Hi,
For those of you who may have played/reviewed the new material for Gaul, you will have probably noticed that the Reformation was handled quite differently from Vanilla. mikl and I have had quite a few discussions on how to deal with this period in history and the one thing that we both want is that there is a lot of variety.
Variety/change/possibilites these are the very heart of the Aberration gaming experience. The problem is that it means work. Potentially lots of work. The AGCEEP has it easy: open the history books, find a cool event/period and
script the appropriate events/sequences. Of course, event the AGCEEP sees the need for variety and have three possible Reformations. If anything, here at Aberration, we need evenm more, because all of the nations (one day ... ) have different paths, alternate histories. This represents a LOT of work and coordination.
So instead, I have tried a new approach. Instead of having each province in the province.csv file have a predetermined religion, I have kept them all catholic, and use instead the event structure to set conversions. Have a look at the Savoy file, for example. There are three possible lineages that you can have prior to the start of the Reformation: Italian, French and Occitan. Depending on which is chosen, the Reformation events are different. For the French, there are two subsets, depending on province ownership. And depending on which action you chose in the Luther (and, then Calvin) event will determine which provinces go protestant, which stay Catholic. For some events these are set, for others (like the Reformation for France) they are composed mostly of random provinces, including colonies.
In this way, players cannot simply review the province.csv and know which provinces to avoid, station troops in or which they will need to convert. In this way, it is also more 'historical' in that nobody at the time knew what was going to happen either.
This sytem is all fine and good as long as he nation for whom the event triggers actually owns the provinces in question, because if you do not own a province then a command line for that province simply does not occur. Accordingly, an important ingredient in all of this is to have a back-up event for each of the provinces. I assume that Provence will be owned by Savoy or France or Occtiania, and include that province in the possible conversion commands in the Reformation events for those nations. However, I also create a back-up for the province that will trigger only if it is not owned by one of those three likely culprits. If, say, Burgundy owns Provence, then some time in the ten years following the triggering of event 100 (Luther) Burgundy will get an event telling them of the heretics in Provence that have come to dominate the region's religious thought (read: convert Provence to Protestant).
So, that will be the approach for Gaul and the Anglo-saxon provinces of the British Isles. Perhaps others will also use this approach, but perhaps not. Test run the Beta 5 and see what you think.
MattyG
For those of you who may have played/reviewed the new material for Gaul, you will have probably noticed that the Reformation was handled quite differently from Vanilla. mikl and I have had quite a few discussions on how to deal with this period in history and the one thing that we both want is that there is a lot of variety.
Variety/change/possibilites these are the very heart of the Aberration gaming experience. The problem is that it means work. Potentially lots of work. The AGCEEP has it easy: open the history books, find a cool event/period and
script the appropriate events/sequences. Of course, event the AGCEEP sees the need for variety and have three possible Reformations. If anything, here at Aberration, we need evenm more, because all of the nations (one day ... ) have different paths, alternate histories. This represents a LOT of work and coordination.
So instead, I have tried a new approach. Instead of having each province in the province.csv file have a predetermined religion, I have kept them all catholic, and use instead the event structure to set conversions. Have a look at the Savoy file, for example. There are three possible lineages that you can have prior to the start of the Reformation: Italian, French and Occitan. Depending on which is chosen, the Reformation events are different. For the French, there are two subsets, depending on province ownership. And depending on which action you chose in the Luther (and, then Calvin) event will determine which provinces go protestant, which stay Catholic. For some events these are set, for others (like the Reformation for France) they are composed mostly of random provinces, including colonies.
In this way, players cannot simply review the province.csv and know which provinces to avoid, station troops in or which they will need to convert. In this way, it is also more 'historical' in that nobody at the time knew what was going to happen either.
This sytem is all fine and good as long as he nation for whom the event triggers actually owns the provinces in question, because if you do not own a province then a command line for that province simply does not occur. Accordingly, an important ingredient in all of this is to have a back-up event for each of the provinces. I assume that Provence will be owned by Savoy or France or Occtiania, and include that province in the possible conversion commands in the Reformation events for those nations. However, I also create a back-up for the province that will trigger only if it is not owned by one of those three likely culprits. If, say, Burgundy owns Provence, then some time in the ten years following the triggering of event 100 (Luther) Burgundy will get an event telling them of the heretics in Provence that have come to dominate the region's religious thought (read: convert Provence to Protestant).
So, that will be the approach for Gaul and the Anglo-saxon provinces of the British Isles. Perhaps others will also use this approach, but perhaps not. Test run the Beta 5 and see what you think.
MattyG
