Paradox Grand Strategy: Tim Cook? How many divisions has he got?

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Demiurge4: Aug 10, 2011

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

I really hope it is possible to have a couple sentient species evolving on one world.

I wanna see a cold war start between post-WW3 Earth and Communist Mars.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 02:52

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# ? May 9, 2024 21:00

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

Groogy posted:

Why? They should be afraid of us for that not us. I've even gotten an old Civ programmer go "how did you do that for FIVE YEARS!?"(talking simply about ck2 expansion, can find it on my twitter) I might be pounding my own chest a bit but so far I see nothing better than stellaris except aurora. And aurora is freaking mental.

edit: Yes I an really biased, but stellaris is really freaking awesome!

Let me ask you this, smart guy: If you know about Aurora, why does Stellaris not feature me designing each of the components of a ship part, all to be individually researched, and then designing of the ship part, which needs to be researched as a whole thing, before I can even start sticking things onto my ship designs? :colbert:

# ? Jan 30, 2016 02:54

Demiurge4: Aug 10, 2011

Mister Adequate posted:

Let me ask you this, smart guy: If you know about Aurora, why does Stellaris not feature me designing each of the components of a ship part, all to be individually researched, and then designing of the ship part, which needs to be researched as a whole thing, before I can even start sticking things onto my ship designs?

I'm reminded of my aborted Aurora campaigns and now I don't want to feel anymore :smith:

It would be a really great game if there were ways around the spergy ship design poo poo, I might even try to learn how combat works then!

# ? Jan 30, 2016 03:00

ThisIsNoZaku: Apr 22, 2013; Pew Pew Pew!

Mister Adequate posted:

Let me ask you this, smart guy: If you know about Aurora, why does Stellaris not feature me designing each of the components of a ship part, all to be individually researched, and then designing of the ship part, which needs to be researched as a whole thing, before I can even start sticking things onto my ship designs?

Need a hypersperg Gundam-style mecha game.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 03:18

Empress Theonora: Feb 19, 2001; She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time.

I hope HoI 4 comes out before Stellaris so I can just seamlessly take ByzLP from WW2 to the stars. :v:

# ? Jan 30, 2016 03:23

Space Pussy: Feb 19, 2011

Groogy posted:

Why? They should be afraid of us for that not us. I've even gotten an old Civ programmer go "how did you do that for FIVE YEARS!?"(talking simply about ck2 expansion, can find it on my twitter) I might be pounding my own chest a bit but so far I see nothing better than stellaris except aurora. And aurora is freaking mental.

edit: Yes I an really biased, but stellaris is really freaking awesome!

I agree with you especially after the shitpile which was Beyond Earth. Brian Reynolds rolling in his grave.

But man, Civ 5 is a straight up money factory on steam.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 03:24

NewMars: Mar 10, 2013

Space Pussy posted:

I agree with you especially after the shitpile which was Beyond Earth. Brian Reynolds rolling in his grave.

But man, Civ 5 is a straight up money factory on steam.

Brian Reynolds is still alive though. :v:

# ? Jan 30, 2016 03:34

ThatBasqueGuy: Feb 14, 2013; someone introduce jojo to lazyb

NewMars posted:

Brian Reynolds is still alive though.

Maybe he's just tenderizing the dirt in anticipation of his death

# ? Jan 30, 2016 03:38

Barnaby Barnacle: May 25, 2010

Reynolds has been working on freemium mobile games. So he might as well be dead and in hell.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 04:16

catlord: Mar 22, 2009; What's on your mind, Axa?

Randarkman posted:

Been working on hand converting a CK2 game I finished quite some time ago and which I messed up converting (got some save game corruption) and happened to be working on just before a major DLC. Anyway I started from scratch as I still have the files and I can still look at the map and stuff of the converted saves. Just got done with Europe and thought I'd just post some screens of it as I am pretty pleased with the setup so far.

Oh man, I had a game that I wanted to convert over when the converter first hit, but the conversion would just hang. Wish I still had it (and had the EU4 expansions I'm missing) so I could do this. It was nuts, I remember that Islam was just completely gone.

I love the name Magyaristan though. I don't know why but I do.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 07:09

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

YF-23 posted:

Sweden hasn't been a great power for quite a long while now.

You misunderstand the concept. It's not simply a superpower that is moral, it's a superpower of the concept of morality. Essentially, Sweden is so moral that when it comes to admonishing other states or giving them a thumbs up for doing good, its word carries the weight of a superpower. (Yes, this is a real life concept.)

# ? Jan 30, 2016 09:12

Enjoy: Apr 18, 2009

A Buttery Pastry posted:

You misunderstand the concept. It's not simply a superpower that is moral, it's a superpower of the concept of morality. Essentially, Sweden is so moral that when it comes to admonishing other states or giving them a thumbs up for doing good, its word carries the weight of a superpower. (Yes, this is a real life concept.)

Something like prestige in linguistics?

# ? Jan 30, 2016 09:16

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

Barnaby Barnacle posted:

Reynolds has been working on freemium mobile games. So he might as well be dead and in hell.

I just gave you a high five while jumping in the air.

Freeze frame.

Roll credits.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 09:47

Ghost of Mussolini: Jun 26, 2011

Paradox devs that post in this thread, if I publish a lot of Japanese poetry and then seize the Tokyo army HQ before committing ritual suicide will you finally release HoI4?

# ? Jan 30, 2016 09:49

Rumda: Nov 4, 2009; Moth Lesbian Comrade

Empress Theonora posted:

I hope HoI 4 comes out before Stellaris so I can just seamlessly take ByzLP from WW2 to the stars.

Not gonna lie that's the only reason I care even a little bit about HoI4.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 10:50

Vivian Darkbloom: Jul 14, 2004

Demiurge4 posted:

I wanna see a cold war start between post-WW3 Earth and Communist Mars.

I still wonder why intra-system combat would make any sense in a world with FTL travel. You could just warp over to Mars and drop your hyper-nukes?

# ? Jan 30, 2016 11:47

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

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

I still wonder why intra-system combat would make any sense in a world with FTL travel. You could just warp over to Mars and drop your hyper-nukes?

That can just be handwaved away by gravitational effects making warp drives inaccurate to a degree where there's no certainty you'd end up closer to Mars than where you started, or so unstable that you risk spreading your ship out across a much larger or smaller volume of space than it originally occupied. In a game or a movie, the answer is of course that intra-system combat looks cooler.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 12:56

Mans: Sep 14, 2011; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Rakthar posted:

Ah cool throwing in your lot with Larry. Yeah videogames that change are real scary, I wish these developers would stop developing their game. Reverting to a previous patchlevel? Total bullshit.

It''s a valid comment. I have friends that i played EU3 with back in the day and they simply refuse to play EU4 because it's comically complex compared to how barebones EU3 was (by comparison obviously).

I haven't played much since Common Sense due to personal issues and when the Cossacks expansion came out i returned to the game and i was loving lost. If you can get lost by missing two patches imagine what someone who hasn't played since EU3 or at all will think of all the mechanics.

EU4 is an amazing game but you need to take a lot of time to get to know the game. I wouldn't call it bloat because the mechanics don't make the game worse, they're all masterfuly implemented and add depth to the game, but they certainly increase the learning curve.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 14:08

Enjoy: Apr 18, 2009

Mans posted:

It''s a valid comment. I have friends that i played EU3 with back in the day and they simply refuse to play EU4 because it's comically complex compared to how barebones EU3 was (by comparison obviously).

I haven't played much since Common Sense due to personal issues and when the Cossacks expansion came out i returned to the game and i was loving lost. If you can get lost by missing two patches imagine what someone who hasn't played since EU3 or at all will think of all the mechanics.

EU4 is an amazing game but you need to take a lot of time to get to know the game. I wouldn't call it bloat because the mechanics don't make the game worse, they're all masterfuly implemented and add depth to the game, but they certainly increase the learning curve.

I'm guessing what happens is the core dev team comes up with a coherent system to begin with, then individual devs add new features in expansions and DLCs without fully integrating the new stuff with the old stuff.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 14:32

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

The main problem is that the people who put additional stuff in the game are people who already know the game inside out. A new player coming in the base game has significantly less stuff to learn than a new player that comes in the game with every expansion. That isn't always the case, because for instance adding mechanics to religions or governments that didn't have any only applies when you are playing those religions, and just roughly brings them to parity with the equivalent that already had them. Mechanics that replace others altogether like the fort system only make things worse insofar as they make that mechanic more complex (eg the fort system). But then you have stuff like estates, which are a completely new system on top of everything else. They are a great addition that deepens gameplay, but new players that jump in the game only really have the option to not use the DLC if they want to start learning the game without getting swamped.

It might be a good idea to set up ingame options to turn DLC features on and off selectively if you have the relevant DLCs active, with something like a beginner-friendly pre-set a new player could pick that disables the more "advanced" features.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 15:01

rakovsky maybe: Nov 4, 2008

Honestly this is why I don't play CK2. I bought it early, played a bit and then set it aside for other things. By the time I got back into it there were like seven expansions and it just seemed terribly bloated and complicated when I played. Maybe I'm a dummy but I used to play Ricky so complex paradox games have never been a problem for me before.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 15:11

RestRoomLiterature-: Jun 3, 2008; staying regular

I understand the bloat concerns as I've played ck2 since realize but gave it up after the expansion that added that ability to romance every character in the game..... And I can see eu4 sliding into that direction

# ? Jan 30, 2016 15:20

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

RestRoomLiterature- posted:

I understand the bloat concerns as I've played ck2 since realize but gave it up after the expansion that added that ability to romance every character in the game..... And I can see eu4 sliding into that direction

I love you France-sama.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 15:51

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

RestRoomLiterature- posted:

I understand the bloat concerns as I've played ck2 since realize but gave it up after the expansion that added that ability to romance every character in the game..... And I can see eu4 sliding into that direction

The latest expansion for EU4 added diplomatic feedback so you can totally tell countries you love them and want to be very very close friends and earn their trust!

# ? Jan 30, 2016 15:53

Groogy: Jun 12, 2014; Tanks are kinda wasted on invading the USSR

In-before EU: Dating Sim spinoff game

# ? Jan 30, 2016 15:57

Pimpmust: Oct 1, 2008

I'm still waiting for Paradox to announce their entry into the dating sim visual novel genre, it's booming on steam I tell ya'

Dating advice pop-ups from Johan-Sempai (and Hitler-kun) :nyoron:

# ? Jan 30, 2016 16:07

Popoto: Oct 21, 2012; miaow

So, I've been watching the WWW videos and it got me wanting to try up HoI again. I heard the 3rd isn't superb though, so should I just go for the second one instead? Tips and hints on what I should look for to have fun and learn without to much problem how to play?

/edit/
Does this write up sounds right? Seems I would enjoy HoI 3 more what with not having to micro manage every single details.

quote:

Lots of people will tell you that micromanagement is an issue in HoI 3, but the issue seems to be that the game wasn't meant to be played with you controlling each division individually.
The purpose of be Order of Battle was to streamline combat by connecting your divisions to various HQs, and then those HQs to HQs, and then those HQs to higher up HQ's, and so forth until you have an OOB with divisions under corps under armies under army groups under Theatre HQs. This sounds like it would just big you down by needlessly creating a ton of units that need to be positioned carefully, but the real purpose was for you to just turn the AI on at whatever HQ level, and let it handle unit placement, composition and everything else on its own.

For example, if you turned in the AI at theatre level, you can just set strategic objectives for it by making sure the HQ is selected, the AI has been switched on, and then right clicking on a province. That HQ will then automatically order all its units to attack towards that province. Setting multiple provinces as strategic objectives will widen up your front and make sure you don't have too many units in a small area. You can also set what kind of stance the unit has. You have defensive, prepare (for an offensive), attacking, and blitzing, each with its risks and merits. It will also allow you to set stance for naval and air units under its control.

The biggest issue people on this sub seem to have is setting strategic objectives for the AI. While the AI will attack freely on its own, setting several strategic objectives will ensure that your offensives are decisive rather than dragged out and exhausting with little real impact. As you go down the OOB and turn on the AI at more and more specific points, you'll be making the game more difficult because you'll have to micromanage individual army groups, armies, or corps, rather than just letting the theatre HQ handle it all.

The most hardcore mode, if you will, would be just forgetting the AI and controlling each division individually. I wouldn't recommend this unless you like spending upwards of 15 minutes just planning the attack of the Low Countries. Forget about controlling Barbarossa all by yourself. That would take hours for each few weeks of the offensive. One useful feature you should be aware of is that theatres will automatically request units from you as they feel they need. If you don't have enough infantry defending your borders or enough aircraft to defend industry, you will see the separate theatres requesting units from you on the production screen.

This makes the game easy mode. Just keep hitting the "build" button next to the requested units, and turn automatic deployment on. Cake. This is actually a good representation of what it would be like to lead a nation. Just tell your generals "these are the areas we need to capture," and they'll make up their plans for it, and carry it out on their own. This allows you to focus on production efficiency, research, politics, intelligence, and the other facets of the game without being overwhelmed. All you have to do is keep supplying fresh units and objectives, and indicate to the AI when they should be attacking or holding their ground.
As for DH, it's much more of a hands on approach to war, from what I can tell. You must control each army individually, but the provinces are larger and fewer in number. Directing offensives, however, seems to be pretty easy, and combat in general seems much more simplistic, a bit like HoI IV is looking to be. I can't tell you much beyond that because I don't own it myself, but there are some obvious differences. The main issue I have with it is the UI and the map. Not the best looking and a little clunky, but I'm sure there are plenty of mods that will help that out.

As for which one you should purchase, well, just weigh what I've stated above and choose the one that sounds more appealing to you. With the Summer sale coming up soon, I would say you could probably pick both of them up along with the entirety of HoI III's DLC (of which you'll at the least want Semper Fi, For the Motherland, and Their Finest Hour, for playability reasons as well as content) for less than $40. They both are great games, so if you get the opportunity to play both, go for it. In any case, good luck on whichever battlefield you choose!
*EDIT: sorry for the wall of text.

Popoto fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Jan 30, 2016

# ? Jan 30, 2016 16:43

Randarkman: Jul 18, 2011

catlord posted:

I love the name Magyaristan though. I don't know why but I do.

Yeah, I like it too, I just looked up the Turkish name for Hungary though.

I'm working my way through Anatolia and the Caucasus at the moment and just noticed that the province code for Ganja in the Caucasus is 420.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 17:12

Psychotic Weasel: Jun 24, 2004; Bang! You're dead.

Pimpmust posted:

the dating sim visual novel genre, it's booming on steam I tell ya'

Apart from the odd F2P or MOBA garbage that I skip, all of those titles are from dating sims that Steam recommends to me. It's about 5% of what Steam has recommended to me since they introduced Discovery Queues.

Paradox may as well get in on the ground floor if Steam is going to break into the AO and X rated games markets.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 17:18

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

Pimpmust posted:

I'm still waiting for Paradox to announce their entry into the dating sim visual novel genre, it's booming on steam I tell ya'

Dating advice pop-ups from Johan-Sempai (and Hitler-kun)

I'd buy it. :nyoron:

# ? Jan 30, 2016 18:19

LordMune: Nov 21, 2006; Helim needed to be invisible.

Casus Bellifriend

(nice joke A++)

# ? Jan 30, 2016 19:14

Space Pussy: Feb 19, 2011

Barnaby Barnacle posted:

Reynolds has been working on freemium mobile games. So he might as well be dead and in hell.

Yeah I don't blame him going for that easy facebook/mobile money. To this day I still see people thinking Sid Meier was responsible for Civ 2 and AC.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 19:27

Torrannor: Apr 27, 2013; ---FAGNER---
TEAM-MATE

Space Pussy posted:

Yeah I don't blame him going for that easy facebook/mobile money. To this day I still see people thinking Sid Meier was responsible for Civ 2 and AC.

With a name like Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, can you blame people for thinking that?

# ? Jan 30, 2016 19:35

Shark Sandwich: Sep 6, 2010; by R. Guyovich

Is it bad I only really want HoI4 for Kaiserreich?

# ? Jan 30, 2016 22:21

Darkrenown: Jul 18, 2012; please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

A Buttery Pastry posted:

I love you France-sama.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt4_TEHV0XQ

:love:

# ? Jan 30, 2016 22:27

csm141: Jul 19, 2010; i care, i'm listening, i can help you without giving any advice; Pillbug

Slaughterhouse-Ive posted:

Is it bad I only really want HoI4 for Kaiserreich?

If not for the alt history options inherent in the focus trees, I'd probably play KR exclusively after the second game.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 22:33

Deceitful Penguin: Feb 16, 2011

Gods, I couldn't even imagine how the crowd at the Paradox forums would transform if they made Hetalia games.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 23:17

BravestOfTheLamps: Oct 12, 2012; by FactsAreUseless; Lipstick Apathy

The metamorphosis will be painful, but when I shall emerge out my chrysalis, *~Third Reich-sempai~^ will finally notice me

# ? Jan 30, 2016 23:19

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

Darkrenown posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qt4_TEHV0XQ

You could have got like 4th place at Eurovision with this one, or Prestige. Casus Belli would of course be disqualified for having warlike/nationalist lyrics.

# ? Jan 30, 2016 23:36

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# ? May 9, 2024 21:00

Nut to Butt: Apr 13, 2009; by FactsAreUseless

StarMinstrel posted:

So, I've been watching the WWW videos and it got me wanting to try up HoI again. I heard the 3rd isn't superb though, so should I just go for the second one instead? Tips and hints on what I should look for to have fun and learn without to much problem how to play?

/edit/
Does this write up sounds right? Seems I would enjoy HoI 3 more what with not having to micro manage every single details.

im not a big HOI fan, but that quote sounds about right. i personally prefer kaiserreich for hoi2:dh over hoi3, just bc alt history is more interesting to me than a ww2 rematch, and i dont bounce off of darkest hour like i do hoi3. i also think the level of automation in hoi3 kinda subverts the whole "war" aspect of a very narrowly focused war game, but i havent spent much time w it.

Randarkman posted:

I'm working my way through Anatolia and the Caucasus at the moment and just noticed that the province code for Ganja in the Caucasus is 420.

nice

# ? Jan 31, 2016 00:57

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