New Player - 2 Questions

[Doggie3]

I've taken the plunge and bought the game. I've spent a lot of time playing the Paradox titles, including Vicky 2. I'm looking forward to this one and to see if it can give me as many hours of enjoyment as Vicky did, hopefully more!

Two questions:

1. I bought the game off Steam and I want to install the 1.04RC5 patch. I have downloaded the patch and it was installed under e:games/ (I have all of my games on my e drive) however the game itself is installed under the Steam folder ( I believe it is Steam/Common/). Will the patch be automatically picked up or do I need to relocate it into the game folder under Steam? If so, where do I extract it to?

2. One of my favourite experiences in Vicky was playing as Prussia and going through the German unification process. I have read a lot while researching the game that German unification may not work properly however many of these posts were old. Is Prussia a playable option and will German unification work?

I'm sure I will have a lot more questions, I must say having opened it up last night after purchase it looks a lot better in real life than the screenshots and Youtube videos indicated.

Cheers,

[ajnatalo]

First off, the patch needs to be dropped directly into your PON directory. You have to overwrite the patched files.

As far as Prussia goes they are my favorite in this game. German unification works. Its not perfect but it works. By not perfect I mean some events seem to have a bad link to their text files so all you get a weird string where there should be linked database text. Historical unification is tough as you start with an alliance with Austria and this keeps relations permanently high. Thus, for North German Federation to form you need to either A. Manually insult and ruin relations with Austria or B. use the unification decision cards on North German capitals to trigger the alternate unification event.

[Jim-NC]

Hello and welcome to the forums Doggie3.

[loki100]

I've taken the plunge and bought the game. I've spent a lot of time playing the Paradox titles, including Vicky 2. I'm looking forward to this one and to see if it can give me as many hours of enjoyment as Vicky did, hopefully more!

...

2. One of my favourite experiences in Vicky was playing as Prussia and going through the German unification process. I have read a lot while researching the game that German unification may not work properly however many of these posts were old. Is Prussia a playable option and will German unification work?

I'm sure I will have a lot more questions, I must say having opened it up last night after purchase it looks a lot better in real life than the screenshots and Youtube videos indicated.

Cheers,

welcome to the obsession that is PoN

For a player, the German unification chain works ok. Make sure you take the Danish war as you'll need Schleswig and Holstein for a later event. As ajnatalo says, insult Austria to lower relations and break the defensive treaty (you have plenty of time to do this).

The AI has more problems, mainly due to it not always going to war with Denmark, but there is a solution (hopefully) in a later patch as well as one to the problem of unending defensive alliances.

[Field Marshal Hotzendorf]

Hi,

I am experiencing similar issues and I was wondering how do you drop the patch directly into the PON directory? I tried installing the patch to the PON folder in STEAM but no go. Thanks.

[loki100]

Hi,

I am experiencing similar issues and I was wondering how do you drop the patch directly into the PON directory? I tried installing the patch to the PON folder in STEAM but no go. Thanks.

Hi

this is based on comments from others (I don't have a steam copy to test with),

I think what you need to do is to copy the entire game folder from the steam directory to a new one on your desktop somewhere. You can then patch that to the beta. An alternative maybe to make sure that Steam auto-updates is turned off and then patch directly in the steam folder (but less sure about this). If I understand properly, steam will keep on reverting any 1.04 beta back to 1.03 as the last definitive patch.

[Doggie3]

Thanks for the welcome and the replies. Much appreciated.

Having done some more research into it, I don't think the patch will work while Steam is allowed to update automatically - so I will either have to turn off steam or wait for the next patch to be official. Any word on when the beta may be made official?

On the loading screen, it does say that I am at 1.04, so I guess just the latest beta's have not been included in the Steam update.

Good news as far as Prussia being playable and I look forward to getting into them. I've covered the tutorials and read the manual once, now to start experimenting for a bit before jumping in.

Cheers,

[loki100]

No definitive view on when the patch will be ready. Pocus has said 'before the summer' which covers quite a lot of ground.

I suspect/fear this will be the last major patch for PoN unless a PoN-gold is made (this is purely a personal view and no idea how AGEOD see the future), so on that basis its best to take time so that the game code incorporates as much as possible of the development of the AGE engine and that the events give both a lot of historical flavour and provide a challenging game even at the end.

If it works as intended, I think the end game will be a challenge no matter how dominant the player has made their country in the period up to 1900. That has been one of the great aspects of the game, that it doesn't lose interest due to player domination and hopefully this will be enhanced.

If you're looking for more practical info, you could have a look at my old AAR 'Manufacturing Italy' (link in my signature). No need to read the whole thing but the index on the first page may point you to posts of interest such as managing the economy or the colonial game (or the surprising moment when the French captured Berlin

[bbmike]

I have the Steam version and you can install the 1.04RC5 patch. Steam won't try to revert back to a previous version unless you ask it to 'verify local files'. Once the patch is made official it will then change your local files but I would think any saved games would still work.

[Field Marshal Hotzendorf]

Thank you for your help! I will try it again tonight.