Decryption of national focuses

[millhouse25]

Hi community,
In last WWW (second Hungarian Games) I have seen possible problem that can negatively influence enjoyment of the game. When Daniel showed tooltip of France's "Go with Britain", we can see, that is obscured, because we lack technology of decryption. We can see, that they are doing it (but we don't know effect of it) and we cannot see their tree at all. But in reality, experienced player knows what "Go with Britain" does, or he can check wiki. Also player who tends to min/max will write every national focuses what other (important) nation did, so he has good overview what is going on.

My point is, why obscure such information, when I can substitute it with paper/pen and wiki. Such methods I wouldn't consider a fun way of doing things, but I couldn't resist the temptation playing optimally.

My solution is, make others tree focuses visible from the beginning (there is still usage for decryption in other mechanics of game) or hide it completely, so I will be truly surprised, what other nations are doing.

Am I right, wrong, or just nitpicking? Thx for answers

 

[Jwits]

It would make sense that if your encryption is bad the national focus would not show the name of the current focus.

 

[Dreadlord]

I agree, game should only show us in which focus tree a country is currently in but to see how deep they gone in that tree and which specific focus they are investing in that tree you should need decryption tech

 

[Giacomo1405]

they should just show also the effect of the foci that we can see

 

[LordOfWar16]

If you want to destroy the fun to some degree and google the national focuses it is your choice. Why should they get rid of it because of that? Everyone can play the games as they like. If they want to cheat, let them as long as they dont do it in multiplayer.

edit: apperiently nobody is allowed to play games the way they want according to people on this forum. In EUIV nobody seems to be bothered with the fact that you can get all crucial information about the other nations like army size etc in the ledger aswell. If people decide to play that way, let them, they dont hurt anybody but themself.

 

[Augustus93]

What about EU4 and CK2? There are ledgers showing you basically everything about your own and other countries.

 

[Mannstien]

I would wager that the entire system will be changed by the introduction of a full fledged feature espionage system. I think there are certain Focuses that should simply be hidden from your view as a player vs the AI and or Human competitor simply because those focuses for the major's were some of the most highly kept secrets even in some case from their own population.

 

[Sir Garnet]

By their nature, some focuses are public, others are secret, others might be mixed or take either course.

E.g., Diplomatic initiatives might be very public, or quite secret. Armor development might be secret until prototypes appear in a military parade or are seen on maneuvers.

 

[kviiri]

I think the OP has a very good point and I've been thinking about the same thing myself. Obscuring information an experienced player would know reeks of bad design. I mean, what's the point? It doesn't make the game meaningfully more challenging in any way, it just encourages keeping notes or reading the wiki. And "challenges" that can be overcome by just reading the wiki aren't really challenging.

 

[OrbitalOverlord1939]

I would wager that the entire system will be changed by the introduction of a full fledged feature espionage system. I think there are certain Focuses that should simply be hidden from your view as a player vs the AI and or Human competitor simply because those focuses for the major's were some of the most highly kept secrets even in some case from their own population.

I think this is exactly how it should be. If you have a national focus where you're building factories, or other large national projects, it's out in the open for all to see. (a country needs almost no decryption to be informed about it) However, in the case of more secret projects like the Manhattan Project and other weapon developments, a country would need a very large decryption value to discover what's going on.

If there's a espionage DLC *fingers crossed* it could be implemented like this. Give every focus an encryption value equivalent to it's (roughly) historical secrecy. That way, a rival nation would have to possess good decryption and intelligence to see the more secret foci. Otherwise, all they will be able to see is the "factory building" foci and then be left in the dark when you start on nukes or other "black projects." This would extend to certain diplomatic and domestic foci as well. I like the idea an opponent looking at Germany's or the USA's info screen and only seeing a question mark for the national focus slot.

Also, I agree with the idea that if you can see which national focus is being researched you should also see what the focus does for the nation. Because, like the OP said, all you have to do is read the wiki. It's not like anything is being hidden. Just give the player the information and don't make the have to scour the web.

 

[77Hawk77]

Hi community,
In last WWW (second Hungarian Games) I have seen possible problem that can negatively influence enjoyment of the game. When Daniel showed tooltip of France's "Go with Britain", we can see, that is obscured, because we lack technology of decryption. We can see, that they are doing it (but we don't know effect of it) and we cannot see their tree at all. But in reality, experienced player knows what "Go with Britain" does, or he can check wiki. Also player who tends to min/max will write every national focuses what other (important) nation did, so he has good overview what is going on.

My point is, why obscure such information, when I can substitute it with paper/pen and wiki. Such methods I wouldn't consider a fun way of doing things, but I couldn't resist the temptation playing optimally.

My solution is, make others tree focuses visible from the beginning (there is still usage for decryption in other mechanics of game) or hide it completely, so I will be truly surprised, what other nations are doing.

Am I right, wrong, or just nitpicking? Thx for answers

Totally agreed, you should need decryption to see what they are doing, not to read tooltips.

 

[Augustus93]

I think this is exactly how it should be. If you have a national focus where you're building factories, or other large national projects, it's out in the open for all to see. (a country needs almost no decryption to be informed about it) However, in the case of more secret projects like the Manhattan Project and other weapon developments, a country would need a very large decryption value to discover what's going on.

If there's a espionage DLC *fingers crossed* it could be implemented like this. Give every focus an encryption value equivalent to it's (roughly) historical secrecy. That way, a rival nation would have to possess good decryption and intelligence to see the more secret foci. Otherwise, all they will be able to see is the "factory building" foci and then be left in the dark when you start on nukes or other "black projects." This would extend to certain diplomatic and domestic foci as well. I like the idea an opponent looking at Germany's or the USA's info screen and only seeing a question mark for the national focus slot.

Also, I agree with the idea that if you can see which national focus is being researched you should also see what the focus does for the nation. Because, like the OP said, all you have to do is read the wiki. It's not like anything is being hidden. Just give the player the information and don't make the have to scour the web.

National focuses do not give you whole techs and you can't actually see what the other country is researching or have already researched. Also you have to be a pretty big stalker to actually stalk every major and some minors to find out what they are currently focusing on in their national focus tree, and you would have to repeat your stalking every two months or so.

 

[OrbitalOverlord1939]

National focuses do not give you whole techs and you can't actually see what the other country is researching or have already researched. Also you have to be a pretty big stalker to actually stalk every major and some minors to find out what they are currently focusing on in their national focus tree, and you would have to repeat your stalking every two months or so.

I didn't say you could see what a nation is researching in the tech-tree, just that if the USA goes for the Manhattan project it's a pretty big heads up that they are preparing for researching nukes. Likewise, other nations would work the same way with their various unique foci. Seeing Japan go for "war with China" would give the Chinese player a critical warning, that is IF they had sufficient decryption and could see what Japan was doing.

And on the "nation-stalking" angle, does anyone know if there are pop-up messages for when another nation finishes a national focus? (or when a specific nation finishes one) In a game, I wouldn't care what Peru is doing in it's focus tree but I would very much like to know if the USSR has or hasn't started the purge, is France going it alone or allying with Britain, and which war plan the USA is pursuing. Having a message "Great Leader! The *insert nation here* have finished/started a national project *name of foci*" or something like this, might work if it's targeted at a few select nations. It wouldn't work for the whole world, there would be too much spam, but that's what the message filters are for.

 

[Augustus93]

I didn't say you could see what a nation is researching in the tech-tree, just that if the USA goes for the Manhattan project it's a pretty big heads up that they are preparing for researching nukes. Likewise, other nations would work the same way with their various unique foci. Seeing Japan go for "war with China" would give the Chinese player a critical warning, that is IF they had sufficient decryption and could see what Japan was doing.

And on the "nation-stalking" angle, does anyone know if there are pop-up messages for when another nation finishes a national focus? (or when a specific nation finishes one) In a game, I wouldn't care what Peru is doing in it's focus tree but I would very much like to know if the USSR has or hasn't started the purge, is France going it alone or allying with Britain, and which war plan the USA is pursuing. Having a message "Great Leader! The *insert nation here* have finished/started a national project *name of foci*" or something like this, might work if it's targeted at a few select nations. It wouldn't work for the whole world, there would be too much spam, but that's what the message filters are for.

You should expect nukes around 1944 at the earliest because of the long research time and also the heavy ahead of time penalties. But let's just assume that you look at the diplomatic screen and you just happens to be so lucky to catch that specific national focus which you are incredibly unlikely to do since you don't really benefit from stalking their diplomatic options when you are at war with each other. Also the Chinese are pretty likely to go up against the Japanese and if you as a Chinese player just react to at most 70 day forewarning then you are pretty much out of luck. We have not seen any popups whatsoever, in fact you don't even seem to get a popup of won/lost battles, you losing provinces or you getting invaded by sea. You seem to only get these popups once your technology or national focus is finished. I don't agree that you should just get the information and it will be very confusing to the player to actually realize which is his own national focus that finished or is it country X national focus that has finished. Also popups are really bad and annoying, there is a reason why they almost completely eliminated from the game to begin with.

 

[OrbitalOverlord1939]

You should expect nukes around 1944 at the earliest because of the long research time and also the heavy ahead of time penalties. But let's just assume that you look at the diplomatic screen and you just happens to be so lucky to catch that specific national focus which you are incredibly unlikely to do since you don't really benefit from stalking their diplomatic options when you are at war with each other. Also the Chinese are pretty likely to go up against the Japanese and if you as a Chinese player just react to at most 70 day forewarning then you are pretty much out of luck. We have not seen any popups whatsoever, in fact you don't even seem to get a popup of won/lost battles, you losing provinces or you getting invaded by sea. You seem to only get these popups once your technology or national focus is finished. I don't agree that you should just get the information and it will be very confusing to the player to actually realize which is his own national focus that finished or is it country X national focus that has finished. Also popups are really bad and annoying, there is a reason why they almost completely eliminated from the game to begin with.

I'm thinking that the pop-ups might just be turned off for the WWW so they don't get in the way. We've seen other events, like Amelia Earhart, and fighter ace announcements come along, so they are still in there somewhere in some form.

In the Japan vs China scenario, yeah, as China you should expect to go to war probably somewhere in 37 or 38, but like Da9L showed, you can rush war and get there in 36. If as China, you see Japan getting that focus early, you can make emergency preparations and not be totally blindsided.

 

[Augustus93]

I'm thinking that the pop-ups might just be turned off for the WWW so they don't get in the way. We've seen other events, like Amelia Earhart, and fighter ace announcements come along, so they are still in there somewhere in some form.

In the Japan vs China scenario, yeah, as China you should expect to go to war probably somewhere in 37 or 38, but like Da9L showed, you can rush war and get there in 36. If as China, you see Japan getting that focus early, you can make emergency preparations and not be totally blindsided.

The idea that they might be turned off is pure speculation. The examples you mentioned are events and they are supposed to come up when something important happens either requiring your action (so you are presented with different choices) or when something otherwise important thing happens like a civil war breaking out in Spain or Germany declaring war against Poland so that you don't miss these kinds of events. But getting notified about every single national focus that multiple nations complete or start is not important. The usage of the first atomic bomb would be important but not that "UK get a +30% research speed on nuclear bombs". There are of course some exceptions that are really significant like the Soviet purges that the player should get information on, but those very few national focuses are certainly not the norm.