Heart of Darkness first impressions!

[Confucius Rex]

Overall it's good, but I'll echo what everyone else is saying about domains. In my game, Austria managed to colonize a chunk of central Africa and they would incorporate a territory and then immediately turn it into a domain. They ended up with like eight African domains. One of them, the Kingdom of Congo, extended from Zambia to Cyrenaica. It all looks rather ridiculous. The whole "if all your colonies touch they will become one domain" thing is pretty restrictive for the player and the AI can't use it responsibly. I'm not even sure what the downside of giving up a domain is. Someone earlier said that only the "whiter" domains should be able to be released and I agree. It's impossible to imagine that the Austrians would turn the Horn of Africa into a domain and put the Somalis in charge of it. There should be a minimum percentage of the population that is an accepted population that should be able to take over. I don't know about much of South Africa was white when it was released by the British, but it should be something like that. Oh, and when I went to war with Britain my domain the Free State of Ghana granted them military access because they weren't involved in the war. That was really wrong.

I did like seeing a very powerful Dai Viet though. I've never seen that before; even in mods.

 

[Pugman]

The first part of my post: making a decision similar to the US apply for Statehood event would fix your problem.

If the middle of Australia was released as a seperate dominion it could then apply to Australia for statehood and join. Seeing the statehood decision is taken by the AI almost 100% of the time it seems like it would be an easy fix.

The second part was just an idea to make dominion spam less of a problem.

Oh I get it now. Yes, that does make sense. That would be one way to deal with it.

 

[Umega]

-It's nice seeing countries like Greece actually aquire land through crises.
-The AI seem trigger happy with releasing dominions.
-The new naval combat is just as confusing as the old one. It's still not clear why I am losing ships.
-As Two Sicillies it was much easy to aquire Great Power status.
-I noticed AI Prussia doesn't attack Denmark/Holstein anymore at near game start.
-Newspapers are full of useless information that I already know, but I nice cosmetic addition.

Again I am more used to playing the easier EU3, so there are many things that I still find extremely complicated/annoying because I have no idea how half of the game works.

 

[delra]

Again I am more used to playing the easier EU3, so there are many things that I still find extremely complicated/annoying because I have no idea how half of the game works.

Don't worry. A few thousand hours into it I still sometimes learn new things.

 

[degen83]

Another problem with Crisis handling: If a land-transfer Crisis resolves peacefully, the country that lost land can immediately declare war on whoever received it if they have a suitable CB; I just witnessed Austria lose Western Siebenburgen to Romania as a result of a peacefully resolved crisis, and within a month they were at war to reclaim it.

Same thing happened to me, but I think it was a different province that Romania gained from Austria. The downside in my game was Austria was allied to UK, Scandanavia, Prussia, Russia, and Ottoman Empire. So essnetilaly all the biggest countries in the region were backing Austria, except for France, and not even France can stand against an alliance of that size. Event the Italian minors were allied with Austria until I managed to turn Russia and get Russia on my side. Eventually the Russian/French/Serb/Romanian coalition managed to knock out Austria's allies.


Still my experience has been that wars are more frequent now and that conflicts between the Great Powers are more frequent, which I think are great additions to the game.

Then again I've only played 1 game so far so my experiences might not be the norm.

 

[billt568]

Re: The dominion issues

Its simple really-in order to release a dominion you need to reach certain requirements
1. Must be after 1860(Dominions only appeared after this time)
2. Must hold all provinces in its regions to release
3. If they have cores(NZ, Aus, Etc) you must hold all cores to release.
This fixes the day 1 releases and makes them more historical.

And no releasing India, and the name of what is released should match the govt type

 

[unmerged(159054)]

It would be nice to be able to automatically upgrade your colony when in a race since its a pain to keep checking on it every 3 months. Even when I have more colonial points than my competitor I tend to lose the race because I tend to forget to upgrade for a while and fall behind.

 

[Laexio]

didn't they have beta testing? i don't understand why the situation with dominions is as bad as it is.

 

[Tumblew33d]

I'm impressed with how they reworked party loyalty.
And I never thought they would have (more than) tripled the amount of console commands.

Only major issue I noticed in HoD was that the only crises I've seen was Greece demanding more land (excluding one for bohemia that fizzled).

 

[Cymsdale]

I'm impressed with how they reworked party loyalty.
And I never thought they would have (more than) tripled the amount of console commands.

Only major issue I noticed in HoD was that the only crises I've seen was Greece demanding more land (excluding one for bohemia that fizzled).

How did they rework party loyalty?

 

[Tumblew33d]

When I checked the loyalty mapmode, it wasn't neutral (without encouraging it). IIRC losing wars (and a few other factors that I forget) makes the ruling party lose loyalty.

 

[Scanian_Warrior]

didn't they have beta testing? i don't understand why the situation with dominions is as bad as it is.

Thats what ive been thinking and its the reason im waiting for a patch to buy it.

 

[takedown47]

Hopefully POP demand mod will fix these bugs before Paradox releases a patch.

 

[DBtotalwar]

Hopefully POP demand mod will fix these bugs before Paradox releases a patch.

I don't think they can fix the dominion problem.

 

[208]

Biggest change in "gameplay experience" that I noticed while playing my first game with the new expansion (other than the new features, of course) was how much better balanced the tech decisions were in the early game. Playing as Spain, I had some tough choices for which tech I wanted next. I haven't had that experience in Vic2 for quite a while, great stuff.

 

[DBtotalwar]

Biggest change in "gameplay experience" that I noticed while playing my first game with the new expansion (other than the new features, of course) was how much better balanced the tech decisions were in the early game. Playing as Spain, I had some tough choices for which tech I wanted next. I haven't had that experience in Vic2 for quite a while, great stuff.

Exactly... I never used naval techs before... and now I find myself focuses mostly on the naval techs

 

[208]

didn't they have beta testing? i don't understand why the situation with dominions is as bad as it is.

Well frankly, if I had been a beta tester, I probably wouldn't have noticed either. It's just not a big deal for me, but apparently it really rubs some people the wrong way.

 

[Valhallas Call]

I just noticed something, I don't know if this is an established issue or not... playing as Egypt, I invaded Hedjaz, and then the Ottoman Empire joined the war. They were a GP, but they were not allied with Hedjaz, nor did they have Hedjaz in their SOI. About a month into the war, they just... joined on Hedjaz's side. They're still not even allied with them. I didn't even get a popup or notification or anything, the first realization I had that I was at war with them is when they occupied Iraklion. It was very strange. Have great powers always been able to just waltz into whatever war they feel like?

 

[Jaol]

I just noticed something, I don't know if this is an established issue or not... playing as Egypt, I invaded Hedjaz, and then the Ottoman Empire joined the war. They were a GP, but they were not allied with Hedjaz, nor did they have Hedjaz in their SOI. About a month into the war, they just... joined on Hedjaz's side. They're still not even allied with them. I didn't even get a popup or notification or anything, the first realization I had that I was at war with them is when they occupied Iraklion. It was very strange. Have great powers always been able to just waltz into whatever war they feel like?

If a GP has friendly relations with a nation, it can always intervene in that nation's wars, so long as the nation is 1) losing (-1 warscore), and 2) hasn't added any CBs of its own (so only in defensive wars). The GP will get a status quo CB preventing it from adding any extra CBs.

 

[mordiuz]

Hey guys, I dont know why but I find it hard to believe that Paradox did not include (once again) an historical war (probably the biggest internal conflict in Brasil History) the
FARRAPOS WAR (1836-1846) between Brasil and Rio Grande do Sul Republic ( you know, where Garibaldi fought before he went back to italy) it is a Major flaw in this new expansion...I mean its not something that ruines the game but it´s like erasing part of history.
And I dont see anyone talking about it, It´s a bit strange for me...I know that there is Mods where we can play as Rio Grande do Sul Republic, but cmo´n Paradox!! seriously?
a 10 year war vanished? coming from Paradox its really very strange...

anyone has an explanation?

Btw it´s my first post ever! lol And I used to play EUII, for me still one of the best games paradox made