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Development Diary #2 - 22nd of October 2008

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Ithron said:
I haven't seen this question asked yet, so sorry if devs have to answer it again. About combat. If combat system mainly stays the same, then it will mean that because of higher number of provinces, smaller countries will be unable to have units in all the provinces at the border. Thus, country with higher number of divisions will not only have easier invasion, but will simply be able to skip border provinces that have divisions. Historically, small nations were prepared to spread divisions more to cover all the boarder. I don't have the historical numbers at the moment, but it was something around having 1 division cover 2-5x longer border, then what big countries covered with 1 division. If there is no system of "spreading", "streaching" the division, so that historical army could cover historical border, then how will this work out? At least one example, of which I hope (as there allways seem to be those who think that no small countries participated or even existed during the ww2, as if they were in holidays on Mars), that involved people should be interested in, is Winter war where both sides had very different concentration of troops.
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You know we here ar Paradox Towers have been waiting and waiting for someone to read the Dev diary in it's entirerty, still no one has. :( However to spare you all and answer your question will combat be the same, this should give you a bit of a clue.

Johan said:
When we increase complexity in HoI3, it will primarily be at the warfare and logistics part of the game.
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King said:
You know we here ar Paradox Towers have been waiting and waiting for someone to read the Dev diary in it's entirerty, still no one has. :( However to spare you all and answer your question will combat be the same, this should give you a bit of a clue.
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Oi, that's not quite fair. Those who read the whole thing tend not to ask silly questions but just make comments that basically say "excellent" or whatnot :p
 
Myth said:
Oi, that's not quite fair. Those who read the whole thing tend not to ask silly questions but just make comments that basically say "excellent" or whatnot :p
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Ok I've been found out. :)
 
However perhaps the biggest change is to gearing. [...] Now a rather interesting consequence of this rule is that let’s say you are Germany, you have focussed all out on land and air units and you have conquered Russia so now you are going to sink all your IC into building ships. You’re production will be initially be much less efficient until your economy reorients towards naval production.
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This worries me as this sounds a bit like theres only going to be a few catagories in this gearing. Land, Air and Ships. Will it mean that a germany that uses a x amount of IC on subs during during the years until BP will be just as efficient at producing carriers as a germany that spent the same amount of IC over the same amount of time poducing carriers? I do agree that some experiences can be carried over and so building subs might give a (small) bonus to building carriers. But it should not be equivalent.

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
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will reinforcing units have an effect on research and production speed(or cost or whatever the bonus applies to) like Production.

Other than that. EXCELLENT. Looking forward to it :)
 
Some very good points you've put forward there, potski.

Even if this is a game focused on warfare and logistics, i find it very essential to have a realisticly based production concept.
 
Johan said:
We're not entirely ready to show the production interface, but here is a screenshot of northwestern germany, where you can see how detailed in amount of provinces the map is becoming.
alpha_okt22.jpg
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Thanks for picture, i realise that the map is still alpha, and therefore i would make a few remarks and observations.

1) There are light and fat province borders. Presumably this implies grouping of the provinces into regions. Is there a reason why that grouping ignores the "real" administrative borders?

2) Will the general shape of coastlines and national borders still change?
The current German Dutch border looks so weird it is ugly. Especially on the coast


Changes would be to move the border eastwards to the southermost sea/land coast (or better shorten the sea ingress westward) and have the province of "Emden" occupy a part of the northen, german coast of the river Eems /Dollard area. Notice that the City of Emden is actually on the northern side, not the southern side.
See this map
Map of area

Some may consider it nitpicking, but having to look at such a map during play will always hinder my enjoyment.
 
With this larger map we can see a bit more about the province geometry. I have done a bit of analysis and there is a lot of deviation from the hexagonal symetry you would expect. For those of you who don't realise, if you fill a space with provinces and avoid point connections (provinces that connect via a point) then the average number of adjacent provinces will always be 6.

Within this "average" there will be anomalies created by coastlines and the transition from small to medium to large provinces (see earlier developer diaries). The expanse of Germany shown is a nice decent size of small provinces and has slight "hexey" feel to it. Coutning up the province borders there is a very significant spread with similar numbers of provinces with 5,6,7 bordering provinces. This is quite a significant spread and raises the following issues

  • Having a lot of deviation from 6 reduces the "hexey" feel of the map. I suspect a nice even "hexey" layout would look less attractive. I don't know if the art team have investigated this but it would be nice to know if the spread is intentional for "visual appeal"
  • Having lots of 5 & 7 provinces does create some tactical advantage resulting from increased/reduced opportunity to attack from multiple directions. This will produce some anomalies although looking at the German map it looks all pretty harmless.

The German geometry is all pretty sound border lengths all relatively even at a logical level even when the actual drawn boundaries vary a lot. I am hoping that the reall anomally provinces from HOI2 are all gone. There where always "special" places to attack on the eastern front based on the province geometry more than anything else. Not only that but partisan suppression in Siberia was always fun for the adjacent province affect since you could find some provinces with a lot of others adjacent.
 
Doomtrader said:
Maybe Paradox realized that hexes are better ;)
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Yuck :(
 
I like how u found solutions to those problems, this sounds very logical and interesting. (can't wait to put my hands on the baby :D)
Sounds very nice if you steal a technology you'd still be "bad" at producing the result.

Would be nice if we could steal experts from other nations (that could give u bonuses to a specific production/research) but I guess that's not forseen hehe
 
_Curieus_ said:
Thanks for picture, i realise that the map is still alpha, and therefore i would make a few remarks and observations.

1) There are light and fat province borders. Presumably this implies grouping of the provinces into regions. Is there a reason why that grouping ignores the "real" administrative borders?
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Not to steal Johans thunder but...

http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8984179&postcount=1

_Curieus_ said:
2) Will the general shape of coastlines and national borders still change?
The current German Dutch border looks so weird it is ugly. Especially on the coast
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http://www.europa-universalis.com/forum/showpost.php?p=8940512&postcount=1

Aye.
 
Awesome thanks Johan for the update! I really like the build stuff and it helps with research idea.
 
Kanitatlan said:
For those of you who don't realise, if you fill a space with provinces and avoid point connections (provinces that connect via a point) then the average number of adjacent provinces will always be 6.
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I do not think I understand what you mean... Obviously the statement is not true for a random devision of space into "provinces", unless you have a very specific definition of "provinces" :p
 
King said:
You know we here ar Paradox Towers have been waiting and waiting for someone to read the Dev diary in it's entirerty, still no one has. :( However to spare you all and answer your question will combat be the same, this should give you a bit of a clue.
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Well, forum is a forum, not an encyclopedia, right? :)
I *think* I've read it all, but you never know.
Anyways, i didn't think of it as a logistical question, i did read "logistics to be advanced" ;)
 
Yay, increased complexity for logistics ^^

Speaking of efficiency. As I recall from my introductory textbook in economics, planned economies have certain inefficiencies built in to them.

For instance, the fact that every step in the production chain, everyone tends to build up huge stockpiles of stuff (which is also true for the military, where you might have a hard time getting a new set of shoelaces :p)

So planned economies might gain a boost in IC but lose them again in lower efficiency ^^

While market economies don't gain IC, but gain efficiency because of the increased competition etc.

Just a thought.
 
I like the look of the map and game overall, the drab colours really suit.Steven Speilburg washed the colours out of Saving Private Ryan to give it a real feel.I hope Paradox continue on that line with the Sprites/icons as I feel it would make the game immersive.
Will the pacific islands have more that 1 province to allow some better battles in this area.Also will sea zones still be the same or are they also going to get an overhaul?
 
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