Orbis Regnum mod for Victoria 2: Heart of Darkness

Introduction

Orbis Regnum aims to simulate globalization from 1908 to 2036, as well as an expanded timeline with many scripted possible outcomes.

The goal is to loosely recreate the evolution of geopolitical, military, and economic competitions of the great powers and developing countries during World War I, World War II, Cold War, Decolonisation, the unipolar and multipolar worlds, and eventually, a shattered-world scenario, enabling all required historical countries, as well as separatist movements, confederations, cultural, economic, ideological, and religious unions, and therefore, superstates and post-nations too.

There will be a modernization of many concepts from the base game, attempting to recreate contemporary immersion in global political dynamics. Certain base game ideas will also be replaced to function better in an attempt to simulate the political complexity of the modern world.

Expected beta features

• Political leaders instead of political parties.
• New ideologies representing the political spectrum of the 20th and 21st century.
• Cabinets and 'ministers', and a bigger new technology system represented as 'cabinet projects' instead.
• Urban centers and economy based on services. Simpler concepts too.
• Unpredictability for every run, expecting different results because of randomisation in events.
• Immersive alternative history, maintaining railroaded outcomes through scripted events.
• Functional UN voting (could change depending on real-expectations of modding)
• Colonial nations and focus on decolonisation, as well as developing nations.
• A lot of new cultural unions. (Included many fictional)
• National constitutions, constitutional reforms, and hopefully, legislative elections.
• Religions replaced by National Values instead, altering how pops feel about the world.
• Lots of new events, depending on legislation and political leaders personality and agendas.
• New interface.
• New skins for military units. Probably no tanks or airplanes, just the infantry one.
• Confederations and regional blocs, such as EU, etc. Possible unification.
• Lots of new cultures. Possibility to build a national or pan-national identity from post-colonial cultures.
• Diplomatic relations changing dynamically on factors such as ideology, speeches, etc.
• Ideological blocs, such as Axis, Allies and Comintern during WW2, but also Cold War and modern-day.
• Ideologies treated as political parties, so losing elections can feel like a big mistake.
• Espionage events, decisions, and some flavour too.
• New flag types for different types of governments and geopolitical alignments.
• Flavour changes to make the game feel more like a geopolitical simulator of the last two centuries.
• Specific attention for each region and nation through eventual updates.

Current goals

These are the modding goals before having a public release:

• 1908 history files (around 20%)
• Urban Centers (around 65%)
• Essential events and decisions for early game (nothing yet)
• Initial political leaders for each region (around 35%)
• Migrations and pops behaviours (nothing yet)
• Casus bellis and rebel types (nothing yet)
• Functional services economy (around 10%)
• Tech tree (15%)

Status (Pre-alpha)

Current version is v0.3.0, which isn't the first pre-alpha build we've had. The mod has had already quite a large tested work, but it is now we're finally making a package and starting to debug as much as possible to have a better-semi-stable release eventually. Currently, the mod is not there yet and KIND-OF-STABLE. Most of stuff done so far works, but sometimes, random crashes happen.

Team

We accept people interested in working with us. We're looking for collaborators mostly, as I can do most coding and mapping at the moment, and due the ambitious (and unstable) nature of the project, I prefer to keep it that way for now. However, if you still want to reach out and become part of the team, contact me through private message. Especially if it's for working on any of the current goals.

In general, what we most need is help for researching and flavour, how to distribute pops, what legislation should have which countries, what leaders or events should they have, what cultural unions do you think would come alive during the first half of the 20th century, etc. So, if you have ideas that you want to share, please, mention it on the forum! We will discuss about it and consider it while working on the history and events files, or anything related to flavour for each nation and region.

Thanks

To the teams of NWO, CWE, GFM and TGC. Guys, I've been playing your mods for years now. Thanks a lot. I hope this mod can be as half as good as any of what you guys did! Also GPT-4, because it's been helping a lot with some stuff, including research and graphic assets. (Though do AIs count when giving thanks anyway?)