So How About an Expansion?

[BandC]

Very good news about the upcoming patch!

So I read the recent news about Paradox and Paradox France. If I understood this right, Ageod now has nothing to do with Napoleon's Campaigns 2 anymore, right? So that means you guys need a new game to work on (maybe you already have one I don't know). I was thinking, why not an expansion for Pride of Nations?

To be perfectly honest, I don't like limited scope war-only games. The Pride of Nations concept was perfect (whole world, economy, colonization, nation building, war). Maybe execution wasn't so great because of engine limitations but an expansion may fix that.

In my opinion, Pride of Nations was very cheap ($20) for a game of its complexity. I personally would gladly pay another $20 for a "substantial" expansion including:

1) Engine re-write or significant optimization. I am talking about < 15 second per turn throughout the game (I know this is not easy to do). Having 3-5 minute turns for a game of this length is simply not acceptable.
2) Fix of all outstanding bugs and implement any not implemented left over features from original game
3) Improve AI
4) Making sure all event chains / unifications etc. work
5) Some new starting points (shorter Grand Campaigns, leading up to World War 1 etc. I know there is a 1880 scenario is in the works)
6) Some other improvements community suggested since the game was released

Is that a possibility? What do you all think?

[Ilitarist]

I see a big problem here. If you sell fix for a very slow and buggy game plus couple of features as expansion nobody will like you. But those fixes require much work and adding other features will require even more... Maybe updated rerelease?

[BandC]

Yes, I know what you mean. I do not want to encourage "bad practices" either. I just thought Pride of Nations had a great concept and could have a larger player base if some players weren't turned off by the long turn times and such.

It would certainly have to be done in a way so that we don't feel like buying the same thing again. It is not unheard of that some companies release a game again as a stand-alone expansion (with lots more features of course). Sins of a Solar Empire comes to mind (The new stand alone expansion comes out in a few days). Also Hearts of Iron 3 added multi-threading (among other features) in the For the Motherland expansion for example.

So I thought an expansion for Pride of Nations could include an engine re-write among other features.

[Kensai]

Probably this is what the developers are planning. A DLC (1880? 1910?) with major fixes. Remember PON is the epitome of complexity regarding the AGEOD engine, it is understandable to hide bugs in its innards.