Hoping Random or other veterans are still around

[woolymuffler]

I seem to still be missing something with Initial Diplomacy. I just now finally understood that most of the important minors have automatic diplomatic tests during the initial round.

1) Do both rounds of initial diplomacy have these automatic tests?

2) Do your ambassadors affect these automatic tests? (I'm assuming yes) And can you influence multiple countries in this diplomatic round?

3) Do the automatic tests remove the ambassadors like a standard test? (seems like they are all gone in the 2nd initial diplomacy phase, just want to confirm that is WAD).

4) And is there any point in asking for audience/sending on mission during initial diplomacy, or is just having ambassadors in a country good enough in the initial diplomacy? And is this true in the 2nd round of initial diplomacy?

[Random]

Here I had thought that I was the only person still playing WW1G! Anyway, the diplomacy sub-routines are pretty complex and I am uncertain that all is working as intended. For instance it does not appear that Greek granting of Free Passage to the Entente actually allows Entente supply past Salonika.

Here's my best guesses, which are not entirely pulled from my a$$.

1. I believe so.

2. I believe so, and: only in the sense that your ambassadors can cancel those from the other side.

3. This does seem to be the case. The disappearance of ambassadors in the Grand Campaigns do have a negative effect on early war diplomacy and (I believe) a positive effect on the game itself.

4. Yes, Yes, 1000 x Yes! But not to Britain or any neutral other than Italy. As Entente, an audience may push Italy into an early declaration of war on your side since she is already pro-Entente. As Central Powers you should throw every ambassador that you have into Italy and activate them to attempt to postpone Italian entry. Even then the odds are stacked against you because of Italy's initial diplomatic level.

If you want to reduce the odds of early Italian entry into the Entente, go to the Nations.csv file and change the Italian diplomacy level from 2 to zero or even -1.

I currently have a 1916 Entente scenario on the go, having completed the August turn. The French and Italians just succeeded in their Grand Offensives but a combination of effective U-Boats and the disastrous British Grand Offensive in Flanders have knocked British National Will into the low teens. WW1G deserved so much better treatment from its developers and is still the only go-to WW1 strategy game for me.

[woolymuffler]

So according to the manual, Italy conducts an automatic test. Is it still necessary to conduct a mission as well? As an experiment I tried not running a mission (just having ambassadors there) and Italy's level shifted 3 towards the Entente, despite Austria granting concessions to Italy. But I have no idea if that was because of my ambassadors influencing the test or just Italy reacting to other events; it would be nice if there was a log for the diplomatic tests, similar to the details you can see for combat. The detailed combat logging really helped me understand just how screwed the Russians are against the Germans in combat.

[Random]

If you check the WarPlanTurnRules.csv file in the Grand Campaign Scenario folder you can see that several rules relate to Italian diplomacy and apply only on Turn-1. Presumably this means that the rules which do not fire during the first diplomatic phase are still active for the second diplomacy round. One issue is that I suspect that they might fire during both diplomatic phases, if their triggers are met, essentially doubling their effects.

Open this file using M$Wordpad and to a word search for ITA retaining Case and Whole Word Only in the search parameters to find the relevant rules.

In the TurnRules.csv file Italy automatically receives a Diplomatic bonus of one for turn 1 only, with the same caveats regarding multiple firings as above. Presumably this is intended to help keep Italy pro-Entente. See TR:13.

I rolled back Italy's Diplomatic Level to -1 but testing seems to indicate that this greatly increases the probability of Italian entry as one of the Central Powers too much for realism and balance. My solution was to apply zero to the Grand Campaign but to keep the value in the Historical GC only scenario at 2. Have not edited the Warplan Turn Rules (yet).

I agree that without a diplomatic log it is difficult to determine the why's when testing but studying the relevant War Plan Turn Rules and scenario Turn Rules might help improve understanding and these are all editable.

If you check a *.SAV file you can see which Turn Rules have fired by doing a word search for TurnRules. Suggest saving after the second Diplomatic Phase and then checking the *.SAV file repeating the search until you reach Nation=ITA.

Hope this helps.

-C

[woolymuffler]

Interesting; why would lowering Italy's level in Nations.csv increase the odds of joining the Central Powers? Assuming this is their starting diplomatic level, I would have thought -1 would push them to join the Entente more easily. Unless the number if the file isn't the same as the diplomatic level we see in game?

[Random]

Nope, it looks like you're correct and I have my signs wrong. I have restored the stock values pending further tests at some point.

-C

[woolymuffler]

So with your hints on where to look, I've been playing with the values and found some interesting stuff. You probably know all this, but as you may quite literally be the only person in the world who finds this interesting, I'm going to tell you about it.

I started out by playing with the phases in the turns.csv for the 2 person GC (I'm using your final naval mod btw, from 2017). Countries just join up too fast; it seems that the double diplomatic phases at the beginning plus the ease of massive swings causes Turkey (almost always), Bulgaria (quite often) and Italy (too often) to join in the August pre-turn. I don't mind that occasionally but not almost every game. The AI does a good job of going after the important minors, but it's just too easy to get them in the war early.

As there is no way to set a timer on entry (as in, they get to war level and then actually join some months later, as Turkey did in real life), I decided to try to force a later entry. I started by reducing the pre-turn to a single diplomatic phase; if you drop the events phase, the diplomacy (IMO) works beautifully, but you get no events from the warplans. And if you have only the events phase (no named diplomacy phase), you can't actually send ambassadors, despite having the button for it. Clearly, there is some custom code around that events phase that I couldn't see how to circumvent, so dropping a pre-turn phase was a no-go.

But then I found diplomaticlimits.csv; that is where the rules for the "cautious" diplomacy for certain minors is stored (max +-2 columns on diplomatic table in 1914). Using that as a guide, I just went even harder for that. I changed Turkey to have a max of +-3 columns in 1914, Italy to have a max +-1 column in 1914 and +-3 in 1915, etc.

Nation 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918
GER 0 0 0 0 0
AUS 0 0 0 0 0
ENG 5 5 5 5 5
FRA 0 0 0 0 0
ITA 1 3 5 5 5
RUS 0 0 0 0 0
USA 5 5 5 5 5
TUR 3 5 5 5 5
AFG 5 5 5 5 5
BEL 5 5 5 5 5
BUL 1 3 5 5 5
CHI 5 5 5 5 5
DEN 5 5 5 5 5
GRE 1 2 3 4 5
HOL 5 5 5 5 5
JAP 5 5 5 5 5
LUX 0 0 0 0 0
MEX 5 5 5 5 5
NOR 5 5 5 5 5
PER 5 5 5 5 5
POR 5 5 5 5 5
ROM 1 2 3 5 5
SER 5 5 5 5 5
SPA 5 5 5 5 5
SWE 5 5 5 5 5
SWI 0 0 0 0 0
ALB 0 0 0 0 0

This was a good start, but just to really force what I wanted, I then removed the diplomatic phases from August and September 1914 in turns.csv. So you get the double diplomacy in the pre-turn, but you don't get another shot at diplomacy until October 1914. This seems logical to me; after the initial flurry, nobody was in a hurry to join until they saw how the war was shaping up (and were sufficiently bribed). Unrelated, but while I was editing turns.csv I also removed the Politics phase until Nov-Dev 1914; forming a new government and increasing National Will that early in the war makes no sense and may theoretically increase the chances of sudden early victory. Maybe.

Turn Year Start Month End Month Description TP_WarPlans TP_Redeployment TP_Events TP_Diplomacy TP_Reinforcements TP_Military TP_Politics TP_Interphase Western Front Initiative Eastern Front Initiative
1 1914 8 8 [IDS_PRE_TURN] 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 TI_CentralPowersInitiative TI_AlliesInitiative
2 1914 8 8 [IDS_AUGUST] 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 -0 -0
3 1914 9 9 [IDS_SEPTEMBER] 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 -0 -0
4 1914 10 10 [IDS_OCTOBER] 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 -0 -0


I'm just in initial testing so far, but it seems promising. In my first test game, after Initial diplomacy, I had FRA, RUS, ENG, BEL and SER vs GER and AUS. TUR is at level 7 and Pro-Central and will almost certainly join in late 1914, BUL, ROM and ITALY aren't that close to war at all in Aug 1914. Just about perfect IMO.

If necessary, I'll play with the starting levels and even the diplomatic table (removing the most extreme results and adding more 0 or small results). I may also try having fewer diplomatic phases for the rest of the war as well; if Romania and Greece are still joining in 1915 even with these values, reducing the bites at the apple might do the trick.

[Random]

Good work, thanks for sharing. Removing the Diplomatic Phases until the November-December turn makes some sense. For myself I have not started a Grand Campaign for some time as I actually prefer the repaired 1915, 1916 and 1918 scenarios as all present challenging strategic problems from the start.

I will be following your "fix" for WW1G diplomacy with great interest!

-C