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

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zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Gort posted:

We might be arguing over nothing, but Stellaris will have turns just like Europa and Crusader Kings have turns. Just 'cause there are lots of turns doesn't make it a real-time game.

At what point do turns turn into real time, because if you're trying to be reductive about it, RTS games have framerate or internal polling rates that would peg them as turn based games that run through 60+ turns per second.

Xeno's strategy game if you will.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 20:45

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 11:46

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

Yeah, if it's a flat bonus then definitely. Farms would make sense to be a flat + bonus to production, which is fine because Food is not an exportable resource and required for the planet to develop at all. But maybe the other ones aren't? Minerals wouldn't make sense to be a flat bonus, if you build a mine where there isn't any resources there doesn't magically become some. You could run with the same concept for Research (studying weird things found at the tile) and Power (represents having natural resources specific to generating power on those tiles). I dunno, guess we'll see.

Given the abstraction needed in everything being energy credits or minerals, I don't see why refineries wouldn't fit as an improvement, abstracting being able to make more useful stuff out of what would be detritus if the refinery didn't exist. Given that synergies at least exist, you'd expect some sort of "helper" improvement like that to stick next to mines. That'd actually be one way to not involve total planet agnostic specialty carpeting if certain raw materials begged for a mix of supply chain type buildings, but doesn't really help my gripe with once you figure out the right supply chain synergy for a given raw material occurrence, why you wouldn't need to clone stamp or hit the automate feature.

# ¿ Nov 17, 2015 22:11

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

CK2 seems sort of scary to invoke. It might have changed since I last played, but I remember it usually being the case that if you were actually playing it as a serious spreadsheet game (which is your fault to begin with but relevant to trying to bring it up as a target) you would still be subsidizing and directing building of some more important territories because the AI had no idea how to make money, pick the better improvements, or both.

The strength ends up being the irrelevance of the civics in most of the facets players end up caring about.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2015 00:35

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

YF-23 posted:

I disagree that the V2 economy is hard to understand, but there is just so little ways in which you can affect it with the options given to you that it might as well exist independently. It is essentially a non-interactive system. You can give it pushes in one direction or the other, but they will never really be big enough that you'll be able to see the effect, except for the early parts of the lifetime of new tradegoods like Planes if you get in on that production at the same time. Less of a black box and more of a glass case. You can see what's happening inside (though the mechanisms close to the walls obstruct view of the inner ones), but there's no levers, switches or buttons with which to give input, so you're stuck watching.

That's probably the most accurate way to describe it. With all the moving parts it looks really impressive with a mid rate power industrializing because you can see real and important effects from prioritizing RGO techs and building your first few factories because its such a lean atmosphere at the beginning. Then the economy becomes sort of healthy in general when a critical mass of tech is achieved in the world and from then on your biggest interaction is just keeping up with the Joneses by sphering a well balanced slice of the pie because any further techs or built factories are sort of Cookie Clicker in their scope of being important but below a threshold that a human can recognize and feel good about.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2015 16:08

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I guess I can live with the planet grid if we can pump space-nitrous into atmospheres.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2015 16:51

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Baronjutter posted:

I don't give a poo poo either way but having the game start in 2200 seems awfully human centric. hell just have a turn counter and let the player imagine how much time is passing. Otherwise the game will seem amazingly short or ships amazingly slow, or something just won't quite make sense.

I imagine the first mod after a bunch of templates for Romes 4-12 will be instructions on how to modify the start date.

Although it'd be real cool if it was just a text entry at game creation to let you roleplay how your species reckons dates. Bonus points if it gives controls over what a tick is equivalent too, including dropping the monthly calendar in favor of a floating decimal stardate.

# ¿ Nov 25, 2015 03:07

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I feel like the demographic for this thread is just right to dispense with the dumb fist thing, and start with the fact that of course July and August are going to have 31 days and it just goes either-or from there.

# ¿ Nov 26, 2015 18:11

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I assume there is an anthro lizard race in Stellaris to keep dragons abiding by official Paradox dragon canon to avoid such amateurish mods in the future.

# ¿ Nov 29, 2015 20:44

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

DStecks posted:

The Stellaris tech system sounds very loving cool and elegant. Surprised nobody else thought of it first, and kinda wish I had.

It is a mountain of work because probability hates you and wants you to die, but if any designers understand that and how to work around it in the scales these games deal with its Paradox people.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2015 20:09

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Psychotic Weasel posted:

Didn't the original Steam page have Feb 2016 on it before it was pulled then republished? Obviously the release date is subject to change but at one point they were aiming for early next year.

Hope they release more previews, covering more stages of the game, as time goes on. Still really looking forward to this.

I think they did the press release version of wink when pressed on the early '16 date that slipped into one version or another of the Steam page.

1st quarter is looking bad if press footage is still labeled alpha now in December but I think they are fairly confident in sometime in 2016.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 02:08

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I am most excited to hear about the Stellaris civics system to know how that junk is really going to work because empire ethics seems like the secret sauce for everything interesting and I hope it has decent intelligible gameplay-levers.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2015 19:20

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Darkrenown posted:

Your weekly dose of Stellaris:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-12-policies-edicts.895923/

Timed sliders are kind of gross but at least CK2s been around long enough that I can at least trust they will be the least amount of gross necessary.

# ¿ Dec 7, 2015 15:00

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

You're just kicking the tires, making sure your new conquest can withstand an orbital bombardment from your enemies. Its only prudent.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2015 19:40

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Westminster System posted:

As far as it goes, if they aren't making money and are, it seems, using it only a basis for the system which apparently will be editable by the "community" in the future, I don't see the issue here.

Unless Paradox copyrighted history recently.

If you can't copyright history why have I been paying $10 for all of these non-fiction digests :argh:

They've probably got grounds for a cease and desist between the map look and who knows how many ahistorical gotchas that have crept into the scenario files. The guys at PDS would probably say "oh weird" but there's probably a team of lawyers at PI that would have a field day.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2015 15:23

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Can't wait for the mod that starts earth overpopulated with subspecies based on not-quite-modern racial conceptualization and you're meant to genocide the lesser species.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2015 16:00

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

There's foundations for so much cool stuff that even if it coasts in as a base CK2 or EU4 experience it should be polishable up real good. As long as they can resist doing an expansion that adds the Large Magellanic Cloud as a playable area.

# ¿ Dec 14, 2015 21:58

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

The away team just confirmed the life signs, but its the strangest thing. There seems to be tits on everything!

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 14:26

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Enjoy posted:

I expect there won't be actual battles between primitives and spacefarers, just progress bars that can get set back by event and abandoned if you need the resources elsewhere but that's just a guess

The dev diary straight up says a military annexation needs you to win a ground war, which is a joke against pre-industrials but can be some form of strain on your troops against industrial and post-industrial level societies. Its hard to imagine what that would look like since we haven't seen how ground wars work yet. Can also imagine things going poorly for orbital research stations when they start experimenting with space flight even if you've taken a passive or espionage approach that far.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 19:01

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Larry Parrish posted:

It would be funny if enslaving/eradicating species of your own archetype made other races of your archetype mad, but they don't care what you do to those filthy fungaloid 'people'.

I think people have picked apart clauses from screenshots that make it seem like xenophobes don't mind you enslaving other races.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 19:46

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Alchenar posted:

Actually I guess the serious concern would be the release dates for Stellaris and HOI4 getting too close together.

Relevant question being: which one would get pushed back for more polish?

The relevant comparison is that HOI4 is finally in beta, while Stellaris screenshots are still getting marked as alpha.

I forget the whole discussion around the HOI4 delay, but now that they are rolling in cash didn't they say the whole plan to prevent new HOI3s (and to a lesser extent, CK2s but at least that was salvagable) was something like a minimum 6 month beta following what the director considers feature complete?

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 22:01

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I might be mixing up Way of Life with the original CK2 launch getting reamed by the real grognards for having less to do than Deus Vult, although I swear CK2 had the usual hot mess for 3 months minor scripting stuff everyone thought was as good as we were going to get until EU4.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2015 22:33

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Mister Adequate posted:

What if you evolved in the volcanic conditions? I mean extremophiles are a thing that exist and it seems a little premature to suggest that we know the conditions under which intelligent life and society can evolve. Maybe after we've explored some of the galaxy IRL we can start with such pronouncements.

Dolphins who developed volcanic metallurgy should be definite candidates for a sci fi space game but there's fairly significant thermodynamic reasons biochemistry works best at sustaining large complicated structures at a fairly temperate range. Thermodynamics, the most depressing science :smith:

# ¿ Dec 16, 2015 00:23

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

A Buttery Pastry posted:

Alternative solutions would be some province borders into the Leningrad province being impassable (which would be weird), or a province modifier which removes any bonuses from envelopment against defenders in the city. The latter could be used in other places too, if appropriate, though obviously such exceptions to regular gameplay should be few and far between, so as to not make it so the player feels like they can't keep track of where they can envelop and where they can't. A little icon above the city would probably help too in that case.

I thought some of the new supply system and city stuff already allow for stalled sieges and rescuable pockets. Like envelopment is not an instant decapitation in a city anymore because there's a degree of scavenged equipment and defender favoring bonuses.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2015 18:54

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

canepazzo posted:

Stellaris is starting to sound more and more like the game we all thought Spore should have been in the space phase, and I'm not sure if it's a good or a bad thing. On the one hand, trust Paradox to pull it off, but on the other hand, the expectations are starting to become unreal.

Was 4X really something people expected Spore to be? I remember more wishful thinking about Star Control 2.

Paradox makes good event driven strategy games so its an easy jump to being excited about all our favorite science fiction tropes making it into a single game, even if they might just be flavor events. Although there does seem to be a fair bit of spitballing beyond the bounds of what they've said they are aiming for at release, its easy to file under "expansion junk" considering the stuff they've managed to shoehorn into CK2 and EU4.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2015 01:00

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Demiurge4 posted:

Whoa whoa. I don't think Sengoku is a fair comparison here.

Its an obvious troll. We've all seen from the start its actually the spring board for Vicky 3.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2015 14:24

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I think the powder keg started with people being incredulous that post-scarcity is a decision to turn on and off somehow, and only getting a peak at max-collectivist modifiers, which is a hivemind that allows slave castes with no penalties and people assuming that means communist got shorted, even though we don't know anything about what sort of modifiers moderate collectivist get and its still in alpha anyway.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2016 21:07

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

RabidWeasel posted:

They're literally Space Rome, when did Rome ever see a new culture and not either gently caress them up or culturally subsume them (or attempt but fail to do one of those things)?

This whole discussion has made me realise how badly we need a Paradox Late Antiquity game.

Almost like an expansion to a Roman period game...

# ¿ Jan 4, 2016 23:13

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

podcat posted:

not sure I'd get away with renaming fascist greece to neo-byzantine empire

Needs to happen so the grammar nazis can wipe that awful oxymoron off the face of the earth.

# ¿ Jan 5, 2016 16:46

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Bort Bortles posted:

I wonder if it will be possible to mod Stellaris to be the Battletech universe...

I think bird people are a confirmed species archetype so that's the important part already in the base game.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2016 23:22

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Palleon posted:

Paradox is one of the developers that I would think would do quite well in releasing games as Early Access. Assuming they want all the players and feedback, could iron out a lot of balance issues and bugs, and have people pay for the privilege. And they're going to be trusted to finish things up and keep supporting the game long after Early Access is over so you know you won't be getting a DF-9 or other disaster.

Being in the door early in EU3 and HOI3 I am glad betas are behind an application now because that is evidence I couldn't be trusted not to spend money early on and waste time despite hating my experience with it.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 02:13

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Pimpmust posted:

So I looked up what the hell "Eudaimonia" is and learned a word.

I think the problem with having the political/social/culture "matrix" be too generic/simplistic is that while the player can certainly fill in the blanks and it's easy to have "anything" represented by a vague label it's harder to have meaningful mechanical differences, or even unique stuff like there's for some religions in CK2 or government types in EUIV. So basically the "slider" problem of EU2/EU3.

There's a whole host of possible sci-fi concepts from the Bioengineering, Android/Replicants and Cybernetization extremes (mostly out of a cultural/society aspect than just the tech) that are all things that probably will need (or should have) some special mechanics to set them apart beyond just +% boosts or a title triggered by having the right political matrix+tech.

R�publique V�nus from Battle Angel, or yes, anything from Star Control 2

Don't forget the socio-political matrix in Stellaris is just the tip of the iceberg for defining the basic way the government works, there's a whole buffet of Policies and Edicts in standard EU4/CK2 fashion. So you can presumably have stuff like a caste based hyper collectivist not recognize robots as citizens, while a xenophobic empire treats every other race as dirt but sees their synthetic friends as racial brothers.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2016 15:00

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Athaboros posted:

And you can go see one of them on stage.

http://www.nazosmanoglu.com/

I vote this guy number 1 funny Roman emperor. It works on votes right?

https://twitter.com/naz_osmanoglu/status/682739791297929216

# ¿ Jan 13, 2016 23:59

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Oh, good, the standard maximization problem that will be solved by a nerd with a spreadsheet a month after release and a week after any balance patches following.

Chief Savage Man posted:

So it looks like we'll be able to use different types of FTL on our ships so long as they're in different fleets. Wasn't it originally one FTL type per empire?

At the very least they already mentioned something about tech sharing between members in a federation, so it might be wasteful to pursue solo, but something that inevitably happens in a federation.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 17:26

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Wars need to be won on the ground so I can see the dynamic being a lot like EU4 land campaigns where early fights are whole hosts trying to force a decisive victory to open up the way for force superiority to have free reign to siege and mop up remnants. Its just some armies can cross rivers or ignore forts and some need to go around or blast through.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2016 19:48

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

V for Vegas posted:

It will probably make some difference in the early game when you only have a few ships and it's still fun to play around with. By mid to late game it will probably become more like EU4 where you just auto-upgrade everything and mass concentration of force is much more important than individually tweaking ship loadout.

The worrying part is its going more ambitious than EU4, which is maybe limiting but who's simplicity throws at least a few bones about important decisions about splitting armies or early unit type choices. Every other bundle of force that's gone complicated, in CK2, HoI3, Vicky2, HoI2, ends up having maximized, often unintuitive, builds figured out and you just attach the correct materiel or marry in high martial Welshmen into your family and go about your day.

In other words I'm worried the ship designer is going to be about marrying Welshmen again.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 01:29

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

GrossMurpel posted:

That's what happens when half the people want a ship designer and the other half don't. They can't very well just completely take it out then.

What if, and I'm just spitballing here, what if they made a good ship designer that wasn't machine optimizable with an in game button because your choices are simple but meaningful?

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 14:28

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Bort Bortles posted:

Any idea if the combat will suit playing long range ships that are fast and kite enemies? Is the combat even that involved?

I thought the underpinnings were very similar to something like HoIs naval combat, despite being animated.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2016 18:36

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

I would pay a few bucks for Paradox Clicker, an idling game that goes through every era of Paradox games. But that seems slightly off topic from how an avalanche of adjustable parameters is usually awful.

# ¿ Jan 20, 2016 14:32

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Bold Robot posted:

Seems like a ton of effort and complexity given that we'll have almost no control over combat. Maybe I'm missing something but is anyone actually going to want to watch the combat play out other than maybe the first few times and occasionally after that? Like imagine if EU4 went into a little Total War minigame when combat happened, but you couldn't do anything other than order a retreat - it'd be cool a few times but overall pretty pointless. This feels like a lot of bells and whistles when something much more abstracted would play better.

I don't know, it sounds simpler than the CK2 combat sim for example. Paradox games don't exactly have the most simple combat sims compared to the rules of thumb that spring up that serve a player well enough. Although I do like when they tend toward the EU4 level and all my complaints about the ship editor have already been laid out last week.

# ¿ Jan 25, 2016 14:41

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 11:46

zedprime: Jun 9, 2007; yospos

Jackson Taus posted:

OK, but that's true of basically everything in gaming. A game is released, and some nerd somewhere spreadsheets it out to find the "optimal" path and then a bunch of folks read his blog. Whether it's MMORPG rotations or the best gun in FPS2016 or Paradox combat, that's always going to be a thing to at least some extent.

There's some beautiful design possible in the margins, usually in deceptively simple systems. Like there's maximized builds in Diablo 3, but at any given patch there's at least a few classes where you can pick which build by playstyle or flavor, and even cooler, if you aren't worried about top tier difficulties you can even put functional stuff together by hand without a spreadsheet or website summary. The best Paradox example is national ideas, there's a general list of best national ideas for given situations, and also a cottage industry of Youtubers proving that list right or wrong in practice and constant discussions about how someone swears Naval is actually usable, and maybe even good.

On the other hand is stuff like HoI2 naval stuff or CK2 combat favoring the Welsh. I personally get spooked the more paramaters get thrown in the mix which leads to broken implementations like those Paradox examples, or more generally the 00s philosophies of more choices obviously means better such as in Diablo 2 and old WoW, even though more choices usually means there's a maximization scheme that renders the choice irrelevant.

# ¿ Jan 26, 2016 02:25

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