Divine Wind - Developer Diary #7

[Besuchov]

Peace - what is it good for?

Every expansion we make tends to be a mix of new cool things that could be added to the game and improvements to already existing features. This week I'll tell you about one of the latter.

War and Peace is an integral part of the Europa Universalis gameplay. You will either be at war or preparing to fight a war. How war is declared and ended has gotten a couple of upgrades over the last few expansions, most notably the new casus belli's that give the player specific aims with the war and that limit what is considered acceptable to demand in peace. Together with the war goals came a new interface for declaring war that made very clear what your goals were and the cost of declaring war. However when peace came the interface have been more or less the same since Eu3 1.0 so the time had come to take a look at that.

The peace view of old had a couple of problems, mostly to do with geography. If you are France and go to war with England at the start of the game, odds are you know exactly what you want and exactly where the province of Gascogne is. However, if you are a global French empire and go to war with the world's other global superpower and try to match your demands to the results on the ground, well you can laugh at me but I can't tell you at a moment's notice where Wallis is on the map or exactly how many provinces I would lose if I offer to release Provence. To alleviate this problem a bit we had a smaller version of the map in the old peace view but it was never as useful as we could have hoped and when empires went global it fell apart. So, what do do?

Well, we thought about it bit and realized that using a small map was pretty silly when we have a big one. So, our team went to work and completely redid the peace interface so that it was small enough not to hide the game map. After that we recolored the game map when the peace interface was open, green for the side set to gain from the deal and red for the other. When you select, for example provinces that you wish to demand, these will be colored differently so that you can see exactly what you are getting. Naturally, you can zoom and scroll the map just as if you didn't have the peace interface open, giving you the great overview of the situation that you need. I also mentioned earlier my tendency not to remember exactly which provinces would go to Provence if I released them. Well, as you can see from the screenshot, that will no longer be a handicap for me

So, now we're back to the quest of making Europa Universalis 3 an even better game than it already was. Stay tuned for next weeks dev diary.

Thomas Johansson
Associate Producer and Project Lead on Europa Universalis III: Divine Wind

[ComradeOm]

Nice interface change. Is it just cosmetic or are there other changes to the 'peace process' coming?

[Besuchov]

It a useability change, you can do the same things as before but easier and clearer.

[Woody Man]

Nice, very very useful!

[DredMorte]

Give and Take peace options? Please? Please?

[Paradygmat]

I was hoping to see the system that is in Vicky 2 , that you can take only that what cb allow you to . so you set your goals before war and then try to achive it
now you can declare war using any cb and then take anythink ( I know that will cause more badboy , but still especially in MP games , i prefer more badboy than lose stability )
I was hoping that this will be changed also

[Vasilius]

Really nice, makes negotiations much easier!

One question though: why keep the list where to choose from which provinces you want or are about to give up? Why not to simply click on the map what you want for yourself?

[BonSequitur]

Sad, I was really hoping for a highly moddable Victoria 2-style war aims system. But the new interface is very nice.

EDIT: Ooh, is that a new rebel flag I see?

[Romtos]

Nice improvement. Makes peace deals much clearer. Especially when releasing states.

[steveh11]

Oh, thank you! I could have done with that interface change as recently as last night.

[Cèsar de Quart]

So no chance of adding wargoals in the middle of the war? Because it's silly that you gain the "Holy War" casus belli against a Muslim country AFTER you went to war with him backing up an ally. Or in any other case.

[Sute]{h]

Really nice change. Might I suggest different colorings though? To be consistant with the rest of the map modes I feel the following would be better:

Owned: Light Green
Allied: Dark Green
Enemy war leader: Light Red
Enemy war leaders allies: Dark Red

Province to be gained by peace: Light/dark red striped with light/dark green as appropriate.
Province to be lost by peace: Light/dark green striped with light/dark red as appropriate.

Provinces to become a new country: Light/dark red/green as appropriate stribed with either blue or the country color in question.

Countries to become a vassal: Light/dark red/green as appropriate stribed with yellow.

In essence changes brought by the peace agreement should be marked with stripes rather than solid colours.

[slepire]

The new interface certainly does appear more functional, and it certainly addresses a personal grievance. That said, is there any chance that we'll be able to add CBs to wars that are in progress, like we can with War Goals in Vicky 2? It is frustrating when I use a Reconquest CB, and my enemy calls in an ally on whom I have a Conquest CB, and I'm forced into either taking more BB than necessary, waiting 5 years for the truce to end, or taking a -5 stab hit for breaking truce. Still, this interface improvement will certainly make peace deals easier in the late game, and it appears to be pretty slick, visually speaking.

[Najs]

Nice interface, but as said before, give-and-take deals would be really nice.

[Svip]

War goals like in V2 doesn't make much sense for the time period of EU3. It was not unusual for people to demand more than they went in for. While things weren't perfect either in V2 times, it was certainly 'cleaner'.

[Gatkramp]

I like this alot. Will make making peace so much less of a hassle.

[SchwarzKatze]

Would I also be able to see what does the deal my enemy send me looks like with such interface?

Edit: what's that in the province north west to Salzburg? Religious rebel?

[The Zealot]

Really nice change. Might I suggest different colorings though? To be consistant with the rest of the map modes I feel the following would be better:

Owned: Light Green
Allied: Dark Green
Enemy war leader: Light Red
Enemy war leaders allies: Dark Red

Province to be gained by peace: Light/dark red striped with light/dark green as appropriate.
Province to be lost by peace: Light/dark green striped with light/dark red as appropriate.

Provinces to become a new country: Light/dark red/green as appropriate stribed with either blue or the country color in question.

Countries to become a vassal: Light/dark red/green as appropriate stribed with yellow.

In essence changes brought by the peace agreement should be marked with stripes rather than solid colours.

+1
Excelent suggestion.



May I also suggest that we add a magnifying lens icon (or something) in the diplomacy window so that we could centre the map when we want to know where exactly that province is, along with its surrounding?

So it would be something like:
Click 1- Click on the icon, cursor turns into a magnifying lens
Click 2- From the list of provinces, click on the province name of the province you want to either claim or give away, ie, Berry

Result:
Map is centred on Berry and the cursor returns to normal.

There would be no need to go to the search box and type the province name, it would be a great simplification of the whole process.
And lazy people would no longer have excuses to know their geography.

[Sute]{h]

I for one don't want give and take deals. The AI wont be able to correctly estimated the worth of such a complex trade. And why should a victor give territory to the loser? Do we have any historical precedence for that?

[Emperor Hans]

I'm actually disappointed, the first line said "peace, what is it good for" so i hoped they'd came up with something which doesn't involve everyone hanging on eachothers throat with the chance to cut it like all previous EU3 games.

Atleast some improvement though, but don't give such a misleading title next time.