Making History II is more than a game about WWII. In some respects WWII is just the historical setting for an epic game about managing a nations economy, military, diplomacy and people. The political and international challenges of the early to mid 2oth century were dramatic to say the least. Weve set out to create a game that provides some of that experience covering not just the battlefields but the home fronts too. Underlying it all is a dynamic human element that is the source of much of the conflict.

At the region level is where the action begins. Each region has a set of key demographic identity properties that are used to calculate an allegiance to the national government. If the nation and region share similar cultural, ethnic and religious identity, then it will be less prone to production strikes or even a revolt. Fed into this is a national stability property which is derived from financial and ideological status, plus an average of all nationwide region revolt levels.

The military gameplay in Making History II: The War of the World will be dramatically different from the first Making History. With MHII weve moved away from units being more like traditional board game pieces to a system where each unit has its own set of properties. All military forces can now take damage, be reinforced or repaired. By giving units the ability to survive a battle despite being hit, it makes a lot more sense to include other standard unit properties like experience and morale. Units gain experience by engaging in combat. Morale is affected by battlefield results and possibly domestic conditions.

One of our initial design goals for Making History II was to increase the level of game activity, especially in the peacetime segments and the lead up to war. To achieve this will be adding more player options across all gameplay areas. MH II will offer a number of new features associated with city management, production and research. For this segment well touch on some of the plans for city based improvements.

To start with, you will now be able to construct a variety of buildings and infrastructure such as munitions factories, shipyards and tech facilities within each city. For the most part these buildings will determine a citys industrial and research potential. They also serve as a pre-requisite for opening up specific projects. Now a shipyard will be required to construct ships and an aircraft plant must be present to build fighters. A city must have a nuclear lab in order to conduct nuclear research. This allows us to significantly vary the quality and value between the different cities and nations. Detroit can be set up as an efficient tank producer and Norfolk Virginia will crank out the naval vessels.

Now that we've started production on MAKING HISTORY II, I've been encouraged to share with the community some thoughts on the new design. Therefore I intend to write a little bit here and there about new features and discuss MAKING HISTORY gameplay fundamentals. There are many opinions on what the game is and how it should be different. As a company we welcome discussions about the game and we're happy users want to help us make it better. Often the community offers ideas that were already working on or have considered. You don't really get a sense of that since we rarely expose our internal reasoning on why a certain feature is included when others are not. Game production is in many ways a very messy process. You never know if something is actually going to work as intended until you make it. Every time you introduce something new there's a chance it might break. Its a bit like cooking and sometimes it's best not to watch the chef handle the food.