Age of Colonialism

[Naselus]

For the Taiping Rebellion, cores spread out from a starting point in the south near where the point the real Taiping Rebellion started. Any province that gets a core starts spawning a special rebel type called the Taiping Rebels. These rebels are instructed to bumrush Nanjing (as in real life). Once they successfully occupy Nanjing it triggers a pre-set area (historical borders) around it to become the heavenly kingdom and the civil war starts. The rebel type is giving us some issues though and we might make the setup more like the ACW in the next version.

I'd recommend that, as rebeltypes.txt doesn't appear to work in a sensible fashion.

Incidently, Rizz, I'd also recommend you consider a total re-write of the vanilla slavery issues in the pop files. The way they're set up in vanilla means that POPs who aren't getting 100% everyday needs get a big bonus to pro-slavery sentiment, and the unemployment changes mean that very few POPs ever receive that much; Moreover, the Slavery Debate itself has no direct impact - which is a tad odd, considering that that's what the debate is supposedly about. A lot of the issues from vanilla are very, very ropey in their implementation.

[Alyosha]

1. When a colony becomes a state the AI picks randomly (50/50) whether it will be a slave state or free state. Kinda silly, but that's how it's setup.

Wow, that's so ridiculous. I guess that explains why I'm seeing CSA California. So the vanilla choice when granting statehood of free state v. slave state does nothing?

[Naselus]

Wow, that's so ridiculous. I guess that explains why I'm seeing CSA California. So the vanilla choice when granting statehood of free state v. slave state does nothing?

No, it works fine. It's just that there's no AI weighting on the event choices, so it just picks randomly.

[egslim]

There's something wrong with the Opium wars in 3.1. As UK I get an event that lets me declare war on China, with a 'cut down to size' objective. Instead, I demanded Hong Kong.

After making peace I got another event, stating that I had been victorious and giving some prestige.

Then I got a new event for the Opium war, with an objective to receive Hong Kong for 5% warscore. I think that's the one I'm supposed to get.

[Rizzmond]

There's something wrong with the Opium wars in 3.1. As UK I get an event that lets me declare war on China, with a 'cut down to size' objective. Instead, I demanded Hong Kong.

After making peace I got another event, stating that I had been victorious and giving some prestige.

Then I got a new event for the Opium war, with an objective to receive Hong Kong for 5% warscore. I think that's the one I'm supposed to get.

Good catch, i forgot to add a check to see if hong kong was still held by china or not before the event chain starts. It'll be fixed for the next version.

The cut down to size is a default vanilla event.

[Ayetach]

So I went over the changes made to the ACW events and the only change we made was to delay the outbreak of the war for 1 month after the CSA forms so that it has a chance to pull its troops back to its borders for a fighting chance against the USA (otherwise an army that split between CSA/USA soldiers immediately fought and the CSA almost certainly would lose all of its standing army after the first few days).

That does make a lot of sense. I'm beginning to wonder if it was just a months wait then, I did mention nearly a year but some of those test runs were at the highest speed so it may be inaccurate on my part. Logical idea though.

1. When a colony becomes a state the AI picks randomly (50/50) whether it will be a slave state or free state. Kinda silly, but that's how it's setup.

You mean colonized states right? Isn't there a prompt that indicates if you support either making it a free state or slave one? Like in the case of Texas after application of statehood?

As to the hegemony wars, it really varies from game to game. I've seen games where prussia/NGF never does a single hegemony war. We haven't changed this at all from vanilla and I am reluctant to make any changes in this regard.

I see.. Interesting behavior then. I guess its okay to have multiple hegemony wars then.

For the Taiping Rebellion, cores spread out from a starting point in the south near where the point the real Taiping Rebellion started. Any province that gets a core starts spawning a special rebel type called the Taiping Rebels. These rebels are instructed to bumrush Nanjing (as in real life). Once they successfully occupy Nanjing it triggers a pre-set area (historical borders) around it to become the heavenly kingdom and the civil war starts. The rebel type is giving us some issues though and we might make the setup more like the ACW in the next version.

Issues? Do the rebs not rush for Nanjing as fast as they should?

[Rizzmond]

If you are a non-european country that allows slavery when a colony turns into a state you are given the option of making it either a slave state or free state. There are no ai weightings to that choice so the AI decides between the two randomly (50/50). That is why the AI might randomly decide to make California a slave state even if there are no people in favor of slavery there.

The rebels do rush Nanjing, but they occupy every province on the way. The reason I'm considering switching it to be more like the ACW is because playing China is too much like whack-a-mole, we have to spawn tons of rebels to give them a remote chance of capturing Nanjing.

[Naselus]

maybe we could try weighting the event choices based on whether there are neighbouring slave states? That should draw a roughly appropriate line across the US.

[Rizzmond]

maybe we could try weighting the event choices based on whether there are neighbouring slave states? That should draw a roughly appropriate line across the US.

Yeah that's a good idea. I'm not sure about the scopes in that event though, it seems to be a "state scope" even though it is a country event. any_neighbor_province should work but it would have to be tested.

[Naselus]

It's certainly a funny one, tho I imagine that's because of it being triggered rather than random firing. Hopefully the triggering mechanism is what sets the scope.

[egslim]

Does anyone else have trouble upgrading naval bases?

I ordered Singapore and a few others to be upgraded at gamestart, but it's 1840 now and they're all still on hold due to lack of lumber. My factories do have sufficient lumber, but even if I close them down my naval bases don't get any.
ETA: A few bases did upgrade, but the majority is still waiting for lumber.

That's one reason why the Opium wars are going badly, with Malta my naval base nearest to China. The second is my Indian troops are getting overwhelmed by Chinese stacks.

[Rylock]

I dealt with this for PDM, by doing exactly what Naselus suggested: weighting the AI based on where the state is. You can indeed use "any_owned_province", and it will correctly look for owned provinces in the state. Doing many other things seems to work strangely, however, so you have to be careful.

[Alyosha]

No, it works fine. It's just that there's no AI weighting on the event choices, so it just picks randomly.

How does California become a slave state then? When I've played the USA and I annex California from Mexico, it is already a full state. Also, it is somehow a slave state - Mexico has slavery=outlawed from game start, so it couldn't turn California into a slave state (or could it?). How is it then that a full state California becomes a slave state?

Also, shouldn't the Wilmot Proviso effect these newly annexed states? It doesn't seem to do anything, other than increase CON.

[Necazian]

Is it possible that you guys would integrate the Broken Dragon mod when it's done? I'd love to see a China where Britain doesn't automatically want extra territory from and a China with several spheres in it.

[Rylock]

How does California become a slave state then? When I've played the USA and I annex California from Mexico, it is already a full state. Also, it is somehow a slave state - Mexico has slavery=outlawed from game start, so it couldn't turn California into a slave state (or could it?). How is it then that a full state California becomes a slave state?

It doesn't matter what a state was before you annex it... so long as it's a full state, the annexation will bring up the OnAction event immediately where you choose whether you wish it to be a slave or free state now.

One exception on that: IF you annex more than one state at the same time after a war, the OnAction event ONLY comes up for one of them. So if you annexed several Mexican states, you'd get the event for one and the others would stay at whatever slave/free state they had when they were with Mexico.

[Alyosha]

It doesn't matter what a state was before you annex it... so long as it's a full state, the annexation will bring up the OnAction event immediately where you choose whether you wish it to be a slave or free state now.

One exception on that: IF you annex more than one state at the same time after a war, the OnAction event ONLY comes up for one of them. So if you annexed several Mexican states, you'd get the event for one and the others would stay at whatever slave/free state they had when they were with Mexico.

Hmm, I don't recall getting an event when annexing. I'll keep an eye out next time.

[Rizzmond]

Is it possible that you guys would integrate the Broken Dragon mod when it's done? I'd love to see a China where Britain doesn't automatically want extra territory from and a China with several spheres in it.

We're going to stick with the Taiping Rebellion and Opium Wars for AoC. However, we're going to change around the Taiping Rebellion to be more like the ACW which should give Britain a much smaller window of opportunity for conquering Chinese Territory. I'm not a fan of splitting up the Qing since it was just as much a unified country as many other civilized and uncivilized countries.

Perhaps in the future we will add a treaty port system.

I ordered Singapore and a few others to be upgraded at gamestart, but it's 1840 now and they're all still on hold due to lack of lumber. My factories do have sufficient lumber, but even if I close them down my naval bases don't get any.
ETA: A few bases did upgrade, but the majority is still waiting for lumber.

Unfortunately, there isn't much any modders can do about the under supply issues early game due to the way the world money supply is calculated without making factories massively too profitable. You can read up on it in the intermod brainstorming thread in the VRRP forums if you're so inclined.

[Rylock]

Hmm, I don't recall getting an event when annexing. I'll keep an eye out next time.

It's possible you just didn't get it-- like the issue where you annex more than one state at a time, it's possible for the OnAction event to get pre-empted by... something. Technically speaking, you're supposed to get it. It's the only place in the game where "state events" exist, even though the OnAction file lists them as country events (they're not).

[Naselus]

Unfortunately, there isn't much any modders can do about the under supply issues early game due to the way the world money supply is calculated without making factories massively too profitable. You can read up on it in the intermod brainstorming thread in the VRRP forums if you're so inclined.

Rizz, you could help this a lot by removing lumber from POP's needs, since POPs seem to get priority over countries when purchasing goods - there's some experiments done recently which suggest that countries can only buy from the World Market, while POPs and factories can get their goods from the internal one. I've found we get less of these unpleasant supply shortfalls early on by making POP needs into 'finished' consumer goods and keeping them out of fabric, lumber, steel, cement and other 'component' goods; also, less variety cuts the number of small transactions and so reduces the money influx.

[DesertSnow]

there's some experiments done recently which suggest that countries can only buy from the World Market, while POPs and factories can get their goods from the internal one.

I have to admit is that trying to understand how a game mechanic works is one of the unique experiences that paradox games offer. I remember reading a huge thread dedicated to experiments on what role each modifier played in sea battles in HoI2.