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podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
Paradox Staff
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Jul 23, 2007
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Welcome to this week's development diary for A House Divided. Much like a pirate's blunderbuss it's going to be filled with a mix of all sorts of stuff.

Dealing with your sphere can sometimes be a micromanagement task, so we set out to improve this. As you found out in diary 8 you can help support your sphere claim by investing in their infrastructure or factories, but this is more of a long term help. To help with the more immediate influence battle we have now changed how influence is used once you fill up influence to max (without spending it on an action). What happens now is that any "overflowing" influence gets deducted from your strongest competitor removing the need to be quick about hitting ban embassy etc and will help automatically protect yourself when someone is moving in on your sphere.

To quote Lenin: "The peaceful development of any revolution is, generally speaking, extremely rare and difficult ... ", so why not give it a helping hand? We are adding a new wargoal available to proletarian dictatorships to help spread the communist ideology. If you use this goal on a country their government type and ruling party will switch to yours and if you are a great power they will be put in your sphere. Most other political relations with other states get toned down or removed due to the new rulers. If you also want to make them your puppet you will have to add an extra goal for this. Spreading your ideology also has some special rules: If another country (or their allies etc) intervene they will be given a special CB they can use in case of losing to help bring back the government from the claws of communism. However they are not forced to try this.

The many flavorful decisions are one of Victoria II's strong points and we wanted to make this even cooler. To have more room for reforms and popular movements we have split them off to their own tab which let us put in a picture for each one (I think we have something like 145 unique pictures).

dd10-1.png
We have also been doing some changes on terrain. Certain borders (like Himalayas) can be set as impassable making things like an invasion from India into china a much more complex affair. Terrain also affects combat width, so hills and mountains will have much reduced width of combat and make selecting where you do battles (if you have the option) a bit more tactical. Another change that people was asking for in an earlier diary was for railways to increase the movement speed of your troops, which it now does.

dd10-2.png

Last for today is flavor names for wars. We have extended the number of custom names for wars and they can be matched to participating countries. So if England attacks USA with certain types of wargoals the new system kicks in and you can get a "2nd American War of Independence" or English conquests in south Africa gets you Boer Wars. We a have a few of these, like The Opium War, Boxer Rebellion or The Pastry War. Another cool thing is that the point of view affects the name of the war so for outsiders the American Civil War will be called that, but for participants (or closely aligned countries) it will be shown as "War of Northern Aggression" for CSA and "War of the Rebellion" for USA.

Tank of the Week
This weeks tank is the Italian Fiat 2000, a 40t monster, often called the heaviest tank of WWI, although it never actually saw combat during the war and only 2 prototypes were ever built. Top speed of 4km/h and armed with 9 machineguns and a short howitzer gun mounted in the top turret.

IMG_02122011_153717.png



Next week we'll be talking about making uncivilized countries more interesting to play!
 
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Impressive. I am specially impressed how you take several things (features) demanded or proposed by the community and make them get real. This is really, really good style and shows how much you appreciate the loyal community. I am sure many people will be happy to see their wishes come true. Thumbs up!
 
Where's our tank!

Wahhhh! Want Tank!

*sulks*
 
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I like this. :) Especially communist flavor.
This games needs more special flavor for countries to set them apart.

Getting more exited for this expansion.
 
Nice changes I really love the new details, now we just need an unique cb for fascists, perhaps a conquest province CB with less infamy?


Also I hate to be picky but I though we were promised tank sprites ever dev diary :p
 
Wow, the amount of stuff you're putting in this expansion pack is enormous. As the last official one, it has to be doesn't it :p. Great improvement over previous expansions like Divine Wind and Semper Fi, which added too few new features.

Thanks for listening to us fans regarding stuff like micromanagement, impassable boundaries, etc. Really speaks to your company's character. Still if you're taking requests:

-Make the Claim Core CB only take the core provinces in a state, not the whole state. Messes a lot of stuff up in terms of historicalness
-Include with the expansion, the templates (.PSD or whatever format) you used to make the tech pictures, decision pictures, event pictures, etc. Fans can never accurately recreate the overlays you use for those GFX files (the light gradient, the scratches, etc.), resulting in new events, etc. sticking out from the vanilla ones. It'd be such a small effort for you, but the modding community would be so much more greatful in return. I remember Victoria I had an event picture template included, which meant mods like VIP integrated seamlessly in the vanilla game.

Can't wait till Friday. I've never enjoyed a DD series like this one.
 
How so? Same as a normal border but a different colour.

Thats why I find it weird. It looks like a political sub division rather than a geographical/physical one. I'm sure I'll get used to if it is the final one, but I think giving it a different stle aswell as colour would be great.



Speaking of improvements for communist countries; Would it be possible to have bureaucrats build factories under planned economy(with their choices massively effected by Industry NFs) to take some of the heat off the player a bit? I'm sure Stalin didn't specify every single project in his five year plans did he? :)