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So what have we done lately? Well, plenty of stuff that will go into 1.14 and the next expansion. Lots of stuff we are not ready to talk about yet, but this week we'll give you information about some new systems.

The first one is the new areas system, which will be a part of the patch.

Areas are a new type of region, usually consisting of between 3-6 provinces, and with no province being in more than one area. A new areas mapmode will show you which provincs are in what areas. This will be used for various mechanics we will explain more next week.

And then we have a feature which will be part of the as of yet unnanounced expansion.. The Victory Cards system. This is a feature that is primarily designed for multiplayer games, as it is introduced to reduce hugboxes and permanent allianceblocks.

At the end of a campaign, the top countries end up with 15-20K in score, so our goal was to create a system that could provide 30-50% more score for those that are willing to go for it.

And thus, we introduce the Victory Cards.

Starting in 1450, and every 100 years after you will be able to get a Victory Card if you have at least 300 development. Of course if you don't qualify for 1 at a given date, you will get 1 as soon as you qualify for it.

A victory card grows in score value every month if you own, control & core every province in its area, and it takes 20 years to grow to its maximum, and 20 years to drop to zero from its maximum.

The area selected is slightly randomised, but average development matter & it must be adjacent or within 1 seazone of any part of your nation or its subjects. Only provinces belonging to potential or current rivals are take into consideration, and you are far more likely to get ones on nations ahead of you in score or belonging to other players.

The first card is worth 1000, second 2000, third 3000 and the final 4000 points.

Here I've loaded up a savegame from 1.13 in our office MP campaign, and in the first 2 months I've gotten 2 victory cards to basically fight my game-long-hugbox-friend France.

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Score in MP is always the absolute least of anyone's worries. :p

But seriously, it doesn't seem problematic to you to balance "victory points" around a specific development limit that obviously differs between different levels of DLC investment?

For what possible reason? 300 development is not hard to get. Some countries start with more than that in 1444.
 
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A very minor thing... perhaps they could be modded to be "missions on steroids" for single player, with some permanent benefits. Like, fulfilling the age-long russian ambition to a a mediterranean port could grant a bonus to trade and navy....
 
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Is the area system going to replace some aspect of regions? Sounds needlessly redundant.
 
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A very minor thing... perhaps they could be modded to be "missions on steroids" for single player, with some permanent benefits. Like, fulfilling the age-long russian ambition to a a mediterranean port could grant a bonus to trade and navy....
I am really hoping we see something akin to the Campaigns system. The Areas are pretty small, so if we do see something along those lines it'll be a more minor, less intrusive feature.
 
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Why are people who say they don't care about multiplayer getting worked up over a change for multiplayer? It's not nice to not want other people to get nice things just because you don't care about them. I don't care about multiplayer but I'm interested in the various new mechanics we're going to hear about next week that have to do with these areas.
 
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One idea to make multiplayer more interesting : do not reveal the 'real' identity of each player until the game ends. That way 'pals' won't team up, and you may end up allied to the guy that backstabbed you in the last...five...games...in a row - without realising it. :p.

One thing I've found in multiplayer is that an individuals real identity can certainly play a part in how they are treated (normally, for good reason!)

Of course, power assignment then has to not be in advance with each player, once in the game, picking their power under some sort of alias that persists for that player and that game. But think of the fun!
 
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Tell you guys what, starting with the next dev diary I'm going to institute a new rule that goes 'stop complaining that the week's dev diary isn't about the precise thing you wanted a dev diary about'. You're of course free to critique the actual contents of the dev diary, but the flurry of 'why isn't the dev diary about X' posts is getting very old.

I think you should have predicted this when you decided to have weekly dev diaries and not only when there's a DLC coming. The dev diaries ones for DLC were comprehensive and had a clear scope(as each DLC has one), the new ones are like snapshots of what we have managed to implement by this thursday and people react accordingly.
I like the card idea, but don't play MP so I don't really care. I might feel this is too little to show and start asking about things that currently bother me in the game.
If this continues, unless you can show improvements on bugs, UI, gameplay every week, the "why is Prussia still not available in 1444?" posts will not stop.
How about instead of a dev diary that gets you 1 h to plan, gather screens and write, you sit in front of the PC and do an AMA? And then, when there's enough stuff to do a proper diary, nobody will complain.
 
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Agreed. Especially since the final score doesn't account for different starts, does it yet?

It sort of does/doesn't. Score is weighted over time; leading late in the game is worth significantly more than leading early in the game on a monthly basis. Even just screwing around as Mutapa I'm first in score in SP not long after 1600 for example.

A nation that leads in trade income and has 50 heavies might lose out because it's not current in diplomatic technology, despite that there isn't a nation in the world that could challenge its navy. Score is also problematically low for huge nations doing neighbor bonus slingshot timings. Finally, it's a capped deal. If you're 1st/1st/1st, from a score perspective it doesn't matter if you own 2/3 of Africa with a bunch of CNs versus owning all of Europe and Asia combined. You're still 1st/1st/1st either way and your score growth will be identical...but these are not identical positions.

So score only has partial reliability as a performance measure. It doesn't reliably tell you the state of your empire in the absolute sense, or create any comparability between games. It doesn't even reflect the current state of the current game consistently (a nation trailing in score could have over double the active army and be more advanced).
 
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I have never found the score to be very helpful. A lot of the times it does not really show who are the true powers, or the emerging powers at a certain time. And the ranking from it I have always taken with a large pinch of salt.
But I do hope the AI is not bothered by it, as in SP I always have my own goals, and I would not be willing to upset the BBB just for some points.
But if this could be changed to give better rewards for doing so, maybe taking a leaf out of the English Parliament system, and give rewards such as you get from that, then I think it would be a much better idea.
 
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Preferable the victory carrds will be used by the AI to make it make senseible belivable decisions. Kind of like how the missions make nations go after things that they did or might have found intresting in real life. These kinds of systems is what's missing from CK2.

The area system is great, could you use it for the centres of reformation so you only get on centre of reformation per area (instead of all getting group together in one place as it is now).

Moreover I advise that blobbing must be nerfed, even more (though common sense made the game so much better).
 
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This is really only meant for MP games that want to play with score, AI does not get victory cards and you don't get them in SP period.

I feel like this is important information. A lot of people, including myself, were assuming that these 'control area' victory cards were going to be like 'Get a Presence in India' and cause random wars.
 
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Oh oh oh oh, this area thing is an exciting preview of things to come, I'm looking forward for next week's diary now.
The whole victory card thing sounds like a good idea for multiplayer though, I'm sure it can be configured on or off and most important of all can be swept out of single player with a single click. Right?
 
I have to admit, it is somewhat impressive how Paradox manages to avoid fan demands sometimes. They've had calls to fix Buddhism, espionage, naval mechanics, peacetime gameplay, multidirectional trade, blob stability, etc., and we get a Dev Diary on... the score.

Wah wah wah. This is one dev diary out of the hundreds they are going to do. They are going to hold back the juicy stuff for later. Just because you see one dev diary about something you aren't interested in doesn't mean they are out of touch. I didn't care about the dev diary about 'Launch Screens'. You won't see me crying about it either. Just wait for more.
 
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Score might well be the most useless metric in the game.

But on a better note, I'm glad to see the province system moving towards "regionalization" *COF* VICKY *COF*
 
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