Victoria 2

[Valmy]

Switching nations though...just feels wrong to me.

If you knew it was coming you be alright with it.  It would be a factor in your strategy.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

All that springs to mind for me is increasing the focus periodically.
i.e. starts with a small region, war between cities and all that then it expands out to a bigger area then a bigger area...
The player technically loses nothing but as he becomes the big fish in his small pond he then graduates to being just another nation in another area (albeit still based on his earlier work)

Like Spore but not shit.
Anyway, I agree it wouldn't work.

That would work well for a 4X game. You can just find a wormwhole or some revolutionary hyperdrive and all of a sudden your playing field is much bigger. But it does not really work for games based on Earth. That's why so many players attempt world conquests with totally improbable minors.

Now, I can't really imagine a gameplay-friendly way to simulate large empires crumbling. After all, most of them crumbled because the imperialists were tired of whacking rebels and noticed that there were dimishing returns on their empires. Now, creating frustration like that will annoy most players.

one of the ways would be to find a gameplay technique that has, after a certain point, increasing ROIs for divesting your empire in favour of a "small" core-area (basically what happened in reality) with indirect rule/influence for former colonial areas.

[saskganesh]

games like HOTW and Brittania had you switch powers more or less every epoch. it's fun, but its a matter of different expectations.

[Solmyr]

At least with EU the timescale is such as to give a surface plausibility to the notion that e.g. a little duchy of Brandenburg could evenutally work itself up to be a major player.

But Victoria covers a much shorter period, and one where the bigger powers tended to augment their advantages over the smaller ones rather than the other way around.  The Dutch were still big players in the 18th century but simply couldn't keep up in the 19th because of lack of scale.

Even in the Victoria timeframe some degree of consolidation was possible.   Savoy went on to unify Italy and gain a few minor colonies, for the biggest example I can think of.  Tiny Belgium managed to gain some significant colonies for another.

It should be possible for a small country to gain in power and influence.  But yes, world conquest as a concept should be right out.

Neither Italy nor Belgium would have existed if some great powers (mostly France, in both cases) hadn't wanted them to. It was an era where the great powers basically dictate what happens in the world.

And yes, they should have pushed the start date to 1815, right after Congress of Vienna, as that's when modern politics really started.

[The Minsky Moment]

The planned cover is out.

It shows a small but determined band of Redcoats preparing to charge quickstep on Robert E. Lee, who is sheathed in a protective glow of flaming aurora borealis.  Unfortunately for Lee, his giant horse is about to trample his rather poorly placed artillery.

[MadBurgerMaker]

The planned cover is out.

It shows a small but determined band of Redcoats preparing to charge quickstep on Robert E. Lee, who is sheathed in a protective glow of flaming aurora borealis.  Unfortunately for Lee, his giant horse is about to trample his rather poorly placed artillery.

I was going to say it's weird that people in that thread are worried that buyers might think it's an ACW game..until I came across the post with the dude who actually does think that cover implies the game is about the Civil War.  A battle between the British and Confederates.

[Josquius]

Is it just me or does the map look like a nice 2D thing?

[Neil]

Is it just me or does the map look like a nice 2D thing?

They're still in alpha.  I'm sure they'll ruin it before release.

[The Minsky Moment]

Is it just me or does the map look like a nice 2D thing?

I think it is just a mockup for demonstrative purposes.  Not even an alpha shot.

[Razgovory]

Is it just me or does the map look like a nice 2D thing?

I think it is just a mockup for demonstrative purposes.  Not even an alpha shot.

Yeah, it's going to use the EU3 engine so we can look forward to an ugly map.  The EU3 map didn't bother me to much.  The HOI3 map does though.  Mostly because places aren't where they are suppose to be.  I can sorta understand getting a place like Jefferson City wrong... But New York?

[HisMajestyBOB]

The planned cover is out.

It shows a small but determined band of Redcoats preparing to charge quickstep on Robert E. Lee, who is sheathed in a protective glow of flaming aurora borealis.  Unfortunately for Lee, his giant horse is about to trample his rather poorly placed artillery.

I was going to say it's weird that people in that thread are worried that buyers might think it's an ACW game..until I came across the post with the dude who actually does think that cover implies the game is about the Civil War.  A battle between the British and Confederates.

It's kinda funny, since everyone will bitch about the cover no matter what they pick.
And all the Euros want the Franco-Prussian war, because anything Amerikkka won't sell in Europe.

[Queequeg]

Permanent lowering of stability with noncore provinces, loss of cores in provinces of a different culture (loss would be through events and revolts), perhaps an expansion of the administrative tension concept from CK.

If you make it so France + a large part of the HRE can field an army that is smaller than France alone plus has less money, you could be well on your way.

This seems somewhat ahistorical and unnecessarily limiting.  The Empire of Augustus and the Good Emperors were very stable places, so was the Ottoman Empire under Mehmet II and Suleyman I, and certain periods of the various Chinese Empires.

I'd really prefer something like EU: Rome but streamlined.  Pretenders, various governors who want to be more than that,   religious-social revolutions should all be important.  To be totally honest, I'd love to see this merged somehow with a social component; so if the Equites/Knights/Dehqans/Beys/Kshatriya start getting uppity you'd see major problems in long-term stability, especially in non-core provinces, although they'd be better off militarily. 

[Syt]

Is it just me or does the map look like a nice 2D thing?

They're still in alpha.  I'm sure they'll ruin it before release.

No kidding. If you zoom in, it'll have Paris in Normandy, London in Ireland and Rome in the Peleponnes. Then King will tell you that the map is fine and that it reflects conscious design decisions.

[Ideologue]

I bet they forget that ironclads shouldn't be able to sink dreadnoughts, too.

[Iormlund]

I bet they forget that ironclads shouldn't be able to sink dreadnoughts, too.

That's a minor error though, seeing as how pretty much anything can sink a dreadnought, from vintage biplanes to a couple Italian dudes in shorts.