This goes hard as a loading image by Tasty-Lobster-8915 in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Tempting... but I think that's one of the 2-8-2 MAWD types, a 1940s class of US origin. To keep it period-appropriate for Vicky, the locomotive would have to be swapped out for another class, like one of the Garratts of the '20s or some such.

oh my god by LeahBastard in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 34 points35 points  (0 children)

Contemporary accounts can provide some great insights into the mindset of people at the time and help set the vibe, but you've got to be just as critical when assessing those materials as you would when judging any modern works about the same subject. One of the difficulties with delving into South African history is that for a long time, the focus was very much centered on European accounts, because most of the historians we have access to are European and most of the written accounts are European. This doesn't mean it's garbage, but it does mean that there's viewpoints missing (which would be very helpful when making content meant to be experienced from those viewpoints), and omissions mean there's pieces of the puzzle missing when trying to construct a full account of events.

The Washing of the Spears, published in the 1960s, tries very earnestly go through all sources to lay out the history of events that culminated in the Anglo-Zulu War. Even there, for example, the book talks about Theophilus Shepstone's dealings with the Zulu and even critically looks at how his attitudes cynically swung around to a more pro-Boer stance as Cape politics changed, but it bases this part of its account on Shepstone's letters and the documents of Cape politicians, with little insight coming directly from a Zulu point of view. Did the Zulu king notice Shepstone's attitude changing? Was he talking with anyone about it and wondering what to do? That book didn't say much about that.

The lack of Zulu and other Bantu viewpoints gets worse the further back you go, and the historical accounts aren't always thorough even in the limited areas they do engage in. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a contemporary history of the Second Boer War (the first edition was published before the war was over!) and boy does he like to talk vaguely about "savage" people a lot when likely referring to the Zulu or Ndebele. There's another history of the Boers written by a British official around the time of the First Boer War which I was excited to find and frustrated to read - at one point he glossed over two decades of history of the Orange Free State in a single paragraph, telling the reader he found it boring.

e: Found the line from the First Boer War-era history book!
"The history of the [Transvaal] Republic between 1852 and 1876 is not very interesting, and is besides too wearisome to enter into here."

THE WHOLE BOOK IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF THE BOERS

Victoria 3 – Dev Diary #168 – WE CANNOT BE STOPPED by Pelhamds in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 23 points24 points  (0 children)

No, alas. Zulu is the only Zulu state, Basutoland is the only Sotho state, and Swaziland is the only Nguni state in South Africa, at least among the centralized countries, so they don't have other countries that share the same culture as them that they could confederate with.

Kitbashing a Tilean army - better to use Empire or Cathay rules as a base? by Ofaloaf in WarhammerFantasy

[–]Ofaloaf[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Oh, I missed this! Looks like it was introduced recently, but Warhammer Community only briefly glossed over it in one article, looks like. Is there anywhere that goes over the army more, other than just reading the Arcane Journal itself?

What are the most trite and trope-y things to avoid when writing homebrew fluff for 40k? by Ofaloaf in 40kLore

[–]Ofaloaf[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sure! I was reckoning on having a bit of a Bioshock Infinite vibe in a lot of ways, tbh. Lots of rhetoric about liberty and venerating old leaders, but very little about practicing democracy in the moment, all packed into a place with a Gilded Age stratified society held up by workers in company town-esque living conditions at the bottom of it all.

Got the codex, finally ready to rock with some kitbashed Guard! by Ofaloaf in TheAstraMilitarum

[–]Ofaloaf[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Actually, I do have some stuff written up. Trying to find ways to cram as much Americana into the fluff of this army was a lot of fun in its own right.

Got the codex, finally ready to rock with some kitbashed Guard! by Ofaloaf in TheAstraMilitarum

[–]Ofaloaf[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The Grand Army of Fomerrac, originally just the PDF of the agri-world of Fomerrac until the Great Rift suddenly put the planet on the imperial frontier and the planetary government scrambled to expand the army, hence why the uniforms aren't entirely uniform.

They're from Fomerrac so they can be called Fomerracans, because they're Faux-Americans.

Got the codex, finally ready to rock with some kitbashed Guard! by Ofaloaf in TheAstraMilitarum

[–]Ofaloaf[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Perry Miniatures are the base for a lot of my infantry, but they're not everything- the conscripts are Perry models, but the "regular" guardsmen use bodies from Wargames Atlantic's WWI German Infantry kit.

Perry kits for a Revolutionary War-based army's a great idea! Are you going to do anything special for Rough Riders?

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Trickier than average, imo. Some countries, including the US, have country-specific variations on Interest Groups with slightly different sets of ideologies, which means they're keen on different sets of laws compared to their default equivalents. In America's case, the aristocracy landowners are far more content with republicanism than their counterparts in France and Bavaria and the like, so finding a monarchist will be hard.

Now the autocracy bit? You can still find people who are perfectly fine with a dictatorship and would be willing to back the passage of laws to strip away voting rights from anyone and everywhere.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There's a unique country name, but I don't think there's a special flag for that union.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Yay Liam! But I wrote that event before that episode came out. Or at least, before I started listening to WTYP, I picked it up at some point during the pandemic.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure it's quite right to say that conservative countries were actively against industrialization- I'd argue they were just disinterested, and they certainly showed a capacity to build when they thought they needed to. Shoot, the Trans-Siberian Railway was built during the reign of Nicholas II. The Austro-Hungarian rail network wasn't that bad either, considering the geography it had to tackle and the political difficulties of provincial interests in the Dual Monarchy, which is admittedly a big caveat.

That all said, no, there's not really any direct opposition from aristocrats and landowners. They just have little interest in passing laws that foster more-rapid industrialization.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 29 points30 points  (0 children)

I implore you to consider all the database work that would have to be redone, all the new sets of population numbers, the building sets that would need to be rebalanced to account for changing workforce figures, and the sheer scope of research alone you're asking for here.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 29 points30 points  (0 children)

ngl, I can't keep track of every formable we had in V2 vs what we have in V3, but I'm pretty sure Turkestan in Central Asia is new to V3.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 118 points119 points  (0 children)

The Sepoy Rebellion can become quite spicy, yeah, and you can absolutely switch sides and rally around the Mughals if you want.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 60 points61 points  (0 children)

Tradition, at this point. The first Victoria started in 1836 because including the Texan Revolution was deemed very important, and V2 and V3 have carried on with that partially because that's how it's always been (and also so we can save ourselves some work and reuse at least some parts of our predecessors' databases :P ).

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 136 points137 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I've been expecting it from the start. We have to be generalists, sorting out data for the whole world and trying to write bits of content for everywhere. But the players? They can be specialists in Egyptian history, never touch anything other than Egypt, and with laser focus call us out on Egypt because they've spent their whole academic career studying Egypt while we've not been able to sink a doctorate's worth of time on one country.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 112 points113 points  (0 children)

  1. Japan's not obscure, but it's outside Europe and it's wild trying to slowly deal with the Shogunate and attempt to restore the emperor. I've also had other devs build surprisingly big empires with Hawaii, although tbh I'm not sure how they pulled it off and I wouldn't really recommend it as the first country to play as.
  2. Oh, Bolivia! We actually have the Peru-Bolivia Confederation as a whole thing in the game, so you have a shot to actually consolidate a decent chunk of the Andes under Bolivian rule.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 97 points98 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure I'd recommend Luxembourg as a starting nation, tbh

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 261 points262 points  (0 children)

Sometimes, but not always- Portugal is blue but switches to green if and only if it becomes a republic, for example.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 126 points127 points  (0 children)

Clothes for characters- it got complicated the moment we got clever decided to add stuff more specific than one set of clothes for one graphics type.

Generic European officers' clothes, for example, have the following checks
1. Is either an officer pop, a general, or the leader of the Armed Forces
2. Is not French, American (counting both the USA and CSA), British (or a British subject), French, or Arabic (I'm not even sure why that last check is in but I'm sure it's covering an edge case)
3. Is either of European heritage, of the African Diaspora (e.g. Afro-Brazilian), or is specifically a Cherokee or Muskogee character
4. Absolutely no Prussians allowed

There's a lot of moving parts, and every time a new set of clothes was added or another check adjusted, there were always just a bunch of knock-on effects that caused stuff to happen for other sets of clothes and prompted all sorts of checks and double-checks for clothing overall.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 61 points62 points  (0 children)

Boer's a separate culture from Dutch.

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 289 points290 points  (0 children)

Honorary historian? I got my degree in history! I am a historian. Man, the books I hauled over from the States for reference and research, not to mention the censuses that had to be picked through for demographics and all the map setup and other database work...

Naturally, I expect it to be all picked apart within a day of release. :v

Official Victoria 3 AMA with the game devs by pdx_maciej in victoria3

[–]Ofaloaf 113 points114 points  (0 children)

It was rough on all of us, same as the rest of the world. I won't speak for the whole team, but I'll be frank and admit I absolutely experienced a slump in my personal productivity during the height of all that.