Equestria At War

Over the past few months I became very interested in learning to mod for Paradox's Clauswitz engine. I knew that the studio supported a wide variety of modding projects and I was keen to see what I could do with it. In order to further my understanding of the modding tools and to give myself a personal project with which I could co-operate with others thus I decided to help out with a modding project that was already underway.

There were several modding projects which were looking for people to help out with them, however none of them went into the breadth of subjects that I wanted to cover. I wanted to know how to properly create national focus trees, ideas, and script events and in game triggers. After all, such things are what I would imagine a high level scripter at paradox would be doing, and high level gameplay scripting is something I love to do.

There are several total conversion mods out there for Hearts of Iron 4 and most if not all have large teams already and were not looking to take on more people to help with their mod, however, I found one that was.

Granted, I find the merging of hasbro's 1980s My Little Pony reboot and a world war two strategy game to be incredibly jarring and perplexing, the mod is fun to work on. I find if one shuts their eyes and pretends it's not about colourful magical horses with tanks, the actual political and socioeconomic issues which are being discussed work very well.

Equestria (which is the defacto nation which My Little Pony takes place) is a stagnant peaceful giant which must rapidly modernise and shed its peaceful beginnings in order to meet the threats of enemies within and without. The central narrative is compelling and other nations are interesting, creative and have their own unique spins and twists. A lot of fan re-imagining has had to occur in order for everything to make sense (If a weird bit of sense) and the world seems to be populated with scenarios and characters that mirror both the historical and the real world.

Taking the mod on, I have been given the task of creating two focus trees and narratives for two minor nations which will appear on the new as of yet unreleased 'griffon continent', and I am partially responsible for the design and implementation of one of the major factions too. I cannot disclose details at the time of writing.

Suffice to say I have learned a lot about how paradox scripting works and I have learned a lot about how to approach the design of a playable nation in a video game. The unique challenge in developing for Equestria at War has probably been overcoming the theme of the mod itself. My Little Pony and world war two, whatever you think of either, it is really hard to make the two feel like they should go together.

That is precisely the opinion that I took when designing my countries. After all, the intended audience or the mod is very niche, and keeping in players who don't fit that niche has been central to my design. Fans of MLP (or Bronies as they are colloquially known) need to be convinced on their first playthrough that the modders haven't completely abandoned the spirit that their franchise tries to convey. Meanwhile the average Hearts Of Iron 4 player who might have tried the mod out of curiosity (or most likely, a lark) needs to be convinced that the mod offers a genuine Hearts of Iron 4 experience so that they will keep playing.

It's perhaps not the project I imagined myself working on, but I am genuinely enjoying the unique challenges associated with it. I am learning a lot about the technology that the clausewitz engine uses and I am enjoying learning about how to work in a team with other modders. Besides, 'I worked on a mod which combined colourful magic horses and world war two' is a heck of a conversation starter.

The mod can be downloaded and played with a copy of Hearts of Iron 4 at: http://www.moddb.com/mods/equestria-at-war