The Light Blue Civ = Tree Hugger?

[curtsibling]

In my Dictator VI playtests, I have noticed that the light blue civ (USA) is being very unwilling to get into battle,
and not going head to head with the axis much. I have seen this in other scenarios like various versions of Bitterfrost
and in Kingdoms of Steel. The light blue civ seems to not engage like the others, and this is regardless of the 'WWII'AI
option (in scenario options) being selected or not.

This is a problem for the Dictator scenario, and it leads to the USA building tons of defense units and doing little else.
I have to investigate this freakish situation and get it sorted. It is not a super-problem with BFIII. But in Dict-VI it
certainly is. The USA should be able to lay the serious smack down onto the Axis, but even in event-encouraged fights,
the light blue AI seems to refuse battle.

Here is an example:

In the new Dictator, the 'Operation Avalance' tech is awarded in Sept 1943, and relies on the sucessful completion of the
'Operation Torch' event, which the British/USA civs normally win with ease. But when the time comes to take on Italy, the
light blue civ tries to escape the Italian boot, while the orange (Brit) civ battles on gamely...What is going on?

The light blue civ does not mind hurling B-17s around, but the battleships and infantry (set to role 0) all run like
frightened geese from the Axis! Any advice or offers of hex investigations into civ's light blue civ would be most welcome.

If worst comes to the worst, I will have to switch the dark blue civ (China) and light blue civ (USA) with civ-city utility.
I have a feeling it might be to do with map location and unit strength...Perhaps. That said, the green civ (Japanese) is cut
off from world with the Japanese island, but still fights with insane ferocity...!

Anyone else had issues with the light blue civ?

[Dr Kellogg]

Hm

Have you tried to edit @LEADERS in the rules.txt?

None of the light blue civs is aggressive, expansionist or militaristic in the original rules:

Americans -1, 0, 1
Chinese 0, 0, 1
Persians 0, -1, 0

; attack: 1 = aggressive -1 = rational
; expand: 1 = expansionist -1 = perfectionist
; civilize: 1 = civilized -1 = militaristic


The orange civs:

Greek 0, 1, -1
English 0, 1, 0
Carthagians 0, 0, -1

[curtsibling]

Tweaking the leaders was obviously my first port of call.

I changed all leaders to be militaristic/aggressive, but not expansionist.

The expansionist trait leads to the AI spending loads of time (and resoruces)
moving around engineers, rather than fighting or cranking out attack units.

The switch of traits does not seem to make a lot of difference...

[Eivind IV]

This would mean some heavy reorganising, but if not the civ traits, then why not use the neutrals as the cyan then?

Also, Kobayashi discovered during designing his Pacific theatre scenario, that giving freighters and carriers an attack value of 1, sub flag and attack role, made them use themselves more agreesively carrying units. Maybe worth some testing.

EDIT: Found the thread on a quick search:

Originally posted by kobayashi
ha ha

I have found the holy grail of AI island warfare. Give transport the following

holds
submarine flag
attack role
attack factor of 1

This is the way to make them transport units to enemy locations for amphibious attacks. And if they should bump into one of your warships and attack, well any merchant ship coming across an enemy ship would be sunk immediately of course. The only minor hiccup is the torpedo sound - well your ships launched torpedoes to sink them then.

Agricola, you should edit the rules file to incorporate the last two items to give yourself a good second half game.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=133749&highlight=kobayashi

[curtsibling]

I recall this breakthrough by Koby!

Worth a few experiments, I think!

[Case]

When I was designing the scenario 'The Cruel Sea' I was unable to persude transport ships to cross the Atlantic from the US until I changed their flags so that the AI thought that they were offensive naval vessels. After that they swarmed across the Atlantic (a little too enthusiastically for those of you who remember version 1.0 of the scenario )

[curtsibling]

Heh!

The more targets the merrier!

[Case]

The remaining Foch would make a nice fat target

(yes, she's a lot more aircraft carrier than Australia has had since the 1980s. But it would still be torpedo bait. The Brazilians are aparently only using her for training purposes and don't consider her to be fit for any kind of combat)

[curtsibling]

Australia is a civ in Dict-IV, so their naval prowess can be put to the test!

Am almost ready to test out the light blue civ with the new rules/events, so I will be soon
able to determine if I need to swap the light blue civ with the yellow or dark blue faction.

[Tigey]

Re: Case

Didn't they only fly SE2 trackers (short, ugly, anti-sub planes, obsolete) and Helicopters off of her? I think she had literally no AA capability at all, save someone pointing a pistol in the air. Even the Thai's bothered shelling out for a few harriers for vanity purposes...

[Case]

Originally posted by Tigey
Didn't they only fly SE2 trackers (short, ugly, anti-sub planes, obsolete) and Helicopters off of her? I think she had literally no AA capability at all, save someone pointing a pistol in the air. Even the Thai's bothered shelling out for a few harriers for vanity purposes...

According to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAe_S%C3%A3o_Paulo the Brazilians fly A-4 Skyhawks off her as well. I think that Argentina has also used the carrier to train the Argentian fleet air arm since their carrier was decommissioned.

[Tigey]

Ah, I was thinking of the Minas Gerais then. Her Wiki article says that she couldn't handle fixed wing aircraft.

[Heresson]

Interesting discovery. I should check if it is like this as well in my scenarios...

[curtsibling]

Been testing Koby's transport ship tweaks!

Well, in my current Dictator VI test, as the USA...
The Japanese launched an amphibious attack and
took over Townsville on the first turn of the Pacific war!

I think we can say the hostility level of the AI has went
up a notch for the sea invasions...The crunch will be to
see what the Cyan Civ does when controlled by the AI!

PS
The Japanese and Germans both launched their major
attacks (Barbarossa and Pearl Harbor) on June 1941!

OUCH!

[Ecthy]

I think changed leader traits only apply in newly started games not on savegames, but I might be wrong.