Development Diary #2 - 22nd of October 2008

[Velko]

Nice, a new game and all but i'm definitly worried about the provinces.

...and so on...

Oh, for God's sake. It's not meant to be a roadmap you know? They've said a million times that the idea is to have similarly shaped and sized provinces for gameplay reasons, so there's no need to be so surprised to find a city lying two kilometres west from it's real position.

Come on people!

[Cueball]

Well, a few comments.

1) Seems like some interesting production ideas.

2) Game will be too large and cumbersome for the comprehension of mere mortals, I think. More provinces than HOI II is probably ok. But 10,000 is way over the top. Will we be playing the game, or will it be playing us? What has been effective about your simulations in the past has been the elegance of the engine mated to a multiplicity of simple game functions representing politics and economy. I am reminded of how much superior the EU II tech tree was to the civilization tech tree, even though it was dead simple.

By the same token, HOI was enhanced considerably by the design decision to simplify the tech tree in HOI II, as a game.

3) Very worried at the appearance of what looks like a tradition AH/SPI hexagonal combat field. The province system is one of the things that has made your games distinct, not to mention nice to look at, and made the EU series and HOI II "classics". I really hope I am wrong about this. Hexes are great for operations and tactics, but the province system suits the strategic/political/economic layer of game play. The fact that their were "special" places to attack" because of the province shapes, was not necessarily bad for the "game" aspect of the game, even though it might not have been "fair" or realistic.

It seems you are aiming to make the "regions" as economic units, which are then cut up into specific provinces. Am I right? If so this may work to bridge the gap.

Anyway that you could actually have the quasi-hexagonal province province "divisions" underly the regions, but make them invisible? This might create more dynamic tactical space that seems to flow, even though actions are guided by the hidden structure.

4) I would favour a more sophisticated diplomatic and political model, not more detailed combat. Seems there are some good ideas here, though. governments in exile and the like. Myth came up with a few good ideas that might be looked into about leaders. Diplomacy is where HOI II was lacking. The combat model was not the main weakness of the game -- of course there are various arguements about how "real" it is from varying perspectives, but it was a workable blend of function and realism, which people liked.

5) Game does not need more "Blitz" feel. Note: almost every single mod for HOI reduced the speed of combat, and hence "blitz". Maybe there is somethng to that.

In the end I am sure it will be a high quality product -- lets not loose the "grand sweep" of the things in the pesky details.

Thanks for the updates.

[Veldmaarschalk]

I don't even want to be begin on Zutphen, which is supposed to be straight South and not too far away of Deventer.

Zutphen is right where I want it to be ! On the map

The map shows the important cities in the east and north of the Netherlands, it may not be all 100% geographically correct, but provinces are there to fight in not to serve as a exact map of the Netherlands.

[harezmi]

Looks ok, though I hoped for more realistic, less gamey system..
I still hold some hopes of
1) Production through companies that are tied to territory.
2) Territorial trade realism (no Germany-Venezuela trade without controling some kind of keypoints that would make it possible). If country has no navy, and especially no ports, then oversee trade in general should be close to impossible. And comperative figure to enemy's fleets could also be taken into account..
3) Possibility to intercept trade ships just like regular convoys (this would partly solve the previous point)
4) more advanced of currently dual system of national-non national lands
5) weather on map would be amazing

totally agreed but one more thing for the first one, you mean companies are the tech teams and i want to add when you assign a project to the tech teams, let`s say Junkers, assigning 1937 CAS, Stukas (Ju-87), you need to make the order at the same time like 4 squadrons of 1937 CAS. so, when the project is done, you have the squadrons and if you want to have more you need to make new order and they`ll be made in a shorter time because you already have the technology.

and my main concern is to be able to make pre-planned strategic air attacks like bombing aircraft factories in their specific location which the information is obtained by spy activities.

Actually it doesn`t really matter, we will keep playing the game anyway. this is the best game so far. many thanks paradox for working on this ...

[ruckel]

Still waiting on a map over Sweden , preferably also the northern part

[Cueball]

Looks ok, though I hoped for more realistic, less gamey system..
I still hold some hopes of
1) Production through companies that are tied to territory.
2) Territorial trade realism (no Germany-Venezuela trade without controling some kind of keypoints that would make it possible). If country has no navy, and especially no ports, then oversee trade in general should be close to impossible. And comperative figure to enemy's fleets could also be taken into account..
3) Possibility to intercept trade ships just like regular convoys (this would partly solve the previous point)

One thing that one should recognize about this "Territorial trade realism" idea is that a lot of German trade was carried using third party neutral countries as the courier. Sweden and Spain in particular served as pretty much open markets for Germany throughout the war, even though Germany had no control of the high seas. Yes, Argentina stopped trading with Germany after the war began -- yes Argentina continued to trade with Spain and Portugal.

Consider this: When Japan declared war on the USA, all of the US freighters taking lend-lease to Vladivostock were simply reflagged as Russian ships and the Japanese left them alone.

I think the present model that cuts trade by large percentages, but does not cut it off entirely is actualy fairly realistic.

[The Great Duck]

Looks good...I hope the next one will be on politics or diplomacy.

[ecnan02]

2) Game will be too large and cumbersome for the comprehension of mere mortals, I think. More provinces than HOI II is probably ok. But 10,000 is way over the top. Will we be playing the game, or will it be playing us?

10,000 provinces means that a WC will mean much more. And if it's impossible, here's one mere mortal willing to try

As for the game playing us, it does already. How else do you explain the hundreds of threads of discussion about a game that we haven't even seen screenshots of yet? Or now, that we have, the even greater discussion about the smallest of points we can glean from the data?

Admit it, HOI owns all of us. We're addicts and we can't / won't / don't want to stop.

[Kouak]

One thing that one should recognize about this "Territorial trade realism" idea is that a lot of German trade was carried using third party neutral countries as the courier. Sweden and Spain in particular served as pretty much open markets for Germany throughout the war, even though Germany had no control of the high seas. Yes, Argentina stopped trading with Germany after the war began -- yes Argentina continued to trade with Spain and Portugal.

Consider this: When Japan declared war on the USA, all of the US freighters taking lend-lease to Vladivostock were simply reflagged as Russian ships and the Japanese left them alone.

I think the present model that cuts trade by large percentages, but does not cut it off entirely is actualy fairly realistic.

Just a thing : A trade agreement will create a new convoy, or will use TC if there is a territorial link.

Another interesting thing is that production effects technology, the more of something you produce the easier it is to research in that area. So if you want to advance technology in an area (say carriers) you are going to want to keep producing carriers to pick up the research bonus. Yes no more tech rushing, those early model carriers may not be that good but they will serve as a nice test bed for design ideas.

1) I want specialized IC ! Otherwise i stop eating
2) Will there be a link between equipment and doctrines ? So, having a carrier will give a bonus for carrier doctrines ?
3) Will there be a year for tech ?

[Andcus]

i noticed that the Hamburg province had a river in the middle of it.
*GASP* does that mean we can move armies INSIDE a certain province?

[The Great Duck]

No.

[Majoor_Error]

Sounds great.
Lets say other countries had better weaponfacturies than the dutch,
with more exp. Thats why they bought bofors AA or german AC.
Less xp in producing would make a weaker army or navy.

[Myros]

To be honest I think the map is a little bland. I know your going for a 'map' look but IMO it lacks any real character and contrast ie mountain, forest etc

Hopefully that can be moded but with that many provinces Im guessing that to mod such a huge map will be a nightmare.
Ah well it will be a great map for dogs to look at

Can't wait for the game anyway.

M

[Cueball]

10,000 provinces means that a WC will mean much more. And if it's impossible, here's one mere mortal willing to try

As for the game playing us, it does already. How else do you explain the hundreds of threads of discussion about a game that we haven't even seen screenshots of yet? Or now, that we have, the even greater discussion about the smallest of points we can glean from the data?

Admit it, HOI owns all of us. We're addicts and we can't / won't / don't want to stop.

Well, for one thing, I enjoyed playing HOI as an SP game, and just for nostalgias sake I can even make it through a SP game of EU II ones every six months, but my main interest has been HOI as an MP platform. I am completely sure this will be a challenging and interesting P-dox game, but at that level of detail it looks like it is going to be a pretty monstorous challenge for Germany co-ordinating air/land and sea in 1941, and that is not including militarily controlling Japan, at that time.

I am withholding judgement since it may very well be that the combat system can be made more efficient in some other aspects with more autofunctions and the like, and so make the game more ergonomically efficient, while using this quality of spacial granularity. Making combat a little more flexible is a good starting point for a concept, I agree, especially if Johan and company do their usual bang-up job on the ai, but maybe this is a little too much?

And as an MP player, I should note that we already play the much simpler HOI II at Below Normal, or Slow during wartime, especially in the later years. I recently concluded an MP game in 1945, where we played the entire period between 1943 and 45 on Very Slow.

Who knows? Paradox has suprised me before with concept changes that I initially frowned upon, but that is the way I see it from outside the design circle.

[6354201]

Well, a few comments.

1) Seems like some interesting production ideas.

2) Game will be too large and cumbersome for the comprehension of mere mortals, I think. More provinces than HOI II is probably ok. But 10,000 is way over the top. Will we be playing the game, or will it be playing us? What has been effective about your simulations in the past has been the elegance of the engine mated to a multiplicity of simple game functions representing politics and economy. I am reminded of how much superior the EU II tech tree was to the civilization tech tree, even though it was dead simple.

By the same token, HOI was enhanced considerably by the design decision to simplify the tech tree in HOI II, as a game.

3) Very worried at the appearance of what looks like a tradition AH/SPI hexagonal combat field. The province system is one of the things that has made your games distinct, not to mention nice to look at, and made the EU series and HOI II "classics". I really hope I am wrong about this. Hexes are great for operations and tactics, but the province system suits the strategic/political/economic layer of game play. The fact that their were "special" places to attack" because of the province shapes, was not necessarily bad for the "game" aspect of the game, even though it might not have been "fair" or realistic.

It seems you are aiming to make the "regions" as economic units, which are then cut up into specific provinces. Am I right? If so this may work to bridge the gap.

Anyway that you could actually have the quasi-hexagonal province province "divisions" underly the regions, but make them invisible? This might create more dynamic tactical space that seems to flow, even though actions are guided by the hidden structure.

4) I would favour a more sophisticated diplomatic and political model, not more detailed combat. Seems there are some good ideas here, though. governments in exile and the like. Myth came up with a few good ideas that might be looked into about leaders. Diplomacy is where HOI II was lacking. The combat model was not the main weakness of the game -- of course there are various arguements about how "real" it is from varying perspectives, but it was a workable blend of function and realism, which people liked.

5) Game does not need more "Blitz" feel. Note: almost every single mod for HOI reduced the speed of combat, and hence "blitz". Maybe there is somethng to that.

In the end I am sure it will be a high quality product -- lets not loose the "grand sweep" of the things in the pesky details.

Thanks for the updates.

First you suggest that simply increasing the number of provinces will make the game too complicated (as if its rocket science to see a few more provinces), and then you say you want a more sophisticated diplomatic and political model.

Yeah, ok, moving on

[sbr]

To be honest I think the map is a little bland. I know your going for a 'map' look but IMO it lacks any real character and contrast ie mountain, forest etc

Hopefully that can be moded but with that many provinces Im guessing that to mod such a huge map will be a nightmare.
Ah well it will be a great map for dogs to look at

Can't wait for the game anyway.

M

The game is ~12 months from release. I bet they do a little bit more work on the map in that time.

[Cueball]

First you suggest that simply increasing the number of provinces will make the game too complicated (as if its rocket science to see a few more provinces), and then you say you want a more sophisticated diplomatic and political model.

Exactly. There is only so much conceptual space to go around.

If you are going to invest game conceptual space in one area you have to sacrifice in another area to make the game playable. People have only a limited amount of intellectual space in which they can operated effectively, before they end up simply micromanaging details. That does not make for good game play.

Are we playing the game or is it playing us?

My point is that the major deficiency in HOI II was its diplomatic/political/ledership model, not the combat system, which was relatively playable, even deep into the game at the granularity presently used. This is not an issue of CPU space, or graphic card RAM, but an issue relating to the capability of the human player. There are already games on the market that effectively express operational level combat in the WW II era, quite effectively, such as TOAW. My sense is that the model being presented might end up being a recreation of that kind of game, but larger.

This is fine in and of itself, and could be a fine game. But what is striking and interesting about the P-dox systems has been their emphasis on integrating a combat system with a diplomatic/economic/political, not simply creating a combat simulation. The production ideas presented in this thread, are definitely interesting. But, my thought is that if additional complexity is going to be introduced to the game, it would be more valuable to introduce it at the level of diplomacy, economics and politics, not combat, given that there is limited game conceptual space available, before the game becomes unwieldy.

Also, its seems to me that quadrupling the number of provinces is adding a lot of conceptual complexity (increasing intellectual TC load if you like), whereas reworking the political and diplomatic model, and reworking those simple interfaces is hardly going increase complexity much, since really the problem with the HOI diplomatic/political system, as it stands now, is that it is much underdeveloped.

There is a lot of potential in the diplomatic/political/economic model as its stands now, really all it needs is to be rethought in some areas, and fleshed out.

[john heidle]

Logisitics, logistics, logistics.

I've seen a few sentences about how this will change through the first 11 pages of this thread, but have not read any details. Is there more info about logistics anywhere else that I missed since I have not been an avid reader of this developmental forum?

The current game seemingly tried to develop a concept of needing to move a supply base forward in order to keep a broad offensive going [# 0 - Basic Logistics Division (1918)] that was never implemented in the game. Historically the large offensives in the European theater had to stop around every 200 miles (300 km) to re-establish a new forward supply base. That is lacking in the current game as you only need to have a connection back to a very distant capital.

So what is the new concept for logistics that will attempt to handle this problem area?

[Myth]

AFAIK they've not mentioned any real details on logistics yet. I'm sure it'll be the focus of one dev diary somewhere down the line.

[Gormadoc]

Very nice to get some efficiency features into production.

Never did like the yesterday we built fighters, today we bould panzers and we are darn good at it, tomorrow we will build fleet carriers and we will be darn good at that to.