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Esroc posted:I think Paradox and other strategy game companies would do well to emulate the automation system of Matrix Games' Distant Worlds. Then they could give us ridiculous complexity but also the option to automate the parts of it we personally find to be tedious. The problem with this design is that you end up spending a great deal of time creating, balancing and testing features that the majority of your players are never going to use and just leave to the AI. Dev time is much better spent on features everyone would like, rather than only a small hardcore subset.
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May 8, 2014 00:30
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Panzeh posted:The problem with that kind of design is that I think games are better when humans can fairly easily understand and manage all the systems included. When you just automate away anything that becomes clunky, you get shitfests like the Victoria games or MoO3. I think Distant Worlds had this problem where you just ended up staring at a bunch of black boxes that have way too much going on to understand easily. Victoria 2 is not a shitfest.  It's just differently fun.
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May 8, 2014 00:41
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BBJoey posted:The problem with this design is that you end up spending a great deal of time creating, balancing and testing features that the majority of your players are never going to use and just leave to the AI. Dev time is much better spent on features everyone would like, rather than only a small hardcore subset. That makes a kind of sense, from a development standpoint. I guess I'm probably one of the few who bothers to micromanage every aspect of Distant Worlds. The majority of my play time is spent with the game paused, which is probably not what most people would consider fun.
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May 8, 2014 00:49
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VostokProgram posted:Victoria 2 is not a shitfest.  Despite all its weirdness and barely-being-a-gameness, Victoria 2 is still probably one of my favorite games. I think CK2 is probably Paradox's best game, but there's just something about Victoria 2 that keeps me passing reforms and aimlessly loving with the economy.
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May 8, 2014 06:47
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Victoria 2 is the most superior MP game of the bunch, with the most options for diplomacy and much of the game people fighting over the same land. In CK2 and EU4 I feel like you can avoid each other for a hundred years stomping AIs. Some nations who start out bordering each other could never have a reason to fight. Playing 15-20 man Vic2 MP games is still the funnest I've had in a paradox game.
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May 8, 2014 07:39
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Esroc posted:I think Paradox and other strategy game companies would do well to emulate the automation system of Matrix Games' Distant Worlds. Then they could give us ridiculous complexity but also the option to automate the parts of it we personally find to be tedious. They tried that already. It was called Hearts of Iron 3
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May 8, 2014 08:04
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If a reasonable proportion of people find a mechanic tedious, the response should be to remove or improve it, not AI-automate it.
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May 8, 2014 08:53
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Gort posted:If a reasonable proportion of people find a mechanic tedious, the response should be to remove or improve it, not AI-automate it. To an extent. I would be fine with the AI controlling the micromanagement of my armies if I could still direct broad operational focus and meaningfully direct industry in order to influence their effectiveness (something I'm hoping for from HOI4).
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May 8, 2014 09:14
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VostokProgram posted:Victoria 2 is not a shitfest. Shitfest is going too far but I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of V2 players will never touch manual resource trading because seriously what the gently caress.
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May 8, 2014 09:14
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BBJoey posted:Shitfest is going too far but I think it's fair to say that the vast majority of V2 players will never touch manual resource trading because seriously what the gently caress. I only touched trade screen when I was rich enough and had a nice surplus of cash, so I could afford having 2000 units of critical resources in stock all the time. That way you don't need to wait for resources to be bought when you need it (for buildings/units).
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May 8, 2014 09:33
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I just kinda ignore it and pray it goes away and doesn't screw me over too bad. I don't know what a good fix would be since you can't remove trade, I don't see any way you could make me pay attention to the global markets to buy and sell resources, and yet the game is all about a time period in which international and intercontinental trade was more important than I'd say almost any other period of time, so you can't just leave it totally automated and divorced from what the player's doing. No real idea of how to fix it, guess that's why I'm not a game dev  .
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May 8, 2014 10:00
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I'm convinced no one actually understands how Victoria 2's economy works, not even the developers.
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May 8, 2014 10:06
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On a more serious note, I've said before that HOI 3's army-automation system would actually be a better fit in Victoria because it's more of a sideshow there that's simply an extension of your nation's industrial/economic strength and manpower reserves. In HOI 3 the timid offensive AI (not that it's easy to make a blitzkrieging AI) and the vague ability to direct the war from the top sucks out the heart of the game. In Victoria it would be par for the course for your men to march on Berlin six inches at a time.
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May 8, 2014 10:28
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HOI2 was just tedious enough to be acceptable. If Paradox makes an HOI4 they need to scale it the gently caress back and make it less ambitious.
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May 8, 2014 10:31
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Disco Infiva posted:
Similar here. I use it to manually set the computer to stock up on certain critical goods or one which go through periodic shortages. Another point where I do some things manually is when I know I was to start building a a lot of something or other and start stockpiling some materials in advance in anticipation. One thing in V2 that hasn't happened to me but I think is cool that it can potentially happen in the system is that you could potentially run out of crucial war materiel due to embargoes etc. IIRC though goods consumed by army maintenance are low enough to only very rarely make that an issue unless you're tiny and your market access is very poor indeed.
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May 8, 2014 10:44
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THS posted:I'm convinced no one actually understands how Victoria 2's economy works, not even the developers. Understanding is not required, only liquor factories.
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May 8, 2014 11:13
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I remember an old Victoria 2 bug where a craftman needed more liquor to consume than he could produce in a factory, resulting in a neverending downward spiral of alcoholism.
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May 8, 2014 11:22
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The office had just been playing Dwarf Fortress too much.
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May 8, 2014 12:03
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THS posted:If Paradox makes an HOI4
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May 8, 2014 12:41
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Disco Infiva posted:I remember an old Victoria 2 bug where a craftman needed more liquor to consume than he could produce in a factory, resulting in a neverending downward spiral of alcoholism. Yeah that was how they tried to squeeze industrialisation into the game, by giving industrial workers resource demands an order of magnitude higher than everyone else. I'm pretty sure that's been replaced by technological inventions each increasing every POP demand in the country, which seems to produce a better model overall (since craftsmen never filled their basic life needs they also contributed to the massive, frequent rebellions the early versions of V2 suffered from).
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May 8, 2014 12:48
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I think a more simplified and directly controllable economic model is better for games. I liked Imperialism's model better than Victoria 2's. I do think you could improve it though and make it a bit more flavorful, and the one good thing to come out of Pride of Nations was probably having private capital be a resource available to the player in addition to state funds. Most economic improvements in PoN are built with private funds, while state funds are mostly used for diplomacy and military actions. Taxes in this instance were just a way to convert between the two.
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May 8, 2014 12:54
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THS posted:I'm convinced no one actually understands how Victoria 2's economy works, not even the developers. It really is the most accurate economic simulation yet created.
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May 8, 2014 13:10
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THS posted:I'm convinced no one actually understands how Victoria 2's economy works, not even the developers. This is actually the case; apparently the only developer who knew how it worked left, and so Paradox doesn't really know how to take it from there.
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May 8, 2014 13:54
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Beamed posted:This is actually the case; apparently the only developer who knew how it worked left, and so Paradox doesn't really know how to take it from there. And they never asked him to, like, write it down?
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May 8, 2014 14:05
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DStecks posted:And they never asked him to, like, write it down? Remember how in the vanilla version of Vicky 2, you had no idea what the actual demand was, and the shown demand was actually just how many POPs would like to buy it if it had money? I imagine the documentation is like that.
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May 8, 2014 14:17
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Paradox doesn't even have documentation on how all the event scripting and traits and things work in Crusader Kings 2. They don't have any internal documents about this either, when asked by CK2 modders about the possibility of just releasing internal documentation about all the scopes and whatnot, the CK2 people just said that they don't have any, and that the developers learn things as they go along. 
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May 8, 2014 14:43
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DrSunshine posted:Paradox doesn't even have documentation on how all the event scripting and traits and things work in Crusader Kings 2. They don't have any internal documents about this either, when asked by CK2 modders about the possibility of just releasing internal documentation about all the scopes and whatnot, the CK2 people just said that they don't have any, and that the developers learn things as they go along. fixed
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May 8, 2014 14:46
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DrSunshine posted:Paradox doesn't even have documentation on how all the event scripting and traits and things work in Crusader Kings 2. They don't have any internal documents about this either, when asked by CK2 modders about the possibility of just releasing internal documentation about all the scopes and whatnot, the CK2 people just said that they don't have any, and that the developers learn things as they go along. Emergent coding, get with the times.
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May 8, 2014 14:48
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DrSunshine posted:Paradox doesn't even have documentation on how all the event scripting and traits and things work in Crusader Kings 2. They don't have any internal documents about this either, when asked by CK2 modders about the possibility of just releasing internal documentation about all the scopes and whatnot, the CK2 people just said that they don't have any, and that the developers learn things as they go along. I guess when you are a single digit sized team and you can just look up and ask the guy next to you how they did a thing and all your games run on the same engine and very similar basic principles then I guess you can get away with something as incredibly 90's as this.
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May 8, 2014 15:05
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DrSunshine posted:Paradox doesn't even have documentation on how all the event scripting and traits and things work in Crusader Kings 2. They don't have any internal documents about this either, when asked by CK2 modders about the possibility of just releasing internal documentation about all the scopes and whatnot, the CK2 people just said that they don't have any, and that the developers learn things as they go along. Documentation is poo poo. It gets out of date and just takes time to make. We make games, and arent in the business of getting bogged down in "processes". Thats why we can deliver games that are actually on time at pretty good quality despite rocking teams that are extremely small. For HOI4 we have made some code that generates documentation for modders though about scopes etc. That kind doesnt get out of date so its not a waste of time. While we are at it, lol concept art. We just make the final art right away. Saves a lot of time!
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May 8, 2014 15:44
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 Fuckin' studios that actually understand how their games work, amiright?
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May 8, 2014 15:51
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YF-23 posted:Yes. In addition to the three combat flanks there's a rear flank whose commander is the general field commander and which is used to reinforce combat flanks as needed. Tangentially related - lots of minor countries in MotE are really short on generals, some to the point that they can't even fully staff a single army. Anyone looking to get into it should pick up one of the Leader-generating mods so that everyone can participate in those mechanics. Leaders gaining traits is a fair part of how your armies improve over time.
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May 8, 2014 15:52
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podcat posted:While we are at it, lol concept art. We just make the final art right away. Saves a lot of time!  
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May 8, 2014 15:53
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podcat posted:Documentation is poo poo. It gets out of date and just takes time to make. We make games, and arent in the business of getting bogged down in "processes".  The irony is that part of my job application at another company was documenting how production worked in HOI2.
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May 8, 2014 15:54
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DStecks posted:
Documentation doesnt actually help with that though because it will not be up to date. So it will just fool people into thinking they do. Beamed posted:This is actually the case; apparently the only developer who knew how it worked left, and so Paradox doesn't really know how to take it from there. Nah, thats probably me, and its a giant emergent blob of, to miss-quote Dr Who, economy-whimey stuff :P Just because you understand how it works doesnt mean its easy to predict exactly how it will react in certain situations. The V2 economy ended up being too hard to control from a game balance standpoint. If/when we do a V3 we will have to do a rethink.
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May 8, 2014 15:55
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Ubik now owns all of Paradox's documentation anyway.
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May 8, 2014 15:55
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podcat posted:Documentation doesnt actually help with that though because it will not be up to date. So it will just fool people into thinking they do. I was under the impression it was King; my bad.
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May 8, 2014 15:56
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May 8, 2014 15:59
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Its clearly a 2nd guy strapped on the far side of the horse. Stunt Napoleon say. That way if the first gets shot it wont slow down your command chain.
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May 8, 2014 15:59
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podcat posted:Documentation doesnt actually help with that though because it will not be up to date. So it will just fool people into thinking they do. Then update the documentation? I cannot imagine a single scenario where that takes less effort than implementing the change in-game would. This just feels like the equivalent of stripping out the seatbelts and airbags from a car to save weight.
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May 8, 2014 16:01
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