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Yeah he did kind of jump on making the new thread needlessly fast I think Anyway there's a new dev diary for Stellaris   quote:Another artistic decision that deeply affected the visuals of the ship designs was the choice of having visible turrets on the ship. Since we want them to be visible to the player if they are zoomed out a bit, they also have to be a fairly large, and mainly placed on the top of the ship. The turrets aim towards their target and gives a satisfying broadside at times. It looks like the battles are still non-interactive, but now rather than just seeing dice rolls we get to see the actual battle? That seems like a pretty interesting change, and I guess necessary if they want to appeal to a 4X market. The complete lack of abstraction for what's going on or what the ships look like etc (especially since they're all turret dominated) is gonna kill my imagination a bit if I'm making my own scenario in my head but I think in the actual game I'll probably get over it. Also those shields look cool.
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Sep 28, 2015 20:53
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New Stellaris Dev Diary on faster than light travel.  Defense sounds potentially really tough if someone can just wormhole into the heart of your empire; I wonder if there are countermeasures you can make against them.
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Oct 12, 2015 20:13
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Panzeh posted:Well let me know if you come up with a process that lets the developer understand the best strats before the game even comes out so that that's even possible. It'd help a lot of Firaxis actually had a post-release attitude towards expansions and patches that wasn't straight out of 2005. I don't think it's like they need to be watching streams all day long, but especially with Beyond Earth they just seemed so completely out of touch. Tbf personally I don't think AI cheating is a bad thing at all as long as it isn't super obvious, but actually balancing your game around strategies that happen after launch shouldn't be some unattainable thing.
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Oct 22, 2015 00:04
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:I agree about not hiding your best AI, especially if harder difficulties also cheat resources and such. It was kind of funny though with AoW3, seeing that many players thought the game was actually too hard even on the easier difficulty settings. Apparently a decent number of people wanted a mode where the AI did literally nothing but sit in town and occasionally build units, the idea of not doing the same themselves being a foreign concept. I'd be curious to see statistics on what difficulty levels are most played for most strategy games, and maybe broken up by age groups. I know I think we get a bit of an inflated sense of most people's skill when we talk on online communities for games too; I have a strong suspicion that the vast majority of the playerbase for most strategy games are actually incredibly poo poo at them. When I play Age of Empires with my friends who don't play it much (but still played it enough to know where everything is etc) we can sit around building stuff for 45 minutes and I'll go raid them and find they haven't even made 12 units yet.
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Oct 22, 2015 00:34
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VerdantSquire posted:Honestly, from my own experiences, the main reason people think that this is a great idea is because obviously bigger sizes = more content, right? I don't really blame people for choosing all the stuff that makes the game a lot longer and bigger, since from their perspective, it's the option that will give them the "most" out of the game. But, while on paper it may seem like increasing the scale of a game won't change much, the effect is much more like what you get if you make someone several times the height of a normal human in real life. You don't get a monster of a human being, you get a human being whose back breaks instantly under the force of gravity and is left with a myriad of physical health issues which probably makes them incapable of even sitting upright. The same thing can be seen with games: Increasing the scale does not equal more content, it results in the framework of the game breaking apart and previously interesting components becoming incredibly annoying and dull. Yeah, it's the same with nobody wanting a shorter timescale for EU4 or TW games. Even though I've only finished either of those games like once, what if I'm having the game of my life and suddenly find it ends? What if I end up colonizing 30,000 tiles in Civ V and find I run out of room, what then man? It's irrational but it's always at the back of my mind in these games. But then the reality is that Civ games on quick speed/ small worlds and the TW games like FotS that are incredibly collected and tight are by far the most fun I've had with them. I don't think it's good to limit the options though, so I disagree about locking it out, even if most people actually don't enjoy the ridiculously huge settings; likewise, even though it's trivial to mod, I do wish Paradox would just let you have unlimited points in Nation Designer as an option if you wanted it. Paradox games are some of the easiest games out there to get mods for and I still have some friends who want nothing to do with the mods in them, and in most other strategy games where it's more complicated it's even worse. Maybe just make it so you have to play the game properly once or twice before you're allowed to go nuts, so you don't get a soured impression of it.
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Oct 22, 2015 18:53
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imperialism's relentless drive to exploit and plunder the less advantaged. actually I've been wondering, did they take out all the little ships and trade carts that to along your caravans and tell you where stuff came from? or did I just disable it accidentally somehow. I haven't noticed them in ages.
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Oct 23, 2015 08:23
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podcat posted:We need lots of sane people. Did you say this so you guys can cunningly filter out all the goons who add it in to be funny?
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Oct 23, 2015 17:50
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e: ^  New Stellaris dev diary on characters.   and funnily enough, sort of connected to HoI4 portrait chat: quote:Now, as you remember from last week’s diary, there are about a hundred different alien race portraits in the game. Thus, we initially felt that lesser leaders should not have actual portraits, because we could not possibly produce enough of them to provide the requisite variety. But then, the artists started to experiment with different backgrounds and clothes, which thankfully proved sufficient to allow all leaders to show a portrait. I wonder if they're using a sort of modular system like that in HoI too. I hope they'll be doing a bunch of portrait DLC packs for both these games though, usually graphical mods aren't something modders shine on, especially for rendered portraits like this.
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Oct 26, 2015 17:57
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Bort Bortles posted:Except I micromanage where the few leaders I have go so I get the best bonus at the right time in the right place/ect. I dont like the concept that there are a bunch of super-amazing dudes that I am managing but everyone else is an identical incompetent nincompoop with the same stats and same lack of abilities/specialties/whatever. You will note that micromanaging your leaders down to the barony level in CK2 is one of the most mind numbing experiences possible once you get past a certain size. I can kind of see why you might want lots of leaders (although I think you're probably overestimating how much you'll enjoy it in practice) but I think for all but 1% of the playerbase it just adds needless confusion and an enormous amount of micromanagement for next to no benefit whatsoever. it also sounds like something that'll be incredibly easy to mod, leader cap is the sort of value that's in defines.lua I expect.
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Oct 26, 2015 23:25
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Bort Bortles posted:I could go on about what I think would be best, but I wont. To sum it up - I want the leaders in use to be dynamic in the background: if there is this generic pool of leaders to pick from the game could just randomly assign one to lead a new colony or replace a dead one. If, however, I want to put a leader who -through background events I am not managing- is a great industrialist, I could chose to sort the list by stats and select him to lead my new colony...it is just a few optional clicks. Whatever position he was in before is auto-backfilled. There would in essence be little actual micromanagement - I just want to feel like I am managing a group of leaders rather than sticking whomever I have wherever because I only have 3 dudes to pick from despite having a dozen colonies to manage. Having an unlimited pool of leaders like that sounds like it'll just make you care about them a whole lot less. It's a lot easier to keep track of just a few people and actually get somewhat invested in them. I can see how it kinda sounds like it'll make things seem busier and more alive, but I think in practice all it'll do is take away a huge chunk of the uniqueness of the characters you actually care about for very little benefit. e: actually there's a really good example for this, just look at Total War Rome 2. They switched from a limited selection of leaders that were slow to replace and turned it into an unlimited pool, and suddenly people started caring about their generals a whole lot less, even though they were still about as detailed as they had been in the older titles. quote:edit: If you played "Endless Space" you may understand my fear better - at the start of the game you get 3 leaders in your pool of hire-able leaders. Certain leaders are home-run hitters from the get go and can develop into someone that turns any fleet that they are in command of into inter-dimensional murder machines, while other leaders you can get are garbo and can develop into okay-ish given enough time. It is all a crapshoot that is RNG based rather than having anything to do with my decisions, skills, or game-goals. This just sounds like you want to be able to get all the best leaders all the time. I dunno about Endless Space, but in EU4 you're totally able to make your leaders better, it just takes a lot of investment through ideas and army tradition. When you give people a selection of traits to choose from, all that happens is they take all the best ones all the time and there end up being totally optimal play strategies. Randomness avoids that somewhat. Also no state in history has been able to just hand pick the best and brightest in their country. You're dealing with corrupt and self interested nobles, if you don't like it, spend another 50 MP to strip some poor guy of his title and find a replacement, otherwise make do. Koramei fucked around with this message at 00:09 on Oct 27, 2015 |
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Oct 27, 2015 00:06
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Fintilgin 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?
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Oct 28, 2015 02:05
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What actually happens after the war is over in Hearts of Iron? The peace mechanics look really nice (and I guess they'll feature in smaller wars before the huge one too), but for the giant peace what incentive is there to actually getting really good terms for yourself? Doesn't the game just end like immediately afterwards? Also how are the casualties having an impact on your contribution going to relate to China? 'Cause they had casualties in the millions but pretty much no say in the peace whatsoever.
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Oct 30, 2015 16:34
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Alchenar posted:Actually I think it's sufficient in and of itself. Paradox games don't have endings, they have 'the clock ran out, here is your arbitrary score', and this works for every game... except HOI. I think adding the start of a Cold War to showcase how the world changes based on what happened in WW2 actually sounds like it would be really good. In most Paradox games I don't even play to the end, but Hearts of Iron is quite a bit shorter than CK2 and EU4 isn't it? So having a solid ending might actually be really important. Koramei fucked around with this message at 16:40 on Oct 30, 2015 |
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Oct 30, 2015 16:38
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I'm gonna be disappointed if there isn't a way to turn important planets into supercities with all the water built over and skyscrapers stretching out into space and stuff. Also nomadic planet-less civilizations entirely based on spaceships for DLC sometime
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Nov 1, 2015 01:42
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I don't think new players need the DLC immediately, it just adds lots of extra stuff for them to be confused by. When you're into the game it becomes necessary cause it has lots of tools to help you to play optimally, but new players really don't need those. Also I think the hardest thing about CK2 is just grasping the concept of vassals rather than nations, it's so alien to people today. EU4 is way simpler to grasp on a fundamental level, the countries basically act similar to how they would today.
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Nov 2, 2015 15:47
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New Stellaris dev diary on science ships  that planet in the second screenshot is gorgeous Groogy posted:That is the rational way to view it and is also how I view it when I do my purchases. If I see a game with a lot of expansions that adds content I am interested in I first buy the base game, play it, learn it then I go and buy the expansions. I usually am more inclined to buy games with a lot of expansions than those without because I like that I get more potential playtime with a game I enjoy. But I have no idea of how others view it (more than what people say/rant about the subject which isn't really a good statistical base to make opinions on). But I wouldn't be surprised by a person that goes and buys the game and every expansion with it without actually having any experience with the product before hand because of the "complete"-idea some people have. I think it's a good attitude (I think it's usually good to dissuade people from trying out huge mods until after they've played vanilla for a while too), but for me personally (and I suspect lots of other people), the problem is that I wait until there's a big sale to buy into these kinds of games, and then I always figure I might as well get as much DLC as I can afford too, since who knows when it might next come down in price and I might want it before then. And if I have the DLC, I might as well play with it too right? And I think (for strategy games at least) more expansions tends to indicate that the game was popular, so it's definitely a good sign. It's only a bad thing when you label something as the complete edition and it turns out it isn't
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Nov 2, 2015 17:12
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quote:so some lesser states have been merged. 
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Nov 6, 2015 16:53
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Wait are you even allowed to mod during the beta? It seems kinda against the point of finding bugs if you might end up accidentally introducing a bunch of your own when you play it. e: also keep in mind they said there's like 40 times the number of applicants than there are beta slots. even if a bunch of those are spam/ duplicates or whatever, our odds of getting in are pretty low  Speaking of modding though, anyone know how to get in contact with any of Paradox's EU4 artists/ what their policy is towards handing out assets? I've got a bunch of free time again so I wanna take another shot at doing adviser portraits, but keeping them consistent with the game's style is (for me, at least) mad difficult on that small a scale so if I could get the original sizes it would be lovely. Figured I might ask at least 
Koramei fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Nov 6, 2015 |
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Nov 6, 2015 20:20
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I was kinda baffled why the spergy map game thread brought up a subject like the same day as the spergy military history thread until I realised there's probably a huge amount of overlap in posters isn't there 
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Nov 7, 2015 19:24
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Wikipedia is not good for looking up sources for further reading since it favors sources that are often incredibly bad (online stuff). And of course print encyclopedias aren't any better, but nobody was ever pretending those were authoritative.Oberleutnant posted:As somebody who works in history in a professional capacity where information accuracy is the most important criteria (archives) I can tell you authoritatively that any article on Wikipedia (outside of Great Man Big Battle articles - so the real bread and butter of history) is highly suspect and won't be accepted as authoritative. We've been burned numerous times in the past from people trying to use Wiki as a source and the information it has is just flat out wrong. and the deeper you go (i.e. the obscure events and decisions that give Paradox games the most flavour) the worse it gets. Wikipedia's very geared towards letting spergs with the time to protect their own series of pet articles shut out any conflicting points of view. Read any page that's remotely contentious and it's incredibly obvious but it's unfortunately relatively omnipresent even when you wouldn't expect it (for instance, an article about loving glass beads). It doesn't help that historians tend to be so loving protective of their research that new findings are often very hard to get into the popular consciousness since it takes like 40 years for anyone to actually see them. e: I gotta be honest that I find this a bit concerning. I mean it's not like Paradox was ever pretending to be the paragon of historical accuracy, but especially with the runaway success of their recent games, hiring a consulting historian shouldn't be out of reach. Koramei fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 20:48
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Yeah I don't think the historians should be writing the game or that the devs should have to listen to them 100% of the time, just that there should be some people who genuinely know their poo poo regarding the periods represented, that are consulted about some of the choices. Like it or not (nobody seems to like it, I've noticed) games like these are one of the main ways historical knowledge seems to get pushed out to the general public, at least in younger generations. When they're pushing an outdated/ regressive model of history then there's clearly a bit of an issue there. Then of course some cases like HOI detaching its self from the holocaust and having gameplay focused ideologies are totally understandable decisions even if they don't make a lick of sense from a historical point of view. Koramei fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 23:16
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Dibujante posted:They can peruse this thread, among other locations, for historical tidbits, though Yeah, and the Paradox forums aren't really universally garbage either. The approach they have has clearly been working to some degree, I just think it could be a whole lot better. Especially on a more foundational level rather than event chains etc, I think when they're in planning stages for a game, having a historian could be really valuable so it doesn't push a massively outmoded view of a certain period. For instance, Europe clearly came out well on top over the rest of the world over the course of EU4's period, but was it because the colonial powers could ship hundreds of thousands of soldiers from Europe, which had a population that exceeded China, India, and Southeast Asia combined? Or was it for other reasons, that could have the design based around them instead? Honestly I don't know, I'm not a game designer or a historian, and EU's model is admittedly extremely fun and well designed. But maybe there would be a better way. Koramei fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 23:37
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Groogy posted:Don't fix what ain't broke. Worst thing that could happen is that we get a Historian that is one of those "You can only be an empire if you derive yourself from Rome because Rome, you know Rome is loving awesome ohmygod Rome I am so wet right now"  but I do still think this: zedprime posted: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. And I mean, even then, when it's a genuine gameplay conceit I think it's totally understandable- EU and Civ (and so on) style progression of technology as a linear thing is kind of destructive to our understanding of civilizations e.g. in Mesoamerica, but it works so drat well gameplay-wise. But then things like the development levels in EU4 giving off the impression that the rest of the world was a whole lot poorer than it actually was, which, if changed, wouldn't really have any gameplay ramifications (especially with the new protectorate warring system in Cossacks- I really hope the AI makes use of that, incidentally, it could pave the way to so much more). And things that some of us might not even consider, but a historian could point to and say "yeah this is actually really important for our understanding of the period". It could be useful. Or maybe it would be worthless, I dunno, lots of historians seem to obsess over the wrong things. e: unrelatedly, it's the last day of beta handouts for HOI4 isn't it? anyone here get in? I didn't but I shouldn't have expected much considering I haven't even done a single bug report or anything Koramei fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Nov 11, 2015 |
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Nov 11, 2015 17:53
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The worst part is I know the odds are infinitesimally small but I still keep convincing myself "but maybe" and checking again anyway. I wonder if there's a "no being smug about it on forums" clause in the agreement when people get in
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Nov 14, 2015 02:40
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You just wait until tomorrow when 3/4 of the forum I really don't get why people complain about this stuff though. It seems like even from a realism stance this makes more sense; the supply lines are much more accurate and understandable. The lines themselves functioning in a way that makes sense is way more important than whether it's tinned cod or pixie dust that's actually on the boats.
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Nov 16, 2015 03:46
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I'm not sure I like it either, but unless it's a feature that the game is built around, then I'm not too concerned. Paradox is treading lots of new ground here, so I figure they're bound to make a bunch of missteps. If it's something they can get right with an expansion or two down the line then it's not gonna ruin the game for me. With the ship designer too, both the problems I'm mostly concerned with for it (being entirely turrets and there being totally optimal builds) are things they should easily be able to work on eventually.
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Nov 17, 2015 16:18
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Maybe I'm just not thinking about it right, but planetary management being disabled as you get larger sounds like it'll bother the hell out of me. Even when automation in games is practical and makes a lot of sense it still always feels like "well the AI doesn't know how to manage the planets as well as me, why should I hand over control". Especially if a big part of the early game is having nicely optimized planets, and suddenly when you get bigger you find their efficiency hits the toilet. It'll just seem really jarring. What other games have done automation like that that people can point to? I can't think of any and maybe in practice I'm wrong and it feels really different. Raenir Salazar posted:Speaking of, I didn't get in despite having something like three years of legit professional QA experience (I listed my experience ofc), what's their selection criteria? lol
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Nov 18, 2015 22:28
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hm those animated portraits are kind of squirmy in a way i don't think i like everything else looks cool though. I love the chun chun chun of the ship in the first link, I hope there are lots of cool sounds.
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Dec 13, 2015 06:46
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Paradox posted:The Neborite civilization of the Kahalajom system. They destroyed themselves shortly after entering the Atomic Age a few decades after this picture was taken. sounds like it for sure This seems pretty cool, drat.
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Dec 14, 2015 18:28
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Be prepared for it to be all kinds of wonky on release, but a year or two later it'll be the best 4x ever made.
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Dec 14, 2015 21:52
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The British Isles floated off way away from the continent too. The map graphics this time around look gorgeous but there are some bizarre decisions for the actual geography. e: at least with Britain having more space in the channel could make Sealion/Battle of Britain more fleshed out I guess, whereas that Leningrad is just strange.
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Dec 17, 2015 04:15
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ship designer looks potentially cool but for some reason i'm deeply dissatisfied with only being able to design military things.
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Jan 20, 2016 20:11
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Demiurge4 posted:Edit: I will say that I don't like the ship designs at all. The aesthetic is very generic. I think it's understandable that they'd want a generic look for the initial stuff, the whole game is like that really. Hopefully it'll get more interesting with visual DLC. I have been kind of unimpressed with the visuals though.. there have been a lot of people saying this is Paradox's best looking title by far, but I think HOI4 looks miles better. It's the refinement of 2 decades of map games and looks nice and crisp from the borders of the countris on the map to the lighting effects to the slick propaganda portraits on the UI. Stellaris by comparison looks like a wholly generic space game.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:45
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Do we know if China is getting a national focus tree etc too? Is it the eventual goal for every country to get one?
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Jan 29, 2016 18:42
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Darkrenown posted:China won't have a special one in release. Focus trees are certainly a good thing to add in DLCs though! Oh cool. How ahistorical are you guys planning on going with DLC? Like say would it someday be possible to pull a DDRjake as Bhutan and build the a-bomb and a fleet of supercarriers? Psychotic Weasel posted:And neither have public release dates yet so what are the chances they'll announce next week "oh yeah its done, it'll hit shelves next week. Enjoy!"? When Stellaris first leaked it had a late-February release date on the Steam page. I'm assuming that's probably not gonna happen, but compared to HOI where they just did a dev diary showcasing changes to a feature they'd showed in an earlier dev diary, the Stellaris ones seem like they've mostly got it down already?  I'm not expecting it really but I wouldn't be shocked either if it's a Q1 title. Johan explicitly said they're not gonna release HOI and Stellaris close together, so if HOI is still a 2016 deal then I don't think Stellaris is so far off.
Koramei fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jan 29, 2016 |
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Jan 29, 2016 22:13
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Bold Robot posted:There was a longish Polygon interview with Johan that got posted a few pages back. It reported that the goal is to have the game out "later this year" I think. It also said or at least implied that Johan got brought into the project in like 2014-15 because it wasn't looking very good and he's been whipping it into shape. Oh I hadn't read that, I guess I should. That's.. a bit worrying though, if it wasn't so good. Space Pussy posted:Civ 6 whoah what
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Jan 29, 2016 22:30
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Trogdos! posted:I will not play Stellaris until Paradox removes female generals from insectoid races. This is very ahistorical and unrealistic since everyone, especially a its ironic because in most insects, all the males are there for is to breed with and die. females do everything. anyway there's a new Stellaris dev diary today with some intense mushroom action.
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Feb 1, 2016 16:44
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expert such as myself, knows that insect warrior caste consists entirely of male members. Ugh. Also if you know anything about bolete physiology you'll see how thoroughly unrealistic it is that mushroom-people females can be
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Wow that makes the peace conferences and all the peacetime options a lot more interesting too. There'll undoubtedly be tons of mods to extend the tech tree well past WW2 too.
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Feb 5, 2016 18:46
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Dibujante posted:edit 2: This is one thing that EU4 doesn't really model very well. England should have a really strong infantry combat advantage until 1550 It's an abstraction in EU4, this is what ideas are for isn't it? It's just a gameplay mechanic. It's not like every country with military bonuses in their ideas actually had unstoppable supersoldiers for the 400 year period the game is set.
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Feb 10, 2016 03:02
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Every country with provinces in India is part of some unique Indian system, sort of a mix between the HRE and the daimyo system in Japan. I think adding "center of gravity" polities like the HRE to a whole bunch of places would be a really good change. One of the main things that makes Europe so much more interesting to play in than the rest of the world (in my opinion, anyway) is having to work within/ against the constraints of the HRE as you expand around it. And it's the spawn of so many alliances and wars, as well as big events like the 30 years war and the shadow kingdom that you can plan a lot around. Unique states (that are unique for people interacting with them, not just themselves) are very fun to play nearby to. India would be good (to stop the hugboxing there too) but Ming especially. An HRE-like system for a shattered China that let it reunify/ get Manchu'd would be great.
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Feb 10, 2016 23:40
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