Development Update IV: Victoria III: The New Order II: Last Days of Europe I news

Development Update IV: Victoria III: The New Order II: Last Days of Europe I

Hello and welcome to yet another development update for The New Order, coming a bit early to thank you for your patience on waiting for the last diary (it wasn't very patient but we also delayed it so we'll call it even this time).

Last diary we hinted that we had some Victoria style stuff cooking up, and that was no lie. We really did decide that if we couldn't bring The New Order to Victoria, we'd bring Victoria to The New Order.

Paradox was kind enough to design scripted GFX, which, while limited in many ways, opened a ton of doors for The New Order and other modders. As The New Order is an ambitious project that will never come out, we have decided to use it to add many new gameplay mechanics. Hearts of Iron simply isn't able to do the things we need it to do to make a Cold War interesting, so we're changing it. (For more information on the mod's beginnings and why exactly I left Victoria 2 in the first place, see Development Diary I: Victoria or Heart's of Iron?, and for more stuff we're doing to make TNO more unique, see Development Update III: Trials, Tribulations, and a War in South Africa.

I know what you're thinking, "Panzer, stop rambling incessantly to make the mod sound more official you overly aggressive brute nobody cares" and my answer is, simply, "Ooch, owie, okay."

No Seriously What Are You Talking About:

So without further ado, the new government screen:

So let's work from the top to glorious, glorious bottom on our almost completely reworked political screen, shall we?

National Spirits are mostly the same but everything else is fairly radically different. Under America's three starting ideas, *Last Bastion of Liberty, The American Depression* and *Jim Crow*, we have the faction logo and the nations position in the organization (currently leader and member, but we might get more complicated with things like associates in the future). If you want to see all of the logos for all currently announced factions, feel free to click here.

Next to that, you can see we removed the party list and expanded the political pie chart. Our reasoning for this was that some nations, like the United States, wouldn't always have a, say, despotist or Ultranational-Socialist party. They simply wouldn't form there or aren't formed at game start, and having to make up a bunch of random names to just sit at 0 on the list forever didn't make sense. This way, you only see the parties which are actually active in the nation.

And finally, in the bottom left, we have our new minister system.

The second in command of every nation is the deputy. For the USA this is always the vice president, for other nations he may be appointed, he might be an heir, he might be the true leader behind the puppet shown above him. The deputy is normally only changeable by event, but some nations can switch them out. As we said, in America this is always the VP, which at game start is John F. Kennedy.

Below that, we have the three ministers, or as we call them in TNO, advisors. The positions, from left to right, are Military Advisor, Political Advisor, and Economic Advisor. These three positions are the most important person in their respective fields, but don't have to correspond with a certain position in government (though they can). These can be leading generals, treasury secretaries, influential politicians, or whoever else. At game start for the US we have Melvin Laird in control of the military, Spiro Agnew as the most important voice for politics, and Robert McNamara, who just might become a bit more influential in military matters if America gets embroiled in a long, drawn out, meaningless war on a foreign continent...

Sometimes the same person can fill multiple slots. You might also not be able to change the person, or only at certain times. We'll describe how that works a bit later in the diary.

And below this, the laws.

Laws and Politics:

Here is where we stole from Victoria. My favorite part of Victoria is how it makes you feel like you're actually changing the course of a nation, not just playing as its infinitely powerful leader that tells it to annex things. Victoria does this through pops, which you can watch the demographics of, spheres, which can show you how wide reaching your diplomatic power and hegemony was, and laws, which show how your nation progresses as a society and what type of government you run.

Now we ain't doing pops, and we're still working on spheres (spoilers), but we did decide to implement laws. We feel with how TNO is so much about how exactly you are moving your nation along as a society (arguably the best part of vanilla, the political choices), it should be natural that you can actually see these changes or make them as times moves on.

Laws operate in a mix of the vanilla and Vicky system. They're Vicky like as in we took huge inspiration from many of their laws and how they worked, and they're vanilla like in that they cost PP and operate much like their vanilla counterparts.

However, many nations can not simply change them whenever they like. Certain laws can be changed freely, but others can be done only through focus, event, decision, or never at all. For the US for instance, you can not change the 'Segregation' law until the issue of Jim Crow is finally decided on through, well, focus, events and decisions.

In addition, each law option has its own description to help you understand what exactly it's doing or give a bit of flavor.



(NOTE: Effects are just placeholders, and are EXTREMELY WIP. We have people dedicated solely on making them and making them balanced, but I didn't want to delay the diary for that.)

A full list of laws and their options can be found here.

Now, as mentioned previously, certain nations have different ways to change their advisors. This is done through the Political Appointment law. The current methods to do so are:

Appointment

The advisor is freely chosen by the ruler and can be changed out or fired at will. This may cause issues with advisors not liking you removing their power, however, or others currying your favor to get a coveted spot.

For Life

Advisors are appointed by the ruler but serve for life. They may potentially be fired but it'd be extremely costly and look very bad for you. Expect your advisors to get complacent or use their positions for ill if not chosen well. We would never *tell* you to assassinate your advisors, but hey, it's a wacky world out there.

Five Year Plans

The ruler chooses an advisor every five years, in which time they can not be changed out, normally to change with ongoing economic or political restructuring.

Democratic

The advisor is a democratically elected individual and your various advisors will hotly contest the position. Your advisors will be shifting in and out of the various spots, and some may be chosen but they are at risk of finding themselves ousted. You are at the whim of the government here.

And that's all for laws!

Thank you for reading this much shorter update for Vict- The New Order: Last Days of Europe. Perhaps in the future we will discuss Spheres, the Economy, Espionage, Elections, Nuclear War or other features we'd like to expand upon or already have. Hell, maybe we'll end up doing pops after all. And our Sun Gun FPS minigame.

See you next week or the week after or the week after (I'll be away for a bit) for a tale of CYKA BLYAT banditry, Big MT the Black Mountain, a very very incompetent peasant commune, and the group of brave rangers with big irons who touched their hearts forever.

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I would like to also shout out Yard1 and the amazing (surprisingly) Equestria at War mod, which you should really give a shot even if the setting turns you off. While I did the layout and the GFX, Yard did the vast majority of the coding, and this wouldn't be possible without him.

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