Previously: Dev Corner 2601006 - TaoG


Generals!

It’s time for another Developer CORNER.

Just for the first couple of these, before we continue, I want to set some expectations and clear things up.
By now you know we have two main types of Developer post:

Developer Diaries

• Give you more detailed insight into content that’s more or less finished and is being polished
  
• Start appearing closer to release
  
• Give you a chance to ask our developers questions, and perhaps even let us know if there’s anything glaringly obvious we missed
  
• (and may still have time to either fix quickly, or already start planning to include in a future Patch; being a Day-x, or a War Effort.)

Developer Corners, like this one, serve a different purpose.
They:

• Need your feedback, specific to the DC
  
• Should be short and to the point
  
• May or may not include any images
  
• May generally give you some idea of something that might come in future content, but it’s not guaranteed
  
• Are not usually planned far ahead. Instead, if at any point any developer has something they want to get feedback on, we’ll pick an upcoming weekly slot, probably Tuesday or Thursday

Indonesia has a problem: It’s a colony, an archipelago, and has no navy on its own. Fighting a civil war in these conditions would be sluggish, difficult, and probably not very fun. We’ve been experimenting with various ways of getting around this issue, and we’d like to share one of our experiments with you all today. Remember, this is early in development and everything here can and will change.

When Indonesia declares independence, a civil war will not start immediately. Instead, it will be represented as revolutionary militias occupying a state (de-facto), but not being recognized by the Netherlands (de-jure). Mechanically, this will be an escalating conflict using events, land raids to simulate border conflicts, and a new Joint Focus Tree only available during the revolution, where Indonesia and the Netherlands can sabotage each other, and/or negotiate a peace agreement.
As you complete land raids as Indonesia, you will add modifiers to the targeted state to represent your influence and control over the region, and eventually you can annex the state entirely. This will, however, increase escalation, especially if you are playing aggressively and quickly. If escalation goes up enough before an agreement between both sides is made, the conflict may turn into a full war, requiring you to push the Netherlands out of Indonesia entirely to win.

We’re still experimenting with the details here, such as how many raids are needed to take over a state, how long the raids take, how easy it is for the situation to escalate into a war, etc. This is largely a process of playtesting and trial/error, but we’re very interested in hearing your thoughts.

We saw multiple concerned comments on the previous Indonesian dev corner regarding when and how the revolution will start. While we won’t tell you everything yet, we can confirm that there will be several ways to start & finish the revolution, including both a historical post-occupation revolution, and an early alt-history revolution.
As stated previously, you are on an archipelago and you do not have a navy. If you, as Indonesia, want to take control over states that you do not share a border with, you’re not going to have a very fun time using naval invasions. We’ve experimented with introducing a new* feature for this: Marine Commando Raids.

We’re very interested in hearing your thoughts, suggestions, and/or concerns regarding this system, so do please let us know what you think!