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Tbf I think the crucial difference between Paradox games and puzzle games like Outer Wilds is that Paradox games by necessity have a huge variety of possible starts, and thus replaying the game is sorta baked into the premise. I do think it'd be interesting to do a strategy game along these lines (like, say, a take on the fall of the Roman republic where you just play an individual general) but it wouldn't really be a Paradox game
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Feb 18, 2023 14:38
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Again I do think that board games have got some good ideas to steal, in that 99% of the time they're designed around you knowing all the components in the game and how they function but still manage to make interesting things happen with them. Twilight Struggle is about when and how to play all the lovely events you got handed, Comancheria or Spirit Island are about responding to an enemy that behaves in semi predictable ways, plenty of tactical games from Combat Commander to Command & Colors about making do with limited ability to activate your units. If anything the fact that their mechanics are necessarily completely open to the player makes it better, though I'd struggle to see how you can directly adapt it to a real time game.
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Feb 18, 2023 14:46
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Stellaris did introduce a level of "temporary" opacity with Nemesis, the espionage DLC. When you encounter new alien civilizations, you have to go through a first contact period where you try to figure out what their basic deal is (what they look like, how to translate their language, their main beliefs), and even once that's complete, you're still very much in the dark about them. You don't know their fleet strength, their level of technology, their homeworld, etc. You don't even know how much territory they control! You could gamble and invade them, but it could turn out they're much stronger than you. This is information you can glean by either spying on them or by engaging in active diplomacy and various deals. It's a neat idea, but I don't really play aggressively enough for it to matter much to me.
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Feb 18, 2023 14:46
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ThaumPenguin posted:Stellaris did introduce a level of "temporary" opacity with Nemesis, the espionage DLC. When you encounter new alien civilizations, you have to go through a first contact period where you try to figure out what their basic deal is (what they look like, how to translate their language, their main beliefs), and even once that's complete, you're still very much in the dark about them. You don't know their fleet strength, their level of technology, their homeworld, etc. You don't even know how much territory they control! You could gamble and invade them, but it could turn out they're much stronger than you. This is information you can glean by either spying on them or by engaging in active diplomacy and various deals. It's a neat idea, but I don't really play aggressively enough for it to matter much to me. I overall like the mechanic that first contact is a slow process but if they're going to add the opacity and the ability for hostiles to kill your poo poo during that phase, then the devs also need to give you tools to deal with it, and Stellaris didnt do that. AAAAA! Real Muenster fucked around with this message at 17:44 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 17:41
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Reveilled posted:The fact that Anbennar has practically taken over the EU4 thread is I think testament to the idea that maybe we’re getting a little bored of always knowing what’s coming up. Your second time through the Rianvisa or the Hoardcurse will be nowhere near as hard as the first, but so what? EU4 is approaching its tenth anniversary, so the fact that the thread's still active at all suggests Paradox did a decent job with replayability.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:35
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Anbennar is like Dark Souls. Poor explanations and obscure requirements facilitate discussion. From time to time strategy game devs think that people really want immersive games with a lot of obfuscation. If they're lucky they get an opportunity to do something about it later. Civilization 5 was a nice example of this because there was a rationale behind the obfuscation, the idea that players want AI to role play and have secret pacts. Paradox games did that too, I think CK2 had AI decisions in diplomacy eventually revealed. Back in True Hardcore times EU3 told you that both 0% chance and 5% chance are Very Unlikely. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Feb 18, 2023 |
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Feb 18, 2023 19:34
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Tbh I think the appeal of Anbennar is also the fact that the replayability of EU4 comes from how each region, and to a certain extent each tag, gives you a different starting setup with different problems to solve. After ten years, and especially with the current team's ethos of only shuffling around tags and adding MTs and not changing the map layout itself anymore, a lot of players have kind of played the whole map by now. With Anbennar, it's a whole new map full of tags and new regions, so it's essentially giving players a whole new set of starts to pick from and setups/problems to solve.
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Feb 18, 2023 20:46
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Here's a discussion of the presentation of history in HOI4 - in particular the mechanics for Stalin and the devs' interpretations of the "human wave" tactic, which seems to be pretty inaccurate. WWII is more recent and controversial than the material in other Paradox titles, but these are interesting examples at least. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqTAzp71Pb4
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Feb 19, 2023 02:29
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The propaganda about the Soviet "Human Wave" was a complete fabrication and steeped heavily in racism.
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Feb 19, 2023 03:34
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I don't think HOI4 attributes that tactic to the Soviets
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Feb 19, 2023 11:20
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StashAugustine posted:Tbf I think the crucial difference between Paradox games and puzzle games like Outer Wilds is that Paradox games by necessity have a huge variety of possible starts, and thus replaying the game is sorta baked into the premise. I do think it'd be interesting to do a strategy game along these lines (like, say, a take on the fall of the Roman republic where you just play an individual general) but it wouldn't really be a Paradox game Sure, but that’s part of my point here, transparency is less important for replayability when there’s that huge variety of starts. If the Time of Troubles has vague, partially randomised starting conditions and then a detailed narrative event chain, and that makes your first playthrough as Russia more engaging, one of the trade offs supposedly would be that later playthroughs will be less enjoyable because the player will eventually work out what the conditions are or look up which options are best to pick in the events. Which is a genuine trade-off that games like the Outer Wilds make, and those games are still excellent, so one half of my point is that we shouldn’t take it as a given that making that trade off is necessarily a bad thing. But the other half of my point is that in a paradox game you’re not even making that trade off to the same degree. OK sure your second playthrough as Russia might be less impactful, less challenging because you know how to handle the Time of Troubles, but your next game of Europa Universalis almost certainly isn’t even going to be as Russia. Or the next, or the next. So is it all that much of a problem that the player could eventually work out the hidden information that influences the Time of Troubles disaster?
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Feb 19, 2023 13:30
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starting as different nations and causing strange historical divergence is the replayability of EU4 for me. EG weird poo poo can happen elsewhere on the map when you start as Scotland, completely absorb England (and culture convert them to extinction) and then hamstring/eat (vassalize) France.
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Feb 19, 2023 16:07
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Gort posted:I don't think HOI4 attributes that tactic to the Soviets It doesn't say the Soviets invented it, but they and China are the only ones to start with the doctrine.
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Feb 19, 2023 18:23
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Vivian Darkbloom posted:It doesn't say the Soviets invented it, but they and China are the only ones to start with the doctrine. Soviet AI doesn't go down that branch of mass assault, do they? They go the other way which models the "Deep Battle" doctrine.
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Feb 19, 2023 21:16
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Gort posted:Soviet AI doesn't go down that branch of mass assault, do they? They go the other way which models the "Deep Battle" doctrine. That would make sense since Deep Battle was the soviet doctrine during ww2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_operation
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Feb 19, 2023 21:56
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human wave isn't a "real" branch anyway, the devs have stated it exists for china and as a "OH poo poo" button if you suddenly need hundreds of barely armed divisions to bleed an enemy dry
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Feb 19, 2023 22:59
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In CKIII, is there any reason to build anything other than buildings that give me GOLD GOLD GOLD GOLD?
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Feb 20, 2023 00:36
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buildings that give development so that you can get more gold
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Feb 20, 2023 00:41
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AtomikKrab posted:In CKIII, is there any reason to build anything other than buildings that give me GOLD GOLD GOLD GOLD? Not really, you can build whatever and still mercilessly beat the game. The META is about stacking men-at-arms modifiers, like putting down Barracks everywhere and using nothing but heavy infantry.
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Feb 20, 2023 00:42
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EricBauman posted:I remember playing EU1 with a history book on my lap because almost all the meaningful events were hardcoded real historical events. Eu1 had no historical events. We made them for eu2..
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Feb 20, 2023 07:50
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I've never touched it, was EU1 basically a flavourless sandbox like Svea Rike III?
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Feb 20, 2023 09:54
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I think EU1 was just a straight port of the board game. e: I forgot that LGR had a video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3HeSSzbYO4 Mantis42 fucked around with this message at 10:32 on Feb 20, 2023 |
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Feb 20, 2023 10:28
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pdxjohan posted:Eu1 had no historical events. We made them for eu2.. It's been over twenty years, and you guys released EU2 so quickly after EU1 that they're merging together in my memory, apparently
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Feb 20, 2023 10:32
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THE BAR posted:Not really, you can build whatever and still mercilessly beat the game. Varangian vets with 250 attack mowing down stacks 10x their size
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Feb 20, 2023 13:17
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CK3 buildings with their diverse bonuses look fine till you realize that the "tech tree" of these buildings is reached around 1300 and after that all the economic management you do is organize the realm in such a way that you get more hunter lodges for archer damage or something.
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Feb 20, 2023 13:30
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Elias_Maluco posted:Varangian vets with 250 attack mowing down stacks 10x their size It -is- kinda metal to stack all the knight bonuses, and have your four sons take on an army on their own. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hap9dOyy0NM
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Feb 20, 2023 16:14
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YF-23 posted:I've never touched it, was EU1 basically a flavourless sandbox like Svea Rike III? Well, it had some hardcoded rules per country..
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Feb 20, 2023 22:03
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pdxjohan posted:Well, it had some hardcoded rules per country.. I think there were one or two events like the Protestant reformation but yeah all the rules would be translated into slider positions for EU2 IIRC?
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Feb 21, 2023 02:27
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Playing a bit of Imperator Rome (with the Invictus mod) and I'm... enjoying it? Playing as the Median rump state of Atropatene with a long term goal of restoring the Persian empire and eventually surpassing the Achaemenids. Problem is that I don't think this is a good idea for a starter nation, and I have is I don't know what to do. Expansion south is obviously blocked by the Seleucids and the Armenians to the west appear to be much stronger than me. Should I go for eternally confusingly named Albanian and Iberian tribes to the north? While it feels like I could take them, the problem with that is they're all in a different culture group and tribal, which from my limited understanding of this game makes it sound like it could be an issue and actually weaken me? Also I'm apparently bad at researching, how do I improve that?
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Feb 24, 2023 14:20
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Yeah, it's a good game, don't let anyone stop you from enjoying it. You probably see the alert about bad population research ratios. Have more nobles and citizens! This advice is both useless and obvious, so here's another. Know that research offices do not require people to have statesmanship stat, but help it grow. The idea is your young bright people should do this job, unlike with other offices where state experience is more important.
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Feb 24, 2023 14:42
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Cool, what's the general rule of thumb for giving citizenship rights to other cultures? There's an Iranian group culture that makes up a large proportion of my population and it only has freedmen rights, should I be giving them citizenship?
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Feb 24, 2023 16:02
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Probably?.. I dunno, cultural assimilation is a complex thing, I don't think there's a good rule of thumb there. One funny thing is it might be cool to assimilate some Greek or Indian people as they'll unlock some cool research-boosting innovations.
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Feb 24, 2023 16:09
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from memory I feel like the decision is whether you feel to opportunity cost of culture converting a lot of pops is more valuable than the malus you get from accepting more cultures and whether the culture you're accepting gets you anything particularly useful which it probably is for the selukids and the more widespread iranian pops. iirc the persian military tradition is also pretty decent so it might be worth it to get access to that? is that a thing? it's been a long time.
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Feb 24, 2023 16:15
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Is there a dedicated Victoria 3 thread? I swear there used to be but I don’t see it anywhere.
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Feb 24, 2023 18:40
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Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:Is there a dedicated Victoria 3 thread? I swear there used to be but I don’t see it anywhere. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3968353 It's more active when there's new patches generally.
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Feb 24, 2023 18:45
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So the Seleucids went into meltdown after Seleucus I died fighting the Mauryans, so I decided to try my luck and declared war on them to see just how tough they'd be to fight. Through hiring two large mercenary companies I was actually able to win the war (even though the Armenians didn't think I could do it and didn't join me, the cowards). I was running a deficit throughout the war with that many mercenaries but I'd stockpiled a good amount of gold before I declared on the Seleucids, and keeping my economy running through looting cities felt pretty cool and authentic. After I won I was able to reclaim Media but doing that meant I took far too much in the peace deal, my old king died of dysentery and his successor is unpopular, my AE is through the roof, I have no manpower, my stability is crashing and the provinces in the Caucasus are spiralling into rebellion and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to stop them. Very much a case of: https://twitter.com/screaminbutcalm/status/1105577845642878976?lang=en Very fun and memorable war nonetheless. I got enough war experience to get two Army Traditions, both of which I invested into making my cataphracts better. I dunno what unit types are actually good in this game but cataphracts are sick so it seemed like the best option. Also before I declared war on the Seleucids I was able to get one of their governors in Media to come over to me and brought his province with him, which was pretty funny. Whorelord fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Feb 25, 2023 |
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Feb 25, 2023 03:06
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ilitarist posted:Probably?.. I dunno, cultural assimilation is a complex thing, I don't think there's a good rule of thumb there. Archaeology Hat posted:from memory I feel like the decision is whether you feel to opportunity cost of culture converting a lot of pops is more valuable than the malus you get from accepting more cultures and whether the culture you're accepting gets you anything particularly useful which it probably is for the selukids and the more widespread iranian pops. Very large omission from both of these posts is that accepting a culture allows you to levy them, which can be a huge deal early on when you have a small core population. The access to cultural techs and traditions is nice (and Invictus has something for almost every culture group at this point), but that's really a mid to late game bonus- for when you have the spare military experience and inventions to go into those trees. The early game is all about maximising your troop numbers, which means maximising the fraction of your pops that are non-slaves of integrated cultures. So, building barracks, founding cities, and integrating any unintegrated culture that makes up a significant fraction of your population. (And bee-lining any levy size multiplier bonus you can find, but those are pretty rare- you'll find one in every other tradition tree, and there's exactly one from technology- "Auxiliary Recruitment", halfway down the left branch of the Religious tree. It's very close to "War Dedication", too, which is one of two inventions that boost army morale (the other is "Divinely Guided", right at the bottom of the right branch of the Civic tree)) As Atropatene, you should absolutely integrate the Cadusians day one. They're not going to let you access anything new- you're in the same culture group- but they're literally twice as populous as your primary culture, and fewer of them are slaves. It's like 20 extra cohorts, for nothing. Whorelord posted:So the Seleucids went into meltdown after Seleucus I died fighting the Mauryans, so I decided to try my luck and declared war on them to see just how tough they'd be to fight. Through hiring two large mercenary companies I was actually able to win the war (even though the Armenians didn't think I could do it and didn't join me, the cowards). I was running a deficit throughout the war with that many mercenaries but I'd stockpiled a good amount of gold before I declared on the Seleucids, and keeping my economy running through looting cities felt pretty cool and authentic. After I won I was able to reclaim Media but doing that meant I took far too much in the peace deal, my old king died of dysentery and his successor is unpopular, my AE is through the roof, I have no manpower, my stability is crashing and the provinces in the Caucasus are spiralling into rebellion and there doesn't seem to be anything I can do to stop them. Oh dear. Lmao. Integrating the Albanians and the Iberians might stop a rebellion, since it'll boost their happiness a little, but if that fails, the Harsh Treatment policy tends to be better than Local Autonomy if things are really bad. Whorelord posted:Very fun and memorable war nonetheless. I got enough war experience to get two Army Traditions, both of which I invested into making my cataphracts better. I dunno what unit types are actually good in this game but cataphracts are sick so it seemed like the best option. Also before I declared war on the Seleucids I was able to get one of their governors in Media to come over to me and brought his province with him, which was pretty funny. Heavy cav is strong but I'm not sure it's cost effective, or worth the supply weight penalty. For an Iranian country in particular you have a much better alternative in Horse Archers, though I think the traditions you're talking about boost those too.
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Feb 25, 2023 04:08
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drat, am I really about to reinstall imperator
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Feb 25, 2023 12:12
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Imperator with Invictus is legit the best Paradox game atm except maybe Anbennar
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Feb 25, 2023 17:05
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Edgar Allen Ho posted:Imperator with Invictus is legit the best Paradox game atm except maybe Anbennar Is there anything Invictus mod does for you in terms of quality, or is it just more stuff? I understand some people tolerate junk for a promise of cool stuff but Invictus is a 30 seconds before your first missing string and art, and it's not a price I want to pay to get 100 times as many unique factions I'd ever play compared to vanillas 30 times as many unique factions I'd ever play.
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Feb 26, 2023 12:31
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