The newspaper system added in Heart of Darkness is great, actually-- it adds a lot of flavor. I have two issues with it, however-- one big and one small.
The big issue: relevance. Newspaper story items are generated and then added into the newspaper regardless of their relevance to the player-- meaning a player is just as likely to see a news item from some tiny country halfway around the world from them as they are to see an item from a Great Power or a neighbour... or, depending on the story type, even their own nation. The problem with this is that it trains a player to ignore the newspaper. Half the time you take a look, and you see an article about how Atjeh really likes Siam or how Nassau is really afraid of Russia... but what does that matter if you're playing Argentina? Why should Argentina care if Parma just invented military training? One could say that's flavor, but there's enough useful information in the newspaper that you end up losing one in favor of the other simply because you can't be bothered to read what Nassau and Atjeh are up to every time.
The small issue: right now a change of ownership is tracked per province... so if a country conquers a state, you get one news item for each province in that state. It becomes pretty ridiculous to see a story about how proud the minister is that they now own X province, when you just saw how proud they were to own Y province in the same state. If a large amount of territory has changed hands, that likely means that a number of news items have gotten lost in the shuffle as a result. Worse, if a country becomes independent, there is no "Independence!" news story... it's just treated as if the new country has conquered its provinces and you get news items about, say, how pleased the CSA is to have acquired X province.
What could be done
* We have filters in place for the notifications in the bottom right of the screen, allowing you to pick countries you're interested in-- perhaps those settings could be applied to the newspaper as well?
* Failing the above, perhaps have it so that there is greater weight applied to certain stories... and less to others. So we should see first stories about our own country (so events, which AI countries like/fear us, wars, etc.)... give those greater weight. Then we should see things about Great Powers and, to a lesser degree, Secondary Powers. Then neighbours, or at least countries on the same continent. Others we shouldn't see anything at all, unless it's a war.
* The "province ownership" news story should instead be "state ownership". States are supposed to be the smallest unit of transfer in Vic2 anyhow, yes? I should see a news item about how pleased Germany is to have acquired Alsace-Lorraine... not how they're pleased to have acquired Colmar.
* Add an "independence" news story for countries which have just become freed, and have this override the province/state ownership story.
Modding
Failing the above items, having some more options for modding would be nice. Now, I've only played around with it a limited amount, but to my understanding you can only mod the newspaper scripts with the scopes provided (in the documentation, thank you very much for that-- it would have been impossible to figure out otherwise). They're pretty limited, however, and much of the stuff above can't actually be done-- other than increasing weight for the player's news items, anyhow.
What I wouldn't mind seeing, at the very least, is some tracking for the civ level of the tags involved in any news item. Since we have tags tracked, how about a separate array for each of the tags? A variable for each one, like 0 = unciv, 1 = civ, 2 = secondary power, 3 = great power? Being able to determine whether any of those tags neighbour a player would also be nice, but I'm not sure how that could be done... perhaps a binary 0/1 for each of the tags again?
There's no way to mod the independence story, since new stories can't be added (to my knowledge). But even just getting the above would help a lot.
Thanks again-- it's a great feature, and I'm glad you've added it.
The big issue: relevance. Newspaper story items are generated and then added into the newspaper regardless of their relevance to the player-- meaning a player is just as likely to see a news item from some tiny country halfway around the world from them as they are to see an item from a Great Power or a neighbour... or, depending on the story type, even their own nation. The problem with this is that it trains a player to ignore the newspaper. Half the time you take a look, and you see an article about how Atjeh really likes Siam or how Nassau is really afraid of Russia... but what does that matter if you're playing Argentina? Why should Argentina care if Parma just invented military training? One could say that's flavor, but there's enough useful information in the newspaper that you end up losing one in favor of the other simply because you can't be bothered to read what Nassau and Atjeh are up to every time.
The small issue: right now a change of ownership is tracked per province... so if a country conquers a state, you get one news item for each province in that state. It becomes pretty ridiculous to see a story about how proud the minister is that they now own X province, when you just saw how proud they were to own Y province in the same state. If a large amount of territory has changed hands, that likely means that a number of news items have gotten lost in the shuffle as a result. Worse, if a country becomes independent, there is no "Independence!" news story... it's just treated as if the new country has conquered its provinces and you get news items about, say, how pleased the CSA is to have acquired X province.
What could be done
* We have filters in place for the notifications in the bottom right of the screen, allowing you to pick countries you're interested in-- perhaps those settings could be applied to the newspaper as well?
* Failing the above, perhaps have it so that there is greater weight applied to certain stories... and less to others. So we should see first stories about our own country (so events, which AI countries like/fear us, wars, etc.)... give those greater weight. Then we should see things about Great Powers and, to a lesser degree, Secondary Powers. Then neighbours, or at least countries on the same continent. Others we shouldn't see anything at all, unless it's a war.
* The "province ownership" news story should instead be "state ownership". States are supposed to be the smallest unit of transfer in Vic2 anyhow, yes? I should see a news item about how pleased Germany is to have acquired Alsace-Lorraine... not how they're pleased to have acquired Colmar.
* Add an "independence" news story for countries which have just become freed, and have this override the province/state ownership story.
Modding
Failing the above items, having some more options for modding would be nice. Now, I've only played around with it a limited amount, but to my understanding you can only mod the newspaper scripts with the scopes provided (in the documentation, thank you very much for that-- it would have been impossible to figure out otherwise). They're pretty limited, however, and much of the stuff above can't actually be done-- other than increasing weight for the player's news items, anyhow.
What I wouldn't mind seeing, at the very least, is some tracking for the civ level of the tags involved in any news item. Since we have tags tracked, how about a separate array for each of the tags? A variable for each one, like 0 = unciv, 1 = civ, 2 = secondary power, 3 = great power? Being able to determine whether any of those tags neighbour a player would also be nice, but I'm not sure how that could be done... perhaps a binary 0/1 for each of the tags again?
There's no way to mod the independence story, since new stories can't be added (to my knowledge). But even just getting the above would help a lot.
Thanks again-- it's a great feature, and I'm glad you've added it.
