Ebenezer Forumite looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Johan Andersson, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.
STAVE IV: THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Forumite bent down upon his knee: for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Victoria 2 Yet to Come?” said Forumite.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
“You are about to show me shadows of the features that have not been implemented, but will be implemented in the time before us,” Forumite pursued, “Is that so, Spirit?”
Air travel is a pain. Obviously your flight is going to be delayed in Arlanda meaning you have to sprint across Heathrow to make your connection, only to find that that flight is delayed too. Luggage is, of course, an option extra and arrives a day or two after you, if you are lucky. However it also gives you a lot of spare time you never thought you had. So I began to write a developer dairy. As it turns out there was no diary scheduled for this topic so I figured you can get it as a Christmas bonus.
What to do about Nations forming? This is one of those tough questions we need to think about, obviously we want Countries like Germany, Italy, Romania and Yugoslavia to form because they did. We also want countries like Scandinavia and other Pan-Slav nations to be able to form because people seriously talked about this. If we are really clever we could also add in nations like Grand Colombia, which did exist a few years before Victoria 2 starts. We starting thinking about this and bouncing about ideas and we remembered a little neat thing in In Nomina, the Union Tag. This country tag is linked to a culture group and this is just the thing we are looking for.
Step one, we reshuffle culture groups so they are now much smaller and more directly linked to the countries that did form in the Victoria era. Culture groups in Victoria 2 began by being very closely linked to the culture groups in EU3. On the face of it they were pretty much linguistic entities of peoples of a similar language. Could we realistically reshuffle these into smaller entities? We realised we could, sitting in the Germanic culture group are the Swiss. Who are themselves a multi linguistic culture. Representing the fact that being German did not make it easier to rule Switzerland, just ask the Habsburgs if you don't believe me. We also break linguistically very similar people down into separate culture groups, there is no English language culture group representing English speakers around the world and we go one further and split Americans into three separate cultures for game play purposes.
The result is that some culture groups are now looking a bit lonely but most, if not all, will have a Union tag associated with them so you can form the greater nation. Some Union tags already exist at the start. The Swiss culture group has already formed greater Switzerland and are fairly happy with it. The American Culture group has the USA as their Union Tag in play from the start, and we'll explain why later. So we make culture groups much smaller, like the Romanians will now be all on their own in a culture group, but will have the country Romania associated with countries of that culture, thus the states of Wallachia and Moldovia have the potential to form Romania. The same goes for the the German culture group, now condensed down to North and South German. The list goes on, but you see where we are going with this.
The Union Tags are defined as static countries, with set cores representing their territorial aspirations. Now I suppose you are wondering why don't we try to link these cores to where the people of this culture group live? Look at Germany, the German Tag's cores are the provinces that Germany holds in 1871. Now there are provinces there where Germans are not a clear majority and excludes provinces, in Austria, that have a German majority. The Italian claims on places like Dalmatia ignore the fact that some of these places hadn't even seen an Italian since Julius Caesar. While we could argue all day on the precise ethnic composition of Transylvania, but please let's not, however we cannot ignore the fact there are some fairly substantial regions there in the Victoria period were Hungarians were the clear majority. From this we conclude that the 19th century nationalists who drew the boundaries of these new nations totally ignored who was actually living there when they did, so we are going to do the same.
There are two ways you can form a Union Tag. Firstly is by being the the biggest baddest country in the culture group. You are a great power and no other great power has any influence there. You should be thinking along the lines of spheres of influence and province holding here. Spheres of influence can be won and lost on the battlefield, so if you as Prussia defeat Austria in war, you could perhaps get the South German minors out of the Austria Sphere of influence and into the Prussia one. Perhaps you may then need to fight France to remove their influence in Germany, or do you need to conquer the German cores, I don't know? However, once this is done it is time for three Hurrays for the German Emperor. The remaining German minors now get the option to join the new Germany (the AI is odds on to agree this, but a player has a few more options) Now the beauty of this system is that not only allow for a historic crack at forming Germany, but ahistoric possibilities like a powerful Bavaria supplanting Prussia to form Germany is also possible. Perhaps a collapse of both Austria and France will pave the way for Germany without war?
Onto the second way, via liberal revolution. Liberals who live a country of their culture type and the union tag does not exist, and are militant consider becoming Pan-Nationalist rebels. Their logic is simple, our country isn't liberal enough because the liberal voice is not being heard, if the country had a few more liberals then we would be heard. Our neighbour of the same culture group has liberals, let's join together for a louder liberal voice. When Pan-Nationalist rebels overthrow a government they offer the union tag to the most powerful country who meets the conditions. If they accept they become the Union tag and get the chance to inherit only those countries who have a liberal revolution in progress. Thus in 1848 it might not be worthwhile for Prussia to accept the German crown, but in 1859 it may just make sense for Piedmont to accept the Italian crown. Again we set up a historical option with flexibility. If you managed to take on all comers as Brunswick, why should you not form the new Liberal Germany? Note the USCA, also a union tag, does from time to time stage a comeback with this model, but probably won't last. What are the odds of that?
Now countries can revolt away from their union tag, This did of course happen, think of the CSA leaving the USA. Think of the collapse of the United States of Central America. In the aftermath of World War I, Bavarians seriously considered succeeding from Germany. Ukraine did have a brief day in the sun in the 1920's free from Russia, but that didn't last too long. Nationalist Rebels are always possible inside a Union Tag. People who feel that the current government does not represent them for what ever reason may turn to regionalism. You saw then and you see it today.
The final neat power of the union tag is it has some of the annexation restrictions lifted. They can annex countries who's culture is of their culture group and they have a core on the capital. Thus the USA, as the union tag of the American culture group, can annex the CSA to save the Union. The CSA on the other hand cannot do the reverse, all they want is to be left alone.
Now I have been a little sparse on the exact form of things take but that is because the decisions and events are still being scripted. So all in all things will firm up as we go along, but at least you get an overall idea of the concept.
Now I suppose you are wondering if there is a screen shot? Sadly the remaining Paradox staff do not understand the harsh unforgiving nature of the Calvinist God and instead choose not to work on Catholic holidays. I would pray for their souls but they are manifestly destined for eternal torment in hell anyway. Happy New Year everyone.
STAVE IV: THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Forumite bent down upon his knee: for in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Victoria 2 Yet to Come?” said Forumite.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
“You are about to show me shadows of the features that have not been implemented, but will be implemented in the time before us,” Forumite pursued, “Is that so, Spirit?”
Air travel is a pain. Obviously your flight is going to be delayed in Arlanda meaning you have to sprint across Heathrow to make your connection, only to find that that flight is delayed too. Luggage is, of course, an option extra and arrives a day or two after you, if you are lucky. However it also gives you a lot of spare time you never thought you had. So I began to write a developer dairy. As it turns out there was no diary scheduled for this topic so I figured you can get it as a Christmas bonus.
What to do about Nations forming? This is one of those tough questions we need to think about, obviously we want Countries like Germany, Italy, Romania and Yugoslavia to form because they did. We also want countries like Scandinavia and other Pan-Slav nations to be able to form because people seriously talked about this. If we are really clever we could also add in nations like Grand Colombia, which did exist a few years before Victoria 2 starts. We starting thinking about this and bouncing about ideas and we remembered a little neat thing in In Nomina, the Union Tag. This country tag is linked to a culture group and this is just the thing we are looking for.
Step one, we reshuffle culture groups so they are now much smaller and more directly linked to the countries that did form in the Victoria era. Culture groups in Victoria 2 began by being very closely linked to the culture groups in EU3. On the face of it they were pretty much linguistic entities of peoples of a similar language. Could we realistically reshuffle these into smaller entities? We realised we could, sitting in the Germanic culture group are the Swiss. Who are themselves a multi linguistic culture. Representing the fact that being German did not make it easier to rule Switzerland, just ask the Habsburgs if you don't believe me. We also break linguistically very similar people down into separate culture groups, there is no English language culture group representing English speakers around the world and we go one further and split Americans into three separate cultures for game play purposes.
The result is that some culture groups are now looking a bit lonely but most, if not all, will have a Union tag associated with them so you can form the greater nation. Some Union tags already exist at the start. The Swiss culture group has already formed greater Switzerland and are fairly happy with it. The American Culture group has the USA as their Union Tag in play from the start, and we'll explain why later. So we make culture groups much smaller, like the Romanians will now be all on their own in a culture group, but will have the country Romania associated with countries of that culture, thus the states of Wallachia and Moldovia have the potential to form Romania. The same goes for the the German culture group, now condensed down to North and South German. The list goes on, but you see where we are going with this.
The Union Tags are defined as static countries, with set cores representing their territorial aspirations. Now I suppose you are wondering why don't we try to link these cores to where the people of this culture group live? Look at Germany, the German Tag's cores are the provinces that Germany holds in 1871. Now there are provinces there where Germans are not a clear majority and excludes provinces, in Austria, that have a German majority. The Italian claims on places like Dalmatia ignore the fact that some of these places hadn't even seen an Italian since Julius Caesar. While we could argue all day on the precise ethnic composition of Transylvania, but please let's not, however we cannot ignore the fact there are some fairly substantial regions there in the Victoria period were Hungarians were the clear majority. From this we conclude that the 19th century nationalists who drew the boundaries of these new nations totally ignored who was actually living there when they did, so we are going to do the same.
There are two ways you can form a Union Tag. Firstly is by being the the biggest baddest country in the culture group. You are a great power and no other great power has any influence there. You should be thinking along the lines of spheres of influence and province holding here. Spheres of influence can be won and lost on the battlefield, so if you as Prussia defeat Austria in war, you could perhaps get the South German minors out of the Austria Sphere of influence and into the Prussia one. Perhaps you may then need to fight France to remove their influence in Germany, or do you need to conquer the German cores, I don't know? However, once this is done it is time for three Hurrays for the German Emperor. The remaining German minors now get the option to join the new Germany (the AI is odds on to agree this, but a player has a few more options) Now the beauty of this system is that not only allow for a historic crack at forming Germany, but ahistoric possibilities like a powerful Bavaria supplanting Prussia to form Germany is also possible. Perhaps a collapse of both Austria and France will pave the way for Germany without war?
Onto the second way, via liberal revolution. Liberals who live a country of their culture type and the union tag does not exist, and are militant consider becoming Pan-Nationalist rebels. Their logic is simple, our country isn't liberal enough because the liberal voice is not being heard, if the country had a few more liberals then we would be heard. Our neighbour of the same culture group has liberals, let's join together for a louder liberal voice. When Pan-Nationalist rebels overthrow a government they offer the union tag to the most powerful country who meets the conditions. If they accept they become the Union tag and get the chance to inherit only those countries who have a liberal revolution in progress. Thus in 1848 it might not be worthwhile for Prussia to accept the German crown, but in 1859 it may just make sense for Piedmont to accept the Italian crown. Again we set up a historical option with flexibility. If you managed to take on all comers as Brunswick, why should you not form the new Liberal Germany? Note the USCA, also a union tag, does from time to time stage a comeback with this model, but probably won't last. What are the odds of that?
Now countries can revolt away from their union tag, This did of course happen, think of the CSA leaving the USA. Think of the collapse of the United States of Central America. In the aftermath of World War I, Bavarians seriously considered succeeding from Germany. Ukraine did have a brief day in the sun in the 1920's free from Russia, but that didn't last too long. Nationalist Rebels are always possible inside a Union Tag. People who feel that the current government does not represent them for what ever reason may turn to regionalism. You saw then and you see it today.
The final neat power of the union tag is it has some of the annexation restrictions lifted. They can annex countries who's culture is of their culture group and they have a core on the capital. Thus the USA, as the union tag of the American culture group, can annex the CSA to save the Union. The CSA on the other hand cannot do the reverse, all they want is to be left alone.
Now I have been a little sparse on the exact form of things take but that is because the decisions and events are still being scripted. So all in all things will firm up as we go along, but at least you get an overall idea of the concept.
Now I suppose you are wondering if there is a screen shot? Sadly the remaining Paradox staff do not understand the harsh unforgiving nature of the Calvinist God and instead choose not to work on Catholic holidays. I would pray for their souls but they are manifestly destined for eternal torment in hell anyway. Happy New Year everyone.
