Divine Wind - Developer Diary #3

[Besuchov]

The Middle Kingdom

I told you last week that we were working on some new gameplay for two nations. Last week I talked about Japan, this week the turn has come to China.

China has always been a bit of a problem in Europa Universalis; a huge nation with huge potential power, that for some reason spent the era in decline and failed to compete with the European powers. This kind of situation, where a nation is theoretically strong (and therefore strong in a historical setup) but due to bad decisions or factors not modeled in the game acts weak, is always a problem in a strategy game. We have always had the problem where the Chinese AI takes a look at what it has to work with and goes on to conquer large chunks of the world. The solution so far has been to give China a modifier that simply penalizes it for being China. We figured we could do better than that.

We sat down and thought about how we could tame the Chinese monster with something that felt more historical and fun and that would give someone playing China something to play with. We came up with what we call Factions.

In the present implementation, China has three factions that compete for influence over the empire. These are the Eunuchs, the Temples and the Bureaucrats. Each of these factions will have an influence value, and the faction with the highest influence will be considered to be in power. Which faction is in power will have a great impact on what you can do with your country; one faction might allow you to build colonies and fleets but will only let you fight defensive wars and so on.

The influence of the factions will change with the mood of the country, represented by the current monarch and the domestic policy sliders. A monarch with a high military value will cause the influence of the warlike Temples faction to increase, while a domestic policy setting favouring Naval over Land will increase the power of the Eunuchs.

The second thing we are implementing is a new government type for China called the Celestial Empire. The key property of the Celestial Empire is that its ruler has the Mandate of Heaven. This represents the very strong belief of both the rulers of China and its citizens that they have the support of heaven. As long as the emperor has the Mandate the people will support him and China will enjoy peace and stability. Should signs appear that he no longer enjoys the Mandate of Heaven his people will lose faith in him with the result that revolts are more likely, stability will be harder to regain and so on.

These effects combined will make China a colossus on clay feet, fettered by an internal power struggle. A Chinese player will have a huge potential at his fingertips if he can maneuver the right faction into and out of power at the right time while at the same time trying to maintain a stable and harmonious country. Should things go against him though, he can quickly find himself in a situation with an unstable country, possibly facing mass revolts with factions that will not release the tools needed to correct the situation; a great challenge, in other words...

Screenshot will follow!

 

[Johan]

There is alot of flexibility in the faction system, but currently its only used by China.

 

[Johan]

When you say "currently" in "Currently it is only used by China", does that mean that modders could have multiple countries using it?

Yeah, should be possible. Currently all faction-lists are country-specific.

faction = temples
faction = enuchs
faction = bureaucrats

enuchs = 10

 

[Johan]

I love you guys !

Curiosity question : what does enuchs=10 entry mean ?

I think its their influence.

 

[Johan]

Wonderful, thanks.


New curiosity question : will there be a faction file (like for rebels and such) with factions within nation entries ? or will it be stored in one of the two (common and history) country files ?
And while i'm at it, i guess two nations will have the possibility of having the same factions (if noted for each country) ? I also guess that by "playing" with the faction influence, we can virtually eliminate a faction, and/or restore it later ?

Factions are all defined in a common\factions.txt with all rules and benefits.

A faction can be used for alot of countries.

temples =
{
	rule = 
	{
		can_not_build_colonies = yes
		can_not_build_buildings = yes
		can_not_send_merchants = yes
		capped_by_forcelimit = yes
	}
	
	modifier = 
	{
		naval_forcelimit_modifier = -0.8
		land_forcelimit_modifier = -0.8
	}
	
}

 

[Johan]

Again, after looking at the first Magna Mundi the Game screenshots, it looks as though the small buttons on the lower right hand EU3DW interface are shortcuts similar to those seen in screenshots of the former.

No, the small "buttons" are filters for messages, just as in Victoria 2.

 

[Trin Tragula]

While this system sounds very nice (and I will probably test performance after adding factions to all countries in the game as one of my first modding tests with this expansion) I agree with those that note that it seems to be a bit of an artificial way to weaken China. There are a lot of other ways that are much closer at hand.
I really like factions in general though and would love to see factions for other great empires such as the Mughals, the Ottomans and Russia as well