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Development Diary #4 - 5th of November 2008

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Johan said:
we toyed with replacing LD with "white collars" and MP with "blue collars".. but.. leadership is the one that felt best.. Intelligence felt wrong as well, as it conflicts with espionage etc.
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Educated workforce, maybe? Or employees? If you can somehow differentiate regular manpower from those, one of them might work (IE, say able-bodied manpower or some such--someone who can be an effective soldier or industrial worker as opposed to someone who's sitting at a desk or something). This might also be a chance to create a relationship between the two--allow for some sort of government policy that's indiscriminate in its taking of recruits (like the Japanese) or one that would only draw from the educated workforce only in emergencies/whatnot, as obviously there'll always be some sort of overlap between the two.
 
wiguy said:
Btw; these layers on the map. Are they computationally heavy? Does it put alot of strain on the GPU (I'm assuming it's the GPU that's handling it) to use alot of layers? It would be interesting to know how you made it work with reasonable efficiency, but I'm guessing that's not something you're gonna reveal.
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all GPU code/shaders in previous games were released in plain text for modding etc, so you will probably be able to have a look at the code yourself and figure it out once its released >:p
 
I don't know about other areas of Europe, but in Italy game region borders have nothing to do with real historical ones.

Perhaps this will not affect gameplay, but it will make the game to lose some point of historical accuracy flavour.
 
podcat said:
all GPU code/shaders in previous games were released in plain text for modding etc, so you will probably be able to have a look at the code yourself and figure it out once its released >:p
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Oooh! That's nice to hear :D It's a great idea too. Gives modders quite alot of freedom to modify the visual.
Also, you guys are great at giving feedback in these threads. The dev-diary in itself is really great, but the fact that you are answering questions relating to it is even better. Now, get back to work! :p
 
Yeah, regions are just a game term for groups of provinces rather than anything related to real-world administrative or cultural regions.
 
I think that it will be moddable - u can call it as u wish IMO. As many other aspects in the game. The important thingy is how will it work and not its name.
And the map can be always reshapped - im sure there will be some map mods for those unhappy about vanilla.
 
Yay, apparently Paradox remembered how many nuggets of greatness are in Victoria and decided to scavenge some. ;)

I'm still curious on how you go about "investing more in leadership", of course. Money talks?

On to the map:
Looks nice, a bit more jitter on those province borders, maybe some softening of the country borders (maybe a fade effect like the region borders?) and it would look awesome. OTOH, the coastlines look like they might have a little too much jitter.

Here's to hoping the snow effect you can see atop the Alps is more or less pronounced as the years wears on. Yeah, fat chance, and just eye-candy anyway.
 
TheLand said:
"Human capital" probably quite closely reflects the concept, but would sound very wrong for a WWI era wargame.

Equally "Talent" would sound very wrong.
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Keep "manpower", add "brainpower". ;)

Darkrenown said:
Yeah, regions are just a game term for groups of provinces rather than anything related to real-world administrative or cultural regions.
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I suppose they were just tired of trying to get it right just to get the good old "the border of Polish province X is 10km to the left of where it should be, which prevents representing correctly the Russian frontline on the 12th of May 1944! Didn't you do any research?!" reaction.
 
Gwalcmai said:
Keep "manpower", add "brainpower". ;)
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But I thought that's not what it was--"brainpower" is more with the research points. Leadership are those people who support the actual leaders (for divisions) or the scientists/etc that are represented by the research points. Those, as the movie Military Intelligence and You puts it, thousands of anonymous men who support the really important people.
 
I wonder if you will be able to build things like military academies or such (kind of like rocket test sites) that increase your leadership. Maybe some techs to simulate the same thing (though this would follow the agricultural production tech model for MP)
 
Does the minimap already works?

At the main map screen you can see only south Switzerland
and the little white box at the minimap draw on the northern France

Weird ;)

alphanov5ado5.jpg



Is it really Alpha?
 
Very nice stuff in there. :)


Except maybe for that bit.
Johan said:
Another little aspect of the map.. If you play in "counters-mode".. the camera is locked in full 2d and will not tilt for more dramatic 3d looks.
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I'll wait to see more, but I can't be the only one who appreciate a 3d view while using counters.
 
I like the idea of leadership and what it represents, but I agree the term "leadership" is a bit odd. But that's just details...
 
Johan said:
In order to make our task of game balance easier these leadership points are consumed when you do research. We do acknowledge that the people you assign to projects will become steadily more experienced and don’t just disappear and this is also held as your accumulated theory value. The more you research in an area the less leadership points you will need to advance in a field. Similarly for practical values, having a number of tanks to work with already means you need to expend less effort to advance in a field.
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So this leadership pool will just improve the theorical research ?
So the pratical research won't improve the ttheorical research ?
Building armoured divisions won't improve research into armoured offensive doctrines tree ?
 
Speaking of the old officer system... I really like the auto-promote system in HOI2 a lot. I usually remove some of the high ranking officers, and enjoy watching my commanders gain experience and advance in rank as I fight battles and expand my army, respectively. I would absolutely love to see some kind of development or expansion of this system.

I think everyone wants to keep the historical leaders. Theres nothing better than playing as Germany and having Rommel, Guderian and Von Manstein leading your armoured divisions.

But developing your officers is great fun as well, and the auto-promote system means that your officers don't lose skill or xp when promoted. The price is a severe restriction when attacking, as you never have enough generals and field marshals for your operations. It is this tradeoff that I love about the system. Also, you can't control who is promoted, which is great fun, but some degree of influence would be even better.

All in all I would like to see more like that. More events that customise your leaders, IN-style decisions about promotions. Maybe a loyalty-factor that can drop if the officer is passed over. Military reforms that increase the skill of some of your leaders but comes at a price. I don't want to take away the historical leaders' characteristics, but spicing them up with player influence would be great.

Anders
 
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