is the release version the latest build?

[King]

We naturally continued to work on the game after the gold master shipped, we ain't Blizzard who can sit and delay a game for a couple of years if need be. Fixing less obvious bugs, improving the AI, improving balance, and tracking down out of sync issues for multiplayer. The last one we think we have nailed. This becomes the 1.1 version. For those of you who buy a boxed version there will be a 1.1 patch on release. The Download sites recieved the 1.1 version as their gold master. It is the nice thing with download sites that we need less lead time.

 

[King]

Quite funny to have the 1.1 version as the gold version

Dear King,
Would you say the 1.1 version is in a really good shape to be precise in a bug-wise no serious patch needed shape?

In my honest opinion you can play the game and have a lot of fun with the 1.1 version. The game doesn't crash the features do what they are supposed to. We are putting a plan together for a 1.2 patch, which will include bug fixing, how much depends a lot on post release feedback from you guys. However, we are looking at things like improving the diplomatic/war AI to make the AI countries behavour better and hopefully make them more of a challenge. Another on my wish list is to look at the Capitalist factory building AI to improve that. We are looking at adding more events for the game both historical and random to make the game more interesting.

 

[King]

Sounds nice so far, is the toggle option for he military and the diplomatic things also on your priority list ? I guess they aren´t soo hard to make, because the AI is there and in HoI we can see the clausewitz engine has no problems with it
And are you looking into the money "issue", becase from the AAR´s it seems it´s pretty easy to get really high amounts of money, I dont know if it is or if the betas are simply awesome in stockpilling money.
From what I read in the AAR´s the capitalist AI is pretty good in building when it´s wise to build (enough free workers et cetera) so I guess you´re talking about their economy approach I.e that they´ll build high-profit things if possible right?

Sorry for all the questions

No we have no plans to bring in AI control, it is a huge ammount of work interface wise. There were rounding errors in the code that caused money to be injected into the system. There is one still at least one outstanding in the 1.1 version, which we are still trying to track down. That is down on our list of bugs to fix. Although to be quite frank the money injection thing does make the game a bit more forgiving for a new player, so it isn't all bad in my opinion. For the Capitalist AI it isn't consistent enough in my opinion, it can build some real turkies.

 

[King]

And I was just about to ask how this works, and if anything had been done about it since the early beta that JaguarUSF had for review.

I'm a laissez-faire junkie (and simply too old and too lazy to build railroads manually), so this is very important.

VIP:R does not seem to take any variables in count(at least I dont see them) and merely folllows a pattern.

It is one of those things we constantly improve. As we watch the game in action we can bring in more factors into play.

 

[King]

So the capitalist improvement will have high or at least middle priority in every patch, sounds good Laissez-Faire is great (IMO at least )
Since you´re thinking the money thing is good for new players you could copy the "bug" to be part of the easy and very easy mode or not?

I would like to know how much "faster" the speed of Vic2 is compared to HoI3 from your POV, especially late-game?

I know this game isn´t about military, but will we might see an add-on thats adding some military features like the automatisation of the whole army and or single parts of it?
Or even an OOB for more order and simplier management of the military?



This is excellent

We don't do difficulty levels so no, we are just trying to get the code to work as well as it can. These small rounding errors are difficult to track, so they take a lot of time to fix.

It's hard to judge the performance, I have been using debug builds for testing purposes, so when you switch to a release build it goes much faster. HoI3 1.0 seemed very fast to me.

We have no plans to do any major changes to the military system at the moment in time. However, I don't rule it out in the future.

 

[King]

No difficulty levels like in EU3 and HOI3?

It is one changing a number of static vairables, it is quite another to have different code running.

 

[King]

If a game like Starcraft 2, with its long development time and huge budget got a patch I think we are safe ground assuming that Victoria 2 will probably get a patch as well. Our goal was to have Victoria 2 playable and fun out of the box. So you would want to patch but wouldn't actually need to. We were almost successful in this. You could play 1.0 in single player but not multiplayer.

 

[King]

A very encouraging answer - thanks King (makes me pleased I have pre-ordered on faith).

Your answer does raise a question in my mind. Does the Capitalist factory building AI look at the quality/quantity of available workforce (eg literacy) in assessing the best places to build factories, as level of literacy can greatly affect profits from a factory?

Literacy isn't a factor for factory output, an fool can be taught a repetative semi-automated task. What literacy does impact is the rate of promotion. What Capitalists do is look at workers, if the factories in the state are too empty they won't build.

 

[Johan]

Effectively such rounding errors would basically just have the same effect as more gold mines though wouldn't they? as far as the world economy is concerned at least?

Also: would you say that the capitalists in V2 as stands are smarter than the capitalists in V1?

Considering the capitalist building logic in V1:Rev was

factory_to_build = rand()%possible_factories

anything is smarter than that

 

[podcat]

Effectively such rounding errors would basically just have the same effect as more gold mines though wouldn't they? as far as the world economy is concerned at least?

for world economy yes, but it can make a big difference for individual pops.

 

[podcat]

Really? There were some important modifiers to that, IIRC. For example, the a.i. wouldn't build a factory to make something where you didn't have an assured supply of an input. Lumber would have to be available for furniture factries - that sort of thing. Maybe my aging menmory is faulty. . . .

as far as I can remember it also had a check to always build machine parts factory first if it didn't have one.

 

[King]

I guess multiplayer will be one of your main priorities in the next few weeks. Several MP games are already being organized (in the Anglo and Franco forums at least) and the game hasn't even made its way into customers homes yet I have to say MP is the best way to experience a Paradox game, role playing and all.

No we put a huge push last week and we able to run for several hours without an out of sync, so fingers crossed multiplayer problems are solved in the 1.1 patch.