The 19th Century Europe Mod

[ArbitraryGuy]

The Concert of Europe: Imperialism, Ideology, and Industry

Time Period: 1835 - 1920

Overview:
It's 19th Centruy Europe... a time and a place for clashes of ideologies, peoples, and nations. The mod will follow the political, social, diplomatic, colonial, industrial, and military developments of the 19th and early 20th centuries, building up and culminating in World War I.

The Civs:
Austria-Hungary
Belgium
Denmark
France
Greece
Netherlands
Ottoman Empire
Portugal
Prussia
Russia
Sardinia-Piedmont
Spain
Sweden
Two-Sicilies
United Kingdom
German Minor States (non-playable)
Germany (to be unified by Prussia)
Italy (to be unified by Sardinia or Two Sicilies)

Ideologies:
Reactionary
Conservative
Liberal
Socialist
Communist

Map:
An original European map, 80 * 104.

Units:
Regular Infantry: Line Infantry, Rifle Infantry, Infantry
Elite Infantry: Grenadiers, Guards, Shock Troops
Heavy Infantry: Machine Gunners
Cavalry: Hussars, Carabineers, Cuirassiers
Artillery: Light Artillery, Field Artillery, Heavy Artillery
Other: Tank, Biplane

Go to this post for a screenshot of units.


Interesting Stuff:
- Colonial System (like EE3)
- Political System. Your state ideology opens up certain civics for you to choose, i.e. to switch to a certain civic, you must be on an eligible "state ideology".
- Random Events
- Historical Events

Anyway, lemme know what you think and ideas that you may have related to this mod. If you'd like to help me meet the time deadlines, lemme know what you are able to or want to do.

EDIT: You'll notice a strong influence from the great game Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun .

Updated stuff on 17. July
Updated tech tree screenshot 19. July
Updated new map screenshot on 23. July

[scottland]

One of the best non-civilization games ever; my mod (to be anounced soon) is heavily influenced by it as well.

[Gunner]

Looks good AG! Hope you are able to follow this one to completion. Gotta love those great ripped graphics from paradox

[Cannae]

This looks very good!!!!

[rumbold]

Ah - good to see you back, AG. Loved EE3 and I look forward to your new creation.

So I guess this means your Throne and Altar: A Medieval Mod is dead?

[ArbitraryGuy]

Originally Posted by rumbold

Ah - good to see you back, AG. Loved EE3 and I look forward to your new creation.

So I guess this means your Throne and Altar: A Medieval Mod is dead?

Thanks . Throne and Altar isn't dead... just on haitus, maybe I should pick that back up on work on it too? So much to mod, so little time !

[Gunner]

I think it'd probably be best for you to pick one mod to concentrate on. Whichever one you think you'd enjoy the most. Then if you actually finish you could move on

But if you did put it up to a vote I would go with this 19th century mod over Throne and Altar


P.S. Have you seen the new expansion pack that Paradox has announced for Victoria? It looks pretty cool!
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...play.php?f=160

[ArbitraryGuy]

@Gunner
Yeah, I'll probably stick with 19th century... 1) It's more interesting to me, 2)Warlords will have a medieval scenario, and 3) I can't remember where I left off with Throne and Altar - I just tried to load it up and it didn't work

RE: Victoria - The new expansion looks excellent. Finally, there will be more of a point to government, e.g. laissez-faire will actually be laissez-faire (capitalists build factories, not the state). What can I say, I lead towards the realism school.

@Anyone with SDK skills
I hate begging, but anybody who can spare a moment to write a few lines of code for me in SDK and would like to help with this project, please contact me. I'd do it myself, but I can't get the Platform SDK. Thanks.

[Justinian519]

This mod looks awsome. Do you have an idea of what civs will be in it?

[ArbitraryGuy]

Originally Posted by Justinian519

This mod looks awsome. Do you have an idea of what civs will be in it?

As a matter of fact, I just finished entering them into XML ...

Austria-Hungary
Bavaria
Belgium
Denmark
France
Greece
Netherlands
Ottoman Empire
Portugal
Prussia
Russia
Sardinia-Piedmont
Serbia
Spain
Sweden
Two-Sicilies
United Kingdom
German Minor States (unplayable)

[ArbitraryGuy]

Updated the first post with more info, and a nice, descriptive ditty.

[Gunner]

That civ list sounds good. I would offer to help, but I'm about to leave on a two week trip in a couple of days. Once I get back I should have lots of free time.

[dh_epic]

The ideology mechanism is very interesting. The question is how the citizens choose your state ideology. The two pitfalls I see, going into it --

1: The snowball effect of ideology. Your citizens begin to drift towards an ideology, which lead you to make certain choices, which reinforce that ideology, leading quickly to equilibrium. This can lead to predictability and boredom.

2: Too much automation, not enough choice. You end up in positions where the player has very little say in their empire. Even if that automation is confined to some civics, the tradeoff for a lack of control isn't really worth it.

These are both surmountable, of course. But you need to go into this ordeal with your eyes wide open, and thinking always about what does the player actually do?

[woodelf]

Good to see you modding again AG.

[ArbitraryGuy]

Originally Posted by woodelf

Good to see you modding again AG.

It's good to be back, for a while.

Originally Posted by dh_epic

...
The question is how the citizens choose your state ideology
...

Thanks for the input, dh_epic... it's always good take a critical look at things. Just to keep in mind, my particular modding philosophy leans towards realism. I know that sometimes this may come at the expense of playability, but where I can, I try to leave in as much player choice and playability as possible.

To address your concerns, which I think are all valid, here's a more in-depth explaination of how state ideology is determined, as of right now.

First, note that in two of the five government systems, absolute monarchy and military juanta, the player can set the state ideology to whatever he/she wishes. It may cause some unhappiness if the monarch/general chooses an unpopular ideology, but hey... everything comes at a cost.

Second, in two of the five government systems your ideology is not directly set by player choice. In constitutional monarchy and democracy, the ideology is "elected," meaning that the ideology most present in your cities is the ideology that is chosen (just a very simple algorithm in python). The player may influence elections, however, by doing things to influence what ideologies are present in a city. By sending polititians, the ideological equivalent of missionaries, to cities, building certain buildings, or picking the "Political Religion" civic to limit spread of nonstate idologies, and choosing certain options in events, the player may influence what ideology is in a city, and thereby influence what the outcome of elections are. I argue that player choice has not been removed, rather, it has just taken on more complexity. Only in a proletarian dictatorship is the ideology forced outside of player influence - it forces state ideology to communist.

Summary:
In two out of five government set-ups, the player directly chooses state ideology. In another two out of five, the player inderectly influences the state ideology. In only one set-up, is state ideology forced.

Note, that government choice is totally up to the player... unless he/she does something really wrong and gets a revolution.

Important: Each ideology only loses 1-3 choices in each civic option, but there are still ways with large costs for attaining the civics that they wish. There is still much choice. I can list out all of the choices by ideology if you wish.

Originally Posted by dh_epic

...
1: The snowball effect of ideology. Your citizens begin to drift towards an ideology, which lead you to make certain choices, which reinforce that ideology, leading quickly to equilibrium. This can lead to predictability and boredom.
...

There is no feedback from your civics choice into what ideology the citizens become (except under political religion, where non-state ideology spread is prevented at large costs). Thus, for example, although a socialist state may choose to have a planned economy, it's citizens still may be, or even become, liberal.

Different ideologies will spread at different times in different places. Spread happens in different ways, for different reasons, hopefully adding a new dynamic. The player will have some control over the spread, through "missionaries," etc... but that's about it.

Also note that just because a government is one ideology, doesn't mean the player has to switch old civics choices to ones in line with the new ideology. For example, if Prussia is formerly running mercantilism but the state ideology becomes liberal through elections, then Prussia is NOT forced into switch to liberal civics. The only thing that happens is if it wants to change civics, it's choice is now limited.

Thus, I believe that things will continue to be dynamic and there is no ideological equilibrium.

Originally Posted by dh_epic

...
2: Too much automation, not enough choice. You end up in positions where the player has very little say in their empire. Even if that automation is confined to some civics, the tradeoff for a lack of control isn't really worth it.
...

Again, things are not as automatic as they may appear. Players are not forced into certain civics because of ideologies, their choices are only limited. Players have many ways at their disposal to overcome these limitations and choose the things they want.

Here's a large example:
Let's say that I'm playing England which has a constitutional monarchy which elects a liberal government. Suppose I would like to have "planned economy" civic, which is only availiable to socialist or communist state ideologies. I can reach this in a number of ways.

First Option: producing socialist/commie polititians in cities with socialism/communism and sending them to cities without, thus influencing the electorate to choose socialism, allowing me to select "planned economy." Then, of course, there's the problem of the newly socialist electorate if I wish to again have a liberal ideology... there are many ways of doing this, if somebody's interested I'll tell you, but this is getting way to long.

Second Option: have a militiary coup and switch to Military Juanta as a government (any ideology may do this). Once anarchy has subsided, I appoint select socialism as the state ideology (Military Juantas may do this), and select "planned economy". After I have it, I switch back to liberalism and have another revolution restoring the constitutional monarchy. This option of course has the sidebacks of hurting diplomatic relations with liberal governments, and a long period of revolutionary upheaval, but I can get the job done.

Third Option: If there are no socialist cities, I may build trade unions, which have a 50% chance of adding socialism to a city's ideological spectum upon being built. Thus, I can launch a large campaign of building trade unions to get a socialist electorate, allowing me to switch. I can then use polititians from the "trade union" cities to spread socialism to cities without it. Again, I have now have a socialist electorate to deal with.

There are many more ways to do this, I've only illustrated three. I think this is not only much more realistic and complex, but the choices are better: do I want to risk a socialist electorate to reach my goals, or is it more worth it to have a long period of upheaval, or is it even worth the costs at all? The choices haven't dissapeared, they've become more complex.

Just to reiterate what I wrote above, I don't think the player has lost choice and control; rather, the play now has a different kind of choice and control. Choices now have different real costs and oppurtunity costs. Again, each ideology only loses 1 - 3 choices in each civic option, but the player can come up with workarounds that may have large costs.

Keep in mind, the mod is highly specific to a limited geography and a limited time frame. This too limits some things, but, at the same time highlights other aspects. In any abstration in any mod, some things have to be chosen over others.

Thanks again for the input, and sorry about the long diatribe. Hopefully, this will help others to understand what I'm doing.

[dh_epic]

Thanks a lot, AG. I read every word. And it all made sense. I think you've got an interesting system on your shoulders. In fact, I would even like to see more ideologies -- like religious, nationalist, and anarchist which all played pretty big roles in the 19th century. Even something like royalist or nobility would be cool (although I suppoes that's covered under reactionary).

My only remaining concern is fortunately a lot smaller. I'm concerned that ideology will almost be too easy to control. Much like religion, one will quickly become extremely popular. Moreover, the player will spread their favorite ideology to all their cities. But this isn't such a terrible thing -- it's already more interesting than the religion mechanism in Civilization 4 vanilla. I'm a big supporter that you should sacrifice a little bit of detail for a lot of elegence, and it sounds to me like you have quite the elegant system here.

[ArbitraryGuy]

@dh_epic
Thanks a lot, I appreciate that. As for your last concern, perhaps making polititians (ideological missionaries) more expensive, and raising the failure rate of them spreading ideology would lessen the ease of spreading your favorite civic?

I argee that further ideologies would be more interesting, but I think I'll keep it to five (for now, I just lump religionists and monarchists in with reactionary, and anarchists in with their radical bretheren socialism or communism (although I do understand that they're different)). Actually, to tell you the truth... like the game developers, I already have ideas for an expansion that won't be included in the original. Let's just say that the last two ideologies (has anyone figured out how to break the limit of seven religions?) are saved for the expansion . Any guesses, anyone?

@All
Here's a chart of the ideologies and the civics they may select...

I'll put it on the first post, as well. It's open for discussion, so sound off if something doesn't look right or I screwed up... it's a lot easier to change now than later .

[ArbitraryGuy]

UPDATE: I've figured out how to do the whole ideology system in python. No C++ needed. Yippee!

[Shqype]

What exactly is the goal of this mod? Is it to focus on the different ideologies of the factions you have written down during the time period of 1835 - 1920? Or is there another direction you are working towards?

Serbia, for example, did not recieve its independence from the Ottoman Empire until 1878 after proclaiming their independence in 1876. What, in your opinion, qualifies them as a faction worth inclusion over their Balkan neighbors, such as the Croatians, the Albanians, the Bosnians, or the Bulgarians?

[ArbitraryGuy]

Originally Posted by Shqype

What exactly is the goal of this mod? Is it to focus on the different ideologies of the factions you have written down during the time period of 1835 - 1920? Or is there another direction you are working towards?

Serbia, for example, did not recieve its independence from the Ottoman Empire until 1878 after proclaiming their independence in 1876. What, in your opinion, qualifies them as a faction worth inclusion over their Balkan neighbors, such as the Croatians, the Albanians, the Bosnians, or the Bulgarians?

Perhaps I haven't been as clear, as the dicussion has been dominated by the political system, which is only one part of the mod. The nationalist ambitions of the Italian and German peoples will also be an intergral part. Also, the colonial race will be important, and even a way to win. The mod will follow the political, social, diplomatic, imperial, industrial, and military developments of the 19th and early 20th centuries, building up and culminating in World War I (hence Serbia).

Since vassal states are not allowed yet, Serbia will be in a defensive alliance with the Ottomans until their independence. Why Serbia and not other Balkan States? Their significance in WWI (giving the Central Powers an enemy in the Balkans) is the justification for their inclusion. Remember, with an 18 civ limit, not all of the Balkan states can make it. The independence of the other Balkan states will be their conversion from Ottoman cities into minor nation cities. Why do you ask? Do you think Serbias inclusion is unjustified? Perhaps Serbia should be dropped, and a "Balkan Minors" conglomerate civ should be added? What do you think?