Cosmetic tags, art, gameplay and AI

Hi everyone! As some people from the fan gathering already know I am happy to announce that Together For Victory will be released on the 15th of December. This means only 2 dev diaries left, and today's will be pretty big so we have time to present everything we have been up to! This diary will also start off a series of smaller mini-diaries about the AI from SteelVolt.

Cosmetic Tags

Cosmetic tags are a new tool that we think modders in particular will like. While not being a full-on tag-switching or union-tag mechanic, it can probably be used to achieve most of the effects. In the most basic sense, a cosmetic tag just tells the game to use a different name (and flag!) for a country while certain conditions are met. For example, the new countries of Malaysia and Indonesia start the game as integrated puppets of Britain and the Netherlands. Calling them Malaysia or Indonesia would make little sense historically. So they both get a cosmetic tag that sets their name to “British Malaya” and “Dutch East Indies”, respectively. They also get the historically correct flag (which is, of course, the most important part of this new mechanic!). The cosmetic tag gets dropped when they break free. Cosmetic tags can also define which name pool and portraits a country will use - India will use European names and portraits for its autogenerated generals as long as it has its cosmetic tag. We are planning to extend this to at least include ship names as well, but that will probably not make it into the expansion at launch due to unforeseen issues. Where it gets interesting is with auto-generated cosmetic tags, which allow for a lot of flavor. One type is tied to the new autonomy system, one type is tied to the overlord, and both can be combined. In effect, this means that we can specify what a country that has become a puppet of another country is called at each level of autonomy. For example, if Germany takes Indonesia as a puppet, they will be called “German East Indies” for as long as they remain a puppet (in fact, the way it is scripted means this works for any country - there may even be a Luxembourgian East Indies). Eagle-eyed viewers of the MP stream at the fan gathering may have already seen another instance of this happening. The first use of this new option was fairly obvious.

The second one was also fairly clear.

For modders, check out how you can use them here:

It should be noted that these generated cosmetic tags require very little scripting - just an entry in the right localization file. But the possibilities are quite extensive. Modders can freely set cosmetic tags with set_cosmetic_tag = and remove them with drop_cosmetic_tag = yes. The autogenerated cosmetic tags are Subject_Overlord_(ideology)_autonomy_level, so for example: BLR_GER_autonomy_dominion:0 "Weißreußen" or ZIM_ENG_autonomy_puppet:0 "British Rhodesia" or LIT_SOV_communism_autonomy_integrated_puppet:0 "Lithuanian SSR"

We are hoping to use this feature a lot more in the future to improve immersion and aid in storytelling, and we are certainly looking forward to the crazy cool stuff the community can come up with. We have also decided to bring back Manchukuo. Originally left out to make it easier for the Japanese AI to fight China, we are now happy to report that we have fixed the issues that Manchukuo caused to the Japanese. Manchukuo starts as an integrated puppet of Japan and does not have a unique focus tree just yet.

Unit Art

As part of fleshing out the commonwealth nations in the expansion we wanted to add new 3D models and 2D art representation for equipment and vehicles. This is part of our idea to prefer combining focus tree/flavor with relevant art rather than splitting it up as much as possible and probably how future country