Making History II Design Report 4: Nations
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.
This means that government actions like running up a massive debt can have an impact on your ability to rule. In extreme cases, this can lead to revolts, civil war and a loss of power. Most nations will begin the game relatively stable in terms of rebellion potential and remain so throughout. This new system allows us to model those nations that had weak governments or lacked national cohesion.
More importantly, aggressive nations must consider the implications of assimilating conquered populations. Annexing territory with incompatible identities can sometimes be more trouble than they are worth. It may make more sense to establish a puppet state or even a colonial government rather than trying to absorb large national entities. Players will have greater options on how to organize their conquest and shift some of the responsibilities.
The United Kingdom and France are both nations that will begin with colonies. Each colony will maintain a separate consciousness and identity while being under the full control of its owner. So when the UK raises troops in British India, the forces will use local manpower. Food grown in India and eaten in London will need to travel by seas that may be infested with German subs. If Indian nationalism increases, India could decide to declare independence. Puppet states offer master nations less direct control but vassal-like obedience.
In MHII the national government will have a political ideology, communist, authoritarian, democratic or fascist. In addition, the nation will maintain a dynamic political opposition representing the non-government ideologies. When a national government is weak with low stability, it is more vulnerable to foreign political influence and events that increase political opposition ideology. Along with the possibility of a revolt or civil war, an unstable nation also becomes a target of foreign instigated coups. This tactic is useful for creating puppet states without using the troops. Another option would be to fund the political opposition to weaken a government making them less able to resist an attack. Nations can also try to minimize political opposition by investing in purge actions. This is a risky choice since it can sometimes produce the opposite results increasing the strength of your political adversaries. Likewise, interfering in the internal affairs of other nations will generally damage diplomatic relations.
All of these new features are meant to enhance the concept of nations as characters and expand the areas where nations compete beyond the standard military conflict. Your enemies can now indirectly attack you without declaring war by undermining your government power internally or within your sphere of interests. This should add a unique layer of action to the pre-war period as nations buildup for war and battle for influence. With Making History II, we want a grand strategy experience that offers variety of gameplay from the beginning of a scenario to the end.
How is it with ethnic cleansing? - Does the game let players make decisions about ethnicities within the country and is there any way to control the puppet states and colonial governments?
So if civil war happen in for an exampel France, and it stands against Democratic France and a Communist France will the flag change on the communist side? will the art change and what will happen?
If I plays as Germany and I want some few areas, like the Polish corridor or Sudetenland can I just demand it from the other nation and threatens to invade em if they don't give me what I want? They either accepts or suffer. That would be much better than territorial transfrers!
We're not providing gameplay focused on ethnic cleansing in a direct manner. You can certainly decimate populations through war. Colonial governments are fully controlled by the owner nation. Puppets follow the directives of the master nation.
Each nationality will have 4 flags & decals representing the 4 ideologies. For the most part, the art will use historical symbolism where possible. In many cases we will need to take some creative license like how a Fascist Australian flag might look.
You can propose a Territorial Transfer treaty. Nations will evaluate the request/demand based on a relevant factors.
No I mean if it will be possible to annex areas and not entire nations!
Territorial Transfer treaties allow you to request regions without offering anything in return. I guess I don't know what other features you might be referring to.
well, you are asking the other nation. But I think you cold demand it to!
I know what he wants, he wants it so that you could both ask nicely for the lands, or you could angrily demand it.
If I offer the poles a hefty lump of marks for the polish corridor, and they reject. I could then demand it.
I've actually figured out something like this in MHGold, I played as the USSR once, and i simpily moved a large portion of my army on the finnish border, I requested they give over Karelia, and Aland. And they accepted. But when my army wasnt on their borders they rejected. I did the same with Romania and their Moldavia territory (bebsaria or whatevah).
I feel it's kind of pointless to have both a demand and a request. Who asks nicely for territory? Basically the demand is implied if the nation has strength to back it up. If it's a reasonable request the AI will process it as such or they might evaluate it as hostile. When the USSR sends a Territorial Transfer request to Romania, it has more seriousness than if the Romanians asks the USSR for territory.
i think i STRONGELY disagree many territorial transfer happen nicely and peacefully, or at least without the threat of military action (such Hong Kong and Macau in 1997) and even if they don't their are millions of examples of nations purchasing territory from one another, even if we are playing as Germany and we want to annex Sudetenland we should still have the option of either the carrot or the stick. really i think the fact that you cant offer incentives like this is major missing component of the game, for example i'd also like it if you could say: offer an ally resources or money to join a war, or even just to stay neutral).
Hong Kong & Macau were ceded back to China because of a contemporary shift in the balance of power. I'm sure China wanted both those cites back from the moment they lost them but they were not militarily or economically strong enough to make it happen. Yes land transfers can be done peacefully but they don't occur without some power considerations. The MHII AI is able to evaluate the difference between a good offer and a threat. I don't think we need a little check box so that the Czechs know what German intentions are. Making a formal request for a nation's home region is not a minor diplomatic proposal.
true but still i would really really like a incentives and rewards system, and one place that should be implemented into the game is in territorial tranfers
are you guys going to add color to the map because i think i might get confused on with territory i own when i am at war
There will be a political view similar to the way we colored territory in MHI.
oh so it is going to be full color or outlined in color
(to Ralph) When you said that each nation would have 4 flags and 4 decals I would be interested to see what you came up with for America.
one map like this one and an other map like in MH 1!Right? Plus more, like in numba 1!?
Ralph is completely right. For the purposes of the 20th century, 'asking' for land is really a demand. There aren't large wild areas anymore (ie the Louisiana Purchase) to knock around at this point. While we would all love an infinite amount of options of this game, it's not really practical.
The map will have at least two operation views one that has full terrain with colored borders - basically what you've seen in the screenshots. The other view will be similar to the MHI game map where the terrain was almost entirely masked by an overlay of color representing the individual nations. We call this the Political View. The final look for this version has not yet been determined. There will be additional map views showing information.
one question that i have is:
Will the "minor" nations have more city's? like sweden for instance. there are more "important" city's there than those who shows.
and for all other "minor" nations.
We're re-evaluating the city list and there will likely be some changes and additions. Cities are assets and are part of the game balancing process. With all the potential new nations we're obviously going to need some cities in places MHI did not.
for cities i'd like it if you could make it so that nations with huge populations but very low industry had alot of 1 IPU's cities so that thier industry has the potential to develop, this was used very sucessfuly used in one mod i forgot its name: specifcly i think that India (as in india, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) , Ethiopia, Indonesia, Congo and a few others should have more low IPU's cities. specifically indonesia, and congo with more cities would give powerful but small nations that start out with them as colonies more options
and on the asking for territory nicely, though you cant ask nicely for territory, you can still offer in the real world huge amounts of money or aid in return for territory. i know that this doesnt really happen that much in real history but the point of this game is to MAKE HISTORY right? (i imagine a scenario where Germany tries to take over Europe through buying power instead of military power being interesting). also scenarios taking place in different time periods could make fuller use of this feature
Can you make Pakistan or India have independence
Both India & Pakistan plus Baluchistan & Bengal
"Each nationality will have 4 flags & decals representing the 4 ideologies." FANTASTIC! Where do I preorder the game? ;)
are you guy going to have a percentage of winning when i start a new battle? Like lets say i am the Russian and i try to enter berlin can i see what is the likely hood of winning?
I don't think we plan to give specific combat outcome probabilities. Our battles can last over several turns with new units added and removed along the way.
What about Turkey. Turkey is in the very important strategic area. Also had very crowded infrary military, had air power, strong navy power, and some early tanks.. Advanced farms.
World's first women pilot was from Turkey.
And please don't ever never use "Kurdistan" area in Turkey ever again. Beceause Turkey don't have any area like that. It's just a imaginary thing which some countries want it to happen like that, beceause they couldn't beat with war, now they wanna beat with other ways. Don't be a pawn for this. That area called "South East Anatolia" .
Would you like anyone to call your nations areas as they wish . I bet you don't . So don't use such imaginary and especially factionist things.
Thank you
Nationalism much?
Kurdistan is part of a much greater region but it is mostly based in Turkey, part of it extends into Iraq. Iraq in the game is represented by only one province. They needed a place called Kurdistan in the game because that's what the area is called (the land of the Kurds), or was called during the time era of the game. It was originally intended to be its own nation will the fall of the Ottoman Empire but that never came to be.
Plus Turkey chose to sit on the sidelines of WWII so I don't think they will play too big of a role in the game.
more cities plz
what about -50 ipu
for any precity
@ firestone
as Ralph wrote 4 days ago:
We're re-evaluating the city list and there will likely be some changes and additions. Cities are assets and are part of the game balancing process. With all the potential new nations we're obviously going to need some cities in places MHI did not.
thanx
np =)
IN MH2 the Kurds are considered a separate ethnic group just like Irish, Thai, Pastun etc. There's no region called Kurdistan. However, the Kurds along with 180 other nationalities can revolt and form an independent nation. That nation would be called Kurdistan. I imagine that's not going to please everyone. In fact I'm certain that for every piece of data in game, there's probably someone out there who's going to find it objectionable. As I've said many times, data can be modded to suit personal whims. So go ahead... make a mod about the US and rename the states. That's what MH2 is all about.
Will there be the CSA (from a revolt in the USA)?
No CSA yet. Could be something like that if we have time.
Is there going to a country called Lebanon? If so what about "Hezebollahstan".
"...what about 'Hezebollahstan'."
I don't usually use "lol" but...
LOL!
Can you persuade your allies not to go to war? Lets say you are Germany and allies with Italy and she declares war on Egypt can you give Italy money to stop from her fighting? i think it would be good if you have that
"...Italy and she..."
SHE?!
LOL!
i like to refer counties as she
In the screenshots there is something like "Political balance" for a nation, and this is given in percentages. How does this actually work? Is it the proportion of population in favour of the said ideology? Do the values sum up as 100%? If so, have you considered that both Communism and Fascism are essentially forms of Authoritarian regime? Does this fact affect the valuation?
or that you can have both democratic communism (at least in theory) and authoritarian communism
i don't think it would be possibly with the value to reach 100%, for the simple reason: everybody is different, even if they have the same ideology they have their own vision of the perfect world/country.
Edit:
If, you don't commit "Ideology Cleansing" but even then it wouldn't be 100%.
(IMO)
I didn't mean that a value should be the same, but if for example fascism has 30% and communism 30% shouldn't authoritarianism be somewhat near to their sum, so almost 60 %? (Of course we could have democratic versions of those)
well, 30% + 30% + 60% = 120%. it can only be 100%. so i could agree with 40 percentage, or that the other ideologies shares that 40% which is left.
and the democratic is that they vote for how their country should be run, and the other, is the way of throwing down the ruling party ?
(just a guess, correct me if im wrong.)
The political balance will sum up to 100%.
just for simplicity i guess, but still good :P thanks for the clearance.
you have not answred my ?
Can you persuade your allies not to go to war? Lets say you are Germany and allies with Italy and she declares war on Egypt can you give Italy money to stop from her fighting? i think it would be good if you have that
thanks
No, the human to AI negotiation interface does not allow that yet.
oh will you ever have that?
I hope so.
say it's 1945. The allies are close to victory against Germany. Would it be possible for the citizens and fragments of the German army to break out in revolt against Nazism?
The system is designed so that such a thing could happen. I can't say exactly what the conditions would be for something like this to occur. We haven't fully balance that area of the game yet.
Awesome!
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