and Japan still support Pan-Africans and natives, but Germany gets the option to support white settler states outside of the Congo which they can get back into the Pakt directly. One could obviously be Rhodesia, but there's also Namibia where we can have a similar situation to Rhodesia just with Germans instead of Anglos, and perhaps Tanzania or Kenya also with Anglos, I do know Kenya had a notable British settler population OTL. Now, these settlers states don't outright join the Pakt, but they do join Germany's economic sphere (Once we get around to implementing that) and perhaps join as Pakt observers, obviously this is not counting the Boers whose content should remain unchanged.
Ultimately, the content coded for a nation or nation(s) is under the preview of the individual coding it. Whether that be myself or someone else. If I am not mistaken, our suggestions ultimately pursue the same goals as mine. That being:
-All SAW participants should have a post war content
-Huttig should have an achievable victory
-The Superpowers should be able to use a post-SAW collapse to their advantage
The essence is still the same. The RKs, South Africa, and the Boers should be able to exploit victory to its fullest or suffer defeat to its greatest. The superpowers should also be allowed and encouraged to partake in expeditions into the dark continent. I also have an aversion to "schizo paths". One or two is fine, but as we have seen with TFR, making every path a schizo path gets bland very quickly.
In simpler terms, I don't care what color the puzzle piece is, only that it fits. I may accept or reject certain details, but I've never been disappointed with code or art people have sent me.
If you end up coding the paths, go for it. The end result will still be fun regardless I think. The outlines and plans I create are also created with the assumption they will be executed by myself. Worst case scenario you might say, but happily more and more people have helped me over the past year, and it may not have to be so.
I would like to note the Empress of Africa title is not wholly without logic. Parliament declared Victoria Empress of India after all, which functionally changed little, but gave the crown more prestige. The Dutch led Indonesia idea is also a Panzer era idea and also not entirely out of the blue. But again that's semantics and Indonesia will probably end up under @local asuka's purview anyhow.
Words, words, words: if it's fun I don't care and if I'm really autistic about something I'll let you know.
By the way, these 4 foci at the end of Huttig's tree fire events that have no loc.
This one also has limited loc.
And the participants in the South African Civil War have no GFX for their ideas.
I appreciate it lol, I was a bit surprised by the result. Regarding the software used, I use Paint.NET. It's free software for Windows. I'm unsure if it supports Linux or Mac if you use either, but it might work via some sort of emulator or virtual machine.
I found this guide on youtube for creating focus icons similiar to the style of the mod to be useful, particularly the assets linked in the description. I'm unsure if you have these already but if not, it could be useful potentially.
More focus GFX created for Red Italy. The one with the Italian and Soviet flags might be a bit rough around the edges. Hopefully I can improve it in a future revision.
More focus GFX created for Red Italy. The one with the Italian and Soviet flags might be a bit rough around the edges. Hopefully I can improve it in a future revision.
More focus GFX created for Red Italy. The one with the Italian and Soviet flags might be a bit rough around the edges. Hopefully I can improve it in a future revision.
These aren't good focus icons, especially the last three. Get Photoshop, any version of your choosing, and download the styles below. The difference with and without them is night and day. Also look up some focus guides, generally desaturate, increase contrast, and lower brightness whenever possible.
See:
And here is a Github repo full of vanilla national focus icons, very useful since early TNO used a lot of them. Be sure to make em black and white and desaturate them if you'll color them afterwards.
@NuovoContenuto How far along are you on your map modifications? I know you were doing some stuff with the Burgundian states to give it the IRL HRE borders.
Also updated D Smith portrait, the source image I chose wasn't that good really, so I had to blur his cheeks to smooth out some of the rough texturing on them, I also made his tie look more natural but I can't nail it for some reason to be honest.
Did another AI only run, more bugs:
-AB broken spirit loc
-Indonesian war drags out for way too long that the only way it ends is through the coup-stalemate ending
-Madagascar bugged, noone sent volunteers, no news event about it, Emil Maurice wasn't even replaced as leader nor did the tag change in any way.
-Morocco was capped by the Rif Republic, they took all of Morocco and Mauretania took Western Sahara and everything south of it, but for some reason Morocco was left alive in a state in IRL Mauretania that they hadn't taken, thereby bugging the civil war and preventing the Rif or Mauretania for getting their victory cosmetic tags.
-Iberian wars are far too volunteer-filled, America shouldn't be able to send NINE divisions to Asturias and EIGHT to communist Portugal. They should also probably support the demcorats instead of the commies outright.
-Oil Crisis fired in early 1970, should ideally be delayed
-Speidel couped Schorner, but he has no Oil Crisis tree
-Goering couldn't core Bohemia because the focus to do so needed you to station troops in it, meaning it was left uncored
-Erwin Rommel doesn't have a portrait
-AI can't naval invade, Goering was couped because he couldn't invade Norway. America similarly has failed to naval invade Guyana in every single one of my runs.
-Blockades, embargos, and such still fuck the game, Burgundy still ends up blockaded to all shit and can't trade. Just turn them off completely.
-Intelligence agency upgrades don't have icons
-Terrain icons in the division designer don't have icons (Despite being present in the files)
-Japan went Takagi who progressed normally down his tree, but he got couped by Kishi. I've heard that this was a common problem in old TNO as AI Japan couldn't navigate the crisis all that well.
-Italy didn't send volunteers to Oman (Who was at war for longer than Yemen when the war started in 1968-early 69.) This was before the Oil Crisis officially began, more reason to make it one big event than a bunch of spaced out wars.
-Finnish tree for the war against Russia is half-baked, for example calls on non-existent event for Sweden.
-Central Siberia couldn't save command power to prepare for the invasion against East Siberia, this is mid-1970.
-Eastern Russia didn't unify until 1967-68. The Black League unified Central Siberia on time FYI.
-Certain quirks in the Aryan Brotherhood's tree prevent them from expanding, from example being at war prevents them from doing the focuses to core tags they've conquered. This meant that although they owned Berzeniki, and Bashkortan, they couldn't progress down their tree because they were stuck in a stalemate with Samara.
-The Gulf Administration doesn't leave Italy's faction, become free, or even get a new flag when they reach the end of their tree. This includes the Pan-Arab Revolution and Indian Revolution outcomes.
-Greece's half-baked focus tree still screws up its content.
-Mongolia somehow peaced out Mengjiang, Manchukuo and Japan. IDK how this happened as Mengjiang did call in Japan. I think this is the reason why Western Mongolia wasn't cored by Central Siberia, and I'm not sure but I think it also could've prevented the PRC from progressing down their tree.
-Chita and Magadan were stuck in a war for far too long, leaving the Far East disunified until Irkutsk invaded in 1968-67-ish.
-AI shits out too many divisions, the UPO alone in Ostland has SIXTEEN divisions on one tile and several on their capital, of only two provinces they held. This made it so Ostland was left disunified when Germany reunited.
-Speidel invaded Ukraine despite it being controlled by the Reichskommissar.
-When Speidel invaded Moskowien, it was split between the Germans and Russians and some fuckery happened when Speidel capped the Russians, for some reason all of the Russian land went to the Germans leaving Speidels troops on the frontline encircled. I didn't catch much since Speidel capped the Germans quickly, but I think the Moskowien puppet held the area around the Volga.
-Minor stuff, like Algerian going tribal council and being puppeted by Italy screwing up its political piechart and making fascism the dominant ideology despite the ruling party being Paternalist, same goes for RK Netherlands under Goering and all that stuff. From now on politics should be manually set with puppeting to ensure realistic political popularities.
-Superevents playing over music, would suggest adding a "one minute of silence" track that starts playing whenever a superevent is triggered, TFR style.
-The Angolan Civil War factions don't have OOBs and don't get any cosmetic tags in case they win their civil wars.
-Some fuckery going around the Pakistan-India border, for some reason Pakistan took Lahore, then lost it, then lost Southern Sind east of the Indus to India over the span of my run after they gained independence. Don't know what that's about.
I think that's all. The game crashed in in 1970 after I tag switched to Iberia and conquered all of the Iberian tags for them (Including NatSoc Portugal who had just invaded), then tried tag switching away. The secessionists like Catalonia, Andalusia, Galicia, and the Basques were still alive. I've left out some bugs I encountered in my previous runs, for example Africa made it to stage 3 Huttig in an OFN-leaning ceasefire and it still affected South African territory like Namibia and Zimbabwe.
Thanks for the reports. Some of these were intentional design choices, or just plain ai retardation but I fixed the simpler bugs. I am very familiar with issues with legacy code which I have slowly patched over time. Since many bugged areas I intend to improve anyway, I was hoping to fix the bugs then since they aren't entirely gamebreaking. Still it may be wise to set aside some time to finally stamp them out.
The AI naval invasion issue specifically was due to the PDX naval REWOOOORK which completely melted the navy ai.
