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IMO CK2 is a game where the best experience is usually had starting as some nobody count in France or the HRE, politicking your family's way into some real power, and then abandoning the save after a few centuries because Jesus who's insane enough to play from 760 to 1444?
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Apr 24, 2020 22:26
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right but thats the entire point, the game is less complex overall than eu4 because of things like this. theres less scope and where the scope is isnt dense enough to make up for it. and i dont think it can be waved away because of "2012". eu4 is only 1 year older, and they both have the same amount of dlc. eu4 has constantly gone back to update stuff, theyre literally reworking the HRE right now, and its not the first time. this is... this is basically my entire point. i get i wrote a lot and its a lot to read but when im saying "'islam is bad in ck2' isnt an excuse when eu4 is much better at actually fleshing things out, this is why it feels less complex and detailed to me" just saying "thats how it is" doesnt add anything. your responses feel like youre replying to points im not making.
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Apr 24, 2020 22:32
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I'd argue EU4 is a lot easier to go back and do big overhauls of though, because the only thing to do is either have wars or build up to wars rather than the internal politics of Crusader Kings. "Complexity" is a meaningless term that nobody ever agrees on, I can argue that CK2 is actually way more complex because despite being a lot jankier around the edges there's at least something to actually do besides go to war or prepare for the next war 
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Apr 24, 2020 22:35
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eu4 gets a lot of poo poo for piling features on top of features through DLC, but that approach is certainly better than "let's make these folks playable and then never touch their mechanics ever again". there is really no reason that islam couldn't have been fixed, except i guess the marketing analysis concluded that people only play christians and pagans (gee, i wonder why?) and the devs were kind of tired of doing half-baked decadence revamps and then wondering why people still weren't playing as muslims, so the financial and creative incentives just weren't there.
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Apr 24, 2020 22:40
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Stux posted:right but thats the entire point, the game is less complex overall than eu4 because of things like this. theres less scope and where the scope is isnt dense enough to make up for it. and i dont think it can be waved away because of "2012". eu4 is only 1 year older, and they both have the same amount of dlc. eu4 has constantly gone back to update stuff, theyre literally reworking the HRE right now, and its not the first time. this is... this is basically my entire point. i get i wrote a lot and its a lot to read but when im saying "'islam is bad in ck2' isnt an excuse when eu4 is much better at actually fleshing things out, this is why it feels less complex and detailed to me" just saying "thats how it is" doesnt add anything. your responses feel like youre replying to points im not making. Actually, EU4 has less scope and what scope there is isn't dense enough to make up for it.
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Apr 24, 2020 22:41
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Crazycryodude posted:I'd argue EU4 is a lot easier to go back and do big overhauls of though, because the only thing to do is either have wars or build up to wars rather than the internal politics of Crusader Kings. "Complexity" is a meaningless term that nobody ever agrees on, I can argue that CK2 is actually way more complex because despite being a lot jankier around the edges there's at least something to actually do besides go to war or prepare for the next war again i dunno, for me i find more to do in the diplo quiet eu4 games than i did trying to do that in ck2, and if anything ck2 was far less punishing for going total war. eu4 has plenty of issues but stuff like AE and coring really does limit your expansion unless you really want to get into truce juggling and then later slamming into max absolutism. in ck2 i just got gigantic with literally nothing stopping me, and i wasnt even trying to because i was genuinely trying to focus on the interpersonal stuff more. there was just no real reason to not expand and when got sick of warring and stopped, my vassals just did it for me and the end result was some internal wars instead to put them in their place. that was one my issues i brought up, that the non-war stuff itself wasnt more compelling or detailed. paradox loves to put flavor in events but the ck2 events repeated endlessly for me and got insanely boring, and the other stuff felt either undynamic and easily gamed or simply not that deep. i expanded on this more earlier. reignonyourparade posted:Actually, EU4 has less scope and what scope there is isn't dense enough to make up for it. i mean it objectively has more scope, whether you personally feel that scope is justified, adequately fleshed out or fun is up to you though. im not saying ck2 is an objectively bad game no one should enjoy, or that anyone is "wrong" for enjoying it more than eu4, just speaking from my personal experience with the game, and asking for other peoples views on why they enjoy ck2 more or feel its more complex so i could possibly go back to it and have more fun with it next time. Stux fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Apr 24, 2020 |
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Apr 24, 2020 22:57
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Yeah EU4 has all kinds of mechanics to stop you from snowballing into a world conquest by 1600, but that doesn't mean there's actually much to the game besides war. AE and coalitions and rivals and everything else are just limits to stop you from doing all your wars right off the bat and steamrolling the planet. When you're waiting for your AE to die down or trying to work around a coalition, you're still thinking about wars and planning for wars and when your AE burns off or the coalition splits up it's time to go to war again. In CK2 you can play politics for decades without fighting a single war and still be engaged trying to massage everyone's family tree so your great-grandson ends up inheriting the Kingdom of England or whatever. In EU4 if you don't want to fight a war or prepare for the war you want to fight in 30 years, there's not much to do besides sit at speed 4 and watch your bank grow.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:07
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Crazycryodude posted:Yeah EU4 has all kinds of mechanics to stop you from snowballing into a world conquest by 1600, but that doesn't mean there's actually much to the game besides war. AE and coalitions and rivals and everything else are just limits to stop you from doing all your wars right off the bat and steamrolling the planet. When you're waiting for your AE to die down or trying to work around a coalition, you're still thinking about wars and planning for wars and when your AE burns off or the coalition splits up it's time to go to war again. In CK2 you can play politics for decades without fighting a single war and still be engaged trying to massage everyone's family tree so your great-grandson ends up inheriting the Kingdom of England or whatever. In EU4 if you don't want to fight a war or prepare for the war you want to fight in 30 years, there's not much to do besides sit at speed 4 and watch your bank grow. right thats what i had heard, but the entire issue here is i didnt feel that actually played out in the game when i tried to engage with it in that way. the playing politics part felt barely more expansive than playing someone like austria in eu4 trying to diplo your way into 1 million PUs. again, i said this pretty early on, but part of why i stopped playing ck2 was specifically the last thing youre saying here: i was sitting there watching the game go by not really doing anything because nothing felt significant. doing the internal stuff was very very static and quickly became dull, messing with societies quickly became repetitive, i found the espionage extremely shallow and with very little punishment for failure. my rulers began bleeding together very early on, even when i was making concerted efforts on my part to differentiate them by doing stuff like joining the assassins and becoming a secret shiite and converting people. so the issue was, and i have said this already, but to reiterate: that on each games own terms of play, with eu4 being nation and expansion focused, and ck2 being individual and internal politic focused, is where i saw the contrasts and issues. eu4 for me is so consistently engaging that i can play it a lot, while i felt tired of ck2 after a very short amount of time. its really nothing to do with what each game is focused on as i approached them both on their own terms, and if anything i am predisposed to enjoying a ck2 style game more, because what initially stopped me from getting into eu4 before was that i have more of an interest in personal relationships and i didnt really care about the era, but it managed to overcome that through being a compelling game. ck2 i shouldve enjoyed more but it fell extremely short for me on the exact things that id heard were its focus because of a lack of detail and complexity to the systems. i feel like im having to repeat a lot of stuff here which is probably even more boring for other people than these long posts already are.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:18
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I think you just don't like CK2 and that's ok
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Apr 24, 2020 23:20
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i would like to like ck2
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Apr 24, 2020 23:22
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Although just as an example of where I see the differences, arranging even one PU much less a bunch in CK2 is the work of decades of planning and arranged marriages and assassinations and other careful prunings of multiple family trees that could be shaken up by somebody unexpectedly having a son when they're 75, or your cousin that was an important part gets the pox and dies, or your daughter gets caught cheating on her husband and they get divorced before they can produce any kids related to you with valid claims on the Duchy of Peasantsfeld, or whatever. Establishing a million PU's in EU4 is the work of clicking the royal marriage button and just waiting for a dice roll.
Crazycryodude fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Apr 24, 2020 |
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Apr 24, 2020 23:22
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I want to mess around with dynasties and internal realm politics and rpg-lite stuff, but with labor unions, gatling guns, and psychoanalysis
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Apr 24, 2020 23:29
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I want to mess around with dynasties and internal realm politics and rpg-lite stuff, but with labor unions, gatling guns, and psychoanalysis This is the actual correct take
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Apr 24, 2020 23:30
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Soup du Jour posted:An argument that would work better if EU4 were any of those things goddamn what a epic burn xD Zane posted:to elaborate: when the mechanics for a grand historical strategy game are more effectively grounded in a pseudo-plausible reconstruction of historical reality, then the 'story' of the gameplay is going to probably be more compelling. the game you're playing now has an interesting correspondence with how actual people might have lived and struggled; how actual historical structures might have operated; how these historical structures constrained and enabled certain human possibilities. it becomes not totally absurd to think about how these constraints and possibilities--as modelled in gameplay--might ultimately correspond, in some way, with your own life I don't even know what your point is. That you can RP easier in CK2? Yeah, ok.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:31
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Crazycryodude posted:Although just as an example of where I see the differences, arranging even one PU much less a bunch in CK2 is the work of decades of planning and assassinations and other careful prunings of multiple family trees that could be shaken up by somebody unexpectedly having a son when they're 75, or your cousin gets the pox and dies, or whatever. Establishing a million PU's in EU4 is clicking the royal marriage button and just waiting for a dice roll. in execution, doing that in ck2 never actually felt compelling to me because its very flat, and it felt like the answer to every political issue ended up being assassinations which just wasnt a particularly enjoyable mechanic to interact with. i guess i just expected more complexity in how the personal interactions played out and crossed over due to how everyone had pushed how that was the focus of the game. i had thought there would be a lot more to it and it would be more dynamic and deep than it was. and again its why eu4 for me executes its concept better, its a game focused on expansion and there is an incredible variety to the nations you can play and the way all the systems work while you do that. i was expecting that level of variety and flavor and detail but on the ruler and interpersonal level in ck2.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:31
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Stux posted:i mean it objectively has more scope, whether you personally feel that scope is justified, adequately fleshed out or fun is up to you though. im not saying ck2 is an objectively bad game no one should enjoy, or that anyone is "wrong" for enjoying it more than eu4, just speaking from my personal experience with the game, and asking for other peoples views on why they enjoy ck2 more or feel its more complex so i could possibly go back to it and have more fun with it next time. Objectively it has less scope, to the point where I sincerely do not understand how you are arguing it has more scope.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:38
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reignonyourparade posted:Objectively it has less scope, to the point where I sincerely do not understand how you are arguing it has more scope. How are you defining scope? Just timeframe?
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Apr 24, 2020 23:40
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Bring back the guy who defined content by install size imo
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Apr 24, 2020 23:43
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I want to mess around with dynasties and internal realm politics and rpg-lite stuff, but with labor unions, gatling guns, and psychoanalysis It's funny you mention this because I always felt the weird framing of who exactly you were playing in Vicky 2 was a bit confusing. Like one of the classic strategies is to deliberately let communist rebels win because being communist gives you a command economy rather than needing to rely on whatever the hell capitalists want to build, but this seems like such an odd thing from a game design perspective - in order to get what you want, you need to deliberately lose.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:52
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yikes! posted:I don't even know what your point is. That you can RP easier in CK2? Yeah, ok. stellaris--eu4/v2 (early modern europe) in space--doesn't count by the way, and in fact proves my point.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:58
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reignonyourparade posted:Objectively it has less scope, to the point where I sincerely do not understand how you are arguing it has more scope. then define how you are assessing scope in this case, because i dont understand either. eu4 deals with the entire planet and all nations on it. ck2 is limited to europe and the surrounding area with some off map mechanics for a few other things.
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Apr 24, 2020 23:58
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Zane posted:imagine a paradox grand strategy game modeled upon a completely imaginary complex system with no plausible relationship to how any human society has ever been historically organized. would something be lost? and if so -- what would that something be? again you are talking about a game where you can become immortal, have a spawn of satan take the throne and use demonic powers, and wrestle a bear to become the best duellist, and eu4s abstraction is not "no plausible relationship to how human society has ever been organised".
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Apr 25, 2020 00:03
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The Cheshire Cat posted:It's funny you mention this because I always felt the weird framing of who exactly you were playing in Vicky 2 was a bit confusing. Like one of the classic strategies is to deliberately let communist rebels win because being communist gives you a command economy rather than needing to rely on whatever the hell capitalists want to build, but this seems like such an odd thing from a game design perspective - in order to get what you want, you need to deliberately lose. Actually you want the capitalists to govern forever so you don't have to click a 1000 times for factories to be built.
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Apr 25, 2020 00:03
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Stux posted:again you are talking about a game where you can become immortal, have a spawn of satan take the throne and use demonic powers, and wrestle a bear to become the best duellist, and eu4s abstraction is not "no plausible relationship to how human society has ever been organised". Zane fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Apr 25, 2020 |
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Apr 25, 2020 00:04
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Zane posted:imagine a paradox grand strategy game modeled upon a completely imaginary complex system with no plausible relationship to how any human society has ever been historically organized. would something be lost? and if so -- what would that something be? You're way overstating whatever mismatch exists between eu4 and history. I also don't think feudalism really existed a la ck2 along with the weird occult poo poo that was just brougt up too. Finally, not everyone shares your drive for a pixel perfect history mapgame also Why the hell would i bring up stellaris in this weird historicity discussion please don't do that feller fucked around with this message at 00:07 on Apr 25, 2020 |
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Apr 25, 2020 00:05
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Zane posted:you can easily disable that stuff my dude. youre the one talking about the game accurately modelling constraints of realistic human society in the alt-history games where weird stuff can happen because its more important to have fun than be an extremely dry perfectly historical game. neither ck2 or eu4 are particularly accurate because being extremely accurate would also be extremely bad for the goal of "a game people want to play and enjoy".
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Apr 25, 2020 00:07
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Party In My Diapee posted:Actually you want the capitalists to govern forever so you don't have to click a 1000 times for factories to be built. yeah you gotta learn to stop worrying and love the laissez-faire
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Apr 25, 2020 00:07
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say what you will about hoi4 (i like hoi4) but it does have probably the most ways to become a communist of any game in history which is admirable.
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Apr 25, 2020 00:09
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yikes! posted:You're way overstating whatever mismatch exists between eu4 and history.
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Apr 25, 2020 00:11
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Stux posted:say what you will about hoi4 (i like hoi4) but it does have probably the most ways to become a communist of any game in history which is admirable. shame theyre also the most undeveloped one and mechanically inferior to anything but democrats
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Apr 25, 2020 00:13
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Davincie posted:shame theyre also the most undeveloped one and mechanically inferior to anything but democrats sure but otoh the first thing i did when LR dropped was play anarchist spain while a single large tear fell down my cheek
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Apr 25, 2020 00:14
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Stux posted:youre the one talking about the game accurately modelling constraints of realistic human society in the alt-history games where weird stuff can happen because its more important to have fun than be an extremely dry perfectly historical game. neither ck2 or eu4 are particularly accurate because being extremely accurate would also be extremely bad for the goal of "a game people want to play and enjoy". this is where these arguments always wind up: “I think that it sucks that EU4 is a game where you have hundreds of thousands of casualties fighting over calais in 1470” vs “oh so you just want it to be a game where you read a wikipedia article about real life history”
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Apr 25, 2020 00:17
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i mean that guy was specifically talking about how eu4 handles the concept of governance and states but go off
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Apr 25, 2020 00:19
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we’re like five posts from that being posted in earnest anyway. this is ultimately a pointless discussion because it’s two groups of people with diametrically different views on what they like about paradox games trying to convince the other that they’re incorrect, wholly unable to grasp why the other believes what they do
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Apr 25, 2020 00:22
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EU4 would be a good game if it was about the tug of war between centralizing authority and feudalism and the growth of trade. Instead it's about???
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Apr 25, 2020 00:24
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Stux posted:then define how you are assessing scope in this case, because i dont understand either. eu4 deals with the entire planet and all nations on it. ck2 is limited to europe and the surrounding area with some off map mechanics for a few other things. Yeah you deal with the whole planet but also you basically only deal with the warfare of the whole planet. "How big is the map" is like the least relevant part of scope.
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Apr 25, 2020 00:28
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Party In My Diapee posted:Actually you want the capitalists to govern forever so you don't have to click a 1000 times for factories to be built. This is actually how I play, although I realize it's sub-optimal.
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Apr 25, 2020 00:31
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Soup du Jour posted:we’re like five posts from that being posted in earnest anyway. this is ultimately a pointless discussion because it’s two groups of people with diametrically different views on what they like about paradox games trying to convince the other that they’re incorrect, wholly unable to grasp why the other believes what they do except i dont want ck2 to be eu4 ive said this like 5 times. the concept of ck2 as sold to me in what other people have said about it is extremely compelling and i would love to enjoy the game in the same way, the problem i had isnt that it isnt eu4, but that it isnt as complex or detailed. like the big thing that ive mentioned was that playing as an islamic nation in a game about internal politics during the crusade era of all things, was completely half baked and lacked unique mechanics and fleshing out. i want to enjoy ck2 as ck2 and i want to know where the depth other people mention is because it doesnt seem to be there for me. i dont want it to be about expansion and i dont want it to be eu4. reignonyourparade posted:Yeah you deal with the whole planet but also you basically only deal with the warfare of the whole planet. "How big is the map" is like the least relevant part of scope. you deal with expansion, and then you have other stuff like development and tech and whatever else layered on that. ck2 doesnt have a larger scope just because its aims are "internal politics". ck2 is a larger timeframe, but it is purposefully a narrower slice, being so heavily focused on europe that anything outside of christians or pagans is a footnote. thats part of the issue i had where i felt penalised for playing as an islamic nation, even one within europe, because i had not picked a leader whos culture and religion fell into the games focus, even though i think it was a completely fair assumption on my part that a game set and based around the crusades wouldve taken some of its focus and applied it to one of the two most important religions in the era. its not just "how big is the map" its "how much attention and detail is there within the map" and that is where eu4 is far larger in scope. you dont like that its focused on expansion and broader politics rather than internal politics and the personal relationships between leaders and thats perfectly fair. and again, that concept is very compelling to me, which is why i would love to love ck2 the way other people do! but ck2 is very purposefully smaller in scope and thats not a negative, its just... a design choice, and im not saying its bad or wrong.
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Apr 25, 2020 00:44
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Stux posted:you deal with expansion, and then you have other stuff like development and tech and whatever else layered on that. ck2 doesnt have a larger scope just because its aims are "internal politics". ck2 is a larger timeframe, but it is purposefully a narrower slice, being so heavily focused on europe that anything outside of christians or pagans is a footnote. thats part of the issue i had where i felt penalised for playing as an islamic nation, even one within europe, because i had not picked a leader whos culture and religion fell into the games focus, even though i think it was a completely fair assumption on my part that a game set and based around the crusades wouldve taken some of its focus and applied it to one of the two most important religions in the era. I do like that stuff, I just don't see how literally any of it constitutes a larger scope.
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Apr 25, 2020 00:47
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i should clarify: my point isn't that eu4 is totally unrealistic and that ck2 is totally realistic; and/or that all grand strategy games should inevitably approach one of these two polarities. my point is that correspondence to historical experience is an important, arguably fundamental, criteria for modelling these gameplay systems -- especially gameplay systems that specifically model the history of (real or imagined) societies over time. and furthermore: that the strength of this correspondence informs the strength of the stories we can then tell about/within these games. why? because as human beings we are interested in the history of human experience. and these sorts of games are 'about' that history on some fundamental level. finally: that ck2 is better at modelling the history it purports to represent without much comparative sacrifice of gameplay. with all that said: there's still a real argument, even within these parameters, about the need to balance gameplay vs realism. it would be more 'realistic' to play a single game as england for 50 years of your actual real life; esp if the mechanics were developed to absorb your attention to a corresponding degree. but time (and many other contents) are quite reasonably ('unrealistically') abstracted. Zane fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Apr 25, 2020 |
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Apr 25, 2020 00:47
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