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podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
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Jul 23, 2007
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Welcome to this weeks development diary for A House Divided. First up we have added a new screen with more detailed information about goods:

dd2.png

This is accessible from both the trade and production screens so will help both with deciding how to trade and what factories to construct or close. The much longer history graph should also be helpful for evaluating long term profitability and it lets you see how much of the total world production you are responsible for which clever players should be able to use to their advantage.

We have also been working on some economic changes this week. Capitalists are getting a big boost (up to 3x in laissez faire) compared to governments when it comes to building factories and railroads cheaply. Overall though constructions are going to get a lot more expensive. It should no longer be a no-brainer to put railroads in each province. Currently costs are up 10x across the board, but we will see if they stay there after balance testing.

Speaking of railroads, they are now affected by terrain. Different terrain types require a certain tech level for you to be able to construct the railroad there, so for example to build in the Alps you might be required to have level 4 researched. This minimum level also works as a penalty so a level 4 railroad in mountains will only effectively work like a level 1 basic railroad. These things combined should hopefully make for some more interesting choices on where to build your railway net.

Next week we will be talking about one of the new major features for how to declare wars. Its going to be pretty neat.
 
Speaking of railroads, they are now affected by terrain. Different terrain types require a certain tech level for you to be able to construct the railroad there, so for example to build in the Alps you might be required to have level 4 researched. This minimum level also works as a penalty so a level 4 railroad in mountains will only effectively work like a level 1 basic railroad. These things combined should hopefully make for some more interesting choices on where to build your railway net.

Hmm, that's going affect RGO output in difficult terrain quite substantially, isn't it. Hope it doesn't make countries such as Japan all the poorer as a result of a lot of their terrain being mountainous and construction costs being that much higher.

All in all though, I like the sound of these changes. Would like to see something more about the political game though.
 
nice changes to railroads
can they still be constructed with 0 investors?
 
We have also been working on some economic changes this week. Capitalists are getting a big boost (up to 3x in laissez faire) compared to governments when it comes to building factories and railroads cheaply. Overall though constructions are going to get a lot more expensive. It should no longer be a no-brainer to put railroads in each province. Currently costs are up 10x across the board, but we will see if they stay there after balance testing.

Great!
 
The screen's a very handy addition! I like the railroads change as well, lot more logical now.
 
Excellent :D

Can we hope that railroads might require maintainence costs as well? Those locomotives currently run on air and never break down...
 
so will infrastructure speed up troops for the controller and increase supply limits?
 
If economy is going to be as simple as in vanilla Victoria 2, then I don't see why would you even bother with "railroad networks", when you can just spam railroads in every single province like it's always done, because it's just so easy to earn money and keep tens of millions of pounds or whatever the V2 currency is and then build all you want, VRRP makes it a bit more realistic with actually high costs for ships, forts and other stuff, Paradox should take the example from that mod.
 
This is accessible from both the trade and production screens so will help both with deciding how to trade and what factories to construct or close. The much longer history graph should also be helpful for evaluating long term profitability and it lets you see how much of the total world production you are responsible for which clever players should be able to use to their advantage.

How exactly will it help the players? Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but if there are two screens where I don't understand anything, are the Trade and the Pop screens. I mean, I know how to read them, but not how to interpret them and understand them. Looking at the data doesn't trigger anything in me, no "aha! I shall do this now and in one year time I will reap the benefits!" coming from the brain.
 
If economy is going to be as simple as in vanilla Victoria 2, then I don't see why would you even bother with "railroad networks", when you can just spam railroads in every single province like it's always done, because it's just so easy to earn money and keep tens of millions of pounds or whatever the V2 currency is and then build all you want, VRRP makes it a bit more realistic with actually high costs for ships, forts and other stuff, Paradox should take the example from that mod.

you wont be able to build railroads anywehere you like as written in the first post
 
If economy is going to be as simple as in vanilla Victoria 2, then I don't see why would you even bother with "railroad networks", when you can just spam railroads in every single province like it's always done, because it's just so easy to earn money and keep tens of millions of pounds or whatever the V2 currency is and then build all you want, VRRP makes it a bit more realistic with actually high costs for ships, forts and other stuff, Paradox should take the example from that mod.

Did you read the Developer Diary before posting?

How exactly will it help the players? Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but if there are two screens where I don't understand anything, are the Trade and the Pop screens. I mean, I know how to read them, but not how to interpret them and understand them. Looking at the data doesn't trigger anything in me, no "aha! I shall do this now and in one year time I will reap the benefits!" coming from the brain.

If you can see the price a good has been making over the previous 3 years, it'll give you a pretty good idea whether it's going to be profitalbe or not.

Also, if you make 90 or even 100% of the worlds tanks... well, then you should stockpile them and shut down production during the war. You alone will have tanks.
 
Excellent :D

Can we hope that railroads might require maintainence costs as well? Those locomotives currently run on air and never break down...

we have discussed it and we'll see during long term balancing towards the end of the project.

nice changes to railroads
can they still be constructed with 0 investors?

not sure what you mean. but I changed some of the display stuff for investor count during last patch for V2 to be more accurate.


If economy is going to be as simple as in vanilla Victoria 2, then I don't see why would you even bother with "railroad networks", when you can just spam railroads in every single province like it's always done, because it's just so easy to earn money and keep tens of millions of pounds or whatever the V2 currency is and then build all you want, VRRP makes it a bit more realistic with actually high costs for ships, forts and other stuff, Paradox should take the example from that mod.

but didnt I explain that we have been upping costs 10x? as for large fleets and endgame balance it is something we will deal with once most features are in. But i agree its needed.
 
Are railroads going to affect troop speed, as another commenter mentioned?
 
Did you read the Developer Diary before posting?
I think what he means is whether they cost 1,000 or 10,000, it does not matter, because of the scale of the tax profits.

I also support the idea of some sort of maintenance/profit calculation. Maybe some value to moving goods or something, so capis will abandon infrastructure in the middle of nowhere (but command economies could subsidize rail corridors).

BTW, I'm also interested to see how this would affect the profitability of factories - if they require 10 times as much steel, etc...
 
This is a fantastic development - no more level five Trans-Sahara railways! Yay!

No more Trans-Siberian railways in 1860!

Yet another one of those nagging wee things about Victoria that you see happening and think 'if only...' has been fixed. I salute the team unreservedly :D
 
I think what he means is whether they cost 1,000 or 10,000, it does not matter, because of the scale of the tax profits.

I also support the idea of some sort of maintenance/profit calculation. Maybe some value to moving goods or something, so capis will abandon infrastructure in the middle of nowhere (but command economies could subsidize rail corridors).

BTW, I'm also interested to see how this would affect the profitability of factories - if they require 10 times as much steel, etc...

But this won't just reduce the cost of RR - it will make it much harder to build RR, which in turn will have a negative effect on the profitability of factories because of a lower infrastructure boost (or at least it would under the present set-up, remember I don't in any way speak for the devs and I could be completely wrong on this).
 
If you can see the price a good has been making over the previous 3 years, it'll give you a pretty good idea whether it's going to be profitalbe or not.

Yes, that makes sense. But for me to better understand it, how would I do it in 1.4, how do I get an idea of what is profitable?

Also, if you make 90 or even 100% of the worlds tanks... well, then you should stockpile them and shut down production during the war. You alone will have tanks.

That's definitely something that I never considered doing. My nations usually do well to quite well in literacy, so I do well in technology. But if I did have the industry to corner that market, you're suggesting me to manually increase the national stockpile, and then flip from a Laissez-faire government into a government type that allows me to close Tank factories, is that it?
 
Very nice. I love the new screen and generally the idea of you working to improve the interface - most companies don't like to touch it in patches or even add-ons.