Hello and welcome to our Post-Release Plans update dev diary for 1.5. Once again, just as in Dev Diary #79 and Dev Diary #89, we’ll be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.6, 1.7 and beyond.
Before we get started, a quick note that we are planning to release hotfix 1.5.11 next week. This hotfix addresses a few dozen remaining issues in the 1.5 release, including some rare crashes and out-of-syncs, graphics polish, some military-related modifiers not working as they should, and convoy raiding balance.
Today we will continue talking about the same key four improvement areas as in previous dev diaries, namely Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, Internal Politics and Other for anything that falls outside those four categories.
Just as before, I’ll also be aiming to give you an updated 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 previous updates 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 1.6, 1.7 and so on. Note that this section will mainly focus on updates made in 1.4 and 1.5.
- 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, i.e. wasn’t present on the list in Dev Diary #89.
- 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.
Lastly in the ‘things that haven’t changed’, we will still only be talking about improvements, changes and new features that are part of planned free updates in this dev diary. I will also remind you that this is not an exhaustive list of the things we are going to do, and that something being ‘Done’ doesn’t mean we’re not going to bugfix, balance or make UX improvements to it afterwards. Right, that’s enough of repeating myself, onto the actual content of the dev diary!
Military
Done:
- Improving the ability of players to get an overview of their military situation and exposing more data, like the underlying numbers behind battle sizes
- The military rework in 1.5 completely overhauled the interface and the addition of discrete armies makes it far easier to see where your soldiers are and what they are doing. We still have UX polish work to do here, but this is otherwise done.
- Increasing the visibility of navies and making admirals easier to work with
- The 1.5 military rework changed navies to work on a fleet basis, to have a visual representation on the map and to always operate in a specific node, which addresses the vast majority of the issues listed above. As with armies, there are still some UX quirks to work out here, but otherwise we consider this done.
- Finding solutions for the issue where theaters can split into multiple (sometimes even dozens) of tiny fronts as pockets are created
- With the addition of front consolidation in 1.5 and the ability to split formations to cover more fronts, this should no longer be a major issue. There may still be bugs that cause unintentional front splitting, and we will of course fix those as they pop up.
- 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 - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
- Adding more options for strategic control over your generals to allow for more ‘smart play’ in wars - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
- Adding more on-map graphics for armies and navies, including soldiers on the map - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
New:
- Turning individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.
Not Updated:
- Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers
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 - This is mostly done but there are still some issues with certain pieces of content, particularly the Meiji Restoration that the AI still struggles with.
- 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
- Both Italian and German Unifications received some key improvements in 1.4 and 1.5, but we’re still not entirely happy with these and plan to do some further improvements before we consider this done.
- General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way - As before, this is something we are continuing to work on in every update. The highest priority improvements planned here is to make the AI more ‘active’ on the world stage and to make the diplomatic AI in particular feel less random and volatile.
- 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
- Several pieces of content such as Scramble for Africa had improvements and changes made to them in 1.5 but we are not done with this.
- Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
- Companies, country-unique IGs and a number of new State Traits were added in 1.4/1.5, along with several new pieces of regional content, but this is a point we are also aiming to continue to improve on in upcoming updates.
Diplomacy
Done:
- ‘Reverse-swaying’, i.e. the ability to offer to join a side in a play in exchange for something - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
- More things to offer in diplomatic plays, like giving away your own land for support - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
- Trading (or at least giving away) states - Added to the game in the 1.5 update
Updated:
- Improving and expanding on interactions with and from subjects, such as being able to grant and ask for more autonomy through a diplomatic action
- Increasing and decreasing autonomy as well as imposing laws on subjects was added in 1.5, but we still want to add more ways to interact with your subjects in the next couple of updates.
New:
- Have Interest Groups weigh in on diplomacy, for example having the Armed Forces disapprove of an alliance with a country that recently took land from you due to revanchism
- Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building
Not Updated:
- Foreign investment and some form of construction in other countries, at least if they’re part of your market
- Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in
Internal Politics
Done:
- Making it more interesting and ‘competitive’ but also more challenging to play in a more conservative and autocratic style
- There are now specific laws for late-game autocracies such as One Party State and generally both more benefits to holding on to power and more pushback against it. This is in ‘done’ not because we no longer want to do it, but because we consider further improvements to this part of the ‘New’ points about legitimacy and national pride below.
Updated:
- Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
- We have continued to add more laws and ideologies to the game in 1.4/1.5 but this is still an ongoing area for improvement, particularly in improving on the migration law group to be more about what kind of migration you want to encourage/discourage rather than whether it’s allowed at all.
New:
- Turn legitimacy into a more interesting mechanic, where the strength of a government depends on their successes and failures, and highly legitimate governments can’t simply be ousted at a whim but have to be undermined first.
- Introduce a concept of national pride which can increase or decrease depending on a country’s actions and which ties directly into legitimacy.
- Have discrimination not be a purely binary status and reflect forms of discrimination aside from what’s written in the law, as well as making assimilation into a more meaningful mechanic in the process.
Other
Done:
- Improving Alerts and the Current Situation widget to provide more useful and actionable information.
- The Current Situation and Alert system is now fully customizable and you can choose which information you want presented as an alert, important action (or not at all)
- 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. - This was done through a combination of Local Prices and Companies in the 1.5 update, so that it now matters a lot more what you build where
New:
- Improve on Companies by turning them into actual actors in your country that can own/expand buildings and interact with characters/politics.
Not Updated:
- 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 as always, when can you expect all this? As usual, I’m not able to make specific promises, but what we have planned next is a standalone free update (1.6) that will be primarily focused on polishing the game (bug fixing, AI improvements, performance improvements and so on), so for that one you should mainly expect points that are about improving existing systems to be done, rather than ones that are about adding brand new systems and major features. In particular, Historical Immersion has several ongoing points like this and you should see some progress on that front. I’ll end this dev diary with one final bit of repeating myself by reminding you yet again that this list only covers changes and additions that will be part of free updates.
That’s all for this time! The next dev diary will be after the holidays in January and then we'll talk more in detail about Update 1.6. We hope you have a lovely holiday season and a happy New Year!