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podcat

Game Director <unannounced>
Paradox Staff
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Jul 23, 2007
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Welcome to this weeks development diary for A House Divided. This time we are going to talk about quite a number of things, but the common theme is military improvements.

Rally Points
As some of you might have noticed there are some interesting looking new icons in the province view and whoever guessed on a rally point system was correct. You can now mark any province you have access to (not just your own but say the front on allied territory) as a rally point. Newly constructed units will head to their closest rally point and merge with the army there automatically (up to supply limit size). The merging is togglable if you prefer to organize yourself but defaults to on. You can keep on top of your rally points in the outliner and there is also an updated recruitment map mode which will highlight rally points and indicate where units under construction will head once done.

View attachment dd7_rally.png

Leader Prestige
Leaders can now gain prestige though successful battles (and lose it if things go pear shaped). A prestigious and experienced leader will get more out of his troops resulting in a morale and organization bonuses. Prestige will also help us stop the current exploit of being able to move your best leader before every new battle. Removing a leader with high prestige from command without reassigning to a new army at his current location will incur a penalty on your countries prestige, meaning its not something you want to be doing very often. For modders out there, starting prestige is scriptable so famous generals can start with an advantage and armies can now also be scripted with their historically correct leaders.

View attachment dd7_prestige.png

New Sprites
We are adding some new sprite types to the game so armies will look different depending on their composition. Tanks aren’t quite ready to be shown yet, but here is a picture of a mounted cavalryman being worked on:

View attachment dd7_horse.png

Late Game Improvements
In the late 1800s things can start to slow down when working with large number of units so we have had a look at improving both the usability of things and performance.
  • Units in the construction screen are grouped by continent and type with summary headers (see screenshot below). These lets you queue up all those units for construction with a single click. The list of current constructions also has a button for canceling all active in case of some economic collapse or early end of a war.
  • When reorganizing units there is a quick shortcut button that will balance out your units for you in an even split.
  • All unit lists have been rewritten to give a massive boost in performance (includes reorganization windows) and will no longer be a chore to use with many units.


View attachment dd7_build.png

Mobilization Changes
Mobilization will now be capped based on the size of your standing army. How much depends on your ruling party's military policy. A pacifist party can mobilize as many as they have a standing army, whereas a fully jingoist party can mobilize up to 4 times their standing army.

I hope this wet your appetite for A House Divided. Next week we will talk about investing in foreign countries and changes to the market system for spheres.
 
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Hull as a rally point? interesting...


P.d: cheep drinks thou, that's a pro
 
The rally point seems like it could be quite convenient, and I am really enjoying the leader prestige. Kudos to you guys, and thanks for the hard work.
 
Great work!

The rally point system will for sure be helpful, and I put great hope in the new army organization tools.
Looking forward to AHD!

I appreciate the new sprites, specially the cavalry one. This will help to tell my "main line armies" (Inf and arty with some cav) from the "rapid action corps" (cav only) on the first glimpse... as long as not any unit with any cav inside will get the cav sprite, but only the cav-only or cav-majority ones...
 
Are there any changes planned to the mobilisation system?
 
Leaders can now gain prestige though successful battles (and lose it if things go pear shaped). A prestigious and experienced leader will get more out of his troops resulting in a morale and organization bonuses. Prestige will also help us stop the current exploit of being able to move your best leader before every new battle. Removing a leader with high prestige from command without reassigning to a new army at his current location will incur a penalty on your countries prestige, meaning its not something you want to be doing very often. For modders out there, starting prestige is scriptable so famous generals can start with an advantage and armies can now also be scripted with their historically correct leaders.
Now if you could only give leaders an average lifespan of more than three and a half years...
 
I hope this wet your appetite for A House Divided. Next week we will talk about investing in foreign countries and changes to the market system for spheres.

It's shame no full-blown regional markets will be implemented, but I might still be pleasantly surprised for next week.
 
I like the changes.

On the topic of improving the usability of the military related interface, could you make the game display the eta of when an army/navy will get to its final destination of its movement orders.
Currently the interface only displays when it will reach the immediate next province.


Yes, but we'll talk about those later :)

Great. :)
 
I wonder what that symbol underneath Conservative in the Politics tab (a boot standing on a smiley) and the 5 next to it represent? I don't believe we have seen that before.
 
Are the United Kingdom at war against France, Belgium, Switzerland and another country? Also, please show us if you had done something with politic more than teaking elections. The number below the conservative party had indeed never been see by me before, what could that mean?

About military, will you make more harder supply for oversea armies. I think that is the major issue if we want to do a Crimean war.
 
It would be nice if we could queue armies directly, for example create a template for an all airplane army, or mixed army of certain types of division and they would queue all automaticly.