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Alchenar posted:I think what sets Paradox games apart is that expansion is not necessarily the end goal, and in many games is often discouraged. I think that’s true in only crusader kings.
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Jun 11, 2023 21:35
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Alchenar posted:I think what sets Paradox games apart is that expansion is not necessarily the end goal, and in many games is often discouraged. You can say the same about Civ 5
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Jun 11, 2023 21:48
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GrossMurpel posted:Yeah for me personally, "grand strategy" is forever cemented as "just what we decided to call this niche of real-time nation-level strategy" because that's what the EU3 tutorial said better than learning from the HoI3 tutorial
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Jun 11, 2023 21:48
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The "Grand" in Grand Strategy refers to the amount of time it takes you to play a game until the end. You can play for thousands of hours and not complete a single game, it doesn't get grander than that!
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Jun 11, 2023 22:11
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feller posted:I think that’s true in only crusader kings. I'd say it's truer in Victoria than CK but yeah it's hardly a common theme. StashAugustine posted:I'd argue that 4x are a subset of grand strategy but are significantly more common that non-4X grand strategy. They hit basically all the markers (controlling a polity's economy politics and military with a broader scope than a single conflict) but specifically focus on starting with a small entity in an unknown environment with peer enemies on an even footing. Stellaris is basically a 4x, while Europa Universalis isn't despite having some exploration elements Yeah, I think this is a big part of the distinction for me- 4Xes have small, symmetrical starts and largely empty worlds, whereas GSGs have preexisting contexts and histories and balances of power that the player has to navigate in some fashion. And, more than that, I think if someone tells me that such and such a game is a "4X", I think what I expect by way of that is that that game will be... monomaniacally ludic? Like, very self-consciously "board-gamey", very much of the Meier-esque conception of the game as "a series of interesting decisions". Something that is very concerned with delivering an experience that is clean and legible and regular. Whereas I think I take a grand strategy game to be something... messier, more textured. Something that makes design concessions to other concerns- narrative, aesthetic etc.
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Jun 11, 2023 23:02
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Those are meaningless and misleading terms. 4X came to mean "like Master of Orion and Civilization" and Grand Strategy came to mean similar to what Paradox does. I like the term empire builder cause it explains well the fantasy these games sell you. It's the same with every other genre name with videogames. RTS came to mean like Warcraft and C&C, so a lot of games that can be described as real-time strategy (like city-builders or, again, Paradox games) are not called that.
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Jun 11, 2023 23:04
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4X means turn-based. Grand Strategy means realtime.
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Jun 11, 2023 23:15
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Paradox games are in fact RTS while Command & Conquer and Starcraft are operational at best
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Jun 11, 2023 23:59
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:I'd say it's truer in Victoria than CK but yeah it's hardly a common theme. Also sort of combining these two is that I think the issue is less that Paradox is less "gamey" but more that they don't have a single win condition. In Civilization one civ will eventually be crowned The Best One and everyone else loses. Even in EU4 you can content yourself with making a minor into a regional power even if you can barely tangle with the #1 great power. That said idk if this is a strict requirement for a "grand strategy game"
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Jun 12, 2023 00:02
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Grand Strategy Game to me just means a bigger scope - taking into account more things than other more focused experiences which are just good old strategy games - and even within that scope these days the label GSG has a good degree of variation, it doesn't have to be that complicated.
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Jun 12, 2023 01:21
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What differentiates Grand strategy is the grand you have to drop on piecemeal dlc
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Jun 12, 2023 01:26
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VostokProgram posted:anyone got that picture of the hosed up Hapsburg that's captioned "I'm 0/0/0" First post of this thread! 
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Jun 12, 2023 01:42
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The Cheshire Cat posted:4X means turn-based. Grand Strategy means realtime.
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Jun 12, 2023 05:20
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who even reads the op
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Jun 12, 2023 05:34
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Paradox games aren't real-time. Depends how fast your CPU is
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Jun 12, 2023 07:09
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i think you'll find that paradox games run substantially faster than real-time
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Jun 12, 2023 07:11
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It's a bit zeno's paradoxy because you play it like a real-time game with pause, but the game mechanics are explicitly constructed around a wego turn based system.
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Jun 12, 2023 07:15
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all games are turn-based, just some have very fine-grained turns
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Jun 12, 2023 07:47
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Paradox games are Metroidvanias
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Jun 12, 2023 07:51
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gradenko_2000 posted:all games are turn-based, just some have very fine-grained turns
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Jun 12, 2023 08:06
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I'm waiting for the 1000-year-long realtime Paradox megaLP where a goon curses their bloodline with playing these games one game day at a time in order to entertain strangers on the Internet.
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Jun 12, 2023 09:49
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What is the basis of Tebizond's zebra heraldry
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Jun 12, 2023 10:22
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In my head at least, the key difference between grand strategy games and 4X games are that grand strategy games have fixed, heavily asymmetric starts while 4X games have near symmetric, randomised starts. There's other secondary components (simulationist focus, for example), but I think that's the core of it. That's why stellaris was pitched as a "4X with grand strategy elements" or something along those lines rather than the other way around, and why in the early days when Stellaris was announced there were people who were hoping that they might include a mode that had a fixed galaxy which was already pre-populated with space empires of varying sizes. I realise that by this metric the Total War games are Grand Strategy, which is not how we tend to think of them but also, I think, not exactly wrong.
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Jun 12, 2023 11:53
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The strategy layer of TW games is absolutely a (simplistic) grand strategy game, it's just that it's mostly a backdrop used to set up the tactical battles that you're actually playing it for.
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Jun 12, 2023 13:10
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Reveilled posted:I realise that by this metric the Total War games are Grand Strategy, which is not how we tend to think of them but also, I think, not exactly wrong. Loading a mid-game save of Civilization is a Grand Strategy game too! Or playing scenarios. I do understand that a lot of design choices stem from a basic thing like pre-made map VS random map every time, but you can see how defining by such things is pointless. Just like, again, those terms are pointless except when you're legally not allowed to mention Civilization/Paradox.
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Jun 12, 2023 13:15
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Gaius Marius posted:What differentiates Grand strategy is the grand you have to drop on piecemeal dlc  That's also conclusive proof that Total War and Train Simulator are grand strategy, which we all knew in our hearts
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Jun 12, 2023 13:38
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GrossMurpel posted:
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Jun 12, 2023 15:36
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She grand on my strategy until I IPO
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Jun 12, 2023 15:40
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gradenko_2000 posted:all games are turn-based, just some have very fine-grained turns Planck time or GTFO.
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Jun 12, 2023 16:13
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It is theoretically possible to finish a game of HoI4 in real time.  I'm sure there is someone, somewhere doing just that. Sitting in an immaculate ww2 uniform, playing one handedly.
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Jun 12, 2023 16:29
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If they started when the game released, they would actually have finished a year ago now.
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Jun 12, 2023 17:10
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Xerophyte posted:Alternative, hotter take: "grand strategy" is mainly a marketing term Paradox have decided to push. Their games do have a somewhat unified design language and some shared design elements -- they're on the simulationist side of the simulation-abstraction spectrum; they try to model politics and not just warfare; they try to construct a narrative with characters, missions and events; they use maps with naturalistic borders instead of regular tilings -- but those elements can be found in other games that don't use the "grand strategy" label. There are no fundamental differences between a PDS game and other strategy games. Not entirely untrue. We had a hard time 15-20 years ago trying to explain what our games were to retailers, as its not a TBS or RTS, so we decided to refer to them as GSG. Think that was around 2006-2007 or so..
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Jun 12, 2023 19:09
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If nothing else we can all agree, grand strategy is when you sink "full time job" hours for months, then go online to yell about inability to feel human cuz the wrong dudes got a +1
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Jun 12, 2023 19:22
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YF-23 posted:I'm waiting for the 1000-year-long realtime Paradox megaLP where a goon curses their bloodline with playing these games one game day at a time in order to entertain strangers on the Internet. Let's not let give Grey Hunter any ideas here. He'd do it, and I know he has a son.
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Jun 12, 2023 19:25
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pdxjohan posted:Not entirely untrue. We had a hard time 15-20 years ago trying to explain what our games were to retailers, as its not a TBS or RTS, so we decided to refer to them as GSG. Think that was around 2006-2007 or so.. case closed
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Jun 12, 2023 19:43
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The Grande Strategy Supreme, coming soon to a Taco Bell near you
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Jun 12, 2023 19:47
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Cantorsdust posted:Let's not let give Grey Hunter any ideas here. He'd do it, and I know he has a son. I have no idea what you are talking about...... scribbles furiously
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Jun 16, 2023 09:03
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tfw paradox releases a new save breaking update and you have to restart the run 20 years in
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Jun 16, 2023 09:33
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Mantis42 posted:tfw paradox releases a new save breaking update and you have to restart the run 20 years in In this context, isn't that just divorce?
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Jun 16, 2023 09:55
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All videogame genres are wonky bullshit with no firm boundaries. They exist solely to be a short hand for “kinda like this thing to some extent”. Don’t think about it harder than that it’s a waste of time. New genres are created when using a genre to describe something breaks a sufficiently large number of people’s suspension of disbelief. It’s all linguistic consensus/unspoken gentlemen’s agreements.
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Jun 16, 2023 10:14
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