Developer Diary 2 – The Map

[unmerged(127071)]

I have to say this map looks gorgeous, maybe not as good as old 2D engine, but definitively a huge improvement over the other clausewitz( or w/e it's called) releases. Perhaps 3d isn't too bad after all.

Also, I like the idea you are using fan made map and not that huge monstrosity from hoi3(as well as the reasons you gave, Vicky is NOT a war game).
That will avoid the use of your geographical knowledge(or lack off.) and will give you guys extra time to release a much more polished game.

 

[unmerged(77251)]

Awesome job

Great work here: paradox maps keep getting better ! My only worry is CLIO: how much exactly did you rely on it ? CLIO is awesome in many points, and certainly a great great improvement over vanilla, but has small errors, which OHgamer's team can't fix all. As an instance, did you fix Alsace-Lorraine in Victoria 2, just like proposed here ? Original vicky1 map was pretty good on this spot, but from what I can see in CLIO, this is not the case anymore. Only a small spot on a pretty big landcape, but hey: 2 Major war were faught over it !

 

[Don_Quigleone]

And what do you say to a Dev Diary, Father?

That would be an ecumenical matter.

 

[Oorlog]

Best of both worlds Good decision!

 

[unmerged(63223)]

What a beautiful piece of artwork. Well done on the map. Captures what you described perfectly (19th century look and feel). Victoria had the best looking map of all of the first gen paradox titles. Looks like that trend has continued. Simply beautiful. Can't wait until this one is released.

 

[King]

Fail.

I take the time to read the posts people post here, however posts like that annoy me. So for the sake of the rest of the people in this thread please do not bother posting if you are not interested in posting constructively about Victoria 2.

 

[Emp_Palpatine]

Well, since I read in HoI 3 forum back then some comments from devs about "say whatever ya want, we'll make the map as we want", I figured our criticisms didn't count that much in face of fantasy borders, strange outlines and Stalingrad and stuffs hundreds or thousands of km from where they are supposed to be. Hence my reaction about the HoI 3 map.

Wathever, here are some constructive criticismsl:
Good thing you got rid of the "perfectly good map for HoI3". I've rarely seen so much approximation in a map from Paradox, it's one of the main reason I have not and will not buy the game. And I own every game in the EU and affiliated series since EU1. Save Diplomacy. Oh, yeah, it's also true that now I wait for complete versions.
For the rest, I hope for the best. No too bad now, as when first HoI 3 alpha screenshots were out I knew the map will piss me off. Here, it seems ok. I am willing to see more. If you are stepping back and going towards a more ROME approach (now, THIS is a nice game, I like the sprites and map very much. Even the usually discarded geographical map), good! I concurr with Johann here: Rome is a nice paradox game (except for the city view I don't fancy much). Please follow Rome look for sprites as well. Current ones are so... slimmy! Almost Skiny. They need a coat and haversack...

 

[Sarmatian]

Thank you, thank you, thank you that you won't have 14.000 provinces like in HOI3...

 

[finyou2]

It seems my memory is indeed serving me wrong; I didn't remember that there was coming these DDs at all for Victoria yet...

So thank you for taking Clio.

*Looks at good looking Finland*

 

[Zhou Yu]

Glad to hear you all used CLIO. Very exciting stuff.

 

[Fredgard]

Will improved and bigger agriculture be visible on the map? That would be great, seeing how you tun the forest and swamps to fields. It was happening in TW: Rome. (sorry if TW is a curse word)

So... Will it be in?

 

[unmerged(126297)]

I know we haven't seen the political map yet, obviously, but I do have a question. Are you going to keep the colors that were used for EU III? To be honest, I thought those colors were horrid. HOI III looked better, though. (But I know you're moving away from the dark map.) I really hope you guys are using something like the Whole World Mod's map for the political screen.

 

[Easy1]

You got Norway wrong. Nothing new there . I suggest that you some day, actually take a look at a map of Norway.

From Oslo and towards Trondheim there isnt much mountains, It should be lowlands the type you can see in Sweden where the forest ends. Its also a rather large lake in that area. The (big) mountains should be on the left side of the picture towards Bergen. From the picture it seems like the Hardangervidden has moved several houndred kilometers north east.

Its not that i care too much, it just looks silly next to the over-detailed Sweden, and they to this in every game the make. Just look at the Hoi 3 map :wacko:

So you consider THIS to be lowlands?
The picture is from Rondane mountain range in the path between Oslo and Trondheim, about THERE.

You should take a look at a map of Norway yourself: HERE and HERE

The HOI3 map of Norway is very wrong, not this one. The presence of lowlands in Norway is minimal.

 

[Lord Haldane]

Capital! I say, gentlemen, as marvellous a map as we could have ever dared dream! Truly, top drawer. Indeed I should reserve as my only quibble the hope that we might see the triumphant expansion of industrial society, in all its many wonders, gloriously drawn to life before us as the world rushes onward in to the grandest age yet seen in these long years of human history!

 

[unity100]

I know we haven't seen the political map yet, obviously, but I do have a question. Are you going to keep the colors that were used for EU III? To be honest, I thought those colors were horrid. HOI III looked better, though. (But I know you're moving away from the dark map.) I really hope you guys are using something like the Whole World Mod's map for the political screen.

yes.

do not want no horrible colors. eu 3 was indeed horrid in that sense. as if it was made by british people who never see sunlight but a few days in a year and all the color palette they can see is comprised of dark brown, light brown, dark green and light green, all of them with the tint of pale sh@t color.

please approach it more like eu2.

 

[Weijun]

And as King said, modders can add more provinces post commercial release if they want further refinement. This is something that I might consider as a mod once Vicky 2 is released. Xie and I drew Clio based on having a fixed limit of provinces, so some areas where we would have liked to have more provinces simply could not be done. With the base Clio map now part of Vicky 2, and with our work on Clio's Iron Heart, a bit more of a detailed map post commercial release is indeed possible as a mod for us to develop, though probably not as many provinces as we are planning for Iron Heart map.

Very much looking forward to China with all the prefectures. Barring something unforeseen, I should be able help out.

 

[Fintilgin]

My only real 'concern' after studying the CLIO maps, is that the eastern USA could really use a higher province density because of the Civil War period. The Civil War is one of the big 'set-piece' wars of the period, hell it even features on the box cover.

So for example, in CLIO you have the state of Mississippi with three provinces (Vicksburg, Jackson, Biloxi). The state was the site of some important battles and was essential for the control of the Mississippi river.

Let's add the state of Alabama at another 3 provinces. Add Georgia for 4 more. Now add South Carolina for another 2.

The states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina make up a large portion of the American South and potential battleground for the American Civil War. 12 provinces and according to Wikipedia
Mississippi: 125,443 km2
Alabama: 135,765 km2
Georgia: 153,909 km2
South Carolina: 82,931.8 km2

So about 498,049 km2.


Then there's Ireland, at 81,638 km2 and ALSO 12 provinces. Ireland, which will rest safely and peacefully under the thumb of Great Britain in 99.9% of all games, and yet somehow has provinces at something like six times greater density. Given the fact that one major function of provinces is military maneuver, this seems quite backwards!


Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Ireland having 12 provinces. It's just seems weird that the province density in America is so low. Maybe this was a limitation of the engine for Victoria 1, but at least in my opinion, America could use a bit of a province boost to make the Civil War more interesting.

Eh. For all I know Paradox has already done this. \/\/

 

[FOARP]

Well time for instalment number 2 of the developer diary process. In order to inject some much needed controversy we decided to go for something everyone can disagree about, the map.

Damn Straight!

Fortunately for us there was a perfectly good map buried in the scenario and modifications forum for Victoria, going under the title CLIO. So we sought permission to use the map and the people agreed (we felt it was a bit rude to just take it), and began from there. Here was a perfectly good map of the Victoria era, with the added benefit that the community made it so no one is going to need to complain about the province boundaries.

Here`s why I`m so pumped about a guy like King running this thing - he`s been on these forums long enough to know where the developers do and don`t need to go about re-inventing the wheel.

Here is a screenshot of Scandinavia. I sense a certain amount of bias to that region amongst my co-workers. However that aside we had one clear objective with provinces in Victoria 2, that the terrain type should be clear. So we have tried to make the provinces a single terrain texture for clarity. Now those of you with a keen eye for detail will notice a shortage of rivers and province names on the map, this because we haven’t added those yet.

The only place I would be a little bit suspicious about this is that Clio probably doesn`t have that many provinces in it - I mean, isn`t it limited to the same number there are in Vicky 1? At any rate, although having as many provinces as HOI3 might turn the game into a micro-management nightmare (although this depends on the game engine as much as anything else), the game needs more provinces than were found in Vicky 1, if only so Liechtenstein can be displayed in its full glory!

Edit: 3,829 - odd provinces? Well, this is a bit less than I was hoping for, but it`s an eminently modable game.

 

[EUnderhill]

My only real 'concern' after studying the CLIO maps, is that the eastern USA could really use a higher province density because of the Civil War period. The Civil War is one of the big 'set-piece' wars of the period, hell it even features on the box cover.

So for example, in CLIO you have the state of Mississippi with three provinces (Vicksburg, Jackson, Biloxi). The state was the site of some important battles and was essential for the control of the Mississippi river.

Let's add the state of Alabama at another 3 provinces. Add Georgia for 4 more. Now add South Carolina for another 2.

The states of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina make up a large portion of the American South and potential battleground for the American Civil War. 12 provinces and according to Wikipedia
Mississippi: 125,443 km2
Alabama: 135,765 km2
Georgia: 153,909 km2
South Carolina: 82,931.8 km2

So about 498,049 km2.


Then there's Ireland, at 81,638 km2 and ALSO 12 provinces. Ireland, which will rest safely and peacefully under the thumb of Great Britain in 99.9% of all games, and yet somehow has provinces at something like six times greater density. Given the fact that one major function of provinces is military maneuver, this seems quite backwards!


Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with Ireland having 12 provinces. It's just seems weird that the province density in America is so low. Maybe this was a limitation of the engine for Victoria 1, but at least in my opinion, America could use a bit of a province boost to make the Civil War more interesting.

Eh. For all I know Paradox has already done this. \/\/

Province/state density had a big effect on immigration, so that had to be given consideration

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

That was true in Vicky 1, and guided some design decisions for Clio (California, for example). But Vicky 2 might not work that way, which means a straight out adoption might carry over limitations that are no longer necessary. It'll be interesting to see what they do change, given ~10% more provinces and a different engine to fit it all to.