How random are events?

[Truman Doctrine]

Playing as Britain during the 1850's there as been no Crimean war but the AI started the American civil war in 1858.

How variable are these major historical crises?

Btw the AI frequently creates a Franco-British Tahiti Crises in 1851 the historical problem with that being that dispute actually occured in 1843.

[yellow ribbon]

about the Tahiti Crisis:

possibly its only a generic name. Crisis mostly are triggered by two nations holding a certain colonial penetration in the same area.

so, its not about history, only about making sure that this kind of diplomatical problems exist.
in "ancient" PC games it was quite often a certain diplomatic person who was way too clumsy with his fork during state visits dinner party...
most known in the vanilla version were Northpole Crisis and Samoa



for the event you have to differ between triggering events and chained events.

on the HDD you can look for each nations events and global events, as well as chained events like ACW with a simple text editor.
i figure AI played nation had events far too early (like your ACW) in my games.

player caused events depend often on a couple of variables, like scripted events plus development in a region, or a tech sets events free and no researched tech lead to lack of the trigger and so on

furthermore there are excessive ranges of couple of year a event may occur in.
the ACW with four and a half years duration itself, started between 1858 and 1862 in my games... however, it makes it spicy

[Truman Doctrine]

Whats the HDD?

Generaly I agree with the concept of event chains and pre programmed events the latter should be rare. As you said having a random element makes it more interesting.

Infact I can only think of two scenarios that fit that latter catagory and likely to trigger WW.I and thats any great power that invades Belgium so breaking the 1839 Treaty (but the game does seem to trigger that effect) or invades Turkey without the consent of the other powers. Thats what happened in 1853 which was a kind of mini WW.I

Iam more relaxed about the variability of the date for the outbreak of the ACW because that could have happened at any time since 1783 and on several occasions it nearly did prior to 1861

[yellow ribbon]

well, its the Hard Disk Drive...

go to the paths ye installed the game to and you find a folder exclusively used for for the events
there you get a good overview which events are scripted for the nation or which events are event-step-by-step actions like wars.

for your historical remarks, true, but most people agree anyway that volunteers are needed to create more events at all....

[Truman Doctrine]

I might well be interested in volunteering on the historical side of game accuracy how do I sign up

[yellow ribbon]

thats exactly the problem, the WHERE i mean...

when PON were becoming more and more stable I joined a group of eight who actually only asked me for input for economical problems.

thus i used my data to do some approximations and derived some equations and ideas what worked out well in the test runs.
But i only changed files in my own game and the modifications we made will probably remain private business for some legal aspects....

however, there are plenty of loud people who demanded mods and had specific ideas about mods and said they would just wait for the official 1.02 patch.

i dont know whether they started to organize with the goal to produce an official and more or less conclusive mod addressing extended economy (better algorithm for trade pattern and price systems) , colonial action (too early, too low penalties) and military, too many units, to fast reallocation around the globe, always in total mobilized (100% combat power) status...

there were plenty good points made in past, including far too few events (while i spoke for adding economic crisis on historical base, plenty of them happened, sometimes half year, sometimes 6 years and even longer)

i for my part have kinda busy season at work, cant even play at the moment. and due to my work i would be too unreliable to program on schedule for such an undertaking...
so i will only do what i did already, giving input.

[Truman Doctrine]

Iam a historian with degrees in British political and military history during the C19 - C20 and I could have helped them on the political side of the game but as you said there is no one to 'call'.

My beef with Agoed as everyone knows was that I couldnt get PON to run but know its stable I would have liked have a constructive imput to improve the game. Having said that HOI wont install and I have wrote to Nexway formally telling them that I require the installation disc of my mony back.

[McNaughton]

Once things are cooling down with official patches and such, I and some others are working on a few ideas for modding.

Here are some plans...

#1. National Units (having each nation with more individual and histoirc forces).

#2. Dynamic Leaders (having it becoming somewhat more random, with leaders dying earlier, or living longer, and alternate leaders in place).

#3. Directed AI planning and goals (having the AI manage its interactions with other nations better, knowing who is your friend, and your enemy).

#4. Directed AI war plans (having the AI fight wars better, able to understand when it should attack, and when it should defend).

#5. War goals and historic limitations (creating a combat crisis system, meaning that nations in prolonged wars with other nations may find that they may start a great war, encouraging nations to make peace before going into total war).

#6. Tweaking of leader abilities (for example, a Good Command ability giving +1 CP to a 1* leader, +2 CP to a 2* leader, and +6 CP to a 3* leader).

#7. Creating a less-deterministic (albiet plausible) path of history (with a few more, non-contrived options).

The economy is not really our specialization, but figure that in combination a lot of things can end up being done.

[Truman Doctrine]

Please contact me when your ready. What you and the AI presumably needs to know is what circumstances trigger historical crises eg Fashoda

Also consider the influance of political as well as military leaders. Supposing Prince Albert hadnt died in 1861 or Kaiser Frederick in 1888.

Also some tweaking of the map and the text boxes for those like me who are visualy impaired

[yellow ribbon]

true, what the game really lacks is the political situations influence.

the system which is used gives you more troops and higher cohesion. for the first bonus does not vanish (the additional troops stay in service) when imperialism value goes down and technological modifiers outweigh the cohesion effect most times...
the political costs for promoting leaders can barely be simulated with that few commanders and that large theaters of war, there is a need for a multiplicative effect how certain a commander/a HQ unit in larger forces can exploit its positive bonuses based on the historical background.

simple roll test however would no do the trick

just my 2cent

[Truman Doctrine]

I assume that most of the posters live in North America and so one political scenario that will be familar to you all are the reasons why Britain almost intervened but diddnt in the ACW.

Historicaly the Trent Affair almost brought Britain into the war but for the intervention of Prince Albert from his death bed that toned down the British ultimatum to Lincoln

In game terms an event that the AI must generate immediatly after the ACW breakes out. This creates a diplomatic crises modified towards a peaceful resolution providing Prince Albert is a alive.

The visual problems with the PON text box centre screen are more urgent for the visualy impared its diffiocult to read the script without a magnifying glass. It also contains too much low grade information eg while I was ploughing through reports of Madras trading with the Home Counties etc I missed ever so slight more important detail that France had decloared war on Britain

[yellow ribbon]

nope, in generally the most active users are gathered from all the world, i am from Germany and live and work in Belgium

ehm, for the Trent affair one could copy and extend the event from AGEODS American Civil War but needs to find another test value and link it to diplomatic relations instead of intervention probability... it even has alternative outcomes if i am right.
they spent enough time for thinking about events in their games, but for sure money and time restrictions dictate them not to use them in all other games.

what i meant originally, its about what you wrote about political leaders:

example, for two years Lincoln and his corrupted administration disabled any exploitation operation.
Even if the Unions forces had some success, they had to cross the river again. Only a part of this goes on the account of overcautious and paranoid generals. some of them already thought about the 1864 elections and their own advantage (not to cause high death tolls)
Lincolns famous general orders to attack on all fronts did not even convince anyone.

so, given a certain administration/leader, in a given time, you shouldnt be able to set up as many all-in attacks as you want, levy as many troops as you want, attack half the world at the same time and so on...

part of that problem is as mentioned:

the best General and the best staff unit would fail if they face to hold the troops to "protect Washington" after a minor victory, for someone in the capital wants it that way. mobbing up was impossible.
thus i suggested to nil some of the bonus from generals and units related to historical background...

daydreaming, too much work i know.... but before we tested a different price system within two months i heard the same

[yellow ribbon]

for the problem with the text, aside of the digital magnifying from windows you can try this kind of mod

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?541645-PoN-alternative-fonts-for-screen-resolution-1920x1200

for the messages in the log, the filters work fine for me, just needs to be more "red" messages.
like Perry events famous "NAVAL EXPEDITION"

in generally some texts for the events and reforms need to be revised, but for native speakers thats done fast (if one has the time)