Zankoas
commented
3 years ago Thanks for the issue report, and while I agree, this is something that is going to eat up a lot of time and doesn't have a clear owner. If this is something you want to take forward, your best bet is to make country-specific issue reports suggesting exact VP's to be added/removed, otherwise this is just not going to get done I'm afraid. Thanks anyway!
LoftonHenderson
Quick questions HOI4 version: 1.10.2 Kaiserreich version: 0.15.2 List any other mods used: N/A
Note: this is not a very pressing issue and it would be a long-term, slow change to implement at leisure, but I did want to bring it up for at least some discussion.
Beyond trying to give each state a victory point, which cities get represented on the map seems to be quite random at the moment (I don't mean which cities get "urban terrain" type or map graphics really -- I'm talking about victory points). Some nations have a ton of small victory point cities all over the place, some have few if any. On one hand, I understand that victory point placement is more about game balance than accurate cartography, but at the same time it seems odd to me when cities of 100k+ are left off the map and cities of 20k are represented as victory points. I think there's probably a way to strike a better balance between gameplay-oriented victory points and modeling a "real/immersive" world.
I think the logical methodology is to simply create a "cutoff" number for urban map representation: above a certain population, we generally show the city on the map, below, we generally don't. With that as a baseline, we can then alter it as needed with rule-exceptions for the sake of game balance. Whether the "cutoff" population should be applied globally or should vary depending on the country, I don't know for sure, but my gut says it should.
I'm going to use Canada as an example since I happen to have the population stats on hand, but this goes for pretty much every country. My source, Popstat, is dead now for some reason but I think it can be accessed with a wayback machine still?
So obviously you want to be able to represent the cities that "everyone knows" generally, and already that offers a pretty decent baseline. In ~1936: Victoria, BC had a population of 44k; Saskatoon, SK had a population of 43k; Saint John’s, NL had a population of 41k. Seems like 40k would be a natural "cutoff" population baseline. These cities are all currently represented as victory points on the map, which is fine except it becomes hard to justify leaving much larger cities off the map.
Trois-Rivières, with a population of 42k (right between Saskatoon and Saint John's) is left off the map. Windsor, with a population of 105k (more than double any of the cities listed thus far), is also left off the map. I'd imagine that even with an influx of British refugees the population distribution wouldn't change that drastically. These cities might have higher total populations but probably not relative to each other, just a general proportional increase across the board.
These are the population numbers for the Canadian cities with large enough populations to be worth mentioning (cities below the 40k "cutoff" are in italics -- Southern Ontario: Toronto 668k Hamilton 166k Windsor 105k London 78k Kitchener 35k Saint Catharines 30k Peterborough 25k Ottawa: Ottawa 155k Kingston 30k Northern Ontario: Port Arthur-Fort William 55k (anachronistically called Thunder Bay) Sudbury 32k Timmins 28k Sault Ste. Marie 25k
Monteal: Montreal 990k Trois-Rivières 42k Quebec: Quebec City 150k Chicoutimi-Jonquière 30k Saint Lawrence: Sherbrooke 36k
New Brunswick: Saint John 51k Moncton 22k Nova Scotia: Halifax 71k Sydney 28k Newfoundland: Saint John’s 41k
Manitoba: Winnipeg 222k Saskatchewan: Regina 58k Saskatoon 43k Moose Jaw 23k Alberta: Edmonton 94k Calgary 89k British Columbia: Vancouver 275k Vancouver Island: Victoria 44k
For Sherbrooke (36k) I could see making an exception to keep it on the map. But for Sudbury (32k) it becomes harder to justify keeping it while excluding other cities of comparable or higher population, like Kingston (30k), Kitchener (35k), and Saint Catharines (30k). If Sherbrooke is a victory point, Kitchener should be as well before Sudbury gets to be one.
If giving each state a VP is another goal, Whitehorse (<1k) could be added to Yukon and Yellowknife (<1k) to NW Territories, despite really being wayyyy to small to constitute as urban areas.
This sort of rationalization is not hard to do thankfully. It only really requires the national population statistics that popstat has for most nations on earth in the 30s. A more densely populated nation like ENG or GER would probably want a higher cutoff number, maybe closer to 80-100k. Those nations already have lots of victory points, this would just standardize them to be represented on the map with a bit less randomness. It would also make some larger countries (like Canada, using the previous example) feel less sparse.