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I was wondering if this game will feature the ability to play other nations than the large European ones (I'm guessing that USA will also be available ). China and Japan, for example, seem like two non-European nations that might be very interesting to play. Will you be able to play any nation, or will there be restrictions?

Also, I'd be interested in knowing how deterministic the game will be. Will major events be included, or are you trying to build mechanics that may or may not recreate some of the events of the period? Either way has its pros and cons, I guess.

We don't want to have all nations potentially playable in this game. So after long exchanges with the beta team, we have decided to limit playable nations to 8 major powers (Great-Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, USA & Japan) and, in some cases (depending on further beta testing results), may be 2 or 3 other nations (secret for now )

Meiji Restoration, here I come!

As for the second question, we are leaning to propose the major events in several flavors, when it comes to handling them and the player will pick his preferred style for a given game with a simple option check (from rather deterministic to rather freeform)

This thread deserves its own poll!! ompom:

One important thing to notice is that, like in any other previous AGEOD game, you can create your own scenario with any playable nation that you desire...
Like recently you could saw the Pontiac's War for WIA and many others community modders efforts to add new scenarios.... you can create your own Grand Campaign for VGN with Haiti, Fiji, Hawai, Cuba and Persia as playable nations if you want...
The posibilities are endless... that's why we focus only to enhance the gameplay factor of the major nations that Phil describes, so, only the major factions are meant to be played with on the "vanilla" game... but any modder can go beyond there and open his own can of worns ... the sky is the limit!...

I vote for...
1- Spain!
2- Ottomans
and...
did i already said Spain?? Ok, then...
3- Spain again!

I wanna ask something too... will it be possible to activate and/or mod into the game other nations as playable?

EDIT: Ok, Generalismo answered before i could ask
Hope this "modding in your nation" is not too difficult as lot's of people will surely want to do it

arsan wrote:I wanna ask something too... will it be possible to activate and/or mod into the game other nations as playable?

[CENTER][/CENTER]
I answered your question before you actually asked!!

And you divined my comment about your divination too
And even had time to post a picture! Awesome!!

I would like to play China. very interesting peroid, what with boxer rebellions, a Russian and Japans increasing interest in this region, and the rise of communism. Though alot of these events seem to come towards the end of the games timeline.

Though I'm very excited about the games release. Thanks guys

The early part would cover the Taiping rebellion in China, arguably the bloodiest conflict of the nineteenth century.

Not to mention the second Opium War. Playing China would probably be quite a challenge, but interesting none the less. I also second Arsan's call for the Ottoman Empire as a playable nation.

China might be challenging to play, but you would lose quite a lot of the other interesting aspects of the game: colonization, industrrialization, technological research, even quite a few elements of the Victorian age diplomatic activity...

I would say Ottoman Empire should be a bit more 'interesting' on that respect...

At the moment though, the game focus is still on the Great Powers

I like the initial choices of playable nations and hope that the game's follow on (expansion? VGN-2?) would opt for some more exotic choices.

The reason I say that is that I would prefer the game be optimized for the initial nations and subsequently re-tuned or adapted to allow the others to be played as well...just get the majors right first!

PhilThib wrote:China might be challenging to play, but you would lose quite a lot of the other interesting aspects of the game: colonization, industrrialization, technological research, even quite a few elements of the Victorian age diplomatic activity...

I would say Ottoman Empire should be a bit more 'interesting' on that respect...

At the moment though, the game focus is still on the Great Powers

I agree that there should really be emphasis on China being modeled well. It's not easy to do as Paradox games show and by making it a potentially monolithic player (and making that playable) entity would clearly remove the historical status of generally being a punching bag. Of course, it would be nice to turn China into an industrial nation (well, lets call it turn parts of the coast into industrial regions... ) but any designer would have make sure it's one heck of a challenge, and balance it with the playability of the rest of the nations.

I think you could make similar arguments for including the Ottoman Empire, or somewhere like Sweden (you could have a very hard route to Scandinavianism, although time-frame may be a bit late for that), Brazil, or Argentina. But, I think these would best be handled by modders with the time and interest to model them well - for the main game it's totally understandable that the developers want to focus on the actual industrial powers of the time, so as that they can get the game behaving appropriately without diving into all kinds of highly specific situations and contexts. Otherwise I can see a player Brazil becoming a great power easily, almost by default, with none of those pesky real-life problems that stifled its growth.

PhilThib wrote:Great-Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Italy, USA & Japan

That list is almost perfect. But the Osmanic Empire should definitely be considered a major power and eventually be included, maybe in a future patch.

Minor Nations that I maybe would like to play would be Mexico and Persia.

But Japan will probably be my first choice!!

gunnergoz wrote:...
The reason I say that is that I would prefer the game be optimized for the initial nations and subsequently re-tuned or adapted to allow the others to be played as well...just get the majors right first!

+1

il me semble que la Turquie devrait figurer dans cette liste.....

gunnergoz wrote:I like the initial choices of playable nations and hope that the game's follow on (expansion? VGN-2?) would opt for some more exotic choices.

The reason I say that is that I would prefer the game be optimized for the initial nations and subsequently re-tuned or adapted to allow the others to be played as well...just get the majors right first!

+1

Research are made about Ottoman Empire forces and setup but with some pain to find accurate datas, especially for ships.
But Ottoman Empire won't be missed.

Evans wrote:I agree that there should really be emphasis on China being modeled well. It's not easy to do as Paradox games show and by making it a potentially monolithic player (and making that playable) entity would clearly remove the historical status of generally being a punching bag. Of course, it would be nice to turn China into an industrial nation (well, lets call it turn parts of the coast into industrial regions... ) but any designer would have make sure it's one heck of a challenge, and balance it with the playability of the rest of the nations.

I think you could make similar arguments for including the Ottoman Empire, or somewhere like Sweden (you could have a very hard route to Scandinavianism, although time-frame may be a bit late for that), Brazil, or Argentina. But, I think these would best be handled by modders with the time and interest to model them well - for the main game it's totally understandable that the developers want to focus on the actual industrial powers of the time, so as that they can get the game behaving appropriately without diving into all kinds of highly specific situations and contexts. Otherwise I can see a player Brazil becoming a great power easily, almost by default, with none of those pesky real-life problems that stifled its growth.

Better a game indeed doing right a few nations than one where any nation is playable but historicity and difficulty are gone...I don't remember the name of this game...

++2

Adlertag wrote:Research are made about Ottoman Empire forces and setup but with some pain to find accurate datas, especially for ships.
But Ottoman Empire won't be missed.

What are you searching for? Names of ships?

Adlertag wrote:Research are made about Ottoman Empire forces and setup but with some pain to find accurate datas, especially for ships.
But Ottoman Empire won't be missed.

It's obvious that Turkey should be in the game. But for a small team adding even just 1 extra faction could be very costly in terms of time, so no problem .. The current list is already very nice. But maybe there is a way it could be added later.

Nikel wrote:What are you searching for? Names of ships?

We finally managed to find a list, but it was the steam light ships the harder to find (frigates and protected cruisers).

Adlertag wrote:We finally managed to find a list, but it was the steam light ships the harder to find (frigates and protected cruisers).

OK, anyway a good reference for the navies of VGN timeline is this

Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships: 1860-1905

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Conways-All-Worlds-Fighting-Ships/dp/0851771335


The Order of battle with ships' names in the Battle of Sinop on 1853 is here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Sinope

The turkish fleet present was completely destroyed

First I would play the Prussian getting the chance to become the "Kaiserreich" which is of great interest for me.
Second, if the Ottomans would be available, I would try to make some good reforms and even would try to improve the industry and economics to get a better stand compared with history. I do not know how it will be possible to integrate additional cultures like the kurdish, armenian, greek and slavic ones as main cultures to reduce any revoltrisk.If VGN would be a little bit similar to Victoria it would be necessary to integrate some cultures more, because these other cultures would be rather revolting if foreign nations like Russia would play their slavic card in the great game.

greetings

Hohenlohe, who waits for this interesting game...

Prussia, forming Germany, and Japan will be my first 2 games

I hope the testing of this game will be better than WWI was!!! apy:

tagwyn wrote:I hope the testing of this game will be better than WWI was!!! apy:

I doubt that lesson has been forgotten.