|
I'm getting Supreme Ruler vibes from EvW. I've never played the Cold War one, but I played a lot of Supreme Ruler 2020 a few years back during a really boring summer. It's a really cool concept, a globe-spanning grand strategy game in the near future, but it was a mess in terms of execution. They poured a shitload of effort into stupid, pointless things and ended up leaving a lot of important stuff unfinished or just totally missing. The political side of the game was so simplistic as to be practically nonexistent. There were a bunch of treaties you could sign that didn't do anything, there were three or four different government types that couldn't be changed and did absolutely nothing, there were political ideologies that couldn't be changed and did absolutely nothing. The only things that mattered on the political and diplomatic side of the game were alliances and wars. The economy was ludicrously, almost pointlessly detailed, with shitloads of different commodities produced by shitloads of different buildings that all had to be individually built on the map at appropriate places and processed into things at factories individually built on the map, and everything needed to be connected by roads or railroads that you had to manually build. There were pages and pages of charts and graphs to dig through, too. War was the real meat of the game, and holy loving poo poo did they cram a lot of unnecessary detail into the war side of the game. There were, I poo poo you not, thousands of different unit types with different stats and stuff. Pretty much every model of tank, IFV, artillery piece, anti-aircraft gun, helicopter, fighter, bomber, ship, etc. they could think of was in the game. You wanna cross a river? Well you better build and deploy some bridging vehicles, multiple models of which are in the game! Jesus loving Christ, they even had multiple types of 'Technical' unit (Toyota Technical, etc.). They also modeled individual missiles for planes and ships, and there were hundreds of individual missile models too, which you had to build manually and then equip your planes with. With all that detail, I still find it hilarious how totally broken their war system could be. The hostile AI was so bad that there is actually a question on the game's official FAQ that boils down to 'Why is the AI so bad?'. The friendly AI for your own units wasn't much better, and there were too loving many of them in any sizable war to just control manually. Instead of having to use anything resembling real strategy, fighting in SupRul 2020 required making use of ridiculously gamey tactics like the 'buzzsaw' - taking a fast, light unit like a scout car and ordering huge numbers of planes to escort it, then driving it into the enemy. Multiple unit types or attributes were in-game but did absolutely loving nothing - you could get NBC hardening for your vehicles, but it had absolutely no effect on anything; you could build minelayers but mines were not in the game. It could have been good, and it was actually reasonably fun at times if you played a fairly small country (I did a fairly long campaign as Minnesota). Overall, though, it was a poorly-made mess. Oh, added bonus, the Supreme Ruler series was also developed by an outside studio and published by Paradox. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Feb 23, 2013 |
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 00:54
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 17:57 |
|
|
The most fun I've ever had was in the SR2010 closed beta playing online vs the devs and they would get upset when I exploited bugs to attack from international land.  Supreme Ruler is fun but ... I don't think they get what people want out of a game like the one they are trying to make. I'll buy any game they make however.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:08
|
|
|
FadingChord posted:The real problem is that this game probably won't be able to model things like not sending foot soldiers into North Vietnam or Congress forcing Nixon to cut Lon Nol off. quote:It would still be neat if you could annex/puppet Afghanistan, but the quagmire modifier persisted for a while so your troops would either get eaten by attrition or forced to sit outside the country to recharge while rebel stacks pop up outside Kabul every two months. quote:I'm definitely with you on the greater problem with boiling strategic situations down to stack-on-stack staredowns, but I feel like some sort of quagmire modifier for actual hot wars between disproportionate sides would be a decent way to model guerrilla warfare (as opposed to 20-unit stacks in every province insta-crushing 4-unit rebel stacks every two months).
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:10
|
|
|
Gorgo Primus posted:Well at least it looked like I've called one of the new games correctly. When EU4 comes out as an awesome game I'll be 2 for 3! Well thank goodness at least one of you people knows how to post correctly, although you might be jumping the gun a little in declaring it a bad game based on one dev diary. We're not making EvW though, so I have no idea how good/bad it is. Note for Goons: I am disagreeing slightly with someone, not flipping out. Don't worry! (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:13
|
|
|
Lichtenstein posted:While the game will most probably focus on the Hot War, unfortunately, I actually see the point of modelling the navies that way. Representing modern warfare by simply massing ships into one province doesn't really cut it and I expect the system to be in place to allow for all sorts of radar and cruise missle shenanigans. I expect some of the inventory slots being a no-brainer upgrades representing technological progress (I've unlocked +2 turbines, yay!) and some being specific and important stuff like "does this sub have nuclear missles on it". That said, I too get the feeling that there's too much focus on the military side, and too little on diplomacy, economy and espionage, all parts that should have about equal weight. That said, the focus on warfare in early DDs might be a way to hook the HOI market, which is not inconsequential. (Or at least I'm going to tell myself until further DDs shatter my hopes and dreams.)
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:17
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:Well thank goodness at least one of you people knows how to post correctly, although you might be jumping the gun a little in declaring it a bad game based on one dev diary. We're not making EvW though, so I have no idea how good/bad it is.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:24
|
|
|
DrProsek posted:So I was playing A Sjrb Divided, and I loaded a save and when I did I got 3 alliance offers... Oh yes, those legacy decisions keep sneaking on me, thanks for catching that. Great Britain occasionaly comes up from pan-nationalist rebels taking over one of the British nations, that one is actually working as designed.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:28
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:
Darkrenown posted:We're not making EvW though, so I have no idea how good/bad it is. Shouldn't Paradox know these things if they're putting their name on the product? Using the Mitt Romney defense just makes your company look unprofessional. But thanks for SOTS2!
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:38
|
|
|
esquilax posted:I, for one, love how accessible the paradox devs are, and that we get actual responses instead of 'we appreciate your concern, Paradox Interactive strives to give the best gaming experience available.' No, I agree, he has a bad attitude.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:41
|
|
|
Space Pussy posted:Shouldn't Paradox know these things if they're putting their name on the product? Using the Mitt Romney defense just makes your company look unprofessional. Paradox Development Studio makes games, it is a separate company from Paradox Interactive, which publishes games, so no, there's no reason I should know what another company with the same publisher is up to any more than Bioware should know about Maxis' games because they're both published by EA. I think you may have outed yourself as someone with no idea what they're talking about. Farecoal posted:No, I agree, he has a bad attitude. Yeah, I should just agree with everything people say here. It gets a bit tricky when you disagree with each other though, who should I side with then? Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Feb 23, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:57
|
|
|
A Buttery Pastry posted:That said, I too get the feeling that there's too much focus on the military side, and too little on diplomacy, economy and espionage, all parts that should have about equal weight. That said, the focus on warfare in early DDs might be a way to hook the HOI market, which is not inconsequential. (Or at least I'm going to tell myself until further DDs shatter my hopes and dreams.) We really don't know yet, although there's much to extrapolate from the screenshots and even the choice of which area to focus the first in-depth dev diary on I guess. Wolfgang Pauli: again, how should COIN be handled? I don't see any option except for province modifiers within HoI3's system right now. You could splice in a cool minigame-like insurgency panel or something, but how would it function?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 01:58
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:Paradox Development Studio makes games, it is a separate company from Paradox Interactive, which publishes games, so no, there's no reason I should know what another company with the same publisher is up to any more than Bioware should know about Maxis' games because they're both published by EA. I think you may have outed yourself as someone with no idea what they're talking about. You do come off as kind of aggressive, though. Guess you can chalk that down to Poe's Law, and all.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:03
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:Yeah, I should just agree with everything people say here. It gets a bit tricky when you disagree with each other though, who should I side with then? I do not doubt that seeing complaints over your company's work, when your job is likely (as most jobs) stressful, can be irritating, but you could probably do with a less defensive/passive aggressive attitude. If you're not feeling that way, you at least come off that way. At the end of the day, people will analyse anything you put out, they will find things they think are anything less than perfect, and they will point them out. It won't matter if it's a beta or pre-alpha screenshot or a photograph you took of chalkboard in the office that showcases what your plans are, someone will notice and point and laugh. There's little point in calling this behaviour out as stupid or whatever, because even if it's stupid, it is. It is a Thing that Exists. It being stupid or being called stupid isn't going to make it any less real. At the end of the day this thread exists because we do like and buy your games so please, there's not much point in being that negative towards criticism, no matter how dumb you may think it is!
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:12
|
|
|
The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: two men enter, Darkrenown leaves Seriously though,the trick is in letting it go. You know, how when there's some kind of derail in a thread anywhere in the Internet, there's often a dude that says "okay, it's time to end this stupid derail, but here's my final thoughts". And guess what, it never works. The only way to kill a derail is to actually stop derailing. Free yourself from the compulsion to respond to every post, and everyone will move on and find a new topic to bitch about.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:13
|
|
|
Lichtenstein posted:and everyone will move on and find a new topic to bitch about. This isn't always a good thing. Wallpapers should be a basic human right.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:18
|
|
|
Incidentally, I really think PDS ought to get its own name/logo separate from PI. This forum is full of spergy 'hardcore' gamers and the confusion still comes up occasionally; on more relaxed parts of the Internet it's very common, if you mention that you like Paradox games, to get a "oh, aren't they the Mount and Blade guys?" reaction. I'd wager the major brand recognition lies in the Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron, and now Crusader Kings names anyway, so I expect it wouldn't cause any significant impediment.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:31
|
|
|
It doesn't help that the forum lists East vs West as a PDS game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:34
|
|
|
Diqnol posted:This isn't always a good thing. Wallpapers should be a basic human right.  I still need to know how Paradox Development Studio plans to move forward with a poorly decorated room. Darkrenown, please post photos of the wallpapers of every custodial room, subbasement, and mailroom, I need to know how far spread the damage is. Lord help you if the mailroom wallpaper looks like a bunch of envelopes.ZearothK posted:Oh yes, those legacy decisions keep sneaking on me, thanks for catching that. I'll hold off on listing other things I find until I can get a longer list so I don't end up spamming the thread, but one last one; there seems to be a "Form Federative Kingdom of Poland" decision I see as the PLC, and it needs me to have 45 prestige, State & Government, be at peace, and then own all the cores for the Federative Kingdom... I can't see any on the map and I have no idea why I would go from Poland -> Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth -> Poland. burnishedfume fucked around with this message at 02:49 on Feb 23, 2013 |
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:43
|
|
|
Koesj posted:You could splice in a cool minigame-like insurgency panel or something, but how would it function? I don't think this would be too overwhelming if set on the region scale, and an espionage system that's more involved than "Generate this many points, spend them on magic" could interact with it.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:44
|
|
|
Lichtenstein posted:The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: two men enter, Darkrenown leaves Oh, I think that everyone needs to realize that Darkrenown was the first one to try to end the derail; honestly, I think everyone is just perpetuating by commenting on it, this post included. Maybe we should all just agree to stop this derail?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 02:56
|
|
|
With EvW increasingly looking like a Hot War expansion for HoI3, it's making me wonder how they're going to handle worldwide nuclear war. Is it going to be just a gameover screen? Will their be some scripted events automatically ending the war? Or will the war continue, fought by moribund, supply-starved armies over mounds of ash until a victor finally emerges? EvW might fail as a tense diplomatic simulator but if it becomes a dystopian Mad Max wargame I might pick it up for $5.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 03:02
|
|
|
Okay I can see how that could work. As long as it's not the silly rebel hunting that's present in the other games it should be better anyway. i poo poo trains posted:With EvW increasingly looking like a Hot War expansion for HoI3, it's making me wonder how they're going to handle worldwide nuclear war. Is it going to be just a gameover screen? Will their be some scripted events automatically ending the war? Or will the war continue, fought by moribund, supply-starved armies over mounds of ash until a victor finally emerges? EvW might fail as a tense diplomatic simulator but if it becomes a dystopian Mad Max wargame I might pick it up for $5. Up until the early sixties you might actually be able to 'win' a nuclear war 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 03:08
|
|
|
DrProsek posted:there seems to be a "Form Federative Kingdom of Poland" decision I see as the PLC, and it needs me to have 45 prestige, State & Government, be at peace, and then own all the cores for the Federative Kingdom... I can't see any on the map and I have no idea why I would go from Poland -> Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth -> Poland. I assume this to be a nice bit of fluff for alt-historians. TL;DR posted:Międzymorze, known in English as Intermarium, was a plan, pursued after World War I by Polish leader Józef Piłsudski, for a federation, under Poland's aegis, of Central and Eastern European countries. (...) Józef Piłsudski's strategic goal was to resurrect an updated, quasi-democratic, form of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, while working for the disintegration of the Russian Empire, and later the Soviet Union, into its ethnic constituents. (...) Piłsudski saw an Intermarium federation as a counterweight to Russian and German imperialism.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 03:11
|
|
|
NihilCredo posted:Incidentally, I really think PDS ought to get its own name/logo separate from PI. This forum is full of spergy 'hardcore' gamers and the confusion still comes up occasionally; on more relaxed parts of the Internet it's very common, if you mention that you like Paradox games, to get a "oh, aren't they the Mount and Blade guys?" reaction. We kinda do, as of last year we have the blue PDS shield that both CK2 and MotE were branded with. DrProsek posted:
Basement!? No, we live at the top of of of the tallest buildings in Stockholm. You can see some of the décor and the view here: 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 03:24
|
|
Wolfgang Pauli posted:The trouble is making this not overly micro. I think, for occupiers, general strategies for a region could be implemented -- like patrols through the bush, clearing villages, clear-hold-build, nuke-them-from-orbit-it's-the-only-way-to-be-sure, etc., and then it could be refined by assigning units to specific missions. Some mix between EU3's Incite Natives and HoI's combat mission menu could work. The menu could keep track of things like popular support for rebels and occupiers, control over various rural or urban areas, various factions (think of the mess that was 2006-2008 Iraq), foreign support. Say you're North Vietnam, you could arrange supplies running through Laos and Cambodia that will reach your decentralized and autonomous partisans in the south. A nation could fund specific partisan units in a region (think Vietcong or Nicaraguan Contras) that could fight their autonomous forever-war with the other factions, and their controllers could have them launch raids or missions or whatever. Or a nation could be content with running guns and money to an existing faction, like the US in Afghanistan. Honestly, I think that the scales involved in the Cold War are so diverse that it would probably be better to run the military as agent-based, like what the EUIV mercantile and diplomatic system seems to be shaping up to be. Say, as the US, you have a bunch of army agents- a "full commitment" one that represents the US fighting a full-on hot war, a couple garrison ones to represent major army bases, a couple famous divisions like the 82nd, 101st, and the Marines, some special mid-sized units (representing various units you can throw in to support coups or bolster friendly regimes, and Corps of Engineers detachments), and then the Rangers and Green Berets. At the start, a bunch of these are locked- the garrisons can't be redeployed without a commitment to detente on the part of Congress and the public, the US can't start a full-on war without Congressional support, and divisional forces require a lot of effort to send out. Each one has particular missions it can perform, with varying degrees of effectiveness (eg Special Forces can do "hearts and minds", "covert operation", and "training" missions very well, but not much in the way of direct fighting except against small units). Vietnam probably isn't going to be much fun without some sort of EUIV-like "spaces" within provinces (which can be much bigger under this system) that determine how much of each province is under whose control. Then you can decide whether to act historically and flood the country with troops that can't fight the Vietcong efficiently (divisional forces are lovely at COIN operations by default, say), but can occupy territory, in theory, or try to follow the "strategic hamlets" model of using special forces dedicated to COIN, at which point we have to add the other ways in which this can go wrong (probably by making Algerian War events more generally applicable). I'd split the agents four ways- army, air force, navy, and intelligence (possibly a fifth for cultural and economic assets that can be deployed in your benefit). You can add more agents by taking actions to expand that part of your armed services, but this can be expensive, particularly if you want modern forces. Agents also don't have to be physical units- I envision intelligence agents as being things like "propaganda team" and "assassination unit" for small countries. This also makes it possible to give the UN more teeth, because it can have its own agents like the WHO and IAEA, and peacekeepers This is rough, off-the-cuff, and without real programming experience to back this up, of course. But generally, I think that the only way to handle the massive scale disparity is to embrace it by taking a step backwards and abstracting more out so that the differences aren't as obvious. Of course, I also would like to add in Cannes Film Festival and Nobel Prize events in this idealized Cold War game, so I may not be the ideal customer. i poo poo trains posted:With EvW increasingly looking like a Hot War expansion for HoI3, it's making me wonder how they're going to handle worldwide nuclear war. Is it going to be just a gameover screen? Will their be some scripted events automatically ending the war? Or will the war continue, fought by moribund, supply-starved armies over mounds of ash until a victor finally emerges? EvW might fail as a tense diplomatic simulator but if it becomes a dystopian Mad Max wargame I might pick it up for $5. If this is the case, the thread ought to be called "The Only Winning Move Is Not To Play: East Versus West" 
|
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 03:25
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:We kinda do, as of last year we have the blue PDS shield that both CK2 and MotE were branded with. Are you still sharing a building with Avalanche? Can you sneak in and get some pics of Just Cause 3 for us? 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 03:28
|
|
|
Please make EvW as grognardy as possible. So grognard that it makes WitP:AE look like Petz Horses 2.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 04:12
|
|
|
Necroneocon posted:Please make EvW as grognardy as possible. So grognard that it makes WitP:AE look like Petz Horses 2. That game was already released and it was published by Paradox!
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 04:15
|
|
|
All i want to know is: When is Paradox going to hire the Steppe Wolfe Phoenix team? I would pay for a terribly broken standalone version of that mod.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 05:43
|
|
|
uPen posted:That game was already released and it was published by Paradox! No, don't. I hope EvW turns out fun, and not TMI: The Game
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 05:50
|
|
|
Cowcatcher posted:No, don't. I hope EvW turns out fun, and not TMI: The Game "God drat you Jack, I hope you die you gross son of a bitch."
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 06:15
|
|
|
List of naval battles throughout the cold war that merit that much attention to detail: - That whole era was mostly defined by dirty little proxy wars and clandestine interventions and I doubt the bigger wars the superpowers did directly engage in (specifically Vietnam and Afghanistan) can be accurately modeled in this type of game. I don't know why the military aspect is getting any more focus than your average paradox game that isn't Hearts of Iron. Basically the whole thing looks like Magna Mundi: Cold War Edition. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 06:25
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:We kinda do, as of last year we have the blue PDS shield that both CK2 and MotE were branded with. What do you keep in your pirate chest?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 06:30
|
|
|
Personally, I can KIND of see an argument for heavily detailing some of the military units, in that a critical component of the arms race was how both superpowers were constantly trying to one-up each other with both nuclear and conventional arms. The problem is, good luck making an AI capable of intelligently deciding how to select and make use of all the different options, and have fun figuring out some way of presenting all these options to the player without seeing him freeze up like a deer in the headlights. Real-life senators and the like making these kinds of decisions were probably just as ignorant as the player, but at least they had committees, subcommittees, and various uniformed staff providing them with advice and viewpoints as opposed to just giving people statblocks to pore through.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 06:37
|
|
|
My real question with East vs. West is how long will a game take? I mean, it looks like they're modelling down to the hour like HOI. but an average HOI game lasts what, 12 years unless you go Maximum Hitler for full world conquest? This game is 1950 to 1991 right? That's like a good 4 HOI games back to back. That's going to take forever if its Hot War non stop.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 06:46
|
|
|
Janissary Hop posted:That whole era was mostly defined by dirty little proxy wars and clandestine interventions and I doubt the bigger wars the superpowers did directly engage in (specifically Vietnam and Afghanistan) can be accurately modeled in this type of game. I don't know why the military aspect is getting any more focus than your average paradox game that isn't Hearts of Iron. Basically the whole thing looks like Magna Mundi: Cold War Edition. Hasnt there been like 4 dev diaries? Compared to like 30 odd for an average Pdox game?
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 07:04
|
|
|
Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Are you still sharing a building with Avalanche? Can you sneak in and get some pics of Just Cause 3 for us? Just Cause 3 will integrate with EvW as a solution to the small wars/proxy wars/insurgencies issue. You just control a suitably named protagonist in Vietnam/Afghanistan/Angola/Belfast. Resources available to you hinge on what you've done in the strategic map beforehand. There I have solved all your EvW and indeed all your rebel problems in all games Paradox you can thank me by making a sci-fi strategy game.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 08:27
|
|
|
Mister Adequate posted:Just Cause 3 will integrate with EvW as a solution to the small wars/proxy wars/insurgencies issue. You just control a suitably named protagonist in Vietnam/Afghanistan/Angola/Belfast. Resources available to you hinge on what you've done in the strategic map beforehand. There I have solved all your EvW and indeed all your rebel problems in all games Paradox you can thank me by making a sci-fi strategy game. I would play the gently caress out of this game. 
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 08:43
|
|
|
Darkrenown posted:Basement!? No, we live at the top of of of the tallest buildings in Stockholm. You can see some of the décor and the view here: As I suspected! The Paradox Interactive logo is hidden behind a projector screen. Now if you're showing something to someone using that screen, they may wonder "Oh what company is showing me this beautiful shot of a guy standing in front of a fence or something" AND THEY WOULDN'T KNOW! </sarcasm> (although that view does look like it'd be nice, in that picture I can't see any other tall buildings so you must be able to see a lot of Stockholm from that view) s1234567890m posted:Hasnt there been like 4 dev diaries? Compared to like 30 odd for an average Pdox game? One the one hand that's certainly true, and the EvW team could be just be getting the WWIII stuff out of the way before going into the less exciting/explosive side of things, but on the other the big thing that should be front and center for a cold war game should be the diplomacy, the espionage, the guerrilla warfare, the economics, etc before the big nation V nation wars. It's okay that they want to show off some of this stuff but I already know my cruisers will need to count bullets, and yet I still have no idea if I can peacefully influence a nation towards my faction or not!
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 09:21
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 31, 2024 17:57 |
|
|
Mister Adequate posted:Just Cause 3 will integrate with EvW as a solution to the small wars/proxy wars/insurgencies issue. You just control a suitably named protagonist in Vietnam/Afghanistan/Angola/Belfast. Resources available to you hinge on what you've done in the strategic map beforehand. There I have solved all your EvW and indeed all your rebel problems in all games Paradox you can thank me by making a sci-fi strategy game. Do not listen to this man, he is insane and will destroy gaming industry forever as people will have no reason whatsoever to play any games other than this.
|
|
#
?
Feb 23, 2013 10:25
|
|