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.

Losing a city with a lot of industrial capacity is one thing, but having your only tank factory fall to the enemy could spell disaster. In other words, its going to be important what you build and where you build it. The game will start each nation with some infrastructure in relation to the scenario start date. It will be up to the player to make choices between modernization, wealth creation or military buildup. Buildings will be a drain on your money and resources so economic choices will have to be made. If theyre producing Goods or researching better Food tech, they may be providing a profit. Bombers however dont make any money unless you use them to conquer somebody.

In MH I, a citys industry could be directed to produce industrial output or technology points. In a simplistic way this represented the finite capacity that any nation might face when dedicating its industrial strength. It was designed and balanced so that only the nations with huge industrial potential could afford to research and conduct a war at the same time. While this might be justifiable in the abstract, we thought it would be better to separate the two efforts. In MH II, cities will now have their own buildings dedicated to research in a similar way as industry and they will not use any industrial capacity to run. Tech projects will operate independently based on their own infrastructure value, but only in cities that have research facilities. As with factories, location will be a factor as to where a facility should be constructed and how large it should be. I can imagine we might transfer some tech knowledge with any research building captured unless you destroy it yourself of course.

All this is likely to add extra management duties for the player and thats the intent to a large degree. However the point is not to bog the player down with mundane tasks as a way of keeping them engaged. I look at upgrading, expanding and crafting your nations infrastructure as strategic planning. In effect, its part of a military preparedness process that can determine your fate. Not to mention, these buildings also provide an additional menu of bombing targets & conquest booty. And yes there will be a project queue to make it easy on you.