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Complexity is bad, overall. Good design should aim to simplify things whenever it can - as one notable frenchman said, perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away. Of course, there are some things that are overall good, that come with a side-effect of making the game more complex - but complexity is the cost you pay for those good things. Making something more complicated purely for the sake of complexity is one of the worst things you could be doing.
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Jan 2, 2020 11:59
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Jabor posted:Complexity is bad, overall. Good design should aim to simplify things whenever it can - as one notable frenchman said, perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away. You have to relate this to Imperator somehow for it to not be just platitudes. 
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Jan 2, 2020 12:25
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ilitarist posted:Yeah, Imperator systems were more interconnected too. Like war killing and displacing POPs on a large scale thus affecting economy, diplomacy affecting who you trade with and thus allowing for a variety of bonuses. Province geography combines with trade goods making every province very unique. Combination of available resources like steppe horses or elephant with your cultural traiditions means that culture, ideas, trade and military systems are tied to each other in a very complex way. Having 4 MP types meant that you have an interesting periods of selective abandunce and available resources affect your strategy as opposed of current system of you always getting richer. Nah, like the only part of that remotely contributing to complexity was POPs.
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Jan 2, 2020 12:58
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There are a lot of mechanics in Imperator which I'd really like in ck3 or eu5. - Pops (how they migrate and are impacted by war, how they really evolve over time, impact on culture and religion) - Difference between settlements and cities - Tech (how you can influence it by building cities, how it's a simple system that does not need tech groups or tons of scripted events to function, although there should be more impact from bordering/trading with other advanced nations) - Provinces - Trade goods and bonusses (mostly because of impact of diplomacy and strategic bonusses, although I prefer the way eu4 calculates commerce income and uses trade power) - Aggressive expansion (the more you have the faster it decreases) - Army automation - Food and attrition I'm probably forgetting some as well.
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Jan 2, 2020 13:20
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The relation is that a lot of the "complexity" in Imperator (at least at launch) seems like complexity for it's own sake, rather than serving some concrete purpose. EU4 has similar issues, though a lot of that comes down the DLC model.
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Jan 2, 2020 13:22
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Jabor posted:Complexity is bad, overall. Good design should aim to simplify things whenever it can - as one notable frenchman said, perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away. The poet you're quoting was a poet and aviator and he was talking about airplanes (and machines in general), and regarding humanities efforts to streamline things as beautiful and the natural order of things. I love this quote but it's often misinterpreted. I think you're close to his meaning tho. Underlying complexity fine, as long as, as de Saint-Exupery desired, the outcome the user/viewer experiences is simple and feels natural. After all, some things must naturally be complex (an airplane or a classical period political simulator), but they shouldn't feel that way, they should feel natural. I think that's where imperator faltered somewhat, it feels dry and mechanical, rather than feeling immersive in its period.
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Jan 2, 2020 14:42
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ilitarist posted:Yeah, Imperator systems were more interconnected too. Like war killing and displacing POPs on a large scale thus affecting economy, diplomacy affecting who you trade with and thus allowing for a variety of bonuses. Province geography combines with trade goods making every province very unique. Combination of available resources like steppe horses or elephant with your cultural traiditions means that culture, ideas, trade and military systems are tied to each other in a very complex way. Having 4 MP types meant that you have an interesting periods of selective abandunce and available resources affect your strategy as opposed of current system of you always getting richer. This is kind of just a ton of nonsense, though? Stacking modifiers is not complexity in and of itself. It's hardly even engaging.
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Jan 2, 2020 19:36
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Of course it's not a complexity when we realize that complexity is not about a number of moving parts but about what you like.
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Jan 2, 2020 20:47
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Cease to Hope posted:the risk, here, is repeating EU4, where every religion turned into escalating rats-nests of mechanics that have nothing to do with the religion's role in history or the actual practices of its adherents Problem being that people seem to legitimately like the escalating rats nest of mechanics even when they make the game clunky as gently caress, because "my unique regional experience, every country must feel different". No better way to force things to feel different than having an entirely separate dumb religion or government subgame attached to the game depending on which part of the map you're on. YF-23 posted:I played Imperator after the 1.1 patch and it felt... weird. Like a lot of the systems in that game are optional. The thing I noticed the most was a lack of tooltips or otherwise adequate in-game explanations, I'd have to hunt down things in the interface myself. I didn't realise building roads was a thing you could do until much later, and the road connections in a province then have an effect on pop promotion speed; but the game won't tell you that, rather it will let you discover it yourself. If you never think to look too hard at your options in the army you can easily go through the entire game without realising they're there. Similarly with army tactics, the animal button, which looked to me like an on-off toggle because it had the appearance of a button and was described in similar terms as the generals' abilities in HoI4 in its tooltip; it took until I got curious enough to click it to discover that it's essentially a dropdown choice of passive bonii to troop types. Yeah Imperator's biggest and still existing problem is that the UI is horrible
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Jan 3, 2020 19:08
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Also apparently for the less well-known religions the rat's nest can be a turn-off because it's too silly and caricatured. I've seen zoroastrians online less than pleased that thanks to CK2, their religion is now widely known as "the one that lets you gently caress your sister" and nothing else.
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Jan 3, 2020 19:18
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Yeah I'll admit I kinda like the EU4 rat's nest of mechanics, but I wish it was more grounded in reality than poo poo like "play Russia, have infinite infantry".
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Jan 3, 2020 19:40
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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PittTheElder posted:Yeah I'll admit I kinda like the EU4 rat's nest of mechanics, but I wish it was more grounded in reality than poo poo like "play Russia, have infinite infantry".
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Jan 3, 2020 22:13
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AAAAA! Real Muenster posted:Infinite Infantry that get a bigger bonus to their fire value than anyone else, too.
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Jan 3, 2020 22:28
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When powerful countries get immersion stuff in the future, I'd like more effort spent making it add to the challenge and not just be extra bonuses- like I've said, ideally a country like France, Russia, or Castile for an experienced player wouldn't end up so dreadfully easy that they are never touched.
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Jan 3, 2020 23:23
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Yeah but then you'd actually need meaningful internal mechanics
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Jan 3, 2020 23:31
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I feel like the way that mechanics should be done is to think of how to add this in as an interesting system that anyone could make use of given the right circumstances, but it's most likely to be used by the particular nation it's designed around. Like if you take CK2 as an example, if you start out in the steppes as a nomad, that gets you access to nomadic gameplay, which is limited to them but it's a big region so it's not just "one nation". So that's mechanics from Horse Lords. But if you wanted to, you could pretty easily convert to Catholicism and get the ability to join in with the new crusades added by Holy Fury, and the other catholic stuff added by Sons of Abraham. If you settle as a tribe, you get access to the tribal mechanics from Charlemagne, then later you could become a merchant republic to play with mechanics from The Republic. All the while you've got stuff from Reaper's Due, Monk's and Mystics, Way of Life, and Conclave to play with, because the bulk of the features from those DLCs are active for everyone all the time, and Jade Dragon because you're going to be close enough to the east to have access to the China mechanics. So that's 10 DLCs where you get to use the bulk of the features added (rather than minor stuff like retinues from Legacy of Rome, hence why I haven't counted it), because they were added in a way that you can get full access to them without needing to tag switch via console or anything, you can do it all via normal gameplay. Out of that entire set, Horse Lords is really the only one you can't "convert" into. Starting as Feudal also limits your ability to switch government types but you can still pretty easily switch religion or culture if you want to get into a specific thing related to those. Very little in CK2 is actually hard-locked to specific tags and that's why it just works better to me than the way EU4's DLC model is set up. Basically the only DLC content that's mostly gated behind one specific nation is Legacy of Rome with its focus on content for the Byzantines.
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Jan 4, 2020 02:37
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The Cheshire Cat posted:I feel like the way that mechanics should be done is to think of how to add this in as an interesting system that anyone could make use of given the right circumstances, but it's most likely to be used by the particular nation it's designed around. I think devs really want countries to feel unique. E.g. your Poland can expand East, switch religion and culture, cover the same territory as historical Russia, have the capital in the same place - but it won't get unique mission or government or modifiers. Summoning Streltsy is only for those who were East Slavs in 1444, if you were West Slav at that point and switched later you don't get that. And of course, devs could have implemented some sort of "Royal Guard" system that would have a special meaning for select nations (by the way Russia is far from the best fit for that idea cause Streltsy do not exist for most of the period and in general are just another name for the soldier, not some special Pretorian-style guard. Russians had something like that later and it was called - you won't believe this - Imperial Guard). But then you wouldn't feel playing Russia is as unique. Endless games (by Amplitude) did similar things nicely. They usually release an expansion with a big feature and a faction that specializes in using it. E.g. Endless Legend had espionage expansion with a faction that can't do research themselves and is forced to use espionage (it has a lot of other unique stuff apart from that). Everyone else can spy too but they don't get as good at it. That systems seem to work fine. Another reason devs might not do that is their commitment to the idea of every DLC being optional which probably turns game development for them as hellish as it is for a new player. Now if they add feature that breaks Streltsy only Russia suffers. And they don't have to worry about, say, Iberian country becoming Russia and having a weird combination of Metropoly, Order and Boyar interaction or something.
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Jan 4, 2020 08:45
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Also apparently for the less well-known religions the rat's nest can be a turn-off because it's too silly and caricatured. I've seen zoroastrians online less than pleased that thanks to CK2, their religion is now widely known as "the one that lets you gently caress your sister" and nothing else. yeah. CK2 tried to recapture the magic of TOG several times (and arguably did a couple times) but the weird silly fun neopagan fantasy poo poo isn't necessarily a good model for everything see also: satanists The Cheshire Cat posted:I feel like the way that mechanics should be done is to think of how to add this in as an interesting system that anyone could make use of given the right circumstances, but it's most likely to be used by the particular nation it's designed around. Like if you take CK2 as an example, if you start out in the steppes as a nomad, that gets you access to nomadic gameplay, which is limited to them but it's a big region so it's not just "one nation". etc. the downside is that not all of these mechanics generalize well. it was a problem starting in sword of islam, which encouraged you to jail and isolate your sons by design, but continued as far as horse lords, where every steppe-dweller regardless of culture is a would-be genghis khan (but all of the finns are sedentary?)
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Jan 4, 2020 10:31
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Cease to Hope posted:it was a problem starting in sword of islam, which encouraged you to jail and isolate your sons by design Tbf isn't that what the ottomans did? Though that's on the tail end of CK (or maybe after, they might have only started doing it later, I don't remember).
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Jan 4, 2020 10:45
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Staltran posted:Tbf isn't that what the ottomans did? Though that's on the tail end of CK (or maybe after, they might have only started doing it later, I don't remember). yeah (and IIRC you're right about the timeline) but there are a whole lot of muslims who were not turks, and most people aren't going to be playing turks anyhow because of the situation at most starting dates
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Jan 4, 2020 10:49
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Staltran posted:Tbf isn't that what the ottomans did? Though that's on the tail end of CK (or maybe after, they might have only started doing it later, I don't remember).
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Jan 4, 2020 13:53
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Can someone please make a mapgame about what really matters in history, which is dumplings?
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Jan 6, 2020 01:57
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x-posting from the hearts of iron thread420 Gank Mid posted:Mapgoons are playing a new, weird, completely a-historic Hearts of Iron game starting this next Sunday January 12th at 8pm UTC and running 3 hours sessions every following Sunday until we're all dead!
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Jan 6, 2020 03:10
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:Can someone please make a mapgame about what really matters in history, which is dumplings? 1. What is this book e: removed dumb question because I read the map better
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Jan 6, 2020 05:32
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saved up enough pasta mana to shift to little twirly raviolis, but I keep getting awful butchers so I'm still stuck filling them with boiled lamb in the 17th century
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Jan 6, 2020 06:41
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VostokProgram posted:1. What is this book Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History by Rachel Laudan
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Jan 6, 2020 06:49
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So, I was browsing Steam today and came across an upcoming Grand Strategy game not made by Paradox? https://store.steampowered.com/app/946990/Secret_Government/ Definitely seems inspired by them, but I was wondering if anyone else had more info/thoughts?
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Jan 19, 2020 16:51
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Paradox knockoffs tend to vary wildly from "absolute trash" to "yeah it's janky and kinda cheap looking but so are all the classic paradox games there's good bones under that interface." I have no idea where this one is gonna land though never heard of it until now.
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Jan 19, 2020 17:02
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It's got "secret" in the name so it has very large boots to fill
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Jan 19, 2020 18:34
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DMW45 posted:So, I was browsing Steam today and came across an upcoming Grand Strategy game not made by Paradox? With games like this, I always struggle to judge them fairly as riffing off Paradox or not; Paradox games really defined the genre, for better or worse. Anyway, I dug up this thread because apparently there's been some drama with Paradox ghosting a bunch of streamers? Anyone know what that's about?
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Jan 20, 2020 18:32
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The only thing I heard of is that Arumba didn't get invited to a LAN party they were hosting and he was upset they didn't contact him to tell him he wasn't invited.
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Jan 20, 2020 19:20
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Arumba is a whiny trash person, news at 11.
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Jan 20, 2020 21:43
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I think any "influencer" is by definition some kind of narcissist
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Jan 20, 2020 21:56
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Hellioning posted:The only thing I heard of is that Arumba didn't get invited to a LAN party they were hosting and he was upset they didn't contact him to tell him he wasn't invited. probably best that they don't put a guy who can't read text when he's under pressure in a multiplayer in-person situation, tbh he'd end up screaming about how it wasn't fair that he married a priestess instead of a princess or something
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Jan 20, 2020 22:19
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Secret Government has a pretty boring name. The theme is cool, but they're pretty vague so far about what the mechanics or core gameplay would look like. I can imagine the idea applying not just to secret cabals but to all kinds of non-state actors. The developer GameTrek looks like a small Russian studio with one other published game (pictured), so I wonder if they really have the ability to make a game like the current Paradox games. 
Vivian Darkbloom fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Jan 20, 2020 |
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Jan 20, 2020 22:21
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Jazerus posted:
Screwing up in a funny way is the best path to a streamer Olympus.
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Jan 21, 2020 06:45
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Enjoy posted:I think any "influencer" is by definition some kind of narcissist To be fair, that's Paradox's (possibly) derogatory term for streamers, not what they call themselves.
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Jan 21, 2020 20:41
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Family Values posted:To be fair, that's Paradox's (possibly) derogatory term for streamers, not what they call themselves. Nope, that’s industry standard. Not derogatory.
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Jan 21, 2020 22:23
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HerpicleOmnicron5 posted:Nope, that’s industry standard. Not derogatory. I don’t know about the ‘industry’, but all the streamers seem to refer to themselves as streamers, and generally when you ignore what people call themselves and apply your own label to them it betrays a certain amount of antagonism.
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Jan 21, 2020 23:28
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Family Values posted:I don’t know about the ‘industry’, but all the streamers seem to refer to themselves as streamers, and generally when you ignore what people call themselves and apply your own label to them it betrays a certain amount of antagonism. There are influencers that are not streamers, and streamers that aren't influencers. It's an umbrella term, and this post is ridiculous.
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Jan 21, 2020 23:34
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