Twitter: The improved expeditionary forces system is now being developed.

[potski]

I purchased EU3 when I heard that HoI3 was being developed to have a look at the engine and interface (which I have to say is a gigantic improvement over HoI2) but there was no mention of missions. I see that this is an In Nominie feature and I'm curious to see how it has been implemented. If it's not too far from what we're describing already then there's a strong hope of it being in the game or at least being able to be introduced later on in an expansion. One of the things I kept in mind when making the mock up image was that it didn't use any new user interface elements that would have to be programmed. It could all be constructed using things we've already seen in the screen shots - not to say that this would necessarily be an easy thing to program, but that's all in Paradox's hands.
Could you elaborate on the EU3:IN system?

The EUIII Missions are nothing as elaborate as you have produced. There are a number of generic Missions, but also country-specific ones. For ex USA can get one of these Missions:

Conquer Florida

Mission: The United States could not keep its hands off Florida.

Acquisition Conditions: Must own a province next to Timucua, but not own Timucua itself.

Success Conditions: Own Sminole and Timucua

Faliure Conditions: None

Reward: 8% Prestige

Relations with France

Mission: The United States needs friends if it is to grow and prosper, we feel that the best option is a solid relationship with France. Let us improve relations with them.

Acquisition Conditions: France must exist, and have relations of less than 150 with the USA

Success Conditions: Increase relations with France above 150

Faliure Conditions: At war with France, or France no longer exists

Reward: -5 Reputation

There is no element of military planning in these. You choose what you want to do to implement the Mission. It is also not the case that you can give a Mission to one of your allies/vassals.

 

[Luka]

I don't think you will have to take MC - there is no option for it on the Diplomacy screen (see Dev Diary #12). I think your allies' forces will be arranged in Armies/Groups/Theatres under AI control, and at any stage you can just take control of a part of their command structure from the AI if you want.

You are of course correct, though I do have nightmares of my exp forces lent to me by Rumania continuously leaving the front line as the AI tried to take control of them.
But this is only part of the problem, yes, I as a player may be able to take control of an allied army group, or individual exp forces, or some variant of this. But where is the operational planning? I've never played a MP game, but I'm quite sure that the human players in that situation talk to each other and coordinate their efforts. I want the same thing. The type of interactions can be:

• Human-Human
• Human-AI
• AI-AI

I want there to be the same type of interaction available in all these situations. This gives rise to three types of interface

• People chatting. Face to face, voice com, text chat, etc.
• An interface dialog like the one I have made above. Required information is requested and information useful to the player's decision is shown.
• One nation's AI interacting with it's allies' AI's - which will have a coding interface which we will never see as this will be internal to the game only, but this is essentially the same (kind of) to the Human-AI interface, but another AI is making the decisions and filling in the variables.

You can take control of an entire front of one of your allies and not have a single clue about their overall strategy, intentions, goals, targets, etc. Basically all the things that happened in the real war between allies.
This kind of system would also help make the AI function better as it would be more coordinated and use what resources it has to the best of it's ability rather than, as Katolik said, have your allies sitting useful armies on it's capital because it blind to the strategic situation outside it's own borders.

 

[unmerged(132658)]

Luka, you present good ideas. Maybe too good .

These mission plannings and interactions with the AI would make it much more fun to play with your AI allies. The way we have them now in HoI2, they don't do much.

 

[Luka]

Luka, you present good ideas. Maybe too good .

These mission plannings and interactions with the AI would make it much more fun to play with your AI allies. The way we have them now in HoI2, they don't do much.

Yeah, I'm a single player kind of guy. I've never played a MP game and I'm not sure I will (maybe one day...) so this kind of stuff is very important to me. If I'm restricted and just absolutely cannot interact in a realistic way, as in HoI2, it really lessens the experience.
As you say, the way things are now in HoI2 your allies can be a liability as you can't control them or know what their plans are.

I'm curious to know what people think, particularly those who have played both multiplayer games and single player games enough to compare in HoI2. Do you feel the lack of coordination between allies when playing single player as opposed to multi?