Development Diary #13 - 21st of January 2009

[OHgamer]

I wonder, do any of these laws require actual upkeep? Or can you just fund education by printing money, and hoarding gold (the actual, in-game Money)?

EDIT: As a suggestion, how about putting laws into categories (not fixed, but defined in each separate law)? Say, "Military," "Economic," "Political," "Custom Law Type N. 67" etc. Would make it better than having mobilization decisions next to education laws.

I don't recall seeing a Dev Diary focusing on the budget process, I assume that will come later. There are still, what, potentially another 25-30 Dev Diaries to come before release, if release is in Q3 09.

It's like the Dance of 1000 veils, you don't want everything revealed all at once before the performance ends, you need to keep some degree of mystery around to keep the audience's attention.

 

[unmerged(70421)]

Hm... Does the "Average Education Investment" law mean there are "Low Education Investment" and "High Education Investment" laws as well?

And perhaps a "Sod Education, Ignorance is Bliss" law for Fascist Portugal?

well, there's already a big edu investment on the slider

i'll also add my voice to the colour blind crowd, please let there be more diffrenciation between the discs, even a simple number inside the disc would help alot. pretty pretty please...........

 

[th3freakie]

well, there's already a big edu investment on the slider

What slider are we talking about here?

 

[Dominik]

Is it ever possible that various parties cooperate to topple a government ruled by hostile party?
For example, all democrats plus some leftists have higher total ORG and Popularity than the Nazis on the screenshot.

 

[unmerged(131221)]

I see 100s of possibilitois for modders to make whole budget. This sound interesting. I really like that DD.
I do not understand peoples concerns becouse the sliders are gone.

 

[Alexander Seil]

I meant figuratively. Obviously monetary policy won't be modeled. What I'm asking is if you actually need money in pocket to keep Big Education Investment enacted, or not.* In effect, not having it require money implies that the government is printing money, and that Money in the game really represents foreign currency reserves and precious metals (but this is irrelevant to the question, and is a matter of interpretation).

* I don't think any laws in EU3 or VV require any upkeep. It would require some kind of a new "continuous" trigger, and would be difficult to implement.

 

[unmerged(70421)]

What slider are we talking about here?

sorry, i meant list of laws o

 

[unmerged(12990)]

I meant figuratively. Obviously monetary policy won't be modeled. What I'm asking is if you actually need money in pocket to keep Big Education Investment enacted, or not.* In effect, not having it require money implies that the government is printing money, and that Money in the game really represents foreign currency reserves and precious metals (but this is irrelevant to the question, and is a matter of interpretation).

* I don't think any laws in EU3 or VV require any upkeep. It would require some kind of a new "continuous" trigger, and would be difficult to implement.

I wouldn't worry about that too much, and certainly wouldn't get your hopes up as finances have always been very much abstracted in HoI. Just look at HoI2 where money is a strange mixture of actual finances and prestige.

 

[WarDog]

Nice DD! I'm more then willing to try something else then the sliders. It was a pain to remember and you knew every step you where going to do - and in what order.
The info on the law-system is a bit sketchy still, so I'll just say that I'm optimistic and positive. It looks like an more involving system to me now.

What I rely love is this:

Same with your military staff positions they, in general, affect practical decay. So if you have Armoured Spearhead Doctrine Chief of the Army he will get you cheaper tanks and better tank technologies but to get the best out of him you are really going to need to build some tanks.

Now you have to use the leaders with the right skills and ideas to develop your doctrines and equipment. And the best is that as Germany you can't focus on armor 100% and then in 40 just switch for Seelöwe and build just as good marines as US (who's been focusing on those marines since 36).

It looks more and more like a true qualitative step forward from HOI2.

 

[Spruce]

something that makes me curious is the choices between ministers. Often you got to choose from different ministers with exactly the same traits. Why choose if they are the same ? And even more - their personalities could never be the same - still they make no difference in the game.

Isn't it possible that you change ministers and give them a few parameters to increase variation and ad flavour in the game? A few examples =

- loyalty - from loyal to fierce adversary
- character, with a positive and a negative trait - f.e. "inspiring"+"hothead",

it would allow for some nice flavour events from your cabinet. Personally this was pretty dull in HOI2. More flavour would be nice!

 

[unmerged(12303)]

Id like to ask Paradox to rethink the sizes of these "bonuses". A +25% bonus is really very big if one looks through the fact that the game lasts so long. It causes bigger discrepencies thus makes the game harder to balance. One could see it with the +25% to ic and the -20% to production costs and time for the respective sliders in HOI2. It made late game balance really beneficial to allies...

 

[Alexander Seil]

I wouldn't worry about that too much, and certainly wouldn't get your hopes up as finances have always been very much abstracted in HoI. Just look at HoI2 where money is a strange mixture of actual finances and prestige.

It's odd to have budget decisions as laws without having some kind of a counterweight to excessive spending (like, you know, requiring you to have money before you spend it). Why would anyone pick Average Education Investment over Big Education Investment?

 

[Bullfrog]

I meant figuratively. Obviously monetary policy won't be modeled. What I'm asking is if you actually need money in pocket to keep Big Education Investment enacted, or not.* In effect, not having it require money implies that the government is printing money, and that Money in the game really represents foreign currency reserves and precious metals (but this is irrelevant to the question, and is a matter of interpretation).

* I don't think any laws in EU3 or VV require any upkeep. It would require some kind of a new "continuous" trigger, and would be difficult to implement.

But they do require upkeep in Vicky, and it makes sense that the more you "spend" on education, the more you get out of it. I would not be opposed to it at all, indeed having to decide whether increased education laws (among others) are worth the money would make the decision process more exciting. Everything needs to balance out, and having some downsides to enacting laws, such as upkeep, dissent and loss of party favor would keep people on their toes. They would not just be scrambling to enact all the laws that produce the most advantageous policies, in the same manner and order each game and for each nation. To my thinking, having no upkeep or negative effects for passing laws is analagous to the researching of industrial techs in HoI2. Bam bam bam, one after the other, without any disadvantage or real cost.

 

[th3freakie]

It's odd to have budget decisions as laws without having some kind of a counterweight to excessive spending (like, you know, requiring you to have money before you spend it). Why would anyone pick Average Education Investment over Big Education Investment?

Taking it to Portugal for the 3rd time in the thread (I know, I know), it makes maintaining your dictator job easier. Less educated people (both in quantity and in quality) make good subjects.

 

[Alexander Seil]

But they do require upkeep in Vicky...

Except Vicky had a budget screen. The only way I can see to model upkeep with event-like Laws is to have a Law requiring upkeep activate a modifier, and un-sleep an event that detects if you have 0 or less money, at which point it fires and un-enacts the law and removes the modifier.

In other words, a very messy procedure, which would have to be repeated with every law requiring upkeep. It's conceivable that they could introduce an addition "condition" field for Laws that would act as a continuous "trigger" - once this "trigger" is gone, the Law is abrogated.

 

[unmerged(38672)]

I disagree with King about HoI3 being primarily a war game. I think it could be much more of a grand strategy game set in the WW2-era. I would love more features for peaceful development and civilian production, say education, agriculture, health care, standards of living, economic progress, and culture (like in Civ 4). Íf you had more options like that playing military weak minors would be a lot more fun... War would only be one of many possible optons to bring glory to your nation!

 

[Alex_brunius]

There is one major problem with Introducing things like education, budgets exc in a HoI war game however. Generally you will not have to pay up for short term changes in those systems until after 5-10 years or even longer in the future. So if they model them realistically everyone can take huge loans and spend zero money on education without any serious reprecursions until after 1946.

So then these processes will have to be speeded up alot to work in HoI3.

 

[unmerged(59367)]

Awesome news... can't wait until Q3 :rofl:

But I would improve the pictures of the politicians and generals, some of them looks really bad. Don't say if I want them in B/W or coloured, but the contrast and quality is quite bad in a lot of them and it can be improved a lot, at least they could look more or less the same quality and isn't a big effort.

In addition, some the Politics graphic's colours doesn't looks very different between them. According to the order of the red colours, in the column graphic I would say that this dark red belongs to the "Left Radical Wing" but in the legend below or the circle graphic it looks like the "Leninist" red colour... and the same for the blues. I would make colours look more different between them.

But anyway, I really like the new display design you have done for the HoI3, congratulations!

 

[dsteve3]

The part I'm really interested in is where you mentioned before about long-term policy.

Say I'm playing Germany, and I want to establish good relations with a faction inside of the Congo (I HATE having to drag divisions through that jungle).

What I would like to see is a system where I can set-up a long-term operation that would provide funds to a faction that will become politically "organized" and move toward assisting me with neutralizing the Belgian victory point there.

I don't have to 'conquer' them; I just want that dang victory point neutralized so that Belgium goes "bye-bye".

Of course, I don't want to get caught! I'll have to set up an intelligence network in Belgium to help distract my operations in the Congo. Maybe also some "wag-the-dog" diplomacy to make sure and keep the Belgians off-balance.

So, I want to be able to set this up, monitor its progress, but if I get distracted by something else, it continues to progress.

I also want feed-back to advise me on what will increase my chances of success. Feed-back is very important; I need to know what to do to succeed.

I don't want to "click-the-button" every two weeks - I want it to run on its own.

Thats what I would like please!

 

[Bullfrog]

Except Vicky had a budget screen. The only way I can see to model upkeep with event-like Laws is to have a Law requiring upkeep activate a modifier, and un-sleep an event that detects if you have 0 or less money, at which point it fires and un-enacts the law and removes the modifier.

In other words, a very messy procedure, which would have to be repeated with every law requiring upkeep. It's conceivable that they could introduce an addition "condition" field for Laws that would act as a continuous "trigger" - once this "trigger" is gone, the Law is abrogated.

As we well know, a law can be passed without paying for it, especially upfront. I think the HoI3 upkeep process could be just like research in HoI2, where you spend ~$2 a day to research a tech. The upkeep of a law could be done the same way.