There has been a lot of questions about events on the forum. So let us devote a developer diary to what exactly we were thinking when it came to adding events. We had three goals. Firstly, we wanted to add an element of randomness into your game. No two games of Victoria 2 should be exactly the same. So you can play the same country, do pretty much the same thing and things turn out differently; maybe a little and maybe a lot. Secondly, events are there to drive a process that we felt game mechanics could not capture well, and thirdly, to provide a bit of flavour and narrative to your game experience.
Let's talk through a few examples of event series (I won't go into too much detail here since we will be looking to tweak and refine the effects through testing.) Let's start with that old favourite, the Liberal revolution. Along it came in 1848; with the right reforms you could avoid it and you knew exactly when it was coming and how strong it would be. Well, no longer. The liberal revolution is an event chain which starts with liberal agitation. Those bleeding heart liberals will be looking for subversive things like the vote or a free press, and will start to organise themselves to campaign for rights. These liberal agitation modifiers effect states and make liberals more militant and increase the appeal of liberalism as an ideology. One of three things could happen. The agitation could simply peter out and nothing much happens at all. The agitation could spread, becoming more widespread and putting pressure on you to give ground to the liberals (and with the way the upper house works, make that easier to achieve). Finally, it could lead to a full blown revolution that could then also spread to neighbouring countries. Our goal is to make the liberal revolution a bit different in every game. Instead of a single popup which says congratulations, you now have a liberal revolution, you will see a rise in liberal agitation that could lead to a revolution. This also gives the liberal revolution a narrative framework inside the game.
Next up, the American Civil War; this one I worked closely with my colleague Brother Bean on. Although, if I were to be 100% honest, he was the one doing the actual scripting. What I did was to feedback the effects of the events back into the issue and ideology scripts. So we have real events happening, like an underground railroad to help free slaves, Bleeding $STATE_NAME$, the Dred Scott decision that all feed into popular consciousness in the USA. Popular consciousness then makes Slavery more of an issue. This pushes the anti-slavery camp towards liberalism and the pro-slavery camp to reaction. Since slavery is a political reform, it also increases popular anger. This creates the effect that the Centre, who seek compromise and are conservative in our model, get isolated. Outflanked by their own fire eaters on one side (the reactionaries) and by the anti-slavery camp on the other (the GOP) the Democrat party will eventually split if no compromise can be found. There are various decisions that can allow compromise to help defuse popular anger; the Southerners thought about conquering Cuba, perhaps that is just the solution? However, can a house divided really stand? Well, we are going to make it difficult, but again you will see this gradually happening in your country and you might be able to find a solution... but do you want to?
As we have already mentioned before, but is probably worth mentioning again, we do have flavour events from Victoria. These are country specific and have country specific texts. The overall effects are slight, because we don't want you to feel you must read the event file to play a country. We have imported these from Victoria to give that feeling that you are playing a specific country. We are trying to keep the flavour that events offer, without the straight jacketing that major historical events can lead to.
We also have minor event chains to give a bit of flavour to the period. As mentioned in the Easter Developer diary we have the Second Great Awakening. This is a minor event chain that describes the religious revival in ante-bellum USA. The effects are not huge, a bit of CON here, a bit less MIL there plus a little bit of prestige. The purpose of the event chain is not to radically change the country but to tell a bit of the story of what is going on inside your country, and move things about slightly because of it. We have several of these either scripted or in the works, all to add a little bit to the game experience.
So there you have it, what were we thinking when we added events? Well now you know.
Let's talk through a few examples of event series (I won't go into too much detail here since we will be looking to tweak and refine the effects through testing.) Let's start with that old favourite, the Liberal revolution. Along it came in 1848; with the right reforms you could avoid it and you knew exactly when it was coming and how strong it would be. Well, no longer. The liberal revolution is an event chain which starts with liberal agitation. Those bleeding heart liberals will be looking for subversive things like the vote or a free press, and will start to organise themselves to campaign for rights. These liberal agitation modifiers effect states and make liberals more militant and increase the appeal of liberalism as an ideology. One of three things could happen. The agitation could simply peter out and nothing much happens at all. The agitation could spread, becoming more widespread and putting pressure on you to give ground to the liberals (and with the way the upper house works, make that easier to achieve). Finally, it could lead to a full blown revolution that could then also spread to neighbouring countries. Our goal is to make the liberal revolution a bit different in every game. Instead of a single popup which says congratulations, you now have a liberal revolution, you will see a rise in liberal agitation that could lead to a revolution. This also gives the liberal revolution a narrative framework inside the game.
Next up, the American Civil War; this one I worked closely with my colleague Brother Bean on. Although, if I were to be 100% honest, he was the one doing the actual scripting. What I did was to feedback the effects of the events back into the issue and ideology scripts. So we have real events happening, like an underground railroad to help free slaves, Bleeding $STATE_NAME$, the Dred Scott decision that all feed into popular consciousness in the USA. Popular consciousness then makes Slavery more of an issue. This pushes the anti-slavery camp towards liberalism and the pro-slavery camp to reaction. Since slavery is a political reform, it also increases popular anger. This creates the effect that the Centre, who seek compromise and are conservative in our model, get isolated. Outflanked by their own fire eaters on one side (the reactionaries) and by the anti-slavery camp on the other (the GOP) the Democrat party will eventually split if no compromise can be found. There are various decisions that can allow compromise to help defuse popular anger; the Southerners thought about conquering Cuba, perhaps that is just the solution? However, can a house divided really stand? Well, we are going to make it difficult, but again you will see this gradually happening in your country and you might be able to find a solution... but do you want to?
As we have already mentioned before, but is probably worth mentioning again, we do have flavour events from Victoria. These are country specific and have country specific texts. The overall effects are slight, because we don't want you to feel you must read the event file to play a country. We have imported these from Victoria to give that feeling that you are playing a specific country. We are trying to keep the flavour that events offer, without the straight jacketing that major historical events can lead to.
We also have minor event chains to give a bit of flavour to the period. As mentioned in the Easter Developer diary we have the Second Great Awakening. This is a minor event chain that describes the religious revival in ante-bellum USA. The effects are not huge, a bit of CON here, a bit less MIL there plus a little bit of prestige. The purpose of the event chain is not to radically change the country but to tell a bit of the story of what is going on inside your country, and move things about slightly because of it. We have several of these either scripted or in the works, all to add a little bit to the game experience.
So there you have it, what were we thinking when we added events? Well now you know.
thanks for the reply.
