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#1 Prestige Points and Objectives: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=21216
Dear players,
The end of the beginning is long past, and with Pride of Nations released within one month (give or take a few days) we are even well into the beginning of the end! So now is the time to give you details about the game in a much more increased frequency. This will be the object of the one feature a day series of short articles. And we really do mean one per day (we will strive to post at 14:00, GMT+1).
So, without further ado, here is number 1!
Prestige Points and Objectives
In Pride of Nations, the main metric on which victory is based is Prestige Points. These PPs are used not only to check if you have won or not, but will also give you several advantages through the course of the game, like starting with a dominant position when a crisis happens for example.
Each turn, you will earn some because you own strategic locations and prestigious facilities (like shipyards, military academies or even luxury factories). You can also get more of these points by fulfilling national missions, like being the leading producer of cotton in the world as the USA, or having the biggest land army in Europe as the French (or major producer of wine and luxuries!). Another example would be to send expedition parties on geographical survey or anthropological missions. If they manage to not be slaughtered by the natives, you can get a nice sum of PPs!
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But this doesn’t stop here! Because the game will regularly add new objective locations to your nation, until 20 are proposed to you. These 20 objectives will be chosen among the historical spheres of influence of your nation, so you won’t receive weird proposals like having to control Gibraltar as the Ottomans, but these locations won’t be exactly the same from one game to another. This means that even if the objectives will tend to be in areas of interest to you, each game will require a different approach, if you want to maximize the chances to win against other countries. Perhaps in one game, the British and the Russian will each receive a series of objectives in Afghanistan, thus greatly increasing the chances that a clash will happen sooner or later. And perhaps in another game Russian interests will be more strongly focused on the Far-East. You’ll never know beforehand!
Each objective if controlled will net you a bit more prestige each turn, plus will boost your national morale, when at war. If you lose some on the other hand, your war morale will fall a bit, so you can be forced to an inglorious peace if you give up too many such regions. As such, wars won’t be only conducted with the goal of capturing the enemy capital or beating his armies on the field, but there will be a variety of regional goals to achieve, if you want to get the upper hand in war negotiations.
#2 Generals and officers: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?t=21218
Generals and officers
If you are not familiar with the AGE engine, then you are in for a nice surprise with Pride of Nations, regarding the men in command of the armies and fleets of your nation! The leaders are defined primarily with 4 statistics. I won’t talk in detail about the ratings used for military operations here, but I would like to call attention to the fourth one, Seniority. Seniority is something you’ll love to hate :thumbsup:.
Leaders can be promoted to new ranks (mostly from corps commanders to army commanders in PON, but you can get an occasional ‘colonial leader’ or ‘division general’ to promote to corps command). The trick being that corps commanders expect to be promoted with the most senior one first - and not your favorite son, even if he is good on the battlefield. So you’ll often have the tough choice to either promote first some old incompetent fool, and satisfy the hierarchy, or upset everyone and promote first the competent young dog that proved he was good on the battlefield. The choice will be yours though, and should you decide to focus on the competent but unknown generals, then the old ones will lose face (and you some prestige) and will be less arrogant next time. So if you are willing to pay the cost, you can still decide the direction you wish to take.
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Generals are also replaced by others because of losses (or retirements). Here an automated system kick in that draws replacement generals from a pool of historical figures. This novelty for the engine will ensure that over the 70 years or so of the game, you keep a constant pool of leaders, with your base expanding over time generally. And then you have the Commander in Chief. This man is the highest-ranked general of your nation, and he can provide nation-wide benefits, should you station him in the capital.
Finally, officers. Troops when recruited need conscripts and officers, more or less depending on troop quality. Sometime when you need to replace quickly losses you have suffered, you’ll have no option but to recruit lower quality units, because you lack officers while conscripts still abound. Luckily for you, you can train up more officers if you manage to build one or more military academies. In Pride of Nations, most of the major nations of the world can do that, and you’ll be pleased to know that they have their special graphic too, for better flavor in-game.
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Each major nation has custom graphics for Military and Naval academies.
#3 Regions in the game: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?p=205494#post205494
Regions in the game
For those who don’t know, the engine used in Pride of Nations is called the AGE engine, and was created a few years ago as a pure military engine. From that, we created quite a lot of new rules and features, so to get in the end this big boy that is PON!
But the roots and basics are still there. One of these basic features is that the game is played with regions. Seems rather straightforward don’t you think? Yes … and no! Because the region is not a monolithic game space!
Each region has a military control percentage for each nation. This control (abbreviated MC) represents the extent of land your military units control in the region. With such a simple but logical concept, a lot of things are derived, and when there is war, they really trigger a lot of cool effects. For example, as the percentage of MC represents the percentage of the region you control, logically, an enemy is prevented from entering a region you fully control, unless he is in offensive posture. That means that you can wait for him to arrive, behind your trenches, and have him assault you. Even more interesting is when a river crossing is considered. If you cross a river and you don’t have at least 10% control on the other side, then the game decides that you are in ‘opposed crossing’, meaning you suffer big penalties should combat happen. But if you manage to have more than that, then you are quite simply within a bridgehead, on the other side of the river, and thus you don’t suffer penalties.
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In this example, the Boer fight the British army in a guerilla warfare making use of terrain, sneak manoeuvers, and others harassing tactics.
Another example is the gain or loss of military control when a battle takes place. A battle is never forced on opponents in a region; unless one has only a meager percentage of control (in this case the game forces him to attack!). If there is a battle on the other hand, then the victor will eat away a bit of control from the defeated. Think Verdun-style battles here, lasting months for a few kilometers gained at the cost of thousands of soldiers. This is quite possible in the game (particularly the late game where army densities attain levels never reached before); you can see troops fighting each other for several turns, in the same region, without anyone retreating outside of it. What you’ll see, aside from a staggering amount of losses, is that the percentages of military control move one way or another, depending of the outcome of each battle.
Add to that trench bonuses or frontage limitation (a part of the engine for a few years) and the fact that fortresses and cities are separate place within a given region, and you understand that the game is quite capable of representing high density combat.
Last but not least, military control percentage allow us to simulate what we call the ‘front effect’. The ‘Front Effect’ happens when you are in a contested region and you want to move through the enemy lines toward a region where you have no or little MC. The game just checks the relative level of control, and is able to interdict you from passing through the enemy line, with this very logical rule. Now break the enemy ranks (a routed army doesn’t control a region), and you can push your advantage. Some units are also able to bypass the enemy lines more easily if trenches are not too dense and even if the front is not broken: cavalry for example. This example of blitzkrieg before its time happened in history, as in the Allenby offensive in Palestine in 1917.
#4 Exploring the Heart of Africa (and more!): http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?p=205547#post205547
In 1850, there were still a lot of lands that were shrouded in mystery for the western powers. These lands, mostly in Africa, but also in South America or Siberia, regularly attracted bold adventurers, motivated by a variety of goals: fame, riches, genuine interest in meeting new people or uncovering geographic features, to cite a few. The presence of colonizing powers in many of these areas went gradually from a few merchants dealing with the natives to the establishment of outposts, trade companies and then the seizing of land.
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It was thus a continuous and progressive process most of the time, spanning decades sometimes. In Pride of Nations, it is possible to uncover the terra incognita that reigns supreme in these areas, thanks to the usage of exploration parties. These parties come in no less than 4 flavors. The basic form, called quite simple exploration party, can uncover a region adjacent to it that is unknown. More advanced expeditions are also available, but can be costly to create, like a Geographical or Anthropological expedition. So if you want to trace your route toward what will be named Lake Victoria (unknown in 1850 and thus not shown on the map!), you’ll have to explore progressively several hostile regions. Hostile because of the harsh climate but also because of the natives here, who often don’t appreciate your intrusion into their lands.
These lands were indeed not devoid of people, on the contrary. Many tribal or feudal kingdoms existed there. In PON they are part of a group of nations called Tribal&Feudal. These countries are able to muster troops very quickly, but most of the time in limited numbers, and are quite able to dispose of your exploration party, or even nearby military outposts, should you press them too hard. Luckily for you, they are constrained to remaining in the land where they have their own people, so you won’t see them rampaging in pacified countries.
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Another group of nations in Pride of Nation is the unorganized group. Here you’ll find China, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Persia and some others. They can do a lot of things and progress in technology, but they are far from being able to compete with the rapid pace of advances that benefits the western powers. These countries can be the target of a few actions from you, but not to the extent of a tribal country. You can for example set a trade post in China, or seize railways or customs in Persia, but that’s it. You won’t transform Teheran into a colony… However, you can negotiate diplomatically with Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar, Shah of Persia and secure a passage right or even a defensive treaty, while still seizing his customs, for good measure!
Alith Anar
12.05.11, 10:41
Ich freue mich immer mehr auf das Spiel.
Kaufen werd ich es auf jeden Fall, ob ich dann zum spielen komme ....
War der 10.06 eigentlich offiziell bekannt gegeben oder nur eine Ciómmunitygerücht. Auf der Webseite steht immer noch Q2.
Ich freue mich immer mehr auf das Spiel.
Kaufen werd ich es auf jeden Fall, ob ich dann zum spielen komme ....
War der 10.06 eigentlich offiziell bekannt gegeben oder nur eine Ciómmunitygerücht. Auf der Webseite steht immer noch Q2.
Laut PhilThib soll es am 7.Juni erscheinen...
Ich freue schon darauf und werde mal sehen, inwieweit man die Startfraktionen modifizieren kann, dafür wurde mir von Pocus Unterstützung für alle Interessierte zugesichert, was eigentlich typisch für die alte AGEOD-Community ist...*freu*
Ich würde nämlich gerne entweder mit Paraguay oder mit den Osmanen starten, in der vagen Hoffnung es besser zu machen, als es historisch der Fall war. Wobei eigentlich Paraguay der wohl etwas schwierigere Part sein dürfte, da man hierzulande nur wenig historisches Material bekommen kann, da vieles nur auf Spanisch oder höchstens noch auf Englisch zu bekommen ist.
Hierzulande ist der damalige wesentliche Konflikt von 1865-1870 imgrunde völlig in Vergessenheit geraten, aber garantiert nicht im heutigen Südamerika, da dieser Konflikt alleine für Brasilien erhebliche Konsequenzen hatte wie Abschaffung der Sklaverei sowie Sturz der Monarchie, sowie jahrelange Schuldentilgung an britische Finanziers(bis in die 1930er Jahre).
herzliche grüsse
Hohenlohe...:smoke:
#5 Coal and upkeep: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?p=205606#post205606
In Pride of Nations, you have to maintain your forces each turn.
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This is called upkeep, and should you fail to pay your men or spend goods to keep your war materials in good shape, problems will start to appeas, like a loss of cohesion for example. Campaigning will also be costlier to your troops, so if you want to reduce this spending, there is always the option to garrison them (fortress units, a special type of unit that is almost immobile, except by train, is also the cheapest to maintain while powerful in defense).
But there are more resources to spend than just money, as if you needed more! Coal, one of the preeminent resources of the era, will have to be watched over with great care. Coal is used in the game for many things. First, there is the industrial usage. Few of your industries will be able to run without coal, and no industry, no place under the sun either! Then you need coal to move your ships. Not all, as many nations start in 1850 with a significant portion of their fleet powered by sail only. But developed nations were building more and more steam ships, powered by coal furnaces. Warships and merchant fleets will soon all use coal for power, and this will place an even bigger emphasis on the need to maintain a good source of this asset for your country. However, remember that ships that don’t move don’t use coal, so this is ‘intelligent upkeep’ here. We won’t make the game spend your coal for ships that stay in harbor…
This need for sources of coal will also make you build coaling stations around the world, should you have access to some lands free of any other western power. The need to build coaling stations for their ships was one of the motivations to grab colonies for European powers,. Rest assured though, you can also secure supply rights in other countries, so as to be able to use their facilities.
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And last but not least, railways. Having a developed rail net is good for your economic power, because productivity will greatly benefit from it. But for each region with a railway, there will be a cost in coal to pay every turn, to represent civilian traffic. That’s not all though, as PON features many special orders for your troops, one being to move by rail. The rail pool you can use depends on the extent of your rail network, and troops moving by rail will also place an extra burden on your coal reserves. Choices will be difficult on how to use coal, but also very interesting to make!
#6 Taxes … or death!: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?p=205775#post205775
One-feature-a-day articles: #6 Taxes … or death!
You know the saying. There are two things you can’t avoid. Death… And taxes! This is also true in Pride of Nations. And for your taxing pleasure we designed the game around not less than 6 taxes. Plus a maritime fee, for good measure.
Rest assured though, this is all handled from the same screen, and you get a nice tooltip reminding you of the effects of the taxes. The thing is, each tax in history had a different base or was used for a specific purpose, or simply triggered side effects (often negative ones) that differed from one tax to another. So it would simply be too much to regroup and abstract the taxes into a ‘one size fits all’ tax.
As you may know now, PON don’t have one single money currency, but two. First there is State Funds (sometimes called “Money” in the game), used mostly to enact decisions at the national level, draft and maintain armies and fleets. Then there is private capital, coming from businessmen and entrepreneurs. This private capital is used to build production structures, as few if any of the production sites during the Victorian era were state-owned.
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Private capital mostly comes from commerce, either international or domestic (or colonial, if you have colonies). We will talk in detail in another article about commerce and private income, though. However, the State Treasury mostly comes from taxes. And these taxes are derived either directly from population, as with the census tax or the tax on income, or from the profits your businessmen make from commerce. Census tax regroups in fact several taxes that have existed since mankind managed to form cities (almost!). Basically, this is a tax on capita (the ‘head’, as in ‘decapitate’ in Latin, remove the head http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/images/smilies/tongue.gif ). This tax is received every quarter (this means 6 turns in PON). This periodicity is not historical, but it is much more manageable in the game to augment the frequency of tax and reduce the amount received, as big lumps often have weird effects on both players’ and AI actions. As with all other taxes, you can change the taxation level, from nothing to very high. When census tax is high, population becomes discontented, and you really don’t want to have your population too much dissatisfied with you. Unless you like quelling revolts or seeing in a democratic country the most extremist candidate succeed at the next election. Tax on income was rare in the Victorian era, and we restricted it to when the country is at war, as it was mostly the case historically (in the Victorian era, us Europeans have alas since a long time had the dubious privilege of having a tax on income every year!).
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But population-based taxes are not the only taxes, as you get three taxes based on your income from commerce. First is the corporate tax. This tax comes as a percentage of the income your private businessmen get from international or domestic commerce. There is a slight side effect of raising this tax too much, though. First, this reduces private profits, and thus can prevent you from creating new production structures using capital. Second, it is assumed that the businessmen will pass the cost of the tax on to the consumer through the merchandises they sell… So in the end you make your population discontented too!
A sub-category of corporate tax is the Excise tax. This one is only based on the luxury type of goods. Alcohol, Cigars, Silk, gems… Illegal substances from China and India (I can’t cite explicitly the name, or PON would be rated 18+, who knows? http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/images/smilies/wink.gif.
Another one worthy of notice is Tariffs. Tariffs allow you to tax merchandises that reach your domestic market from foreign sources. Also it has the good side effect of restraining the market penetration of others powers, so you can sell more merchandise to yourself, increasing the amount of capital you earn every turn. The main drawback is that other countries really dislike when you put tariff at a too high level, thus leading to a degradation of relationships or even commercial treaties broken unilaterally …
hohe_Berge
17.05.11, 11:20
Sieht interessant aus. Leider wohl nur nicht auf Deutsch erwerbbar, oder?
Glück Auf
Sieht interessant aus. Leider wohl nur nicht auf Deutsch erwerbbar, oder?
Glück Auf
doch, auch auf deutsch:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?534879-Physical-copy
hohe_Berge
17.05.11, 15:36
doch, auch auf deutsch:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?534879-Physical-copy
Hipp Hipp Hurra. Danke.
Glück Auf
Bei Amazon kann man es vorbestellen, und da wird es als Deutsch angegeben.
#8 National soil and peace treaty: http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?p=205886#post205886
As you may now understand, Pride of Nations is rather history-oriented, and is not in its basic format very much ‘sandbox’ (although we will talk in another article of the options you can play with to change the game profile). This means that when you go to war with another country, if you manage to be victorious, only a fraction of of your opponent’s regions can be claimed as part of the peace treaty.
These regions are either regions national to you or are claimable regions. In both cases this is determined by checking if one of the ethnicities of the region is the same as the main ethnicity of your capital region, and under which proportion (more for national status, less for claimable status). Another possibility is population loyalty toward your nation. At 50% loyalty, the region is part of your National soil, and you automatically get a just cause of war (Casus Belli) should anyone be occupying such a region. Population loyalty can be changed over time with events and some decisions though, so it is theoretically possible to have a region switch to another status. This alone prevents countries from expanding endlessly, as there is no other means but a peace treaty to gain legal ownership over a region.
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Perhaps you may think it is too constrained toward history. Again, there are options to play sandbox, but for players wanting to try PON as it has been designed, rest assured there is still a huge room for expansion, as the hundreds of colonial regions await your rule, should you embark in this direction!
Peace treaties are handled with a concept that is now quite proved in strategy games (sometimes reinventing the wheel is superfluous http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/images/smilies/wink.gif ). Warscore. The more successful you are in war, the more WS you get. Should you end up positive (because your opponent will get points too…), you are the victor in war, and can ask for peace entries. In the current version of PON, there are five such items. The first one is to request national/claimed regions from the other country. The second one is to ask for a colonial transfer (i.e you get a protectorate established by another country, complete with regions, colonial penetration, military influence, all structures and outpost!). Another possibility is to ask the defeated to pay war reparations. Payment is made every year, and is a fraction of the country wealth, determined when the peace is settled. The fourth item is to ask for the liberation of a nation. For example as Russia you soundly beat the Ottomans and ask for the liberation of Bulgaria. Last but not least, you can ask for a partial demobilization of the army, or the scuttling of your opponent’s fleet.
The game also penalizes harsh treaties. The victor in the war can decide how harsh he wants to be. Should you try to get the most possible out of the defeated, then you can be sure that the relationship between them and you will stay abysmal. On the other hand, if you go for a ‘gentle peace’, spending only a fraction of your Warscore, then you’ll see that relationship improves much faster afterward.
As for warscore, it is possible to gain some by various means. Defeating the enemy in battle and capturing regions give you some ‘instant’ points. But that’s not all. Holding the capital region or some of the objective regions of your opponent (see article #1) will also give you points each turn. So, if you manage to hold these objectives, you can almost wait for the enemy to come to you, because if not he will be the loser in a few months (or years, depending on his resistance). There are also other, more subtle mechanisms about WS, that can force your opponent to literally ‘beg for peace’, because being backstabbed by the home front is a possibility in Pride of Nations!
@ Werter Herr Hohenlohe, Ihr werdet uns doch nicht etwa wieder mit einem AAR und Platzhaltern des Spiels erfreuen :???: ;) :prost: :D
Um auch mal etwas vernünftiges zu schreiben :-) Wir werden eine Rezension über das Spiel in unserem Hausmagazin schreiben. Werden also das Spiel ebenfalls spielen und freuen uns schon darauf. Sieht ja sehr komplex aus.
#9 International trade and Commerce fleets: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?537131-One-feature-a-day-articles-9-International-trade-and-Commerce-fleets
In Pride of Nations, commerce is extremely important, as it was historically. And commerce often means having a large merchant fleet at your disposal. We had to design a system that represented with good approximation the intricacies of commerce in the Victorian era, while trying to keep it manageable by the player. We knew what we wanted though, so we started by designing commerce zones.
The game would revolve around the central concept that merchandise units are produced within a trade zone, and you have to pick them up from this zone or it would be wasted. Also, we wanted to have buying and selling done by transactions between two countries. This is one of the great things about a turn based engine, using 2 seconds to calculate how transactions succeed between countries is well affordable, while doing that in a real time game is too time consuming.
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And so the commerce is handled by transactions. A country proposes goods in a given trade zone (most of the time in the trade zone where his capital resides, this is quite enough in complexity), and customers, if they can reach this commerce zone (and you generally need a commerce fleet for that, as long distance land trade was not economically profitable, except for luxuries) will buy your products. But before buying it, they will perhaps compete with other countries. For example Great Britain is a major exporter of coal, and France needs coal. France and other countries will propose purchases in the Great Britain trade zone. So there will be competition, and who will get the deal depends on many parameters, like your commerce techs, your relationships and how much money you are willing to spend.
Transactions are done in a way that once set, and unless something major happens, you don’t have to tweak them every turn. The same applies to commerce fleets. You’ll not have to hunt constantly across the continents to spot new opportunities, as commerce fleets operate from only 22 sea trade boxes. Twenty-two seems a lot already, but when you have 3 commerce fleets, you’ll generally put one nearby Great Britain (and she will be able to trade also with France and the Low countries), one nearby USA and for the third, well, the choice is yours. So really, there is a minimum of micro-management here, given that the trade is quite concentrated in only a few areas.
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A nice side effect of this decision (to use only a few maritime boxes) is that they are ‘promoted’ to ‘convoy boxes’ in time of war. In this way, Pride of Nations is able to simulate the submarine operations of the Great War. Place your subs in a maritime box and try sinking some trade ships, to disrupt the enemy’s economy, while evading escorts! Or perhaps you want to go for a more direct approach by blockading the enemy harbors, thus preventing them from operating as an unloading point for merchandise? This is feasible too!
Screenshot 1: view of a maritime trade box, where you handle your commercial fleets and the small but very important Trade window belonging to the Great Britain trade area.
Screenshot 2: Portuguese AI is maintaining a commerce fleet in the gulf of Guinea while a US patrol cruises nearby.
#10 Population Definitions: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?537294-One-feature-a-day-articles-10-Population-Definitions
In Pride of Nations each region has population, split in several social classes: Aristocrats, Upper-class, Middle-class, Workers, Peasants and Serviles. The big initial question for us was how to handle the complexity linked to that; should we go the Victoria way, with ‘pop bricks’ or not? Clearly doing it the Victoria way was a possibility, but we did not feel people wanted to have Pride of Nations be a Victoria clone. Plus the game is already so rich that this would be going overboard to have a system as detailed as Victoria’s for population. So we decided to have the region be the root concept, with population definition linked to the region itself.
This means that population handling is much simpler here! But being simpler means you can (as we did in development) spend more time on other aspects of the game, like the colonial game, which is very rich, vast and colorful in PON. Or the nice commerce and industrial system that is detailed while also being manageable almost on auto-pilot.
Practically, how does population work? First, the region is the reference for population. For example the region where London resides is defined with these population numbers:
Aristocrats: 158
Upper-Class: 220
Middle-Class: 598
Workers: 1228
Peasants: 945
These figures are in thousands of people, but here we are only counting the ‘productive’ population, excluding child and old people.
In addition to that, the region is defined with others parameters: The militancy rating, indicating how much people are eager for reforms (or want changes), the contentment level (50 being neutral, 100 being ecstatic toward your enlightened reign, 0 being in open revolt against the State). Plus, for good measure, Education rating, Ethnicity, and Religion.
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This seems fairly detailed isn’t it? But this is still rather abstracted, as these percentages or values are at the region level. It means for example that the education level is perhaps 70% regionally. And you want to know exactly what is the education level of Aristocrats? Well, you can’t. But the good news is … you don’t care either! Except for your personal enlightenment, there is no great interest to the system in PON to know that the education level for Aristocrats specifically is 80%, while the workers are at 50%. What is important in the end is that the education level average of your population can hamper or speed up research, that a higher education generally means a lower growth rate, and that the higher the education, the easier it is for a social class to change (slowly) to another.
Sure, this also means we are approximating quite a lot of concepts (workers and peasants benefit somehow from the average education percentage, for example), but the approximation is 99% correct in its end effect… which is all what matters in the end.
We shall explain later in another feature the impact of Ethnics and Religion, knowing they work in the same, simplified, way as the Education.
Also we shall explain what each class of the population brings as benefits or liabilities…
Stay tuned.
#11 The Industrial Base: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?537455-One-feature-a-day-articles-11-The-Industrial-Base
Industries in Pride of Nations play a major role, to say the least. Great Britain is well into the Industrial revolution at the start of the game, and it shows! France and other countries are to a lesser extent industrializing; while other major nations (and many minor ones) are totally backward, like Russia or Japan.
Industries are able to process raw merchandise into manufactured goods. First and foremost is the Steel Mill that is a real necessity for your nation, if you want to build advanced structures. We took some provisions though to prevent a deadlock of the game. First, you can rather easily build mines that will produce the raw resources necessary to operate a steel mill. Then each major nation has a nice feature called ‘intrinsic production’. This production is the abstraction of the work of the thousands of craftsmen each nation had. In game terms, it means that every major nation will receive a few advanced resources each turn, like for example 1 steel unit, 1 mechanical part. By hoarding these resources, you’ll be able, even if nobody wants to sell steel, to create your first structures.
But this is just an extra arrow in your quiver anyway, as international trade is your friend here: No nation was self sufficient historically, even Great-Britain. So you’ll see many countries in the world constantly selling products, including steel. Perhaps not as much as you want, but there will be always a proposal somewhere to check. To succeed or not in acquiring the product is another matter; that will depend of your skills in commerce, and perhaps your willingness to pay a high price… Or you can try securing a commercial treaty, to double your chances. There are several approaches possible.
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Foreign investment in Chile as Great Britain.
Selling is a necessity, anyway, for you or the other countries, because selling means net profit. Whether you sell to your own population or to other countries, in the end you’ll always get a bit more in capital than it costs you to produce the goods. So autarky is really not a good idea as it is the slow way to expand: you can succeed this way, but this is not very historical and PON reminds you of that. You’ll want to have production surpluses to earn capital, and rely on international trade to get what you miss, most of the time.
And then we have another feature that differentiates PON from many other games: You can build structures in other countries! Not all, as you need to target a country which is not under protectionism (and forget Closed Japan for a while!), plus it costs more, but this is quite feasible, if you really want to produce a specific resource. The British had interests in cattle ranches in Argentina, but nothing stops you from acquiring a gold mine in Alaska too!
Then there is also the possibility of uncovering new resources, with prospectors. We will talk about that with regional decisions.
In the end, opportunities abound in Pride of Nations, that, you can be sure about…
#12 Pomp and Circumstance: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?537608-One-feature-a-day-articles-12-Pomp-and-Circumstance&p=12408942#post12408942
We are big believers that immersion in a game also comes from the little ‘chrome’ touches that developers can add in a given game. We want you somehow to suspend your disbelief, so you think that when you play you are back in the Victorian era, leading a grand nation.
This approach comes from the way graphics are integrated in the game, like showing a nice diplomatic window with a 19th-century desk and inkwell with pen, or the crisis screen with a presentation as if you are playing bridge (or poker!) in a Gentleman’s club. But it doesn’t stop here in PON. Because we have tried to add more than that, but always with the second thought that if beauty can also give some ‘gameplay’ feedback, then so much the better!
For example you’ll realize that in Pride of Nations, your factories sprites produce smoke from their chimneys. The more smoke, the more factories in a given region. But then, try switching your factories off progressively (this can also happen if you suffer from strikes, look out for population militancy in this case!) … and you’ll see that there is no more smoke! So in a way, this animation also has a game purpose. When you have industries and no smoke billowing out, then you can be sure something is wrong in the region.
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Another example is the shipping lanes you’ll see on the map, complete with little animated sailing ships or steam ships. There is also some game logic code attached to that. If there is a ship moving between 2 harbors, then it means commerce happens for real in the game (the ship itself doesn’t generate commerce, but is the manifestation of this commerce, in a ‘let’s add chrome’ way). And then, if the ships you used to see disappear from the map… then you can be sure that either one nation is at war with the other, or one of the harbors is blockaded by a third nation. Rail lines work the same way, with little trains moving between cities.
As you’ll learn in detail in the tutorials, there are four gaming modes in PON: Military, Commerce & Industry, Colonial and Political & Homeland decisions mode. These 4 modes can be accessed by a variety of means, one being that there is always an object on the map that you can click on that will switch to this mode. A striking example is the colonial mode. When you see a camel in the desert or a tiger in the jungle, it is not only there to add flavor to the game. Click on it, and you will be in colonial mode!
The map is also dynamic. The Suez Canal (and the others you can build) will for example change the map in the region they are in, when finished. You also get a set of winter images when a region is under snow, so basically you have two maps in one in PON.
This seems a bit superfluous to some of you perhaps, but believe us, adding chrome to a game is really important for its enjoyment. We also added more than 400 Mb of music. Personally I think we went just a little overboard, with 143 music selections provided to you, but hey, the more the merrier in this case, no? Know also that some music files are custom for a particular nation, and some are only played when at war, some only at peace, and the rest at any time…
And then there is the ton of uniforms we have for the combat units. Some pictures are better than a text here, so please enjoy the ones posted here!
A few of the 1660 generals and admirals portraits of the game (here a fraction of the portraits for Great Britain):
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Some of the 1100 units portraits and uniforms shipped with the game:
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#13 Population Militancy and Satisfaction: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?537764-One-feature-a-day-articles-13-Population-Militancy-and-Satisfaction&p=12412744#post12412744
An important aspect of Pride of Nations is how you’ll handle your national population. National population welfare is primordial, as not taking care of your people can mean your demise in the end. Even if you consider only the material aspect of the problem, you will do much better if you address the problems of your people as opposed to ignoring them.
There are two main aspects to consider. First, you’ll want your metropolitan population to be furnished with a lot of goods and merchandises, because it means more income for your private sector, and thus indirectly because of taxes, more income also for the state. That alone is a pretty big incentive! This can be achieved by being successful in industrializing your country, and if you are already well down this path, by further expanding your economy with more production sites, and several merchant fleets. Production sites are often limited by your availability of resources, but this is where colonial territories can also be of great interest. Barring that, you can also invest in some other countries, provided they are not closed to outside investment.
But an equally important aspect must also be considered when dealing with national population. Your people tend to expect that you will provide the home market with a variety of goods. Goods are split into three categories: foods, common goods, and luxury goods. Each social class will accept more or less of each type, but the common concept is that the more diverse the goods are, the happier the people will be. PON won’t ask you to provide specifically tea, wine and cigars to your upper class though, so you won’t have to hunt for one last merchandise that is necessary, because no merchandise by itself is that essential that the system would grind to an halt without it. But … should your national market not be very well furnished, population satisfaction will start to lower.
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Reforms and laws are always available as a tool to shape your nation.
Adding oil to the fire, national population has also a regional rating named Militancy. It grows faster in democracies or parliamentary kingdoms than in fully authoritarian countries, but in the latter you have less means to fight this growth (you can use martial law though). Militancy is the need and desire of the people for reforms, more liberties and such like. Should you fail to act regularly to lower militancy, it will start to take a heavy toll on the population satisfaction rating, to the point that even a well supplied market is not enough to keep people in line. In the end, you’ll generally have no other choice but to enact costly social reforms, to appease your population.
Here you’ll have to consider if you go for a short term effect or a long term one. Short term effect is generally when a reform boosts immediately and significantly population satisfaction. This is a short term measure because the underlying militancy problem is not fixed, so contentment will soon start to diminish. Longer term reforms are costlier, but ‘fix things for good’, i.e they lower militancy, and also reduce satisfaction a little bit. Both types have their uses though, so you can consider them as two quite valid tools to rule wisely.
You may have noted that we spoke of metropolitan or national populations several times. This is because population that is not national to your country is handled in another way. Here, there is no population satisfaction, but a revolt risk. The risk of revolt depends on how you handle your minorities (ethnic minority, religious minority) and colonies (if in colonial territory) so this is another set of problems altogether.
#14 Garrisons and raids: the ‘petty’ war: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?537916-One-feature-a-day-articles-14-Garrisons-and-raids-the-%91petty%92-war&p=12416084#post12416084
With a game of such scope as Pride of Nations, we are always trying to reduce micro-management, if it is not detrimental to the (allow us the word) ‘finesse’ of the game. As such, we took a look at the smaller forces that still make a vital part of your nation: garrisons.
Garrisons are there by necessity and by definition are spread all over the (important) places, and for some countries like Great-Britain and to a lesser extent others countries (Russia and its vast empire, United States and the numerous territories of the Frontier, etc.), they are present over several continents.
So a potential chore would be to check and maintain an adequate level of force everywhere for the player. For the AI the matter is even worse, because AIs are not as proficient as a player when it comes to ordering small, unimportant units in the home country to board ships and garrison faraway places like the Falklands, Madagascar, Hong Kong and such like.
The idea then is to have a kind of ‘auto-garrison’ feature. It is in place in PON, and will spare you many hurdles, so you can concentrate on others things. For each structure, we defined if it could shelter a garrison, and of what type (plus in which quantity). When one of your structures is besieged or even as soon as an enemy enters the region it is in, then auto-garrison triggers. Should the structure survive the attack and no enemy is around, then the garrison is disbanded automatically. This is a nice feature because it also helps the AIs quite a lot against native raids, as you can bet that historically, there were always some soldiers protecting a colonial fort. The same happens in PON.
In metropolitan regions, auto-garrisons are also in place, but are more massive, particularly for fortresses. Here you get garrisons numbering in the thousands of men, with dedicated fortress artillery.
Now, there are also some control freaks among us (I’m a former member myself of Control Freak Anonymous ;)). Rest assured bean-counters! You can supplement the automated garrison system with extra fortress units, should you really want to have this brand new multi-level fortress behind the Rhine (or Volga, Danube, whatever) a really hard nut to crack.
Now, some words on raiding. Because PON is the most recent incarnation of the AGE engine, you can do raids with it, as easily as you did if you ever played Wars in America. All units have a ‘hide value’ (a sneak or stealth factor). Should you manage to have a value high enough to not be detected, it is quite possible to place yourself in the region of your enemy without him seeing you coming. That done, several opportunities await you. You can stay there, and provide from turn to turn some recon value. Or you can pillage the region, or you can assault the structures by surprise. Should you manage to capture them, then your enemy will lose prestige points (burning the governor’s residence of your foe in one of his colonies is quite a valid tactic).
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Raiding mechanisms are an integral part of the game, because PON also handles partisan warfare. It is quite possible that should you lose most of your territory to an enemy, you will see new units pop up in wild regions, ready to respond to your orders. These are partisans, and they are defined with high stealthiness and low need for supply. They can even use the special order ‘ambush’, for maximum havoc. And as with the other units of the game, each of these units is illustrated with a custom, portrait, just for fun and historical pleasure.
#15 The Colonial game: Part I, the basics: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?538062-One-feature-a-day-articles-15-The-Colonial-game-Part-I-the-basics&p=12419151#post12419151
As you may have now noticed because of the numerous screenshots we are shelling you with ;) , Pride of Nations boasts a quite complete and flavorful colonial system. This is indeed one of the big modes of the game, a part of the gameplay where we wanted people to have a lot of fun, while being immersed as much as possible in the game.
At its heart, the colonial game is about changing a group of wild, uncivilized regions to an entity that will provide benefits to your nation (beware, I’m using non politically correct terms here, but we are in the Victorian era, and so at this time Europeans believed that what was not educated to Western standards was not cultured, so I stick with that).
These groups of regions are called ‘colonial areas’. You can’t define them as you wish; they are already defined for you. This was necessary so to keep some consistency and overall to simplify what could have resulted in complex problems, because of zones overlapping and such like. These colonial areas have a status, ranging from ‘wild’ to ‘influenced’ and then ‘Protectorate’, ‘Formal Colony’, and ‘Dominions’. Your aim here is to do the most colonial missions so that it is you and not another organized nation that attains Protectorate or better status (in opposition to tribal/feudal nations that will mostly suffer from your actions).
Why would you want to do that (except to show the rest of the world the supremacy of your nation)? Because each colonial area falls in a given Sphere of Influence. If a Colonial area you own is in your SOI, you gain prestige. That alone is a great incentive, but you can also see colonies as a new market for your manufactured goods or as a reservoir of men for your army (but in PON you will need to recruit native units in the colonies, and can’t recruit metropolitan ones). Or perhaps some resources can be exploited, the benefits are numerous.
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Merchants are great to add some CP while earning money.
In practice, the struggle in the colonial regions is done with the concept of colonial penetration. CP is a value, for each nation, in each colonial region. When you manage to augment your CP to a certain level, and with some other conditions fulfilled, you can play a special colonial decision that can switch the colonial area status to the long awaited status of Protectorate, or perhaps even better Formal Colony.
But there are other considerations to understand, in addition to Colonial Penetration. Because a colonial region is also defined with a development level, that eases movement and reduces attrition, a revolt risk, and can produce some wealth. So CP is only a part of the game, and you’ll want to watch over the other values and increase them, if possible (except you’ll have to make priorities!).
How it is done, you may ask: With colonial decisions. Colonial decisions can be seen as ‘Cards’, that you drop from the interface toward a specific region. But that is the subject of the next article! Stay tuned and see you tomorrow for the second part on the colonial game!
#16 Colonial strategies: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?538219-One-feature-a-day-articles-16-Colonial-strategies&p=12422627#post12422627
When you start to dig around in the Colonial Mode, you’ll at first focus only on one thing: Colonial Penetration. This is good, because CP is perhaps the most important concept to grasp when dealing with colonial lands. But it would not be optimal to focus only on CP, fundamental though it is, especially if you are playing with friends in multi-player. Even in single player, there are times where CP is not the most important criteria of a particular colony.
Having a good Colonial Penetration in most regions of a given colonial area will often be your first goal. After all, this is mandatory in order to claim an area and propose a colonial decision able to change the status, like ‘Declare Protectorate’ or ‘Declare Formal Colony’. These statuses are really very important. They will protect you from disputes about the ownership of the colony in an international crisis, plus you’ll start to gain some prestige from the colony, and you can start selling goods to the oversea population.
But you’ll see that when you are in Colonial Mode, there are around 15 to 25 different colonial decisions available (it depends of your country, some are better served than others, and you know the usual suspects here: Great-Britain, France, USA* to a less extent). These colonial decisions are not redundant in fact, because each approaches colonial matters from a different angle.
* About USA: the decisions they have are not used to create oversea colonies, but will be used to ‘convince’ the Native Indians that the Manifest Destiny of the USA is to control the land between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
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A colonial decision can influence CP over time. This is quite expected for many of them. Also some will reduce the risk of revolt, because you are taking a peaceful path with the Natives. For example running a vaccination campaign or building a bush school will reduce revolt risk, while also increasing your colonial penetration. This is good because a revolt is always something that could happen, and having natives’ armed bands in a colonial area can really be harmful to your interests.
Then, there are decisions that will develop the infrastructure of the region. This can be the creation of a road, or more abstractly an augmentation of the development level. The development level is very important, because it speeds up movement and reduces attrition.
Some decisions will also provide you with an immediate gain. Merchants will give you some private money each turn. A trade post can lead to production of a rare resource. Some expeditions like the anthropological expedition can net you a hefty amount of prestige.
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And then, you can target a long term goal by raising the loyalty of the population toward you, or using decisions that will cause migrants from the metropolitan area to go to your colony. This will drastically change the population profile of the area, and will perhaps allow you in the long term to produces a lot of resources in the colony, resources that you may very well lack on your national soil.
So as you see, there are several possible paths in the colonial game. Some people will aim to declare a Protectorate as quickly as possible, even if it means garrisoning the area heavily to prevent the infuriated natives from doing too much damage. Others will try different approaches, some with beneficial results. This is up to you, in Pride of Nations!
Ich freu mich zunehmend mehr aufs Spiel, weil etliche DevDiaries mir mittlerweile das Spielkonzept immer schmackhafter machen, zumal ich dem alten AGEOD-DevTeam das notwendige Vertrauen entgegenbringe, dass ihnen damit ne echte Perle gelingt...*daumendrück*
herzliche grüsse
Hohenlohe aka Mike
#17 Elections and changing rulers: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?538394-One-feature-a-day-articles-17-Elections-and-changing-rulers&p=12427205#post12427205
With a game spanning over 70 years, you are bound to have changes in who is ruling your country. Depending if you are in a republic or an authoritarian country, things will be vastly different. In an authoritarian country, like Austria-Hungary or Tsarist Russia, the new ruler appointed will be generally the historical ruler next in line, so as a player there is not much you can do about it. However, we have planned for a few cases where the new ruler can be an alternate King, Czar or Autocrat, particularly if the former ruler didn't die of old age (and again here, we are talking of a few historical events).
Things get more interesting with elections. Here there will be several candidates nominated. The feature particular to PON here is that the elections’ outcomes are calculated in a very special, yet quite logical (as you'll see) way.
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For each candidate we know what the issues are that can affect how people will vote for him. We have defined a dozen potential issues so far. For example a populist candidate will be affected positively if the poorer classes are not satisfied. Another candidate can be a proponent of protectionism. If your national market is indeed quite penetrated by foreign powers, then he will get numerous votes. If on the other hand you don’t have such trouble, then he won’t appeal to many people.
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Let’s say take example of the US 1864 election, with Lincoln versus McClellan. Here too our system will be at work. Should the USA be at war with a low national morale, then McClellan will have numerous votes (as he was historically in favor of a peace settlement). On the other hand, if national morale is high, then Lincoln will have a great chance to be elected again (because historically he took a much harder line).
You won’t be able to influence these voting percentages rapidly, and never directly. But you can steer the decision of people toward one candidate or another, if you ‘work’ before hand on the factors that will favor candidate A, B or C. Here, as the player, you are the invisible hand that shapes a nation, as in many other aspects of PON!
#18 Diplomacy: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?538551-One-feature-a-day-articles-18-Diplomacy
In a game of such scope as Pride of Nations, Diplomacy is bound to play an important role in the fate of your nation. Your actions are centralized in a single window in PON, that allows you to see the relationships and treaties of any nation with another, and will let you propose treaties (or issue unilateral moves, like forging a Casus-belli or breaking a treaty) with other nations.
Diplomacy in PON also makes use of the Diplomatic rating of your ruler and his Prime Minister, as some treaties won’t be available, or have less chance of success if the rating is low. You’ll have the opportunity to propose a state visit, to improve your relations (as they might suffer from a variety of causes), a commercial agreement, a military passage treaty (you can ask a mutual treaty here or just a one way treaty), a supply treaty and a few other entries, like the infamous ‘Forge Casus Belli’, that will allow you to have a just cause (or so it seems!) to declare war.
One thing to keep in mind in Pride of Nations is that you just can’t declare war on nations (except Feudal/tribal kingdom) if you don’t have a legitimate cause for war. Also, an important thing to consider is that you have a limited availability of diplomats and plenipotentiaries, so you’ll have to make a choice of who you want to deal with. Spamming the entire world with a host of proposals is simply not possible, and will only result in having spent all your envoys for nothing. Some new diplomats are formed every 6 months though, so you’ll have to wait for them and choose more wisely the next time.
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Another thing to consider is that many AIs in Pride of Nations have a kind of ‘personality’, that depends both on their statistics (Rulers are defined by three characteristics: Diplomacy, Administration and Imperialism) and the historical behavior they had. So trying to propose a defensive treaty or even a mutual passage right when you are France toward Prussia, when Prussia is looking toward Alsace, has a much lower chance to be accepted than the same treaty with Russia. Also, you’ll have a hard time pleasing everybody, because ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ applies here: If you are befriending a nation that is hostile toward a third party, then that other country won’t be pleased much by your acts, and your relationship will start to degrade.
In the end, as usual, there will be a fine game of balance of power for you to set, and you’ll need to identify who must be your friend and who you can afford to irritate, if your long term goals demand that.
But this is not all, because some dire turn of events can always happen unexpectedly … An international crisis can develop, even between friends (although chances are much lower). But we will talk about that in another article!
#19 Modding Pride of Nations: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?538698-One-feature-a-day-articles-19-Modding-Pride-of-Nations
From current discussions in the PON forum, it is obvious that many of you would like one day or another to play a smaller country rather than one of the major contenders of the era. We, as the development team, concentrated on the gameplay and events for the eight majors, but nothing here is in the end hard coded. Or perhaps you will want to tweak some datum or another, because you have your own personal opinion about something. As you’ll see, it is easy to mod PON, based on the AGE engine.
We can split modding in two categories, for ease of understanding. First, there is modding that is about altering a value in a game asset. Let’s take an example with the chance of successfully forging a casus-belli. The data are all in the GameData directory, and quite logically, the diplomacy data are in the Diplomacy subfolder. One great thing to realize about diplomacy items (treaties or unilateral moves) is that the vast majority of the diplomacy module is data-driven. What does this mean? It means that by changing or adding data in some text files, you alter the behavior of the game.
So back to your Forge Casus Belli entry: You believe it should have a higher chance of success. This tweak can be done in a few minutes. In the Diplomacy folder we talked about, there are a lot of entries. The file of interest to us is ’40-Forge Casus-Belli.dpl’. Dpl meaning … diplomacy as you can guess. Double-click on it, and Windows is asking you how to open the file. This is a text file, so just pick your favorite text editor. Then you’ll see there are several entries there, but more specifically, here are the ones of interest to you:
SuccessImperialism = 2
SuccessDiplomacy = 3
SuccessAdministration = 0
These three entries, define the % chances of success of forging a CB, for each point of statistic of your Ruler and Prime minister (the two stats are aggregated in one overall value ranging from 1 to 9). So if we have a cabinet with 5 in Imperialism and 3 in Diplomacy, then our chance of forging a CB would be 5x2 + 3x3 = 19%
Just tweak these entries, save the file, and voila, you have just done your first modding of the AGE engine. It is difficult to have something simpler, in our opinion!
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Now, this kind of modding is just the beginning, useful when you need a little fix, as you can guess. If you really want to engage in serious modding, then it is better to work a bit differently, with a utility we provide for free and with the Excel files listing the data in a more convenient way (because editing the 11277 leaders and combat units subtypes(sic!) of the game would not be practical, if you had to open each file separately). We will post the link to the utility when the game is out.
The second category of modding is about the modification of the scenario setups and events. This type of modding uses a simple scripting language, so that you can tell the engine what to do with the data you add. Here we will do also a bit of modding. Let’s say we want to add 100 steel to the county we are currently playing, Russia. We will do an event for that. Events are in the Events folder of the game, and they are text files ending with .sct. There is a file for you in particular, called Plugin_1850GC.sct. This file is empty currently, but everything you add there will be used by the Grand Campaign. So let’s add a simple event to it:
SelectFaction = RUS
StartEvent = Steel arrival|1|2|Sir, we received 100 Steel from an unknown benefactor|Benefactor.png|$Moskva|NULL
Conditions
MinDate = 1850/01/01
Actions
ChangeResStock = $merSteel;100
EndEvent
The only line of text that is perhaps a bit complicated is the StartEvent one… The text ‘Steel Arrival’ is the name of your event. 1 means it will occur only once, and 2 means we want the full Monthy, i.e a pop-up with an image (which is Benefactor.png). $Moskva is the region of focus. Save the file, resume your turn and click end turn. It works!
A neat thing about the engine, is that the events you add will work even if you add them after you started a campaign. This is great for ‘on the fly’ tweaking and modifications and can even be used to fix a data during the course of the game…
#20 Logistics, part I: Don’t march on an empty stomach!: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?538888-One-feature-a-day-articles-20-Logistics-part-I-Don%E2%80%99t-march-on-an-empty-stomach!
Logistics, part I: Don’t march on an empty stomach!
Logistics. This word by itself can send shivers through the body of even a hardened veteran or an experienced general! Fail to supply your armies, and you will be defeated, no matter the odds. Succeed in cutting the enemy’s supply lines, and everything can be achieved against your foe.
Pride of Nations game rules about supply are rather involved. Before you run away, cursing the gods of micro-management for their betrayal, let us tell you that: the system is involved, complex even, but it runs almost by itself, at least at the lower level (the bean counting level). You, as the player, will only act at the top of the chain, taking the big decisions that will alter its flow. For the veteran players of AACW or NCP, you’ll recognize 90% of those games in the supply system of Pride of Nations, but there are some novelties, though. For the rest of you, here is how it works…
Supply is defined with supply points. In PON you have two types of these points: The general supply point that will feed your troops (think food, water, shoes, small parts), and the ammo points, used only during battle. These supply points are generated by structures, on the map. The structures producing most of these are cities, harbors and some special factories. Depots or fortresses by themselves only produce a meager amount.
Every other turn in PON, supply is produced then moved toward target locations or supply wagons. How supply moves is the core of the system, and going into details about it is much beyond the scope of this article (there is a wiki about the AGE engine though that describes it here: http://www.ageod.net/agewiki/Main_Page). What you should know at this stage is that the moves are done by a series of push and pull. Some locations will emit messages that they are too full, and some other locations (a depot, a supply wagon within an army) will on the contrary send messages that they need supply. And then, a lengthy algorithm (no y to this word!) will arbitrate between all the rich and the poor, like Robin Hood, and distribute supply points.
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That’s the basis of the supply system. There are a ton of subtleties involved though. First, a ‘push’ (i.e sending some points away from a location) can only travel so much during a ‘supply subphase’, this is to take into account the advantage of roads, railroads, or the problems in moving through hard terrain. Then there is also the fact that each location has a coefficient attached to it. Some locations don’t want much supply, some on the contrary, like a supply depot, are literally siphoning away tons of supply from the grid, until they are fat and replete…
So, at the end of the sub-phases making the supply phase, our supply points are redistributed. This is where your armies start to use them, but only if they are in or adjacent to the supply points. Yes, that means that if you don’t have a supply wagon in your army, then you had better be close to a supply source, or your men will starve.
We talked about novelties compared to the previous games made with the AGE engine. The most important ones are these:
a) You can deactivate depots, so they stop accumulating supply points (they will on the contrary release what they have)
b) Depots can have multiple sizes, so you can tweak even better your supply grid.
The system works remarkably well, as it has been in use for some time now. We can see that because when you are in your home country, it works well enough that you generally forget about it… You are always well served. And you’ll notice that you have a supply system that requires attention only when you start invading a neighbor, or if your foe wants to cut your lines. Then you will realize that logistics is not for amateurs, quite the contrary!
#21 Logistics Part II : Fun with food!: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?539039-One-feature-a-day-articles-21-Logistics-Part-II-Fun-with-food!
Yesterday we talked about the basics of the supply system. The core game rules were explained, but this is perhaps a bit theoretical to you right now. Plus there are some extra features that we would like to tell you about it… So here it goes!
The land supply system is complemented by the overseas supply system. It works like this: Each of the maritime trade boxes where you have either merchant fleets or transport fleets can take supply from your nearby unblockaded harbors and redistribute it to other nearby locations in need. The valid locations here are not just restricted to harbors but also include coastal depots, so with this system you can set up a kind of a ‘mulberry before the hour’ by landing troops in an enemy region, have your supply wagons build a depot, and then the turn after receive supply in the depots, provided you have control (or at least partial control) of the nearby maritime trade box. No need here, as you can see, to manually shuttle transport ships with supply. If you plan for a large scale invasion though, it will be better to capture a large harbor, and install a depot there (or increase the size of the existing one), to be sure you start accumulating extra supply.
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Gibraltar is a pivot for British supply in the Mediterranean. Drawing supply from the British harbours in South England, the base is capable of sending them further in Malta and Eastern Med. This is accomplished thanks to the existence of transport fleets in the Atlantic MTB and Mediterranean MTB.
Having supply materialize by points on the map is a decision we never regretted, because this ‘regional localization’ is great to solve a host of issues. For example there is no need in PON to come with abstracted, sometimes awkward rules, about siege and surrender. If you manage to besiege a force, then the supply points that were there at the instant the siege began will be the only resources the besieged can rely upon. This also goes for ammunition. Perhaps they have an ample reserve of food but are low on ammo, who knows? So after 2-3 aborted assaults (that you will do using the combat posture ‘probe’ to limit your losses, but more about combat postures in another article), they will have expended all their cartridges and shells and you’ll be ready for the real attack. There are really a lot of subtleties involved here, should you like to play things smart.
Beware of besieging a harbor though, if you can’t blockade it, because it will be easy for the besieged to stay supplied from the sea (or navigable river). Here again, simple logic, and it works well in the game without need of abstraction.
Another important aspect of the supply system is being in supply in regions with hostile weather, particularly in colonial regions. Each region has a ‘safe supply limit’, or SSL, which is dynamic and depends on several factors, like the weather, development level, if the region is national to you, etc. You can view this value by checking an icon on your army or with the supply filter, should you need it. The rule works quite simply: if the total supply in the region is under the SSL, then nothing adverse happens. On the contrary, if above, then your supply will start to degrade and rot, the higher above the limit, the faster it will disappear. And then enters … the colonial leaders! Colonial leaders are great, because even if they do not command many men without penalty (did we talk about command ratings and capacities?) they have special abilities that will prevent the supply transported by their men from being wasted (at least partially, don’t try to exploit the rule, it won’t work!). In the end, if you were to make a relief force made up either of a column of 5000 men commanded by a colonial leader or an army corps of 50.000 men commanded by another general, from say Cairo to Lake Victoria (without using riverine movement, which is a possibility in the game), we can bet you that the colonial column would be in better shape than the continental corps and have more men able to fight when it arrived!
#22 Formations and rules of engagement: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?539178-One-feature-a-day-articles-22-Formations-and-rules-of-engagement
Pride of Nations is based on a simultaneous turn based engine. It means that once you have clicked on end turn, the game engine will calculate the events that will happen during the course of the next fortnight, with all the forces of all nations moving at the same time. So, one key thing to understand is that you won’t be able to give new orders to your armies during the course of these 2 weeks. This is great in a way, because it really speeds up the game (waiting for the turn in sequence of 160 nations is not really an option).
But you are not without tools, to guide your generals in doing the best move against your opponents. Each of your forces can be defined with a specific posture, and a specific rule of engagement. These two series of 4 buttons, in the army panel, are not redundant, but complementary. Using them both correctly will often mean the difference between victory and defeat. Combine these two types of behaviors with the fact that your forces can have different sets of orders, even when moving toward the same objective, and there will be many subtleties involved in the final outcome.
First, you have 4 possible postures. The offensive posture (and its brother, the assault posture), are used to initiate attacks against any enemy your force encounters. You can be in offensive posture in a region you are in, or when you march toward an enemy region, both are possible. You may indeed remember that combat is not forced upon players when they both are located in the same region. For example having two opponents in defensive posture in the same region will lead to having both armies build up trench networks, and nothing more. The military control of the region will stay the same also. The passive posture is valuable because it allows forces to regain cohesion much faster than the other postures, at the expense of more vulnerability. This posture is best used when you have troops in defensive formation to screen the resting force (if you are inside a city, you’ll always be considered in passive posture if there is no combat, and in defensive posture if a combat happens, so here, no micro-management for you!).
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Fear my Sipahi!
Rules of engagements introduce another level of subtlety. There are four rules, but they are different if you are in offensive or in defensive posture, so you can consider there are 8 overall, except that each couple shares the same philosophy… The red rule for example means ‘all out attack’ if you are in offensive posture, and will mean ‘defend at all cost’ if you are on the defensive. As you see, the red rule conveys the idea that your troops must fight to the last man (except that having your army rout because of losses is always a possibility beyond your control). The blue rule is either an attack that should be called off after 2 rounds of combat, or a fighting withdrawal where you retreat after two rounds. The green rule is either a probe attack, or a ‘retreat as soon as engaged’ defense. (A note of importance: retreat is never triggered if you are really in overwhelming numbers in defense).
So, how it plays? For example if you are unsure of the enemy forces, or if you fear a trick from him, a feint attack will be an excellent means to get a detailed layout of his forces, without risking being soundly beaten. Alternatively if you fear that the enemy may appear all of a sudden, perhaps you are better with a ‘retreat if engaged’ (except that if only a lone cavalry probes you, you’ll not retreat, as per the note above). There can be a lot of other uses for these behaviors. For example if you really need to take this important objective this turn, then all out attack can be of use. You can even mix these rules for each force. Say you decide that your force made of veteran units will be in ‘defend at all cost’, because you know they will hold whatever the losses, while your militia will start an (hopefully) orderly retreat at round 3 because they were in ‘defend and retreat’ posture.
These are just a few examples of the usage of these buttons, but as the saying goes: ‘easy to learn, hard to master!’
#23 Recruiting units and replacing losses: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?539354-One-feature-a-day-articles-23-Recruiting-units-and-replacing-losses
In Pride of Nations, recruiting units is done by first selecting a unit among dozens (there are filters to help you, rest assured) available in your force pool. What is a force pool, you may ask. This is one of the core concepts of the AGE engine used by Pride of Nations. A force pool is the potential maximum allowance of a given item. It is used to limit the number of military units of each type you can build, but is also used elsewhere, for example for production structures or colonial decisions.
This may seem an unneeded constraint for some of you, but believe us, it really helps having an historical game. This means for example that you can’t only recruit Guards units with Great-Britain. Or it means that Russia will have to recruit militia corps alongside the line infantry formations. Force pool is also used to limit in number units which were regional formations. For example as Austria-Hungary, you have several ethnics to deal with within your empire. Without the limitation of force pool, you would be able to recruit only Austrians perhaps, or alternatively only Hungarians. But Austria-Hungary was made of many ethnicities, and thus her troops are too: Austrian, Hungarian, Polish, Czech, Rumanian, Italian, German, etc.! Without force pool, we would not be able to represent that. And if you wonder, yes it has a huge impact in the game, because replacements are handled by sub-nationality. You just don’t fill up the ranks of your Austrian corps with Polish soldiers, neither one would appreciate it!
In case you just can’t bear this way of doing things, rest assured. Pride of Nations has several options available for more ‘sandbox’ oriented players, just check ‘extended force pool’ in the Options window, and you’ll get more leeway.
Something also to bear in mind, when you build units, is that they appear on the map immediately, but without any strength or cohesion. They will fill up with conscripts and materials, then gain combat prowess (cohesion) as time passes, though. Once they reach a certain percentage of readiness, they can be used by your high command, but it does not mean they are at maximum efficiency: this is just a possibility, if you need to rush ill-prepared conscripts to the frontline.
The same applies to ships under construction. You don’t receive the ship when it is finished; you get it the turn after you ordered it. It will stay perhaps 2 years in the harbor where it is being constructed, unable to put to sea even in an emergency and should a war happen and your harbor is captured, you’ll lose your half-constructed ship!
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The Sultan rules alone (not quite true but he pretends to!)
Replacements are reserve elements used to fill up weakened combat formations with men (or materials) draw from depots and rear-area barracks. Unlike the new units you build, replacements are not placed on the map but are ‘bought’ from the Ministry of War screen. Replacements are split by ethnicities, and also by types. You’ll for example buy ‘Scottish Line Infantry’ replacements, or ‘Cossack cavalry’ replacements. When your units are weakened, provided they are in a region with extra supply, they will receive replacements to fill up their ranks. It is always a good thing to have replacements in reserve, because it is much cheaper to add conscripts to your weakened formations, instead of rebuilding a new unit from nothing. A cool feature (which is new, yes I look at you veterans of our past games!) is that the priority of receiving replacements is heavily altered by the generals in charge of your units. The most ranked, most senior generals will generally (doh!) ask to be prioritized over other units, whatever the strategic situation of your units. That is the privilege of the rank!
#24 Technological advancements: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?539543-One-feature-a-day-articles-24-Technological-advancements
disclaimer and apology: this text is not yet proofread, but will be edited and fixed very soon. Bear with my Engrish then for the time being. :wacko:
The Victorian era (in the broad sense of the term) saw an astonishing number of inventions and technological progresses happens. Triggered in no small proportion by the industrial revolution, novelties like the train, steam powered ships, mechanized agriculture tools and latter the automobile, phone or airplanes are just ones among many amazing novelties that were developed in this period.
Warfare also evolved drastically. The dubious honor of being the first war of the industrial era can be given to the Crimean war perhaps, with the use of early iron-claded ships by the British and French, and the usage of railroad by Russia to bring much needed reinforcements. Rifle fire from the allies was also devastating because of the usage of Minier bullets (renamed Minnie by English-speaking command latter).
In Pride of Nations, you’ll too experience these changes, and they will have a profound impact on the pace of the game, the relation of power, and just how you perceive everything working together. Railroad is providing an enormous productivity boost for the industry, plus allows rapid redeployment of troops. Advances in steam-power will allow your ships to move faster, and your merchant’s fleets to be more competitive. Progress in the military field will give you troops that can fight against all odd (and still win most of the time) against less advanced nations. Industrial and agricultural advances will provide you with high productivity or new highly valuable merchandises to sell (like automobile).
There are peculiarities in the system used in Pride of Nations. Applied researches almost never appeared 'out of the blue'. Inventions (or theories) can be given to any nations (that is not technological backward) if the minimum date (and some others prerequisites) are met. But to switch from a great idea to an application in the daily life of a nation things are approached quite differently.
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Practically progress speed between two applied researches is often vastly different, because an applied research progress can depend of many factors. For example many naval researches are sped up if you have a lot of harbors. Discovering a new mining technique can ask for several mines of the proper type already in exploitation. In the same way, developing an advanced sawmill for your wood loggings industry can only make sense if your workers and lumberjacks are already at work in some exploitations.
The same will apply for advanced banking techniques. It is assumed here that the more businessmen, the easier it is to develop advances in this domain. For military units, the concept is even pushed further. Doing naval battles with some kind of ships (pre-dreadnought) will speed up greatly the advances that will lead to the dreadnought.
So as you see, technologies in PON will progress with an indirect influence from your actions. Indirect, because you can influence them by say building more harbors, or extending the ones you have, perhaps converting them to powerful Naval Bases. There is an influence to perform, but this is not a direct one. If you have followed the others diaries, you see that this ‘design philosophy’ is present too in Nation Attributes. In the end though, PON is a game, so we did not want people to have nothing to play with when it came to research. This is why each applied research (remember Inventions are given ‘for free’) has a ‘boost’ icon. By spending some state money (from 25£ to 100£ per turn, for each research so boosted), you get a +1% in progress (per turn), in addition to spontaneous progress. This way, you can directly influence research, should you have some spare funds.
Note: the release version is using this boost cost: 5% boost for 250£.
#25 International Crisis!: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?539707-One-feature-a-day-articles-25-International-Crisis!&p=12456359#post12456359
Often there will be points of contention or friction between countries in the world. This can be a territory held by a country that is claimed by another. This can be a lot of troops of another not-that-cordial country nearby the border of your national soil. This can be the closing of your commercial interests in a colonial land because another country declared the whole area as a Protectorate. In PON, this is called a Crisis. These many possibilities are handled by the Crisis module. The module will check for points of friction and determine the probability that each degenerates. If you have negative relationships with the other country, the probability is higher, but it has been known in history that two countries with cordial relationships also had to manage a crisis, like the ‘Fashoda Incident’ between France and Great Britain.
When such a crisis happens, you’ll have to decide your strategy, and try to guess what can be the one used by your opponent. There are several possible goals for a given crisis, and several ways of reaching them. It seems obvious that the goal of a crisis whose stake is to claim a colony is always the colony … but no! The true goal can be different, depending of the nation triggering the crisis. In the end, a crisis goal can be gaining a territory, gaining the upper hand over your opponent (thus receiving a lot of prestige while he loses much), or … going to war! This last goal is rather dangerous, international relationship-wise (it can greatly damage your standing with many others nations, not just the one you are in war with), but this can spare you the difficulty of trying to forge a casus-belli, which is a diplomatic agenda that takes a long time to set and is quite costly in diplomats.
That in mind, you have to understand a a little bit about how a crisis can evolve before preparing your moves. A crisis, when triggered, will force the nations involved to solve an issue, and in so doing, they will put part of their prestige at stake. One side will be perceived as having the Just Cause in the crisis, i.e he is the legitimate party in the dispute. Often this will be the one who is subject of the crisis, but this characteristic can change during the course of the crisis resolution, by clever use of diplomatic maneuvers from the other side. Producing a document (truly legitimate or not), doing a great discourse that will shift world opinion in your favor (diplomats and thus governments were already quite sensitive to what the international press was saying) can suffice here.
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Even nations in good term can have a crisis, although allies can't.
Also, one side will be considered as having the upper hand, while the other is being ‘dominated’, most of the time. This concept is named Dominance. To win a crisis, you must get the upper-hand over the other side, and the more, the better. In the end, the spoils (the stake, the prestige each country spent) will be greatly in favor of the most dominant country.
Practically, the crisis preparation screen will show you a row of 6 slots. This is where you’ll place your ‘agendas’, i.e your diplomatic moves. You don’t know beforehand what will be the moves of the other side, so you have to develop a strategy with this uncertainty in mind. The agendas you can choose from are numerous, more than twenty. Some have conditions to be played though, and this is why you won’t always see the same agendas at your disposal. The conditions can be that the ruler of your nation must have a good diplomatic rating for example, or he must have a high imperialism rating. Some conditions are more complex, for example you must have some troops at the border of the other nation or alternatively near the region at stake. For example, you are France and a crisis has been drawn against Belgium, because as France you started to install missionaries in the Belgian Congo… You must have a French Army either near the Belgian border or near the Belgian Congo to be able to play some powerful agendas, like mobilization.
Once you choose your agendas (if you forgot or are unsure, the AI will play your role), just validate and wait a turn for the resolution of the crisis. This is the great leap! Even friends can have a serious degradation of relationships because of a sudden crisis, triggered by some forgotten merchants infringing on a commercial monopoly in a distant colonial region. Rest assured though, it is impossible to go to war with an ally. Just with a friend!
The next and final feature a day article will be out discussing the outcome of a crisis and the content of some cool agendas.
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In-the-work layouts from French graphic artist Robin Pirez, on diplomacy and crisis.
#26 Solving a crisis: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?539841-One-feature-a-day-articles-26-Solving-a-crisis
Yesterday we discussed how to deal with a crisis in Pride of Nations. It might be interesting, though, to describe exactly how a crisis can happen. There are several possibilities.
The most common occurrence is when two nations have colonial influence in the same region. The crisis will then be a show of force to discover who in the end will be obliged to relinquish his control in the area, on behalf of the winner. You can be sure that in this case, the winner, having received all the influence of the loser, is now in good position to switch the area to Protectorate status.
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Nb: this slightly old screen shows a crisis that can no longer happen now, as Singapore is already above influenced colonial status for Great-Britain. Plus Japan has the 'closed' attribute, meaning he an't generate new crisis until the attribute changes with the Meiji era.
But then, switching to Protectorate can also trigger a crisis! Here, there is a need for someone to explicitly declare a stake in the area. This is done with a colonial decision and requires that the contender also has some influence left. Once you manage to have your protectorate recognized as such by the international community, then it won’t be possible to suffer from a crisis from it.
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Another possibility is a crisis because of tensions or bad relationships. Here, we are almost in a kind of wicked circle! Because sometimes you’ll protect your back by garrisoning your border against a potential threat, but this garrisoning by itself can trigger tensions that can lead to a crisis! If the two countries also have a contentious matter, like a region claimed by both countries, then the odds are bigger.
And then, there are crises coming almost out of the blue, from something totally unexpected. These crises are handled by the historical events module, and they can really be about anything.
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Crisis resolution happens 15 days (one turn) after your planning. The window is done in such way that you don’t know what has happened when you open it. You click on the golden bullets to the right of the screen to uncover each round of the crisis, until you see the final round… then you know the outcome, for good or bad! For people who don’t care about this kind of tension, just click on the end round to see what happened… The two opposing nations will have played several agendas, vying for the supremacy in terms of Just Cause and Dominance. Again, several strategies are possible, and the game identified some for you already, when you planned your agendas the turn before (just click on a preset strategy and you are done).
As for the agendas, here are two examples:
Great Discourse is an agenda that demands you have at least a diplomacy rating of 5. That said, it is a great one, as your plenipotentiary will impress others diplomats with his oratory skill. In game terms, you’ll enjoy a nice bonus modifier in order to keep the crisis under control, and you can even grab Just Cause if you did not have it.
Issue Ultimatum is part of the series of agendas that are dangerous to use, but potentially very powerful. You need an Imperialism rating of 4 or more to play it, and it involves committing a lot of prestige to the discussion table, as there is no back down possible for you once you promise the other side that should they press the matter, war can happen! Also, as you are adding a great deal of pressure, the crisis can go out of control rather easily, with you slamming the door to all negotiations (were you really trying to negotiate?). In this case, prepare to suffer from harsh relationship penalties, with perhaps a war as the ultimate outcome. But perhaps this was your true goal? Biting the bullet, but having a war with the other side? Only you will know…
Now, some other agendas are more mundane or less ‘intense’. You can adopt a delay strategy, droning on with boring and procrastinating discourse. After all, if you manage to keep everything down for 6 rounds of the crisis module, then nothing much will happen… The choices will be yours, and with the help of up to 20 agendas, the variety of approaches is really big.
Note of importance: This is the last feature a day planned. Don't be sad, this means more time to spend on improving the game :D
Ich freu mich zunehmend mehr aufs Spiel, weil etliche DevDiaries mir mittlerweile das Spielkonzept immer schmackhafter machen, zumal ich dem alten AGEOD-DevTeam das notwendige Vertrauen entgegenbringe, dass ihnen damit ne echte Perle gelingt...*daumendrück*
herzliche grüsse
Hohenlohe aka Mike
Meiner Ansicht nach, wäre auf jeden Fall eine gründliche Überarbeitung der Lokalisierung fällig. Und zwar befinden sich im vgn/settings Unterverzeichnis zwei csv-Dateien, LocalStrings_VGN.csv und LocalStrings__AGE.csv. Diese sind ziemlich umfangreich und nur unzureichend übersetzt. Da Pride of Nation einen komplexen Wirtschaftsteil hat, ist es für das Spielverständnis wichtig, diese Dateien durchzuarbeiten. Diese Dateien sind vereinfachte Exceldateien und man braucht eigentlich nur die in Spalte B enthaltenen Begriffe und Texte in Spalte E sinnvoll eindeutschen. Da steht natürlich schon etwas, aber der Sinn ist manchmal nicht deutlich und bei den Regionen zum Beispiel sind dort nur die englischen Namen übernommen. Ich hoffe es finden sich Leute, die helfen wollen und englisch können.
Ich weiss nicht, was die Patchentwicklung sagt...ob da nun noch was in der nächsten Zeit kommt oder der 1.02er erstmal alles ausmerzt.
Im Gametwitter-Forum (http://gametwitter.de/forum/showthread.php?t=399) wollen wir demnächst mit einem MP anfangen. Bisher sind wir wie schon bereits erwähnt 3, eventuell 4 Spieler.
Das ganze soll auch mit einem AAR versehen werden, der im Forum dort und hier laufen soll.
Also wer Lust hat kann ja gerne mal dort ins Forum schauen. Bisher sind noch einige Spieltechnische Fragen offen, der Anfang soll Ende Juni, Anfang Juli, sein.
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