Here is the latest version of the RandRoadProject. The latest change is adding an option to have peace treaties with each country at the start. The treaties will all expire at random times during the first year of the game. There are also six flags to choose from on the start screen to help with multiplayer issues.
The treaties allow the game to move faster at the start and give you time to begin a little development before the wars start popping up all over. Thanks to the person that sent me the idea and a code snippet to look at to my email.
The .Net Framework from Microsoft is necessary to run the program. It was developed with Visual C# Express 2008 on Vista so you may need to upgrade your .Net framework to run it.
This version is from March 16, 2009. Comments and suggestions can be sent in the threads at the Paradox Forums or to aguild003@hotmail.com
Note: When trying to use countries that aren't included in the vanilla 1936 scenario you will get an error when the game tries to load the ai. This is because there is no ai file with the correct name in the ai folder. The StubAIFiles download contains empty files with the correct names. If you put these into the HOI2\ai folder it will prevent the error messages and allow you to play with all 157 countries.
The RandRoad project is an effort to create a program to make random scenarios for HOI2. At the moment it includes the following:
Doomsday scenarios can be made with every country having random spies in every other country.
Each country can start with treaties with every other country that expire at random dates during the first year of the game.
You can create a scenario or a battle scenario with 1 to 157 countries.
Countries are randomly spread around the world, so each scenario is different.
Each country can start with random slider values, or it can be set so that each country is the same.
Each country can start with the same techs and number of units, or random tech and random units.
Each country gets the same number of random leaders you select with male, female, or both names.
Each country gets the same number or random ministers you select with male, female or both names.
Each country gets the same number of tech teams, random or specialized.
The program can generate a random ai for each country, or they can all use a file you specify.
The province resources can be shuffled, multiplied, both, or left alone.
The terrain on the map can be randomly generated or left alone.
The infrastructure can be raised to a minimum, randomized, or left alone.
The victory points are more evenly distributed around the world.
I called it RandRoad since my original goal was to randomize a few things in the Road to War scenario.
Unzip the folder to a location of your choice.
Click on RandRoadProject.exe to run the program.
Select your options and click Create Scenario.
A folder with the scenario name you chose will be created with your files in it.
Copy that folder to your HOI2 directory.
Use moddir to play with the modified files, while leaving your vanilla game intact. This is basically using the game .exe with the scenario directory name as a command line argument. This will cause the game to load files from the mod to overwrite any files with the same name in the vanilla folder.
If there is an error loading ai files, check the readme for information on using the stub files found above.
For more information about running HOI2 with moddir visit the Paradox forums.
It is also possible to copy your vanilla HOI2 game into another folder, ie RandRoadHOI2, and copy the mod files into that folder.
You could also use a mod loading utility, such as JSGME, which is easily found with a search engine.
Probably when HOI3 comes out. There will always be more to add and tweak.
This program writes all of its files to one folder that is designed to be used with moddir. This won't make any changes to your default HOI2 installation. There is more information about how to use moddir at the Paradox forums.
If you take these files out of their folder to put them into the game they can overwrite original files since many of them must have the same names to work. So if you take these files out of the folder to put them into your game take care to back up your original files.
These files can be used separately with other scenarios. So if you want to play Cuba in the 36 scenario, but with better leaders and tech teams, you can use this to make leaders and tech teams to put into the game. Or you can use the modified map to play the 36 scenario on a world with different terrain or resources.
Before you make any changes to an original file, back it up.
These scenarios were made by the program. They have 78, 50, and 25 countries respectively. Each comes with 150 leaders, 75 ministers, and 32 or 30 tech teams per country. The resources were shuffled and multiplied by 2 and the terrain was randomly generated. They use the original random style tech teams.
Here are the C# source files for the program. They are freely available for use, modification, or purely for comedic value. These were last changed on March 16, 2009.
Here are the old java source files. If you are familiar with Java you should be able to get these to compile and run.
Here are some screenshots from fairly ancient periods of the development process. Hopefully new ones will come soon.