This is the final update before new demo update is released. I realized I should start naming and numbering versions of demo updates being released to avoid confusion. This time I have no good idea for naming the demo (join discord and help me out ːsteammockingː) but at least I can tell the version number is 0.2. Doing some final polishing and testing and if nothing big pops up aiming at releasing it by the end of this / beginning of next week. And now to the contents of this week's update.
New Military, Economic and Foreign power
In the previous update I have presented additional geopolitical interactions that you can apply in order to increase the chance to flip a target region to fit your agenda (e.g. puppet or liberate). These geopolitical interactions are either from the military, economic or foreign policy domains. And they cost military, economic or foreign power respectively.
So how to get your hands on these 3 new resources? Easily.
In the new "Power Projection Generation" section in the region details form you have the possibility to boost any of the three power generation by spending your geopolitical (geo) power. The base cost currently is 10 geo power for each +1 mil/econ/foreign power generation boost.
Every time you boost any of the powers to +10 generation level - the further boost cost decreases by 1. For example if your economy power generation level is +10 in a particular region, the further boost cost would be 9 instead of 10.
It is possible to get the cost down to 5 that way where it stays capped. This incentive can encourage you to play centralizing your power generation in specific regions, however this increases the risk when losing this region. Therefore decentralizing or centralizing your mil/econ/foreign power generation is going to be based on your strategy.
In the future versions there could be more application for these new powers apart from covering for additional geopolitical interactions. Future uses can for example be related to technology research and global market.
AI
In this release I have obviously added the afore mentioned new mechanics to be used by bots as well so be prepared for some fair fight.
On top of that additional decisions were added for AI evaluation and some of the existing ones were reworked. Together with the old and new the current list of AI evaluated decisions consists of the following:
- attack the weakest player;
- attack the strongest player (especially one nearing hegemony, i.e. being x2 stronger by geo power gain than all other players combined, which is one of the victory conditions);
- grab regions cheapest to obtain;
- grab regions with the best ROI;
- disrupt enemy influences around the globe;
- follow up on previously influenced regions;
- defend the realm;
- play tall;
- decide when to prioritize boosting mil/econ/foreign powers.
Apart from that I have fixed some of the gaps / weak points of the AI that were identified in the previous demo (0.1). I challenge you to find and report any new exploits which I will happily fix in the next demo to make the AI even more deadly.
In general for every demo rolling out new mechanics I also plan to dedicate some time to further enhance and improve the AI. I have a bunch of ideas in my backlog so it will be a rather iterative process.
If and when AI will become too hard to compete against I will introduce difficulty levels. I am also thinking about adding some sort of a proto-diplomacy, where every AI player will keep track of other player's actions in its own player profiles. These profiles will serve as inputs to AI forming its attitude / opinion towards other players.
Another potential AI improvement is having a certain list of strategies (e.g. aggressively expanding, pacifistic focus on inner development, leaning towards military or economic actions, etc.) that AI can choose from that will determine longer term AI strategy. Perhaps this can be derived from the country ideology - something that I will introduce in the next demo (0.3).
Right now AI is merely scanning the environment every turn and makes its best moves lacking a longer term strategy or attitude.
UI sneak peek
First of all the disclaimer that I'm making some last minute UI/UX changes so the demo that I will roll out within a week could slightly differ from some of the screenshots I am using in these diaries.
And now to sneak peek - as mentioned in one of the earlier updates, I'm looking to significantly changing the visual style of the game, including the map, color palette, forms, icons and so on.
To give you a heads up of how it might look here is a sneak peek work in progress draft of the new map style. Let me know what you think in the comments.
That's all for this week. Looking forward to releasing the updated demo very soon.
Stay tuned and wishlist the game, there is more to come.
Alex Fenek