US Civil War ?

[unmerged(17675)]

I haven't been following the development of Vic 2. I plan on getting it when it comes out.

Would anyone mind giving me the lowdown on the development of this part of the game. Really looking forward to it.

 

[JoeGiavani]

What?

 

[Aleksei]

It will be like two countries at.. I guess.. War?

 

[unmerged(17675)]

Well I was hoping that paradox would say a little about a scenario or give some details about how the this part of history would be effected by the gameplay.

 

[telesien]

It won't be a scenario, there will be only grand campaign. The ACW will most likely happen, that was made clear. The crucial issues are there from the begining of the game and it supposed to be quite hard to chenge history to avoid it.

 

[Dragoneer]

csa will probally revolt IF you have many pops with over 8militancy in the south, however as the last guy said, im sure its pretty easy to avoid

 

[unmerged(17675)]

Have they spoken about any events or if the ACW will have a lot of attention. From what I am hearing it won't.

 

[HMS Enterprize]

I'm so pissed that only a grand campaign is going to included in V2. ACW was one of the best scenarios to play. You can start at any year you want in EU3, is it too much to ask that we have the same facility in a more advanced game?Plus that was a really cool feature of EU3...

 

[Snaake]

Wow, you believe two nations should go into total war because one practises slavery. You're insane I'm afraid.

... Which brings us back to the exact point that it wasn't caused by slavery, or any single thing, it was an overall major rise in militancy (in game terms) in the South, caused by vastly differing issues (again, game terms) or other causes in the scenario setup (the game's, or the real-life demographics and cultural processes that happened after the American Revolutionary War).

I'm so pissed that only a grand campaign is going to included in V2. ACW was one of the best scenarios to play. You can start at any year you want in EU3, is it too much to ask that we have the same facility in a more advanced game?Plus that was a really cool feature of EU3...

It should be perfectly possible to mod in an ACW scenario, if you want, so you can stop complaining and do something about it. It's a proven fact that the vast majority just play the longest possible campaign anyway, so Paradox have chosen to concentrate on making a good game, faster (and not spending a month or two or three per additional scenario on researching said scenario). Also, wiser men than me have said that in EU3, the only things you need (per province) are dates for changes in ownership/religion/culture, and dates for building of improvements. Plus some even more minor (in terms of data and research requirements) things like CoTs and heads of state.

In V2 (or CK2, for example... some have even made a wish for "any start date they want" there), the requirements are vastly larger. Province ownership, factory/railroad/fort/naval base building is still pretty much the same, techs aren't that bad, political parties and government compositions and laws and such would still be doable, but the exact distribution of POPs for every day or month or even year, in the time period? Yeowch!

 

[unmerged(103845)]

In response to the OP, I believe the ACW has been mentioned in several dev diaries (or at least King has discussed it in response to questions). The general impression I got was that the ACW will not have any special treatment, but that is because the normal game mechanics are being designed with the ACW in mind. In other words, the developers seem to be treating the ACW as a historical example for balancing all sorts of game mechanics, which probably means it will be well-represented.

 

[DeathFromBelow]

I don't think it is pathetic to attempt to correct people when they maintain incorrect perceptions about such pivotal events. and this debate is of particular interest in this forum.

Seriously.

Read the Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina (and the similar documents from the other southern states). The southern aristocracy started the war to protect their god-given right to own slaves against what they perceived as an increasingly aggressive abolitionist movement in the north. The average poor white southerner who fought the war might have had other reasons (defending their homes from federal occupation), but it was started over slavery.

Perhaps this discussion will help the devs create or change the conditions that lead to the ACW in game. In other words, depending on what the devs think about the root causes of the civil war (slavery or states rights) that influences how their engine can be manipulate to either avoid the war or derive more benefit from an expert conduct of that war.

The VIP mod for Victoria modeled it by allowing the player to choose whether new states were slave or free and making pro/anti/neutral decisions at the compromise events. If you take an anti-slavery path the south will secede early, if you're too pro-slavery and you can end up with an uprising in the northeast. If you manage to avoid the civil war there are several opportunities to peacefully end slavery in the 1870/80's, compensating the south and converting the slaves to farmers.

 

[unmerged(17675)]

In response to the OP, I believe the ACW has been mentioned in several dev diaries (or at least King has discussed it in response to questions). The general impression I got was that the ACW will not have any special treatment, but that is because the normal game mechanics are being designed with the ACW in mind. In other words, the developers seem to be treating the ACW as a historical example for balancing all sorts of game mechanics, which probably means it will be well-represented.

Thanks for your reply. I was about to decide to wait on getting Vicky 2 but your post was a welcome site.

 

[OHgamer]

I'm so pissed that only a grand campaign is going to included in V2. ACW was one of the best scenarios to play. You can start at any year you want in EU3, is it too much to ask that we have the same facility in a more advanced game?Plus that was a really cool feature of EU3...

Give Paradox the money to hire someone/some group to spend several hundred hours researching and adjusting population data for each and every province even just at the start of each year of gameplay, and maybe that can be done.

Constructing POP files is a massive amount of work just to set up for one date of gameplay. I would hate to imagine trying to do it for 100 different dates (minimum update one per year) or even more, especially if you have to start with no data at all already collected.

Seriously, I'd much rather Paradox get the gameplay functionalities right for the grand scenario and then if the game sells well, consider investing in the development of new scenarios at later dates as part of an expansion (which would likely include more gameplay enhancements as well) than spend a huge amount of resources trying to get all the factual data for even four scenarios collated and restructured into the new game format, never mind 100 start dates (or, heaven forbid, 365x100 = 36500 start dates :wacko, and having less time or resources to make sure the actual gameplay is solid.

In the end if the gameplay for the grand scenario doesn't work right, having alternative scenarios isn't gonna make the game any better on release.

 

[OHgamer]

And this is not the forum for discussion of the historical causes of the US Civil War, if you want to have that discussion, please take it to the history forum, where you can discuss to your heart's content. This forum is for discussion of gameplay mechanics on how to model historical processes, such as civil wars, not a platform for in-depth debate on different historicological interpretations of past events.

 

[Shackel]

Wow, you believe two nations should go into total war because one practises slavery. You're insane I'm afraid.

Also, I can't stop mentioning here something that your American textbooks fail to mentioned:
The Confederacy fired the first shots, INSIDE THEIR OWN SOVEREIGN TERRITORY. That can only happen, in self defence and when you are being invaded. Unless you have ICBMs, but I think those had not been invented yet.

This is not the place for political arguments over whether the Confederacy was in the right or in the wrong, Mr. Davis.

EDIT: Emu'd? D:

 

[HMS Enterprize]

It should be perfectly possible to mod in an ACW scenario, if you want, so you can stop complaining and do something about it.

Given that your written English is pretty good, Im going to have to assume that your unwarrented rudeness is intentional. So I would politely ask you to cut it out and stop being a twat, there was no need for your 'complaining' comment.

Onto your 'point'...why should such things be left to the modders? Given how even a relatively small mod can take a) a long time to produce and b) even longer to test properly, Im going to assume you have never actually contributed to a mod, let alone made a whole one yourself. If you had, I doubt you would come out with such comments.

Again I ask why it should be left to the modders? All the Paradox games Ive played have had more than 1 scenario and quite frankly I was appreciative of having the choice. And I also dont think having more than 1 scenario is too much to ask of a game, especially a Paradox one.

People keep banging on and on with this 'its better they make 1 scenario perfect, it will be faster, more features etc etc etc' but given the choice between 1 scenario 90% complete on release or having 2 at 80% complete on release, I'll take the latter.

Why? Because as you have already shown you are more than happy to let modders pick up the slack (which they will no doubt be doing anyway) at least with the 2nd arrangement they will have a foundation with which to begin work on. Can you imagine the sheer difference in scale between editing an existing scenario or making a whole new one from scratch. And on top of that, its not exactly like the ACW scenario was unpopular anyways! No-one is asking for the 1881 scenario!

 

[Andrelvis]

Seriously, I'd much rather Paradox get the gameplay functionalities right for the grand scenario and then if the game sells well, consider investing in the development of new scenarios at later dates as part of an expansion (which would likely include more gameplay enhancements as well) than spend a huge amount of resources trying to get all the factual data for even four scenarios collated and restructured into the new game format, never mind 100 start dates (or, heaven forbid, 365x100 = 36500 start dates :wacko, and having less time or resources to make sure the actual gameplay is solid.

I don't think it is absurd to be able to start on any date, if we had the data set for 1836 and 1936, the population of the years in-between could just be the defined by the change in population composition between 1836 and 1936 being spread over the 100 years, and the same for pop growth. Possibly not enough to make it worth to be included, but is still far more feasible than having to research the population composition of 100 different years.

 

[unmerged(139928)]

Given that your written English is pretty good, Im going to have to assume that your unwarrented rudeness is intentional. So I would politely ask you to cut it out and stop being a twat, there was no need for your 'complaining' comment.

Onto your 'point'...why should such things be left to the modders? Given how even a relatively small mod can take a) a long time to produce and b) even longer to test properly, Im going to assume you have never actually contributed to a mod, let alone made a whole one yourself. If you had, I doubt you would come out with such comments.

Again I ask why it should be left to the modders? All the Paradox games Ive played have had more than 1 scenario and quite frankly I was appreciative of having the choice. And I also dont think having more than 1 scenario is too much to ask of a game, especially a Paradox one.

People keep banging on and on with this 'its better they make 1 scenario perfect, it will be faster, more features etc etc etc' but given the choice between 1 scenario 90% complete on release or having 2 at 80% complete on release, I'll take the latter.

Why? Because as you have already shown you are more than happy to let modders pick up the slack (which they will no doubt be doing anyway) at least with the 2nd arrangement they will have a foundation with which to begin work on. Can you imagine the sheer difference in scale between editing an existing scenario or making a whole new one from scratch. And on top of that, its not exactly like the ACW scenario was unpopular anyways! No-one is asking for the 1881 scenario!

You said it yourself, even a small mod(which i take that refers to major mods, as minor tweaking is quite easy) takes lots of time to produce and even more to test, time that Paradox doesn't have, as Victoria 2 is going to be released by Q3 this year, and they still have to get all main features working, balanced and stable.

Also referring to you, there is significant work needed to make a whole new scenario from scratch, and PI's major focus of development is the game itself, so a new scenario would siphon some valuable work/hours and more importantly, money, something not so abundant for this company.

And your 90% scenario to 2 80% ones dilemma is fallacious, there is no way to quantify "completeness" of a scenario and even more so, these are not the only alternatives possible.

 

[Snaake]

Given that your written English is pretty good, Im going to have to assume that your unwarrented rudeness is intentional. So I would politely ask you to cut it out and stop being a twat, there was no need for your 'complaining' comment.
...
Onto your 'point'...why should such things be left to the modders? Given how even a relatively small mod can take a) a long time to produce and b) even longer to test properly, Im going to assume you have never actually contributed to a mod, let alone made a whole one yourself. If you had, I doubt you would come out with such comments.
...
People keep banging on and on with this 'its better they make 1 scenario perfect, it will be faster, more features etc etc etc' but given the choice between 1 scenario 90% complete on release or having 2 at 80% complete on release, I'll take the latter.
...

It was meant to be blunt, perhaps, but not rude. Certainly not rude enough to deserve this reaction. I indeed haven't done any modding, but I do understand and appreciate the effort involved. The point was that if there is such a vocal and active portion of the community that really wants and ACW scenario, it is possible to make one, and I would be surprised if there isn't one within a year from release. And frankly, that's not a long wait at all, judging by how long PI games have active communities and players.

I guess the major issue is that I'd much rather take 1 scenario 90% complete on release, given the two choices above. I don't really care that much about the ACW, I play the game as a global one, and almost never venture into North American territory at all.

I don't think it is absurd to be able to start on any date, if we had the data set for 1836 and 1936, the population of the years in-between could just be the defined by the change in population composition between 1836 and 1936 being spread over the 100 years, and the same for pop growth. Possibly not enough to make it worth to be included, but is still far more feasible than having to research the population composition of 100 different years.

Are you suggesting it'd just be a function of starting population, end population, then interpolating between the two? Because that would be an extremely crude model of all the immigration, emigration and colonisation that went on over those 100 years. And even then, this approach would still require researching the 1936 situation, for practically no game use, since you can't play onwards from that date anyway.


Edit: Just realised the easiest way to make a basic ACW scenario, one that should be doable within a day or so. Play the game as USA (or eg. Mexico, and try to keep the US borders historical) until 1861 comes around and the south secedes, then upload the save game. You can fiddle around a few times to get it more historical.

 

[HMS Enterprize]

You said it yourself, even a small mod(which i take that refers to major mods, as minor tweaking is quite easy) takes lots of time to produce and even more to test, time that Paradox doesn't have, as Victoria 2 is going to be released by Q3 this year, and they still have to get all main features working, balanced and stable.

...

And your 90% scenario to 2 80% ones dilemma is fallacious, there is no way to quantify "completeness" of a scenario and even more so, these are not the only alternatives possible.

Tweaking is one thing, a mod is another. Take CSABadass's CSA mod for Vicky1. This only really edits the CSA but does it to a large extent. Is this tweaking? Not in my experience and Im sure he would tell you that a mod that only edits even one country is anything but tweaking and took a lot of effort. So lets not confuse the two.

And Id wager heavily that you have got the order of priorities regarding Paradox mixed up. I doubt it was 'we have only got till Q3 better drop all 'superflous' scenarios' but rather something more along the lines of 'lets not bother with more than one scenario then we can have it out by Q3'. There is a difference there.

And for crying out loud, my 90% etc comment was just an example to illustrate my point not something to be taken literally.

I guess the major issue is that I'd much rather take 1 scenario 90% complete on release, given the two choices above. I don't really care that much about the ACW, I play the game as a global one, and almost never venture into North American territory at all.

Ahh, see, here we go. I see this so often from many posters. After the obligitory comment about resources, development etc etc we get the 'well I dont even play/care about X comment, aka, the selfish factor.

I didnt particularly play the 1881 scenario, nor the WW1 but I appreciate the fact that they are there if I choose to play them and Im sure people who do play them appreciate it even more.