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Dev Corner | Faction Dynamics Part 2

If you missed the previous Dev Corner, check it out here.


Reinventing Faction Dynamics Part 2​

Generals!

Welcome to another Developer Corner. Let’s start with a reminder, or clarification, so you have a better idea of what kind of feedback we’re looking for.

Dev Diaries give you a clear preview of what’s coming very soon.

Dev Corners are our way of involving the community earlier in our design and development process so we have a chance to listen and tweak. This obviously means there is less detail to share, because we don’t (want to) have it all nailed down yet. It’s also possible that things we discuss here aren’t all meant for the next DLC.
Now that that’s all cleared up, settle in, read it all and give us your honest, and friendly, feedback.

Now on to @Wrongwraith :

The first dev corner about all things factions got a bit too long as I tended to talk about more things than I had originally intended to. But it felt that I had to try to cover a lot of things in order to explain what I was talking about. To compensate for that, this one will be a bit more focused.

I wanted to talk about the different factions - what makes them different? Basically giving a little bit of an insight into the working day of a game designer.

What we have tried to do is to decide on a theme for a faction; and design a Manifest, and select a set of Faction Rules that relate to that theme. We want to have Goals that are more or less strategic in nature. You should be encouraged to act; and to act in a way that makes sense according to the theme wherever that is possible.

Just to say it one more time: This is very much an iterative process. The final result, whenever this feature actually makes it into the game, might be totally different.

To explain what I mean I will give a few examples and show you a few more screenshots (sorry, but they still very much have placeholder UI elements - and not at all pretty).


Designing the Axis​

Let's start with the Axis…

Germany starts the game as the leader of the Axis; nothing new there.

Thinking about the Axis, and especially the two major powers there - Germany and Italy - it is all about conquest and expansion. Subsequently that quite naturally becomes the theme for this faction. How do we measure conquest then? In HOI terms it is probably the amount of controlled territory that is outside your core nation.

Some of the bonuses you get from high fulfillment of the Manifest then also relate back to the conquest of territory, like non-core manpower, and resistance to occupation.

dc_factiondynamics2_001.png

The Axis faction window - and no, it won't look like this when it is ready.​

The Axis goals then, are as follows:
  • Secure the Resource Supply - Faction members control resources enough to ensure they can be at war with the world for some time.
  • A European Bastion - Get European Continental countries to either join your faction or capitulate / become part of you.
  • Secure North Africa - Control key areas in, and on the way to, North Africa to ensure the safety of the core Axis territory of continental Europe
  • An Armored Fist - Deploy enough armored units so that you are ready to take on anyone who opposes your expansion plans.
  • The North Atlantic - stop any enemies from gaining control of the North Atlantic in order to disrupt any attempts to block you off from world trade and to disable support for enemies in Europe.

The Axis countries weren’t very good at cooperating with each other, so it is for this reason that the faction starts without any of the more cooperative features unlocked.


What about Japan​
How does this then contrast with e.g. the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?

Here the theme is more centered around creating the prerequisites for expansion in Asia, ensuring that the Japanese industry has enough resources, and on creating puppets to establish control over the region. It is a very Japan-centered faction (at least if you play the historical version)

The manifest is about securing vital resources. The goals revolve around ensuring this is possible - and securing the necessary puppet countries.

Coastal security for example is about securing the sea zones around Japan and along the Chinese Coast, down to the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand. Secure the Oil Supply is a step on the way to fulfilling the manifest. Align China basically means creating Chinese puppets in China or conquering the country altogether. And so on.

dc_factiondynamics2_002.png

Faction Goal: Coastal Security through naval dominance


The Allies​
The Allies on the other hand have a slightly different set of goals:
They start with just a few, and then they can get a few more through focuses and/or events, but this is what it looks like relatively early on:

dc_factiondynamics2_003.png

Allied Goals​
  • Arteries of trade Focusing on asserting dominance over critical sea zones around the world
  • Guardians of peace - try to ensure world peace
  • Atomic Race - ensure that no one else gets an atomic bomb before we do
  • Imperial Glory - Keep key parts of the colonial Empires under control even in times of war.

Stalin vs. Trotsky​
We are looking at different themes for a Stalin-lead, Communist block versus one led by e.g. Trotsky. Where the Comintern under Stalin’s lead would be more focused on border security for the Soviet Union and its allies and securing key strategic locations, the Trotskyist one should be more about spreading the revolution - supporting communism in other countries and/or forcibly converting them.


The Chinese United Front​
The theme for the Chinese United Front is resistance to occupation and unity. Thus the manifest is about territorial integrity - uniting and liberating China. The goals connect to this in various ways; like trying to control the coastline for as long as possible, organizing the resistance to occupation, but also things like building the industrial capacity to be able to stand up against the Japanese - or any other aggressor.


On Feedback & Dev Corners​
This would be all for this time. Would love to hear your thoughts on what you think makes the historical factions different from each other. What other factions and goals would you like to see?

We hope you do like these glimpses into what we do. We at least appreciate the feedback we are getting, having gotten some really good feedback on factions, naval dominance, and coal/energy already.
 
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Faction goals seem like a good way to nudge the AI into playing more historically, I am very happy with this.

Could we see the system expanded a bit though, like the Crisis mechanics from Stellaris? If we had "phases" for faction goals like for the Axis "Phase 1" could be Poland, Denmark, Norway then Phase 2 being after the "phoney war" for Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg and France, Phase 3 being the Soviet Union then things like secure the atlantic, invade America.etc Have the goals be a bit smaller in scope but evolve with the course the faction takes essentially.

Also will we have any solution for countries joining non-sensical factions? E.g., the Japanese faction taking in wayward European Fascist nations after the defeat of the Axis or the Chinese United Front taking in unrelated countries. It's definitely one of my biggest frustrations. Perhaps something like a "full member" status and lesser statuses for enemies of enemies could work here? For example, invading Fascist Spain after the Axis has been defeated would push them closer to Japan yes, perhaps material aid and such but not fully joining the Co-Prosperity Sphere meaning we dont have to capitulate Japan to peace out Spain.
 
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The custom goals for the Axis and Allies are nice, but what about generic factions? Every country with a generic focus tree can create factions if they go down their political tree, and other countries with factions can just disband and remake them. Will we be able to choose our objectives (goals + manifest) when creating a faction?

If we will, having simple generic objectives like "Secure Claimed Territories" or "Defend our Home Area" would be nice. Maybe "Stop [Country] Expansion" if there's a mutual threat, or some situational ones like "Spread [Overlord] Dominance" if the faction's created between a master and its subject or "Spread Communism" if it's created by two Communists. There's just so many possibilities!

Finally, what happens if a faction fulfills all of its objectives? Do they automatically disband, or is there a chance for them to change course? If so, then factions could naturally change without needing to be railroaded by events or focuses. The Allies complete their objectives after defeating Germany, and then change to fighting communism, or the Chinese United Front disbands after Japan is defeated. Not to mention the interplay with all the alt-history possibilities.
 
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mattyh1995 said:
Faction goals seem like a good way to nudge the AI into playing more historically, I am very happy with this.
Click to expand...
I certainly hope that the AI will actually be nudged to complete them, changing its behavior accordingly, and not simply be some sort of reward they get when they complete it by pure chance after playing normally for long enough.
 
Andreu said:
Why don't we focus on talking about the Dev Corner?

We're assuming they'll release Korea without any content. We'll see when the corresponding Dev Diaries DLC arrives.
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The reason I am concerned is that the previous DLC was among the worst products Paradox has ever released. While the devs (sort of) apologized they have not given us much reason to be confident it won’t happen again.
 
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Is there a chance that you can help land enclosed factionmember with this problem? Japan send lend lease to Mengkukuo. But Menkukuo has 0 convoys and need 62. There is no way to build convoys for this countrys. Maybe buy from market! But the ai buy with his only factory more like oil instead of convoys. No idea why Mengkukuo need Oil at start?!

Faction option of share convoys or autonomy for cargo space?

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Yeah the allies factions are really in a bad shape. Like f.e. for France there is no reason to do the focus to join the allies. Its 70 days, and you get nothing lol. There should be like research and or PP bonuses for it. You can gain the same effect by simply guaranteeing Poland. So why waste 70 days of a focus?
Same goes for similar focuses for Portugal and Netherlands etc.

For factions like Australia and Canada. They have a standard bonus of getting research % from the commonwealth, then there is 1 focus of 70 days to gain 5% and one more for 5% with a cap of 50% anyway. This is just straight up bad. 140 days of focuses for a 10% research bonus on researched techs that are capped anyway if enough factions already researched them. That is just horrible. Specially for australia this is mostly useless since you are stuck with 2 research slots anyway till at least august 38. Raj & South africa can get 3 research slots sooner.

South Africa gets just one focus to gain 10% commonwealth research bonus which is already better, and New Zealand has 2 of each 5% but does gain PP from it too.

So this does need a proper rework. There should be no cap imo and bonuses should be able to stack with normal research bonuses for it
 
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Is there gonna be a new dev corner today? The redacted schedule hasn't been updated, so it's unclear whether we're getting one or if you're all on vacation (in which case do enjoy the sun and we'll see y'all in a couple of weeks)
 
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Svenkomigen said:
Is there gonna be a new dev corner today? The redacted schedule hasn't been updated, so it's unclear whether we're getting one or if you're all on vacation (in which case do enjoy the sun and we'll see y'all in a couple of weeks)
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The most recent version of the schedule says July 29, so unless they say otherwise, I'm assuming that that is when it's gonna happen.
 
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Historically, both the Battle of Shanghai and the Marco Polo Bridge incident started with local Japanese forces reacting to local incidents, some of which were false flags. Will that be added as a feature, so that a faction with a certain goal would automatically start a war with another country, or force you to make white peace with another country, like what happened in the Xi'an Incident?
 
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Could we have some kind of "War Participation Reward" dynamic, please? For instance, maybe Greece goes for Byzantium and just wants Zara and maybe Albania so it can complete "Triumph in the Balkans." Is this really the kind of thing that should tear a faction apart? Right now, the Greeks might join the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere in hopes that they can occupy that land if it's ever taken over by the Allies, but it seems like that won't be possible. What if Spain wants to help the Allies, but it also really wants Gibraltar? Couldn't there be some way to declare some objectives like this when joining a faction? Like "I'll join your faction, but if we win War X and I have 30% or more the War Participation of the faction leader, you have to give me this territory." Make it cost 3x the normal War Score, or 10x if the allied holder has the territory as a core. Diplomatic Pressure, high Opinion, Trade Deal Opinion Factor buffs, and the target faction doing poorly in its wars can decrease the War Participation requirement, whereas the target country needing that territory to complete an imminent decision or Focus, or the target faction doing well in its wars can increase the War Participation requirement. The more value of the territory also could influence this. So the United Kingdom might be willing to trade Cyprus to Al Andalus, or Northern Ireland to Ireland, but they won't trade Lancashire for anything. If the requirement is above a certain factor, it's just outright rejected.

Or better yet would be if you could make the allied territory trade DURING a war as long as you give up the appropriate amount of Victory Points and exceed a certain War Participation.

The point is that if faction join requirements are going to get stricter, it'd be really helpful to allow some flexibility in allied territory transfers. It'd also introduce some more risk vs reward, as coming in to dramatically save a besieged faction would be more difficult, but rewarding. It'd also potentially allow players that are losing a game to tempt neighbors into joining in to help them. This sort of thing can happen with focuses, so why not more flexibly with the Faction system?
 
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What about finally have some sort of Cooperation, specially when it comes to terms that faction Members declare War etc.
Maybe combined with some sort of Power Balance, so you might not be able to tell Italy not to declare War on Greece because he has a lot of Power, but later, specially when you liberated a lot of his Territory (because Italy fails every single Time) your Power over the Faction Members grows and you have then some kind of Control.

Also to Assign specific Members a special Task, like Guard this Coast.
 
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I'd like to see the Axis, Comintern and Japan's faction be more aggressive late game against neutral nations that are not on any side. I'd like to see wargoals against these neutral nations and war with them such as against Liberia, Bhutan, Tibet, Nepal the Carribbean and South America and even Ireland. I'd like to see an aggressive mentality of either you're with us or against us.
 
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