Today's preview comes once again from our British correspondent, mandead, who will show us more of what he's been working on. mandead?
Hola, and welcome to Thursday's For the Glory 1.3 Preview! This evening I'll talk about a few of the scenario and event changes that you'll see in the new patch, alongside a couple of new features.
First and perhaps most importantly are events. As the spiritual successor to EU2, we've always tried to maintain that game's wonderful mix of historical and flavour events. By this I mean those major - and several minor - events which aim to push certain countries in a particular direction, either historically or ahistorically depending on the player's choice. Flavour events are those which may only have a minimal effect on the course of your chosen country, but will hopefully give some of the larger events a little more context.
As for new and reworked events, what do we have? Well, several of the more famous event chains for the historical majors (England, France, Austria, etc.) have been polished and improved, and a number of smaller states have had their event files expanded. In addition, we've also gone through and fixed a number of events that apparently hadn't been working properly for years - if at all. It's funny what you learn by reading through a game's database...
New formable countries have been added, most existing ones have had their formation criteria improved and cores/claims have been standardized between scenarios and the events which hand them out. I've also done a lot of work on trying to improve various countries' known provinces between scenarios, but that's quite a lot of work as I'm sure you'll understand. It is also incredibly tedious.
As an example of a new major event that can have a universal impact on the flow of the game:
The Treaty of Westphalia is a global event that will fire for European states between 1640 and 1680 so long as they're at peace and Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands all exist. The reason for adding this event is fairly simple; Michael added the hre = yes/no command a while back, so I thought why not actually use it?
In gameplay terms it's a very interesting event because it can seriously hamper the Empire's war efforts outside of Germany. So, playing as Austria or Spain and want to keep Charles V's realm together? Solution: crush the Dutch rebels before they can form the Netherlands. In the long term this will benefit the Habsburgs (assuming they can remain emperors) immeasurably because it gives them free reign to march across northern Europe and Italy, whereas if the Treaty of Westphalia event fires then the strategic balance is pushed in France's favour.
As I mentioned last time, consistency has very much been the driving force behind many of these changes, and as such the Empire's borders have been tweaked across all scenarios - meaning, for example, that Austria can no longer peacefully march its troops across the Dutch Republic in 1795.
Actually, speaking of the Dutch Republic, here's a little something for you:
Tired of seeing the French and Spanish overrunning the Dutch in every single game? This was a change we discussed pretty early in 1.3's development, the basic premise being that France + Holland = no more Holland. Historically of course this was never the case, and the relatively tiny Dutch Republic managed to fend off Louis XIV's invincible armies on many an occasion. With the vanilla map being 'unique' in its layout and choice of province sizes, I tried a few things to help improve balance in the Low Countries, and so by adding straits to all provinces adjacent to Zeeland (and there are a number of them) the Dutch may keep enemy troops from crossing into the Republic so long as a navy is present off the Dutch coast. This doesn't make them a complete fortress insofar as naval supremacy is required on the part of the defender, and armies may still invade Holland from the three neighbouring German provinces which have no river crossing.
There are a couple more examples of straits being added to try and aid historically defensible parts of the map, but I'll let you spot those next week.
Finally, here's an example of one of my favourite new random events, coupled with one of the game's new religions.
Tomorrow, Michael will talk you through some of the new map modes, interface enhancements and gameplay features.
Hola, and welcome to Thursday's For the Glory 1.3 Preview! This evening I'll talk about a few of the scenario and event changes that you'll see in the new patch, alongside a couple of new features.
First and perhaps most importantly are events. As the spiritual successor to EU2, we've always tried to maintain that game's wonderful mix of historical and flavour events. By this I mean those major - and several minor - events which aim to push certain countries in a particular direction, either historically or ahistorically depending on the player's choice. Flavour events are those which may only have a minimal effect on the course of your chosen country, but will hopefully give some of the larger events a little more context.
As for new and reworked events, what do we have? Well, several of the more famous event chains for the historical majors (England, France, Austria, etc.) have been polished and improved, and a number of smaller states have had their event files expanded. In addition, we've also gone through and fixed a number of events that apparently hadn't been working properly for years - if at all. It's funny what you learn by reading through a game's database...
New formable countries have been added, most existing ones have had their formation criteria improved and cores/claims have been standardized between scenarios and the events which hand them out. I've also done a lot of work on trying to improve various countries' known provinces between scenarios, but that's quite a lot of work as I'm sure you'll understand. It is also incredibly tedious.
As an example of a new major event that can have a universal impact on the flow of the game:
The Treaty of Westphalia is a global event that will fire for European states between 1640 and 1680 so long as they're at peace and Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands all exist. The reason for adding this event is fairly simple; Michael added the hre = yes/no command a while back, so I thought why not actually use it?
In gameplay terms it's a very interesting event because it can seriously hamper the Empire's war efforts outside of Germany. So, playing as Austria or Spain and want to keep Charles V's realm together? Solution: crush the Dutch rebels before they can form the Netherlands. In the long term this will benefit the Habsburgs (assuming they can remain emperors) immeasurably because it gives them free reign to march across northern Europe and Italy, whereas if the Treaty of Westphalia event fires then the strategic balance is pushed in France's favour.
As I mentioned last time, consistency has very much been the driving force behind many of these changes, and as such the Empire's borders have been tweaked across all scenarios - meaning, for example, that Austria can no longer peacefully march its troops across the Dutch Republic in 1795.
Actually, speaking of the Dutch Republic, here's a little something for you:
Code:
adjacency = { from = 340 to = 334 type = sea through = 938 } #Flood Dykes around Zeeland - 1.3 addition
adjacency = { from = 340 to = 338 type = sea through = 938 } #Flood Dykes around Zeeland
adjacency = { from = 340 to = 339 type = sea through = 938 } #Flood Dykes around Zeeland
adjacency = { from = 340 to = 343 type = sea through = 938 } #Flood Dykes around Zeeland
adjacency = { from = 340 to = 378 type = sea through = 938 } #Flood Dykes around Zeeland
adjacency = { from = 340 to = 380 type = sea through = 938 } #Flood Dykes around ZeelandTired of seeing the French and Spanish overrunning the Dutch in every single game? This was a change we discussed pretty early in 1.3's development, the basic premise being that France + Holland = no more Holland. Historically of course this was never the case, and the relatively tiny Dutch Republic managed to fend off Louis XIV's invincible armies on many an occasion. With the vanilla map being 'unique' in its layout and choice of province sizes, I tried a few things to help improve balance in the Low Countries, and so by adding straits to all provinces adjacent to Zeeland (and there are a number of them) the Dutch may keep enemy troops from crossing into the Republic so long as a navy is present off the Dutch coast. This doesn't make them a complete fortress insofar as naval supremacy is required on the part of the defender, and armies may still invade Holland from the three neighbouring German provinces which have no river crossing.
There are a couple more examples of straits being added to try and aid historically defensible parts of the map, but I'll let you spot those next week.
Finally, here's an example of one of my favourite new random events, coupled with one of the game's new religions.
Tomorrow, Michael will talk you through some of the new map modes, interface enhancements and gameplay features.
