|
I have more or less the opposite view because stuff like map painting, Kaiserreich epic alt history and Ulm world conquest memes have meant the games don’t have historical mechanics because they don’t aspire to historical outcomes anymore. It saps a lot of depth to make anything possible, there can’t be a representation of material conditions if the baseline idea is that material determinism is boring.
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 01:27
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 13:56 |
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:I thought EU IV’s historical theory was based on National Ideas and Institutions, though the Missions system seems like they are trying to transfer that part of HoI 4. I have to say I don’t really have experience with the game, I’ve just dabbled with it. The DLC obsession with adding new nickle and dime subsystems is honestly what keeps me from playing EU4 nowadays, but that's just predictably lazy, predatory capitalism. As you say, you need all DLC systems to work with all other DLC systems, so in the end you have to juggle a dozen different screens to pile up all your piddly +2.5% bonuses; busywork that punishes you for not fiddling, buttons you just have to click every 5 years for treats like a Facebook social experiment... National Ideas at least back on release actually mattered more, but since every new subsystem has no choice to replicate the same few core game bonuses, anything you get from National Ideas you get from many other sources, so it quickly just becomes another source of nickles and dimes... Would be interested at what point Stellaris was placed in "salvage" mode - back when they first added Alloys?
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 01:56
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:I have more or less the opposite view because stuff like map painting, Kaiserreich epic alt history and Ulm world conquest memes have meant the games don’t have historical mechanics because they don’t aspire to historical outcomes anymore. It saps a lot of depth to make anything possible, there can’t be a representation of material conditions if the baseline idea is that material determinism is boring. They never had historical mechanics to begin with, they just had scripted events and triggers for historical trivia. EU suffers more than any of them because its scope is too big. The transition of from premodern to modern states over 400 years is a gargantuan topic that ends up getting represented as having 30% better trade income etc. Just silly little numbers that don't change the gameplay of moving the map around and clicking things. Also making war the only real way to progress through the game leads to boring gameplay as well. Frosted Flake posted:Finally, who has the dirt on Vicky leaking, the Paradox devs freaking out, and their proclamation they’re disregarding feedback on the mechanics? Some tester leaked a test build, and it was blatantly unfinished. Annoying people attempted to give their feedback based on this leaked build, but since software development works incrementally it was mostly useless and had to be ignored. The core mechanics of the game had already pissed some people off but expecting that to be changed is also pointless. Much ado about nothing, which any sort of hyped game suffers from the bitcoin of weed posted:Honestly the high fantasy total conversion mod Anbennar is a lot more interesting than base game europa 4 at this point since they actually went really crazy with mission trees and wizard goblin bullshit. It makes a decent platform for that sort of thing and for whatever reason mission trees in vanilla are completely loving boring that never really got expanded on at all Anbennar is fun, ironically because it adds narrative to a game (EU4) that had discarded almost all narrative from its historical setting. The narratives are slightly off-standard fantasy stuff but it works. It also creates entirely new mechanics out of the EU4 skeleton like magic and the dwarve's hold-digging projects that tie into the narratives well. Lastly, it sheds any sense of "balance" and just makes end-game reward stuff dramatically, wildly OP. This contrasts to the boring sort of EU4 end-game OP crap like having 15% more discipline, because it involves wyvern cavalry or liches with zombie soldiers, or producing 40% of the world's wine in one province.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 07:51
|
|
|
the bitcoin of weed posted:Honestly the high fantasy total conversion mod Anbennar is a lot more interesting than base game europa 4 at this point since they actually went really crazy with mission trees and wizard goblin bullshit. It makes a decent platform for that sort of thing and for whatever reason mission trees in vanilla are completely loving boring that never really got expanded on at all How's the balance on it, mission trees taken into account? Aimed for "yeah I paint the map, in 1550 as a Euro/Horde power or in 1750 as an African province" types, different enough through the heavy modification that the gameplay decisions are heterogonal, or forgiving but similar? Mandoric has issued a correction as of 08:12 on Aug 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 08:09
|
|
|
PoontifexMacksimus posted:The DLC obsession with adding new nickle and dime subsystems is honestly what keeps me from playing EU4 nowadays, but that's just predictably lazy, predatory capitalism. As you say, you need all DLC systems to work with all other DLC systems, so in the end you have to juggle a dozen different screens to pile up all your piddly +2.5% bonuses; busywork that punishes you for not fiddling, buttons you just have to click every 5 years for treats like a Facebook social experiment... yea, most every paradox game suffers from the same lifecycle problem. first they start out as a buggy mess, then they eventually become playable and fun a few patches (and dlcs) in and in the end they've tacked on so many goddamn bells and whistles that it's just a chore to play
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 08:25
|
|
|
Cerebral Bore posted:yea, most every paradox game suffers from the same lifecycle problem. first they start out as a buggy mess, then they eventually become playable and fun a few patches (and dlcs) in and in the end they've tacked on so many goddamn bells and whistles that it's just a chore to play this is definitely what happened to EU4, a game I really enjoyed at one point but is terrible for it now. I think both HOI4 and CK2 (and now 3) are better for it, though. HOI4 has added a lot of systems but they mostly feel good and apt to the rest of the game, with the possible exception of espionage. EU4 started to get seriously bloated when they added Estates and they've never recovered, only got worse
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 09:20
|
|
|
fortunately nothing could happen to my beloved civilization palindrome has issued a correction as of 10:33 on Aug 9, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 10:23
|
|
|
Civ 4 needs an HD remake so drat bad
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 10:30
|
|
|
Civ 4 was the last time I enjoyed Civ. you know what game absolutely sucked? Civilization IV: Colonization. not only disgustingly racist but it loving sucked to play too
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 10:59
|
|
|
John Charity Spring posted:Civilization IV: Colonization... it loving sucked to play too it's unbelievable how simple the concept was and yet how badly they hosed up the implementation actually, the other game that needs to be remade is Merchant Prince 2
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 11:09
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:it's unbelievable how simple the concept was and yet how badly they hosed up the implementation Yah, the original Colonization was fun as hell and every single thing about the remake sucked.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 11:34
|
|
|
Would say that Meiou and taxes 3 is really fun if you are playing in europe. The entire gameplay loop is about building trade and other stuff alongside funni pre capitalist industry. Oh and there is an involved centralization system too.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 12:05
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:If you were to pick up a submarine study sim, is Silent Hunter III w GWX, Silent Hunter 4 w either Operation Monsun Dark Waters or Knights of Sea Depths II, Silent Hunter 5 with Wolves of Steel or UBOAT the better bet? Wolves of Steel is the most taxing, the manual navigation stuff is awesome. Keeping track of speed and course over time to manually plot your location is awesome fun
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 14:04
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:If you were to pick up a submarine study sim, is Silent Hunter III w GWX, Silent Hunter 4 w either Operation Monsun Dark Waters or Knights of Sea Depths II, Silent Hunter 5 with Wolves of Steel or UBOAT the better bet? I haven't touched Silent Hunter modding since at least 2013, but SH4 is the most straightforward because it just installs straight from Steam and it Just Works right off the bat with Windows 10, but SH5 is just a qualitatively worse experience unless there's some huge mod out there
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 14:27
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:I haven't touched Silent Hunter modding since at least 2013, but SH4 is the most straightforward because it just installs straight from Steam and it Just Works right off the bat with Windows 10, but SH5 is just a qualitatively worse experience unless there's some huge mod out there Wolves of Steel being said huge mod. Although I highly suggest modding some of the campaign objectives, being expected to sink 300k tons of poo poo in each AO is ridiculous
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 14:35
|
|
|
Slim Jim Pickens posted:They never had historical mechanics to begin with, they just had scripted events and triggers for historical trivia. EU suffers more than any of them because its scope is too big. The transition of from premodern to modern states over 400 years is a gargantuan topic that ends up getting represented as having 30% better trade income etc. Just silly little numbers that don't change the gameplay of moving the map around and clicking things. Also making war the only real way to progress through the game leads to boring gameplay as well. PoontifexMacksimus posted:EU has always suffered from not actually having any real unique gameplay element or coherent thoughts about the historical period portrayed.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 14:41
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:This is 100% true of the Dutch government. The only thing they give a poo poo about is "beeldvorming" (imaging / image formation) because this has been the key to winning elections for decades. People will vote for the appearance of efficacy over actual efficacy. On top of that the government consists of committed liberals heavily inspird by US libertarians, so they believe government ought to do next to nothing because it is not efficient at doing things (unlike private enterprise and markets). So we get stories about how our finance minister in the 90s would spend hours a day playing Heroes of Might and Magic III on his work PC. Things have only gotten worse since.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 14:47
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Civ 4 needs an HD remake so drat bad Switch the map from squares to hexes, boom, done.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 14:58
|
|
|
PoontifexMacksimus posted:our finance minister in the 90s would spend hours a day playing Heroes of Might and Magic III on his work PC I bet this was better for the populace of the Netherlands than anything that would have happened if he'd been doing his actual job
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 15:11
|
|
|
Pryor on Fire posted:I keep thinking that Paradox games would be way more fun if they leaned into alt history or fictional fantasy/sci fi stuff more and more, just let games go completely off the rails with random events and good writing. See the TNO or Fallout mods in HOI4 for how fun this can be. In EU4 I want to play as the Aztecs who get a bunch of advanced alien ufo tech and then have to fight undead zombie hordes or something, idk just get weird with it. Communist Germany focus tree coming right around the corner, any day now. I did the HOI4 DLC subscription thingy for 2 months and that was exactly as much as I needed. When it comes to paradox wallet loyalty, I've got all the Stellaris and Surviving Mars stuffs, but I am stuffed. I cannot put another map game into my brain without something falling out. That's a lie, I've been trying to crack into Planetfall for the last week. It's a good Age of Wonders 75% tactical / 25% strategic videogame.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 15:25
|
|
|
PoontifexMacksimus posted:Would be interested at what point Stellaris was placed in "salvage" mode - back when they first added Alloys? I feel like it was a little bit after the Dick update last March that overhauled how planets and population worked. Lem was balancing and then after that they announced the maintenance team that... felt like they did more than the regular content updates but materially did much less.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 15:28
|
|
|
Wanna play DC:Ardennes' Wacht am Rhein scenario vs Frosted Flakes. Germans have a disadvantage in everything except number of artillery tubes but turns out if you know what you are doing you can make that count like a motherfucker.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 15:33
|
|
|
speaking of HOMM, I remember during the early days of the internet that one of the first ways to apply some kind of strategic analysis to the game was to take the total amount of creatures that could be hired from any given town, per week, and then add up all of their collective HP into one big total, and then get a metric of "total HP per week", as well as "HP-per-gold", where higher would be better for example at a Castle, every first day of the week, you would get: 14 Pikemen - 10 HP per unit, 60 gold to recruit one 9 Archers - 10 HP per unit, 100 gold to recruit one 7 Griffins - 25 HP per unit, 200 gold to recruit one 4 Swordsmen - 35 HP per unit, 300 gold to recruit one 3 Monks - 30 HP per unit, 400 gold to recruit one 2 Cavaliers - 100 HP per unit, 1,000 gold to recruit one 1 Angel - 200 HP per Angel, 3,000 gold to recruit one added together, that's 1,035 HP worth of creatures and it would all cost 10,540 gold, or you'd be getting 0.09819 HP per 1 gold [this is not yet including all the various upgrades to increase growth, or the higher HP/cost of upgraded creatures, but lets keep it simple to demonstrate the point] compare this to the Conflux: 20 Pixies - 3 HP per unit, 25 gold to recruit one 6 Air Elemental - 25 HP per unit, 250 gold to recruit one 6 Water Elemental - 30 HP per unit, 300 gold to recruit one 5 Fire Elemental - 35 HP per unit, 350 gold to recruit one 4 Earth Elemental - 40 HP per unit, 400 gold to recruit one 2 Psychic Elemental - 75 HP per unit, 750 gold to recruit one 2 Firebirds - 150 HP per unit, 1,500 gold to recruit one added together, that's 1,175 HP worth of creatures and it would all cost 11,650 gold, or you'd be getting 0.10085 HP per 1 gold so not only does the Conflux get more "raw meat" every week, they also get it cheaper this is sort of a simplistic analysis, since it avoids all sorts of special abilities, ranged attacks, flying, etc., but it's a kind of an economic/production-based lens where even if the Castle player is cleverer or that their Archers and Monks can shoot the mostly-melee Elementals from a distance, that can only go so far before the sheer weight of numbers starts to tell this also calls to mind the on-release, pre-Armageddon's Blade version of HOMM3, where the Angels had a base growth of 2, and did not need gems to be recruited, which at the time made them far-and-away the best town (until, of course, the Conflux arrived, which basically blew all the other towns out of the water)
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 15:35
|
|
|
the only units you need are power liches and vampire lords and enough skelemans to shield them 
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 15:41
|
|
|
Holy poo poo Warlords 3 Darklords Rising got a gog.com release in 2019 and I only found out about it now I know what I'm going to be playing tomorrow
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 16:21
|
|
|
BrotherJayne posted:Wolves of Steel being said huge mod. I must have bought it with an old uPlay account because Ubi’s DRM has me locked out and their support guys haven’t done anything despite me sending the receipts from Steam. Shame. I’ve started a Type IX campaign in Op Monsun for SH4, and while it’s janky, until U Boat or Wolves of Steel adds that type, I suppose this is what I have to work with. It’s too bad Ubisoft has these moments of real brilliance because I would love to write them off at this point. Even the latest AC games and Breakpoint have these touches and detail that I could see being fantastic if they weren’t tied to generic open worlds, collectothons and uPlay.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 16:28
|
|
|
Orange Devil posted:Wanna play DC:Ardennes' Wacht am Rhein scenario vs Frosted Flakes. Germans have a disadvantage in everything except number of artillery tubes but turns out if you know what you are doing you can make that count like a motherfucker. I’m still trying to get through Warsaw to Paris and Case Blue. It’s on my list, and it looks more manageable than the Bulge scenario in War in the West or Command Ops.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 16:32
|
|
|
Mandoric posted:How's the balance on it, mission trees taken into account? Aimed for "yeah I paint the map, in 1550 as a Euro/Horde power or in 1750 as an African province" types, different enough through the heavy modification that the gameplay decisions are heterogonal, or forgiving but similar? it functions similarly enough and the world is also much more dense to the extent that world conquest will actually take a real long time just from the sheer amount of development on the map. Balance on it similarly depends on where you start, most of the different races play completely differently but everywhere outside of the europe equivalent you still just soak up everything in your region then run into whoever blobbed up in the next one over, and so on. Some of the nation types have horrible disasters that only fire once you're big enough to not have any external threats like if you're a dwarf and make too much money you'll get goldcursed and the whole dwarf empire will collapse, that keeps things interesting
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 16:49
|
|
|
KirbyKhan posted:I feel like it was a little bit after the Dick update last March that overhauled how planets and population worked. Lem was balancing and then after that they announced the maintenance team that... felt like they did more than the regular content updates but materially did much less. Man, it's really crazy with Stellaris how they just keep revamping core systems over and over to see what sticks. Forget public beta, this game has been a public alpha.
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 16:54
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Holy poo poo Warlords 3 Darklords Rising got a gog.com release in 2019 and I only found out about it now Holy poo poo. Fucken warlords!
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 18:47
|
|
|
i'm pretty impressed with C:MO's in-game tutorials so far; it seems a lot easier to pick up than CMANO was at any rate
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 19:01
|
|
|
Tankbuster posted:Would say that Meiou and taxes 3 is really fun if you are playing in europe. The entire gameplay loop is about building trade and other stuff alongside funni pre capitalist industry. Oh and there is an involved centralization system too. The fact that estates demanding privilleges hasn't been implemented yet is a major bummer
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 19:21
|
|
|
gradenko_2000 posted:Holy poo poo Warlords 3 Darklords Rising got a gog.com release in 2019 and I only found out about it now Still got my CD  Man, I spent days upon days drawing maps in that game... I'm still annoyed by Gray Mana dominance...
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2022 22:13
|
|
|
John Charity Spring posted:this is definitely what happened to EU4, a game I really enjoyed at one point but is terrible for it now. I think both HOI4 and CK2 (and now 3) are better for it, though. HOI4 has added a lot of systems but they mostly feel good and apt to the rest of the game, with the possible exception of espionage. EU4 started to get seriously bloated when they added Estates and they've never recovered, only got worse I think EU4 hit its peak at around art of war when everything felt really tuned and all bugs fixed, before they started shoving so much unnecessary stuff into the game. I haven't played the game since leviathan and there seems to have been already a new DLC out which is also badly received although not as badly.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 01:33
|
|
|
Frosted Flake posted:I have more or less the opposite view because stuff like map painting, Kaiserreich epic alt history and Ulm world conquest memes have meant the games don’t have historical mechanics because they don’t aspire to historical outcomes anymore. It saps a lot of depth to make anything possible, there can’t be a representation of material conditions if the baseline idea is that material determinism is boring. sad but true
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 01:45
|
|
|
Slavvy posted:Holy poo poo. Fucken warlords! My favourite in the original map was Orcs of Kor because I felt they had far and away the best starting position. Loads and loads of neutral castles and huge distances before you reach another player, whereas some other factions begin right on each others' doorsteps.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 05:38
|
|
|
aurora 2.0 is out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 05:42
|
|
|
Mans posted:I think EU4 hit its peak at around art of war when everything felt really tuned and all bugs fixed, before they started shoving so much unnecessary stuff into the game. Moving away from having a fort in every province was one of the few inspired updates EU4 got: cut down on game tedium and introduced some actual strategy to fort placement
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 10:42
|
|
|
I want to speak in detail about Order of Battle here because that damned game drew me in with the "it's free!" button and then sucked me into grabbing all the DLCs so far while also playing custom made ones. It's a really fantastic beer and pretzel game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 16:17
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 13:56 |
|
|
It's better than Panzer General and it's copies due to how it handles logistics. The naval scenario's are not fun though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 18:07
|
|