Limited Expansion

by on October 15, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the second in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Victoria II. See the previous review here:
Victoria II: Same But Different

Victoria II was part of a string of successes for Paradox Interactive around 2010, and its first expansion was announced a year after the release of the game. A House Divided was released for download only for PC on February 2nd 2012, with a Mac version following at the end of March. As the title suggests, much of the attention, and hype, was around enhancing the American Civil War inside of the game, though there were also a number of other features.

As part of this primary focus, a new start date of 1861 was included, with the South already separated and organized in the Confederate States and at war with the USA. The initial country selection map even moves to focus on the United States instead of Europe, though the rest of the world is playable as always, and some players find it handy for playing Italy and Germany, who are much closer to forming than in 1836, but have not yet done so.

Note that this review is just on the expansion, and you may which to go back over my review of the main game, listed above.

Interface

Overall, the interface was cleaned up a bit and added to, with some new buttons in various screens to make things easier. Additionally, new information was added. When you click on a particular commodity, it brings up an info screen that shows the price history for it, how much you’re producing (and how), and what your consumption is. There’s also a section showing what things may consume it, but currently aren’t in your nation.

And similar to Divine Wind, the number of map modes was doubled, with new informational modes for population density, spheres of influence, supply limits, and the like.

American Civil War

Victoria’s Euro-centric model of politics has always been a problem for one of the bigger events of the mid-19th Century: the ACW. AHD spends a fair amount of effort trying to come to grips with the problem, and is partly successful.

The Second Great Awakening will happen at the beginning of the game, which will make Moralism a dominant issue (a stance all the existing parties agree with), and start triggering Moral Crusaders events that increase consciousness, and start shifting opinions to Secularized. In addition, The Slavery Debate event adds a country modifier for a small increase consciousness over time. A number of other events also increase consciousness, and others (like granting statehood) shift it around.

The net result is the US will have a high level of political consciousness relatively early in the game, forcing appropriate POPs into supporting liberalism (and the eventual liberal Republican Party), and pushing for issues, with slavery allowed/not allowed being likely choices. There are a number of decisions that lower consciousness again, but they are also lead-ins to the Civil War, with the main A House Divided event set to fire while the Upper House is at least 40% liberal (actually electing a liberal president is not necessary). At that point the split between the CSA and USA is judged by slave state status, and possibly whether a secessionist event has fired for that state (which starts happening early), with no events or decisions around border states, or initial attempts contain succession without war.

Despite being more fleshed out, there are still major problems with this model. The pre-war era saw bitter fighting inside the US government, and this still isn’t represented inside V II: AHD. Territories can be made states at the will of the player, and can be made slave or free at the player’s whim (the decision does have consequences), while antebellum politics would be better served by forcing statehood to go through decisions that force effects, slave/non-slave statehood etc. (For example, the Kansas-Nebraska Act is a decision in-game, but just shifts POP consciousness ratings around.)

Moving to Rebellion

Rebellions in Victoria II have the problem of often being based on popular movements, and there’s no consequences for shooting down what essentially seems to be civilian protesters.

AHD improves on this situation in its final big feature, movements. These are non-violent groups established to pressure for a particular reform. They get their own section in the Politics screens, and only exist there. However, if ignored too long they can ‘radicalize’ and convert into an incipient rebellion of the same nature as nationalists and more violent agitators for a change of government.

POPs join movements just as they would a rebellion, and as their numbers swell, moderate factions in the government will bow to the pressure and start voting for the particular reform. This should be different than in the base game, where the system wasn’t refined enough for the upper house voters to start voting for a particular reform, but for some reason (bug?) the upper house will still start voting for any reform of the proper type, instead of just the particular one.
Movements can radicalize if they start feeling like they can’t get their reform passed, at which point they have a chance to turn into a normal rebellion. They can also be suppressed, which will disband the movement for a time, and lower pressure for that reform, but when the movement starts again, it will have a higher chance to radicalize, so it can only be put off for so long.

Westernization

In regular Victoria II, Westernization worked the same as it had in the first game: an ‘uncivilized’ nation needed to research some basic technologies and hit certain prestige and military goals to escape being considered little more than potential colonies by 19th Century Europe.

A House Divided changes this by barring uncivilized nations from researching technology at all. Instead, they have a different reform screen from normal nations, and research goes into military and economic reforms that overcome a number of starting deficiencies, and can grant some of the basic technologies. Each reform contributes to Westernization, and once it reaches 100%, the country becomes a Civilized Nation, the normal reform panel shows up, and normal technologies can be researched.

As usual, Japan gets some bonuses in this system. They start with the basic land reform already active, which increases mining and farming efficiency, and gives 10% Westernization. The Meiji Restoration gives a bonus to research (which is already good for an uncivilized nation thanks to a good literacy rate, and that literacy rate makes the reforms cheaper), and actual research points. As well as the historical option, Japan can choose an ‘early’ Restoration, at a cost in militancy, which should be easy to deal with.

Less easy to deal with is the events that start up once a country is well on the road to Westernization. Each reform will raise militancy in the population, and partway through, there will be an event to embrace or resist Western influences (pretty much just like the events for Westernizing a country in EU III), which will either anger the population, or delay reform progress.
Railroads

Paradox stated that overall, money should be a bit tighter in this version of the game, partially through re-working some of the technology bonuses. With an economic model this complex, it’s really hard to say how much effect there has or hasn’t been….

However, the most interesting part of this re-work is that infrastructure/railroads are now limited by terrain. Hills, mountains, swamps, and the like now impose a penalty on the maximum level of railroads allowed in a province, so that only clear terrain can build railroads after the discovery of Experimental Railroad, and then hills can get level one after discovery of Early Railroad, and so on. This is one of those ideas that’s obvious once you see it, and keeps the rougher terrain areas as something of an economic backwater, since they lack the bonuses of higher infrastructure.

China

The last major new feature of the expansion is the sub-state. This basically an unbreakable loyal alliance between two countries that are supposed to represent one decentralized country. While available for anything in mods, Paradox only uses it for China.
The primary function is to keep the single Chinese economy from wrecking the world economy with its millions of Artisan POPs. Now, the Chinese Empire is China and six substates, each one of which can dealt with, and put into a sphere of influence, separately, breaking up the economic unity of the region. If China manages to fully Westernize, it can then inherit all the sub-states to make itself a unified nation.

This seems like a purely practical solution to a bad problem with V II’s model without really getting at what happened to China in the 19th Century any better. However, the various sub-state’s best relations at the beginning of the game are with China, so they still form their own economic pool of resources and production. When the various sub-states start falling into European spheres of influence, much of that gets diverted to the appropriate great power, weakening the overall Chinese economy, which actually does get closer to the situation.

Conclusion

As a package of improvements to Victoria II, this is definitely a good expansion. The new features do help with the Victoria model of the 19th Century. However, they aren’t quite as sweeping as some of Paradox’s other expansions.

That would have been okay if there had been big sweeping changes centered around the ACW as suggested by the title. Instead, there was just a large number of additions to the existing system of decisions and events. They don’t do a bad job bringing the USA to a boil of tensions before starting a war, but considering that a lot of the forces at work played out inside the national government, which is one of the things that the Victoria series tries to focus on, it still feels lacking.

For someone who already likes Victoria II, this will improve the game, and for someone just getting into it, it will not complicate things any more, and should not be avoided. It doesn’t deserve a strong recommendation as a ‘large’ expansion, but it is still recommended.

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Shogun: Only War

by on September 9, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the tenth in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay
Crusader Kings: A Dynastic Adventure
Hearts of Iron II: Return Engagement
Europa Universalis III: A Whole New World
Europa Universalis: Rome: Make a Desert and Call it a Game
Hearts of Iron III: One Plus Two Equals Three
Victoria II: Same But Different

After more work on the Far East in the Europa Universalis series, Paradox next developed a new real time pausable empire management game focused on Japan itself. It was announced shortly after Total War: Shogun 2 was announced (but had already been under development at that point), and came out for PC in September 2011, several months after that popular similarly-themed title. A Japanese-language version was released by CyberFront in Febrary 2012, but was not supported by Paradox itself.

The game got a small number of die-hard fans, but apparently was not much of a success. There were four notable patches after release to clean up the interface and work out bugs, but no development past that, leaving it one of Paradox’s only games without a sequel or expansion.

The Time and Place

Sengoku covers the entire Warring States period of Japan from the start of the Onin War in 1467 to 1620, safely past the Battle of Sekigahara (1600) that effectively founded the actual Tokugawa Shogunate and the Siege of Osaka in 1615, which ended the last opposition to Tokugawa.

Unusually for a Clausewitz game, Sengoku does not feature the ability to start at any point in the time period. (One imagines that researching a detailed timeline description for everyone involved is not possible outside of Japanese-language sources.) At first, only 1467 was available, but the second major patch added the ability to start in 1551, when all the late players are established, and most of the familiar names are active.

Interestingly, this makes it one of the wider-ranging of the many games on this period, since most concentrate on just the later Azuchi-Momoyama period/Nobunaga’s career while Paradox elected to start with the initial breakdown of authority.

The game features a fairly detailed map of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu (normal for games on this subject). As well, some of the smaller islands, which are usually ignored, are separate provinces, and Awaji and Sado are three provinces each.

The base provinces are considered kori, small districts, which are grouped into kuni, which are all named for the actual historical regions held by the daimyos.

The colors used in the various map modes are a bit muted, and actually help quite a bit with establishing the mood, as does the very good Japanese-styled soundtrack provided by the Knights of Soundtrack, which was only the second time that Paradox has gone outside of their main composer for an original soundtrack.

Clan Warfare

Like in Crusader Kings, there is a large cast of characters, from which individual rulers of kori and leaders of armies are drawn. Everything is organized around clans, with ultimate authority residing in the clan heads.

These clan heads will generally personally control from one to five kori, with all further lands under control of the clan going to other kokujin (ruler of one or more koris). When a clan controls all of the territory in a kuni, it automatically gets access to the title of daimyo for that kuni, which will go to the clan head, but can be granted (like the kori themselves) to a kokujin to make them an extra daimyo within the clan. As in CK, going over the demense size (the number of kori directly held by you) causes an escalating chance of revolts, and unhappiness among everyone else in your court. Here, however, the maximum size is always five kori, and is not modified by rank or the current year.

Like in EU:Rome, characters have three primary attributes; in this game they are, Diplomacy, Martial, and Intrigue. There are two character-based currencies: Money and Honor. Naturally, everyone has a clan they belong to, but may be in service to a clan other than their own. There is a system of traits that can modify the primary attributes, like in the previous character-oriented games, but it’s not as extensive.

They can also have ambitions, like in EU:Rome, but the scope of them is extremely limited. A character may wish to take one of the three main court positions (one that works with each primary attribute)… and that’s about it. There are other things characters will desire, but they are not technically ambitions.

A character can start a plot; this is akin to gaining an ambition, but he can then try to get other people in on the scheme. A clan leader can plot to attack another clan, and invite other leaders in on the plot, and everyone ends up attacking at once. A vassal can decide to go independent and found his own clan, and plot with other vassals to have them go along with him. Or a lesser member of a clan may decide he should be in charge, and plot with others for them to go over to his side when he starts a civil war. The plot screen will show everyone who’s involved, and dis play a plot power, that rates the relative power of everyone in the plot and the target of the plot; when it is high enough, the plot can be enacted.

A character may also ask to get the next kokujin or daimyo title that becomes available (this seems to only happen with people who are already vassals of yours; unlanded courtiers do not seem to ask), and this can affect relations depending on the answer.

This last brings up an important new idea: instead of what two people think of each other being represented by one number, there are two, to show what each person’s opinion of the other is. If one refuses a favor to the other, the snubbed character may be bitter and have a lowered opinion score, but the other may not have seen anything important in it and be unaffected. This really allows for some meaningful flexibility in how relations are handled, and is a great improvement over previous games.

Honor

The major weak point of Sengoku is the relative dearth of diplomatic options. You can’t create alliances (plots, above, stand in for that), or negotiate treaties of who gets what in a peace deal. Because Sengoku depicts a period where authority has broken down, peace generally means that everyone keeps what they currently hold.

There are other options, including one side becoming a vassal of the other, or sending a hostage to secure good behavior. (Hostages can also be exchanged during peace to try and keep a war from breaking out.)

But most actions have a cost in personal honor. Declaring war on someone costs honor (with extra charges for attacking some one less powerful, attacking someone you have a high opinion of…), as do most other actions, like inviting someone into your clan. While at peace, honor slowly accumulates, and characters must prevent their honor from slipping too low: if someone’s honor goes below 0, they must commit seppuku (and if this happens to you, it is Game Over, even if you have an heir).

At very low values for honor (10 or less), a character may voluntarily commit seppuku, and his lord may command him to commit seppuku, which can be refused, but will drive his honor even lower….

Overall, play is like Crusader Kings as you play as a particular character, instead of a government with a cast of characters like in EU:Rome. It doesn’t have quite the same emphasis on a dynasty, as you can adopt a child to be your heir if all else fails. Your heir will take over, and you continue the game as him as long as you do not lose all honor and are forced into involuntary seppuku. Along with most actions having a cost in honor, it’s a fairly effective method of bringing through a good feel for the period.

Warfare

Sengoku uses the same general battle system that was introduced in EU III, and has been in every Clausewitz game. Units line up in a main and reserve row, and attack their counterparts across the way, with units that don’t have anyone directly facing them attacking nearby units in the flank. This time the display is a bit larger and brightly colored, making it a bit easier to follow, if you understand what’s going on.

This time, the basic unit is a 250-man ‘regiment’ which can be of three types: ashigaru (peasant infantry), samarai (cavalry), and arqubusiers. The latter are not available without being subject to Western (Portuguese) influences, which starts by an event around 1547.

It seems like combat is a bit more fluid in this game, with troops redeploying around the lines a lot more, but it’s hard to be sure. As usual, combat relies on a 0-9 die roll, modified by the army leader’s Martial skill, and for attacking across bad terrain. There are alternating fire and shock phases, like in standard EU-series combat, but the general’s skill applies equally to both of them. With only 250 men in each unit (compared to the 1000 of an EU III unit), regiments can disappear quite quickly, which may cause the fluid combat.

Provinces must be taken by siege, or by assaulting the castle. Again, this is pretty much the same system as in other Paradox games, but the ratio of sieging to defending troops seems to have more of an impact, and ‘basic’ castles can fall fairly quickly.

Indeed, while there is no real change in ‘technology’ during the game, everything gets more developed, with larger armies becoming possible, and common. Castles become much harder to take (especially in rough terrain, where bonuses can help them hold out for a long time). Most notably, the sizes of personal retinues, or standing armies, gets much larger, and as wars continue, units of ronin (effetively extra retinues) become available for hire. All of these require pay even in peacetime, which makes overspending a possibility.

An odd point is that musters will replenish in their province even while it has been raised and in the field. So it is possible to lose an army, and then immediately replace it by mustering troops from the provinces all over again. Of course, this takes a long time to happen, so your army would have had to been in the field for a long time, and you can only raise complete brigades of 250 men.

Construction

Kori have a—limited—number of ways they can be improved. At the beginning of the 1467 game, no improvements are built (and very few in the 1551 start), and everyone must start building up their lands from scratch. The two primary things to build up are the castle, and the village. Each has eight upgrades that are built up in a specified order.

In addition, there are four guild slots in each kori. These are a two-step process where each one has to be opened up before a guild can be started there, and they are the primary way to specialize a kori, as there are eight different guilds for the four slots.

Like in the feudal world of Crusader Kings, each kori has a muster that can be called up. While active in the field, they cost money, but are of course ‘free’ when not in use. Low-level improvements of the castle increase the size of this muster (in even steps of one samurai regiment and two ashigaru regiments), while later improvements increase the rate at which this replenishes losses. Meanwhile, the village increases tax revenues and the maximum size of the personal retinue.

Doing all of this construction does not, for a change, cost money. Instead, while construction is underway, revenue from the kori is reduced by 70%. And there are plenty of events where something happens to the construction, and you have to decide between spending money to fix it, or accepting a delay (with more time spent at 30% revenue).

On the other hand, installing a guild in an opened slot, and building a religious building, does cost a flat amount of money. They still take time to build, but do not draw from your continuing income. Guilds are particularly expensive to start, while opening the slot up is short and ‘cheap’.

The first four guild types offer bonuses to personal retinues and ronin, allowing the ‘standing’ troops to be noticeably better than the musters. The fifth builds arquebuses, which then produces 30 guns a month, which is tracked for purposes of equipping regiments and reinforcements.

Religion

At the start of the game, there are two religious factions that a kokujin can court to gain advantages. Building Buddhist temples will help your muster recover strength faster, and building Shinto shrines will give a bonus to your honor.

Actively siding with a religious faction will give a stronger bonus of the same type, and being the leader of that faction a stronger one still.

In the early 16th Century, Portuguese traders will arrive, and a province or two will gain the ‘Western Influences’ modifier. Thereafter, it will slowly spread through the rest of Japan in a haphazard fashion.

Provinces where this is true can build Christian churches, and gunsmith guilds. As with the other two religions, building a church allows a kokujin to join the Christian faction and gain bonuses, with them all being increases in taxes.

Victory

Generally speaking, Paradox’s games are something of a sandbox affair for grand strategy titles. Usually, there’s some form of in-game ranking of countries, and you can certainly try to keep yourself on top, but that doesn’t bring about any sort of victory screen, or in-game reward. Furthermore, it’s quite common for experienced players to take a small country and just try to survive the game, or turn a backwards part of the world around. But there’s still no in-game ‘victories’ there.

Here, however, there is a clear goal: become shogun. This is done by taking control of 50% of the provinces in the game, and then holding off any challenges to you taking the title. There is a bar underneath the upper left interface that fills up depending on how close the largest clan is to this goal. Green if that’s you, or red for the largest clan, with your current percentage in yellow.

Conclusion

I try to avoid ‘looking ahead’ much in these reviews, but it’s nearly impossible here, and for once not doing so is possibly detrimental. Sengoku is often called Crusader Kings II light, or a trial run for Paradox’s next (and break-out) title. Both were actually in development during the same time, and so ideas were likely shared between the development teams. (One suspects that ideas mostly flowed from CKII’s bigger development team to Sengoku, but I haven’t seen anything to say one way or the other.)

The main interface of the portrait in the upper left corner with the line of buttons for other functions is basically identical in the two games, events have largely the same appearance, and many of the sound effects are the same, including a small musical sting that plays when an event fires. The terrain-mode map is gorgeous and detailed, but still not quite in the same style as later games. Plots and the ‘character opinions’ detailed above would be central parts of CK II.

However, Sengoku retains its own identity by being a game that Paradox determinedly stripped as much out of as they could. It is overall one of their simpler games, and one can assume it was meant as more of an ‘entry-point’ to their catalog, but instead, the much bigger and more complex Crusader Kings II ended up doing well in that capacity.

Computer strategy games have been moving away from being just about warfare for some decades, with Civilization being an early marker in the change of direction. One of the hallmarks of all of Paradox’s entries is a fairly robust diplomatic system, which allows for all sorts of interactions. It’s not entirely absent here, but the much-reduced options are at the center of what makes this game feel small, and limited, and probably did much to limit its appeal.

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Winds of Change

by on August 20, 2018 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the eleventh in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay
Crusader Kings: A Dynastic Adventure
Hearts of Iron II: Return Engagement
Europa Universalis III: A Whole New World
Europa Universalis: Rome: Make a Desert and Call it a Game
Hearts of Iron III: One Plus Two Equals Three
EU III: Heir to the Throne: Not Done Yet
Victoria II: Same But Different

A year after Heir to the Throne, another poll from Paradox returned more EU III as still the leading desire among fans. This time the proposal was to concentrate on ‘the rest of the world’ (than Europe) though all the attention went into the Orient.

What would become the last expansion (and the second past what Paradox had originally expected to do) for EU III came out for PC in December 2010, and a new bundle, EU III: Chronicles, with all the expansions was released the following March, along with the Mac version of the expansion. This review is just of Divine Wind, so you may want to read/review my EU III and HttT reviews listed above for basic details before reading this.

The World

The most readily apparent thing about the new expansion was that the graphics had gotten a major overhaul. This caught EU III up with the other Clausewitz games graphically, and did away with the overly-muted colors it had been using. The jagged-looking province borders are still there, but they’re better smoothed in some of the larger zoom levels.

The result was still a bit flat, especially compared to how their games would look very soon, but comparatively, it was quite good. There are some other important improvements, including the ability to zoom out much further than before.

Additionally, the number of different map modes generally available about doubled, with views of relative tech levels, number of buildings in a province, and so on being added. In addition, there was a new map mode linked to the peace process. As you go through the list, selecting provinces to change hands, they light up; the area of new nation to be released as a vassal changes color etc. In addition, there’s shading to show what’s currently possible to take in a peace, and the map will shift areas when a selected province is far away, also making it handy for wide-ranging wars.

Japan

In EU III, Japan is a minor power, stuck, like the rest of the east, with a poor technology group and troop types. But, it has the population and riches to be able to do quite a bit in its arena. Left to itself, the AI usually muddles around, winning and losing wars. But given a lucky break or two, it is not uncommon for a Europe-based player to get to the east, and find that Japan is carving up a mighty empire for itself.

In Divine Wind, a lot of detail was added to Japan. First, the map of Japan itself was expanded from 18 provinces to about 40. Second, it was split up into four factions (daimyos) all under one emperor. The rest of the world deals with Japan as a whole through the emperor, for alliances, wars, and the like.

Internally, the daimyos treat with each other as normal, but have no diplomatic options to deal with nations outside of Japan. Typically, one daimyo will be shogun (at the start of any game, the Minamoto will be shogun), and the strength of his rule is shown in a panel that gives the shogun’s influence. This represents his ability to keep control of what the other nominally independent daimyos are up to. At lower levels of influence, the other daimyos can declare war or ally with each other; at moderately high levels, the shogun can declare wars on the other daimyos; and at very high levels, he can declare wars on other countries on behalf of all Japan.

Influence changes on a monthly basis according to the shogun’s current prestige and his relations with the other daimyos. He has a couple of decisions that can be made as shogun, but there’s no series of reforms like in the HRE, so the actions he can take are all limited. At low influence, the daimyos may declare war, and if one can gain enough power, may be made shogun instead. Additionally, if the other daimyos can be eliminated, then the shogun can take full power and become the full Japanese nation, instead of just a clan under the emperor.

Underneath it all, the daimyos are still normal feudal monarchy governments, and can change forms at will. It is instead some hard-coded relationships that make up the differences. It is also possible for an external country to conquer ‘Japan’ (take the one-province nation of the emperor), and cut the daimyos loose that way.

This is still obviously fairly abstracted from the actual situation, which Paradox felt does not fit into EU III’s large-scale model with dozens of clans and fairly rapid shifts of power, but it certainly is closer than just a single unified nation.

China

China (or more properly at the start of the game, the Ming Dynasty) is a large nation that did not do a whole lot during the period of Europa Universalis. As such, it always presents a problem for the developers, as it’s hard to keep such a large and populous country chained to an inward-looking set of goals. (In fact, there was an early AAR on the forums that came to the conclusion that Ming was the easiest country to do a world conquest game with.)

Typically, EUIII hands Ming a number of large problems, such as being in one of the slowest-developing tech groups (Chinese, 40% of the normal rate, with a further limitation on anything past level 7), and a lot of rebellion events to keep attention off of the outside. This often works with the AI (but not always…), but a determined player can still do quite a bit.

Divine Wind gives Ming China a new government form, Celestial Empire, which comes with three factions. The abilities of the current monarch, and the current domestic policy sliders determine the month-to-month support of each faction. There are also events and cultural decisions that can directly influence the current support (which will then slowly slide back into balance according to the monthly support). The factions truly are about a third of a government apiece, as at any time you can only do the third of the functions allowed by that faction.

The Eunuch Faction is supported by Diplomatic ability, Free Trade and Naval policy, and allows the placing of merchants, exploration, the placing of colonies, and building new naval units.

The Temple Faction is supported by Military ability, narrow minded and large army policies, and allows the declaration of wars and the placement of missionaries.

The Bureaucrat Faction is supported by Administrative ability, aristocracy and serfdom, and allows the construction of buildings and army units past the current support limit (which, being China, is already quite large).

It would seem the faction influences were not written into the timeline, as a game will always begin with the Eunuch Faction at 100%, but the policy sliders will make sure it is soon overtaken by the Bureaucrats (with the Temple getting second place). The Celestial Empire is otherwise a fairly simple government with no special bonuses, and a time to domestic policy changes that is fairly good for the beginning government types. But it does come with an extra bonus: the Mandate of Heaven national modifier that reduces revolt risk, stability cost, and gives a monthly bonus contribution to stability progress. (However, going below 0 stability or 60 legitimacy gives the Mandate of Heaven Lost modifier that makes stability much harder to get, along with other nasty effects and events.)

All of this makes the Ming Dynasty ship of state one that is hard to steer, and certainly does its job of keeping it constrained. But while there is some interest in the idea of working the factions against each other, it is more an exercise in frustration for anyone not prepared to be very patient.

However, the factions only exist (and limit the Ming) if there’s no major changes. Westernizing the Ming at all will get rid of the factions (and the Mandate of Heaven, which only applies while you have factions), while fully Westernizing the country allows the government form to be changed. Also, in 1644 or later, the Ming can possibly take the decision Form Chinese Nation (meant to represent the Qing Dynasty) if the Manchu are no longer around, and this changes the formal nation tag, and shifts the government to a Despotic Monarchy (which also gets rid of the factions and Mandate of Heaven).

The Steppe

Lastly, the fluid tribal governments of central Asia got a very interesting rework in Divine Wind. They’re considered to automatically be at war with all their non-steppe horde neighbors all the time. They can be defeated, and a peace imposed, but as soon as the 10-year truce is over, the war starts again.

Not only that, but there is no way to trade territory in a treaty. If a horde occupies a province long enough it automatically goes over to it. Conversely, a ‘settled’ country can colonize any province that they hold from a horde. Like with a normal colony, if it gets to 1000 people, it becomes a regular province of the country. However, these ‘colonies’ develop much faster than normal, taking about 4 years to settle the province if nothing further is done instead of the roughly 18 years of a fast-developing normal colony.

The only ways for the horde to escape from this is to reform the government away from a tribal structure (which is difficult), or to form the Mugal Empire, either of which will turn it into a despotic monarchy.

The good news is that this really does lend central Asia an appropriately fluid feel, and the nearby settled countries must always be wary of what’s going on beyond their border. But since a war with a horde country doesn’t count as a ‘normal’ war for war exhaustion, degrading cultural tradition, etc, the first time they have a problem (such as the usual succession crisis of all tribal governments), it isn’t hard to just occupy everything, put down any rebellions, keep them from ever generating a new army, and just colonize the entire country. An occupied province will have an ever-mounting revolt risk, but as long as there’s troops to keep a lid on while colonization proceeds, not a huge problem. This isn’t too far off of the sudden collapse of these societies in history, but it can happen much earlier than it should by being a bit gamey.

Building Out

One of the interesting ideas introduced in HttT was that of an extended set of provincial decisions, which in conjunction with national focus and magistrates turned into a separate way to improve provinces.

DW did away with much of that system and the province improvement buildings that had been around since the original game. Instead, there are now six categories of buildings (Government, Army, Navy, Production, Trade, Fort), each with six levels. Naturally, at the beginning of the game, very little of this is available, and the levels of buildings unlock as technology progresses through the game. The magistrates from HttT were retained, and now each building costs money and a magistrate, which at least keeps a large country from just saving money and spamming every province with a new building as soon as it becomes available.

An extra wrinkle is that in the late game you must choose to specialize your provinces. No province may have more than one building of level five or higher. (Note that this also means powerful fortifications now come at the cost of other things.) Short of this, it’s still a lot like the older system, but with a lot more steps along the way (6×4+2 = 26 buildings, compared to the 17—including 6 fort levels—of the old system).

Manufactories still exist as a one-off expensive buildings that improve local resource production, and give a bonus to technology investment as before. But there is now also a set of eight ‘Unique Buildings’, which each can be built once in the country. These aren’t as expensive as Manufactories, but overall tend to have higher tech level requirements, making many of them late-game improvements.

Conclusion

Every expansion for EU III saw new features introduced to the main feature set originally presented. Most would find their way into EU IV, but the main exceptions are in Divine Wind. They’re generally all good ideas, but the hard-coded relationships in Japan, the separate government type and factions of China, and the more fluid tribal nations did not work well in practice, and were dropped.

But the interface improvements were a big help, and was something that Paradox continued to work on through further games. The overall look of EU III was still slightly behind the times with DW, but it was a big step forward for the game, and doubtlessly helped it continue to do well as Paradox’s attention was occupied elsewhere for the next couple of years.

For a new player of EU III, going straight to the Chronicles version is fairly easy to recommend. Unlike HttT, which was a mixed recommendation due to all the extra complexity it introduced, most of the new features are in places where a new player probably won’t see them until they are well acquainted with the main parts of the game. The rest of the new features are definite improvements, and will help, rather than hurt, a new player.

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Same But Different

by on August 8, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the ninth in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay
Crusader Kings: A Dynastic Adventure
Hearts of Iron II: Return Engagement
Europa Universalis III: A Whole New World
Europa Universalis: Rome: Make a Desert and Call it a Game
Hearts of Iron III: One Plus Two Equals Three

When Paradox Interactive polled their fans around 2008, a sequel to Victoria was the most-wanted new game, which caused some controversy as it was the developer’s least successful game (the implosion of the game’s original publisher, Strategy First, carries some of the blame for this). While some important insiders were sure that it could be successful, CEO Fredrik Wester announced that he’d shave his head if the new game ever saw a profit.

Victoria II was released for PC in August 2010, with a Mac version following in September. Wester had had his head shaved in June, on the strength of the pre-orders. There have been expansions since then, but this review is only about the original game.

Not Like the Others

As a sequel, Victoria II is a typical Paradox empire management game, and follows the lead of the original game’s take on the 19th Century fairly closely. A large number of features are not much changed, and are, at most, polishings of the original’s ideas. At the same time, there are some very important differences between it and its predecessor, and other recent Paradox real-time empire management games.

Early Paradox games had the obligatory intro movies, but these were dropped with the introduction of the Clausewitz engine. Victoria II, however, does feature a small intro movie that plays after the launcher, and before the main load of the game, which feels like a sort of celebration of the return of Paradox’s most troubled title.

The usual ability to start at any point in the time period of the game (1836 to 1936, the same as Victoria: Revolutions) is missing this time. The detailed world market was too much to set up for the timeline definitions the other Clausewitz games use, and so the only option is to start on January 1, 1836.

The interface has a set of seven ‘tickers’ along the top, along with the more usual minimal element that identifies who you’re playing as, and is the normal place to get at the rest of the interface in a Paradox game. This top bar is actually equivalent to the overview that the sidemenu in the original Victoria had, but these go directly to much-needed full-screen displays of information, like was introduced in HoI II.

Fully Operational Economy

Victoria II uses a production economy with world market very similar to the original game’s (with 48 instead of 47 commodities), but with some extras.

Like before, each province produces some form of raw resource, and a fair amount of the population is employed in the RGO (resource gathering operation). Unlike before, these are not upgradeable into larger versions that can hire more people to produce more goods. Instead, they they get more efficient, and, generally, smaller, as technology advances, which reduces the amount of labor needed to get full production.

Factories exist at the state level which can take those products and turn them into finished (or intermediate) goods that are more valuable. But, this is not just a resource/factory economy. The population also includes artisans who can produce all the same things that factories do (including machine parts, which was a choke point in the industrializing economy of the first game). And, at the beginning of the game, they do it more efficiently than the factories can. Factories can employ large numbers of people, and overcome the artisans in bulk, but it will take a number of technologies that make factories more efficient to truly make industrialization pay (it has been noted that China’s large population of artisans can wreck an economy that gets too easy access to them).

Every part of the population has has needs (life, everyday, and luxury), and tries to buy the the items for those needs from its cash reserves in the internal and international markets, and can, over time, change into different social status depending on how their needs are being filled and and how much cash they have accumulated. Most of this is the same system as the original game used, but changing population roles was purely up to the player originally, and now has been taken out of his hands.

All of this adds up to a complicated world market with evolving supply and demand, and slowly changing prices. However, the actual market forces are just as primitive as in the original. Prices vary around a baseline target price, there’s no embargoes, or country-specific import/export controls, which were all large parts of 19th Century economics.

And finally, it needs to be noted that it takes a little bit of time for the AI to figure everything in this system out properly, and the current trading solution doesn’t get saved. So on every reload there is a bit of thrashing around until the economy settles down again, and dedicated players avoid closing the game when possible to avoid artificial disruptions to the economy.

I’ll Bid One State

Like almost all Paradox games, Victoria II has a large number of options in diplomacy and warfare. Like with the casus belli system from EU III: Heir to the Throne, a particular goal must be chosen before going to war, but many details are different here. Most notably, you can only receive things in a peace that you have specifically made a goal; in EU III: HttT, you could declare a war over a province you have a claim to, but then take everything but that; here you must have made those other territories goals too.

There are, of course, valid reasons for going to war, such as reclaiming an area that can be seen as rightfully yours, or forcing repayments of debts after a country has declared bankruptcy. Using a legitimate reason is easy, other reasons (say, pure land grab) cost infamy to set as a goal (whereas in other Paradox games, infamy comes when you take it).

The only way to get anything out of a war is to have set it as a goal. This might be ‘cut down to size’, which limits the other country’s military for a while, or indemnities, or becoming a satellite. Each state is a separate war goal, and must be added separately, possibly incurring an infamy cost each time (there are some exceptions that allow taking an entire country at once). The defender of course starts with no war goals, and all he can demand is a return to the status quo. However, he, as well as the aggressor can add war goals as the war grinds on.

Great powers can also intervene in a war, and demand a return to the status quo, which then becomes a war goal.

In addition to the infamy costs of declaring a war goal, failing to get that goal in the peace costs prestige. Of course, getting that goal gains prestige. This means that wars turn into bets, where you spend infamy to bet prestige on the war; loosing an aggressive war can cost you infamy (which makes you unpopular), and prestige (which affects your international standing and trade), and can hurt even if you technically ‘lose’ nothing from it.

Great Power Politics

Like in the first game, the eight highest-ranked countries are ‘Great Powers’, who enjoy extra prestige (one of the things that lets you become a Great Power…). Also, there are eight ‘Secondary Powers’ below them who, like the Great Powers, can colonize the less developed parts of the world.

The Great Powers each have a sphere of influence. A simple version of that concept was actually in EU III: HttT, but it worked very differently there. There a sphere of influence just marked an interest in a country, and provided a casus belli whenever a third country tried interfering with it (wars, annexation…).

Great Powers get to influence other non-great Powers. This turns into a feed of influence points spread across all the countries that it is trying to influence, and those can be spent on a number of unique diplomatic actions. This includes destroying the influence of other Great Powers, but is focused on increasing relations with that country until it is within the Great Power’s sphere of influence. This is separate from the actual diplomatic rating that says how much or little the countries like each other, as it is more to mark that the rest of the world considers the area under your protection (to do with as you will…), but the in-game language confuses the issue.

Once in the sphere of influence, the country’s internal market acts as a part of the Great Power’s internal market, giving the Great Power easy access to its raw materials, and an expanded market for its own goods (…and vice versa, if the sphered country has meaningful production outside of its RGOs). This can also become a bone of contention, as competition between two Great Powers for influence in a country can lower relations, and ‘de-sphering’ a country is a possible war-goal.

Internal Stresses

As with the previous game, Victoria II’s complex population demographics include what ideologies the population follow, what policies matter to them, and just how upset they are over it. It’s a bit finer-grained this time, but there’s still the two basic ideologies of Conservatism and Liberalism at the beginning of the game, with Socialism being introduced later, with Reactionaries, Anarcho-Liberals and Communists and Fascists as the extreme forms of these views.

Politically, this feeds into an ‘upper house’ system using those same ideologies that reflect the overall mood of the country, and is what allows political and social reforms to be enacted or repealed. Liberals want to pass political but not social reforms, Socialists want social but not political reforms, and Conservatives want neither, but will give some limited support to quiet unrest. The various extremists specifically want to repeal all reforms they don’t approve of (i.e., Socialists try to repeal political reforms, and Anarcho-Liberals try to repeal social reforms).

There are a number of political parties shown in the game, with at least one of each ideology for each nation. An authoritarian government can appoint the party it wants to be in charge of the upper house, but democratic ones go through an electoral process every few years. A lingering problem with the system is that while parties come and go during the game, they can only do so in a set schedule, not in response to events. Each party has its own set of policies (trade, economic, religious, citizenship, war) that set limits on what you can do, and modifies how the country acts. The population has desires towards particular policies and reforms, which partially determine what party they back.

If these desires are not met, then the population can get more militant, and if that goes on long enough there will be a revolt. Various revolters have their own goals, and generally, if they can take control of the capital for a while, they will then enforce their demands (which may be a government change). The problem with this is it doesn’t really work. You can’t negotiate with the rebels, and promise reforms, and try to convince them to go back home. Well, you can kind of; if you satisfy the things that are making them militant, the population will lose militancy, and the revolt can actually lose people that way. Worse though, is the fact that there’s very little incentive to not send in the military and crush the revolt. It will reduce the population, but there’s no public opinion to be scandalized by the brutality of your country. While it is possible for a military unit to join a revolt, they will not hesitate to fight against one they are not actually a part of. No hesitation, no units refusing to fire on civilians, just crush them.

Warfare

Victoria II uses the same general combat model originally introduced in EU III. One different feature here is that as technology progresses, the maximum combat width goes down, allowing the number of troops needed to effectively fight a battle to decrease. Cavalry can attack from the flanks, so a lower-tech army could take advantage of a superiority in numbers if it can field large numbers of hussars (the most mobile type). Each unit has an offense and defense rating, and the appropriate one is used in combat (i.e., the defense rating does not mitigate the opponent’s damage, but is the combat rating used when defending).

Past the general combat system almost everything else is much as it was in the first game: Generals and admirals use a combination of traits that produce a wide range of good to poor leaders with different strengths and weaknesses, but even the worst leader is better than the wide-ranging penalties of not having any leader at all.

Nearly any land military improvement also increases supply consumption, making armies more and more expensive to maintain as their effectiveness goes up. Taking over an enemy-held province is a matter of waiting a set amount of time while occupied only by your troops. More men take it faster, but the supply situation can cause large amounts of attrition. Fortresses can be built which both aid in a defensive battle, and make a province harder to take.

Land combat features the usual three arms: infantry, cavalry, artillery. There are four types of infantry: irregulars, regular/infantry, guards and engineers. Irregulars are cheap, but not as effective, while guards are expensive, and better on the offense, but not as defensively capable as regular infantry. Engineers lessen the effects of fortresses in combat and capturing provinces. Cavalry comes in four types: cavalry, dragoon, cuirassier and hussar. Each is generally more expensive and overall more effective through each type, though cuirassier are the only type without a reconnaissance bonus, which helps with the time to take over a province and against the initial fortified defense bonus. Artillery only comes in one type of unit, but gets much more effective over the course of the game compared to other unit types.

Military manpower and the population are directly tied together, with each land unit being supported by a particular province’s soldier population. As a unit takes losses, the population reduces, and if the segment gets too small, it starts taking extra amounts of time for that unit to receive reinforcements. Creating new units requires having enough soldiers to tie a fully-functional unit to (this is complicated by the game’s demographic segregation of different ethnicities and religions), creating some hard limits on army size.

Naval units are comparatively simple, with only nine types of units, including two different types of transports. They aren’t tied to manpower, but all of them do require either clipper or steamer convoys to build (types of commodities; this seems meant to represent the availability of sails, rigging, and engines to build a new capital ship). The units are general types (‘ironclads’), with specific stats resting more on the various advances available, but unlike land units, do not have any strong tendency to become more expensive to maintain as time goes on.

Conclusion

I find that like the original, Victoria II is a game that is supremely fascinating, not for what it is, but for what provides a glimpse of. The first game was a bundle of interesting ideas that didn’t quite make a well-realized design, and Victoria II is an interesting design that doesn’t quite make a well-realized game. There is a good game there, but it lurks around the corners, and behind a model that doesn’t quite work right.

I enjoy the game. I enjoy the little clockwork model world it provides. But it is a bit hard to recommend because it doesn’t quite do any one thing really well. And one final annoyance: many of the events and other descriptive text in the game are full of typos in English (I don’t understand how most of these have not been fixed along the way with all the patches).

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Not Done Yet

by on January 20, 2015 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the second in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Europa Universalis III. See the previous review here:
Europa Universalis III: A Whole New World

While Paradox planned for two expansions to Europa Universalis III, they figured the game was finished after that. There were a number of small ‘sprite pack’ DLC and the like offered, but the game was done, and it was time to turn to other projects after releasing EUIII: Complete.

However, when they polled the fans on their forum for what to do next, more EU III content was the most popular request. And so, Europa Universalis III: Heir to the Throne was released as the third expansion at the end of 2009. This is a review of just the expansion, so you may want to look over my original EU III review (listed above) to better understand this one.

Putting ‘Grand’ in Strategy

I’ve talked about the map in previous reviews in this series (notably the EU III review). One problem the Clausewitz map had is that at a far remove it lost all details. It’s still useful, the political mode shows all the countries, and so on, but it’s just functional.

However, now we get something that has defined Paradox’s maps ever since: In the large zoom-outs, country names sprawl across the map, looking by turns magnificent and intimidating. This is made possible with code that adjusts the size and orientation of the words as the size and shape of the countries change. We’ve technically seen this before (during the HoI III review), but it was only introduced to that game with the later Semper Fi expansion. This is where the idea first shows up.

That said, the map is still less than impressive. The colors are muted, names (provinces or nations) are in a faded gray, and borders still have a number of odd glitches.

Whose Throne is it Anyway?

The new feature for which the expansion is named possibly has the least direct importance, but is an interesting tightening up of the model of pre/early-Modern politics. Any monarchical government has a succession, and the current heir is listed. The current and future rulers have legitimacy scores. The current legitimacy can give bonuses or penalties to stability, revolt risk, and religious tolerance. The successor’s legitimacy is based on the strength of his claim, and will normally be quite high. But ‘pretender’ rebels and civil wars are still possible, and if they win, will establish a new dynasty, which will start with a low legitimacy.

Since the age of the successor is now tracked, there can be a long regency that lasts until he gains majority (age 15). A regency council limits the diplomatic actions a country can take, and causes legitimacy to fall.

Finally, there is a chance for other countries that have a royal marriage to inherit the country. This might be a personal union, which is effectively a special form of vassalage, or a more direct inheritance. It is also possible to claim a throne in a disputed succession (which is whenever the legitimacy of the heir is too low), and the game has an alert listing all the countries currently subject to the problem.

Merchants, and Spam

The trade system got expanded with trade leagues and trade rights. Both of these are diplomatic options only available to merchant republic governments, and allow them to extend the reach of their Centers of Trade.

Trade leagues are like a special kind of alliance where all the members agree to send their trade to the leader’s trade center. In return, everyone in the league gets to use the best possible modifiers for trade and merchant activity available in the league. Trade rights get countries outside of the league to send certain goods to the trade center. This greatly expands the reach of certain trade centers, and boosts the money flowing through them, to the profit of the host merchant republic.

For some reason, these actions are set to pop-up message windows instead of just being noted in the log by default. With four leagues in action at the beginning of the game, this creates a lot of extra messages that are not meaningful for most players, especially since there seems to be a lot of churn in league membership amongst AI powers.

Not Holy, Not Roman, But Perhaps an Empire

One of the oddities of history that the EU series has always tackled is the Holy Roman Empire. It is depicted as a collection of separate states with a nominal head (the current emperor), that is, at best, first among equals. With its position in central Europe, what’s going on within the HRE is always important, but the Empire itself only has a light touch on the course of the game.

This was expanded upon somewhat from EU II to III, but it was still a fair amount of motion without a whole lot of effect. Generally speaking, there are a set of countries defined as electors, who choose the new Emperor every time the current one dies, and the Emperor always has the ability to march troops through the various territories of the Empire (normally this takes diplomacy to arrange), and has some freedom to intervene in wars among its members. (This is not a bad model of history.)

Now, there are a series of reforms that can be initiated. Assuming the Emperor can garner enough authority, the government of the HRE can gradually be strengthened. This is effectively a list of decisions available to the Emperor, that must be triggered one after another, that affect all the countries in the HRE. The member states also have to accept these reforms, which is part of what imperial authority does, and takes time and effort to build up to. The final reform, Renovatio Imperii, turns the entire HRE into a single big super-state controlled by the Emperor.

Ministry of Culture

The idea of army and naval tradition as a score that was used to create military leaders was introduced to the EU series from Victoria in III. Now, HttT has introduced cultural tradition, which allows you to create advisors.

In the original EU III there was a system of randomly generated advisors which you could hire to generate bonuses in particular fields. The advisors are still the same, and there is still a pool of available random ones, but now cultural tradition allows you to create one of the type you want/need—and there are 36 different types. They also come in different degrees of capability, and a high cultural tradition allows you to create more capable advisors.

In general, cultural tradition goes up during peacetime, and down during wartime. However, there are now also ministers, who can be used to boost cultural tradition; but this is merely the cheapest of their abilities. Ministers are like the colonists, merchants and diplomats that have been in the EU series from the beginning. Depending on the exact form of government you have, you get a certain number per year, which can then be ‘spent’ on various tasks.

EU III introduced provincial decisions along with the concept of decisions in general, and they have now been modified and expanded in HttT. Most provincial decisions were local trade-offs between two statistics, and for me, usually an unattractive tradeoff. Now there’s a more extensive list of them, including some that are minor upgrades to the province, kind of like the buildings that EU has always had. However, the ‘upgrades’ can only be done near the national focus, an area that you have decreed will receive bureaucratic attention, and that can only be moved every few decades. All the provincial decisions require different numbers of ministers to enact (up to 5 for some, which is the maximum number you can have at one time), forcing you to ‘budget’ your activities.

Why Are We at War Again?

The most important addition to the game is the Casus Belli system. The EU series has always had a robust diplomatic system to handle peace talks, but once at war, it didn’t matter if you started it, or were attacked, if you had a claim on some of that nation’s territory, or a different religion, the peace process was the same.

Now, it matters.

The new system defines different reasons (causes) for war, such as ‘alliance’ (your ally is at war with them), ‘trade war’ (someone has embargoed your merchant republic), ‘reconquest’ (someone else controls what your country considers to be home territory), or any of a couple dozen other reasons, some of which are granted by random events. These are meant to define the goals of a war, and will affect the prestige and infamy gained from the peace.

This ends up changing how the game generally works. It used to be that the punishment for declaring a war was a loss of stability, but with all these goals it is now easily avoidable. Instead, a new statistic is listed at the top of the main screen, infamy, and the game is much more about managing that number instead of stability.

Badboy was a concept added way back during patching of the original game in the series, and has slowly become more visible over time, and was renamed infamy either in EU II or III (not quite sure anymore…). The main idea was that taking territory increased this rating, and it would then slowly subside over time. If it went over a certain limit, the AI players would all start attacking that country in an attempt to keep it from running away with the game. The idea has gotten more nuanced through various iterations, and now the AI is responds better to shifts in infamy, up and down, including in other AI players. Any country that goes over its limit (which varies depending on the ruler and policy settings) now becomes eligible for the “Dishonorable Scum” casus belli from everyone else.

The amount of infamy gained from taking territory has increased from previous versions, but some war goals lower the amount again. However, defensive wars don’t (usually) have a goal, so taking territory when attacked is expensive, and the declared goal only applies to the country you declared war on, so taking territory from allies instead of the main target is also expensive.

Conclusion

Paradox had good reason to consider EU III complete after releasing In Nomine, but Heir to the Throne is a solid improvement. Most of the features came from suggestions from users on the forums, and Paradox managed to choose some very good ones, and implement them well. In addition, the interface does make a few things clearer than before. Most notably, Military technology has always slightly improved a number of combat modifiers, and these are now made visible in the military tab of the UI.

It is an expansion made up of feature creep, so I wonder if a new person would want to start without it, but then, the complications in HttT are largely lost in the vast sea of complexity that the EU series has always had. Certainly any fan of EU III Complete will find HttT an improvement.

However, I do need to mention one last flaw in the ointment: For some reason, the EU III: Heir to the Throne crashes upon exit on my Windows 7 machine. This isn’t really a problem, as there are no problems while playing or saving the game, and this occurs as the game is finishing its exit, but it does always give an error.

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