Double Happy Thursday! As promised last week, today we’ll be returning to the future update plans, which we last touched on in Dev Diary #102. Just like the previous times, we’ll be going over what changes and improvements we have planned for the game in future free updates such as 1.8, 1.9 and beyond.
Once again we will be talking about the same key four improvement areas of Military, Historical Immersion, Diplomacy, Internal Politics as well as 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 be removed from the list, to avoid it growing unmanageably long, but you can look at the older dev diaries (#79, #89 and #102) if you’re interested in what was done previously.
- 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 1.8, 1.9 and so on. Note that this section will mainly focus on updates made in 1.6 and 1.7.
- 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 #102.
- 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.
For the final bit of repetition: Just as before 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. Alright then, onto the dev diary proper.
Military
New:
- Making navies more important for projecting global power and securing control of coasts.
- Adding a proper system of military access and finding solutions for the other remaining rough edges in the frontline system.
Not Updated:
- Turning individual ships into proper pieces of military hardware that can be built, sunk and repaired rather than just being manpower packages.
- Adding a system for limited wars to reduce the number of early-game global wars between Great Powers
Historical Immersion
Done:
- 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
- Asides from the AI challenges when it comes to forming Germany/Italy, we are now relatively happy with the state of the unifications. There are certainly ways we want to improve unifications in the future, particularly in tying them much closer to the political systems, but that falls outside the scope of this particular point.
- General AI tweaks to have AI countries play in a more believable, immersive way
- With the introduction of Diplomatic Catalysts and various AI improvements in 1.7 we now consider this to be ‘done’, though in reality this is the sort of point that is never going to stop seeing improvements from our end.
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
- After the release of 1.7.2 we now consider this to be ‘almost there’ but still in need of a bit more work.
- 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
- We’ve made a number of changes and improvements to older journal entries in 1.6/1.7 such as the addition of scripted progress bars, but we still have more work to do here.
- Adding more country, state and region-specific content to enhance historical flavor of different countries
- As before, this is something we’re simply going to keep adding to every single update and is never really going to be ‘Done’. For now I am leaving this entry here to mark that this is still one of our top priorities
Diplomacy
Done:
- Improving and expanding on interactions with and from subjects, such as being able to grant and ask for more autonomy through a diplomatic action
- 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 (Lobbies)
- Foreign investment and some form of construction in other countries, at least if they’re part of your market
Not Updated:
- Make declaring and holding onto diplomatic Interests a more rewarding and challenging aspect of global empire-building
- Allowing peace deals to be negotiated during a Diplomatic Play instead of only having the option to give in
Internal Politics
Updated:
- Adding laws that expand on diversity of countries and introduce new ways to play the game
- Similar to the point for region-specific flavor, this is something that will never really be ‘Done’ but remains here to highlight that we consider it an important priority
Not Updated:
- 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.
New:
- Find a better solution for the ways ideologies appear, attract followers and create support for reforms than the current RNG-heavy leader ideology system.
Other
Not Updated:
- Improve on Companies by turning them into actual actors in your country that can own/expand buildings and interact with characters/politics.
- 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.
As always, I cannot make any specific promises about when these things will be coming. However, I can tell you that the next update (1.8) will be a standalone free update that should knock a point or two off this list, but will mainly be focused on bug fixing, general polish and more AI improvements. Before then we also have at least one more hotfix (1.7.4) planned to address the remaining high priority issues from the 1.7 release (tentatively planned for next week) and part of the team will continue working for a few more weeks like I mentioned in last week’s dev diary.
Right then, that’s all for this time, and all for this side of the summer! Dev diaries will return on August 15th but until then, I can but wish you many a Happy Thursday in the sun (or possibly snow, if you happen to live in the south hemisphere). Regardless, I hope you have a great July!