No, no, I definitely wasn’t playing as the US. In fact, I wasn’t even playing. I was just letting the game run. My guess – and really I should just shut up since Johan is here and far more capable of explaining it if he feels it needs explaining – is that there’s an event fairly hardcoded to cause the CSA to form right at 1849. If you’re playing as the US, you’ve presumably been working to keep the union together, so if the CSA forms, it won’t be until later. 12 years later if you’re playing perfectly historically. :)
Actually, its not “one event”.
There is a chain of several dozens of events and decisions that guide you through the pre-civil war conflicts.
Exact dates of when a us civil war breaks out was completely irrelevant for us in the development process. What mattered to us was to make it interesting to play the USA and that avoiding a civil war should be a challenge.
I didn’t mean to distill it down to something so simple as one event, but thanks for the clarification. I fully know from EU how complex y’all’s event trees can be, particularly for watershed moments in history (Protestant Reformation, for example).
I’m actually happy to see that historical events are back in for Vicky. I’ve been thinking about starting an Austro-Prussian war or a Franco-Prussian war, but I am afraid that then an event will fire and do the same thing. Although, I think, with these two events you can chose when they happen via war goals.
As was pointed out above, this only makes sense if the AI is choosing different strategies each time you play. If the same even fires off in multiple games on the same (or near the same) date, yet this is not hardcoded, then clearly the initial conditions have been chosen by the devs that do not reflect “reality” if the deterministic are arbitrarily chosen.
In other words, you can’t say the AI is choosing to play to win, which causes certain events to fire off, when those events are firing off at the same time each and every game, and not point to the initial conditions chosen by the developers as being the reason the AI chooses to play ahistorically.
Anyway, Total War and Civ are different genres and different games. To a great degree the opprobrium heaped upon Empire: Total War were due the the shortcomings caused by the poor AI, such as no European power being able to colonize, which greatly angered players. Players have an instinctive sense that modern nations have more “inertia” than classic civilizations and expect more historic results. Sparta was a city-state of perhaps 20k-50k people; one major defeat and the entire culture would collapse. In a sense, the further back you go, the easier it is to accept quasi- and ahistoric outcomes. Civ starts all civilizations at the same time; it’s fundamentally “gamey” and has different expectations.
Demo is out. Alas, I am at work, and I typically wait to play the full title anyway. But for those who wanted to give it look before purchasing, you can try it now. You’re limited to playing the US and I think the demo spans 15 years.
To follow up on the ACW issue, I raised the same question in a thread on the official forums and one of the devs there responded that it is still something they are tweaking.
No it ran something like this, we weren’t getting an ACW at all. So we lowered the bar and upped the POP issue script effects. The net effect was we ended up with an ACW, but it kept happening early. We are now back tonning things down again so it falls in a more historical range.
I’m speaking theoretically here but the AI could be acting rationally where the actual historical figures acted irrationally, in which case one would expect different outcomes from reality.
Best map ever (aside from completely screwing up El Paso as Plains? That’s the ass end of Texas, it should be below Steppe. Something like “Run, don’t stop!” Or at least desert.)
OMG complex.
Also, complex.
Did i mention the OMG part?
Now, where’s the manual?
I wish the demo wasn’t of the US. On one hand it’s a great choice for the time period because you have Mexico to tussle with as well as the west for colonisation.
On the other hand you have to deal with all the slavery policy choices and it’s an extra level of complicated stuff to deal with on top of an already complicated game.
I never tried Vicky 1, but i was quite familiar with EU series, and played Rome and found it … mediocre, with unfulfilled ideas. I can grok the overall view of what’s going on, what i can’t grok this early is how to influence the whole system deliberately rather than haphazardly.
I think it’s the best map as far as functionality and display of information, which is all I care about. Although I live next door, I couldn’t care less if there’s mountains in Colorado or not.
So I’ve still yet to play the actual demo, I’m still going through the (many) Tutorials. First off, what I heard seems to be the case, these tutorials are well done. In HOI3, I felt the tutorials showed me where things were on the interface, but with 0 understanding of what to do in the various screens. Vicky2 tutorials do a much better job of actually explaining the gameplay.
The other standout for me at this point is the polish. This isn’t meant to be an insult, but I never thought I’d use the word “slick” to describe a Paradox title, but Vicky2 is. The map is fantastic, and I think this is far and away their best interface yet.
Going through all these tutorials, I’m blown away at the amount of depth. There’s a lot of meat to this game. I like how many things are driven indirectly by decisions you make. That’s coupled really nicely with the National Focus idea - I liked it in EU3: HttT, but I love the implementation here! It gives you that bit of direct control in a game that almost has a Majesty feel, for me.
I’ll have to wait and see how the game actually plays out, but presentation wise, this is the best I’ve seen Paradox do yet. I’m impressed.
I agree, great tutorials and it is really appealing to the eye. The actual game part of the demo is pretty great too.
Two criticisms with the tutorials:
They are so short I don’t really see a need to separate them into beginner, intermediate, and advanced for each topic.
When a tutorial is over, it will give you the option of going to the next basic one, or to do the more advanced tutorial on the same topic. I always chose the latter, and it broke the tutorial a couple of times. Because several tutorials switch you over to Prussia, I got situations where I was controlling belgium and it was telling me about Prussian politics, and vice versa. This didn’t crash the game, but it did make it confusing at a couple of points.
… and oh lord, i do not envy Paradox. This is pretty much a condensed summary of the topics on their official boards:
-How do i change Prussia to Prussian Blue?
-Can i unite Germany and expel all non German ethnic groups?
-Does Vicky 2 have ethnic cleansing (no!?!?)
-How does Facism work on the POPs?
-What nation are you going to start with (Prussia!)
The “completely irrelevant” part bothers me. I feel that in a historically based game, historical results should be common. For example, if you aren’t playing the US, their civil war should occur roughly 3/4 of the time. When it does happen, the age range should center on the actual start date, 1861. 1849 is just fine, and so is 1873, as long as that center holds true. Having 1849 be the mean (and the mode as well, from what I’ve read) feels wrong.
