Welcome to the second diary covering stuff in the upcoming (unannounced) expansion and patch, if you missed the previous check here. I do have it on pretty good authority that there is gonna be some enlightenment on that today during the World War Wednesday stream (15:00 CEST) 
, so make sure to tune in then!
One of the things we are focusing on in this expansion is to flesh out the commonwealth nations with focus trees, art, flavor and special mechanics. First up is Canada because it was the first of the commonwealth nations to send troops to Britain.
Like many commonwealth nations it suffered from the Great Depression and came through the war a modernized, more independent and stronger nation despite the hardships of the war.
The Canadian focus tree deals with some major issues of the time. Firstly how to get out of the economic depression and get ready for the war, but also problems with conscription, particularly around french-canadians (a major reason was because existing officers were mostly english speaking). Canada had a fairly small population, but mobilized heavily during the war, both militarily (40% of men in conscriptable ages joined the military and a sizable amount of women too) and industrially (a large part of allied production was thanks to Canada). To model that one of the trade offs you will need to do in the focus tree is one between manpower and fielding a larger army or to fully mobilize your industry.
So, without further ado here is the focus tree:
You will notice a few things. First up: it's BIG! Secondly, we have made sure to support all ideologies without restricting internal development and such too much by ideology (you can mobilize industry no matter what etc). This is something we feel strongly for and will keep doing in the future as some of the major trees can be a bit inflexible. It's not readily apparent but there are a couple of new features hidden in choices in this tree as well that we will be talking about in future diaries, but to not give away too much this early: we are expanding on the puppet/subject and master relationships into a new system with levels that can be affected, and there will also be neat new things with technology (I probably said too much already now though.. More in the future!).
Each of the nations we add comes with more Generals/Admirals, portraits, custom equipment icons and 3d models where appropriate. We really want to make sure that nations we add feel fleshed out and give you new ways of playing (focus trees are great for this!)
To make playing the allies cooler we are also adding a new feature with the expansion: Request Lend-Lease. This allows you to make broad stroke requests such as requesting infantry equipment or heavy tanks to your allies, they can then exactly how to fulfill that (or if they can’t at all). Like we usually do we team new features with free stuff in the patch so you can now also modify a receiving lend-lease if you no longer need parts of it (or even the whole thing). This functionality will be for any kind of Lend-lease too so no matter how it's set up you can avoid canceling the whole thing when you just want to change parts.
Next week we will be covering more new stuff, but until then don't forget to tune in for the expansion announcement and multiplayer stream at 15:00 CEST today. We will be trying a new format with spokespersons for each major faction being able to talk on the stream with headsets so things should be more involved than normal!
, so make sure to tune in then!One of the things we are focusing on in this expansion is to flesh out the commonwealth nations with focus trees, art, flavor and special mechanics. First up is Canada because it was the first of the commonwealth nations to send troops to Britain.
Like many commonwealth nations it suffered from the Great Depression and came through the war a modernized, more independent and stronger nation despite the hardships of the war.
The Canadian focus tree deals with some major issues of the time. Firstly how to get out of the economic depression and get ready for the war, but also problems with conscription, particularly around french-canadians (a major reason was because existing officers were mostly english speaking). Canada had a fairly small population, but mobilized heavily during the war, both militarily (40% of men in conscriptable ages joined the military and a sizable amount of women too) and industrially (a large part of allied production was thanks to Canada). To model that one of the trade offs you will need to do in the focus tree is one between manpower and fielding a larger army or to fully mobilize your industry.
So, without further ado here is the focus tree:
You will notice a few things. First up: it's BIG! Secondly, we have made sure to support all ideologies without restricting internal development and such too much by ideology (you can mobilize industry no matter what etc). This is something we feel strongly for and will keep doing in the future as some of the major trees can be a bit inflexible. It's not readily apparent but there are a couple of new features hidden in choices in this tree as well that we will be talking about in future diaries, but to not give away too much this early: we are expanding on the puppet/subject and master relationships into a new system with levels that can be affected, and there will also be neat new things with technology (I probably said too much already now though.. More in the future!).
Each of the nations we add comes with more Generals/Admirals, portraits, custom equipment icons and 3d models where appropriate. We really want to make sure that nations we add feel fleshed out and give you new ways of playing (focus trees are great for this!)
To make playing the allies cooler we are also adding a new feature with the expansion: Request Lend-Lease. This allows you to make broad stroke requests such as requesting infantry equipment or heavy tanks to your allies, they can then exactly how to fulfill that (or if they can’t at all). Like we usually do we team new features with free stuff in the patch so you can now also modify a receiving lend-lease if you no longer need parts of it (or even the whole thing). This functionality will be for any kind of Lend-lease too so no matter how it's set up you can avoid canceling the whole thing when you just want to change parts.
Next week we will be covering more new stuff, but until then don't forget to tune in for the expansion announcement and multiplayer stream at 15:00 CEST today. We will be trying a new format with spokespersons for each major faction being able to talk on the stream with headsets so things should be more involved than normal!
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