Heart of Darkness first impressions!

[Daema]

Think I'll hold off on this. I don't care much for naval combat or colonialism, but the terrible AI on dominion-releasing and a hard lock on Germany kind of kill it for me. The only other new thing is newspapers, is it not?

Oh, and a question about dominions: what decides their primary/accepted cultures?

 

[Riotkiller]

Sadly my laptop can't run V2 properly (Integrated Intel Graphics Card, so it crashes after a while) so I have to wait til I'm home to really try it. I briefly loaded it and liked the look of it though. One thing... the USA says Secondary Power and is ranked 10 when I clicked to select a country. As soon as I started the game it was back to it's normal GP position and the Netherlands (which was said to be ranked 8 and a Great Power) was a secondary power. I'm not sure if this is an issue for any other countries, but it did seem a bit weird.

On the other hand, being able to see why the AI will accept/reject my offers was pretty awesome!

 

[Riotkiller]

Think I'll hold off on this. I don't care much for naval combat or colonialism, but the terrible AI on dominion-releasing and a hard lock on Germany kind of kill it for me. The only other new thing is newspapers, is it not?

Oh, and a question about dominions: what decides their primary/accepted cultures?

Synergy bonus for factories + land combat rewire... I suggest you check out the Dev Diaries and in particular delra's land combat AAR (That seems to be the one you'd most interested in)

 

[walrus]

>Finland released via crisis
>Because they have one core on Viipuri in Karelia, Greater Finland is created stretching Finland's borders right up to Archangelsk and encompassing Murmansk

Now, I saw a screenshot where Finland was released with more sensible boundaries, so what's going on here, Paradox >.>

 

[Tamas]

so is there like an editable parameter for the AI's enthusiasm for dominions? Seems like the beta AARs didn't have this problem, or hid it very well.

 

[Lexar_kg]

Think I'll hold off on this. I don't care much for naval combat or colonialism, but the terrible AI on dominion-releasing and a hard lock on Germany kind of kill it for me. The only other new thing is newspapers, is it not?
Oh, and a question about dominions: what decides their primary/accepted cultures?

Just majority of population. Master's culture will be accepted - people who 'tolerated' in dominion while natives (most times in Asia/Africa) will be 'first class citizens'.

 

[Cymsdale]

If the desire to release dominions is toned down, I could see it being a problem for the AI in that they would lose their competitive edge in colony scrambling. It makes sense to me to have some type of restriction on release. I don't think doing it based on culture would work very well because you have so little control over that. Tech sounds good but basically just turns it a period of the game that goes from no dominions to a ton of them. Perhaps something simple like requiring you to hold the provinces as a colony for X amount of time before it can be released, or alternatively making the release process itself something that takes Y amount of time to do, and a nation can only "process" the release of one dominion at a single time (with the ability to cancel it in the middle if they wish). Maybe it could cost something to release one, although I'm not sure what.

 

[Aeon221]

I thought we had added that already. I'll put it on the feature list for the patch.

Even better, could you also make it so that right clicking the upgrade thing for colonies makes it auto upgrade? That way if I am absolutely determined to get a colony I can make that call and just check up on it regularly. Same with the sphere upgrade and relationship increase/decrease buttons in diplo.

 

[EuroLooney]

I don't really understand the hate about Germany being "locked out" until later in the game. Is it that hard to wait a few decades to become a guaranteed superpower? Even from a historical standpoint the idea of a unified Germany before 1848 at the very earliest was incredibly unlikely. Someone mentioned an analogy to France earlier, but the two situations are extremely different, as France had (by and large) been unified for quite awhile before Germany. Hell, even after unification in 1871 in our timeline, a LOT of people in the Wilhelmine empire wouldn't have considered themselves German above all else (looking at you, Bavaria).

 

[SuiciSpai]

With the flashpoint now i can stay as a GP easily with Spain. Austria and OE has lost a few great wars (but there wasnt yet great wars.. buts was all vs them in any case) and with flashpnts they are releasing a lot of regions. Chezc republic, Grecee, Romania.. Also, France has been cut so size hahaha (not by me).

Its 1860 and lots of dominions already. Portugal has 4, and GB has canada and columbic british columbia and some others.

At least now there are more things to do while playing and I dont skip years at full speed. Thats nice.

 

[Ignudo]

If the desire to release dominions is toned down, I could see it being a problem for the AI in that they would lose their competitive edge in colony scrambling. It makes sense to me to have some type of restriction on release. I don't think doing it based on culture would work very well because you have so little control over that. Tech sounds good but basically just turns it a period of the game that goes from no dominions to a ton of them. Perhaps something simple like requiring you to hold the provinces as a colony for X amount of time before it can be released, or alternatively making the release process itself something that takes Y amount of time to do, and a nation can only "process" the release of one dominion at a single time (with the ability to cancel it in the middle if they wish). Maybe it could cost something to release one, although I'm not sure what.

all good suggestion. I also think releasing dominions should come with a prestige hit. Maybe the amount of the prestige loss could be tied to the year.

to control the much reported cases that GPs release partial dominions before even finishing colonizing the whole region (Australia, NZ...) one could just make it a requirement that no neighboring province is unclaimed. While this isn't the most sensible solution from a logical point of view it would certainly effectively control the most ridiculous outcomes of this new system in a way that should be very easy to implement.

 

[unmerged(106138)]

I really like the changes to prussia. Instead of instantly declaring war on austria and then denmark you have to actually spend infamy and time on justifying wars at the start, you have to actually struggle instead of having everything handed to you on a plate. If only dominions weren't being released willy nilly left and right during the first couple of years this would be a pretty good release of the expansion. There really needs to be some requirement for releasing dominions at the start. Tech requirement, limit to how often you can release a dominion, population requirement, unable to release dominions that border uncolonized provinces... something.

The problem with Britain seems to be that they dismantle 2/3rds of their fleet pretty much straight away which leaves them with way too few colony points to spend on the race in america.

Portugal can colonize the rest of Zambia and Mozambique at start but lacks the CPs to do so and releases the rest of their colonies to do it, including zambie and mozambique >.>

 

[The Turk2]

I was bespectacled to see Portugal and the UK release half their colonies (or in the case of Portugal all of them) right at the beginning of the game. So there was Australia, New Zealand, India (out of Goa), Mozambique, Columbia (Canada), Angolan Federation (or something weird like that).

My only question is why? It looked so ugly, that I had a hard time believing it, all the way until Italy annexed Croatia?? Can the devs please ban Europeans annexing territory that they are not neighbors with! The funny thing is that Italy invited France to help them in their war to take Tuscany, instead of taking Tuscany, France asked for Croatia -__-"

I thought the AI was supposed to be smarter (and in some ways it is), but when it comes to CB's and annexation logic/releasing dominions, it is still terrible at it.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

I was bespectacled to see Portugal and the UK release half their colonies (or in the case of Portugal all of them) right at the beginning of the game. So there was Australia, New Zealand, India (out of Goa), Mozambique, Columbia (Canada), Angolan Federation (or something weird like that).

My only question is why? It looked so ugly, that I had a hard time believing it, all the way until Italy annexed Croatia?? Can the devs please ban Europeans annexing territory that they are not neighbors with! The funny thing is that Italy invited France to help them in their war to take Tuscany, instead of taking Tuscany, France asked for Croatia -__-"

I thought the AI was supposed to be smarter (and in some ways it is), but when it comes to CB's and annexation logic/releasing dominions, it is still terrible at it.

Italy has cores on Dalmatia, is that what you mean?

 

[Oliver Twopence]

I lol'd.

 

[Vestinus]

As Greece, I'm at mid-80's with nowadays borders, and I just enacted Megali Idea, and get ready for next war vs ottomans.

I have to say that the new implementations are very nice and...particular.
Happened that I had to change "main ally" 3 times to be sure to win crisis, first UK then Russia and UK back in 70's.2 crisis failed, 1 war after crisis lost (white peace), got all Greece except Crete and Ottoman egean Isles by crisis (crisis war or clean crisis).
However I found hard to survive with money (quite surprising, since vicky1 without revolution I hadn't...) so economy seems harder, and for the first time I've got to research many economical techs...
Warfare is way better, no more running away little armies, no more long siege nor carpet-like occupations.
The whole game simulates very well the tensions of the 19th centuries...especially balkans one and center Europe (without a strong Germany Austria and Russia are destined to crush each other quite often).

I have a question...can I become byzantine empire with a prussian costituzionalism?

 

[Arentak]

My first impressions: I played for a half hour this morning before work. I played as France. I started a fabric factory in Normandie since that area would get a bonus for having cotton. I was concerned about initial factory layouts ignoring the new "resource synergy" rules.

I did my usual "put influence in every area another GP has 25 points in", and sure enough, I got badmouthed in 50+ countries, rreducing mucho influence from my rivals.

The naval slider was awesome! I hated manually setting my clippers to 0 and artillery to 0. As France, my minimum naval slider was 25%, which was still pricey.

I spent some time dealing with the fact that I had so many different cavalry to choose from, and I thought "This is unneeded complexity". I have read the DD and AAR's, so I knew about the shock vs the recon vs the useless(basic cavalry). I couldn't decide how much cavalry a 30k man army should have. I appreciated the increased support limits, I always thought 18000 men was way too few to garrison my prussian border.

Navy-wise, i see I can add 3 or 4 commerce raiders instead of 100. I used to literally add 5 or 6 commerce raiders in every single province of France and North African France so that by 1842 or so, I'd have 300 commerce raiders to fight England with. Now, I'll have to make some sacrifices, probably starting with removing all my frigates, and then phasing out my Man of War ships and replacing them with CR's as well, while building naval bases in all states.

And that's it. A very limited set of impressions since I only played a tiny bit. Overall solid improvements. Didn't notice the "creazy release-dominion" thing, but I'm pretty sure when I left it was still the first week of Jan in 1836.

 

[HisArmada]

all good suggestion. I also think releasing dominions should come with a prestige hit. Maybe the amount of the prestige loss could be tied to the year.

Prestige hit is a good idea, it'd give the AI and players a reason to not just instantly create a dominion to free up CP.

to control the much reported cases that GPs release partial dominions before even finishing colonizing the whole region (Australia, NZ...) one could just make it a requirement that no neighboring province is unclaimed. While this isn't the most sensible solution from a logical point of view it would certainly effectively control the most ridiculous outcomes of this new system in a way that should be very easy to implement.

In the case of Australia, it was independent states before uniting to form Australia in 1901. I think being able to release dominions by selecting individual (but connected or close in distance) states would be a better alternative.

If there was a no unclaimed neighbour province rule, it would force the creation of massive blobs to be able to release, e.g. having to have all of Africa colonised by GP's before being able to release your blobs there.

 

[Majromax]

The problem with Britain seems to be that they dismantle 2/3rds of their fleet pretty much straight away which leaves them with way too few colony points to spend on the race in america.

Portugal can colonize the rest of Zambia and Mozambique at start but lacks the CPs to do so and releases the rest of their colonies to do it, including zambie and mozambique >.>

I wonder if this, combined, might be the problem with early dominion creations. Hypothetically:

• Starting great powers have just enough colonial points for existing-colony maintenance plus historical levels of expansion, preventing overly-unrealistic early colony-spam
• Industrialization puts budgets under pressure, especially as the game rebalances from the state-at-start to a longer-term equilibrium
• To not run in the red, GPs cut back on naval expenditures
• ... cutting into the colony point budget
• ... making maintenance of existing colonies impossible, sparking too-early Dominion release

I do not yet own HoD (I haven't even gotten a game of HoI3:TFH in yet!), but this might be something fixable with a mod on the naval/colonial-points end of things. Dominion release as a consequence of an overextended empire is certainly plausible, but GPs shouldn't be forcing themselves into overextension on day 1.

 

[The Turk2]

Italy has cores on Dalmatia, is that what you mean?

No, Tuscany was independent and in the sphere of Austria. Italy with France as an ally declared war on Tuscany to annex it. Thats all fine and dandy, until France (after they had won the war), instead of choosing to have Italy annex Tuscany, randomly chose to annex Croatia from Austria. Yes, FRANCE annexed CROATIA, and was therefore surrounded by Austria.

My point being that on the continent of Europe, the European powers, should not be allowed to annex territory that is not adjacent to them, in countries they are not neighbors with. This really goes back to the whole Holy War CB in EU3 and CK2, both of which needed to be nerfed, and frankly it worked out well for CK2.