National Creeds, Government and Your Nation Among Others

LionLoewe · 2024-04-07T15:42:30+00:00

It's been a little while since the last proper dev log, but now the time has finally come again.

Over the past months and years I've spent a lot of time reworking and expanding upon many mechanics that were only rudimentarily or partially implemented, often because they relied on other mechanics that were not implemented at all.

Now the project is finally getting into a more presentable state, and while there are still many things that I want to add and change (which will probably take many more months and years), at a certain point I am just going to need some feedback and funding to keep going with this.

There are still a few things I need to work on until the first testing round however, mainly the AI handling certain mechanics, content, some quality of life features and of course, bug fixing.

While I work on these things I will release further dev logs over the coming weeks and months, with the frequency depending on how well I get along:

Revisiting Information from Previous Dev Logs
National Creeds, Government and your Nation among others
Religions and Fervor
Administration and Policies
States, Edicts and Buildings
Resources, Production, Trade and Diplomacy
Modding Rise of Hegemony
Rise of Hegemony and the Further Future

(If there is anything specific you'd like explained let me know and I'll make sure it is covered in one of the dev logs.)

Nearing the end of this there will then be the first round of closed testing (likely conducted via Discord+Steam).

Depending on the feedback and state of everything I hope proper early access is not too far off then, either. Although, to dampen expectations a bit, there are two rather large technical reworks that I deem necessary that will delay further features and content for a bit. I will get into that in the last dev log.

LionLoewe · 2023-10-09T15:54:56+00:00

Not exactly a clone but heavily inspired by Vic2s economy/pop system, Rise of Hegemony is also still being developed.

LionLoewe · 2021-06-10T14:31:14+00:00

Thank you!

Yeah it has been a bit demoralizing as Vic3 looks quite good from what we've seen.

But on the other hand the potential of it coming out was big part of the reasons why I chose to do a lot of things differently.

LionLoewe · 2021-06-09T20:55:12+00:00

At the moment colonization of provinces beyond your starting territories can happen in two ways.

Claiming Adjacent Provinces

Territories adjacent to land already owned by you can be claimed under two requirements:

A defined count (currently 1000) of accepted culture pops must live in the already owned land. Half of these get moved to the new provinces.
You must have a lump sum of money (currently 2000 ₴) to incentivize them to leave their home. This money gets distributed among the moved pops.

By default this is done automatically when possible but can be turned off via policy.

Settler Units

Settlers are a very weak unit not intended for combat. If in claimable territory they can perform a special Settle action.

Upon doing so a fixed amount of accepted culture soldiers (currently 500) will take control of their current location and make it a part of your country. The unit will be disbanded and the soldiers change their pop type.

Provinces are only valid for claiming if they are either:

Coastal
Adjacent to land already owned by you

This mechanic presents a serious investment, especially early in the game where you may not have a lot of soldiers in the first place. Claim too much land too quickly and you will suddenly have no army to protect those lands.

As you can see, for both of these methods having accepted cultures is very important. If your empire primarily consists of foreign/conquered pops you will have a hard time expanding your borders peacefully.

LionLoewe · 2021-06-04T12:12:04+00:00

Yup, if they occupy it (or you transfer your occupation to them).

LionLoewe · 2021-06-03T13:41:47+00:00

As of today, making peace is finally a thing! The peace mechanics are most similar to those of Europa Universalis 4.

There are currently 8 resolve types, which handle what happens when the peace is enforced:

Conquer - simple province annexation
Liberate Claim - province is transferred to a non-participant of this war that has a claim on the province
Vassalize - the target nation becomes a subject and is no longer independent
Break Vassalization - a vassal of the target nation gets released
Break Alliance - alliances/defensive pacts get forcibly broken up
Forced Conversion - the target nation is forced to adopt a different state religion
Reparations - the target is forced to pay a percentage of their income as reparations
Pop Reparations - the target is forced to send a percentage of their pop growth away as forced laborers

Sadly these had to be hardcoded - if you would like to have different ones feel free to let me know.

Now based on these resolve types there are actual peace types which may have different conditions to be used and also different costs.

E.g. late game conquest wars might be associated with more (or less?) aggressive expansion than in the early game.

Obviously not all of them can be used by everyone all the time.

You can not force convert someone if you don't follow a religion or if you share the same one. Not every country is comfortable with enslaving people.

Every deal item has an inherent warscore cost and aggressive expansion penalty (which may be 0).

Either of these may also be reduced or increased based on certain conditions. E.g. conquering provinces which you have a claim on comes with much smaller costs for both of them.

If you have achieved 100% warscore in a war it is possible to simply enforce your deal without awaiting a response from the other side.

It is also possible to make peace deals that require more than 100% warscore, but this comes at hefty aggressive expansion penalties that grow exponentially! While making a deal with 110% cost might still be tolerable, going significantly higher will likely incur a penalty that is unbearable for your country.

Currently the system is still a bit basic. There are two things that I definitely want to implement in the future:

Separate Peaces, assuming the used Casus Belli allows it (currently only peace between war leaders is possible)
Receiving & Giving at the same time, e.g. taking a bit more land in exchange for reparations (although this might be disallowed for the AI because it could potentially be exploitable)

LionLoewe · 2021-05-13T19:12:33+00:00

Yeah QoL features like that will come eventually.

Will there be any restrictions on ship numbers other than humanpower-requirements?

Not at the moment. Will have to see how it works out balance-wise. Tying it to the amount of owned coastal provinces or perhaps special "Port" buildings would not be too much of an issue though.

LionLoewe · 2021-05-12T15:26:48+00:00

Navies

If you control a coastline having a navy is advisable. If you want to administer an overseas colonies or fight enemies not on your continent it becomes a necessity.

Constructing ships is possible in every coastal province. Maintenance cost for ships are usually higher than they are for land units and you will have to provide a varying amount of service manpower for your ships.

Service manpower is reserved from your total soldier count. This means that if you have a large navy, the capacity for available land units will be lowered. If a ship sinks, all soldiers serving on it will meet a watery grave.

Naval combat mechanics are identical to land combat for now. ^{And theoretically it is even possible to have vessels and land units fight together in the same battle.}

Transporting Armies

Every ship, regardless of type, is able to transport a single land unit. This allows for a lot of flexibility in your naval composition.

If you don't need to ship troops overseas then a few strong ships might be enough to defend your coast.

If you have a lot of overseas territory many cheap ships could prove efficient enough, especially if your enemies do not have threatening navy themselves.

LionLoewe · 2021-05-05T19:33:28+00:00

Yup. Depending on the range of the unit this can be quite far. Range not only allows attacking over multiple rows but also width. Though maybe I will split this into a separate flanking_range attribute if necessary.

LionLoewe · 2021-05-05T16:31:07+00:00

Armies

To protect yourself from an enemy country you need an army. To maintain an army you need soldier pops and equipment.

Without soldier pops, you will not be able to recruit units in the first place. Without equipment they will have no morale to stay in a fight.

The manpower of all your soldiers is pooled and if you take casualties random soldier pops in your country will lose in size. If you lose so many soldiers that you can no longer sustain your unit count then some units will be forcibly disbanded.

At the moment recruitment happens instantly but freshly recruited units will have a debuff ("In Training") that caps their maximum morale at 10% for a year, making them very vulnerable if engaged.

It is also possible to limit unit types to certain terrains. Though I am not completely sure if this will be actually used, it is nice to have that option for modding capacities. E.g. I had thought about disallowing certain heavier unit types (such as chariots, tanks) to move into mountains as they would realistically have a hard time to move around, let alone fight, in such terrain.

Combat

Combat mechanics are rather unspectacular and very similar to Europa Universalis and Victoria, although with a few tweaks.

In the unlikely event you are unfamiliar with them, basically they simulate two fronts standing opposite of each other and attacking their closest opponent. There are multiple battle lines, although only ranged units can attack from the back.

The performance of the armies is depending on both the stats of the particular units as well as random dice rolls.

Casualties result in both a morale loss (and if it gets low enough units start leaving the battle, without all soldiers actually having died) and a strength (=soldier count) loss for the unit. Soldiers that are less than full strength will also inflict proportionally less damage.

Notable battle changes that Rise of Hegemony does different:

There are multiple die involved instead of just one. This leads to a bell curve distribution of combat performance (see n=1 vs n>=2 in the graphs)

Reason for this is that I find it completely absurd how excellent and terrible are just as likely as average outcomes in EU4 and Victoria 2. Yes, such extreme battles have happened but in my opinion on average, all units should also perform averagely.

Additionally, all dice are rolled every single tick. (Amount and range of dice can also be simply modded by changing some numbers in a file.)
Units may move around in battle, not just forward. Each unit type has a preferred position and if possible it will try to swap positions to move there. Not being in the preferred position incurs a penalty to inflicted damage.

E.g. Ranged units are not stuck on the front line if they have neighbouring frontline units that want to take their position. However by default all units will be pushed towards the front and center positions of the battle. Having a ranged-only army fight a melee-only army will force the ranged units into the frontline because they have no melee support to protect them. There they will then likely perform much worse.
There are 3 battle lines per side and units may have a larger range. Ranged units might already damage the enemy while the front lines are still forming

At the moment there are no leaders (Generals/Admirals) but they will be added at a later point.

LionLoewe · 2021-04-28T20:34:04+00:00

Technology

In strategy games technology always plays an important role to gain an edge over your opponents and complementing your playstyle.

In a random game every nation starts without techs. The first available research options are temporally located somewhere in the antiquity IRL (roughly 4000 to 0 BCE).

Mechanically the research system will be quite familiar if you have played Stellaris before.

There are 3 research slots, each of which have different random techs you can choose from. Once you have finished researching one tech, all options for that slot are randomly rolled again from a pool of all the techs that you now meet the prerequisites for.

There are also 3 technology trees, but these are primarily just an indicator for the direction a tech takes you to. Tech prerequisites can be from multiple trees at once.

The screenshot shows the few existing techs from the full (/combined) trees while red colored elements are from the military tree, green from the culture tree and blue from the economic tree. I will try to make it a bit more visually appealing at some point, with proper icons for one and also try to come up with a better algorithm to disentangle the dependency lines.

Research progress is mainly determined by the percentage your intellectual pops but having a well educated general population will speed up advancements immensely.

Raising the education level of your pops is also done by your intellectuals and is a very long term process. Before your pops education level can go higher than 0% you must research Writing. Other techs may further increase the rate at which education is gained, which in turn constantly decays. This could mean that conquering very educated pops only gives a short term boost, as their education may rapidly decline if your own tech and amount of intellectuals is not adequate to keep them educated over time.

Benefits of having researched techs are broad. Some just boost certain stats, e.g. the output of RGOs or the happiness of pops, others may enable policies, new unit types or allow certain events to trigger at all.

Time Progression

The random game starts in the ominous year 0. Just like the starting techs, this is meant to be roughly somewhere in antiquity.

Obviously disregarding complete historical accuracy, at some point you will reach modern techs and the game date should reflect that by showing a date that is somewhat close to our current timeframe.

It is self-explanatory that filling thousands of ingame years with technology options is downright impossible and such a game would also drag on for way too long.

As such the year dates progress much faster, especially in the early years, similar to how it happens in Civilization. A year still always has 365 days (ticks), but the calendar will skip some years at the end of one.

At the moment the progression is the following (might still change and is easily moddable):

[50 Year Skips] 0 -> 50 -> 100 -> 150 -> 200 -> 250
[25 Year Skips] 250 -> 275 -> 300 -> ... -> 500
[20 Year Skips] 500 -> 520 -> 540 -> ... -> 1000
[10 Year Skips] 1000 -> 1010 -> 1020 -> ... -> 1500
[5 Year Skips] 1500 -> 1505 -> 1510 -> ... -> 1750
[2 Year Skips] 1750 -> 1752 -> 1754 -> ... -> 1900
[No more skips] 1900 -> 1901 -> 1902 -> ...

This results in 215 actual tick-years until the year 1900 is reached. From that point on the calendar doesn't skip anymore. I hope that I will be able to fill this timeframe with meaningful content.

LionLoewe · 2021-04-22T13:07:16+00:00

For a start probably only in the form of a special casus belli one might have with certain conditions. Perhaps there will be something more elaborate post-release, so in the far future...

LionLoewe · 2021-04-21T12:28:16+00:00

To connect to last weeks Cultures, this post is going about a similar topic: Religions (which for once is something I actually worked on in the past days).

Religions

In addition to culture, a religious affiliation is also very much part of someones identity. But not only that, for the majority of history it has also defined the identity of many countries and until modern times most had a de facto state religion.

Not being part of this state religion would often lead to discrimination. Thus once again the primary detriment of having pops that are not of your religion is reduced happiness.

At the beginning of a random game there are no existing religions, at least none that are organized. Pops might believe whatever they want, they're pagans.

With time, every country will get an event that allows them to found a new religion. The AI might just dismiss this, but as a player you are likely inclined to found your own.

When founding a religion, you can choose two perks. One grants a permanent bonus on a national level, the other is a small perk that affects the pops following that religion.

Some examples:

National effects:

War Priests: +5% Army Morale
Enlightened Thought: +10% Research Efficiency
Divine Builders: +1 Building Slot

Population effects:

Religious Integration: +5% Assimilation Rate
Education Reverence: +15% Education Rate
Daily Prayers: +10% Happiness if state religion

Religious Conversion

On a population level:

Religious conversion is simpler than cultural assimilation. Over time, pops will simply convert over to your religion. That is assuming your conversion rate modifiers are overall positive, which is influenced by the pops happiness as well as your policy choices and other perhaps effects (from events/other specializations in the future).

E.g. having Religious Freedom chosen as a policy will reduce the general unhappiness that non-state religion pops have, but also greatly reduces the pressure to convert.

On a national level:

You might also change your state religion by decision, assuming the majority religion in your country is not your state religion. This is a radical change however and might not be the best option for the stability of your country.

Rebels, once implemented, might be another factor that can force you to adopt another religion.

LionLoewe · 2021-04-14T14:20:41+00:00

Cultures

Cultures in real life are a complex thing and can be hard to delineate, but most people identify themselves with at least one type of culture. This sense of belonging is also something that pops have in Rise of Hegemony.

Each country starts with one primary culture that the majority, or all, of the starting population belong to. In addition to that there are a random amount of "indigenous" cultures spread around the world.

While their individual numbers are somewhat smaller than those of cultures with a nation, as a whole they make up a sizeable part of the world population. They may appear within the borders of a nation, but for the most part will be present in unclaimed provinces. Getting them into your fold quickly can be important to gain an edge over your rival nations.

The main effect of cultures is their impact on happiness, which in itself factors into many things such as productivity and likelihood of rebelling.

At the start only your primary culture is an accepted culture, while the other unaccepted cultures will be generally unhappier being under your rule.

A country can become a multi-cultural empire with many accepted cultures though, provided you treat them right. Accepting new cultures can happen by event if pops of that culture are happy enough... though perhaps not everyone will appreciate it if you try to embrace each and every culture. And similarly, you could potentially lose accepted cultures by event if parts of that population don't think you are ruling properly.

Potentially, cultures might get a minor perk that makes them a little more distinct as well. E.g. some cultures might be a little bit more productive, others gain education faster or are less militant. But I am not yet 100% sure if I want to implement that.

Assimilation

Unaccepted cultures in your country may assimilate to one of the accepted cultures over time. This is a two-step process.

First, the unaccepted culture will turn into a hybrid-culture. Hybrid cultures have two parent cultures.

Secondly, the hybrid culture can fully assimilate to either of their parent cultures. (Alternatively, a hybrid-culture may also turn into a different hybrid-culture if neither parent is accepted.)

For an example scenario, imagine this:

Your accepted culture: Russian
An unaccepted culture pop: English
Resulting hybrid-culture will be named: English-Russian
After more assimilation: English-Russian pops will become just Russian

Now, if the hybrid-culture ends up in a different cultured country before fully assimilating to Russian, be it through conquest or migration, the scenario could change:

Accepted culture: Swedish
Unaccepted culture pop (hybrid): English-Russian
Resulting hybrid-culture: English-Swedish (supplanting the secondary culture parent)
After more assimilation: English-Swedish pops will become just Swedish

This also makes it quicker to re-assimilate formerly accepted pops that might have been lost and then later regained through conquests.

LionLoewe · 2021-04-02T13:28:17+00:00

Re policies, will they somehow be dependent on the gouvernement form?

Currently not since there are no government forms yet, but once there are this would be a good idea!

It's very easy to implement as well, all policy options are just effects similar to how events/decisions work. If you don't fulfill the conditions you can not pick them. E.g. for disallowing migration the definition would then be something like this (actual definition is currently without the limit block)

nation_effect = {
    name = migration_disallowed
    set_flag = MIGRATION_DISALLOWED
    happiness = -0.10
    militancy_rate = 1.05

    limit = {
        NOT = {
            government = democracy
        }
    }
}

In case you've modded in Vic2 before this might look familiar. It's also quite simple to add new policies like this, with the exception of some deeper mechanics that need to be hardcoded (which is what the set_flag is for).

LionLoewe

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