ORBIS REGNUM
The Global Kingdom
Pre-alpha progress: 40%
Hey guys, this time I won’t be posting a detailed article about one of the mod’s conceptual changes. Instead I’ll be talking a bit about the work I’ve done these last three weeks (somewhat vaguely, to save most of it for upcoming posts) and keeping score of the current progress so far. When the counter in the spoiler section reaches 100% I'll move the dev stage of the mod to alpha, and way closer to the beta I want to release around in a few months (most surely August).
I've talked with some friends who will be testing the alpha in around June (or a bit later if necessary). If you're interested in joining this group, write me at libertinox4Y@proton.me, or in twitter / reddit. Also, I've made a discord server but I don't use discord that much, so any patience / help in there is appreciated, as this is the reason I haven't made it public yet, sorry. If you want an invite, join the group or simple collaborate, feel free to send a message. I'll finish the details and probably make it public by next weekend.
An old screenshot from a way earlier stage. Support for the Sprites Pack DLCs will be added in case you've bought them, and will also be extended to more nations so earlier warring can feel more epic. (Beware the assets won't be distributed to avoid violating PDX policies, so make sure to get them on one of the Steam sales)
Anyway, let’s start with last week's work and talk about the map and the provinces, as I’ve been adding a bunch of new provinces into the mod to be able to simulate modern-day economies based on services, and these are the ‘urban areas’, the administrative core of the metropolitan areas. Put simply: the cities themselves, surrounded by the greater areas (current vanilla provinces) where pop's live and produce industrial or agricultural goods, etc. I’ve thought some may see this as a perhaps conflictive addition to the mod, thus I've preferred to announce it as subtle as possible, as I really don’t want to scare anyone who might consider it ‘ugly’, ‘out-of-place’, or whatever. Fugly, short and simple.
However, I really like it, and considered it very much necessary for a proper simulation of how geopolitics works in an urban/interconnected world, and how life these days can be so radically different in urban metropolitan places as it is in rural ones (how this affects politics too) and so, I had to make it work one way or the other, and obviously, the most important reason was to construct parallel main core for the whole service economy concept of which I'll tell more in its own article, but anyway, lots of the world’s largest cities are already in the map, with all requirements like climate or continents added, trade goods (services), regions, etc:
They are absolutely playable since quite a while, with related crashes reduced to zero now, during the first week of the addition. I did come up with an interface glitch, some nightmarishly game-killer stuff, just a few days ago, but solved immediately thanks to good-almighty-constant organisation. If it ever happens to you while modding provinces: check your duplicates in map files.
As for general modding progress, this weekend’s count would be 312 cities already up and running (unpopulated, as I haven’t do pops yet), and I still need to do at least around a hundred more to cover the capitals of all nations (the remaining) as well other necessary cities depending on specific economy sizes. There are a bit more new provinces as I also tweaked and play to create some new borders, but left it for later:
(List of largest cities, Urban area, Population, Metropolitan area, World's largest urban areas in 2020, and more)
Again, I’ll talk more about cities later on, but if you like the concept, rest assured it’s going very well so far with a lot of work done already. I’ve also added some flags, including Russia and modern Germany, as seen in one of the latest screenshots. I did Andorra because I had to do the province and anyway, one of you guys in here asked about it and I thought it’d be cool:
The Vatican has also been worked a bit this week. There was some slight localisation adjustments, but nothing too fancy to tell. Also, I worked on my excel files to calculate pops distribution of the map now that I’m getting closer to finishing essential new provinces. Along this, I think I may finally have the first branch of the defence ministry tech tree designed and listed. We’ll see.
Anyway, I think that’s it for this weekend. I’ll be sharing a bigger post anytime soon. Take care, and thanks for staying in touch. Lib, out.
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A small pic of Northern Africa borders at the beginning of the bookmark of 1908, the initial one. Protectorates and colonial nations will be playable as substates of the colonial empires to make the starting phase of the game (and the eventual decolonisation) more interesting, adding its own challenges and development/identity path to each real-life or alt-history independence movement.
I don't know if you'll be worried about this, but it's a suggestion. The Sudetenland borders of the Czech Republic and the Transylvanian borders of Romania would be interesting. Because the German and Hungarian decisions regarding these regions in the 2nd World War. Part of this is already present in the HPM and HFM Mods, and their derivatives.
Yeah, that would all be part of the goals or flavour of the first two bookmarks.
And I was already forgetting, also the region south of Slovakia, as the Hungarians also have interests and take over in WW2.
On the other hand, also going back to the Cold War era, the Golan Heights would also be interesting, a region that gives Israel a view of Damascus, and which was Syrian territory, until Israel captured it in 1967. Result of the six-day war.
Also very interesting jaja
I believe this is my last suggestion for this mod, I believe it would be good to give bureaucrats the ability to finance the construction of industries. Because it could be a way of simulating corporate state apparatuses alongside bourgeois and capitalist capitalism. And when the communist system was formed, it would not have the support of the capitalists. However, this would not stop bureaucrats from building industries. It would also be interesting to see the financing capacity of ports and naval forts, by capitalists and bureaucrats. This would help the player to be lazier with a very large and expansionist nation, it takes work to build forts in Russia and the USSR. On the other hand, with regard to the function of a forced worker (in the CWE, but in general in Vitória II it is the function of a slave), it would be better to place him or exchange him for a prisoner, and depending on the nation, he could be used or not, it would be good if it could initially serve as reinforcement for industrial workers and engineers. . Although it was mainly useful to increase the mobilized army. Just look at the context of the current world. And it would be interesting if all communists had in their party a ban on capitalists until the 80s, when they reformed like China, and had the option of allowing state capitalism. Furthermore, for other Latin American, African and other nations with a low industrial index today, such as Russia before the 1917 Revolution, it would be interesting to have some type of disincentive to the industrial process, as only through reforms could industry be started. and stimulated.
Don't worry, you can make as many as you want. About these last suggestions, they may be harder to implement, so we'll have to see. However, yeah, trying to find ways to make each different playstyle as enriched as possible is a must-do in our team.