With VIP:R 0.2 now in final beta testing stage, I've decided to offer up a little peak as some of the changes that have been implemented in the game since VIP:R 0.1. While the amount of changes is not as large as in VIP:R 0.1, there were several areas of changes made, including a major reworking to add new resources and factories, which requires a huge amount of testing to balance correctly.
Geopolitical Changes
China struggling to contain the Taiping rebels in the early 1850s
One of the main gameplay changes in the geopolitical realm concerns China, where the Taiping Rebellion has now been modelled along the lines of the US Civil War, with the Taiping as a separate nation. Should Taiping succeed in overthrowing the Qing Dynasty, it will become China, while China must defeat and occupy the Taiping lands in order to crush the rebellion. With pro-Taiping revolts possible in much of China that does not immediately come under Taiping control, and with rebel provinces in certain areas having the ability to defect to become part of Taiping, this should make China much more challenging in the 1850s.
The White Rajas of Sarawak carve out a territory for themselves in NW Borneo
Sarawak, the land of the White Rajas, now exists in game, first as a satellite of Brunei, later as a satellite of Britain.
The Balkans transformed as war breaks out between the Ottomans and the Balkan League in 1912, and the end result along historical lines by the end of 1913.
As VIP moves closer to being able to bring World War I into the mod, the Balkan Wars have now been included in the mod. If all the nations involved directly in the war are AI controlled, events will fire to ensure a historical outcome, but each of the main nations involved (Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Ottomans) also will have options to keep fighting, though risking the ire of the great powers who did not want the Balkans torn asunder in 1912 and put heavy pressure on the Balkan states to accept peace.
Economic Changes
One of the big focuses of development for VIP:R 0.2 was the decision to replace some of the factories and resources in 0.1 with new factories and resources in 0.2. The result was the addition of one new raw material (sugar) two new industrial goods (chemicals and capital ship hulls) and four new factories (chemical plant, capital shipyard, sugar beet refinery and synthetic nitrate factory).
To accomplish these changes, some resources and factories have been removed from the game. Ammunition and the Ammunition Factory are now removed, and the needs for ammunition are now subsumed into the supply cost for units. Wool has been replaced, and now there is a generic livestock resource combining cattle and wool, and luxury furniture has been removed, replaced by a general luxury goods good and factory based on the luxury clothes resource. The radio factory has now become the factory for synthetic nitrates, and radios merged with telephones into an "appliance" factory.
One of the sugar-rich RGO regions of the world, the Caribbean basin.
The new Chemical Plant and Capital Shipyard factories
The chemical plant will be available from the start of the game, and chemicals have been added to the factory needs of several early basic factories, such as fabric and steel, as well as being an input in the vast majority of later game factories.
Industrial substitutes to imported resources vital to 19th century life : sugar refined from sugar beet, and synthetic nitrates.
The development of "substitution" industries to break dependence on imports of goods was one of the major focuses of research in the 19th century, and in two industries in particular, sugar and nitrates, the results would allow continental Europe in particular to break dependence on imports and in the case of sugar, become a leading producer (Germany was the leading producer of sugar around 1900, in wake of massive expansion of the beet refining industry).
in addition to the new factories to represent these goods, events have also been included to mirror the decline in the "natural" suppliers fortunes for cane sugar, nitrates (and dye) so that those areas of the world dependent on those goods will have to come to terms with the rise of the industrially-based production that destroyed or gravely reduced the market for the "natural" goods.
All of these factories have been tested to ensure that the capitalists will build them (they in general do, eventually) and events have also been included to allow the state the ability to build one of each factory as well, as was the case with other factories in VIP:R 0.1 that many players have said they found a great introduction.
(to be continued...)
