Wishes for the Next Engine

[CanOmer]

Please tell your wishes for the next game engine for PDS games. Here is mine:

- Full multi-core CPU utilization
- Efficient usage of system memory. A game should use more than just 1GB memory. (So, 32 bit systems would need to be upgraded.)
- 3D Global Earth map (similar to SuperPower 2: http://www.deafgamers.com/04screenshots_a/superpower2pic4.JPG)
- More detailed 3D cities on map or in with additional GUI (Eu3 had 3d city where you can see every building. This feature vanished after Heir to the Throne expansion.)
- Dynamic provinces: We should be able to create provinces by merging some of the cities to create effective administration. For example, let Spain has Sardinia, Corsica and other three cities in Sicily. Spain creates a province with merging these 5 provinces and rule it as one. Unit recruitment (instead of recruiting 5 different places, now recruiting 5 times faster), building (same building type for every city in this province easily built and queue), setting tax rate (because of non-Spanish province, Spanish government may want to reduce tax rate to lower dissent) ..etc. This concept would reduce micromanagement deeply, bigger the empire bigger the provinces and you can still do everyting city by city if you like micromanagement.
- More 2D art for buildings, characters, units...etc. It is right and easy way for giving immression to player. So, PDS games wouldn't be consisted of only "numbers and letters".

 

[Vedinu]

Please tell your wishes for the next game engine for PDS games. Here is mine:

- Full multi-core CPU utilization
- Efficient usage of system memory. A game should use more than just 1GB memory. (So, 32 bit systems would need to be upgraded.)
- 3D Global Earth map (similar to SuperPower 2: http://www.deafgamers.com/04screenshots_a/superpower2pic4.JPG)
- More detailed 3D cities on map or in with additional GUI (Eu3 had 3d city where you can see every building. This feature vanished after Heir to the Throne expansion.)
- Dynamic provinces: We should be able to create provinces by merging some of the cities to create effective administration. For example, let Spain has Sardinia, Corsica and other three cities in Sicily. Spain creates a province with merging these 5 provinces and rule it as one. Unit recruitment (instead of recruiting 5 different places, now recruiting 5 times faster), building (same building type for every city in this province easily built and queue), setting tax rate (because of non-Spanish province, Spanish government may want to reduce tax rate to lower dissent) ..etc. This concept would reduce micromanagement deeply, bigger the empire bigger the provinces and you can still do everyting city by city if you like micromanagement.
- More 2D art for buildings, characters, units...etc. It is right and easy way for giving immression to player. So, PDS games wouldn't be consisted of only "numbers and letters".

No globe! Never globe! (Well, perhaps it would be nice for HoI...)

Anyways, I'd really like to have good shaders, and "camera controls".

 

[General Baker]

Pretty sure Johan answered a Twitch question of mine about 3D spherical maps: "never".

To be quite honest, I'd like to see military units able to roam free over terrain like in the Total War games, with an 'intercept' radius to initiate combat. Provinces are too constraining for warfare, especially when many need to be added to realistically represent tight maneuvers.

I won't hold my breath, though.

 

[CanOmer]

It is weird to see there are people against global earth, but why? Did you meet Google Earth?

 

[Fryslan0109]

I wouldn't mind if the map became more satellite accurate, but for some reason thinking of playing EU or Vicky or any PD game on a sphere makes me nauseous.

As for the other points, I don't think it would be good for armies to have a zone of influence. It's too much to manage on a global level, the AI will most likely have huge difficulties with it, and it just doesn't really work for full-front warfare games like HoI. So yeah, please keep the province by province combat (the maybe attack-on-move would be nice for Vicky 3)

If you ask me, I'm still somewhat miffed the TW series went that direction.

 

[Trexeth]

Rework of battle interface.
Real-time 2D battlefield screen with province terrain, army formation and army movement during the battle, like in this thread:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?744810-More-graphical-representation-of-battles
(Many pics in thread)

 

[Augustus93]

I actually like the 3d globe map (with provinces), one of the biggest advantages would be that the North and South poles could be represented.

 

[Konair0s]

- Full multi-core CPU utilization
- Efficient usage of system memory. A game should use more than just 1GB memory. (So, 32 bit systems would need to be upgraded.)

Must have.

- 3D Global Earth map (similar to SuperPower 2: http://www.deafgamers.com/04screenshots_a/superpower2pic4.JPG)
- More detailed 3D cities on map or in with additional GUI (Eu3 had 3d city where you can see every building. This feature vanished after Heir to the Throne expansion.)
- More 2D art for buildings, characters, units...etc. It is right and easy way for giving immression to player. So, PDS games wouldn't be consisted of only "numbers and letters".

Bells and whistles. Geoscape would be nice as an option, but I definitely will not use it.

- Dynamic provinces: We should be able to create provinces by merging some of the cities to create effective administration. For example, let Spain has Sardinia, Corsica and other three cities in Sicily. Spain creates a province with merging these 5 provinces and rule it as one. Unit recruitment (instead of recruiting 5 different places, now recruiting 5 times faster), building (same building type for every city in this province easily built and queue), setting tax rate (because of non-Spanish province, Spanish government may want to reduce tax rate to lower dissent) ..etc. This concept would reduce micromanagement deeply, bigger the empire bigger the provinces and you can still do everyting city by city if you like micromanagement.

Not an engine concern. But I would like some like this (not in this form though). Not merging provinces, but creating administrative units of various levels. Like in Victoria, with wider options to manage. For example, I want to automatically build in some region, or automatically convert provinces in a region. Or recruit troops (from 5 different places, but with gathering in one point).