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

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: Tim Cook? How many divisions has he got?

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IncredibleIgloo: Feb 17, 2011

Gaius Marius posted:

You're comparing a sale price to a full retail price. Counterpoint Crusader Kings 2 is still $40 retail and you'd be hard pressed to find a game on psn that's five years old that hasn't been marked down. If you're going to defend them at least use like examples.

There are few games that continue to receive free content updates for five years though, so it might be hard to find an apt comparison.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 01:42

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# ? May 23, 2024 06:52

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

Koramei posted:

It's a different model though. Lower starting price but constant support for years. There might be an analogue but I don't think it's fair to compare it to a AAA game.

Plus it goes on steeper sales than PSN games ever do.

The constant support is supposed to be paid for by the DLC however, not continuous sales of the base game. At least that's my understanding of the theory.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 01:46

Gaius Marius: Oct 9, 2012

IncredibleIgloo posted:

There are few games that continue to receive free content updates for five years though, so it might be hard to find an apt comparison.

"Free content" is a bit of a stretch when you consider that you need to spend in excess of a hundred dollars to get a complete game.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 01:50

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

When it comes to more 'mainstream' titles and devs there's not a whole lot I can think of that shares the same model Paradox is now using, but one thing that immediately comes to mind is The Sims; EA has been milking that cow for over a decade now and I remember when the second one came out I had an entire shelf of expansion pack boxes lined up at one point (that was fun to install, back in the days of CDs). Then there's a few train/plane/ship sims that live on for years with absurdly overpriced add ons and packs (as I type this, Train Simulator has CDN$ 6,553.48 worth of DLC on Steam right now, the total would be higher but about 1/4 of it is on sale).

You also have your more grog type games that look like they're from 1995 and hit the market at $90+ and stay there forever. Christ, Distant Worlds cost a fortune and was a huge pain in the rear end to buy and install before the developer finally relented and listed it on Steam. I think I've only ever seen it on sale once since 2014.

I'm not going to step in and defend Paradox because I really haven't been paying attention to what they've been doing with their prices (so far as I can tell, they haven't changed the USD price points) and I'm not about to white knight for a corporation. But at the end of the day they make things I like playing and I understand the people that make this poo poo aren't doing it as a hobby and have bills to pay. So long as the prices aren't outrageous or the product doesn't look like a cheap cash grab I'll probably continue to buy stuff from them.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 01:54

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

YF-23 posted:

The constant support is supposed to be paid for by the DLC however, not continuous sales of the base game. At least that's my understanding of the theory.

Given the brick wall difficulty curve I assume their model gets by most of the way on DLC sales, but shores up the numbers by youtubes following DLC launch causing random people to buy the base game at full price but with no DLC to see that oh god how do I actually do anything and then never think about it again. But its hard to test that hunch because Steamspy can't see DLC attachment rates.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 02:00

Mans: Sep 14, 2011; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Koramei posted:

How? It's one of the fairest on the entire market. You get half the stuff for free and can pick and choose whether you wanna pay for cosmetic/audio stuff or just the base expansion. The big shortcoming is how it favors feature creep but that's not normally what people complain about.

I'm not even sure how half the mechanics of EU4 would work without buying the DLC and you literally have to buy a 20 euro DLC to join an alliance if you are a minor power in HoI4, a game that has already 40 or 50 euros worth of DLC while the AI still doesn't know the concept of defendng, flanking or literally building motorized infantry.

So yeah, their DLC policy is very questionable.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 02:28

Marshal Prolapse: Jun 23, 2012; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

Gaius Marius posted:

You're comparing a sale price to a full retail price. Counterpoint Crusader Kings 2 is still $40 retail and you'd be hard pressed to find a game on psn that's five years old that hasn't been marked down. If you're going to defend them at least use like examples.

Yeah, but the base game goes on sale a lot. Hell usually when a new DLC comes out.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 02:47

WhiskeyWhiskers: Oct 14, 2013; "هذا ليس عادلاً."
"هذا ليس عادلاً على الإطلاق."
"كان هناك وقت الآن."
(السياق الخفي: للقراءة)

Mans posted:

you literally have to buy a 20 euro DLC to join an alliance if you are a minor power in HoI4

No you don't.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 03:06

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!

Gaius Marius posted:

"Free content" is a bit of a stretch when you consider that you need to spend in excess of a hundred dollars to get a complete game.

What that doesn't make any sense.

The fact that there is also paid content doesn't not make free content any less free.

Free is free.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 05:48

corn in the bible: Jun 5, 2004; Oh no oh god it's all true!

just buy darkest hour, it's the only good hoi anyway

# ? Jun 18, 2017 05:54

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

Hoi was never good.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 05:57

corn in the bible: Jun 5, 2004; Oh no oh god it's all true!

uPen posted:

Hoi was never good.

darkest hour is good

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:00

Vanilla Mint Ice: Jul 17, 2007; A raccoon is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

Ah the lost art of using the word literally. Let's see a random example:
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to wave a white flag for them to end the war [in a multiplayer LAN game].
vs
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to literally wave a white flag for them to end the war.

The first statement you could take with multiple meanings, he could've referred to jumping up and down while waving his arms and yelling stop, or telling everyone that they concede. But in the second one there is no other way to interpret the statement, the writer had to, quite literally, wave a white flag for the jerks to stop vaporizing all his manpower.

Now let's look at an example of misusing the word:
you literally have to buy a 20 euro DLC to join an alliance if you are a minor power in HoI4

Why was the word literally used here? Nevermind the accuracy of the statement because who cares, was there anything wrong with just saying 'you have to buy a blah blah to bleh bleh bleh'? What was that man trying to say? Was he showing off his low level of education by being unable to use the correct words to show emphasis? Or did he for the sake of comedy harm his own argument by making it sound ridiculous? :thunk:

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:01

corn in the bible: Jun 5, 2004; Oh no oh god it's all true!

Vanilla Mint Ice posted:

Ah the lost art of using the word literally. Let's see a random example:
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to wave a white flag for them to end the war [in a multiplayer LAN game].
vs
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to literally wave a white flag for them to end the war.

The first statement you could take with multiple meanings, he could've referred to jumping up and down while waving his arms and yelling stop, or telling everyone that they concede. But in the second one there is no other way to interpret the statement, the writer had to, quite literally, wave a white flag for the jerks to stop vaporizing all his manpower.

Now let's look at an example of misusing the word:
you literally have to buy a 20 euro DLC to join an alliance if you are a minor power in HoI4

Why was the word literally used here? Nevermind the accuracy of the statement because who cares, was there anything wrong with just saying 'you have to buy a blah blah to bleh bleh bleh'? What was that man trying to say? Was he showing off his low level of education by being unable to use the correct words to show emphasis? Or did he for the sake of comedy harm his own argument by making it sound ridiculous?

oh my god shut up

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:02

feller: Jul 5, 2006

Vanilla Mint Ice posted:

Ah the lost art of using the word literally. Let's see a random example:
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to wave a white flag for them to end the war [in a multiplayer LAN game].
vs
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to literally wave a white flag for them to end the war.

The first statement you could take with multiple meanings, he could've referred to jumping up and down while waving his arms and yelling stop, or telling everyone that they concede. But in the second one there is no other way to interpret the statement, the writer had to, quite literally, wave a white flag for the jerks to stop vaporizing all his manpower.

Now let's look at an example of misusing the word:
you literally have to buy a 20 euro DLC to join an alliance if you are a minor power in HoI4

Why was the word literally used here? Nevermind the accuracy of the statement because who cares, was there anything wrong with just saying 'you have to buy a blah blah to bleh bleh bleh'? What was that man trying to say? Was he showing off his low level of education by being unable to use the correct words to show emphasis? Or did he for the sake of comedy harm his own argument by making it sound ridiculous?

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:04

fermun: Nov 4, 2009

Vanilla Mint Ice posted:

Ah the lost art of using the word literally. Let's see a random example:
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to wave a white flag for them to end the war [in a multiplayer LAN game].
vs
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to literally wave a white flag for them to end the war.

The first statement you could take with multiple meanings, he could've referred to jumping up and down while waving his arms and yelling stop, or telling everyone that they concede. But in the second one there is no other way to interpret the statement, the writer had to, quite literally, wave a white flag for the jerks to stop vaporizing all his manpower.

Now let's look at an example of misusing the word:
you literally have to buy a 20 euro DLC to join an alliance if you are a minor power in HoI4

Why was the word literally used here? Nevermind the accuracy of the statement because who cares, was there anything wrong with just saying 'you have to buy a blah blah to bleh bleh bleh'? What was that man trying to say? Was he showing off his low level of education by being unable to use the correct words to show emphasis? Or did he for the sake of comedy harm his own argument by making it sound ridiculous?

Linguistic prescriptivists to the guillotine.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:05

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

Vanilla Mint Ice posted:

Ah the lost art of using the word literally. Let's see a random example:
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to wave a white flag for them to end the war [in a multiplayer LAN game].
vs
They were so bloodthirsty that I had to literally wave a white flag for them to end the war.

The first statement you could take with multiple meanings, he could've referred to jumping up and down while waving his arms and yelling stop, or telling everyone that they concede. But in the second one there is no other way to interpret the statement, the writer had to, quite literally, wave a white flag for the jerks to stop vaporizing all his manpower.

Now let's look at an example of misusing the word:
you literally have to buy a 20 euro DLC to join an alliance if you are a minor power in HoI4

Why was the word literally used here? Nevermind the accuracy of the statement because who cares, was there anything wrong with just saying 'you have to buy a blah blah to bleh bleh bleh'? What was that man trying to say? Was he showing off his low level of education by being unable to use the correct words to show emphasis? Or did he for the sake of comedy harm his own argument by making it sound ridiculous?

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:07

Randallteal: May 7, 2006; The tears of time

It's weird looking back that Paradox got into publishing big mods for their old games as standalone products. And then the first two (only two that made it to market? Darkest Hour and Arsenal of Democracy?) were basically trying to do the same thing.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:07

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

Randallteal posted:

It's weird looking back that Paradox got into publishing big mods for their old games as standalone products. And then the first two (only two that made it to market? Darkest Hour and Arsenal of Democracy?) were basically trying to do the same thing.

The first fan-game was For the Glory but nobody remembers it since nobody was going to go back to play EU2.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:10

SkySteak: Sep 9, 2010

Randallteal posted:

It's weird looking back that Paradox got into publishing big mods for their old games as standalone products. And then the first two (only two that made it to market? Darkest Hour and Arsenal of Democracy?) were basically trying to do the same thing.

Don't forget Iron Cross!

# ? Jun 18, 2017 06:18

Gort: Aug 18, 2003; Good day what ho cup of tea

I played a shitload of Darkest Hour. Hearts of Iron 4 has made it obsolete.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 09:42

ArchangeI: Jul 15, 2010

Mans posted:

You literally have to buy a 20 euro DLC to join an alliance if you are a minor power in HoI4, a game that has already 40 or 50 euros worth of DLC while the AI still doesn't know the concept of defendng, flanking or literally building motorized infantry.

So yeah, their DLC policy is very questionable.

Small correction: You can join an alliance as a minor without a DLC just fine. HoI 4 has 25 Dollars worth of content/mechanics DLC. The AI was made to not build motorized infantry because motorized infantry is a waste of resources.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 10:43

Splode: Jun 18, 2013; put some clothes on you little freak

I just wish paradox would improve/replace the Clausewitz engine. Most of their games run like poo poo, and the desyncing in multiplayer is horrendous. And that is true for literally(lol) all their games.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 12:02

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Splode posted:

I just wish paradox would improve/replace the Clausewitz engine. Most of their games run like poo poo, and the desyncing in multiplayer is horrendous. And that is true for literally(lol) all their games.

Isn't HOI4 a new engine?

I do feel like CK2 is showing it's age a little lately, especially with how it's far more of a nightmare to mod than any other current-gen game. Aside from Vicky but lol everyone knows that.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 12:06

V for Vegas: Sep 1, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER

Clausewitz is still a 32 bit engine and they are really butting up against the limits of what it can do - it will be interesting to see how paradox manage the change to a 64 bit engine.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 13:06

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

They've always said that building Clausewitz was the biggest gamble Paradox have ever taken as a company. It would be interesting to get a hint at the calculations going on behind 'keep fiddling with Clausewitz' vs 'build something for 2020 and beyond'.

e: particularly given that doing so would mean drawing a line under the current generation of products. EUIV and CK2 might be running into diminishing returns on ideas for DLC but that's certainly not the case for Stellaris and HOI4.

Alchenar fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Jun 18, 2017

# ? Jun 18, 2017 13:18

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

In fairness while I love EUIV it does feel like a bit of a mess alarmingly often. There's just so much stuff in it.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 13:24

Splode: Jun 18, 2013; put some clothes on you little freak

Stellaris is the best example of why they need a new engine. CK2 is a creaky mess but it's an old game now and has a ton of DLC hanging off it, so it's forgivable. Stellaris isn't an old game by any means but it's just as flaky, and will only get worse as they hang more poo poo off of it.

# ? Jun 18, 2017 13:47

Sindai: Jan 24, 2007; i want to achieve immortality through not dying

A new engine isn't going to make the games any faster. The performance bottleneck isn't the engine, it's the gameplay code because that's the part doing tons of pathfinding, AI calculations, and event condition checks every tick.

64-bit will only help if the extra usable memory lets them switch to more memory-hungry but cpu-efficient algorithms.

Splode posted:

I just wish paradox would improve/replace the Clausewitz engine. Most of their games run like poo poo, and the desyncing in multiplayer is horrendous. And that is true for literally(lol) all their games.

They're working on overhauling the multiplayer using Stellaris as a test bed right now. Once it's done I think they want to backport those changes to the other active clausewitz games.

Sindai fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Jun 18, 2017

# ? Jun 18, 2017 14:24

corn in the bible: Jun 5, 2004; Oh no oh god it's all true!

uPen posted:

The first fan-game was For the Glory but nobody remembers it since nobody was going to go back to play EU2.

I play FTG a lot because I miss old-school event driven EU

# ? Jun 18, 2017 14:50

Mans: Sep 14, 2011; by Jeffrey of YOSPOS

ArchangeI posted:

Small correction: You can join an alliance as a minor without a DLC just fine. HoI 4 has 25 Dollars worth of content/mechanics DLC. The AI was made to not build motorized infantry because motorized infantry is a waste of resources.

Fair enough i was badly informed and it was just puppet related mechanics.

Either way, if you think one and a half years of development in a world war 2 game, with experience of three other games made in the same setting, you can't convice the AI to defend territory, try to flank forts or build motorized infantry in a ww2 game then what is the point of buying this mess?

HoI2's metagame was building 2 militia, 1 infantry unit and giving them arty. Turns out that this was not only a bug, it was something that the AI in HoI IV is actually basing itself on.

Amazing.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 00:01

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

SkySteak posted:

So I remember hearing that the Imperialism series is really the other game that comes to close to what Victoria does, particularly when it comes to economic factors. Given the GoG sale is on and both Imperialism games are quite cheap, which one is worth picking up in this case? 1 or 2?

Imperialism 2 is technically set within the EU period of history, whereas Imperialism 1 is set in Victoria.

Imperialism 2 has a bunch of interface/quality-of-life improvements that make it easier to play, but these games are cheap enough that I ended up buying both anyway.

# ? Jun 19, 2017 02:15

corn in the bible: Jun 5, 2004; Oh no oh god it's all true!

Mans posted:

Fair enough i was badly informed and it was just puppet related mechanics.

Either way, if you think one and a half years of development in a world war 2 game, with experience of three other games made in the same setting, you can't convice the AI to defend territory, try to flank forts or build motorized infantry in a ww2 game then what is the point of buying this mess?

HoI2's metagame was building 2 militia, 1 infantry unit and giving them arty. Turns out that this was not only a bug, it was something that the AI in HoI IV is actually basing itself on.

Amazing.

also, tanks were useless in ww2,

# ? Jun 19, 2017 03:40