Comments - Mapolq

About the discussion on northern Brazil, there are a few problems with the borders in the Alto Rio Negro and Alto Solimões area, mainly that Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil all claimed the region and represented it as part of their territory in their maps. Perhaps the best solution is to leave Marabitanas unclaimed until the treaty to represent the contested status.

Sources
(in Portuguese): 4.bp.blogspot.com
(in Spanish): Exhibits.library.vanderbilt.edu

Also, I second the question of where does arkhometha would prefer we post our comments. On the reviews, personal messaging, or some other site?

I separated my post in three since I got preeeetty long. Apologies to everyone for the walls of text. So...

Even more out there or silly wishlist:

- I've seen many countries get depopulated every time they manage to form. Poland is a good example - Russia tends to go to war on it, and even if it leaves some of the country intact, the war usually wrecks them enough that they never recover from waves of rebels which sometimes turns the place into a near-wasteland by 1930. Even if you're allied to them and ride to the rescue, it's usually too late and they get a destroyed army and occupied territory for a long time. Greece suffers from that even though it's there from the beginning.

- A pet peeve I have with Victoria is the hardcoded immigration to America and some other regions/states. Though there's nothing that can be done about specifically that (and some of it is understandable and required for historicity), I'd love to see some immigration happening within Europe, for example, or around other countries elsewhere. I remember a little bit of it seemed to occur in vanilla, but I haven't seen any in HPM. The mechanics, honestly, elude me somewhat, so... well, that's why it's in the "out there" section.

- I liked the PDM types of farmland that gave little pluses and minuses to RGO production and supply. Probably too much work for little gain, but, well, I like terrain variety, I guess.

- One thing I liked about the Victoria 1 interface was that when hovering over a province you saw the total population, not in pops, but "times four". Could that be added to the population density map type?

- The pluses and minuses that factories and RGOs gain from several factors are a bit disorganised in the reports you get when hovering. All the information is there, but it doesn't always say which values are being added, and which values are being multiplied. I can work it out if I need to, but it is a bit annoying.

- Can Capitalists be made to build more than 6 factories on player nations before electricity inventions open up more factory types? Usually you can destroy factories as a player, so it's not an issue like it could be with the ai, which might have trouble building the new types on certain conditions? (At least that's what I *think* the reasoning is)

- Colonial migration sort of breaks down when you are a country with lots and lots of colonies. Since it spreads through all of them, each one gets a trickle of pops. This means that as the UK, Australia and New Zealand stay basically with their original pops forever, for example (well, until you release them and they get their immigration bonus). Even using the national focus seems to make little difference. Could there be a heavy bonus to certain colonies for migration?

- I know you're already dealing with late-game basic resouce glut by changing some province RGOs to certain commodities. There was a mod that used the same principle (PDM I think), but they allowed you to choose between a number of commodities to change to, which I thought was interesting for the player. Of course, you might want to keep it more geography-based as well and replicate historical trends, but you might as well consider giving the player some choices in certain events, too. I suppose it depends on how much effort it's worth to put in something like this.

- Bit of a silly one, but some investment-dependent bonuses such as the probability of pops promoting to soldiers or bureaucrats increase once you get more than a certain percent invested in the proper area (like defence or administration). Can it be made more *or equal*, so you get the bonus once you get, say, 60% defence spending instead of 61%?

Weeeeelll, I think that's about it. Thanks a lot if you managed to read all the way to here. Also, I know you're doing this project alone, but if you want I could try scripting some historical events for South America and send them over - no credits required, just take whatever you want. Thanks again for this awesome mod.

Mapolq

General suggestions and opinion:

This is more general, and I fully expect you to disagree with some of my ideas here. I don't fully understand the workings of the game, either, so some of it may be nonsense. But since I'm writing, I figure it won't hurt.

- It seems to me taiga infrastructure limits are a bit too harsh, though I suppose it is a question of both taste and balance, as infrastructure levels are a bit abstract. In any case, it seems to me the restriction on Naval Bases is very tough - it's strange not being able to build a level 1 Naval Base on Newfoundland in the early-ish game, while it's easy to do so in the Falkland Islands.

- The Fenian events for Britain keep firing even after one regains the core in a given province through cultural assimilation. Even though that would be completely understandable, it does feel a bit harsh, given that it's hard to even regain most of the cores before the end of the game anyway if you choose to keep Ireland and try to incorporate them as the UK, so getting those sort of makes the cultural assimilation events moot.

- The UK doesn't get an event to get Pitcairn, so it tends to be grabbed by France.

- Marcus Island / Minami Tori-shima still looks big in the map, while it's actually exceedingly small. I figure it could be made the size of Pitcairn and similar islands.

- Events that change RGO type on provinces that are marked as Rubber producers end up being useless as the event "Rubber Discovered" will fire again quite soon. I figure it should be disabled after the first time, or that the player could at least have a choice on whether a province starts producing Rubber (which seems to stay very plentiful and cheap up until the end of the game).

- Would it be unbalancing to have Radio production come earlier, around the same time as Telephones? I think it would be a better fit for modelling radio telegraphy, myself. That would imply changing the Telephones requirement of navies and armies to Radio as well (and maybe increasing civilian Telephone demand a bit to compensate?)

- I absolutely love the infrastructure bonus from producing certain good in state. I think it came from the PDM mod, I remember liking it somewhere else. As such, I'd like to see it extended, with, for example, giving a +5% to Ammunition factories from producing Coal in state. Though you seem to have gone with some less important material not giving a bonus.

- I have a preference for smaller states in industrial regions so there's more ability to develop a varied industry with the 8 slots limit. Even with the UK, I modded my game to divide East and West Midlands and turn London into a single-province state (and I gave Stirling to Highlands, for resource bonus and keeping pop totals more equal)... not a big deal, of course, just throwing it there.

-The Burma wars could get their own events, since in the current way, the ai UK doesn't tend to conquer it, or at least not in a... very sensible way.

Hello, arkhometha.

I'll start by giving a sincere thank you for all your work on this mod, HPM. Like I said in the description of my vote, it enhances most of what makes Victoria 2 a great game. Now, I'd like to send you a number of suggestions, many of them fairly minor, for the next version of the mod. This is by no means exhaustive - I only played a few nations - Brazil and the Piratini Republic, the United Kingdom and Spain, so my experience with what happens in some corners of the world is limited.

I think I sent you a private message, but I'm not sure how this thing works, so sorry if I'm just repeating myself. Anyhow, let me start - I'll put the suggestions in categories:

Geography and provinces (Brazil):

While I do understand the general keeping of terrain textures to represent the province terrain only, I noticed you have mixed them a bit in a few places. With that in mind, I'd make a few suggestions for Brazil:

-Have the Amazon forest extend slightly into São Luís, Chapada and Vila da Palma provinces.

-Have the Cerrado (grasslands or savannah) extend north a bit into Cuiabá and Vila Bela provinces.

-Add a different texture to represent the Planato das Guianas (Guyana Shield).

-Make Pantanal a little bit larger, reaching into the south of Vila Bela and Cuiabá provinces.

-Rework the southern Mato Grosso provinces. I would suggest a Marsh province of Corumbá covering most of Pantanal, and another province (Miranda instead of Dourados, with a possible name change to Campo Grande after the War of Triple Alliance) east of it. This would require changing those two provinces from an east-west to a north-south configuration. Iguatemi can stay as is to represent the land gained from Paraguay in the war.

-The island of São Francisco do Sul in Santa Catarina is linked to the land. This is very minor, and I'm only mentioning it because you have taken great care on such things and because I happen to live in the state. ;-)

- The province representing the territory of Roraima should stretch more to the south, taking some space from Oriximina and Cachoeira, if you want to follow modern state borders (which you seem to, going by the rest of the beautifully-drawn map).

-I noticed you changed the name of the province of Paraíba to João Pessoa because provinces preferentially use the names of the main city. This would be accurate *after 1930*, when the city of Paraíba (or Parahyba, but you also seem to use contemporary names, which is also fine to me) changed its name to João Pessoa in honour of an important politician who was murdered. This was closely related to the coup d'état which happened that year in Brazil.

-There was (and still is) relatively important coal production in the southern states of Brazil. Coal mines were started in Rio Grande do Sul in the 1860 decade (I'd say it'd fall in the province of Porto Alegre in the map) and in the 1880 decade in Santa Catarina (in the province of Desterro). Adding those via event would be accurate and might give a little bit of a boost to Brazilian early industry in the late game.

-Rename "Chapada" to "Caxias", to keep with city names being used. Though Caxias might be a little bit over the border of São Luís province, and you could use Imperatriz instead (founded in the 1860s, though).

-Correct the diacritical in "Cabrobo" to "Cabrobó".

-Correct the preposition in "Vila do Barra" to "Vila da Barra".

Other geography:

-The Altiplano in Bolivia looks a bit strange not being bounded on the east. It's probably not worth it to change the terrain on entire provinces for it, but maybe put some montainous/hilly textures separating it from the lowlands?

-The Sudd in South Sudan is a very large expanse of wetlands and if I remember correctly it was a serious barrier to travel to the upper reaches of the Nile, so I found it strange that it doesn't appear at all. I figure it would be centered more or less on the Bor province?

I'm just glad you keep improving this great mod! Always nice to read your blog reports as well, though.

Another great update!