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

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Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Bold Robot posted:

What's the story on the mine slavery?

Mines are just bad news. First, you have your run of the mill mine dangers - collapses, for example. Or breathing the dust. However, digging deeply into the ground has some other risks, too. You can unearth pockets of noxious gas that will kill you before you realize you're not breathing oxygen anymore. On top of that, Roman gold mines used hydraulics in order to expedite gold mining. These hydraulics could easily crush or down.

Silver mining exposes the miner to all of those risks, and more. This is where the Spanish innovate, by the way - the silver mines of the Spanish colonies were actually worse than those of Roman Hispania. This is because of the Patio Process, which uses mercury to extract silver from ore. This increased Spanish silver yields enormously. It also meant that not only were mine workers exposed to mercury, but they had to mine that stuff, as well. According to contemporary accounts, 3 months was around the longest you'd last before you got nerve damage, went crazy, and died.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2016 23:40

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 16:49

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Demiurge4 posted:

CK2 was the dawn of the golden age of functional releases for Paradox, after they shed the shame of Sword of the Stars 2. I'm sure Wiz won't accidentally unleash Skynet while he teaches the AI to taunt like a proper French twat.

Paradox Interactive and Paradox Development are held in personal union by Johan but they are not the same thing.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2016 23:01

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

I want the Ur-Quan to show up and start slapping energy shields on everyone for mysterious purposes that soon become grimly clear.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2016 22:10

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Baronjutter posted:

Allied planets has one planet, their name is a bit optimistic I guess.
It sounds like as a player a federation will be a pain due to the rotating presidency and total lack of control when not president, but they'll be great for minor powers to band together. Wonder if they'll form in response to the player conquering too much near them sort of like a coalition in EU4.

I've wanted this mechanic for Switzerland in EU4 for a while. It would be pretty fun for it to be a federation of cantons that essentially can't expand due to bickering and rotating presidency but which is also very hard to attack due to each canton being surprisingly powerful when mobilized.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 20:40

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Fintilgin posted:

They're going to have to put in some sort of Federation internal politics. It's going to be awfully hard to convince players to give up control of their foreign policy 3/4 of the time.

It's like a semi permanent opt in regency council. Oh boy!

if it makes it more viable to play small, focused civilizations it might be worth it. This kind of mechanic in EU4 would definitely get used by most players doing OPM starts.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 22:09

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Psychotic Weasel posted:

From one of Doomdark's responses in the Paradox forums it sounds like while they won't be taking the concept further before the game is released they are leaving the door open to future refinement.

May be reading too much into the respone though. Maybe they're going to see how people react to it first before throwing more resources at what would likely be a fairly complex problem to solve if they were to introduce a whole new layer of internal politics?

As it currently stands it doesn't seem like a thing a human player would use with a bunch of AI empires - in the example shown the player is giving up control of their empire for up to 15 years at a time... who would want to do that?

It depends on whether or not the peacetime game is engaging. I could definitely see piggybacking off of a federation while I built my empire up internally.

In any case, I am confident in Paradox' mechanic design, but even more confident that they will recognize what works and what doesn't and iterate on it.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 22:34

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

If some of the late-game scenarios are real doomsday scenarios then the federation may be the only chance at survival, which would be amazing. Imagine a bunch of AI who all hate each other forced into a federation.

# ¿ Feb 22, 2016 23:17

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Strudel Man posted:

They wouldn't be doing the plantation labor, though, surely. A lack of slaves would have hindered the plantation owners, not forced small-scale white farmers onto the plantations themselves.

Mind you, this doesn't necessarily tell us what the actual opinions were on the subject. It's actually kind of an interesting question. I'm going to poke around on google, see if I can find anything illuminating.

This isn't my field of study but my understanding was that poor southern whites were generally pro-slavery, because this meant that they weren't at the very bottom of the social hierarchy. It was a self-destructive vice.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 07:51

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Strudel Man posted:

It can be a subtle distinction. Poor southern whites were certainly strongly anti-emancipation, for the reason you state, and also because of economic and other fears about what would happen if the slaves already there were freed. But we're specifically thinking now about how they felt about bringing more slaves in, which is a slightly different question.

I feel like you have causation slightly backwards here. The plantation system was reliant on slavery, yes, absolutely. But this doesn't mean that in the absence of slaves, other people would be forced into that niche; it means that in the absence of slaves, the plantation system breaks down. As happened with emancipation in Haiti and elsewhere - at least, once such emancipation became more than de jure.

Or I suppose, in our counterfactual, the system doesn't get established in the first place.

The plantation system could not have survived without West African slavery, full stop. It's not just a logistics problem (how do we get all this work done cheaply?). The environmental changes wrought by the plantation caused malaria to boom in the region. Without modern medicine, the only way to get any work done there was by using malaria-resistant workers, and West Africans are resistant to malaria. No European populations had any malaria resistance. If you look at the outcome of any European military expedition into this region, the results are pitiable: you sometimes see as many as 1/3 of the army drop dead from malaria.

Could the plantation system have survived with West African wage labour, perhaps? Possibly, but the notion of wage labour was pretty alien to most humans at the time. Also, being shipped to a distant place where there is only one employment game in town means that you are a de facto slave, regardless of whether or not you're paid a pittance at the discretion of your owner/employer.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2016 16:52

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Wiz posted:

I learned a *ton* of things applicable to Paradox games from working on MMOs. Balancing numbers and mechanics versus each other, maintaining endless replayability, etc. They're more similar mechanics-wise than you might think.

Please drop a lot of acid and then make a game that combines the most inappropriate mechanics of both genres.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 18:37

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Oberleutnant posted:

Pdxplaza are way ahead of you there.

Someone post those anthropomorphised countries represented as anime girls with grotesquely oversized tits.

Some autist on the plaza invented those. Right?

Those are leaked design documents.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 19:03

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

LaSalsaVerde posted:

clearly my nation's breast size should represent total development

World conquest would be therapy-worthy horror.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2016 19:51

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Bel Monte posted:

I investigated the horror. As a gay man (really drunk right now), I will survive the Great Historine Plague of 2016 and go on to repopulate a blasted wasteland Earth.

Mans posted:

i would like to know more

Bel Monte has done enough. Let's keep paradoxplaza where paradoxplaza belongs.

# ¿ Feb 25, 2016 23:32

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

nothing to seehere posted:

The Goon EU4 game runs at speed 2, very rarely bursts of speed 3, with no pausing ever. We play for 4 hours a week, with a rehost or two in the middle, and will get through about 35 years every session: poo poo-talking, keeping an eye on other wars, and diplo take up some time.

Also diplomacy-wise: I'd say goon EU4 games have a very Napoleonic/congress of Vienna style diplomacy. There's alot of making alliances with your enemies enemy, coalitioning leading powers, and basically people trying to keep each other in check. This leads to betrayals, large hellwars (each person joins a war because their rival joined the other side, spread over the whole of europe and ME), and some ruthless crushing of states without good allies.

Everyone gets bored and then every single war turns into a hellwar, though.

# ¿ Feb 29, 2016 23:58

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Groogy posted:

I don't know I'm too focused on when designing panzer division on "what would Ai Hitler do?"

Surprise attack on Germany. Crazy? Crazy like a fox!

# ¿ Mar 2, 2016 05:23

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

If you unleash some Ancient Evil can you just tagswap to it?

# ¿ Mar 2, 2016 07:30

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

GrossMurpel posted:

It would have to be very early 20th century though. TW would stop being TW as soon as you stop using line formations.

So you can use it for the American Civil War to hilariously destructive effect.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 16:12

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Drink Cheerwine posted:

what's the problem? would you feel the same way if they were talking about christians, scientologists, buddhists, mormons, or all religions?

Removing just one religion doesn't go far enough :ussr:

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 21:21

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Tollymain posted:

hmm yes that seems the appropriate reaction and not banning the gross bigots who responded

although i guess they could have been banned too, i'm not about to go look into the depths of paradoxplaza myself to find out

they don't do honeypot threads though do they

Paradox should ban all posters in a randomly selected thread every day at midnight.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 22:39

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

V for Vegas posted:

Hmmmm. Not sure how a business that constantly pushes back releases is going to deal with quarterly profit reports. Gotta keep that share price going up!

I hope Wiz, Groogy, Johan, Podcat et al. retire with millions in the bank after Ubisoft acquires all of PDS's franchises and makes them an open world single-player fetch quest grinder.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 22:17

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Why are they doing it, though? Are their financials worse than we thought? We could all just buy another cosmetic DLC, Fredrik! We'll raise the money!

Actually maybe we should acquire their IPO and run everything into the ground.

e: Actually, is PDS included in the deal? If they're just IPOing the publisher then that's not really the same thing.

Dibujante fucked around with this message at 22:27 on Mar 7, 2016

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 22:22

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Wiz posted:

You guys are pretty silly. Your map games will be safe, I promise.

You already left us for Stellaris!

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 19:09

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

pdxjohan posted:

Conclave was called zeus as a projectname..

So, Peloponnesian War game confirmed?

# ¿ Mar 8, 2016 20:25

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Koramei posted:

there's a thread on the Stellaris forums were Johan says it was a few days early

some people are posting some stuff from it though:

Oh god this game looks so good

My gaming backlog

# ¿ Mar 14, 2016 21:34

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Vivian Darkbloom posted:

Yeah I'm on my first real game on Easy (after restarting due to a food death spiral) and it's quite competitive even with all the advantages I'm getting. I think I have to unlearn a lot of my instincts from Civilization, like using my civilian units to build as much poo poo as possible. Very 90s game, in that it provides a bunch of in-game help but you can still shoot yourself in the foot completely.

I am coming to appreciate the need for careful management of critical, scarce resources (early on, lumber and cast iron) and just how fast you need to start loving up the natives. It's a pretty grim game from their perspective -- it's 100% likely that they will be conquered or absorbed "peacefully".

Overall I think the game (Imperialism II) is very much worth playing, if anyone is looking for a 4X with more than a little resemblance to EU and Vicky.

Oh man hell yes, Imperialism II is amazing. It's one of those games that nails its intended thesis really well. All the mechanics come together to produce a really brilliant exploration / conquest / colonization of the new world game and put it into a context of European competition. There should be an Imperialism III ;_;

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 16:30

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

There's a solution to counters that solves everything for everyone. Use 3d models at all levels, but make them Wrestlemania wrestlers, and translate all actions / special attacks / maneuvers into different grapples. Blitzkrieg encirclement needs to be hitting a guy with a chair and then jumping on him, though.

# ¿ Mar 29, 2016 17:53

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

pdxjohan posted:

None designed that would allow a human to not die by alcoholpoisoning within 30 minutes.

You underestimate what slavic ancestry plus being a programmer has done to my capacity for whiskey.

# ¿ Apr 6, 2016 21:15

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Groogy posted:

64bit won't improve performance in terms of speed. That is not how computer works.

But you can do double-precision floating point calculations in half the steps!

# ¿ May 18, 2016 17:26

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

Grizzwold posted:

I saw this file in the Stellaris Workshop and thought of this thread. No idea if it's the same Ubik.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=686361792

According to his Steam profile, he commands ferocious loyalty; a true leader of men:

code:

: IF U WERE KILLED TOMORROW, I WOULDNT GO 2 UR FUNERAL CUZ ID B N JAIL 4 KILLIN DA PERSON THAT KILLED U!
�......|.._______________________, ,
�....../ ..�-_____��___________|] = = = = = D
�...../==o;;;;;;;;__.: /
�.....), �-.(() /
�....// (..) ), ���
�...//__ //
�..//__ //
�.//__ //
�WE TRUE HOMIES �WE RIDE TOGETHER �WE DIE TOGETHER �send dis GUN to every1 of ur homiez. C how many times u get this, if u get 13 your A TRUE HOMIE 4 LIFE 420

# ¿ May 20, 2016 22:42

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 16:49

Dibujante: Jul 27, 2004

"Except for the ways in which X differs from Y, X is the same as Y" is a statement that contains zero information.

# ¿ Jun 14, 2016 21:55

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