Palpat
Colonel
Posts: 303
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 9:27 am

Is the game still railroaded?

Sat Jan 06, 2018 11:08 am

Hi there,

Years after release, has the game evolved?
Upon release, it was heavily railroaded. A victorious CSA was to be annexed by USA. Or French Empire was doomed no matter what.

Is it still the case? Is there more freedom with what ifs now?

User avatar
Durk
Posts: 2921
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2011 4:36 am
Location: Wyoming

Re: Is the game still railroaded?

Tue Jan 09, 2018 2:47 am

I assume by railroaded you mean models historical determinism requiring historical outcomes despite ahistorical play. There is an element of necessity in building historical events into any game of history. I understand your concern which imposes these events upon players. I think you will find conditional probabilities have been nicely crafted with development, many player initiated. The game has evolved through many patches and options. Be sure to search the mods as well as the regular patches. There is a large group of players who adore this game and have tinkered with it.
So do a bit of research in the forum, find all the official and unofficial fixes, and have fun with it.

User avatar
loki100
AGEod Guard of Honor
Posts: 2399
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2011 4:15 pm
Location: Caithness
Contact: Website Twitter

Re: Is the game still railroaded?

Tue Jan 09, 2018 11:14 am

There is a practical problem to doing branching events which is the event syntax does not support 'or' commands. You can get around this by creating formal descriptive events and using those as a future test or the tricky 'regedit' function but neither are easy (especially the latter).

An example of the former would be to write an event that simply tests for say Alsace and Lorraine still being French controlled the turn before the Second Empire falls. Call that say 'Napoleon III survives'. If that event has fired then the end of the Second Empire is set to one side.

The secondary consequence is what then. The great majority of the later events involving France assume the Third Republic (ie the major shifts that really happened). So you'd need to do a complete mod with fresh invented events along the lines of Kensai's Austria mod.

So I think a certain degree of historical determinancy is very hard to avoid

Palpat
Colonel
Posts: 303
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 9:27 am

Re: Is the game still railroaded?

Tue Jan 09, 2018 11:49 am

So that's sadly a big no for me.
What's the point of winning in 1870 if you still got Germany and the republic. Or of the US civil war if the CSA still die.
Some major what if should have been in.

Well, that's how it is.

User avatar
loki100
AGEod Guard of Honor
Posts: 2399
Joined: Sun Aug 14, 2011 4:15 pm
Location: Caithness
Contact: Website Twitter

Re: Is the game still railroaded?

Tue Jan 09, 2018 3:34 pm

if you win, Germany doesn't form.

Problem is its not just a simple decision keep the empire/lose the empire.

It triggers a need for an essentially different what if chain for France. How stable is the Second Empire even after a win? The underlying social tensions remain and will resurface once the glow of victory goes away. It'd be an interesting mod along the lines of Kensai's reworking of the Austrian events assuming they beat Prussia in 1866 but PoN isn't a sandbox game by design.

However, its a very moddable game so if you want to explore a Second Empire post 1870 no one stops you. Or posting a mod with your changes that can be used by others.

User avatar
Durk
Posts: 2921
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2011 4:36 am
Location: Wyoming

Re: Is the game still railroaded?

Wed Jan 10, 2018 4:29 am

loki100, you are so much better at explaining than am I, but yes, search the forum for mods. Lots of players have solved very many different historical determinist like outcomes and have provided alternatives.
Your play, Palpat, must incorporate the mod and player elements for you idealized formulation of 'what if' outcomes.
As a student of the American Civil War, I delight in collecting the very many different 'what if' scenarios. The best of which is James Thurber's 'What if Grant had been drinking at Appomattox?'
For PON, either enjoy the deterministic game as designed or make your own changes. The game is very open to your fiddling with it. Almost as many what if mods for this game as articles for the American Civil War.

Palpat
Colonel
Posts: 303
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 9:27 am

Re: Is the game still railroaded?

Wed Jan 10, 2018 8:28 pm

loki100 wrote:It triggers a need for an essentially different what if chain for France. How stable is the Second Empire even after a win? The underlying social tensions remain and will resurface once the glow of victory goes away. It'd be an interesting mod along the lines of Kensai's reworking of the Austrian events assuming they beat Prussia in 1866 but PoN isn't a sandbox game by design.



Well, even very hostile historian like Roger Price have to concede that the Empire was indeed popular outside the vocal radicals of Paris and that it fell because of the defeat and of a parisian mob.

By the way, if searched for mods and haven't found any? Are they somewhere else?

User avatar
Durk
Posts: 2921
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2011 4:36 am
Location: Wyoming

Re: Is the game still railroaded?

Thu Jan 11, 2018 1:07 am

It can be tough to find mods with active links. I am assuming you looked on the PON Mod page and could not find much. Several forum members provide mods or mod commentary. Two which come immediately to mind are loki and Burns. If you search for the those two by name you will find several mods.

User avatar
Khanti
Captain
Posts: 173
Joined: Mon Sep 08, 2014 6:06 pm
Location: Poland

Re: Is the game still railroaded?

Mon Jun 04, 2018 8:52 pm

Palpat wrote:Upon release, it was heavily railroaded.
(...)
Is there more freedom with what ifs now?


Testing it recently: to my surprise, if you will leave the railroad, then game gives you more freedom.
Railroad means countries that HAVE events files (about 15):

SelectFaction = $AUS / Austria
SelectFaction = $BEL / Belgia
SelectFaction = CHI / China
SelectFaction = $FRA / France
SelectFaction = GBR / Britain
SelectFaction = GER / Germany
SelectFaction = $HOL / Holland
SelectFaction = $ITA / Piemonte
SelectFaction = JAP / Japan
SelectFaction = $MEX / Mexic
SelectFaction = $POR / Portugal
SelectFaction = RUS / Russia
SelectFaction = $SPA / Spain
SelectFaction = $TUR / Turkey
SelectFaction = $USA

The rest is less or not at all railroaded ;)

OK. If you really, really want to play railroaded country without "railroads", there is simple solution: just change Probability value in event files. Some of them are 75%, some are less, some only 10%. Changing all to 0% means 0 railroads, but with 10% it will probably plays more unpredictable.

I haven't test it on wide scale, but it should do the job.
Meteoryt-like user. Strikes and disappears.

Return to “Pride of Nations”

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 24 guests