Dev Diary - Sneak Peek Week discussion

[MichaelM]

While the crew is hard at work polishing up the next beta patch, I thought I'd take a few minutes to talk about what we showed in last week's sneak peeks.

Sneak peek #1

This one was fairly obvious. I didn't mention that the cost and chance rollovers are available for trading posts also, but you probably guessed it. What I didn't hint at is the fact that cost, chance, and time rollovers are also available when sending missionaries:

Colonist time information is not available in the colonization screen because the arcane formula that produces it is too complex to show players. But perhaps it will be streamlined in the future.


Sneak peek #2

This was, as you now know, a hint at the existence of decisions (which is why all triggers needed text written).


Sneak peek #3

Some of you spotted the fact that terrain sprites are visible when units are enabled on the political map. That is a change that I've personally been playing with for years, but for some reason never got around to merging into the mainline code. Rest assured it will be in the next patch though!

What I actually meant to show was the new 1816 scenario. And that itself is a hint of something else new: if you're wondering why we would go to the trouble of making an 1816 scenario when the game ends in 1820, the answer is that we have extended the game's timeline to end on January 1, 1837. This required a great deal of extra monarch, leader, and event research, which is what we are polishing up right now.


Sneak peek #4

This was just part of the modding changelog. Most of the new triggers were added to support decisions. We also added triggers to check whether a decision has happened, but of course we didn't want to reveal that before the final sneak peek.


Sneak peek #5

In the final sneak peek, we revealed the existence of decisions in FTG. This required a lot of effort to design and implement, starting with the obvious question: where do they go in the user interface?

We solved this problem by eliminating dynamic missions. Dynamic missions never worked very well, and their usefulness was mostly limited to players climbing the VP ranks by always taking "Keep XXX province" missions. The scroll to the left of the minimap now takes you to the decisions screen:

Rolling over a decision will show its requirements:

Decisions marked in gold text are scripted as "major = yes". If such a decision becomes available, the notifier seen in sneak peek #5 will appear:

Note that the list of decisions seen in these screenshots is not final and will change before release of the patch.

I'll close for today by posting the contents of the new file Db\Decisions\Readme.txt:

# For the Glory Decisions Scripting Tutorial
# By MichaelM

# Decisions are similar to events in many respects.
# The primary difference, of course, is that a country can choose when to enact a decision rather than waiting for RNG to pop a specific event.
# And because there is already an option to not enact a particular decision, only one action is allowed. A pair of mutually exclusive
# decisions could, of course, be created using a flag system.

## Sample decision ##
decision = {
    id = 100        # The ID of a decision must be unique only among decisions. Events and decisions do NOT share ID-space.

    major = no        # If major = yes and if the potential trigger is satisfied for the player's country, a player notifier will appear.
                # Major decisions will also appear in a different color in the decision list UI.

    persistent = yes    # If persistent = yes, the decision will not be saved into the country's decision history when enacted. Thus,
                # it may be necessary to use a flag mechanism to prevent it from being immediately enacted again, especially for AI.

    unique = yes        # If unique = yes, the decision may only be taken one time globally and will then be unavailable for all countries.

    name = "Test decision"    # As with events, names and descs may be localized
    desc = "Test decision"
    
    potential = {        # if satisfied, the decision will appear in the player's potential decision list
        # all triggers are valid here
    }
    trigger = {        # if both potential and trigger are satisfied (and the decision hasn't already been enacted or is persistent), the decision may be immediately enacted.
    }
    ai_trigger = {        # The ai_trigger is an additional trigger that must be satisfied before the AI will enact the decision.
                # However, the AI is not guaranteed to enact a decision the moment it becomes available.
    }

    action = {        # only one action is permitted
        command = { type = treasury value = 100 }    # All event commands are valid, even though some may not make sense.
        command = { type = revolt which = -1 }        # Randomized commands will not be resolved until execution. They will be displayed in the player window as e.g. "a random province" or "a random elector".
    }
}


## Scenario files ##
# It is possible to specify in scenario files that certain decisions have already been made. The syntax is:
decisionhistory = {
    unique = { 1000 }
    ENG = { 100 101 102 }
    FRA = { 100 104 }
}

# That is, a country tag followed by a list of decisions. The country will be unable to take any such decision again in the game, unless it is persistent.

 

[fixmypcmike]

Really looking forward to this. Do you have a rough idea of how many decisions will be implemented in the beta, and how many of those are completely new vs. decisions that were previously events?

Will the existing scenarios which bt default end in 1820 remain that way, or will they be extended to 1837?

 

[Unknown Unknown]

Will the existing scenarios which bt default end in 1820 remain that way, or will they be extended to 1837?

I can answer this one for you. All scenarios now extend to 1837 instead of 1820, so you can now play from 1399 - 1837. This includes a new set of land/navy techs to cover the additional years, and, as Michael said, the other DB files - such as monarchs and leaders - have been updated accordingly.

There's a lot of other new content as well, including many fixes and improvements, but that is perhaps for Michael to divulge.

 

[Aleppo]

It would be great to make leadership in some production more useful than just +1 victory point per year. Does the game mechanic even allow this?

 

[MichaelM]

Feature requests for this beta are currently closed, due to the fact that we're releasing this week (!)