Developer Diary 10 – PoPs and the End to Manual Promotion

[bbasgen]

Looking great; sounds like PI has a great new approach in hand. POPs are the most important part of Vicky.

FWIW, I recommend the artists consider spending a bit more time on them. It appears that most POP icons are carried over from Vicky 1, and their age shows.

 

[Hiram_Maxim]

I didn't know New Orleans had a Bhuddist community in 1836.

 

[Nikolai]

Alpha, mate.

 

[unmerged(164401)]

I mean, a game is a virtual world; so you're trying to create an 'ambiance'. I understand the time issue, but why not use good old hoi idea, and include some nice photos, pic or whatever remembering the victorian aera, just like you did with your very nice trailer. For an instance, one could imaging the same population control pannel having as header background a graphic showing a crowd of varying size: you click a small pop state, and get a small crowd as background, you click on New York and the same background could fill up with lots of different people. Old ones, younglings, women, kids ... and why not a vickyish styled pic of you paradox developpers within it ? I can only imagine how much whipsers this would gather all over the net, one thinking he saw yourself, King, somewhere hidden in the game, another stating that there is definitely a photo of Johan ....

totally agree with you there. i did start a thread a while ago emphasizing the use of the event arts, which really gives a nice feel to the game. hope they don't chop it out. i think it is relativly easy to make. some dude made a a nice collection of art works for Empire:Total War..here. only trick is to choose a fairly generalized paintings, and not faction specific.

 

[Red_Communist]

Looks great!

 

[JimmyCos]

Lol, buddhist dixies ahaha

And i'm very happy with this, changing the destiny of a country was one of the best features of victoria, still we need events with the change of classes, like the typical rural exodus of the industrial revolution, or in the south american countries the rural exodus to the capital etc

 

[unmerged(22834)]

What else is OHgamer being used for? other than pop files

 

[Orinsul]

its seems againt that you'll need to both pause and click on more things to see anything, rather than the static bar down the side where you clicked on a state and there was its details if its all in seperate screens then the game must stop before you can take a glance. especially if the screens cover the message box.
All that youre glancing looks to be completely awesome, but the question if with all those steps forward is taking a couple back along with them really the thing to do.

 

[rjf101]

Well, being alover of statistics, charts,a nd graphs (especially when relating to ethnicity, religioon, and population!), thyat screenshot made my day!! I mean, its just got so much information, and all in one place!

My favorite feature: the scroll-down on oercentages next to charts! I always hated in Victoria I how you could only see the top six laregst percentages in one area (for example, even if you were Russia and had a hundred ethnicities, you could only see the percentage of the total for the siux laregst ones). I also love the state population numbers.

Also I am thrilled that the head of the VIP project is going to be handling POP distributiuon. That should be very good.

 

[Nikolai]

What else is OHgamer being used for? other than pop files

You don't want to know. It's quite horrible, really.

 

[twinxor]

What else is OHgamer being used for? other than pop files

the Clio map

 

[Jolt]

I really like the new pop promotion system and I think it shall finally make an industrialized China playable. But on the other hand was the very involved peacetime management of victoria, what made it's peace time gameplay so much better then that of EU3(I bought victoria after I bought EU3).

In victoria could I easily play with a small nation and have fun without ever engaging in a war for the entire game. In EU3 would I quickly get bored if the peacetime periods became too long.

So I hope that industrialization and modernization shall still be a very involved process, were the player still feels that HE has successfully industrialized his country.

So what I really don't want to see is:
1) I start a new game
2) I set all my sliders in good positions
3) 60 years pass with me doing barely anything industry or economy related
4) I have now an industrialized and rich country

True. One needs to strike the a balance between realism and gameplay.

If this becomes too automated without the player having much to do besides watching, we'll probably witness this become a second Rome game, which critics were that there was simply nothing to do in peace time.

 

[Ex Mudder]

I am confused as to why the new orleans farmers are unemployed at game start, though. Might explain the fish shortage if all the fishermen are out of work.

 

[unmerged(56465)]

Yeh, if you selection for national focus is give me farmers in state X, then that is what it does.

Oh my god, the possibilities are already dancing through my head...

 

[Dark Knight]

Thanks, this game looks great! One of the things that annoyed me the most about Victoria was the complete and sudden, illogical, assimilation of immigrants, i.e. 1000 Moroccan Jews converting to Yankee Protestants the day after immigration to rural Louisiana. How will this be fixed?

For the latter, POPs will keep their religion when changing culture. For the former, culture change will be more gradual than in Victoria 1. Both are made possible by having a more fluid POP system.

 

[jamhaw]

I like this, it sounds far better and more realistic than the original. What is the issue "outlawed"? I do not remember that being in Vicky I.

 

[unmerged(56465)]

I like this, it sounds far better and more realistic than the original. What is the issue "outlawed"? I do not remember that being in Vicky I.

Abolitionism.

 

[zarinth]

Automated population sounds juicy and delicious, can't wait to get my hands on it! I'm drooling already.

 

[zarinth]

Good stuff. On the downside, this will drastically reduce the length of a campaign as I won't have to leave the game paused so much while splitting/promoting POP's. What on earth am I going to do with all that spare time?

With all that time, I would not wait and just start a WAR to END ALL WARS! :rofl:

 

[gamer42_au]

I have always thought that manual POP promotion was odd, so this is good news.

However, there should be strong drivers shifting pops into vacant jobs. Effectively, there should be some measure of relative income (how much more the available jobs are paying), compared to cost to relocate.

So if industries in that State are highly profitable (hence presumably paying staff well) and have available jobs, whereas the RGO in that province is not very profitable, then POPs should shift rapidly.
Presumably a poor class POP (labourer, etc) with high literacy should shift to Clerk if there are factory jobs available.

So essentially, if you build it, they will come! Rather than having to predicate factory building on availability of people willing to work there, the profitable factories will draw in staff.

Moving further away should reflect cost of shifting, including personal cost (which would be culturally based).

Personally, I think manual POP promotion should be possible in two instances:
1) recruiting soldiers - i.e. paying money to entice people to sign up as long term soldiers; alternatively introducing conscription laws to force more people to be soldiers
2) funding POPs to become capitalist - crony capitalism is still capitalism. This was common in Russia and in some less developed nations. Basically give some favoured group enough money and other privileges so that they will become industrialists.