How many events would you have to create to have all the historical leaders of Vic1? 200 or so? That's a bit of work but hardly impossible and you'll be able to make their rise context-sensitive.
Developer Diary 26 – Miscellaneous Military Stuff
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How many events would you have to create to have all the historical leaders of Vic1? 200 or so? That's a bit of work but hardly impossible and you'll be able to make their rise context-sensitive.
Yes, I'm sure they've put hundreds of man hours into researching exactly which regiment of the British Indian Army was garrisoning Delhi at the outbreak of the First World War.
In the meantime, Paradox put that time into designing robust political, economic and diplomatic models
No, you're getting a huge officer pool and a big pot of leadership at start.
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Funny, when I play Rome one of the bits I relish most is the flavour of Republican Rome. The intrigues in the Senate, the threat of the Populists, the need for patronage and "bringing the youngsters on", the threat of the mob, the management of career paths, the venal and corrupt provincial governors - all just as I have read about in the histories! Add to that the stories of those in other lands (their leaders staying around after I conquer them, their outcasts turning up in Rome with abilities to sell and stories to tell) - the game reeks of historical feel and atmosphere!
Similar applies with CK. One of my earliest CK memories is of going to war against the Pagans as a German Duke. One of my vassals refused to muster - twice - so I threw him out and replaced him. A while later, I have some Count on my border who has claims on part of my Duchy - my disinherited ex-vassal! He ran to another court and became a vassal there, then proceeded to make war on me for the "injustice" I had done him - fantastic stuff!
So, we don't get Julius or Octavian or Stephen and Matilda or whoever - big deal. They were just the folk who happened to be in place when the histories were made the first time - making it anew, with new actors and new (hi)stories is much preferable, in my view.
Having said all that, tolerance is a wonderful thing. Why should those who buy the personality hype not get what they desire? Well, I really would have no objection to that, at all. The problem here, though, is that the game is being ported onto a new engine. Some folks have spoken of Paradox "taking the stuff that was already there out" - but that's not really an accurate description of the situation. To "keep all that stuff in" they would need to remake it for the new engine, but time and people-power are always in short supply. Either they put the stuff in and leave other stuff out (not good!), or they spend more time and salaries adding it in (risky - this could ruin the business viability of the game), or they leave it out, maybe to build it into an expansion pack (if the game works in a business sense). Paradox seem to have chosen this last route, and overall I think they were right to do so.
It's a bit of a clash 2 separate approaches to history as well as 2 different game design philosophies. One way to approach history is treat it as a series of names, dates, places and facts, while the other is to treat it as currents, forces and cycles, with cause and effect. I suspect that people who tend to the first approach find historical leaders more important than people who tend to the second approach.
It's not a clash at all, then, but an entirely natural division.
The irony, though, is that the "facts and names" people (or, to be fair, their detractors) have all but secured exclusive usage of the term "simulator" for games that fit their criteria, even though it is the sandbox games that are the simulators
The irony, though, is that the "facts and names" people (or, to be fair, their detractors) have all but secured exclusive usage of the term "simulator" for games that fit their criteria, even though it is the sandbox games that are the simulators
It's not a clash at all, then, but an entirely natural division.
The irony, though, is that the "facts and names" people (or, to be fair, their detractors) have all but secured exclusive usage of the term "simulator" for games that fit their criteria, even though it is the sandbox games that are the simulators
Perhaps they should be called replicators rather than simulators, since they very often want to replicate history a la Ranke's "wie es eigentlich gewesen" in their games, and expect the AI to do so as well.
In the end, I'm very much happier that Paradox is taking a more Annales approach towards game development, allows for much more open-ended game experiences, especially for players who want to follow the path in the fork in the road that historically was NOT taken. More Braudel and less Ranke as the basis for long duree games is I think the best solution.
Yeah, and much of what we have today as roman history was written by Cicero, a character who was not only a contemporary writer, but also a powerful noble in Rome himself. So critics assume he wrote about what he liked, being non-objective and perhaps omitting certain things he didn't like?
There might be alot of history that actually happened that nobody knows about today. And in a game where the player and the AI creates the history by plausibe mechanics there is no need for predetermined leaders.
I would still call them "historical" leaders if they are made plausible.
hmmm.....
Now how plausible is it that Rome gets leaders with low military skills?
I frankly don't know. If the game was designed with that in mind or if its just random?
Only thing i know is about the legend of Spartacus which was a much better military leader than his Roman counterparts at that particular time. According to the legend they replaced a lot of defeated Legions with weak leaders and had to call in the best ones back from Spain in order to beat his huge rebellion.
I believe a quote from after the battle of Cannae went "To lose a battle like Cannae, you need not only a genius like Hannibal on one side, but also an idiot like Varro on the other..."
Well, except the extra manhours of coding and testing and such, yes? You realise the engine has to behave differently in both cases, it's not just a "it's easy to do but we won't do it! Bwahaha!" thing.
The other day, I was trying to enjoy a nice game of AGCEEP, and some thugs came in my home, forcibly uninstalled EU2, and forced me to play vanilla EU3 at gunpoint!
Did you miss the part where there are more modding options than ever before with Clausewitz engines?
I remember EU2 as being a "now I have to wait for this event to happen before I have my next war, I woudn't want to take those territories when I can have cores on them later" and "nah, let's not war now - in 20 years I get a kickass king and a bunch of badass leaders!"
Same with Victoria, the historical leaders were usually badass, and the randomly generated ones were often useless.
A bit melodramatic no? How do random leaders appeal to Johnny Sixpacks?
:rofl:
Even worse for me, I had some sten-gun wielding PI-commandos here the other day. Rapelling thru the windows, while I was enjoying a fine game of HOI:CORE, and they formatted my harddisk using windows vista, and installed only HOI3.
I agree, there was simply no reason for removing historical leader functionality. Unlike most of the other features that allow better simulating the period, this removal of historical leader functionality adds nothing.
Yes, I'm sure they've put hundreds of man hours into researching exactly which regiment of the British Indian Army was garrisoning Delhi at the outbreak of the First World War.
In the meantime, Paradox put that time into designing robust political, economic and diplomatic models
They wouldn't have to put any time in researching them, as the research for historical leaders is already done!
And I don't particularly care much about if historical leaders come with the base game or not, but the removal of the possibility to mod them in practically is what bugs me.
Did you miss the part where for the particular feature being discussed there are less modding options, not more?
Yes, I'm sure they've put hundreds of man hours into researching exactly which regiment of the British Indian Army was garrisoning Delhi at the outbreak of the First World War.
In the meantime, Paradox put that time into designing robust political, economic and diplomatic models
If only what you said about Paradox's efforts were true. I keep remembering my disappointment with EU3 and my fear is that Vicky2 is heading in the same direction.
I don't know what you expected from EU3, EU2 was a pretty shallow game after all.
This is a straw man, in fact I really don't think it's true. For example, in Hearts of Iron, HOI3 is a completely different engine from Hearts of Iron 2, but the HOI2 events can be copy-pasted into HOI3 and they work fine. In fact, in another dev diary they have said that they have ported over a bunch of flavor events from the original game. Not everything is going to be perfectly adaptable to the new game, of course, but I don't think this would be as big a deal as you are making it sound.
As far as the time comitment goes, of course there is an opportunity cost for everything. However, from a business perspective, I think the worst thing Paradox can do is alienate loyal fans. From the many passionate debates you can see on these forums regarding the historical approach versus the free gaming approach, it is very clear that many passionate Paradox fans fall on both sides. These are people who generally like every other aspect of Paradox's games. I guarantee they will sell more copies by spending a few man hours putting optional historical functionality in the game, thereby appeasing some of their traditional fans, then they would adding a couple more bells and whistles.
Again, as a reference for Hearts of Iron fans, there are fights about the supply system all the time on those pages. A lot of people think it generally works and is just a little quirky (I'm basically in this group), but a lot of people have come on and said they think it ruins their entire enjoyment of the game. What Paradox did there was the "smart" thing business wise: rather than side with one portion of their fans against another, they built an optional new gameplay mode where the supply system was drastically simplified. Paradox already sells to an extreme niche market. Trust me, I know a lot of gamers, but I don't know many who get pumped up about a Victorian-era political and economic simulation. It's not a good idea to polarise and divide this niche market even further, instead a basic effort should be made to accomodate all segments of their core fan base.
And as Johan has shown as far back as p. 2 of this thread, that moddability will exist in V2.
It may not be in the same form as in V1, but the result of the modding will be the same - custom made historical leaders with whatever traits and personalities the modder chooses to assign.