Idiot Bourbons and NM Blowout

[Straight Arrow]

Just picked up WON and was playing through the first 6 months of 1805 as France; it’s a beautiful game.

No problems smacking the continental powers around, but I did notice a huge problem with my Spanish ally's behavior. For some unknown reason, Spain keep sending small fleets out to challenge the British at sea.

Needless to say, that didn't turn out so well. The end result was a decimated Spanish fleet and a free gift of 60 NM points to England.

Yeah, not so good; it seems one can’t control allied forces in this game.

And thus my question: while playing with Athena, is it possible to keep your allies from committing national suicide and throwing away your game?

edit: Athena is set at lieutenant; v 1.03

[Straight Arrow]

Eh, maybe I should just live with it.

It’s kind of like Mussolini trying to do his own thing in WWII.

[Durk]

You can have some control by requesting an expeditionary force, army or navy.
These forces you do control.

[Straight Arrow]

You can have some control by requesting an expeditionary force, army or navy.
These forces you do control.

Thanks Durk - but how do the expeditionary force mechanics work?

Spain agreed to lend a naval force, but, even though I tried selecting units before asking, I can't seem to find any ships that were released to me.

The rules have nothing to say on this matter, and comments on the forum seem to suggest, that until v 1.03, this part of the game was broken.

I am currently running v 1.03.

[Durk]

This is a bit of a mystery to me, also.

Using the diplomacy interface you gain the opportunity to request an expeditionary force. Then (and I have only done this once successfully) you select the force you wish to be released. I am also pretty much unclear how this happens, but I think:
1. You make the diplomatic request
2. The request is answered
3. You select the force

As I said, I kind of stumbled into gaining an expeditionary force one time. So I am not absolutely clear about how to sequence this event.

[Durk]

This is a bit of a mystery to me, also.

Using the diplomacy interface you gain the opportunity to request an expeditionary force. Then (and I have only done this once successfully) you select the force you wish to be released. I am also pretty much unclear how this happens, but I think:
1. You make the diplomatic request
2. The request is answered
3. You select the force

As I said, I kind of stumbled into gaining an expeditionary force one time. So I am not absolutely clear about how to sequence this event.

[Captain_Orso]

Lending naval stacks does not currently work.

Lending land stacks does.

Britain, and France I believe, cannot offer an Expeditionary Force directly; they must wait to be asked for an EF. Other player controlled factions may directly offer an EF.

To request an EF (F-1 is the requesting faction, F-2 is the lending faction)

• F-1 sends the Request EF Treaty to F-2. This also works with allied minor factions.
• If the F-2 is player controlled, the F-2 player will be notified that F-1 has requested an EF. To Lend/Lease an EF F-2 must do 2 things on the turn F-2 has receive the treaty request, otherwise the request will expire
  
  • F-2 Selects 1 or more stacks and gives each of them the Lease EF SO (Special Orders)
  • F-2 Answer positively to the Treaty
• The next turn, the stack(s) F-2 selected will have their flags changed to F-1's flag, and F-1 will have control over these stack(s) as if they were his own.

Once F-1 has lent a stack(s) to F-2, he cannot lend further stacks until the first treaty had ended or been broken.

Since lending naval stacks does not currently work, if Britain is going to lend an EF to another factions, if necessary, Britain should of course transport them on Britain's own naval transports to where they are needed, before lending them. In PBEM this should not be an issue if the players are coordinating with each other. If Britain's ally is AI-controlled, I don't know how this would work, as Britain cannot offer an EF itself.

[veji1]

Lending naval stacks does not currently work.

Lending land stacks does.

Britain, and France I believe, cannot offer an Expeditionary Force directly; they must wait to be asked for an EF. Other player controlled factions may directly offer an EF.

To request an EF (F-1 is the requesting faction, F-2 is the lending faction)

• F-1 sends the Request EF Treaty to F-2. This also works with allied minor factions.
• If the F-2 is player controlled, the F-2 player will be notified that F-1 has requested an EF. To Lend/Lease an EF F-2 must do 2 things on the turn F-2 has receive the treaty request, otherwise the request will expire
  
  • F-2 Selects 1 or more stacks and gives each of them the Lease EF SO (Special Orders)
  • F-2 Answer positively to the Treaty
• The next turn, the stack(s) F-2 selected will have their flags changed to F-1's flag, and F-1 will have control over these stack(s) as if they were his own.

Once F-1 has lent a stack(s) to F-2, he cannot lend further stacks until the first treaty had ended or been broken.

Since lending naval stacks does not currently work, if Britain is going to lend an EF to another factions, if necessary, Britain should of course transport them on Britain's own naval transports to where they are needed, before lending them. In PBEM this should not be an issue if the players are coordinating with each other. If Britain's ally is AI-controlled, I don't know how this would work, as Britain cannot offer an EF itself.

In other words, it's very very complicated. Could there be a way to have a cheat code allowing a player to enforce the lend force thing, ie hack into the F2 country and make sure they do those 2 steps ?

I have horrendous memories of seeing the troops of my new duchy of warsaw just standing there doing nothing but pumping all the supply while my troops died... ahh good memories...

[Captain_Orso]

Lending naval stacks does not currently work.

Lending land stacks does.

Britain, and France I believe, cannot offer an Expeditionary Force directly; they must wait to be asked for an EF. Other player controlled factions may directly offer an EF.

To request an EF (F-1 is the requesting faction, F-2 is the lending faction)

• F-1 sends the Request EF Treaty to F-2. This also works with allied minor factions.
• If the F-2 is player controlled, the F-2 player will be notified that F-1 has requested an EF. To Lend/Lease an EF F-2 must do 2 things on the turn F-2 has receive the treaty request, otherwise the request will expire
  
  • F-2 Selects 1 or more stacks and gives each of them the Lease EF SO (Special Orders)
  • F-2 Answer positively to the Treaty
• The next turn, the stack(s) F-2 selected will have their flags changed to F-1's flag, and F-1 will have control over these stack(s) as if they were his own.

Once F-1 has lent a stack(s) to F-2, he cannot lend further stacks until the first treaty had ended or been broken.

Since lending naval stacks does not currently work, if Britain is going to lend an EF to another factions, if necessary, Britain should of course transport them on Britain's own naval transports to where they are needed, before lending them. In PBEM this should not be an issue if the players are coordinating with each other. If Britain's ally is AI-controlled, I don't know how this would work, as Britain cannot offer an EF itself.

In other words, it's very very complicated.

Do you think so? What would be a less complicated way to do it?

Could there be a way to have a cheat code allowing a player to enforce the lend force thing, ie hack into the F2 country and make sure they do those 2 steps ?

I have horrendous memories of seeing the troops of my new duchy of warsaw just standing there doing nothing but pumping all the supply while my troops died... ahh good memories...

So some extent, you can, but in all cases it would be very complicated.

The first issue you must confront, is that any time you issue orders for a faction, the AI believes you are taking over that faction, and quits issuing orders for it. There are two possibilities in this situation
You actually do take over the faction completely, for at least that turn. The next turn, if you issue no orders to the faction, when you start to execute the turn, the engine will tell you that the faction has no orders, and asks if you want the AI to take over issuing orders for that faction.

Or, you can have the AI calculate the orders for all non-player-controlled factions, but not actually execute the turn. To do this, before starting the game, you need to create the file '..\Wars of Napoleon\NGC\Settings\AIOrdersOnly.opt', with contents:

// AI Gen Order without Turn Exec.
aiFlushOnCalc = 1

Actually, the parameter can be optionally inserted into General.opt instead, but I find using it's own file better. Updates can't overwrite or change it. The name can also be something else, as long as it is unique and ends with .opt .

If 'aiFluchOnCalc' is set to '1', when the turn is executed, the AI will calculate orders for all factions without orders and then return to the main menu; if set to '0', turn execution runs normally.

Once the AI has generated orders, you can load the faction in question, observe those orders, modify them, and save them normally. This will allow the player to modify only those aspects of the AI issued orders he wished to influence.

IIRC once all factions have orders, turn execution runs normally, even if 'aiFlushOnCalc' is set to '1'.

What I'm not sure if you can do, as I haven't trued it myself, is influence a minor factions in lending troops. If the AI actually does select the positive answer to the treaty request, which from my understanding, if it is allied with your faction, it probably will, you should probably be able to go through the faction's stacks and find the stacks with the Lease Force SO, and change these settings on any and all stacks.

I don't think the Diplomacy menue <F6> will work properly for minor factions, as I believe the scenario must be loaded for that factions for the Strategic Atlas pages to work properly, and I know of no way to load a minor faction from the Load menu, and even if there were a trick to do that, the setting and graphic files, etc. would still be missing.

The only way I know of to access the AI orders of a minor faction, is to first load a major faction, then open the console and issue 'changefaction xxx' where 'xxx' is the faction tag of the faction in question; eg BAV for Bavaria, or SAX for Saxony.

The Stack Panel should work normally for all factions AFAIK, as it has no faction-related settings. So selecting and rearranging stacks, including giving and/or removing SO's should be no issue.

Those are the possibilities of which I know.

[veji1]

I didn't mean to criticize your explanaton, just that the process you described (which is the actual process) shows how complicated the whole system is.

regarding the whole take over of a faction, well this is much of the pont : minors should NOT HAVE AN AI, period... they should be passive and set up with scripts and only activate as part of the controlling major's AI or player, ie as when a country enters a side in TEAW.

this is the core of the problem with WON and why I sadly think it's unfixable : there is too much AI in this game, and it can't manage... AI should be massively wound down in most if aspects of the game for it to be manageable.

[Captain_Orso]

I didn't mean to criticize your explanaton, just that the process you described (which is the actual process) shows how complicated the whole system is.

Constructive criticism is always welcome. I certainly don't know everything, and by far don't have all the best ideas.

I find the way Expeditionary Forces are handled to be as simple as the can be. I could think of many ways to make it more flexible, but they would make the process far more complex, and I'm not sure they would be as useful as the cost of complexity.

regarding the whole take over of a faction, well this is much of the pont : minors should NOT HAVE AN AI, period... they should be passive and set up with scripts and only activate as part of the controlling major's AI or player, ie as when a country enters a side in TEAW.

this is the core of the problem with WON and why I sadly think it's unfixable : there is too much AI in this game, and it can't manage... AI should be massively wound down in most if aspects of the game for it to be manageable.

I have to completely disagree here. The game engine should recognize the situations of a faction and react to them accordingly. It would be practically impossible to do this with scripts, and a horror to create and manage.

The game engine should be a collection of 'rules' controlling the behavior of the factions the AI is controlling. It should work intelligently regardless of the faction being controlled or the situation.

If the AI is failing at this, that would be something to discuss.

BTW are you using the Ally Request function? <Tab> to open the window.

[veji1]

The AI is clearly failing at this : I have asked for exp forces numerous times, many many times I have been turned down, quite a few times I have had a yes answer followed by no actual troops... The game is failing at this simply put.

[Pocus]

is this with latest beta patch, because it cleared again issues on exp forces, and in particular the "yes but no" answer (i.e AI says yes but don't provide troops).

[veji1]

is this with latest beta patch, because it cleared again issues on exp forces, and in particular the "yes but no" answer (i.e AI says yes but don't provide troops).

The main problem now is the no but no answer : Say you create the duchy of Warsaw, the very fact YOU created it and its a satellite country means that basically upon its creation it should give you all but its garrison troops.

To me this is where there should be a distinction between satellites (KoI, KoH, Warsaw, CoR countries when it's created, Westphalia, etc..) and more independent allies (other majors, Danemark potentially, Bavaria before the rhine confederation, Saxony later on, etc..).

[deidaraakatski]

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