Some Suggestions about Nations, armies & AI balance issue

[frostyplanet]

I am now playing 0.3.35 amd tied some early-mid play through. Just some thoughs:

1. miltech

miltech growth is just too slow, and not balanced between countries, I've watch Perun's Academy playthough on youtube. Current setting will force player to go for US or other western country if they want build some armys to fight the alien.
In my experience, I have used China in several games, get control in around 2024, put 20% IP into miltech, miltech still 3.9 until 2030.
disband amy has little help. With two 3.8 tech army cannot even take Taiwan unless with help from US.
I should complain the initial setting is not so real life. (In real life, Taiwan military gear all stall after 2000, while China is advanced in rockets and hyper sonic missle, drones, GPS, and stealth fighters. According to many simulation by RAND Corporation or others, China can compete with US in many fields. the simulation outcome makes great difference between 2000, 2010, 2020)

I have saw some people in reddit say the trick is put all IP into miltech in specified country and have a rival to trigger missle test event, at the cost of orbital debris and global opinon.

According to https://hoodedhorse.com/wiki/Terra_Invi ... ns#Miltech
It saids The current miltech grow is affected by gov level.
I think it makes no sence. Because in real life most 3rd world country rely on weapon trade (just like direct invest concep in the game ), while some country achieve miltech growth relevant to GDP growth (most of the part is Industrialization, electonic tech and information tech, think about Soviet Union in 1940s-1970s, and China in 2000-2020. It has nothing to do with whether the gov is democratic or not)

In the game, research like Terrestrial Military Science only increase the miltech upper bound, cannot boost current miltech grow (I don't even know where the current upper bound is if I don't research that tech)

Besides miltech, I think army performance should have some country based modifier, (refer to HOI4). China force the UN to peace talk in Korean war. And North Vietnam (backed by Soviet Union and China) win the South Vietman (backed by the US)

2. Large nations and AI balance

The current game is Alien + Servant + Protectorate vs Resistent + Human First. Exodus just try to leave (like BeiHai.Zhang in The 3-body Problem), Academy wants middle ground (like Picard in StarTrek), Initiate wants profits and control (like Jules-Pierre.Mao in The Expanse story). There's much un-balance between the two since Servant/Protectorate has Alien aid. Unless we want the AI to stay dummy. If Alien flip some CP for Servant in some major countries, there's no turning back (I have tried 3-4 High level consulers to do public campaign in the flipped nation, public opion always fall if it pass above 50% (I don't know want defence mechanism is that), unless I do some assacination or Hostile take over to the Servant and hope they abandon the CP)

The game is somehow chaos between the AIs. The example 8 factions game, human first is tend to fight with resistence over European countries even if there ideolgy is simular. No one gets the upper hand, I cannot tell my ally faction what to do (not like the alien does). At first I think the problem is the number is too high while the cake is not large enough, so I tried 7 factions game and 6 factions game.
When I get into china, some AI still fighting over the surrounding small countries or african countries just ignoring the fact that Servant (attacked by me) is abandoning many large strong countries. When they are fighting over CP in the same country, I sometimes have to do the cracking mission for them to let someone win over.

So from my perspective it's my duty or burden to make sure all the best major countries under my control, I have to play map painting even I don't want to. If some random event to make Servant too strong, I just reload the game.

3. Difficulty

The current game Servant normal difficulty may equal to cinematic mode to other faction. There's nothing in-between (no easy mode).
I think Servant/Protectorate should have some pentalty modifier, because In human nauture there's xenophobic, people tend to have issue when rule by other ethic group, let alone it's alien. you know everyone is going to be slave after the Alien enthrolled the elite, at least there should be underground movement or the mass population should have a modifier to resist their propaganda.

4. Tech tree

I think tech tree should be trim down if the game want to be more acceptable by average player. Most social research is not relavent (there's no where I can know CP cap relative research, not by the name). When I research independance movement for 25 CP, I don't really want to know about the independance option (nor do I know where those regions on earth are)
I play with proton on Linux, the game freeze many times when I tried to view the full tree. Sometimes the game got OOM killed, sometimes I have to plug the power to reboot. I just have to find online tech tree website to know what's what.

5. Co-op Ideas

Because there will be not enough CP for one player to control earth enirely, it will be fun to add some co-op function ( just like HOI4 in which player can join faction to fight together and split territory after the war ). The current ideology spectrum is left-middle-right, some of the factions are compatible, they are just believe in different means to achieve the goal. It may be simplify as the following:

a). Fight the alien
The people think they must take a fight to drive alien away from earth. Earth belong to human control, our fate is in our own hand.
Which including Human first and Resistence, they are both fighting the alien, just argumenting whether or not destroy the alien once for all.
They can be ally since they are just different factions like the various group inside communist party (In real world there are indead so many groups you cannot tell them from there names)

b). Co-exist
The proportion of people is neither xenophobic, nor xenophie. They ok to co-exist with the alien. The initiate are the bad guys just ploting behind their mask. They will not tell the people what they truly want, they just prepresent some elite people's deep hidden plan (otherwise the mass will know their true nature and abandon them) The Academy are the good guys. But they can choose to ally with each other (since the Academy story line have some overlaps for the Initiative)

c). Surrender
The proportion of people believe there's no chance to win over the alien.
The Servant's goal is to actively help alien control the world. Protectorate think they are reluctant to surrender but they are playing passive in order to preserve humanity, chances are better to stay on Earth. The exodus also does not care who own the world, they just want to delay the time for their plan, chances are better in the stars.
Since Servant already Ally with the Alien. Exodus may ally with Protectorate.

After the simplification of ideology, allow allied groups to do public campaign in the same country for mutual benefit. Under the same ideology public support, whoever contribute to propaganda most are more easy to control that CP. They are allowed to negothiate to exchange nation CP for unification purpose. After abandoning some country for a reason, simular ideology faction can easily pick it up, since they are compatible ideology (not need to do public campaign). During the end game, whoever strongest faction get to execute the ending they want. This will enable human player to play together and human player can co-op with AI player.

[frostyplanet]

I agreed the current relationship about education-> democracy -> govement_level -> economy growth, but democratic should have some down side in reality by my observation:

* small country tend to produce higher weapon cost (weapon price is higher but less effective, same as army personal cost). Because arms produce in small batch, it's hard to do cost control. (you may recently see some peaceful countries increase their defence budget from 1% to 2%, but do not ignore the fact that their weapon is already many times more expensive than average.)
* some democratic gov, defence budget is a lawful way to do sploit for the elite through lobbying. Weapon research delay is a common case. So the same defence budget, so weapon research cost is often higher than estimate.
* democratic gov is not possible to have near 100% defence budget, because too many voice will go against it. In non-democratic gov, the gov can sustain higher defence budget. And although there might be corruption , but corruption can be controlled by law enforcement
* In Non-democratic country (epsecially china) because weapon industry is owned by nation, the companies are not aim for profit. There're rules to limit an enterpise control profit lower than a certain %.
* larger industialized country will have cheaper weapon cost to gear up. They have better chance to go civil-military integration route (ship building, air plane production, and even electronic product for civilian can be easily convert into miltitary production. Company sustain and growth rely on cilvilian produces). And given large population base, minor budget adjustment will achieve larger effect in advance miltech development. (everyone saved a dollar, a billion people will save a billion dollar)

[anonusername]

Needing to prune some servant councilors and otherwise stage a complex espionage campaign to take over a large country is basically working as intended, so far as I can tell. The earth game would be even more boring in the late game if all espionage was reduced to "roll opinion dice until threshold hit, roll crackdown dice, roll purge dice".

China's tech and force projection potential is not nearly so advanced as they like to pretend. They have surpassed Russia since the USSR fell, but their other competitors have not stayed stagnant. There is a very real cost to the political realities of needing your military apparatus to serve double duty as both an internal suppression mechanism and a foreign force projector, as the Russians, Iranians, etc. all discovered at one point or another. This is somewhat crudely presented by the flawed "democracy" stat, but adding more complex political simulation would detract from the central mechanics of the game.

[frostyplanet]

Report on China is always suppressed and misguided in western media. The will of force projection is one thing (they do not even want to take aggression stance, nor this is in Chinese culture, just active defence right now). I myself as an Chinese might have more understanding in Chinese military trandition and method. When China fights a war outside its territory, political stance, timing and war support is more importance consideration than just miltary power. That's why China never lose an international war since 1949 (Korea, Vietman, India, and even counterattack border conflict with USSR). China will not fight a war without fully prepare like Russia did.

Perpahs it's the only country to fight a long war other than US. There are rarely a adversary with the same self-sustainable weapon industry, depth of defence, and self-developed weapon tech which not rely on other country import. Because when in a war and there's lost in army assets, the ability to replenish and build more is crucial. "Factory of the world" has the ability to produce most components of their war machine by their own. In world war II it's the US. In the year of 202x it's China.

[frostyplanet]

What I trying to express is that the game intitial settting and mechinsm has greatly limit China's protential in a conflict with Alien.

I disagress with the idea that:

There is a very real cost to the political realities of needing your military apparatus to serve double duty as both an internal suppression mechanism and a foreign force projector

This is a common misunderstanding from a foriegn perspective. They certainly don't know the history why the PLA is formed and why they win civil war pre-1949.

The PLA is not tool as an internal suppression, nor a tool to occupied foriegn territory. They are army of the People and for the People (When there's a flood, or a wild fire, or a hurrican, like many random event is the game. PLA always helps). People is the source of war support (like cohesion mechansim of the game). Defend the people from the alien fits the goal of the PLA.

[anonusername]

What I trying to express is that the game intitial settting and mechinsm has greatly limit China's protential in a conflict with Alien.

I disagress with the idea that:

There is a very real cost to the political realities of needing your military apparatus to serve double duty as both an internal suppression mechanism and a foreign force projector

This is a common misunderstanding from a foriegn perspective. They certainly don't know the history why the PLA is formed and why they win civil war pre-1949.

The PLA is not tool as an internal suppression, nor a tool to occupied foriegn territory. They are army of the People and for the People (When there's a flood, or a wild fire, or a hurrican, like many random event is the game. PLA always helps). People is the source of war support (like cohesion mechansim of the game). Defend the people from the alien fits the goal of the PLA.

Doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on a big (or a pooh-bear). The purpose of any armed force is destroy adversaries of the state, either foreign or domestic. Sending them to natural disaster relief is a combination of PR and efficient use of peacetime resources.

The PLA won the civil war because the Nationalists were busy fighting Japan, and FDR was a communist sympathizer who deliberately sabotaged the nationalist Chinese campaign by putting Soviet """"spies""" in charge of the US' Chinese policy. When the dust settled, Mao used his less war damaged forces to stab the nationalists in the back and pretended he had been the one fighting the Japanese all along.

[johnnylump]

Keep this discussion within the context of a video game that has space aliens and ray guns. If you disagree with someone, express it politely. Or just regard their point of view as a phenomenon that's a product of culture, politics and media, not something to flame-bait.

[frostyplanet]

I will not talk about history and reality any more, just focus on how to applicate miltech in this game (This explain my anxiety about slow mil-tech development) .

Using army to fight world war 3 is not a goal in the Game, altought you can play it that way and ignoring there's alien invasion in the game.
There's no point to start a war between major countries unless the AI did it. That's a waste of time and human lives.

What army really do in this game (sorted with priority):

* Fend off alien troops dropped by alien carrier (mid-late game):

As Alien miltech is high about 7. That's hugh gap over the intial earth miltech 3.8 or 4. You have to stack up many low tech army and nukes, but nukes destory the global enviroment (There's no Nuclear electromagnetic pulse techonlogy in this game).

* Fight the alien admin (mid-late game)
I have no such experience so nothing to talk about.

* Destroy alien megafauna (early game)
Unfotunately it's the only one way to stop mega fauna after it forms. Altought I observe megafauma can be slowly destory by local resistence, but there's no visualization of how effecient is the local resistence and how much damage it do to local encomy.

* Speed up the unification process and bypass political cool down

The difference of miltech is not so important as initial earth miltech is almost the same.
The optimal play style which demostrated in Perun's video. First control the country you want to invade, disband their amys (if there's any), cancel ally with other country, set a rival, then call as many troops as possible from all your allies.


Deployment speed is another problem (affect by miltech level):

* The game lacks abstraction of air strikes, naval strikes and conventional ISBM strikes, which does not require mobilize of land troops

Air force relocation only needs fiendly air base near by. ISBM, long range bomber with in-flight refuelling can almost reach anywhere on the earth. ISBM strikes should only takes less than an hour, air strikes should takes less than a day to react. There's too many wars the US fight using only air strikes. There's also lacking of cruise missle because navy (destroyers and subs) is not abstracted.

* Currently there's only land amy which suffer from deployment speed limit.

The ironic part is that re-deploy over land is much slower than re-deploy over see. In reallity the amount of troops on one assault carrier is
around 1~2 battalions, 4 carries for 1 division. That's why army with amphibious assault capability is expensive, high tech and require large amount time to build. Meanwhile re-deploy over land only require the country has some infrastructure build (not relevent to miltech).

Army should also transport on air, but currently in the game can only airlift home. It seems there is no option to airborne to friendly airbase.

Current deployment time is slow because currently army only moves from province to province. It's painful to move from Saint Petersburg to Almaty, or from ShangHai to Ürümchi. There's no strategic redeploy concept like "Hear of Iron".
Relocation of army should be faster because strategic re-deployment use railway and highway in friendly territory. During such operation tanks and troops do not move in combat state. Tank should not waste precious mechanical hours on the road, they are carried on truck. So the speed should be higher.

[0x4149]

What I trying to express is that the game intitial settting and mechinsm has greatly limit China's protential in a conflict with Alien.

I disagress with the idea that:

There is a very real cost to the political realities of needing your military apparatus to serve double duty as both an internal suppression mechanism and a foreign force projector

This is a common misunderstanding from a foriegn perspective. They certainly don't know the history why the PLA is formed and why they win civil war pre-1949.

The PLA is not tool as an internal suppression, nor a tool to occupied foriegn territory. They are army of the People and for the People (When there's a flood, or a wild fire, or a hurrican, like many random event is the game. PLA always helps). People is the source of war support (like cohesion mechansim of the game). Defend the people from the alien fits the goal of the PLA.

Doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on a big (or a pooh-bear). The purpose of any armed force is destroy adversaries of the state, either foreign or domestic. Sending them to natural disaster relief is a combination of PR and efficient use of peacetime resources.

The PLA won the civil war because the Nationalists were busy fighting Japan, and FDR was a communist sympathizer who deliberately sabotaged the nationalist Chinese campaign by putting Soviet """"spies""" in charge of the US' Chinese policy. When the dust settled, Mao used his less war damaged forces to stab the nationalists in the back and pretended he had been the one fighting the Japanese all along.

I've to point out your knowledge aren't very accurate.
Chiang and his army hided in Sichuan since 1940, and even in Dec. 1944, the sunset of japanese, as we know, WWII ended in Sept. 1945, nationalists lost the Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi, or known as Operation Ichi-Go, which cause more than 500 thousands soldiers lost. Its meaning just like Battle of the Bulge, but American lost. Nationalists also created Yellow River flood in 1938 to stop japanese, which cause 800 thousands civilian died.

What's more, actually, nobody think Mao can do something great before they saw what have nationalists done. Even Soviet prefer to aid notionalist in the begining of WWII(1937-1941), you can google Operation Zet. And FDR died in April 1945, his successor Truman, it's really hard to tell he was a communist sympathizer. In addtion, all the tanks PLA have in civil war are from japanese or nationalists, PLA only got T-34 after winning the civil war.

[0x4149]

Not only militech, the whole Military Priority is really expansive, whatever for militech or decrease unrest, 3 IPs to decrease at most 0.1 unrest... Well, I prefer use my Councilors, one mission equivalent to 5 IPs or more. And even I get 10 goverment score, 0.00125 militech per IP is too expansive. Especially considering as more and more country have nuclear, army are more and more useless, they will nuclear their capital when they will lose. The biggest use, maybe is to break the blockade, this is a binary one

[frostyplanet]

the wiki seems do not provide enough information of Advise mission, only say that it will have diminishing return.

I do not know whether the bonus from Advise mission is persistent, and how the effect Advise mission is calculated, science level? or org from the advising councilors ?

[rookie.one]

I do not know whether the bonus from Advise mission is persistent, and how the effect Advise mission is calculated, science level? or org from the advising councilors ?

The advise mission increases:

- monthly investment points by the councilors Administration stat in %, e.g. councilor with 25 admin increases monthly investmentpoints by 25%
- science output by the councilors Science stat in %, e.g. councilor with 25 science increases points by 25%
- military tech level by the councilors Command stat / 100 as flat bonus, e.g. a councilor with 25 Command adds 0.25 to miltech level

So an Advisor with 25 Admin, 25 Science and 25 Command would increase the stat of a country with 21 monthly investpoints, 600 science output, 4.8 miltech with 4 armies / 2 navies to 27 monthly investment points including armies ( [(21 + 4x 0.5 + 2x 0.5) x 1,25] - 4x 0.5 - 2x0.5), science output to 750 and miltech level to 5.05.

The advise missions lasts from when the councilor starts advising (usually 2nd day of mission cycle) until the end of that mission cycle (e.g. when you can assign new missions).

The diminishing returns are for advising with multiple councilors: the first councilors advises with his full stat value, the 2nd with 50% of his stat value, the 3rd with 25% of his stat value. E.g. for miltech advising with 3 councilors all having 25 Command this would result in adding 0.25+0.125+0.0625 = 0.4375 miltech.

[frostyplanet]

@rookie.one

Is this understanding correct?

Advise mission provide one temporary buf to the nation,
1. admin -> buff the investment points -> the snow ball will roll larger for next cycle, good for long term if keep doing that.
2. science -> temp buff to research: research will dropped back to previous stats once the month passed ? I've seem research go up and down.
3. command -> performance of the army -> temp buf to miltech: which will have no persistent effect, and no use when I'm not fighting a war

Org bonus (eg: +4% knowledge, +3% military ...) do not need an advise mission to take effect ? I have juggle different kind of orgs to differ concilors for advise to different country (some country focus on miltech, some country focus on knowledge ). I do not know if this is neccessary.

[rookie.one]

Is this understanding correct?

Advise mission provide one temporary buf to the nation

You misunderstood me there a bit: The advise mission will TEMPORARILY apply ALL 3 buffs to the respective nation depending on the councilor's stats, e.g. a councilor with with 25 Command, 25 Admin, 5 Science will increase miltech by 0.25, investment points by 25% and science output by 5% simultanously; a counsilor with 5 Command, 25 Admin, 20 Science will increase miltech by 0.05, investment points by 25% and science output by 20%.

1. admin -> buff the investment points -> the snow ball will roll larger for next cycle, good for long term if keep doing that.

correct

2. science -> temp buff to research: research will dropped back to previous stats once the month passed ? I've seem research go up and down.

will last one cycle, not month (e.g. 2nd of month to 16th or 17th to 31st) and then will drop back again.
research is influenced by a lot of things, most importantly cohesion which can change pretty fast (going to war for example exactly will drasticly increase cohesion and therefore slightly reduce your research output).

3. command -> performance of the army -> temp buf to miltech: which will have no persistent effect, and no use when I'm not fighting a war

correct

Org bonus (eg: +4% knowledge, +3% military ...) do not need an advise mission to take effect ? I have juggle different kind of orgs to differ concilors for advise to different country (some country focus on miltech, some country focus on knowledge ). I do not know if this is neccessary.

that is not necessary; once equipped on a councilor these orgs apply that bonuses globally regardless of a councilor's mission.

[Ian_W]

Regarding MilTech, my current playthrough had China - controlled by the AI Resistance faction - at rough military technology parity to the US by 2038 or so, and keeping up with US after that. It's currently at a Chinese miltech of 7.2, which is at parity with Alien armies.

Now, the NPC faction paid a lot for that - as far as I could see, China went 100% into modernising their military, probably assisted by high-Admin counsellors on Advise missions, so the in-game Chinese economy is truly crap (remember, there's an ongoing GDP reduction from global warming each and every turn. If you dont invest in the economy, you go backwards).

But it's possible.

In 20 or so game years, a NPC China went from it's current tech level to being able to go toe-to-toe with the aliens.

[frostyplanet]

AI tend to put alot into military, may be they value too much in using army to raise a lot of wars. I just tend to do public campaign or purge to achieve the same goal. To me knowledge and global research are more important.

One of the reson I held back to grow economy is that I have nearly all major countries, but my CP caps are tight : US, China, Erasion Union, and reluctantly held 4 CP of Euro taken from Servant (and Servant taken from Academy). I put nearly all IPs of China into Knowledge, half IPs of US into Military, all IPs of Erasion into Mission control. If AI is more competent I'd love to share the world with them
In my current game I just don't know what Academy and Exodus doing, they just lack ambition

[Ian_W]

"miltech growth is just too slow"

"knowledge and global research are more important"

Pick what you want - guns or books.

You can have either in TI, but you don't get both at the same time.

[anonusername]

What I trying to express is that the game intitial settting and mechinsm has greatly limit China's protential in a conflict with Alien.

I disagress with the idea that:

This is a common misunderstanding from a foriegn perspective. They certainly don't know the history why the PLA is formed and why they win civil war pre-1949.

The PLA is not tool as an internal suppression, nor a tool to occupied foriegn territory. They are army of the People and for the People (When there's a flood, or a wild fire, or a hurrican, like many random event is the game. PLA always helps). People is the source of war support (like cohesion mechansim of the game). Defend the people from the alien fits the goal of the PLA.

Doesn't matter how much lipstick you put on a big (or a pooh-bear). The purpose of any armed force is destroy adversaries of the state, either foreign or domestic. Sending them to natural disaster relief is a combination of PR and efficient use of peacetime resources.

The PLA won the civil war because the Nationalists were busy fighting Japan, and FDR was a communist sympathizer who deliberately sabotaged the nationalist Chinese campaign by putting Soviet """"spies""" in charge of the US' Chinese policy. When the dust settled, Mao used his less war damaged forces to stab the nationalists in the back and pretended he had been the one fighting the Japanese all along.

I've to point out your knowledge aren't very accurate.
Chiang and his army hided in Sichuan since 1940, and even in Dec. 1944, the sunset of japanese, as we know, WWII ended in Sept. 1945, nationalists lost the Battle of Henan-Hunan-Guangxi, or known as Operation Ichi-Go, which cause more than 500 thousands soldiers lost. Its meaning just like Battle of the Bulge, but American lost. Nationalists also created Yellow River flood in 1938 to stop japanese, which cause 800 thousands civilian died.

What's more, actually, nobody think Mao can do something great before they saw what have nationalists done. Even Soviet prefer to aid notionalist in the begining of WWII(1937-1941), you can google Operation Zet. And FDR died in April 1945, his successor Truman, it's really hard to tell he was a communist sympathizer. In addtion, all the tanks PLA have in civil war are from japanese or nationalists, PLA only got T-34 after winning the civil war.

If winnie the pooh says it, then it must be true.

[frostyplanet]

@anonusername the game give you freedom to releazie your ideology, no need to force them on other player. I also recommend Hear of Iron 4, best game to achieve whatever alternative history any people ever thought of.

[johnnylump]

Locking thread because anonusername can't argue without trolling.