Hello!

I really like the concept of the modern day grand strategy and played the first Realpolitiks, also HOI4, Stellaris, Vic2 etc, so I decided yesterday to buy the RP2 through GOG.
I know currently we are in alpha/beta test phase, so if you would like to send me salary for my test hours invested please tell me and I send my account. :)
As far as I understand currently you guys need feedback so I try to give it by sections.

Story:
I choose Russia to play with, lots of province so lots of options there good starting position but not USA. :)
My PC meet the minimum requirement and the game run smoothly while the Saving/Loading times were on the slow side.
In the first few years I did the following:
- Started wars with most of the countries where I have starting cores and taken the provinces.
- Generated new cores with spies
- Researched diplomacy projects to make warmonger modifier better.
- Keept an eye on warloss and warmonger penalty and started new wars while it was low
- Built 2-3 Garbage dump to generate money
- Built hordes of lvl2 farms (they feels cheap as hell) to generate gdp + pop.
- Built hordes of universities to generate lot of HDI.
- Played like 4 hours.

Bugs:
1. When I fought with Estonia and Ukraine, they sent armies to my territory to occupy my areas, once the war ended with the peace deal their armies didnt teleported back home, but stayed on my territory.

2. When some of my wars ended while others were still ongoing, my armies in the enemy occopied territory teleported away to Vladivostok from Europe once the enemy accepted my peace deal. I am not sure if this is a bug or intended. It would make sense to teleport to the nearest barrack or to capital however to another end of the world?

3. When I fought with Ukraine a strange thing happened in one of my battles, 4 Ukraine infantry gone to the middle of the battlemap and they were invincible. Like a ghost unit, they neither did or received any dmg as far as I can tell, while the battle was in a province where Ukraine had a barrack so new infantry was joined the battle 1by1 as far as I can tell I was able to damage those ones. I was able to workaround this by disregarding the ongoing battle and sent some demands through peace deal offer to Ukraine who accepted my territory claims and the war ended so the battle ended too.

4. After my war in Ukraine, Turkey declared war on me while my warloss/warmonger was still high. At this point I thought „Cool, now the AI do something and start to challange me!” however to my absolute horror in one the large battles I had with them in my own territory the previous 4 Ghost ukraine infantry appaered... Ukraine was not part of this war, and the 4 ghost infantry was not able to get damage again. I thought I will disregard them and let the auto-army-commander handle it. The war raged on, I occupied most of Turkey that one battle was still ongoing, I pressed fast forward to check and saw there are no damage done by neither side... After a while the combat window bugged and the icons /units doesnt react to anything while the enemy flag changed to USA flag...

5. When my war with Turkey started they were in a Bloc with Iraq and Lebanon. After a few month Iraq left the Bloc. I got pop message which doesnt look inteneded it was sg like „Iraq_left_bloc_white”. After this, I had 2 war, one with Turkey and Lebanon and a new one with Iraq. I sent peace deal offer to Iraq after blitzed some of their territory with a very low stacked infantry, they accepted it. However after this I was not able to open the Turkish war peace deal window. I had only 2 icon at the upper status window, each of these were a battle and there was no icon for the war-status where I can initiate the peace deal.

6. When I blitzed in my Iraq war, I was able to „pull out” my low stacked army from a battle. I just paused the game selected the army and clicked into a new province. This happened when my 3 infantry stack meet a 110 unit Iraq stack. Not sure if this bug or intended.

Balance:

1. Farms feels far too cheap to build and maintain, even if a country is poor, if they have enough empty territory it is worth to place farms everywhere and later they can be destroyed and new building can be added if needed. Ofc I am not an expert but it may worth considering increasing the cost.

2. Warlosses. Something doesnt feels right, I got very huge war losses in some of the battles where I clearly on the upper side (250+). I am not sure how the war losses calculated but I think unit loss should be weighted and tone done a bit and occupied territory maybe affect it more than unit loss?

3. Diplomacy – Aggresive actions - Claim core. I wanted to be effective and take all of the enemy lesser provinces in war, make peace, and then later Claim their capital with Diplamcy-Claim Core (40% chance). This never happens, 10/0 success. Maybe I was just not lucky but by this fact I think maybe it isnt inteded to get a capital by this way. If this is true, please consider invalidate this action type against capitals.

4. Spy and General Traits. My spies get xp and sometimes they got level up! This is good, so clicked on the status window to the lvlup-icon and was able to pick 2 traits like „Hooks on polticans” / „Incite soldiers”, but what the hell these do? I was not able to find any tooltip or information about the traits actual effect. So I went with the flow and picked thing to diversify my spy traints. To this point I have no idea what the traits actually do and how to use them. Please consider adding tooltips. On the other hand, I had tons of battles as you can read above however non of my army leading generals got any xp or level up so far.

5. Tech Tree. I think you should think about the concept to make some techs mutually exclusive. For me in the Russia Tech tree I saw 2 branch: „Hegemony approach” // „Open approach” I researched „Hegemony approach” then I saw I was also able to research open approach too. I felt more powerfull after getting both tax+miltary bonus but some of these doesnt make sense. I think some of the tech should be one or the other but not both like: „Turn toward religion vs Turn away from religion” Public healthcare vs Private healthcare” Public transport vs Private transport”. If a player can get every single tech without exclusion then the player would not really care what is the thing and just go for the bonus/penalty/cost balance of the project. I need to decrease unhappieness? lets do it, now increase gdp? lets to that.

6. I am at the start of the game, but I really have no idea how the Environmental degradation // Unhappiness // Rebelion risk factors works. Maybe I was just a noob to not find these, but I really looked for this information. Rebellion risk only goes up once unhappiness reach 100%? Environmental degradation increase unhappiness target only? Some better tooltip or ingame information would be nice.

Overall:
I love these type of games, and I had a blast last night, wanted to rule the world and build stable economy, the events made sense and was fun to read them and balance all the negative stuff. I have 3 save from the last night game from different states and I really hope today I will be able to continue with my saves, this invincible Ukraine ghost army thing can be game breaking if it ruins every battle of mine. English isnt my first language so if something needs more clarification or if you needs my save files to upload somewhere please do tell me.

Hello Karesz6!

First of all I want to thank you very much for this extensive and detailed feedback! It is very valuable for us, as it shows us how different players approach the game and how we should handle balancing issues in the future updates. It also serves as a good guide of what should be added or improved in our current tutorial, that we are

As for the bugs you have mentioned, we are aware and already working on a fix for most of them, but the "Ukrainian Ghost Division" you are mentioning sounds like something new. Can I ask you to send us your log and save files to contact@jujubee.pl?

You can find your log files here (you will need to enable viewing hidden folders and files in Windows settings):
C:\Users\[your username]\AppData\LocalLow\JUJUBEE_S_A\RP2

Please, send us these two files: "Player.log" and "Player-prev.log".

And you can find your saves inside the "Saves" folder in your main installation folder. For example

C:\Program Files (x86)\Realpolitiks II\Saves

Thank you very much for your help!

Yesterday I sent a mail with a .rar file, it contained 2 savegame + the log files + a screenshot and some files which maybe useful from the gamedirectory.
Also I was able to load up my savefiles and continue to progress.
When I loaded up my game I didnt saw the particular 4 ukraine infantry, however I got a same type of visual bug at another battle. Now 2 stacks of Polish 150+ tank stood at two edges of the battlemap (I actually never fought the polish). I made a screenshot asap, will send it later in a followup mail, currently I am not at home.

Additional remarks, mainly for balance and quality of life things from yesterday gameplay:
1. Take water province first – This is a bit annoying, have to capture and take water province before the capital however I cannot „Close the peace deal window temporarily” and go back to search/capture the water province. It would be so much better if a player may have like 30-60 day to do the peace deal instead of the current mandatory pop-up.

2. Warlosses – Holy hell! This thing generate itself like a parasite. I had huge battles on several front, I lost some units but won the war. I generated like 300 warloss. I built some hospitals to get rid of it faster. High Warloss --> High unhappiness --> Rebellion. To kill the rebellion 120+ stacked army I have to battle it, and when I battle it I get warlosses... The Snake eats her own tail at this point. I activated the war-rebuilding ad-hoc tech and even built like 25 Hospital in total and get the techs to decrease warloss, however I already had 2 rebellion when my warloss gone back from 220 to 300. I fear if I get new rebellion a lot of time I need like 40-50 hospital to decrease warlosses back to normal level? I would say add a Rebellion prevention factor for like 2-3 year if the player kill off a rebellion. (not everyone plays russia and have this much building slot)

3. Warscore – As far as I can tell the Units which killed in the war does not generate Warscore. Pakistane and Iran went to war. They locked themselves in battle on a Pakistane territory. I attacked Iran as Russia to get Baku and some other provinces back. I rushed through their empty provinces with multiple low stacked army with 0 battle, got all Iran provinces sent peace deal and got a large chunk of territory of Iran without any effort. Then China started to do the same with India. It can be done again and can take a lot of chinese province without battle by blitzing. I think it may worth reconsider and brainstorm how occupied territory/warloss/warkill should affect the warscore generation to get more balanced peace deal offers if the war have multiple participants.

4. GDP/Unemployment growth – Unemployment growth feels like too easy to handle unless player pop/pop growth is huge. I have like 0.01 pop growth, unemployment level at 1% and decreasing with 1.7% but as far as I can tell it cannot go lower than 1%. GDP growth is usually negative for me since I have hordes of hospitals which affects it negativly, however so far I do not see any actually negative side effect of this. I do a lot warmongering so actually my GDP increasing because I capture enemy territories. Tax lowest possible, hordes of hospital, negative GDP growth but I still make a lot of money 20k+/month but I actually didnt made an effort to get rich.

5. Battle alert level - I tested it and went from lv5 to lv2 on battle alert while I was lobbying my parties. I fought and won the battle and then had a peace deal. After this I want back to battle alert window and pressed the "IMPLEMENT" button at the lv3 section (I wanted to decrease my battle-alert back to 5 since it is peace time). I was not able to do it! I stayed on lv2 battle-alert in peacetime. Had to start a new war and and try again to actually be able to decrease the battle alert level.


If I see something new later I may followup on this thread.

Hello!

Yesterday night I sent a new mail about 2 gamebreaking bugs. Savegames and screenshots were attached.

1. No movement – I give the move order command to armies, the movement status line appaer, but as time pass no progress made on the movement line and the unit stays in the same province. This is annoying, currently I cannot progress with my game because of this and I am not willing to go back a previous save again so if possible please advise and later fix.
2. Stucked battle status of armies – In another save some strange warstatus happened because one of the minor country I attacked become another country while we were at war. After this I get a war status where the war sides looks like Russia+Gabon VS Russia+Gabon. After this all of my armies started to behave like they are in battle. When I try to move them around they feels like they are retreating from a battle, so I cannot move them to enemy provinces.

Please check and advise and fix if possible.

Hello Karesz6!

Thank you for your continued feedback and your help by sending over your save and log files! We are already preparing a new patch, that should fix most of the technical issues you have mentioned. In case you'd come across any further issues, I'd like to ask you to send us your save / log files, just like last time, as it helps us make a fix for them.

We also continue to improve the overall balance of the game and your extensive and detailed feedback like yours, helps us better understand what parts of the game players like or dislike and what we should focus on next. If you'd have any further suggestions or ideas, please feel free to share them with us here :)

Once more thank you very much for your help and have a nice day!

Thanks, I do have a question now.
When the new patch will come out?

I cannot continue to progress due to the movement bug, and I hope that will help it. (I do not want to go back to another save now, because I want to have some progress and do not repeat the same time period over and over:))

Not sure about this one, The game is already full with blitzing with a single jet/heli, if battle damage progress faster than the current pace it would be more easy to rush around in bigger country. I myself missing more the "front war" effect.

I was glad to continue with the new patch, I was also happy that the movement bug is fixed.
5min later --> War with India ended (since my army can move now), peace treaty pop-up, peace offer accepted.
The New "Teleport your armies to relocate them" pop up window came. I selected a province with Barracks, pressed ACCEPT... Nothing happened, tried to select another one, tried to select discard, tried to select army tried everything I can think of... I am stucked at this new army relocation window and cannot progress at all...

Am I missing something? Or is this some new kind of bug? Feels like to much a gamebreaker to not show up at testing...
(screenshot attached)
I pressed accept 30+ times, discard also 30+ times, selected 4 different provinces after reload and repeating, also closed and restarted the game client.

Pre modern wars were much different than modern wars. Lot of them can be simpliefied just to gathering army and facing enemy in max one day battle. After that, winning side doesn't change, they can sign peace, or try to conquer some land, maybe they succeed or maybe not, but they won't be on losing side during peace treaty. Current warface is more complicated. But to balance blitzkrieg, adding time to occupy 'empty' land seems good idea.

Another idea: joining and lefting bloc should have popup with this informaction. I joined to sphere of influence and didn't even notice it till atacking enemy. I wondered why conquered land wasn't occupied by my country.


Offtopic: Do You know any way to counter enemy spy activity? I see Interal security in projects, but i'm not sure if these project helped me significally. I also thinked about increasing personal control, but i see no communicate like counter enemy spies in personal control effects.

No, as far as I understand the counter espionage increase add extra points to your own spies when you use them in your own provinces. There is some OP spy projects there like decrease warmongering by 50, +5% AP for 365day, etc.
However these not prevent enemy spy point generation
I got an event twice when enemy spy was in my capital, but not sure what triggered that.
Also if I remember well, there is an option to send a spy to enemy province and use an action to decrease that country spy-point generation or sg like that.

pre built buildings doesnt seem to work for me.for example russia starts with a level 3 farm and 0.01 population growth.when i dismantled the farm nothing changed,however when i built another level 1 farm population growth changed to 0.02 which means that prebuilt farm did not work at all.its a minor bug as every building can be rebuilt but it would be nice to get it fixed in the future none the less.