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Pharnakes posted:No orbiting planets. Star Ruler 2 and Distant Worlds both have orbiting planets and to be honest I just find them more annoying than anything. The travel time within a system is a fraction of a second so it's not like orbital positioning really matters for timing, but every time you zoom back into the system you have to find where everything is again. It also makes it essentially impossible to set up static defenses that actually stay near the planet you actually want them defending. mmkay posted:So I've recently bought a couple of DLCs I was missing and fired up Crusader Kings 2 at the earlier start as some Count in England. After some 100 years, I've managed to consolidate 4 Duchies and I was well on my way to becoming a King. Unfortunately for some reason the Catholic church's Moral Authority plummeted, which spawned over time multiple heretic armies, each one larger than the whole army of my realm (???). Also came across a pretty annoying bug where the Duke of Kent, despite having a 200 men army managed to somehow drag along multiple neutral armies from other countries totaling 4k troops and smack around 3 different attacking characters, including mine (those countries weren't at war with me). Oh and after all this happened, the Duke of Saxony, with his 3 whole provinces, dumped 10k troops in an invasion of England and wiped me out. So my question is - what the hell is happening with this game and is this normal? This happens but it's not super common. The main issue is the game isn't really able to understand three-way combat, so when you have multiple armies in a region they all sort into either attackers or defenders - even if one is actually hostile to BOTH other armies or completely neutral.
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Sep 28, 2015 23:03
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I don't know why but orbiting planets in 4x games just does it for me. I'd probably buy any piece of poo poo early access MOO 2 "spiritual successor" just as long as it had orbiting planets and more or less regardless of other features or lack thereof. There's something wrong with me I think.
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Isn't there a Sengoku mod for CK2 already?
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Sep 29, 2015 05:12
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AdjectiveNoun posted:That honestly doesn't look that bad. I'm sure there's horrific anime waifu bullshit mods out there but that just looks fairly neat, IMO. It did have a hilarious bug at one point where people's eyes would show up way off the portrait of they were certain cultures thanks to a conflict with a portrait pack dlc. The anime mod is kind of ugly (I don't dismiss anime out of hand, but that particular one is not good), but I think a "portrait" style mod that made them all look like medieval paintings would be cool.
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Sep 29, 2015 17:55
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I got Hearts of Iron 3 ages ago as part of a bundle but never really got into it since it was before I really understood Paradox games (I've since played the hell out of CK2 and Victoria 2 so I think I can wrap my head around it a bit better). Would it be worth picking up the DLC while it's on sale? I know HoI4 is coming out eventually, but the current sale has a collection of ALL of it for $10. Basically is the DLC as "must have" as it was for Victoria 2 if I want to try playing it?
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Oct 2, 2015 00:16
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Pershing posted:So I'm really, really, really thinking about getting the Vicky 2 package. I've never played VIcky 2 though...is this enough for a good time? Is there a mod I need to add for it to be worth a drat? I happen to really like Victoria 2 but I can also understand why people might not like it. It's totally playable without mods (so long as you get the DLC), but you might want to check out a let's play or two to figure out if it's going to be your cup of tea.
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Oct 2, 2015 03:02
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Also for the navy only capital ships count for military score (battleships, dreadnaughts, Ironclads, Man o' wars, and monitors). No matter how many other ships you have, they won't count as anything towards your military ranking even though they consume naval supply. Technology also influences your military score - higher tech in general makes your units count for more, and naturally units like tanks will count for a lot more per unit than standard troops. Unlike ships though, ALL units get counted so a general rule of more = better applies. Officers also count towards your military score but I'm not really sure how it works - probably just raw numbers of officers in your population counts X towards your military score.
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Oct 5, 2015 05:37
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It's kind of tricky to figure that sort of thing out because first you have to decide what the player represents in Victoria. Are you the old world monarchies desperately trying to hold on to power in a world that's evolving beyond them? Or are you the new world liberals trying to make your nation better regardless of "tradition". Part of the issue in Victoria 2 is that you're such an abstract figure that you kind of play both of them. The end result is that a lot of strategies revolve around intentionally allowing a rebellion to succeed because their form of government is more effective, even though from a gameplay perspective you're supposed to be fighting them.
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Oct 5, 2015 16:36
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I think it would work better if they ALWAYS carried a prestige penalty - "prestige" is a very imperialist concept, generally about kings waving their dicks at each other rather than a measurement of real social progress. The idea behind reforms should be that they might lessen your nation in the eyes of the old world powers, but the benefits they provide for your people allow you to grow stronger as an industrial/military power, forcing the old guard to acknowledge you even if they don't respect you.
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Oct 5, 2015 18:25
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It would be cool to have that sort of thing - maybe even multiple different versions so it's not always exactly the same. Like, a federation would be a UN style model where planets/races all get a representative (with maybe exceptionally powerful ones getting special privileges like veto power). You could also have a space Roman Republic where there IS a top position (dictator), but it's actually vacant most of the time and only used during crises. Meanwhile you'd have a bunch of senators that all have equal power in theory but in practice are always jockeying for more influence and control. Or some kind of Mongol horde thing, where you've got a top power that conquers a whole bunch of minor ones, but then essentially leaves them to self-govern. Basically I think it would be interesting if mega-conglomerates didn't all just follow a single federation model, but instead would have different forms of organizing based on their own cultures/needs. It would also make integration between them more interesting, as naturally they're all going to think their own way of doing things is best.
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Oct 6, 2015 17:13
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Probably somewhat confused, but not as much as you would be in say, Hearts of Iron 3. Victoria 2 will mostly play itself if you let it, and even when you're good at it you'll probably still want to leave trading and such on automatic. Brazil is a good country to start with because you're fairly well established economically, and you're in South America so you won't get caught up in the middle of the inevitable huge wars in Europe (unless you decide you want to), and you're in a good position to rocket up to great power status once you get your literacy rate up.
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Oct 6, 2015 23:45
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Yes, if you click on the actual country you want to invest in on the map and click the build factory button it will take you right there. You have to be a great power though, and your current party's economic policy has to allow foreign investment.
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Oct 7, 2015 14:33
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Frontspac posted:Agreed. It's messy, but I like the way combat mechanics kinda evolve over time as you research tech. I think it should start out somewhat Eu4 like, but transition to having elements more in common with HoI as the game progresses. It's a tricky time period because you start in the area of massed armies fighting large but singular decisive battles, then transition into the WW1 era of massive static fronts and trench warfare, than into the very late-game interwar period where you start to see WWII style mobility warfare emerge.. The game would definitely benefit from HoI4 style strategic planning in the later game, as well as a more coherent (or at least less opaque) connection between industrial output and mechanized military capability. I agree with all of this. I like how your manpower is tied to population in Vicky - I think one of the coolest things about that game is the non-abstracted population. Each soldier represents an actual person in your country and mobilization puts a serious dent in your industrial power simply because all your farmers/labourers/craftsmen are off at war. I do agree that it's annoying to tie manpower to specific provinces, though - just having them all be in a pool that draws equally from your soldier pops around the country would be a lot easier to deal with, and you wouldn't end up with those stupid brigades that can't reinforce because their home province doesn't have enough soldiers even though you're swimming in available manpower otherwise.
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Oct 13, 2015 15:13
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zedprime posted: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. See I'm hoping they don't go this route - I prefer the Sim-ness of Victoria to the Board Game-ness of EU4. I still like EU4, it's just that there's really no other sim game out there like Victoria and I think it could still maintain that while also being made more playable - a lot of the issues in Victoria 2 aren't the systems themselves but rather the way they're presented to the player. It suffers from the same issue as HoI3 where it's just got a nightmare UI that has very weird priorities about what to show where (I can drill down and see what political parties the craftsmen in Essex support but still don't know where my nation's official religion is displayed). That and Pop AI just being bad at making financial decisions.
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Oct 13, 2015 16:40
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I feel like democracy on democracy conflict should be allowed, but have a lot of difficult/expensive requirements. Basically let people go full ahistorical if they want and have the UK invade the US and take back the colonies of the players really want to, but make it something that's not really reasonable to do in a more normal game.
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Oct 16, 2015 17:08
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RabidWeasel posted:The only time in a game where I unironically enjoyed finding the perfect way to jam more guns and bits inside a chassis was Mechwarrior 2, and that's mostly because the premade mechs were so bad that you had a huge incentive to start tinkering with them. I love how the design system in mechwarrior worked, where the more stuff you crammed in there the more things there were that could catastrophically explode.
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Oct 19, 2015 22:44
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Another Person posted:France, who owns jack poo poo outside of three colonies and France itself is #2. USA, who has done literally nothing all game, is #3. GB is naturally #1. I'd imagine you're probably behind the US and GB in industry, and behind France in prestige. What you need to do now is get some factories built - try to get a party in power that's state capitalism or planned economy, then built factories that will make use of the huge amount of available raw material you'll have from all that territory in Africa.
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Oct 24, 2015 04:07
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They probably could do something like that, actually, based on what they described. Clothing and face are generated separately like CK2, so for empires with certain ethics they could be given uniforms that reflect their particular ruling style - fancy futuristic stuff for a technocracy, Spartan jumpsuits for a military dictatorship, etc.
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Oct 27, 2015 23:08
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Seems kind of out of left field for Paradox to buy White Wolf, but I guess they have plans for it. An obsidian developed/Paradox produced sequel to bloodlines would absolutely be great. Although if it was nWOD it wouldn't have Malkavians which were the best part of that game.
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Oct 29, 2015 20:11
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ArchangeI posted:Didn't Wiz also say he tried to fix VII's economy when he first showed up at paradox? Maybe they decided he should get his chance after all? Yeah I think he also mentioned that it broke him trying. Although maybe building it from scratch might be easier than trying to fix the existing system. Just out of curiosity, are there any other games that have ever simulated a world population and economy the way that Victoria did? It seems like most games tend to abstract either one or both of those elements, even games that are actually based around trade/economics like the Anno series. I just really like how Vicky lets you really see the impact of conflict on your nation. The soldiers in your army aren't some abstract "manpower" value, but actually drawn from your population, and the supplies and such that they need are real goods being produced (although they do seem to be magically teleported to your armies no matter where they are - it would be interesting if Vicky had supply line mechanics like HOI), so full mobilization has a significant impact both in terms of just how many people DIE, but also because they aren't working the factories that are producing the ammo and food that they're going to need to fight. It's a lot more interesting to me to see how everything is interconnected like that, rather than most strategy games where it's just like "build one unit of spearmen, costs 2 gold per turn".
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Feb 5, 2016 17:37
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Slime Bro Helpdesk posted:One thing that I think would also help is that, in my limited space 4x experience, few games do "vertical" empires well. It's assumed that everyone is advancing their tech a lot, so going wide doesn't interfere with also trying to be the most efficient/advanced empire much. I hope there's something of a mechanic for that. Either that or you get the Civ V problem where vertical/tall empires are by far the superior choice, because the game scales research and cultural costs based on how many cities you have, and generally it works better to build 3-4 really awesome cities than having 10+ mediocre ones which just serve to increase your requirements faster than they can produce tech/culture (so even if you still have a couple of awesome cities on top of them, you're still running a net loss). The thing about wide vs. tall is that they should both be viable but also both have different challenges. With wide, it's a management/efficiency problem. CK2 does this really well - the more territory you have, the more vassals you need to manage it, and the more vassals you have the harder it is to keep them all happy. Going tall, meanwhile, should put you a bit behind when it comes to production/tech, but you're much more efficient than larger empire, so a bunch of tall nations banding together can punch way above their weight class - the challenge there then is in brokering and maintaining those alliances. Basically, it boils down to wide mainly needs to worry about internal threats, while tall needs to worry about external ones.
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Feb 8, 2016 17:08
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Sindai posted:Looks like it's just rounding errors (it always rounds down?) in how the numbers are displayed. I think it's probably more like the individual casualties will round up a fraction to 1 even if it's something like 0.08.
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Feb 10, 2016 01:44
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Yeah the main problem isn't "how do we design systems that will emulate the decline of an aging empire?" but rather "how do we make those systems fun". Losing strength/territory is almost universally a failure state in strategy games, and being forced to split your huge empire for "balance" would just feel like the game kicking you in the balls for no reason. Even when it's not even a forced thing but rather a natural consequence of the current game state (eg a huge more powerful neighbour rolling over you), players will still complain about it being unfair that there's no way for them to stop it.
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Feb 11, 2016 18:19
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Torrannor posted:At least in CK2 some religions/governments are bound to gavelkind succession to split up their titles if the player doesn't game the system. Which they almost certainly will. Gavelkind is a perfect example of how hard it is to implement anti-blobbing mechanics that players will actually enjoy. I mean everyone HATES gavelkind. The first piece of advice given to new players is always "switch away from gavelkind ASAP".
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Feb 11, 2016 20:10
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Sharzak posted:Didn't Cossacks just come out? Not that long ago, yeah. Although if Johan only gave away the next DLC by accident, it's possible they weren't planning on talking about it yet.
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Feb 12, 2016 07:30
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Yeah the thing about ck2 is it's got a more "personal" focus - generally the most interesting stuff happens within a single generation or two, and there isn't really any "nation building" aspect like the ideas in EU4, where it's more fun to start from scratch and work on a long timescale. The development trajectory in ck2 is a straight line, so it's still just as interesting to come in closer to the end of that line, as opposed to EU4 where it just kind of feels like everything has been done for you already.
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Feb 12, 2016 23:19
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Well to be fair a real space Athens would have more of a "direct democracy" where 99% of the population aren't actually eligible voters because they're slaves or foreigners or women.
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Feb 16, 2016 20:33
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Psychotic Weasel posted:Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson, apparently. Yeah my #1 annoyance in 4X games is when the computer gets a bunch of free resources or just flat out ignores certain aspects of the game, especially when there's nothing telling you which rules it doesn't have to follow, since knowing that would at least give you an idea of which strategies for attacking the AI won't work when the rules of the game as written say they should. It's totally fair to give the AI advantages on higher difficulty levels - I know they're usually bad at those kinds of games and need the help to be challenging. But at least offer ONE truly "fair" difficulty - even if it's the lowest one.
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Feb 18, 2016 17:27
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That looks like the kind of thing I'd love to see in so many games and hopefully it gets carried forward to future Paradox releases as well. The worst part of strategy games, especially high level ones like HoI are trying to micromanage all your units when what you want them to do really isn't that complicated but the interface only allows you to give them singular orders like "move here" "attack this unit". I know that HoI4 won't be using the order of battle stuff from 3, but does it have some other system for organizing units in groups so you can quickly adjust plans for say, a whole theatre at once without having to drag select them to do it?
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Feb 19, 2016 21:16
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ThisIsNoZaku posted:Does this coalition of interstellar states only have barely more than a dozen warships between them? It looks that way. Although they also all only have one planet each so the tiny fleet seems about right. It's a starter federation.
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Feb 22, 2016 20:30
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wukkar posted:I'm really confused with diplomatic choices being in the HOI4 focus trees. They appear to conflict with the standard diplomacy buttons. They seem like dead branches which smart players will never pick over some of the other ones that give material things like '5 free factories', etc. I don't think that the diplomatic focus stuff is meant to REPLACE the standard diplomacy, more to give players some direction in how to tackle the game and presumably some kind of bonus for pursuing those goals.
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Feb 27, 2016 05:17
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Yeah, I'm not colorblind and I don't usually use those map modes either just because I don't really find them helpful. I mean I guess someone out there might want them, but they're hardly a requirement to play the games.
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Feb 29, 2016 18:00
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Ofaloaf posted:A navy? Also a country that's not involved in a huge civil war and might actually be able to provide some meaningful help against the USSR.
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Mar 5, 2016 04:59
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Baronjutter posted:But I mean show me any 4x or scify game where most aliens aren't just "Slightly differently shaped humans with weird heads", it's par for the course. Ascendancy doesn't even have humans or humans-with-green-skin aliens. I think the closest thing to human is some humanoid rat-people.
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Mar 7, 2016 19:20
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WeaponGradeSadness posted:The first diplomacy tech in GalCiv 2 has a description starting with "The trick to having good relations with alien species is to first avoid killing them. This may be harder than one might think as many aliens are just incredibly disgusting." Actually that reminds me of something I meant to ask - will you have to research communication/translation technology to be able to speak to alien races? Given that the game can be set up with multiple empires that are the same race (but potentially different cultures), it seems like it would make sense that you'd inherently be able to speak to your own people, but being able to speak with aliens might take a bit of work.
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Mar 7, 2016 22:09
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vyelkin posted:Clash of Kings, the official Game of Thrones mobile game by Paradox Interactive. This would probably genuinely make shitloads of money, though.
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Mar 8, 2016 01:17
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Did you get those lockers from an actual ww2 bunker or something? They look like they have seen some poo poo.
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Mar 8, 2016 17:17
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Yeah, I'd really love to see a Vicky-style take on a Civ game, where it's more about the people than the "civilization". Plus there's a lot of interesting historical territory you can cover that's not really touched on by the standard 4x formula - how development of agricultural techniques causes lifestyles to shift and the availability of food leads to more specialization of labour, how that leads to populations concentrating more heavily in cities, how that leads to class structures as well as diseases, etc. etc. Cultural development is basically just a footnote in most 4x games, even though it's the driving force behind basically all of human history.
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Mar 8, 2016 22:11
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The new thing is probably the secret project Wiz was moved on to. Come onnnnnn Victoria 3.
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Mar 10, 2016 18:02
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Baronjutter posted:I did not like King's contributions to V2. The whole reason the economy is so hosed up is that they put a trickle down Thatcherite in charge of designing the economy and way the world, specially capitalism, works. That's like putting a homeopath in charge of a medical sim. Honestly I don't think that's the real issue with Victoria's economy - it's that the capitalist AI is really bad at deciding what to build, and factories don't seem to be able to operate at a loss, so one day of bad sales sends them into a death spiral. Also if the game was meant to demonstrate the superiority of the free market, it failed pretty miserably considering that factories are basically guaranteed to shut down without government subsidies, and because of the aforementioned stupid AI planned economy/state capitalism end up being by far the best choices.
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Mar 10, 2016 18:54
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Randarkman posted:You could maybe maybe do a compromise version of this by making certain actions and mechanics solely available to superpower countries, of which there should be only 2, somewhat in the same way that great powers in Victoria can do more stuff than other countries (adding countries to their sphere of interest, intervening in crises). Another reason why I think some future potential Victoria sequel should extend through WW2 into the Cold War rather than ending in the 1930's. The Cold War was basically just imperialism taking on a new form and Victoria's focus on politics and economics would be a natural fit.
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Mar 14, 2016 02:11
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