Mongolia problem

So I’m not sure if this is a 2nd ed. issue, a triplea issue, or a BM issue.

BM on tripleA, Round 2, Japan attacked Amur and other Russian territories, but Mongolia didn’t turn Russian. As far as I can see, there was no prior Russian declaration of war on Japan, no Russian units in China, and basically nothing else that would negate Mongolia turning Russian. Is this a glitch, or is there some rule or possibility that I’m missing?

So yes, I did complete the turn - actually I didn’t think to look at it until there next round and was surprised they haven’t turned.

Panther, I’ll try to recreate as much as I can and see if it happens or doesn’t happen again. I did look through the game history for any other things, like attacks on strict neutrals or anything that was out of the ordinary, but didnt see anything. I’ll look again. I can also go back to the same gamefile right before and do it again to see if there is anything interfering with it.

So, I just tried recreating it, and I could recreate it, twice in fact. I included one of the files below. I replicated the same combats (not the exact same moves, just the areas & SZs attacked):

• on J2, declared war on all allies and Russia
• I blitzed a tank from Korea to Amur and then Sakha, and a single inf amphib to SFE,
• amphib attack at a US fighter on guam, undefended Anzac transport at DEI, and then conventional attacks on Kwangtung, Yunnan, Phillippines, and SZ 41 (UK cr).

It seems normally the trigger (Mong to Russian units/control, hereafter called ‘the trigger’) occurs at the beginning of the combat phase, but when I tried to recreate it, and it did switch MON to RUS, it did it at the end of the combat phase. So this makes me think that the problem is related to circumstances when the trigger happens at the end of the combat phase, rather than the beginning of it. Because sometimes it happens before you resolve all combat.

In this case, I declined the scramble, confirmed attacking a transport, and confirmed a bombard. Then I went through all the battles, and when completed, the trigger didn’t happen.

I continued on in the defective file (not the one attached, but the original), just to see what happens with a still neutral Mongolia, and this is what I discovered:

• As Russia, in the politics phase, I could declare war on Mongolia separate from the Neutrals (never knew this was a thing)
• If, as Japan, I moved into Buryatia, then it would trigger Mongolia to become Russian.
• But if I did nothing, just went through the whole turn and didn’t move anything, then the trigger doesn’t occur, even though Amur is Japanese.

So, the best guess that I can offer is this:

• I think it has something to do with the fact that the other prompts I had (scramble, attacks on transports, bombards) pushed the trigger to the end of the combat phase, not the beginning.
• I think it is related to the fact that I blitzed through Amur, and so it wasn’t enemy occupied during the combat phase. In addition, this persisted to the next turn, since if I did nothing on the following turn, the trigger wouldn’t be pulled and Mongolia would stay neutral. It’s as if the engine decided that Amur wasn’t a reason to trigger the trigger.

Maybe this is just a weird obscurity that should be added to the player enforced rules part of the game.

No mongolia switch 1.tsvg

@barnee yeah, that makes sense. I must’ve tried about 40 different scenarios - I didn’t record the variables diligently, but off the top of my head, having a unit in Amur was always enough to trigger the switch. Sometimes it would trigger at the beginning of the combat phase, before any battles were run, which is strange.

I’ll give a shout-out to all the programmers and developers out there who keep this game working, because I definitely don’t have the time at this stage in my life to run sims and isolate the factors that are causing this. For those that do, and keep triplea working in general, hats off to you!!!