You cannot create new types of formations, they will be of either Army or Fleet types. However, all properties of formations - like combat unit types and mobilization options - can be modded.
Everything can be modded for unit types and mobilization options.
Probably! Nothing decided as of yet, but the tech is there for it.
Boosting speed is something we've planned for, at least! For the time being we're not making major changes to how the supply system works, but the new pathfinder we're adding would potentially allow for a more in-depth supply system in the future.Nice I hope railways will boost your military movement speed
The current plan is that they will continue to limit how many units of a type you can support from each state and what units you can recruit. But we will be open to feedback during the Open Beta period and will implement good suggestions as time allows!
I'd consider revisiting which commanders spawn for the recruitment pool. Right now there's some conditional logic that influences which commanders you have available to you at any given time, and maybe we can give players more ways of influencing that. But I don't want to just give players full control of which IG to recruit from, either; part of the fun for me at least is that you have a limited number of options at any given time, forcing me to occasionally choose between the perfect candidate from an IG I don't want to empower or a sub-standard candidate from an IG that agrees with me.
Not for this update. We're considering ways of making pops and IGs care about diplomatic relations for the Sphere of Influence expansion, though.
This will be (re)implemented, yes. Shipping Lanes supporting overseas Generals has always been in the game (albeit a bit hidden) and for the first Open Beta release there won't be a cost at all, but we will definitely require Shipping Lanes supporting overseas armies in later beta updates (probably update 1).
The way this is currently implemented - and let's be perfectly clear, the functionality is just a placeholder right now, we need the full pathfinding system to make this work properly - is with a speed modifier on railways specifically, possibly only on friendly railways or railways in states occupied by you. As for the cost, it's somewhat abstracted as a "budget" assigned to the formation for travel purposes - the cost is always incurred, and the Transportation goods always purchased, whether the formation is currently traveling along rails or not.
Yep! We know we need to work on this more, and as the Open Beta build matures we intend on moving more resources onto working on performance. We recognize this remains a big concern and want to see marked improvements before 1.5 release. More on this in later dev diaries.
It's come up in design discussions and with the new pathfinder it would be more feasible for us to implement something like this. One issue here is historicity; in this era of nationalism it was quite rare for countries to just march their armed forces across another nation's territory (without that nation being under occupation, that is). It doesn't exactly ring true to me to allow countries to have permanent "military access" pacts with one another outside the context of a particular war; ideally I'd want it to be an agreement negotiated in the context of a particular war, and irrevocable for that war.
I'm not entirely clear on where you're coming from here, to be honest - this system does permit you to send your troops home to remobilize with different armaments without penalty, if you research some new tech during the war or decide you want to spend more (or less) on them than you had planned originally. There's a time factor to consider for doing so, which seems perfectly rational to me. The mobilization mechanic, now as always, is intended as a way for you to have to pre-plan a bit how many of your armed forces you want to commit to a given conflict, not to let you min-max damage output just before a battle breaks out for example.
We're aware and discussing possible improvements here. Companies is one (small) part of the solution to this puzzle, since it will mean greater focus on competitive advantage over simply building whatever happens to be in demand, and has a big impact on construction efficiency.I have advocated many times for animated tiny soldiers and they will finally come.
Based on my negative experiences with judging features before actually getting my hands on them I will not comment on these changes as of now, but just a short reminder that many people are still unhappy with construction points being the beginning and the end of all gameplay, so maybe have a look at that next!
There could potentially (though rarely, with the new front improvements) be 2 fronts bordering a single state, and both those fronts could potentially have simultaneous battles in that state. It would be weird to force one front, which could be a totally different country in a different war altogether, "wait their turn" to attack a certain state.
We want to try to avoid this solution since it means we couldn't give you the precise map location for a particular military resource, which is one of our main goals for this update. It's also weird on very long fronts, to see the same guy in two places.
Great feedback, I'll pass it on to the UX team! Should be very doable.
You're right that it's not going to happen right now, but we will be working on creating a kind of pyramidal rank structure of commanders within a formation and we can't wait to actually leverage that for cool political effects and events in the future!
"Political Appointees" is a fantastic suggestion and compromise here, will add it to the list of ideas!
Front naming is on our list of things to address, it's super weird right now (worse actually due to the shared fronts). One issue is that we want to try to keep fronts as uniquely identifiable as possible, but they can also move, which adds a wrinkle to naming them according to geography. Very open to ideas here!
This is more a problem with the fact that civil wars always exclude the capital rather than, in some circumstances, splitting it. I really want us to change how revolution state selection is managed, for this reason and others.
Variable canal access (and tolls, or similar) is something we want to do at some point. Not coming for 1.5 but definitely something we want to do eventually.
The core way this will work is that higher-end units will often require more of the goods in question. Since you have the option of customizing your army more with this system - it's not a "PM on or off" kind of situation - this becomes a more usable mechanic than it has been. However, we're also looking into the option of certain techs providing unit-specific bonuses - this is particularly relevant for Cavalry type units, since we can't unlock different types as the game progresses (it'd make no sense to not have access to Lancers in 1836, for example).
It's hard to overstate my enthusiasm when I saw that little marker move on the map for the first time! Even though it's currently just a straight line, it makes everything feel so much more tangible. Once we have these guys move across splines, people in the office will start hear me squealing in my chair again.
