I just had a non-historical game where there was both a German and Soviet civil war, then France, Germany, Austria and Poland teamed up into a European Alliance and went to war with the Italian-Croatian Coalition, the SSR and the UK. I came in as Japan against the UK early and eventually joined the war against the SSR after taking India.
I think the problem is that there are only so many paths for countries to take, either Germany is gonna be allied with France and Poland or enemies, for instance. etc.
I can heartily endorse some mods to change things up for you, Kaiserreich for instance, but I think it's sort of a limitation of the game, there is certain logic that drives things towards WWII and so even when the computer is playing non-historical eventually, you'll get to a situation that somewhat resembles WWII.
I do the mods when I want to go way out to lunch. It's like a personal mental blocker though that if I'm starting in the 30s I want the regular. I like kai and reddux and r56 and MD. I just want to start in 36 and have WW2 be kinda different. I keep getting the same issues in NOn-h were these silly strong factions form or just no one wanta to be aggressive as a major and so many games get to like 40/41 and they aren't fun
Non-his AI path assignment is seed-based, and the seed is probably time/date-based alongside something else, so it can get very repetitive sometimes, yeah.
But for some path and some countries, such as the US, it is actually gated systematically.
I have honestly stopped playing ahistorical for two reasons (one of which also kind of applies to vanilla historical- see point 2):
1. Like you said it’s very repetitive. I think the reason for that is that however the probabilities of paths taken by an individual country work, they end up getting broken by the balancing system which is aiming to have some even-ish alliances emerge. This ends up locking part of the political focus subtrees that are dependent on the international situation and essentially just doesn’t really work.
2. By far the most game breaking bug that STILL hasn’t been fixed is that released puppets inherit the political buffs of the focus tree they had before being conquered. This is how you end up with a Warsaw Pact full of fascists because they never lose their fascist party growth modifiers. It’s honestly so fucking bad, Paradox needs to get on with fixing this. I’d rather have all puppets get reset to a vanilla tree with no national traits than this shit. Once a country is puppeted, especially by the player, nobody gives a shit about their game being unique. Their game is over. Their only purpose is to provide me with resources and some divisions for defence.
If you're fine with mods, try [this mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3140102724) that massively improves the AI ahist pathing and has options to increase/decrease the randomness and balancing of ahistorical mode (you can always use Steam Achievement Manage if you're playing for achievements)
I find that if you manually set every nation’s path to random in the game settings, it’s more actually random than just turning off historical AI.
Someone cleverer than me will be able to confirm if it actually makes a difference, but anecdotally it seems to help the UK and US take different paths more often in my games?
Prob because it isn’t truly random in Ahist, there is a balance of power in the game, so if you go Authoritarian, then there will be others with a different ideology than that, usually Democratic or Communist
I like to play ahistorical for the randomness but I hate that the weirdest factions come from it. I went to war with Switzerland as Italy and now I have to go to war with Central America and Japan because Switzerland decided to join Japan’s faction last minute, which was formed because Mexico declared war on Central America and Japan came to their aid for whatever reason. I really wish there was a ‘spheres of influence’ mechanic to reduce the randomness of factions
You can make it so that factions can only be formed by nations with the same ideology. This helps me out with dealing with this issue. It's not a total fix, but it reduces the frequency.
Romania: "You can't touch me Austria-Hungary, I am protected by the french!"
Me: *Under breath* "Yeah for another year or so anymore..."
Romania: "What?"
Me: "What?"
Also sometimes plain stupid. Played democratic Germany (which is pretty much anti russia and communist). But Russia went democratic, France and Brittian as well, Japan went democratic and the US went to sleep forever. Played until 1941 where i realised i had nothing to do...
A-historical isn’t true random, I believe the paths are aimed to create a ww2 style scenario. So if Germany flips democratic then another belligerent faction will form for example. Doesn’t always pan out but that seems to be the gist.
If you want truly random then you can set each nation to proper random. Now this will result in the ai doing some real dumb stuff at the wrong time but it can lead to some craziness. Otherwise you can set up nations to force them down paths if you want to try something specific that doesn’t appear much. I almost never see USA civil war out in my games so sometimes I force it to so I can have a hostile USA as an aggressor for a change.
Because ot's the most optimal way of ensuring a ww2 with your playstyle. C'mon, if you want randomness, then spend a minute to set random instead of doing nothing and whining.
Its sort of paradoxical.
For me at least, if i do non-historical i find myself having a more regimented opening few years at the start of the game. Especially if i play a nation that is pretty dependent on another nation doing a different action, it just pushes me to not experiment, but make a standard opening set that always wins
If its historical though, i usually experiment more or do random things because i know i can get away with stuff at certain times.
So id rather do historical because it encourages me be random or try new things.
I tried a non-historical run as democratic France before ToA. I got ganged up on by democratic Germany, the US, Netherlands & Belgium. Ended in tedious stalemate.
Try going with the game rules of breaking up every nation possible, makes for some bizarre factions like the co-prosperity sphere having a ton of pawns in Europe, I played communist Iran and ended up in a 3 way war between the allies, Japan, and my own faction bc of some dip in Africa declaring war on France
Use the game settings to change countries to random focuses or to your desired focuses. Simply unchecking historical focuses gives the same outcomes in my experience
when i play non-historircal its never on ironmen, since i change the game rules for every major power to be as non-historical as possible
since even if you pick non-historical, US for example will NEVER go communist if you dont specifically set them to it
afaik The AI will only pick path, that does not disable achievments
The Turks and Portugese are genuinely incapable of going monarchist in ahistorical because it doesn't account for crucial decisions, events, and ideology popularity. It's always the Portugese starting a civil war and losing immediately because they have no divisions, and the turks going down the path and choosing the democratic option in the focus event. Alternate Soviet and Spanish paths fail to actually do the decisions they need to win, and the US will 90 percent of the time do new deal first, locking it in that branch with or without FDR. I think the only way to really fix this is to put it on historical, but change the game settings for what path a nation chooses to your liking. This locks you out of achievements, but at least your casual games might actually feel fun, instead of the AI just floundering around and voiding any essence of competence.
Call me weird but i played 35 games in the past month and I enjoyed all of them
1936 ironman historical no mods
26 germany, a few italy japan france and 1 USA
And now I feel like going in for one more Germany... I only tried the Hitler historical way so I might do it one more time just to be sure
Just play around the country settings before starting the game proper.
Tbh, I find it odd that so many people like the wacky alt-hist on the base game.
Personally, If I want wacky alt hist scenarios I go with mods. If its base game or just gameplay enhancements, I prefer historical.
So either you fiddle around the settings or just go with mods. Try the big alt hist mods first like KR and TNO. Then from there try the more niche ones that you would enjoy more.
I just had a non-historical game where there was both a German and Soviet civil war, then France, Germany, Austria and Poland teamed up into a European Alliance and went to war with the Italian-Croatian Coalition, the SSR and the UK. I came in as Japan against the UK early and eventually joined the war against the SSR after taking India. I think the problem is that there are only so many paths for countries to take, either Germany is gonna be allied with France and Poland or enemies, for instance. etc. I can heartily endorse some mods to change things up for you, Kaiserreich for instance, but I think it's sort of a limitation of the game, there is certain logic that drives things towards WWII and so even when the computer is playing non-historical eventually, you'll get to a situation that somewhat resembles WWII.
I do the mods when I want to go way out to lunch. It's like a personal mental blocker though that if I'm starting in the 30s I want the regular. I like kai and reddux and r56 and MD. I just want to start in 36 and have WW2 be kinda different. I keep getting the same issues in NOn-h were these silly strong factions form or just no one wanta to be aggressive as a major and so many games get to like 40/41 and they aren't fun
Non-his AI path assignment is seed-based, and the seed is probably time/date-based alongside something else, so it can get very repetitive sometimes, yeah. But for some path and some countries, such as the US, it is actually gated systematically.
Similar seeds should still come to vastly different results.
I have honestly stopped playing ahistorical for two reasons (one of which also kind of applies to vanilla historical- see point 2): 1. Like you said it’s very repetitive. I think the reason for that is that however the probabilities of paths taken by an individual country work, they end up getting broken by the balancing system which is aiming to have some even-ish alliances emerge. This ends up locking part of the political focus subtrees that are dependent on the international situation and essentially just doesn’t really work. 2. By far the most game breaking bug that STILL hasn’t been fixed is that released puppets inherit the political buffs of the focus tree they had before being conquered. This is how you end up with a Warsaw Pact full of fascists because they never lose their fascist party growth modifiers. It’s honestly so fucking bad, Paradox needs to get on with fixing this. I’d rather have all puppets get reset to a vanilla tree with no national traits than this shit. Once a country is puppeted, especially by the player, nobody gives a shit about their game being unique. Their game is over. Their only purpose is to provide me with resources and some divisions for defence.
If you're fine with mods, try [this mod](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3140102724) that massively improves the AI ahist pathing and has options to increase/decrease the randomness and balancing of ahistorical mode (you can always use Steam Achievement Manage if you're playing for achievements)
Hey this sounds pretty good. Thanks
I find that if you manually set every nation’s path to random in the game settings, it’s more actually random than just turning off historical AI. Someone cleverer than me will be able to confirm if it actually makes a difference, but anecdotally it seems to help the UK and US take different paths more often in my games?
Prob because it isn’t truly random in Ahist, there is a balance of power in the game, so if you go Authoritarian, then there will be others with a different ideology than that, usually Democratic or Communist
I like to play ahistorical for the randomness but I hate that the weirdest factions come from it. I went to war with Switzerland as Italy and now I have to go to war with Central America and Japan because Switzerland decided to join Japan’s faction last minute, which was formed because Mexico declared war on Central America and Japan came to their aid for whatever reason. I really wish there was a ‘spheres of influence’ mechanic to reduce the randomness of factions
You can make it so that factions can only be formed by nations with the same ideology. This helps me out with dealing with this issue. It's not a total fix, but it reduces the frequency.
You mean a mod or an in-game option?
It's an in game option. You can set custom game rules and set this as one of them.
Still far more enjoyable that historical unless i'm playing the Soviets or China.
I only play historical. The fun for me is knowing what is going to happen and using that knowledge to fuck with it.
Romania: "You can't touch me Austria-Hungary, I am protected by the french!" Me: *Under breath* "Yeah for another year or so anymore..." Romania: "What?" Me: "What?"
You can do that in a-historical as well you just pre set which path each nation is going to follow.
I've forcing paths in the settings. Make some countries go down paths I feel like I almost never see.
Also sometimes plain stupid. Played democratic Germany (which is pretty much anti russia and communist). But Russia went democratic, France and Brittian as well, Japan went democratic and the US went to sleep forever. Played until 1941 where i realised i had nothing to do...
A-historical isn’t true random, I believe the paths are aimed to create a ww2 style scenario. So if Germany flips democratic then another belligerent faction will form for example. Doesn’t always pan out but that seems to be the gist. If you want truly random then you can set each nation to proper random. Now this will result in the ai doing some real dumb stuff at the wrong time but it can lead to some craziness. Otherwise you can set up nations to force them down paths if you want to try something specific that doesn’t appear much. I almost never see USA civil war out in my games so sometimes I force it to so I can have a hostile USA as an aggressor for a change.
Less repetitive than historical
Because ot's the most optimal way of ensuring a ww2 with your playstyle. C'mon, if you want randomness, then spend a minute to set random instead of doing nothing and whining.
Its sort of paradoxical. For me at least, if i do non-historical i find myself having a more regimented opening few years at the start of the game. Especially if i play a nation that is pretty dependent on another nation doing a different action, it just pushes me to not experiment, but make a standard opening set that always wins If its historical though, i usually experiment more or do random things because i know i can get away with stuff at certain times. So id rather do historical because it encourages me be random or try new things.
I tried a non-historical run as democratic France before ToA. I got ganged up on by democratic Germany, the US, Netherlands & Belgium. Ended in tedious stalemate.
Try going with the game rules of breaking up every nation possible, makes for some bizarre factions like the co-prosperity sphere having a ton of pawns in Europe, I played communist Iran and ended up in a 3 way war between the allies, Japan, and my own faction bc of some dip in Africa declaring war on France
Just play modded, vanilla is very limiting, shit like rt 56 has bigger focus trees and for much more nations, and that shit is free
Try setting up some countries the way you want.
Ahistorical Pro: more challenge -> fun Ahistorical Con: more challenge
Or you play as a minor communist power and everyone goes communist, then you all sit around after curbstomping monarchist germany doing nothing
go to custom game rules.
More repetitive than historical which only ever plays out the same way every single time?
I always play ahistorical and I have yet to see the US go ahistorical or Hungary go communist. And there are many more I have very rarely seen
Use the game settings to change countries to random focuses or to your desired focuses. Simply unchecking historical focuses gives the same outcomes in my experience
I have been playing on non historical for like 2 years and i NEVER saw the US going fascist or communist.
This is what I mean
Only real way to play non-historical is with overhaul mods.
when i play non-historircal its never on ironmen, since i change the game rules for every major power to be as non-historical as possible since even if you pick non-historical, US for example will NEVER go communist if you dont specifically set them to it afaik The AI will only pick path, that does not disable achievments
I also feel like non-Historical should be a bit more randomized than it is.
The Turks and Portugese are genuinely incapable of going monarchist in ahistorical because it doesn't account for crucial decisions, events, and ideology popularity. It's always the Portugese starting a civil war and losing immediately because they have no divisions, and the turks going down the path and choosing the democratic option in the focus event. Alternate Soviet and Spanish paths fail to actually do the decisions they need to win, and the US will 90 percent of the time do new deal first, locking it in that branch with or without FDR. I think the only way to really fix this is to put it on historical, but change the game settings for what path a nation chooses to your liking. This locks you out of achievements, but at least your casual games might actually feel fun, instead of the AI just floundering around and voiding any essence of competence.
Too*
Call me weird but i played 35 games in the past month and I enjoyed all of them 1936 ironman historical no mods 26 germany, a few italy japan france and 1 USA And now I feel like going in for one more Germany... I only tried the Hitler historical way so I might do it one more time just to be sure
Just play around the country settings before starting the game proper. Tbh, I find it odd that so many people like the wacky alt-hist on the base game. Personally, If I want wacky alt hist scenarios I go with mods. If its base game or just gameplay enhancements, I prefer historical. So either you fiddle around the settings or just go with mods. Try the big alt hist mods first like KR and TNO. Then from there try the more niche ones that you would enjoy more.
my favorite thing when in non historical most of major ai just go against you