AHD DD6 – China

[Darkrenown]

It's Friday, and that means it's time for another AHD dev diary! Today's DD is about China. As most of you know, getting China into your Sphere of Influence could be a massive boon to your economy since all those Chinese pops buy your produced goods first. Perhaps not quite a “Win” button, but it was a big advantage.

Our solution to this was to split China into several parts. Some of the parts are still pretty populous and so are still good SoI targets, but they are not quite as huge as the old China was, and of course multiple GPs can now Sphere separate parts.

So what have we done? Well, we've added something called a “Substate”, a Substate is basically an unbreakable puppet. While a Substate can be conquered, while it exists it cannot be broken away from their masters. It's possible to form CBs on Substates, but to use them you must declare war on China and fight the combined armies of China and their Substates. In other regards, they act as puppets do. Those of you you have played a Daimyo in Divine Wind should find the concept somewhat familiar, although in this case the Emperor is the largest and most powerful state rather than a figurehead.

China can re-unite itself though, an event will be fired when they Civilise, annexing all Substates on good terms with China. Substates that refuse will also Civilise, but will suffer a large relations hit with China, and since they have cores on all the Substates dissenters may be in for interesting times. If a Substate manages to Civilise first China and the other Substates will also become Civilised, but the country will not unite.

For anyone not interested in China, perhaps this might tickle your fancy? Troops now once again speed up Colonisation! Cunning coding has been done to convince the AI that sending out troops to colonial areas may indeed benefit them, so it should no longer be a free ride for the player. However, no one likes having competition in their colonial ventures, so when two or more nations are trying to Colonise the same state they will also find it easier to generate CBs on each other, and adding troops into the mix only increases this bonus.

 

[podcat]

I hope that isn't the only change to colonisation (arguably it isn't a change at all, since it was marketed in the original Victoria 2) and there is more to come in future developer diaries?

there were two reason it was removed from original V2. The AI didnt understand how to ship troops properly so the player always won and having the troops fighting over the province didnt work very well. This system fits much better now when we have developed the CB generation mechanic so you can have conflicts and colony races between powers lead to war.

also yes, substates are playable, but less interesting than puppets because they cant break free if they want (which is a new features of AHD)

 

[Darkrenown]

Are substates playable?

Do any other nations than China use the substate system at the start of the game?

I assume Tibet remains as it is currently in Victoria 2 and is not a substate?

I realise it is a minor complaint, but could you change the colour of the substate around Yunan so that it blends in more with the rest of China? The other colours are already a good fit.

Is the path towards civilising for China easier now to reflect the weakened power of any one Chinese state? Or do the scores of substates count towards their master's scores?


I hope that isn't the only change to colonisation (arguably it isn't a change at all, since it was marketed in the original Victoria 2) and there is more to come in future developer diaries?

They are playable, although it is perhaps not the most interesting game. So far only China has Substates. Tibet is not a Substate, but it is a puppet. Yunan's colour may change, but it's hard to make it visibly different while still yellowish, if you have a nice RGB value I can certainly try it. This is the only major colonial change.

Which substate is the imperial substate? Given that China was then ruled by the Manchu Qing dynasty, is it in Manchuria? Or Beijing?

Beijing.

 

[Darkrenown]

"Chinese Empire" might be a better name for this new arrangement than just "China", both in terms of how it looks on the map and given that China was considered to be just a part of the Chinese Empire at the time.

Could do.

 

[podcat]

Why not jsut have SOI by state instead of by country (with a bonus if one spheres all states in a country)?

because it would probably mean 20x more micromanagement and not be very fun.

 

[podcat]

I hope you also have big changes planned for the whole SoI-minigame, otherwise I fear substates will just add more micromanagement.

stay tuned for future diaries

we have talked about maybe using substates for other things, but have not done so. We will see how well they work during testing to see if its worth it.

 

[podcat]

Question: when you got at war with China to conquer a substate with a proper CB, the warscore will be calculated over the whole China or the substate? In many games I leave China to his own just because it's boring to occupy so many provinces before reaching enough WS to grab land.

the whole. this is an even tighter bond than a puppet. I dont see any reason china would give it up. we will however tweak how warscore is handled a bit because I'm not 100% happy with it (eg occupying canada for 50 years etc)

 

[podcat]

Looks great!

Are there going to be commands and triggers for sub-states? If so, then modders could probably create events to partition other places. Also, will there be a trigger that tests if a nation is colonizing a province?

In terms of other candidates for substates, what about the Ottomans?

There are separate triggers for substates yeah

 

[Trin Tragula]

I like this idea. I hope it get's ported to at least Persia as well as it seems like it would fit very well there.

 

[podcat]

Um, I have an inquiry regarding sub-states and rebels: what happens if rebels successfully change the government in a sub-state or the central government in Beijing? Will the sub-state with the successful rebellion break away? Or in the case of Beijing, will all of the sub-states break away?

Also, will we be able to create puppets through war since it's not as constricting in AHD?

Yes there are a few new wargoals. One is to fight for freedom (also breaks spheres) the other is to put puppet countries

 

[podcat]

Who controls the armies, factories (if civilized), etc. of the substates? Are they controlled separately, like with puppets, or centrally? In other words, will someone playing as China get to control the substate armies, or will this be handled by the AI?

Also, what happens if you declare war on China itself, not a substate? Will you be able to invade the substates and have to fight the combined armies of all the substates, or will you only be at war with "China proper"?

all of them are always fighting with you. they control their own armies etc just like a puppet. a substate is pretty much a puppet but with some extra rules like Darkrenown explained

And what if someone conquer the actual China provinces, do the substates become independent.

yes

So can substates become independent at all or never?

no, I was talking about puppets. a substate cant break free (except at the point of civilizing where there are events etc)

Also what is next week's dev diary?

"military stuff"

You know, something which would be very helpful when using sub-states in modding would be to be able to change country colours on the fly. I'm pretty sure that isn't possible right now.
Anyways, just a tought I had which I thought was interesting.

its doable in the internal build. I could leave it on in final release I guess

 

[podcat]

Sounds like great changes!

One question on colonization: is it just a binary troops present/no troops present or does it scale with the amount of troops or anything else?
And is it still possible to fight the other colonizers troops in the still neutral but contested territory without being at war with him? I'm not exactly sure if podcat wanted to say it's out by this:

no fighting. the ideas is the troops are there and create lots of tension which leads to you being able to push through a CB and attack if you want, or if you lost the colony race to take back the land. Random fighting outside actual wars creates lots of problems and I'm not convinced it adds that much to the game. I like this tension increase much better as a solution.

its a flat bonus, so it doesnt matter how many troops you have

 

[Darkrenown]

Germany didn't have a burning desire to colonise those areas though, they just picked them up because they were late to the game, they felt they needed some colonies to show they were a Great Power, and no one else wanted them.