Paradox Grand Strategy: From the Carnival of Lust to the Enlightened Times

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gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Mantis42 posted:

Why are we talking about V2 as something fundamentally broken and in need of 'fixing' when its the best Paradox game by far?

Have you SEEN V2's pie charts? The next game really should make them start at 12 o'clock, going clockwise with the largest slices first.

# ? Oct 24, 2014 21:14

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 14:26

Mantis42: Jul 26, 2010

Okay, fixing the pie charts is the first good idea I've heard. Also the age pyramids. Basically I want to be able to play Vicky 3 in Excel.

# ? Oct 24, 2014 22:16

Chickpea Roar: Jan 11, 2006; Merdre!

The ability to see population/craftsmen/clerk size and what raw materials a province produces in the factory screen.

# ? Oct 24, 2014 22:19

Cantorsdust: Aug 10, 2008; Infinitely many points, but zero length.

I would pay $15 for a Vicky 2 expansion that did just 3 things:

1) Sever the military unit--specific pop connection and just have units drawn from generic manpower, which is the sum of all solider pops.
2) Allowed army recruitment en masse or rally points for set army builds (5 inf, 5 art, 1 eng, 2 cav or w/e).

3)

Hreinhold posted:

The ability to see population/craftsmen/clerk size and what raw materials a province produces in the factory screen.

# ? Oct 24, 2014 23:02

fuck off Batman: Oct 14, 2013; Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah!

Vicky 3 should have gunboat diplomacy. :v:

I don't remember ever using it before they removed it, did it even work? What did it do exactly?

# ? Oct 24, 2014 23:20

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

More fundamental.

V2 is trying to be 3 games: a world economy/industrialisation simulator, a state internal political simulator, and Diplomacy^tm Paradox Edition.

You need to pick one of those games to be the main theme. Then pick another one to be a background theme that adds depth and flavour to the first. The problem with V2 is that even the most basic motivation in CK and EU ('I want my dynasty/nation to be the bestest in the world!') is really quite hard to follow - it's very unclear to the player what they should be doing to make their country the bestest in the world at anything.

# ? Oct 24, 2014 23:38

Fidel Cuckstro: Jul 2, 2007

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Thank you.

My thinking would be that it would sorta be a mix of reacting and being proactive. Right from the start you would be faced with a certain demographic situation, which would change as you discover new inventions such as germ theory. You could try to nudge your population towards greater fecundity, or encourage family planning, depending on strategic situation/goals. Loads of babies would mean more people manning your guns in the future, but fewer babies might mean a better educated work force that more than makes up for a lack of numbers, especially in the economic field. Not much point to having 300 million Germans in Germany, if there isn't enough resources to actually feed and clothe them properly. It would be more about nudging things in the direction you want them to go though, and reacting to a changing world, than unilaterally deciding "Every woman should have three babies, by order of the King"

The economy, internal politics, and warfare, and no, it would not get in the way of those. In fact, the system would help make those core features more sensible and realistic, while being perfectly easy to understand at a glance.

A developing country with a ton of young people functions differently than a more advanced one with a more modern population structure, making for a bit more variety through the game. On top of that, the fact that no country would be developing in complete parallel would further differentiate them and make for a shifting balance of power.

This too. Getting a sense of what your population is like beyond just "these dudes are soldiers, these guys are farmers, and these jerks are aristocrats" is nice. If any of Paradoxes game should deal with what the lives of the average person is like it's really Victoria. Plus you'd be able to see the massive holes left behind in the pyramid after Great Wars.

Ok am I controlling these policies on a total-country level, or a province or wealth level or job-type level? What kind of information are you providing to the players not just so they can see what the pops are at now but where they need to be to accomplish X or Y? Are military advisor screens popping up to tell you "hey we can't recruit for our army better go take over India and make regiments there"? This is sounding like a tactical-to-strategic minigame like what I mentioned in my HoI navy post and while it could be interesting on its own, it's likely going to be tedious and confusing if it's running in parallel with other tactical-to-strategic systems that overlap.

Also I'm still not sure what alternative strategies come out of this- it still seems you'd just want to go with whatever maximum birth rate you can maintain while not overloading your education system? Research what techs you can to keep mortality low? Would you ever do the opposite as opposed to simply delay your investment in those for other things? I'll be honest I can't think of any countries in the Vicky period that were staying agrarian and de-centralized and so on that was kicking rear end and taking names on the world stage. When you say "a developing country...functions differently than a more advanced one..." I still don't buy that the gameplay difference is more than in one you're already pretty close to the good 'low mortality' point and in the other you're far away and want to research the techs/policies that get you there. Again I can maybe see some fun in "hey we've become a pretty stable-state population and we need a bunch of bodies to fill out our army, lets go colonize some Africans and make them soldiers" but I think you can give that goal to players without all this.

And when you say economy/warfare/internal-politics are the core mechanics, they stay the same in this new version of Vicky? Warfare is still just about mega-stacks of soldiers killing each other forever in a province? Internal politics is just slowly trying to push one party's popularity w/ national focuses in hopes that you get the ruling party you want and stay there?

Fidel Cuckstro fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 24, 2014 23:41

Tomn: Aug 23, 2007; And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

Cantorsdust posted:

1) Sever the military unit--specific pop connection and just have units drawn from generic manpower, which is the sum of all solider pops.

If they wanted to keep the whole "maybe your units will rebel!" thing, they can just have each nationality contribute to its own manpower pool, which is the sum of all soldier pops of that nationality. If any given nationality starts rising, give units made up of that nationality a chance to rebel based on how strong the rising is. Heck, if they wanted to keep the whole "War will murder your pops!" thing, they can just apply the damage to a randomly selected group of soldier pops and I don't see that it'd make much difference.

There are a couple of times where I can see the current system modeling stuff better, but they're mostly edge cases.

# ? Oct 24, 2014 23:56

BBJoey: Oct 31, 2012

Average Bear posted:

yeah why does this game have flaws???? hosed up and doesnt make sense...

Please help, I am having trouble understanding how something can be good and also not perfect at the same time?

# ? Oct 25, 2014 00:33

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Ok am I controlling these policies on a total-country level, or a province or wealth level or job-type level? What kind of information are you providing to the players not just so they can see what the pops are at now but where they need to be to accomplish X or Y?

Country level, and possibly regional level if you're trying to divert excess population into areas with room to settle rather than have them run off to some other country. As for the second question, I'm not sure precisely what you're asking.

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Are military advisor screens popping up to tell you "hey we can't recruit for our army better go take over India and make regiments there"? This is sounding like a tactical-to-strategic minigame like what I mentioned in my HoI navy post and while it could be interesting on its own, it's likely going to be tedious and confusing if it's running in parallel with other tactical-to-strategic systems that overlap.

Military/strategic advisers could be trying to get you to boost the birth rate *somehow*, make your colonies do more for the home country, or expand the metropole by trying to settle people in your colonies instead of having them run of to the New World. Or they could bypass the whole looming population issue by trying to crush the enemy while you still have the upper hand, or convince you to find an ally that is likewise worried about the rise of your rival. (The AI likewise having been introduced to the concept of looking at the upcoming generation, and not just the current one.)

I'm not sure where the tedium and confusion about possible parallel "tactical-to-strategic" systems that overlap would be though. What would cause confusion about an event that said "The Germans are having millions of babies more than us, you have to do something!" and then gave you different options for how to proceed. (And unlocked decisions to do all of the above if you had the resources to do so.)

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Also I'm still not sure what alternative strategies come out of this- it still seems you'd just want to go with whatever maximum birth rate you can maintain while not overloading your education system? Research what techs you can to keep mortality low? Would you ever do the opposite as opposed to simply delay your investment in those for other things? I'll be honest I can't think of any countries in the Vicky period that were staying agrarian and de-centralized and so on that was kicking rear end and taking names on the world stage.

You seem very focused on the idea that the player has to devote a lot of energy to this stuff, in a sort of social engineering kind of way, instead of it being more about creating a richer world for them to do their thing in. Sure, the system would not be completely out of the player's hands, but it wouldn't be designed to be controlled to the same degree that for example factories are. Not every game mechanic has to designed in a way that gives the player the sense that they're supposed to control it, just deal with it the best they can. You can't move the mountain, but you can certainly build a fortress on it and fill it with guys with guns.

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

When you say "a developing country...functions differently than a more advanced one..." I still don't buy that the gameplay difference is that in one you're already pretty close to the good 'low mortality' point and in the other you're far away and want to research the techs/policies that get you there. Again I can maybe see some fun in "hey we've become a pretty stable-state population and we need a bunch of bodies to fill out our army, lets go colonize some Africans and make them soldiers" but I think you can give that goal to players without all this.

The difference between a developing country and an advanced/developed one is not of low mortality, but high fertility vs. low fertility. The agrarian base from which the developing country comes from is the one that's high mortality, which is why the high fertility there doesn't result in massive population growth. Combining an agrarian mindset and modern sanitation and medicine is what leads to massive population growth, which is ideally curbed eventually by new family patterns which don't encourage having a ton of kids, since half of them don't die before 5. As for the second part, the whole point is that it's predictive. You're not reacting to having too few soldiers now, you're reacting to the fact that you're going to have too few in the future.

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

And when you say economy/warfare/internal-politics are the core mechanics, they stay the same in this new version of Vicky? Warfare is still just about mega-stacks of soldiers killing each other forever in a province? Internal politics is just slowly trying to push one party's popularity w/ national focuses in hopes that you get the ruling party you want and stay there?

Of course those mechanics wouldn't stay the same, but we would be getting side tracked a bit if I reiterated older suggestions such as party policies not being implemented immediately, bur rather over time depending on their strength in parliament vs. the opposition.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 00:51

Tomn: Aug 23, 2007; And the angel said unto him
"Stop hitting yourself. Stop hitting yourself."
But lo he could not. For the angel was hitting him with his own hands

Because if there's one thing Victoria 2 needed, it's even MORE information to keep track of. My own eyes already glaze over when I try to work out dominant issues in my pops and how to change them to something I prefer (whatever that is), I don't see that I'd get much joy out of juggling age brackets on top of that.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 01:09

Fidel Cuckstro: Jul 2, 2007

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Country level, and possibly regional level if you're trying to divert excess population into areas with room to settle rather than have them run off to some other country. As for the second question, I'm not sure precisely what you're asking.

Military/strategic advisers could be trying to get you to boost the birth rate *somehow*, make your colonies do more for the home country, or expand the metropole by trying to settle people in your colonies instead of having them run of to the New World. Or they could bypass the whole looming population issue by trying to crush the enemy while you still have the upper hand, or convince you to find an ally that is likewise worried about the rise of your rival. (The AI likewise having been introduced to the concept of looking at the upcoming generation, and not just the current one.)

I'm not sure where the tedium and confusion about possible parallel "tactical-to-strategic" systems that overlap would be though. What would cause confusion about an event that said "The Germans are having millions of babies more than us, you have to do something!" and then gave you different options for how to proceed. (And unlocked decisions to do all of the above if you had the resources to do so.)

You seem very focused on the idea that the player has to devote a lot of energy to this stuff, in a sort of social engineering kind of way, instead of it being more about creating a richer world for them to do their thing in. Sure, the system would not be completely out of the player's hands, but it wouldn't be designed to be controlled to the same degree that for example factories are. Not every game mechanic has to designed in a way that gives the player the sense that they're supposed to control it, just deal with it the best they can. You can't move the mountain, but you can certainly build a fortress on it and fill it with guys with guns.

The difference between a developing country and an advanced/developed one is not of low mortality, but high fertility vs. low fertility. The agrarian base from which the developing country comes from is the one that's high mortality, which is why the high fertility there doesn't result in massive population growth. Combining an agrarian mindset and modern sanitation and medicine is what leads to massive population growth, which is ideally curbed eventually by new family patterns which don't encourage having a ton of kids, since half of them don't die before 5. As for the second part, the whole point is that it's predictive. You're not reacting to having too few soldiers now, you're reacting to the fact that you're going to have too few in the future.

Of course those mechanics wouldn't stay the same, but we would be getting side tracked a bit if I reiterated older suggestions such as party policies not being implemented immediately, bur rather over time depending on their strength in parliament vs. the opposition.

I think my questions are what is the game behind this. It seems like you want to convince me that this is an important trend and I don't think anyone disagrees- I just don't get what the player's going to get for all this design effort to model and present all the extra pop information? Like if the plan is to have some strategic advisors popping up to tell you "hey Germany's population is going to be 10 times our own in a generation or two we need to try and do something " or "yo England wants to trade us a bunch of cool stuff to basically use our underclass as soldiers and poo poo" that seems like some interesting decisions that make the play experience more enjoyable. But at the same time there's probably an easier way to just make those events occur, especially if the controls the players have to actually shift their populations to points where those events occur are limited or opaque.

And it's not side-tracking to discuss what the core player mechanics/interfaces are if changes to that are going to better explain why this system enriches it as opposed to not. I don't think there's some settled answer on what all those systems absolutely need to be for a better Vicky-3, but if there is point me to where I can read them I guess.

I mean it seems like without explaining all the ins and outs of this system you've said it enriches the world of the players even though they have at best limited control of shaping their demographics, it doesn't really affect the core mechanics, and at best it maybe convinces players to make some decisions now in hopes of impacting future demographics when I suspect players are already encouraged to thing about decisions based on their future impact to prestige, resources, and overall population.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 01:20

Fidel Cuckstro: Jul 2, 2007

Like is there some reason this couldn't be handled by saying a country's population grows a small percent based on its current population, and that percent is modified a bit by the number of farmers versus miners/laborers versus clerks/clergy/capitalists? If you are have mostly farmers your growth rate is higher than having mostly factory workers or middle/upper class. Then the player input in the existing system is simple: you generally want to national focus the more urban jobs, but now there's a reason to NF farmers or something to grow your population. One improves your economy a lot more, but the other improves your manpower for the military more.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 01:30

Gorelab: Dec 26, 2006

Man Greece's population in Vicky 2 makes it kinda annoying to play especially if you start getting territory from the Ottomans and still are stuck with one focus.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 01:41

Randallteal: May 7, 2006; The tears of time

Gorelab posted:

Man Greece's population in Vicky 2 makes it kinda annoying to play especially if you start getting territory from the Ottomans and still are stuck with one focus.

I had a similar problem with Siam. I was able to optimize my civilize build to the point where I conquered Burma before they allied China or the UK and civilized by about 1862, but I still only had one focus and even focusing on soldiers in my highest pop states and maxing out my military slider I still wasn't in the ballpark of fighting Japan, China or the UK.

I like the early game of playing smaller uncivs, but eventually I just end up picking off the little countries in Arabia and the Pacific and having a really spread out, not that strong empire.

Edit: One other thing I'm not thrilled about is the one great power alliance limit in V2. Getting a worthwhile GP ally feels like playing musical chairs, and at the end someone gets stuck with the Netherlands/Austria/Spain.

Randallteal fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 02:22

Allyn: Sep 4, 2007; I love Charlie from Busted!

Randallteal posted:

I had a similar problem with Siam. I was able to optimize my civilize build to the point where I conquered Burma before they allied China or the UK and civilized by about 1862, but I still only had one focus and even focusing on soldiers in my highest pop states and maxing out my military slider I still wasn't in the ballpark of fighting Japan, China or the UK.

I like the early game of playing smaller uncivs, but eventually I just end up picking off the little countries in Arabia and the Pacific and having a really spread out, not that strong empire.

Edit: One other thing I'm not thrilled about is the one great power alliance limit in V2. Getting a worthwhile GP ally feels like playing musical chairs, and at the end someone gets stuck with the Netherlands/Austria/Spain.

Re your edit (on phone and cutting quotes down is a pain), that limit gets lifted once Great Wars are enabled. It does seem arbitrary but at least you can be safe in the knowledge there's an end date. I know I waited til then as Italy so I could get mega-Germany on my side, and proceeded to take all the Balkans in the only V2 game I've ever finished :shobon:

# ? Oct 25, 2014 03:04

DrSunshine: Mar 23, 2009; Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

I think that glancing at an age/occupation pyramid would be far easier to understand than going into the "Demographics" screen and sorting each and every single pop by size or type manually.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 04:02

Epinephrine: Nov 7, 2008

So going back to the "Why do I care [about population versus age]?" question earlier, the answer is simple: I want to paint the world my color and otherwise screw around with history. For that I need soldier pops, and for that I need working age people. Pyramids allow me to see how my policies affect working age people, how current policies might have ramifications 20 years down the line. I can see that my moment of stupid in taking on half of Europe as Bavaria all by myself severely depleted my current working age males. They'll bounce back in about 5-10 years because those pops were still kids and never got sacrificed to the skull god, but in about 20 years I'll begin to feel the pain of having no one making kids right now due to being dead. Or, I can note that some invention has doubled my nation's overall fertility, that this invention rolled out in my country about 5 years ahead of everyone else, and I can use this to my advantage in about 18 years when my working-age pops are exploding before everyone else catches up.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, any simple figure is easier to understand than any table of numbers. Pop pyramids are pretty simple. (Although I'd prefer to make it a line graph with 2 lines for men and women, with age on the x-axis and pop on the y, having time on the x-axis is orders of magnitude more understandable generally speaking.)

Epinephrine fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 04:44

Fidel Cuckstro: Jul 2, 2007

Epinephrine posted:

So going back to the "Why do I care [about population versus age]?" question earlier, the answer is simple: I want to paint the world my color and otherwise screw around with history. For that I need soldier pops, and for that I need working age people. Pyramids allow me to see how my policies affect working age people, how current policies might have ramifications 20 years down the line. I can see that my moment of stupid in taking on half of Europe as Bavaria all by myself severely depleted my current working age males. They'll bounce back in about 5-10 years because those pops were still kids and never got sacrificed to the skull god, but in about 20 years I'll begin to feel the pain of having no one making kids right now due to being dead. Or, I can note that some invention has doubled my nation's overall fertility, that this invention rolled out in my country about 5 years ahead of everyone else, and I can use this to my advantage in about 18 years when my working-age pops are exploding before everyone else catches up.

Also, as a general rule of thumb, any simple figure is easier to understand than any table of numbers. Pop pyramids are pretty simple. (Although I'd prefer to make it a line graph with 2 lines for men and women, with age on the x-axis and pop on the y, having time on the x-axis is orders of magnitude more understandable generally speaking.)

Ok but those goals seem pretty achievable with the as-is population figure and some tooltips on these population techs/decisions, whatever they may be?

# ? Oct 25, 2014 05:09

Charlz Guybon: Nov 16, 2010

Do you guys recommend the Concert of Europe mod for Vic 2? Why or why not?

# ? Oct 25, 2014 11:20

BBJoey: Oct 31, 2012

Well the first red flag is that it requires PDM.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 11:32

Charlz Guybon: Nov 16, 2010

BBJoey posted:

Well the first red flag is that it requires PDM.

What's PDM and why is it bad?

# ? Oct 25, 2014 13:21

Zeron: Oct 23, 2010

Pop Demand Mod. It's the big enormous gameplay overhaul for V2. Basically does stuff like rebalance the economy(by making everyone have infinite money and adding a shitton of new trade goods and factories), rebalance pops, rebalance wars and the military(by throwing random stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks, I don't think they've managed anything good with this yet), rebalance politics by adding a ton of new reforms and decisions, adding in a ton of events and new nations, and so on and so on. Some people swear by it(no one here that I know of) but my experiences with it are that it breaks the game and that everything cool about it is ruined by bizarre design decisions. Also all the new trade goods and stuff slow the game to an absolute crawl.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 13:33

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:

Ok but those goals seem pretty achievable with the as-is population figure and some tooltips on these population techs/decisions, whatever they may be?

Currently, population growth techs work immediately in Victoria II, where a system where the population actually ages would have some lag time between the tech getting invented and it being felt by the player. Similarly, improvements in education would also have some lag to it, though obviously less than mortality lowering inventions would, the pops affected being generally older.

DrSunshine posted:

I think that glancing at an age/occupation pyramid would be far easier to understand than going into the "Demographics" screen and sorting each and every single pop by size or type manually.

I really do too. In fact, it might be easier to show what such a age/occupation pyramid could look like than continuing to explain it only through words. Well, perhaps not a pyramid after all, Epinephrine makes a good point that having the x-axis be age and the y-axis pops would be more easily understandable. In this case, I've put men and women on the same graph, since I'm not exactly sure being able to see the difference in their employment is worth the trouble of having twice the number of graphs. Just because they're on the same graph doesn't mean you're going to be making female soldiers.

This is roughly what the population of Germany and France looked like in 1880. The adult population is quite similar, but looking at the under 20 group you see that things are about to change. By 1900, Germany is going to have a significant edge over France in terms of potential soldiers, and workers, a fact which any French government would have to contend with.

Looking at Germany alone, we can see the changing patterns of employment in Germany. (Nearly completely made up by me in this case) The older generation is mostly farmers, but as the Industrial Revolution kicked off, mines started employing more and more people, and later the population started to really move into the city where they became craftsmen. If the trend holds, the increase in the population will be further reinforced by changing patterns of employment, resulting in a massive increase in industrial potential for Germany going forward. This would likewise be a thing Germany's rivals would worry about, perhaps enough that countries which have been at each others throat for centuries would start considering whether it was time to leave old grudges behind.

If we wished to get more detailed information than the graph provides, we could hover the cursor over a given age and see how pops are currently promoting, or do the same for the pop types and see how they're growing across the board.

The advantages as I see it of such a graph is the ability to quickly get a sense of what kind of population I have presently, and where it's likely to be in the future, in contrast to the current system which divides the information into pie charts, a separate population number, and a population growth number, and where the information about the changes in occupation requires one to look at pops individually. Considering that Victoria is to a large degree about nudging things in the direction we want, and not controlling things on the individual level, I think it makes sense to keep the most visible information in the category of "overall situation" and "general trends", while details such as the number of Russian Jews in Jutland can made much less prominent. (If such details are even relevant, which I'm not sure they are.)

# ? Oct 25, 2014 13:37

YF-23: Feb 17, 2011; My god, it's full of cat!

I think the last page or so makes a good case for not including population pyramids.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 15:38

Wiz: May 16, 2004; Nap Ghost

YF-23 posted:

I think the last page or so makes a good case for not including population pyramids.

I sometimes wonder if this thread thinks it is suggesting things for a game or a thesis on 19th century population dynamics.

Wiz fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 16:05

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

Wiz posted:

I sometimes wonder if this thread thinks is is suggesting things for a game or a thesis on 19th century population dynamics.

Game? I thought the point was to make the world's best genocide simulator?

# ? Oct 25, 2014 16:08

Vichan: Oct 1, 2014; I'LL PUNISH YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR CRIME

Zeron posted:

Pop Demand Mod. It's the big enormous gameplay overhaul for V2. Basically does stuff like rebalance the economy(by making everyone have infinite money and adding a shitton of new trade goods and factories), rebalance pops, rebalance wars and the military(by throwing random stuff at the wall and hoping it sticks, I don't think they've managed anything good with this yet), rebalance politics by adding a ton of new reforms and decisions, adding in a ton of events and new nations, and so on and so on. Some people swear by it(no one here that I know of) but my experiences with it are that it breaks the game and that everything cool about it is ruined by bizarre design decisions. Also all the new trade goods and stuff slow the game to an absolute crawl.

So it's basically V2's version of Magna Mundi?

# ? Oct 25, 2014 16:13

DStecks: Feb 6, 2012

YF-23 posted:

I think the last page or so makes a good case for not including population pyramids.

Would emptyquote this if I didn't also want to respond to this:

Fintilgin posted:

`Cause it ain't.

V2 is a pretty good grand strategy game, but frankly CK2 is probably one of the best games ever made. It'd be like arguing that American Graffiti is George Lucas's best movie.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 16:34

Wiz: May 16, 2004; Nap Ghost

The one weird trick to know about game design is that the correct ending to the sentence 'Wouldn't it be cool if...' is usually '... but we probably shouldn't because it'd eat development time and resources without contributing much to the core gameplay experience.'

# ? Oct 25, 2014 16:41

Takanago: Jun 2, 2007; You'll see...

Okay get this... what if every POP were a player?

We could turn Vic 3 into the next EVE Online.

edit: No wait... what if every POP were a backer?

We could turn Vic 3 into the next Star Citizen.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 16:51

YF-23: Feb 17, 2011; My god, it's full of cat!

Takanago posted:

Okay get this... what if every POP were a player?

We could turn Vic 3 into the next EVE Online.

edit: No wait... what if every POP were a backer?

We could turn Vic 3 into the next Star Citizen.

Ugh, Goonstate's demographics are a mess, I've already had my newphews sign up, anyone else with younger relatives should get them to join before our population pyramid gets worse.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 16:54

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling

Wiz posted:

I sometimes wonder if this thread thinks it is suggesting things for a game or a thesis on 19th century population dynamics.

Uh, but that's what the game is. That's the whole point of Vicky!

# ? Oct 25, 2014 17:08

CharlestheHammer: Jun 26, 2011; YOU SAY MY POSTS ARE THE RAVINGS OF THE DUMBEST PERSON ON GOD'S GREEN EARTH BUT YOU YOURSELF ARE READING THEM. CURIOUS!

Mister Adequate posted:

Uh, but that's what the game is. That's the whole point of Vicky!

No its a realistic economy simulator.

In that while a lot of people pretend they know what is going on, no actually does.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 17:10

Takanago: Jun 2, 2007; You'll see...

YF-23 posted:

Ugh, Goonstate's demographics are a mess, I've already had my newphews sign up, anyone else with younger relatives should get them to join before our population pyramid gets worse.

God, now I'm imagining a Grey Hunter-style LP of Vicky done in real time.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 17:11

GenderSelectScreen: Mar 7, 2010; I DON'T KNOW EITHER DON'T ASK ME; College Slice

Yeah guys, let's ditch the interesting and much easier to understand population pyramids and stick to the magic piecharts? How do they work? MAGIC :bravo:

# ? Oct 25, 2014 17:20

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

YF-23 posted:

I think the last page or so makes a good case for not including population pyramids.

Care to explain why? Like, I get that there are limits to how many fiddly details you'd want to encumber the game (or the player) with, but these aren't fiddly details, but big picture kind of stuff. I'm literally arguing for doing away with unimportant details in favor of modeling population dynamics which would have an actual impact on the game, which the player could understand at a glance, and which would give the player a much better sense of what kind of country they're controlling and how far they've taken it since the start of their campaign. Why wouldn't a game so centered on the population itself actually model the population? And by model I mean not just assuming it follows late 20th century Western family structures.

Wiz posted:

The one weird trick to know about game design is that the correct ending to the sentence 'Wouldn't it be cool if...' is usually '... but we probably shouldn't because it'd eat development time and resources without contributing much to the core gameplay experience.'

I know things are always more complicated to actually program than just writing out, but I really don't see why this has to be such a massive undertaking that it can be written off like a pipe dream. The only new thing the game would need to keep track of would be the number of different types of pops in each age bracket, the individual pops wouldn't have an actual age associated with them. Promotion in this case would basically come down to looking at how many pops there are in a given bracket, dividing it by the number of promotion pulses per year, and then rolling to see how many pops of each type "is having a birthday". They would be subtracted from their current age bracket, and then depending on your policies, your economy, and the age of the pop, they would either be added directly to the next age bracket, be added as a promoted/demoted pop type to the next age bracket, or removed entirely.

Aside from that, all you would need would be a way to determine how many pops are getting added to the 0-1 bracket during these pulses, but that shouldn't be particularly difficult either, since you know how many people are in their reproductive years. Obviously a ton of detail could be added, but you wouldn't really need to to get a system that's a decent enough representation of this.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 17:21

YF-23: Feb 17, 2011; My god, it's full of cat!

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Care to explain why? Like, I get that there are limits to how many fiddly details you'd want to encumber the game (or the player) with, but these aren't fiddly details, but big picture kind of stuff. I'm literally arguing for doing away with unimportant details in favor of modeling population dynamics which would have an actual impact on the game, which the player could understand at a glance, and which would give the player a much better sense of what kind of country they're controlling and how far they've taken it since the start of their campaign. Why wouldn't a game so centered on the population itself actually model the population? And by model I mean not just assuming it follows late 20th century Western family structures.

Ok, let's say that you're France in the example in your previous post. Your population growth compared to Germany's has plummeted, and you need to either fix that or sort out your beef with Germany ASAP. So let's say you want to fix that.

a) WHY has your population growth plummeted in the first place?
b) What steps can you, as the player, take to rectify your lowered population growth?

If you are going to add a system to represent the population pyramid in the game you need to actually make that something that the player engage with. It's fun and all to know that there's low births now and that that will come to bite me in the rear end twenty years down the road. What's not fun is not being able to do anything about it. And I do not see any real ways to influence how many children people have in a Victorian-era political simulator.

# ? Oct 25, 2014 17:30

VerdantSquire: Jul 1, 2014

Honestly, I don't really see any value in having age groups in V2. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for adding stuff to get a feel for what your nation is actually like, but there is a point where you have to realize the feature you want in the game would just end up hogging a ton of resources for a mechanic that many people would have trouble comprehending and probably just ignore. I'd rather have development focused more on more interesting diplomatic options and a compelling trade&industrialization system.

Takanago posted:

God, now I'm imagining a Grey Hunter-style LP of Vicky done in real time.

You'd have to start that LP at infancy to have any chance of reaching the end date. That, or have an equally dedicated offspring.

VerdantSquire fucked around with this message at 17:39 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 17:33

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 14:26

Obliterati: Nov 13, 2012; Pain is inevitable.
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YF-23 posted:

b) What steps can you, as the player, take to rectify your lowered population growth?

Healthcare/agricultural reforms, shifts to defensive military strategies, attempts to limit emmigration, more efficient recruiting (like Prussia, which doesn't so much have more men historically as it does the most militarised population in Europe)?

e: the first three of these reference processes that already occur in Vicky II and would require the least effort to add.

Obliterati fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Oct 25, 2014

# ? Oct 25, 2014 17:34

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: From the Carnival of Lust to the Enlightened Times

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