How do you get foreign intervention?

[James W. Starnes]

Despite winning battle after battle, and having a national morale of 140, I could never get foreign intervention on this one play through with the CSA. I had actually won earlier than historically in 1863, but even so I was really hoping I could get help from GB just so I could see how it would go. Is there an easier way to get foreign intervention? One time I even tried sniffing through the game files to see about setting the foreign intervention meter to maximum at the beginning of the game.

[Captain_Orso]

IIRC you have to use the cotton embargo and get real lucky.

There are a thread or two explaining what you can do to increase your chances, but it's luck at best.

Or as you did, and mod the game.

Or as I did once, because I was trampling the South mercilessly, you write an event that goes something like this:

King of England: I'm bored.
King of France: Aussi, je m’ennuie.... eh, me too.
King of England and King of France: War with America! (FI on 200 and bingo)

[Cardinal Ape]

Like Orso says, its mostly about luck; In January of 1862 you need to roll 10 or less on a hundred sided die...

In January of 1862 is when the Trent affair should resolve. The Union will play it cool 90% of the time, which will reduce FI. However, if the Union escalates the affair then FI will increase by 35 points. Sadly, the Union also gets 10NM if the affair escalates.

If you really want FI then you might want to rig the Trent affair event to go your way.

[DrPostman]

It would be more fun if the CSA player could control those forces.

[Captain_Orso]

The way the game is now, it is considered cheating, but you can to some extent.

You can opening the console (all commands listed by entering '?<Enter>' and enter the command 'changefaction GBR<Enter>'. You will still have the interface of the faction you loaded at the start, but you will now have control over the GBR forces. So you can give them orders, but you cannot build units.

I only did this to prevent the British from doing some moves I found to be poor, and otherwise let Athena do her thing.

If you've found that Athena made a poor move, you can always go back a turn, and change those moves, using the above method, because when you go back a turn, all the orders issued before executing the turn, including those the AI issued are still present, but now you can see and change them.

If you use changefaction before turn execution, you will be responsible for issuing all moves of that faction, because there is only one '_.ord' files per faction, and when the AI encounters it, believes that a player is controlling that faction.

The next turn, when you click the 'Advance to the next turn' button, you may be asked if the AI should take over that faction again. Simply answer yes and continue.

[DrPostman]

You can opening the console (all commands listed by entering '?<Enter>' and enter the command 'changefaction GBR<Enter>'. You will still have the interface of the faction you loaded at the start, but you will now have control over the GBR forces. So you can give them orders, but you cannot build units.

Kewl! Thanks!