Request to Philippe(s): Time Machine tool

[Kensai]

One of the Phillippes once said that the developers had a neat tool to check the balance of the game as it progresses. A vital tool to correct any blatant historical inconsistencies, especially as far as AI actions are concerned. Since an 1880 or 1910 DLC is not coming anytime soon, I have another, potentially easier to accommodate request: why don't you make the time machine tool available?

If I understood correctly, this tool sets all nations to AI and then resolves the turns automatically up to a requested date, meaning that you can leave your machine running in the night and wake up and find your just started Grand Campaign in 1870 or 1900. Neat, huh?

Well, please make this tool available or at least tell us how to script the game for all nations to become AI (that should be easy I guess) and then end the turn automatically in a loop of preset times.

[lodilefty]

Add a line to one of your .opt files in \Settings: [I use GameRules.opt]

AIALLFACAI = 1

Then start game, load scenario and invoke Console <alt>~ (tilde character)

Type ? to list console commands: one of them is related to running many turns.

AFAIK, Prior to game engine updates of Feb 15, 2012, this param is limited to 9 turns.

[Kensai]

AFAIK, Prior to game engine updates of Feb 15, 2012, this param is limited to 9 turns.

Game engine updates?!
When will they be available for PoN?

[Philippe]

I'm not a big fan of science fiction, but a concept embedded in this thread reminds me a bit of something that happens in Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. When you set something as complicated as PoN or reality on automatic and let it run for thirty or forty years, what you end up looking at is probably not what you thought it was going to be.

While it's probably better than nothing, if you let the AI run for twenty or thirty years, what you'll get at the end of that period probably won't resemble the historical situation all that much. To the extent that the game models strategic motivation correctly, it will, but even so there will be/actually were oddball chains of events that would have been hard to predict in advance.

What I'm trying to say is that running the AI for thirty years from an 1850 start date probably won't give a very satisfying rendition of the world in 1880. Unless there's been some really good scripting. That's why a game like this needs to have start dates at ten to fifteen year increments. For what it's worth, whenever I play EU III I rarely play for more than ten or fifteen years, because after that amount of time it's harder for the world to resemble reality very closely.

[Kensai]

Very true, but better than nothing, don't you think?

Actually, the AI does a fairly good job at colonizing the right places (courtesy of SOIs) at the right pace. What if fails most of the times is to understand what to do correctly in the scripted events. That's why many times, for example, it fails to unify Germany or Italy.

I really hope the developers find some time to bring us the 1880 and 1910 starting dates, but in case this doesn't happen, I hope to bring you myself a couple of starting dates using lodilefty's trick. Hopefully, after a couple of attempts I might get something that resembles 1880.

Once there, a couple of plugged in events to finish stalling wars and/or other inconsistencies and there you go.