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

[Lockesly L`Crit]

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?

As someone who plays Japan mostly, my favorite bits are the reduction in Dreadnought spam, Battleships (for when you want more power than a Cruiser but less cost of a Dreadnought), Torpedo Attacks (Commerce Raiders and Cruisers are no longer the gimps of the sea), the crisis system tied into liberation movements (making Korea a risky conquest), Korea being no longer a puppet of China, and finally being able to take my cores back from Russia without carpeting the entirety of Russia.

 

[IconOfEvi]

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?

 

[apg]

Hi podcat - release is tomorrow and when i download it i shall slaughter 5 kittens in your name!

Also on to my question With regard to negotiations, in future (maybe in patch), will you look at adding more things be available, so offering money, trade goods (i.e. well give 500 artillery pieces and 1 steamer etc) and own territory? (i also think this would be good for AAR people).

i think that would be very good.

 

[Lockesly L`Crit]

(diff post for diff question)

I noticed there's a minimum supply payment for naval. Is this because of what was noted above - that naval size is important for colonial whatevers? Are there similar limits to the army or civil things? Are there maximums? do they change based on things (things being: political party, year, technological advancement)

National Stockpile is split into three different sliders: Army, Navy, and Construction. Only the naval slider has a minimum, and there are no maximums.

 

[delra]

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?

Between the crisis system, the land warfare changes, the new naval combat mechanics and some other things.... all of a sudden at some point in testing a couple months back I discovered that the late game, the three decades after 1900 seem to be a very exciting fun part of the whole game to play through. You have all the toys available to you, and the crisis system encourages you to use them creatively (liberate Poland!). Late game is often criticized in PDS games as a period when you've won already and there isn't much to do, even the most popular titles (EU3!) were afflicted. I consider HOD different in this regard and hope more people stick around and give the 1900s a chance after getting the expansion.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

Also, Great Wars are activated a little later now so there's that to look forward to.

 

[Cybvep]

What are you most proud of in this expansion?

 

[IconOfEvi]

Oh also about the Crisis system...I think I saw in a video or something that say, minor powers, can help make crisis? How would this work? Or is it only what the game determines is a crisis becomes a crisis? Say, I'm Serbia. I want to remove kebab. Would I like, be able to devote a NA towards festering an internaltional crisis on an Ottoman province? I need that clay lost to kebab. Is there something like a "I-don't-give-a-shit" hidden mechanic that prevents Balkan minors, to note just one major example, from causing headache after headache early in the game, that gradually goes down?

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

What are you most proud of in this expansion?

Winning a drinking competition

 

[unmerged(467597)]

Only the naval slider has a minimum, and there are no maximums.

Would it be possible to avoid this minimum by manually setting your clipper and steamer stockpiles to 0?

 

[Lockesly L`Crit]

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?

If you have one huge chunk of land in Africa that is contiguous, that entire land will be a dominion if you release. It makes you think strategically about what you want to release and what you want to keep. You certainly don't want to release a dominion that could have the potential to rise up as a GP in the future.
If you have one huge chunk of land (let's say... in the north of Africa) and one small bit of land on the Ivory Coast, and they aren't connected, then you can release the smaller land as a separate dominion without worrying about the bigger chunk. The key word of releasing is contiguous.
And yes, dominions are unique, and there are a LOT of them in the files. If UK has one part of Egypt, France has another part, and Spain has a third part, they all can release a unique dominion, based on the region name.

 

[Rain908]

I noticed that unciv-s get research points for conquering now.
Isn't that incredibly abusable?

 

[delra]

(diff post for diff question)

I noticed there's a minimum supply payment for naval. Is this because of what was noted above - that naval size is important for colonial whatevers? Are there similar limits to the army or civil things? Are there maximums? do they change based on things (things being: political party, year, technological advancement)

It prevents spam of Dreads, and ships in general, you can only build as many as your economy can "carry". It also helps naval and artillery factories as demand can't jump from 1 million to 0 units when the UK, the US, Russia and France sign peace move their sliders to 0%. There are no other mins/maxes on the spending sliders.

When is the next expansion coming out? :wub:

Hehe. We all have to prove to PDX there's a huge market for Vicky2!

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?

For dynamic dominions you just release all the continuous connected land. If you want smaller dominions, you need to release them "as you go". You can trace your colonial range through them (colonize around your dominion), so it's not a bad idea to take 3-4 states, wrap up a dominion out of them, and then keep pushing into the heart of darkness using that dominion as a base.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

I noticed that unciv-s get research points for conquering now.
Isn't that incredibly abusable?

Not really, in practise.

 

[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

 

[Arthasus]

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.

 

[Pellaken]

You may not know when it will be released - which is fine, who am I to tell you what you've been or not been told by those 'in the know' - but if I can ask, when will you know when - IE would there be an e-mail going around sometime later today or tomorrow telling you what time the release will be?

 

[Torakka]

I'll re-phrase the earlier question about bureaucrats in colonies:

Currently in AHD, when there is for example a clerk POP of culture A each new person promoting or demoting to clerk will join that existing POP regardless of their original culture, unless there also is another clerk POP of culture B and the person promoting or demoting to is is of culture B. That is of course a nice feature when culture A happens to be primary or at least accepted culture, but such is not always the case. Now, in most colonial states there already exists a native bureaucrat POP and when, for example, your primary culture farmer promotes to bureaucrat he will join that already existing POP therefore assimilating away from primary culture into a non-accepted one. One can obviously wait for some primary or accepted culture bureaucrats to emigrate into that state before starting to promote bureaucrats, but even then natural promotions and demotions have most likely converted some POPs to non-accepted culture.

So the question is, does it still work that way in HOD or are primary and/or accepted cultures somehow "protected" from assimilating into non-accepted cultures through promotions and demotions?

 

[Seelmeister]

Oh also about the Crisis system...I think I saw in a video or something that say, minor powers, can help make crisis? How would this work? Or is it only what the game determines is a crisis becomes a crisis? Say, I'm Serbia. I want to remove kebab. Would I like, be able to devote a NA towards festering an internaltional crisis on an Ottoman province? I need that clay lost to kebab. Is there something like a "I-don't-give-a-shit" hidden mechanic that prevents Balkan minors, to note just one major example, from causing headache after headache early in the game, that gradually goes down?

Exactly, civilised states who are not great powers can use a national focus to increase tensions in a state where they have cores. However, even when you have raised tensions sufficiently to prompt a crisis, a Great Power will need to take up your cause, and then you will have to hope that whichever Great Power that does is able to secure enough support to secure the disputed territory for you. Any Great Powers who are not at war will be offered the chance to represent your cause, starting with the #1 ranked power. As a GP, there is no prestige loss if you refuse to take up the cause and the crisis does not begin.

 

[jordie]

Are there any interface or usability improvments? e.g. being about to hit a hot-key to upgrade a fort in a province/region.