The biggest question we have is how to make the game come alive. How to make you feel you are steering a country through the 19th century? Now, a lot of this is done via game mechanics. We want to put constraints on your actions that matched those that countries in the period felt. We also wanted to set up the mechanics in such a way that historical choices were logical to you, even though with hindsight they weren’t always.
Also, consider the scenario set-ups themselves; each country is different. Even two countries of identical size will have different POP compositions and produce different goods, etc. Essentially, each country should be different. All this adds to the game experience.
However, we felt that this was not going to be enough on its own. Firstly, we imported as many of the old Victoria flavour events as we could. The effects may be quite small, but they helped establish some narrative for the countries, telling a little bit of the story of what was happening in the world. We then added more decisions and events to countries; from an event for Great Britain about the first FA cup final to a decision for Lippe-Detmold on who to support during the Lippe succession dispute. Although there will always be things we missed and there could always have been more, we felt that each event we added helped bring the game more alive.
Not content with events and decisions, the power of the game engine allows us to do other cool things. We decided to add two country specific rebel types into the game. Spain now has the Carlists. Unlike standard reactionary rebels, these guys will not settle for anything less than an absolute monarchy lead by Don Carlos (or right thinking heir thereof).
China gets the Boxer rebels and a decision to encourage them. These guys are also not your standard reactionary rebels. They are not just content to ensure that China is ruled by an Emperor with the mandate from heaven; as they win provinces they seek to remove European influences, things like those nasty Europeans encouraging the use of opium for example. If they, win they will enforce China’s removal from a sphere of influence. They don’t want to remember all those who died to keep China British. The down side of this is that as they capture provinces they hand a Great Power a Casus Bellum on China. So, you could end up with the Eight-Nation alliance intervening to restore order to China.
Although we are now on text freeze and won’t be adding more, we put a fair amount of effort into making the countries as unique as possible and reserve the right to add yet more in possible patches. Well, that’s it for me, back to balancing the economic system.
Also, consider the scenario set-ups themselves; each country is different. Even two countries of identical size will have different POP compositions and produce different goods, etc. Essentially, each country should be different. All this adds to the game experience.
However, we felt that this was not going to be enough on its own. Firstly, we imported as many of the old Victoria flavour events as we could. The effects may be quite small, but they helped establish some narrative for the countries, telling a little bit of the story of what was happening in the world. We then added more decisions and events to countries; from an event for Great Britain about the first FA cup final to a decision for Lippe-Detmold on who to support during the Lippe succession dispute. Although there will always be things we missed and there could always have been more, we felt that each event we added helped bring the game more alive.
Not content with events and decisions, the power of the game engine allows us to do other cool things. We decided to add two country specific rebel types into the game. Spain now has the Carlists. Unlike standard reactionary rebels, these guys will not settle for anything less than an absolute monarchy lead by Don Carlos (or right thinking heir thereof).
China gets the Boxer rebels and a decision to encourage them. These guys are also not your standard reactionary rebels. They are not just content to ensure that China is ruled by an Emperor with the mandate from heaven; as they win provinces they seek to remove European influences, things like those nasty Europeans encouraging the use of opium for example. If they, win they will enforce China’s removal from a sphere of influence. They don’t want to remember all those who died to keep China British. The down side of this is that as they capture provinces they hand a Great Power a Casus Bellum on China. So, you could end up with the Eight-Nation alliance intervening to restore order to China.
Although we are now on text freeze and won’t be adding more, we put a fair amount of effort into making the countries as unique as possible and reserve the right to add yet more in possible patches. Well, that’s it for me, back to balancing the economic system.
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