Comprehensive Guide on Playing Project Alice 1.2.0

In italics you see pieces that may relate to the features not yet in the game but planned for release soon.

At game start

Start with changing your national focuses. Firstly you want to increase admin efficiency by promoting bureaucrats to a 100%.
In technology, rush discovering machine parts. Without the technology, your artisans can't produce machine parts. At the game start only a couple countries have the required tech, so the world will experience significant shorage of years to come. With local machine parts production you'll be able to kickstart your industrialization.
If possible, change party in government to the one allowing construction of factories by the government. First factory you want to create should be either machine parts factory or cement factory.

Economy

Factories. Factories don't get vanilla bonuses to adjacency (no matter what tooltip says). This bonus is represented by the local economy.

Factory subsidies. Try to avoid factory subsidies as they essentially remove the factory from economic suppy-demand feedback cycle. Subsidized factories grow infinitely reducing the prices below their equillibrium until soon your whole economy starts operating at a loss providing extremely cheap goods to neighbouring countries with exports.

Budget. Budget screen has been completely reworked. Graph to the right shows what share of the population has what satisfaction score.

Public Works pours money to your capitalists and aristocrats. It helps them fulfill their needs and invest into projects faster.
Overseas maintenance helps reduce militancy overseas. 50% has no effect, 100% reduces militancy and 0% spending greatly increases militancy in colonial provinces.
Tariffs have been separated into import duties and export duties.
Debt: To allow nation to go into debt a checkmark to the right has to be placed.
Debt Service refers to the Interest Payments.

Trade. Now trade is simulated on state-level with states having trade routes between each other.

To see the trade routes a state has, navigate to province tab and select a good on the local market subwindow. With a province selected, the game shows all trade routes impacting that state AND big trade routes in the world.

Trade route placement is impacted by geography (distance) and population of states. Lowering tariffs will not bring you extra trade as an intermediary.

Route "desired volume" shows the actual volume of goods transferred. It's impacted by prices on both sides of the route, tariffs, and distance. Every unit of distance increases delivery price by 0.05£.

State purchases (army, navy, national stockpile) are done in the capital. Construction materials are purchased locally.

State trade throughput has limited capacity which is determined by:

State population;
Railways;
Ports.

Conditions for Trade routes ignoring Tariffs:

Same sphere, OR
Same overlord, OR
Free Trade Agreement diplomatic action.

Conditions for Trade routes shutting due to Embargo:

Origin and target are at war, OR
Origin is embargoing target, OR
Target is embargoing origin.

Tariffs. Tariffs are taken on goods moving in or out of the country. In case of an international trade route, both countries (exporter and importer) take tariffs. Effective tariffs = set tariffs * national bureaucratic efficiency.

Trade route won't pay tariffs of the nation if that nation is either:

Subject of the other party;
Sphereling of the other party;
Has free trade agreement with the other party;
Was forced to sign unequal treaty by the other party;

AI always sets tariffs to 5%. Therefore, if you have more expensive/less productive labour than the AI you are competing with - raise tariffs higher than theirs. This way you protect domestic industry from unfair competition. If you have cheaper/more productive labour than the AI you are competing with - lower tariffs lower than theirs. This way you support exports that will suppress other country's industry. Reasonable amount of tariffs help avoid closure of your factories and massive unemployment.

With 100% tariffs under 100% administrative efficiency you will block all trade going in or out.

Loans and National Bank. Your pops (in 1.20 - upper class, in the future - middle class) save some of their money before luxury spending in the National Bank. On the opposite, if they don't have enough money to support themselves - pops will drain National Bank. There is only one bank per country. It allows state to take money from the bank as loans. Interest on loans is paid back to the bank.

Country is bankrupted only if it cannot pay back its interest. Loans are repaid automatically as the state goes out of deficit.

Private Borrowing is in the final stages of development and International Borrowing is planned for the future. However, I'm not releasing them now as with new trade system there is simply too much money in the game and capitalists don't need extra credits at all.

Foreign Invesment. Overlord can always build factories in subjects with foreign invesmtent ignoring subject laws.

Private Construction Investment pool. In PA, both capitalists and aristocrats invest into private construction in the following order: 1) factory upgrades, 2) construction of highly profitable factories (payback under a year), 3) construction of factories with good profit margin (>30%), 4) construction of province buildings (railways).

Capitalists won't build factories that will experience inputs shortage in the target market. My experiments show that this is the most limiting factories for capitalists investing in the economy.

Investment pool of the country, its main revenues and expenses can be seen in the topbar treasury tooltip.

Daily 1% of the investment pool is paid to all other pops in the country as "incentives" expenses (representing accounting, lobbying, bribes, etc.).

Investment Pool of subjects and overlords. When private investment pool of the subject doesn't have anything good to do - it transfers 2% of the pool up to overlord's investment pool. When private investment pool of the overlord doesn't have anything good to do - it distributes 2% of the pool between subjects' investment pools.

National industry specialization (window hotkey: Ctrl+N). Nations can specialize their industry in particular factory types. Specialization reduces inputs: 100k points invested reduces inputs by 50%. 0.1% of invested points are lost daily. Specialization points are generated 1:1 with research points. 50% of specialization points are managed by the capitalists (private specialization) which always try to maximize profit and other 50% are managed by the state.

Private specialisation mostly follows existing setup of factories, so if you focus on small arms production and thus increase amount of money private investors spend on inputs for them, it encourages them to follow.

AI plays specialization as a race. Once it lost specialization race in one field, it'll try to respec into a different industry.

Artisans. Since vanilla artisans have the same efficiency as factories, PA nerfes them with +4% required inputs and -4% outputs. These values can be changed with:

alice_inputs_base_factor_artisans = 1.04
alice_output_base_factor_artisans = 0.96

Politics

Diplomacy

Wars. In war, peace offer with complete capitulation or wargoals worth >=100 warscore is accepted automatically. There is no longer a way to keep full occupying your enemy forever.

Unequal Treaties. Unequal treaty is a new wargoal type that can be used by mods with po_unequal_treaty = yes in cb types declaration. It allows victor to force unequal treaty on the losing side. That treaty will prevent the nation from collecting tariffs from trade with the victor. Treaty cannot be revoked for alice_free_trade_agreement_years years (by default - 5).

Conferences. Declaring a war, nation can choose to run it as a conference instead. Conferences use existing Crisis mechanics. It allows for potential diplomatic resolution to what would have been war.

Crises and Conferences. If crisis failed to attrack GP as defender then target becomes defender.

Subsidies. War subsidies are replaced with subsidies that can be given to a country even in peace. Subsidy size is calculated as a warsubsidies_percent * min(giver's tax base, receiver tax base).

Dynamic CB Infamy Cost. War justification infamy cost is dynamic. For state-level CBs cost is modified by state population to the civ/unciv average. For country-level CBs cost is modified by country population to the civ/unciv average. Civ/unciv average helps prevent weird situations where annexing Belgium costs 2 infamy because unciv states have much higher average population than Europe. Population cost multipliier is clamped between 0.1 and 2.0.

Subject payments. Subjects pay their overlords a share of their collected tax revenue. By default, a puppet pays 30% and a substate - 40%. Subjects payments can be seen in the budget screen under diplomatic expenses. Payments can be changed by mods with defines:

alice_substate_subject_money_transfer=30.0
alice_puppet_subject_money_transfer=40.0

Subject land transfers.

Overlord can always grant land to its subjects with "State transfer" diplomatic action.
Overlord can declare war on its subjects if they hold cores of the overlord (see Chinese substates).
If define alice_allow_revoke_subject_states is set, it allows overlord to revoke provinces from its subjects.
If define alice_allow_subjects_declare_wars is set, it allows subjects to declare war independently of overlord.

Other bits and pieces:

War justification for state-level CBs (such as demand state) requires selection of the state prior to the declaration of war.
AI doesn't pay attention to relations between countries. It will ally and join your wars if it thinks to have common interests. For example, Netherlands in 1836 will always ally France to partition Belgium thanks to Netherlands having a CB against Belgium.
AI constantly justifies CBs on some states it would like to take. Open CBs of AI countries let you and other AIs pull allies into wars as these intentions for land-grabbing are known and visible.

Military

Reinforcements and repairs. Reinforcing regiments and repairing ships costs goods. 1% of replenishment costs 1% of base unit cost. If these goods are unavailable (spending is reduced or goods weren't available on the market) then reinforcement/repair isn't done.

Unit Upgrades. Regiments and ships inside an army or a navy may be changed into different unit type. For that, first select the units (use Shift+Click for multiple selection), then click upgrade button and select a unit type. After swap unit will be reduced to 1% strength. Since 1% of replenishment costs 1% of base unit cost, unit upgrade costs the same as unit construction for the new unit. The following rules for possible conversions apply:

Regiment/ship types must be researched and available to the owner nation.
Small ships cannot be converted into capitol (big) ships.
Armies with upgraded units are not retreating, in battle, or on transport ships.
Navies with upgraded units are not retreating, in battle, or transports armies
Big ships can be upgraded only in naval base of sufficient level.

Macro unit builder. Macrobuilder simplifies construction of balanced stacks. It is opened with F10 hotkey or the button in the bottom right corner of the screen.

To create new unit template: select "New" template and add some units in the right part of the window.
To modify existing template: select a template and change unit count in the right part of the window.
To delete template: press "X" button.
To build unit using a template: select a template in the window, select a province in the window and click "Build in selected province" button in the window.
To reinforce existing armies up to template: select a template in the window and then select an army or a navy. Template assigned to the army will appear in the bottom left corner of the unit panel.
To remove assigned template from the army: select "New" template in the window with the army selected.

Macro unit builder window with no template selected

Selected macrobuilder template is assigned to the selected army

Battleplanner. Ctrl+Z hotkey brings up battleplanner UI. It helps automatically relocate and redistribute troops and navies between provinces you assign as HQs.

To use battleplanner:

Set some province as HQ.
Assign regiments and fleets to the HQ. Regiments will be automatically delivered to the HQ using transport ships if they have been assigned to the HQ as well.
Using tools to the left mark some provinces for the operations.
1. Defend order will distribute regiments to protect the designated area.
2. Siege order automates siege of designated provinces.
3. Ferry origin allows to control from which provinces regiments should be ferried.

Important notice: battleplanner isn't very well suited to fight battles for you.

Smaller bits and pieces:

Unlike the basegame, in PA disarmament CB enforcement cancels construction of military factories as well.
AI only builds infantry and artillery units.
AI very rarely performs naval landings.
Military spending doesn't limit organization of your army. It only slows down organization regain.
Directional map arrows showing where your & enemy units in sight are moving.
Full capitulation (or peace giving up >100 warscore) is accepted automatically.
po_make_puppet wargoal ticking warscore is introduced to allow achieving 100 warscore with this wargoal.

New UI

Viewing armies and navies of other countries. You can view armies of enemies and neutral countries.

Army Map icons.

Small-scale army map icon includes only the size of the army in manpower.

Large-scale army map icon includes an image showing its key regiment types, current org (green line), manpower, dig in status (gray/yellow dots), and current status (green arrow for moving, red scull for attrition, swords for fighting).

Tooltip for the army always shows: number of infantry, cavalry, and artillery regiments, its combined ATK and DEF scores and Upkeep cost.

Production tab of production window. Every row here represents a type of a factory. Columns to the right specify values that are used by capitalists in their decision making when building factories: build cost, inputs costs (source materials per tick), outputs costs (products per tick), profit (outputs - inputs), margin (outputs - inputs / outputs * 100%), payback period (profit / build cost).

Trade screen. Tabs here allow digging down on markets level: world, domestic, nations (a slice of good prices, production & consumption across all countries) and markets (states inside the player's country). World and domestic tabs provide aggregation over markets so presence of goods on national level doesn't guarantee they will be available in a particular state.

Map icons with Ctrl held. When you hold down Ctrl, all usual icons are hidden from the map and a set of new ones is displayed. Here on province level:

Star means capital.
Artillery icon means fort. Number of dots displays fort level.
Train icon means railway. Number of dots displays railway level.

Multiplayer

Persistent Multiplayer. In this MP mode, players are automatically returned to their nations on both lobby join and hotjoin and playerlist is saved between sessions on the host side. AI isn't placed on player's country upon disconnection.

This allows for 24/7 servers where players join and leave any time they want with the game progressing (previously known in browser games).

You can play Persistent MP with our Persistent PA MP community.

Hotjoin. Project Alice allows for hotjoining the game. If the player (with his nickname) was already in the game - he will be placed back on his country. New players are placed on AI-led countries sorted by rank from the top (UK, France, Russia, etc.).

Player password in MP. To protect himself from impersonators player can set a password in launcher. Password is passed to the PA game as a cmd argument. Client sends password to the server in plain form. If player is known, salt is taken from DCON and hashes are compared to check whether to drop connection. If player is new, hash and salt are stored in DCON. If player previously didn't have a password and sets one in Launcher - it'll update password. In persistent mode, hash and salt are stored in playerlist csv file.

JSON Web API. PA can expose Web API enabled with alice_expose_webui define. As of now it allows viewing key stats on trade routes, and some stats on nations and commodities.

Mods

Working mods:

Modding

Mods can have their own assets folder that overwrites the main assets folder in the same way normal modding works so you can change the shaders, etc, if you wanted to.