Paradox Grand Strategy: Tim Cook? How many divisions has he got?

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zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Lord Binky posted:

Please make Victoria 3, thanks!

I fear the closest we may ever get is steampunk DLC for Stellaris.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2015 19:29

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:02

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

No orbiting planets its the right choice for the scale of Stellaris. Its tough to say since I would love a good space strategy game with orbiting planets, but that is only really meaningful, useful, and sane to keep track of if you can count the number of star systems on one hand.

# ¿ Sep 28, 2015 22:51

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Need a dlc where soldiers bodies are replaced with NATO counters so my NATO counters can do push ups.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2015 13:54

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

The Mantis posted:

sell outs.

not buying this "game" until I can wage war on limbless sea sponges who have no concept of space, war, or love.

That's specifically rival space empires. I think they are on record that research events can include non-spacefaring local creatures and civilizations. So even if there's no sea sponge events in the base game it should be a fairly simple event mod.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2015 16:20

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

They tried with Sunset Invasion for Crusader Kings II but after the backlash from dumbasses on the Pdox forums I doubt they'll try again.

If backlash on the forums stopped them they would never release another game or expansion.

I expect the bigger problem is finding some sort of expansion niche since Sunset Invasion is cool but sort of a slapdash idea/implementation. But making an expansion something like Kaiserreich is a fairly large undertaking even in the recent scheme of expansions basically being new games.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2015 17:42

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

DrSunshine posted:

Thanks! That's what I needed to know. I'll have to wait for the next sale then, even if EUIV wasn't my favorite game when I tried the demo.

A quick caveat before the bell rings, the EU4 Collection is mostly graphic and music DLCs. You can get the core game and the 3 content DLCs in the collection (Conquest of Paradise, Res Publica, and Wealth of Nations) for $10 cheaper.

Its also important to note that their content DLC pricing scheme is synced to their DLC release schedule such that if you ever want to play the fully upgraded game, you'll need to shell out for the latest couple of DLCs at less impressive sale numbers. Common Sense for $10 is probably as cheap as its going to get until the next one comes out. El Dorado is probaly the most skippable so you could buy into EU4 during this sale for $30 ($15 as described above, plus Art of War and Common Sense for another $15).

# ¿ Oct 5, 2015 16:46

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

PASCAL seems like it'd be perfectly suited for Vicky 3's economy simulation, yall should be more open minded.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 00:10

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Enjoy posted:

That sounds cool, something like CK2's college of cardinals?

Nah, it'd be cool if it was something that actually mattered.

Bort Bortles posted:

The persistent argument against this is that then wartime gets too complicated, because you have to worry about that stuff AND fighting. Most people play the games for the fighting, so developers leave out stuff to do in peacetime. My argument against that (I'm no videogame developer (just boardgames in my free time)) is that the special peacetime mechanics would be put on hold or have a "wartime status" that streamlines or holds the peacetime stuff while at war.

So you're saying you'd like an option to suspend the democratic process during times of war? I like that idea especially if there's an option to say "you know what, lets keep going like this" after the war ends.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2015 18:52

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I've admitted before the time period covered by the Victoria games are due a board gamification like EU4, but I hope its called something else out of reverence for the Victoria series being absolutely insane and beautiful and wonderful in spite of not being very playable.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2015 16:14

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Stellaris is Vicky 3. So more like Stellaris: Marx is a Fungi

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 17:11

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Randarkman posted:

I imagine it is possible to change your empire's ethics over the course of a game? I prefer a gradual evolution towards xenophobic despotism myself.

The wording seemed a little weird in the DD, but I think the idea is you define the ethics at the start, that gets stamped onto your home planet POPs, and for the rest of the game your Ethos scales are some amalgamation of POP leanings.

e. Or rereading, I suspect faction driven, which is fueled by POP leanings.

zedprime fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Oct 19, 2015

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 23:07

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Xenophobic warp lane users should get an election/faction/whatever-type-might-be-applicable event to demand that walls be built around their solar systems.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2015 23:22

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

VostokProgram posted:

Yeah, it's a terrible idea in practice, but if you really want an AI that stays competitive no matter what tactics players develop, it's either that or manually coding new behaviors to deal with strategies that become popular. I guess you could pay a full-time employee to watch twitch 8 hours a day and take notes on any interesting tactics streamers talk about?

To bring it back home, isn't this what they do for EU4?

# ¿ Oct 21, 2015 23:52

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Neopie posted:

Okay. SO I just got EU4, complete with every expansion.

I've played CK2, so I have a bit of a reference for a lot of things, but, um, where's a good starting country for simplicity?

Portugal for a colonization focused game, Ottoman for a landwar focused game.

All the countries the recommendation serves up in pregame are all good choices and pretty easy to get on their recommended track while learning the ropes but those two come up the most often for having fairly straightforward paths to big blobs.

# ¿ Oct 25, 2015 17:44

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Agean90 posted:

I cannot comprehend the desire to purge and turn on their fellow man when there are literal giant ants threatening to conquer our frontier worlds.

The world being run by a jewish-reptilian banking conspiracy is a popular enough theory. Imagine if we had contact with real reptilians.

# ¿ Oct 27, 2015 23:19

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Koramei posted:

Anyone know what they mean by moving portraits in this? It's been brought up in a few places but it's been pretty vague- is it just people blinking/ aliens dripping slime and gnashing mandibles, or are we talking fully animated with people turning their heads and gesticulating and so on, or something in between?

I seem to remember them saying there is space business happening in the background of portraits as if you are on a webcam call with them, in which case it probably also needs a bit of idle bobbing or something to keep it all looking natural. Dev Diaries in general need more videos please.

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Is there a vermin race? If not, why isn't there one?

Humans were like the first race announced dude.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2015 02:51

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Slaughterhouse-Ive posted:

It's because they're a bunch of nerds directing all of their sexual energy into dumb power fantasies. Some idiots pick shooters, some pick fascists, some pick Stalin.

Stalin is pretty deserving of sexual energy tbh :heysexy:

# ¿ Oct 28, 2015 17:55

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Hate to ruin the party but making a game with a licensed publisher owned IP goes against everything Obsidian has said they were focusing on in the near future.

# ¿ Oct 29, 2015 20:23

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

End Turn button spotted

I think one of the biggest things that always stops me from going back to CK2 is the peace mechanics, having to figure out which option to pick when going to war (will this person become my vassal or not???) and then not having anything other than Win/White Peace/Lose options. Did they ever change those at any point? Been a while since I played it.

That's CK2's schtick. Everything is bound by some international religious rule of law so you either prove your point, agree to disagree, or outright lose. Aggression is less total war and more legal trial by fire and God will let the true owner of the province prevail.

Holy wars have less binary results but you don't get to pick and choose in a debate, its based on force projection. But a good Spain or Viking based game is a good change of pace since it acts a little more like the Total War series (but still not EU4).

Basically CK2's reason to exist is to let you play as a medieval lawyer.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 16:36

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

Did they at least add a tooltip for pressing someone else's claims to say if they will become your vassal or not? That's the one that always drove me crazy the most.

But yeah I guess I see the point about it the war mechanics, I guess I just like the EU4 mechanics better even if they wouldn't make sense in CK2.

You can tell at a glance with the dynasty blood drop icon, based on the title level. Pressing for dynasty members at a level that they can swear fealty to you will always have them swear fealty.

That's just dipping your toes in the water though, and if you don't want to jump into the political bog that is CK2 to tell that at a glance and in advance so you can set up elaborate marriage plots, its not a great game because just forging and pressing claims is kind of an awful gameplay loop even if it makes you an immortal big blob.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2015 18:13

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Pharnakes posted:

Can I just say that I hate the "can only research something once trope". If that was true in real life and an initial wrong conclusion destroyed all evidence or future possibility of research then we would never have got anywhere at all. I don't even think it makes for good gameplay, it just encourages stupid gamey poo poo like using only 1 scientist to research all the anomalies you find to pump their xp into some sort of super genius. Doesn't make any sense at all. Yes you can come up with other mechanics to punish such tactics, but why can't you just remove the incentive to do it in the first place?

Oh look, we have found a strange and wondrous alien artefact, better not pay any attention to it at all until our xenobilochemolinguistastrophysimathematian can come and research it. Presumably by eating it, since no traces are left thereafter.

Its weird to not see it mentioned in the science dev diary so hopefully its still in, but Doomdark explained at Gamescom that while anomalies are once and done, galactic features can house multiple anomalies that could be hidden and only show up when certain requirements are met.

Also he didn't explain what scientists could be doing while not on a science vessel and why you wouldn't want them to always be on one, if for any other reason that rotating out a stable of more than 3.

e. That is to say I expect that time pressure is going to dictate you keep research pressure up to minimize any sort of scientist skill loading or shuffling.

ee. it also depends on the event writing, which has been good but bad in CK2 (or bad but good), but he mentions the failure state is figuring out the wrong thing about an anomaly. So you could just file the Galaxan Death Beam in the museum under Galaxan Tea Set if you aren't smart enough to figure out how to turn on the death beam.

zedprime fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Nov 2, 2015

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 18:07

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Pharnakes posted:

Ok that's fine, but why should that mean that no one else can come along and tinker with the tea set and wipe out a planet? Time pressure against using just one scientist is precisely what I mean when I say I hate the mechanics that are usually implemented to try and balance this, it just makes it feel like the game is taunting you with the possibilities of what you could discover, then punishing you when you try to do so. Either by using one scientist and falling behind or else by using many scientists and loving up your future research potential. It's just not a fun or rewarding mechanic at all. At best you just feel like you've gamed it the objectively correct way/got lucky, never that you have been rewarded for an actual plausible approach to discovering alien artefacts.

Why can't it just be that every time a given scientist fails at researching an anomaly, his chance of success at the next attempt goes down a little. After a while it would be obvious he has totally the wrong approach to the problem so you bring in someone else who has a different idea of how to investigate it. That's not to say there shouldn't be some chance of failure resulting in destruction of the artefact or worse, but to have it be a 50% chance or more (which the diary heavily implies it will be, as per usual for this kind of mechanic), is extremely not fun at all.

You know what? I'm with you, IRL even. You see, noone wants to give me a grant to prove the pyramids are actually space bases for ancient astronauts. I am almost sure they are the key to jump starting Stellaris in real life. Like if I could just get some expedition funding and the correct visas, we could be visiting Alpha Centauri before Stellaris even comes out with the inevitable delays to balance an event driven research system.

The Sharmat posted:

You're not but failure and disappointment are actually vital to a game experience.

Even looking at it as a failure is metagaming a little too hard, especially with people trying to pass this off as "you're affecting my storytelling!". To call mistaking a death ray for a tea kettle a crushing failure is a little soulless. Like the Enterprise, the gold standard for how they are probably taking the science vessels to work, spent most of its time spinning its proverbial wheels.

e. We probably won't get any detail on it till we get a hold of the event files on release but it also sounds like anomalies are non-deterministic. So a success doesn't even mean the same thing every time, its just pulling from the big file of this entity's events, weighted by the probabilities dictated by your scientist traits, empire tech level and ethics, and CYOA choices.

So its less about "losing the roll on the one and only death ray on the map" and more about stacking probabilities to eventually succeed on the death ray roll by stacking death ray focused ethics and science. If you stacked the tea set ethics instead you could count on the probabilities stacking up to get your tea set instead.

zedprime fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Nov 2, 2015

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 20:50

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Bort Bortles posted:

To me, its less about that and more about the irrationality of "your scientist failed once you now forever cannot look or think about this fantastic anomaly/ancient artifact". If the dev diary said that you would get options like "intensive research: anomaly/ancient artifact is consumed, chance of success or breakthrough +x%" or "basic research: anomaly/ancient artifact is preserved, chance of success or breakthrough +y%" then I wouldnt have anything or as much to say.

But it doesnt. It says that if you research something once it is gone forever. Which just sounds dumb.

Now I may be misinterpreting what is said in the DD or maybe I just need to wait for more information, but as it is presented at this point in time I think it sounds like an odd and obtuse mechanic.

Based on the description from Gamescom combined with the DD, I am assuming its like Vicky1/2, except instead of research categories and tiers, there's Empire ethics, Scientist stats, past research, and CYOAs, and instead of MTTH, its mean anomalies of a specific tendency to sciencify.

Sure, you are losing out on this research roll, like every month a tech doesn't fire in Vicky 2 you are losing on that research roll. Grasping your hair at every month it doesn't fire is losing the forest for the trees though. Not that getting angry at the months ticking doesn't happen, but getting mad your art tech was swiped at the last second was always a good-angry for me as opposed to a gently caress-you-game angry.

I could be wrong at which point I will admit defeat to everybody worried about "oh no we're losing tech forever" crowd.

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 23:55

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Pharnakes posted:

Yeah but in vicky if someone else researches machine guns first, it doesn't mean you don't get machine guns. It just means you loose out on any prestige the tech might carry.

If you don't find the machine gun in the ancient temple, keep an eye out next time you are in an ancient temple. That's what I mean by mean anomalies of a specific tendency to sciencify.

Based on the original Gamescom talk, anomaly's are sort of indeterminate beyond an initial flavor. Based on the flavor and a bunch of other inputs like ethics, your scientist, and so on, you could get any number of results. If you've really stacked the deck for machine guns, odds are you will get machine guns eventually. And if not, you probably found a pretty decent alternative instead.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 00:06

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Research has been described as a core gameplay feature and the driving impetus of the first gameplay phase of Stellaris, and an important conflict trigger mechanism in the middle and final phases. Therefore I am forced to assume an absent minded scientist can accidentally flush the next level of warp drives down the toilet forever. There is only one ancient warp manuscript left in the universe, and Dr. Magoo just used it to wipe his rear end because he misunderstood the intern when he said it was the "key to TP technology!" and the silly old doctor thought that meant toiletpaper instead of teleportation.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 00:21

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

If we're spitballing here, CYOA influencing research is fairly safe territory following CK2 and is bound to get lost in the map game shuffle. I would say lets make research success truly skill based and contract a hidden object game developer to create some sci fi HOGs that guarantee research success. it could even tie in with some of the late game research catastrophes that have been teased; you get so into the HOG you don't even realize you are summoning the Chaos Gods into the warp, or inadvertently programming psycho AI.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 02:02

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

YF-23 posted:

It isn't like the anomalies here are presented as the main way to advance technologically or anything, they are there to give you a huge boost in something in case you succeed. That's what I got from the dev diary anyway.

Tech has been described as a collecting card game,and anomalies as the only source of cards so we should definitely be concerned if the anomaly system sucks. But I think people are misascribing failure to "I don't get this tech ever," when its really "I don't get a tech today, better luck next time."

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 14:02

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Baronjutter posted:

Yeah I was just about to post that Anomalies are just goodie huts from civ. Little treasures to encourage and reward exploration. But sadly once they are gone the whole mechanic is gone
This is why I'd love many anomalies to stick around, or have the failures give you a hint that you need to come back later. A mid or late game breakthrough could finally unlock the secrets of that weird anomaly you found in the early game.

Even if I misinterpreted excitement about anomalies as being the whole tech system, I am pretty sure Doomdark is still on the record at Gamescom saying that you can find new anomalies on old features because of new sensor technology.

# ¿ Nov 3, 2015 17:35

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Apoffys posted:

Losing is fun, but the failure should come from specific choices the player did or did not make, not random chance. It should be something you could have prevented if you were a better player, or had more information.

If you lose a civil war in CK2, at least you know you *could* have won if you played better or that victory was simply impossible given the circumstances. Even in a game like Dwarf Fortress, where "losing is fun" is the motto, failure is something you could have prevented. If you fail horribly in DF, you can at least see why it happened and how you can prevent that specific disaster from happening again on your next attempt.

Having an obvious coinflip where you could get a better result by reloading the game and trying again (without changing anything) is just infuriating gameplay. The answer to "why did I lose" shouldn't be "you were unlucky".

How do you stand playing map games? What with all the dice being thrown around for battles that you could reload and get a better result on constantly.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 14:32

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

DStecks posted:

I'm not saying that losing is bad, I'm saying that it is not needed for a game to be a game. You can't "lose" Myst.

You lose Myst when you don't finish it because you don't know how to play a piano.

A game literally needs losing to be a game, but figuratively video games has been broadly enough applied to say that a video game doesn't necessarily need to be a game anymore.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 15:09

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

DStecks posted:

It literally doesn't, but for argument's sake, let's say that it does. What does policing the definition of "game" actually achieve? It is inevitably a bludgeon being wielded by people who want to enforce their video game preferences as the only legitimate ones. "A game without losing isn't really a game" is perhaps a statement of interest to, say, developmental psychologists studying the animal origins of play, but in the field of video game design it's a worthless statement, which can only ever serve to stifle creativity.

Pharnakes says "I find it frustrating when a game says "hey, maybe a cool thing!" and then says "actually no, nothing at all!"

The Sharmat says "You're not allowed to! If there's no chance at failure, then it isn't a game!" conveniently ignoring, for example, random events in the very games this thread exists to discuss. Plenty of Paradox game events have only positive outcomes. Does this mean they delegitimize these games? Make them lesser? Because that would seem to be the argument Sharmat is making.

This is why I said that Sharmat's definition of a game is a useless one. All it exists to do is tell developers there's certain things they aren't permitted to do, that there's certain things games aren't permitted to be. It's video game fundamentalism.

You're surprised at video game fundamentalism in a thread full of map game grognards for series that are traditionally workshopped by its developers with competitive multiplayer matches?

I bring it up because its just as prescriptive to focus on The Sharmats comment that it isn't a literal game after the original comment explaining that failure is vital to a game's experience, which is still a broad stroke but an important one that defines the map game through line. There are many sources of random failure and the entire point of a map game is to statistically minimize those in favor of the good stuff. That seems to be the case of the anomaly system that's being argued over as well, since it is influenced by scientist skill and traits they have collected so far, almost as if its a cool system that is meant to be probed and prodded by a player to find the dynamic but maximized approach like Apoffy's description of how to get good CK2 leaders.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2015 15:59

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

A historian would be more of a cool thing to interview over dinner a couple times while preparing a design document than any sort of required ongoing support member of staff.

However they desperately need a historical geographer. Again, it wouldn't be useful for any sort of ongoing support, but I think it would be a good penance option for the tragedies of past maps.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2015 15:14

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

You wouldn't download a bicycle, thus you should not make components of mod recognizable and assemblable from a public repository.

e. Its an aspect of their strategy of mods as soft DRM, which I think might come from on high from Johan so you're probably saddled with it if you want to play in their official ecosystem. I'd probably take the angle of bellyaching for a modder's repository hosted by Paradox. They are really married to the whole idea of community as soft DRM so I'd doubt they'd budge on external stuff, but could be guilted into making the tools available on their terms.

zedprime fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Nov 12, 2015

# ¿ Nov 12, 2015 17:11

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

You can't really blame them for the provinces, they were only trying to stay competitive with the count compared to HOI3.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2015 14:26

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Gort posted:

Just being able to point at a province and instantly find out how many divisions you can put there without problems will put this game massive ahead of HoI3.

I think the "oil is only used to make new tanks, not run them, but you're going to constantly need new tanks thanks to attrition" system will work fine for infantry, tanks and planes (since you'll notice very quickly if Germany stops being able to make new tanks as their numbers drop off) but it's going to be weird if Japan can run the Yamato around all day without any sources of oil.

I took the whole making and supplying tools terminology as you are manufacturing a generic industrial widget made of everything including fuel, that turns into gasoline when presented with a tank or boat, or turns into a lovely ration and a bucket of bullets in front of a man.

# ¿ Nov 13, 2015 19:43

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Bel Monte posted:

Just a warning, don't go too far down that rabbit hole. I swear my mom did and half the books she read back then reeked of scare tactics and zombie apocalypse survivalism but for gardening.
How about a book about a thinly veiled Monsanto's terminator gene hopping into every plant around regardless of how impossible it is for corn to mix with trees and grass?
Or how about a super strong solar flare, forcing everyone back to pre-industrial "good living"...ignoring how we'd just pollute even worse and why would we not just make new electronics?
There was a similar one about electricity just not working anymore. Somehow the entirety of reality stayed the same...That's not how physics works!

Those are the extremes, but all it takes is a step towards survivalism with gardening and BAM, you're reading tin-foil crazy books.

I assume they are looking for non-fiction digests on the food supply chain, and not pop fiction.

# ¿ Nov 15, 2015 21:09

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Pharnakes posted:

I dunno about Germany so much but what the gently caress did you think the war in the Pacific was all about?

Fix the godawful borders European powers had in the colonial holdings.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 18:34

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Star posted:

The new Stellaris DD about planets https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-9-planets-resources.891510/

To be melodramatic, that's almost exactly what I pictured in my head as what sort of tile system to run screaming away from. I should reserve judgement until they talk about how buildings work and why you would or wouldn't use some sort of automation as governors, but seeing a big grid of varying resources is always slightly a bummer because I don't know why you wouldn't have buttons that automate it in such a way that tiles don't even really need to be present.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 19:53

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

cool and good posted:

It's not like you can transport energy between planets, so the reactor example doesn't necessarily mean specialized planets.

Its a pooled currency in the interface, at least.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2015 23:13

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 20:02

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I'm not sure why its surprising, I recognize most of the people bellyaching (including myself) as calling our shots way back at the original announcement because there are ancient battlelines drawn about 4X civic development from before EU was a glint in Johan's eye.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 18:07

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: Tim Cook? How many divisions has he got?

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