Victoria II: Heart of Darkness Dev Q&A - Ask us all your questions!

[podcat]

Hi guys, since the expansion Victoria II: Heart of Darkness releases tomorrow I thought we should run a Q&A thread during the day.
So if you have any questions to us the devs or one of the beta testers - post away!

Brief description:
Victoria II: Heart of Darkness, the second expansion for the grand strategy/ political simulator Victoria II focuses on the Scramble for Africa as you compete with other colonial powers and experience international crises which require Great Power mediation if the world is to avoid war. Read all the devdiaries here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...-II-Heart-of-Darkness-Developer-Diary-Archive

 

[podcat]

Hey there!

I haven't played victoria 2 yet but looked at a few AARs. An issue that came up a lot of times were the bureaucrats (and their culture conversion) in colonies.
Will that issue be resolved?

This is by design, its supposed to be harder to convert to states where there is the wrong cultures. You can convert them to dominions instead now if you want though.

You still need bureaucrats for the final step of converting to a state, but it also cost colonial points. Cost scales with distance, so making a state far away is very costly, and its cheap close by.

 

[podcat]

I've read in one of the beta AARs that revolutions are more likely to happen in HoD.
Have you done something to increase the fighting power of rebels? Do the changes you did for unciv armies (higher base tactics) apply to them as well? Or will they be just more numerous?

We have redone this a bit. Uprisings can now grow larger, but rising chance of smaller rebellions are much lower.

I'm really liking the idea of those dynamic tags. How does the game decide what to call them? The dev diary says they get their names from one of their constituent states, but Svip released a country called the Confederation of Yoruba States, and I don't think there's a state called Yoruba States.

The names is based off the region names, and there is a Yoruba States region.

Can the international crisis system force/allow countries that have a truce or an alliance together to war with each other?

Yes, although it will break the alliance. Backing your allied is much preferred from the AI's point of view though.

Q about a very very minor thing (more a wish than an actual issue): any quality of life improvements for a CSA player after winning the war? Some way to revoke USA cores or maybe a special casus belli to force the Union to give them up. I like the idea of playing "alternative" USA, but having to fight war after war soon becomes boring and prevents me from playing CSA further.

We havent changes this. There is a new peace option that is used in crises where cores are removed, so a crafty modder could make a post-civil war specific goal you could use as the CSA to remove union cores

Can you incorporate diplomatically Dominions later? [I'm guessing no]

not diplomatically no

How trigger-happy is the AI about creating Dominions? I've seen in a couple of the Beta AARs how Portugal turned both Mozambique and Angola into dominions and it got me worried about the scramble for Africa turning half of Africa into dominions instead of directly-ruled colonies.

Also, is there any way to prevent "Dominion Crawl" to get tons of Colonial Points by releasing colonies as puppets, colonizing adjacent territories and then releasing them as well into another puppet?

Well, by doing so you might get more land, but you lose control and income, so its a tradeoff. I'd say perhaps the AI is a little trigger happy at the moment and I'll probably make it a little more hesitant in a future patch. But it depends on what people think. At the moment about half of africa gets turned into dominions I'd say. It depends a lot if there have been big wars hurting british and french navies and impacting their existing colonial power. Remember you get to control armies of dominions so they are more tightly controlled than you are used to as well.

 

[Darkrenown]

I've read in one of the beta AARs that revolutions are more likely to happen in HoD.
Have you done something to increase the fighting power of rebels? Do the changes you did for unciv armies (higher base tactics) apply to them as well? Or will they be just more numerous?

Base tactics applied to rebels too, yes.

 

[podcat]

Yes!

to expand on this, I think we set it on 50 now? There are also wargoals like Humiliate that get ticking warscore from winning battles so you dont even need to hold land to enforce it.

 

[Darkrenown]

Colonial points are based on how big your navy is.

Note that CPs also come from bases, not just ships. This way if your fleet gets sunk you don't lose ALL your points.

All non-territory wargoals?

Humiliate and Assert Hegemony are the ones that tick from battles.

 

[podcat]

Will HoD come with a list of expansion notes (equivalent of patch notes) so we won't get any unpleasant surprises when things don't behave as they used to? I also happen to think bug fixes are a great part of expansions even though they usually don't get much attention.

We do them for patches, but for an expansion it would be like 20 pages of text. The manual and dev diaries highlight the most important changes.

Can't you change somehow the way dominions work so that non-primary or accepted culture majority colonies become uncivilised dominions instead of civilised dominions like Canada or Australia.
It just seems wrong to me that what would normally take you years of colonising proper can just be done here in one click. And that going from a savage area in the middle of Africa without even a state one year later you get a civilised nation...

Also, will we mac users get to see this expansion ?
If yes, as I supposed it'd be handled by VP like AHD, have you any idea on when we can expect a release date ?

I dont have any information to share about a mac version right now. I'll let you guys know when I do. As for dominions, I think the current system works, but I'll be listening to players after release.

 

[podcat]

To the Devs and Beta testers: What do you feel is the most important addition to Victoria 2 that Heart of Darkness brings to the table? In your own opinion of course I'm not looking a clinical response. In other words: What's your favorite new feature?

Crises is my favorite I think, but I also love looking at my enemies ships burning in naval combat

Ticking warscore fits perfectly in the era, good to know that it'll be affecting not just conquered land but also battle warscore.

Otherwise, has been changed land combat finally?

Land combat has been changed a lot. you can read about it in this beta AAR: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...t-of-Darkness-Beta-AAR-War.-War-never-changes

Is the release time on amazon correct?
As in: If I preordered on amazon, will I be able to download HoD at midnight PST?

I dont know actually. generally releases are in the morning GMT so I would not expect it at midnight.

 

[podcat]

About this Dominion feature that looks lovely - how does it determine which regions to release? Some of them seem to give gigantic amounts of land in screenshots. Does it release land according to how far the total land reaches or according to 'underlying' cores? If say, your colonies in Africa are connected from one end to the other, would the release option, say, force you to release one gigantic amount of land? That could be catastrophic considering cultural issues. Also, Im supposing this is true, but say colonial powers each got a slice in one large ethnic area - if they all made dominions, are there enough tags for that? So say Austria, Russia, GB and France had grabbed some portion of...Egypt. Im assuming whoever took the south gets something like Sudan, but what would say, the other three release? Each different variations of 'Egypt', or would the game not let someone else release dominons?

It picks the first region, which should be a port area most likely for dynamics. For dynamic dominions you release the entire connected area, you cant release only a part of it unless it has historical cores. so if you are worried about cultural issues you are best off releasing smaller dominions as you colonize.

You can get several dominions with same name base. So you can get say The Peoples Republic of West Morocco and Mighty West Morocco bordering each other

 

[podcat]

Has anything been done about flavor union states like Gran Colombia and Poland-Lithuania appearing so often under AI control? It's great that they were added, but these really are a different kind of union country than nations like Germany or Italy. They should be a nice goal for a powerful human or AI player to achieve through decision, but shouldn't be something that pop up through revolution nine times out of ten.

I dont think I'v seen Poland-Lithuania much since we introduced crises, but Gran Colombia is still fairly common.

A nation cause a crisis and steal a Great Power's satellite provided it has the cores?

you can only take parts of it, not the whole thing in one crisis.

 

[podcat]

I have 2 small questions:
1) How did you change RGO hiring mechanism (before it could only hire 50 pops per day)?
2) Did you change capis/AI so they can destroy closed factories ? Later in the game I saw countries with lost of unemployed craftsmen and with lost of closed factories which blocked constructions of new ones.

1) it now hires and fires based on number of workers. so filling a giant RGO doesnt take forever. The more workers, the faster it goes. It also scales with how much it feels it wants to adjust (less if its making only a little loss etc)
2) no, but capis will try and reserve slots when it can for future factories

 

[Darkrenown]

Is there a new sprite for the new battleship unit?

Yes.

 

[podcat]

Main question for me:
Is it possible to mod that dominions have master's primary culture only?

you could do an event to handle it I guess

Also are you at all allowed to tell us if there is a sprite pack on the way? If you don't answer, I'll expect its a secret (although an answer would be nice)

there is

 

[podcat]

Question about crises:

When I am on the loosing side of a crisis that gets resolved peacefully, can I refuse the deal?

For example:
Greece stirs up a crisis for some territory held by Ottomans. (Ottomans not being a great power at that point)
Everyone and their Mother sides with Greece, while Ottomans only get one power to help them.
That one power gives in, wanting to give away the territory owned by Ottomans.

Can the Ottomans now refuse to give in? Perhaps having to fight everyone and their mother alone?

no, they have to accept their fate. they can try and stir up a crisis later to get it back though when the situation is more favorable

 

[podcat]

What was the reasoning behind not putting the pre-order on steam? Is it more profitably to sell steam codes on your own site? (If it is, i will 100% buy it from the Paradox site instead)

I think it is, but I'm not 100% on all the sale details.

 

[podcat]

I don't mean to be pesky but how about it? By all means do curse my line for six generations along with an answer

haha ;D yeah that particular problem we have not solved. you have to try and get immigrants and then promote.

 

[Pallidum]

What type of unit sprite pack is it?

There are two unit packs. The Interwar Engineer pack follows up on the previous Interwar unit packs, and the German Unit Pack enhances German and Prussian armies with updated uniforms.

 

[podcat]

Wouldn't the Ottomans need cores on the region to do so? (I am not certain whether they have those or not, at least in Ricky they don't)



Even as the "minor partner" (non GP) in the crisis?
Your and podcat's answer seem to contradict each other a little.

I answered from an AI PoV. as a minor partner you can try and force a war by mobilizing etc, but it might not be enough. There are also events where you can try and get more tension faster but I cant for the life of me remember if they fire for the minor nations right now or just the major.

if you are the mediating major nation you can be as stubborn as you like.

 

[podcat]

Besides Jan Mayen being added as a joke country (the AAR possibilities...), are there any other new countries? Macedonia (with all three regions or just Northern Macedonia, doesn't matter) would keep me occupied for hours!

No new nations except Jan Mayen (and the dynamic ones). I had to stop Wiz from adding in Atlantian union cores for them ;D We might add some surprises in a patch though. JM is going to be hard. You are a one state country so need to expand somewhere to get up in power and with very little population it will be hard to conquer anything. I wish you luck though

Alrighto, here's a bloody stupid question that I'm not sure you are able to answer but I'll ask anyways because you're the devs anyways. And before anyone asks, I've also submitted a support ticket to GG about this same case but I just want to ask opinions on if this is somehow possible.

So I bought Heart of Darkness couple days ago from GamersGate and already managed to activate the free game that came along with it (Victoria: Revolutions). However, because I'm slightly nuts I also decided to buy Victoria II and AHD from Paradox webstore so I could also add them to my Steam library (yeah I'm that kind of person) and now thought if there's any chance of getting a refund on the GamersGate copy of the expansion so I could get it from Paradox web store instead. According to the Refund-policies at GamersGate, I am entitled to a full refund during 14-days if I haven't "used" the game (viewed the serial at GamersGate) which is something I have not done but because I already managed to activate the free game that came with it, I'm now completely confused if it is still possible. Technically I think it should since I only paid for HoD and just got an extra game for free, but since I've already registered that game to this site for example, I'm not sure if it nullifies my chances of a refund.

It's a damn stupid question, I know, but I'm just curious. It doesn't really affect me that much if it's not possible as I still get to play it, but like I said, I'm a bit foolish person when it comes to Steam games and such so it would just be cool to have it there with all my other games as well.

Thank you for anyone who replies and hopefully someone understands my "problems" :laugh:

I think you have to talk to GG. I dont think the free game cost a lot so I imagien your refund would still be available but I dont know, only GG can answer that one.

Can you give us the Manual? It would make the waiting a little bit easier .

Maybe. we are putting the last design touches on it. When I get it you guys get it

 

[podcat]

btw, for people who are thinking about newspaper modding. We have detailed documents for that I will be posting tomorrow or thursday