Hello and welcome to our Post-Release Plans update dev diary for 1.3. Just as we did in Dev Diary #79, in this dev diary we’ll be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.4, 1.5 and beyond. In the previous Post-Release Plans Dev Diaries we outlined four key areas of improvement for the game, which we’ll be sticking to for this one: Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, and Internal Politics. The Other section is also still there for anything that doesn’t fall neatly into one of the four categories.
Just as last time, I’ll be aiming to give you an overview of where we stand and where we’re heading by going through each of these four categories and marking on each one with one of the below statuses:
- Done: This is a part of the game that we now consider to be in good shape. Something being Done of course doesn’t mean we’re never going to expand or improve on it in the future, just that it’s no longer a high priority for us. Any points that were already marked as Done in the previous update will now be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long!
- Updated: This is a part of the game where we have made some of the improvements and changes that we want to make, but aren’t yet satisfied with where it stands and plan to make further improvements to it in future updates such as 1.4, 1.5 and so on. Note that this section will mainly focus on updates made in 1.3.
- Not Updated: This is a part of the game where we haven’t yet released any of our planned changes/improvements in any currently released updates but still plan to do so for future updates.
- New: This is a planned change or improvement that is newly added, ie wasn’t present on the list in Dev Diary #79.
- Reconsidered: This is a previously planned change or improvement that we have reconsidered our approach to how to tackle from previous updates. For these points we will explain what our new plans are, and change the list appropriately in future updates.
Finally, just like in the original Post-Release Plans dev diaries, we will only be talking about improvements, changes and new features that are part of planned free updates in this dev diary. So then, let’s get to the categories and see where we stand! For each point in each category that isn’t new to this update there will be a sub-point detailing our progress on the point so far.
Military
Done
- Solving the issue of armies going home after Generals die during a war by adding a system for field promotion
- Field promotions have been added to the game in 1.3 to solve the most critical issue of armies simply going home. In the future we’ll aim to further improve this through changes to armies/navies and having defined successors for your commanders.
Updated:
- Improving the ability of players to get an overview of their military situation and exposing more data, like the underlying numbers behind battle sizes
- This is an area where we are continuously making improvements but where we still definitely have more work to do. A particular area of improvement we’ve identified is the need to more clearly be able to see a summary of a country’s military strength instead of just seeing unit counts.
- Increasing the visibility of navies and making admirals easier to work with
- As above, this is an area where we are continuously making improvements but still have work to do. In particular, we want to improve the sense of where exactly your navy is and what exactly it is doing.
- Finding solutions for the issue where theaters can split into multiple (sometimes even dozens) of tiny fronts as pockets are created
- We have mitigated this issue in update 1.2 by auto-closing small pockets and improving battle province selection but the issue still persists (particularly in wars with a large number of small countries) so further improvements are needed here
New:
- Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers
- Adding systems for organizing your generals and admirals into discrete armies and navies to allow more control over geographic positioning, military composition and unit specialization
- Adding more options for strategic control over your generals to allow for more ‘smart play’ in wars
- Adding more on-map graphics for armies and navies, including soldiers on the map
Reconsidered:
- Experimenting with controlled front-splitting for longer fronts
- After some internal design consideration, we have decided that this is not the best approach going forward - instead we will aim to solve the issues with long fronts by supporting multiple battles and improving the strategic options you have to direct your generals.
Historical Immersion
Updated:
- Tweaking content such as the Meiji Restoration, Alaska purchase and so on in a way that they can more frequently be successfully performed by the AI, through a mix of AI improvements and content tweaks
- Improvements to this were made in both 1.2 and 1.3 (the most significant being preventing journal entries such as Fragile Unity from being broken by revolutions) but we still have some work planned here, particularly to the Meiji Restoration and the willingness of AI countries to open up Japan.
- Ensuring unifications such as Italy, Germany and Canada don’t constantly happen decades ahead of the historical schedule, and increasing the challenge of unifying Italy and Germany in particular
- The German Unification received a significant rework in 1.3 to more closely follow the historical narrative, with other unifications planned to receive similar improvements in the near future.
- General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way
- This is something we are continuing to work on in every update. Some tweaks and improvements were made in 1.3 but the biggest improvements here should come alongside planned updates to diplomacy.
Not Updated:
- Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
New:
- Going through the base game Journal Entries and events and making improvements and additions to ensure that they feel meaningful and impactful for players to interact with
Diplomacy
Not Updated:
- ‘Reverse-swaying’, ie the ability to offer to join a side in a play in exchange for something
- More things to offer in diplomatic plays, like giving away your own land for support
- Trading (or at least giving away) states
- Foreign investment and some form of construction in other countries, at least if they’re part of your market
- Improving and expanding on interactions with and from subjects, such as being able to grant and ask for more autonomy through a diplomatic action
- Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in
Internal Politics
Done:
- Improving the mechanics of law enactment and revolutions to be more engaging for the player to interact with
- Law enactment and revolutions received a significant rework in 1.3 to behave in less random and more engaging ways, while also somewhat (intentionally) increasing the challenge involved in rapidly reforming your country
- Adding more mechanics for characters and giving the player more reason to care about individual characters in your country:
- Agitators were introduced as a new character type in 1.3 that directly interacts with political movements and serves to push more forcefully for political reforms. There are definitely more types of characters we want to add and more we want to do here in the future, but right now it’s not a high priority when compared to the other items on this list.
- Added Petitions to ensure the Interest Groups you add to your government has agency in demanding political change
- This was not previously on the list but is something we’ve added since we consider it a fairly significant change to internal politics.
Updated:
- Making it more interesting and ‘competitive’ but also more challenging to play in a more conservative and autocratic style
- New laws were introduced in 1.3 (such as One Party State) that makes late-game autocracies more viable, and the addition of Agitators means that conservative countries now face a greater internal push for reform.
- Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
- A number of new laws were introduced in Update 1.3, but there is definitely more we want to do in the future here
Other
Updated:
- Improving Alerts and the Current Situation widget to provide more useful and actionable information.
- The Current Situation widget received a series of tweaks in 1.3 to give more useful and actionable information. In the future, we want to improve this further by giving the player much more custom control over the alert/current situation system similar to what we’ve done with message settings.
New:
- Increase the overall challenge in the economic core loop, as well as creating more clear mechanical differences between different countries and their starting positions in ways that encourage more economic specialization.
- Find a way to deal with the excessive fiddliness of the trade system in large economies, possibly by allowing for autonomous trade based on your laws in a similar way to the autonomous investment system.
So when can you expect these changes to reach the game? I can’t give specifics for any particular points but what I can say is that we are planning a large update with an extended open beta period in the second half of this year which will check off a considerable number of points from the list. In particular, that update will be aiming to tackle many of the points from the Warfare and Diplomacy sections of this list. I’ll end this dev diary by reminding you yet again that this list only covers changes and additions that will be part of free updates.
Well then, that’s all for today’s update. We will see you in two weeks for our next Dev Diary, on the 22nd while we work on 1.3.3!