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TorakFade posted:for someone who expected a fully fleshed out and polished game on release, why are you even here? I said earlier in the Paradox general thread that Paradox games are always barebones at launch, and people were telling me it's not true, HOI4 was great, etc... but now I can see I was definitely right I dunno, it feels pretty fleshed out to me. I've played as Etruria and Bosporan Kingdom (it's in Crimea) and both certainly didn't feel like a boring vanilla factions, both had as interesting situation and configuration as any non-major nation in EU4. And my Etruria was completely destroyed by Rome on my both tries even though game went into a different directions to that destination of destroying me. It feels like a real game right here right now, while both Stellaris and HoI4 were barely games last I've checked. Both of them want you to click things suggested by alerts and it's enough to take you to a victory screen. You can also read some nice event descriptions along the way. Imperator requires me to think about enemy army composition and not wanting to annex some of their more problematic land and in my book, it brings it ahead of every other Paradox game at least in some respects.
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Apr 26, 2019 11:16
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this does have the Stellaris vibe , but having real countries and places and history behind it it's much more focused of course
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Wondering if it's even possible here to get vassals peacefully. As Etruria I'm the same rank as Rome. Everyone is beneath me. Yet no one at all is even close to agreeing for any sort of relations. How can I get allies in this situation? I've even raised Carthago opinion hoping they propose some sort of defense from Rome but they don't care.
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Apr 26, 2019 20:38
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TorakFade posted:We really need a ledger. Or some sort of central management tool where I can check my provinces (goods, pops, cultures, religions, policies) and even regions. If they don't want to give us war information on enemies fine, but please, PLEASE let us see internal info for the whole country in an easy, complete and sortable way. I can't bear hovering over every single city, province or region to see data and being unable to compare it with the province next door I really would like some sort of city/population list. Even Victoria 2 allowed me to see whole province POPs. Now if I want to know the best place to build a marketplace or if I have unhappy freemen and thus need to export wine - I need to click a lot of provinces.
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Apr 27, 2019 17:39
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I'm not happy with UI but in general map works great and I dig gameplay. As Bosporan Kingdom I've conquered most civilized places around and now any expansion would either mean sailing into faraway lands I won't be able to defend or getting those tribesmen and opening my borders to barbarian hordes. Diplomacy might be too restricted compared to EU4, but it's a first time Paradox made it so that expansion for its own sake doesn't feel like it's always net positive. Even with people complaining about changes about territories and conversions you'd still benefit from a new 1/1/1 province in a middle of nowhere. Now a new province might mean a new powerful governor in your state, a bunch of useless people of wrong culture and wrong religion who produce nothing. It's easy to see how trading with that province instead would be much more beneficial.
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Apr 29, 2019 12:10
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Also right now I irrationally want EU4 with that map - useful terrain mod - and proper UI scaling. Maybe CK2 with those portraits too. As for I:R the only thing that irritates me at the moment is a lack of province view (how many infidels are in that province? Should I switch the policy to conversion? Are freemen here unhappy in general? Should I import wine?) and the fact that I have to build each road province by province.
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Apr 29, 2019 12:12
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"For Imperator, some things will be similar to how we have developed games since we released CK2, and some will be new. We will aim to have two major updates each year, with accompanying big expansions, where we focus on flavor in the paid content, while having core systems primarily part of the free patch. We have been working on ideas for our first expansion, but before starting on that one, we are doing a big free patch, which contains a lot of free features for all of you." This part of dev diary makes me hopeful. I've bought most of the content for CK2 and EU4 so it's not like I'm greedy. But I'm sure that core mechanics put in DLC made the game worse for everybody. It'll be fine if events/special governments/military traditions are all in DLCs if core mechanics remain part of the base game. I also didn't understand why stability is shown as just "1" instead of "+1" but it won't matter soon, won't it?
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Apr 29, 2019 12:25
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TorakFade posted:Couple questions: what are you people spending all your Oratory power for? I don't change laws very often, I'm loving tired of clicking "assimilate" (I should do it on, uhhhh, about 7000 pops?) and since a single claim for a province usually gives you a fairly big chunk of land, most often you can't even spend it all in claims (btw do claims ever expire?) Oratory power is also spent on character interactions. I think organizing gladiatorial fights between prisoners is a good boost for ruler popularity. You also smear the reputation of everybody important. The podcast was probably this one https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/ Everyone recommends it even though I myself didn't find it that engaging. The performance is not so good. Something like Dan Carlin's Hardcore History would be much much much less reliable but he makes you want to listen to him. I'd also recommend Great Courses which is read by university professors. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/category/history.html?CFM=mega_menu They might look a little click-baitish but I assure you that you won't find anything of higher quality. It looks pricey but you have a 14 days trial on Great Courses Plus if you want to do it in legal but cheap way.
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Apr 29, 2019 14:54
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What's a good way to marry women of your ruling family? Tooltip says that I can only "arrange marriage" with foreign characters. But what if I want a woman to stay in my country?
ilitarist fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Apr 29, 2019 |
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Apr 29, 2019 15:11
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So let's talk about what looks strange but not broken in your games. I can see that Maurya barely expands. As others have noted it's also pretty stable. The most technologically advanced nation in my game is some city-state (later a small power) on the horn of Africa. The greatest thing we lost from antiquity were cool hats that were worn by everybody north of the Caucasus and east of Dniester. Unloyal character troops make me a pacifist. They just stand there doing nothing even if there's war. If I lose my troops in the war those guys will start a civil war. The game would have benefited from the sort of tooltip about you being able to marry your close family in the monarchy. I had to switch to agnatic-cognatic system when it turned out that my family now consists of 4 old women and 2 little girls. The real popularity boost comes not from winning a war but from gladiatorial fights between imprisoned rulers.
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Apr 30, 2019 08:49
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It's hard to take seriously that video about anti-strategy nature of mana. Instant spending of mana to get a result doesn't mean there's no planning. Because any big thing requires you to spend a lot of MP. And if you have even a hundred spare MPs then either you're planning to do something with it or you're playing ineffectually. You may redirect those MPs quickly, yes, but then it's mostly a matter of convinience - people don't care if you spend money on building, then cancel it halfway in, get all the money back and spend them on something else. Those instant decisions put decisions in focus instead of boring calculations and microcontrolling stuff. In fact, I'd say that, say, EU4 needs more of those instant things. Edicts look like a thing of the past where it pays to remember when can you turn off the edict as often you don't need it for most of its duration, like with development edict. In that video I see him having thousands of points stockpiled and that makes me think that this guy doesn't understand strategy at all.
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Apr 30, 2019 11:41
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fuf posted:uhhh did you miss the part where he quoted sun tzu I've actually was full of hope when he acknowledged it's a bullshit quote. Fellblade posted:The hilarious part about this video is that PDS already said they were changing it to take time rather than instant results before this video was even posted. Only some of mechanics like stability and it still doesn't change the perceived problem that you can solve any problem with throwing a lot of MP at it. People seem to be angriest about instant conversion and claims.
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Apr 30, 2019 13:29
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:That the community latched on to the term "mana" to denote these more abstract currencies is telling, I think. It suggests that in the players' minds these things are magical or unreal, and the actions they enable are not attatched to any sort of identifiable real-world process. Not that you can't (usually) synthesise a narrative to ground these things, but it seems these mechanics are not naturally creating those narratives in the minds of players. They are narratively null, and thus unsatisfying. I had this conversation several times already and it seems that people don't like the term itself. Monarch *points* sounds gamey. I myself think that "numerical representation of state's ability to project power in specific ways" is much more historical than some things that people are used to and consider to be historical, like gold. Especially when in EU4 it's called Ducats and you know it's historical. Even though it's an abstract concept that makes even less sense: it can be transferred instantly to any country or culture; when you invest it in buildings or recruitment you can pull it off instantly; it has no real inflation (1000 ducats can by you same stuff in 1500 and 1800) but somehow you need a different amount for scaled events; it's the only representation of country's economy as there's nothing else except of state property and so on and so on. But we're used to having gold in our games that magically produces stuff. For some reason it's more historical than political capital allowing to move or convert people. Previous EU games used agents instead of MP which did basically the same things. Victoria 2 had focuses. But those things are too hard to quantify. You can't have many agents cause it's chore to manage, you can't have few cause then getting even a single additional agent is a lot. Still this system is easier to "get", maybe they should have done something with it. EU4 already has agents with some personality (they have names as if they're immortal servants of the state) but they are auxiliary to point spending. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Apr 30, 2019 |
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Apr 30, 2019 14:28
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You also get basic MP and your advisors which, together, will affect your MP production more than the ruler. You can also apply the National Focus to get a different kind of points. Yes, your ruler heavily affects what you can and can not do. That's the idea and that's part of the appeal.
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Apr 30, 2019 14:39
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ShiroTheSniper posted:Instead of: build mana pool ---> spend mana for instant result This would probably give you a little more inertia to your decisions... But it will add a lot of hassle and need for micromanagement. I.e. if you click button "redirect that mana to whatever cause I want" then not directing mana is bad choice and so you need skills to click button that redirects your mana in a new direction ASAP. The difference is like between turn-based and real-time tactics. In a sense EU4/I:R allow you to play RTS as if it's a TBS and your units all have their action points stockpiled, and then when you need them to instantly move somewhere far away spending a lot of action points. It makes little sense in tactics because you can't plan if enemy units may actually instantly teleport. But when we're talking about what MP affects in Paradox games it doesn't really affect your strategic consideration. In something like Civilization you can assume that someone is 1 turn from researching nuclear weapons because you see they have prerequisite tech. In EU4 you have to assume that this guy with 15 military tech is one day from buying 16th tech just to be safe. If someone conquers a land in I:R you can assume that they can spend some of their MP on converting pops but it's a still unstable land. If the game doesn't have some sort of espionage system where you know that enemy is in a middle of something so its better to attack now (and it would probably only make sense in post-Napoleonic game) there's little difference for you whether everyone clicks things to instabuy or launches a long process.
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Apr 30, 2019 21:08
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RabidWeasel posted:With that said monarch points are only interesting if there are competing things you want to spend them on and for the most part that only applies to oratory power at the moment. I'd like it if inventions went from being all civic to having a cost based on the invention type. Then move some of the other current oratory functions over to other power types since drat near everything is oratory at the moment. Not sure this will work. The current balance is that Civic power is the most universally needed mana for most of the countries. Everybody needs it for trade routes and advances. But I imagine it's significantly less important for tribals who exhaust their advancement pool quick and start relatively small so they don't have a lot of trade. You'd also need to make inventions cost more cause it will be much easier to scrap 300 MP of each type than 1200 Civic MP to research every invention - not that I say you should do it, but you know what I mean, inventions become a go-to place to drop your spare MP into. In general, I think that I:R is interesting in that it went from EU4 approach where every type of MP is important to a more subtle one. Religious points seem to be the least important, but when I got into a series of monarch deaths (all the inheritors were old) I really saw their importance. Completely agree with your thoughts about the system in general, including CK2.
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Apr 30, 2019 21:36
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Chomp8645 posted:Is this guy trying to make a coherent point or is he just saying "I like EU4" in a really weird way? A lot of people don't care about strategic ganeplay that much. So they don't care about expanded mechanics and strategic depth. Rome is a lesser roleplaying experience and for many it means a lesser paradox game. You are not killing Catholic French, it's about murdering Hepatic Sampapians, it's like Stellaris but without mushrooms and starfish. You only get events about a specific game mechanic, and there are no funny events like wench throws herself at you. Different countries have their own bonuses but those show themselves in strategic part which you don't care enough, they don't have special button and event. CK2 and EU4 also had natural goals to work for - almost anyone has something to form or usurp and many people seem to stop shortly thereafter. So for many people attempt to make paradox games looks like adding a better story into a porn film. Technically any film needs a good story, but in this case it only distracts from flavor. Can't genocide and marry sister in that game, what do I care about deep army composition?
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May 2, 2019 06:58
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It may not be deep and strategic enough for you, but it's deeper and more strategic than any previous Paradox game.
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May 2, 2019 07:10
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Sheng-Ji Yang posted:you seriously think this? you really think this is a deeper game and simulation than vicky, ck2, eu4, or hell even HoI and stellaris? Yes, it's obvious to me. Unless instead "deep" is synonymous with "a lot of numbers" for you I can't see how can you think otherwise. Also what @RabidWeasel said and what I've said previously. People confuse depth with content. People care about thousands of "something happened in real history so get this advisor or +5 prestige" events more than a limited number of systemic events that are greatly affected by your ruler stats and add an additional level of character interactions that provides opportunities for character control without guaranteeing full control. People care about genetic national ideas giving a bonus to trade more than organizing a dozen trade goods coming into your capital, interacting with existing goods and creating a unique set of national/capital province bonuses. Add to that bolder use of MPs (which make much more sense than gold but are not as familiar to players) which initially made many people hate EU4 too. Nowadays I think most people realized that deciding whether to spend your ADM on ideas, tech or conquering and coring is an interesting choice, but on release, people complained about arcadey coring with button click instead true hardcore waiting for 50 years. I think big part of people thinking that Paradox games become much better later is that they get more accustomed to those new ideas; games themselves become more stable and have more content but I don't believe any Paradox game has ever moved more than a single point on my 10 points review scale. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 09:15 on May 2, 2019 |
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May 2, 2019 09:05
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:e: Stellaris is more complex on all fronts but that complexity makes it difficult so see where your decisions are making a difference. IR is simpler then Stellaris but your decisions are also more meaningful. Maybe it is so with Stellaris but for me all complexity is made moot by two things: - No matter who I am I still build stations, build stations, build stations, colonize planets, build stuff that is either work with planet specialization or solves a problem of overpopulation. - Even if you give AI maximum bonuses it won't be able to do anything against you as long as your skill level allows you to react to alerts in an expected way and build new stations.
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May 2, 2019 09:27
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reignonyourparade posted:It still compares disfavorably to launch-everything-else as far as i can tell, excepting possibly stelaris which i still haven't gotten. The game has a lot of problems to iron out. I'm not that good with gameplay yet so I don't feel comfortable talking about balance beyond high level concepts, but UI clearly needs work. Each province needs culture/religion/class piecharts (you can see classes in state overview but not in province view) and I'm still thinking that maybe I'm blind, there's no way they wouldn't give you this info. We also miss a lot of alerts, I blame them for the fact that my ruling family has almost died off before I discovered that I have to marry them manually. Macrobuilder that doesn't show you city manpower/income/populace is a joke and it's hard to understand why didn't they copy EU4 functionality. Maybe there are too many cities in empires so they don't want to overwhelm you? I'm also sad that music is not as varied and good as in any other game since EU3. After numerous hours of play I still only remember one theme (with the violin, you know the one) and others don't even register. And experience shows that mods won't help much, modders think that Lord of the Rings and Witcher soundtrack makes everything better. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 11:10 on May 2, 2019 |
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May 2, 2019 10:05
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uaRPRFx6_c Another video review. Pretty harsh too, but more self-conscious. He doesn't like lack of personality like many others but argues about gameplay, not about fluff. He doesn't like MP too but is more eloquent when explaining why and comes to it from more of a psychological side. He doesn't say it's unrealistic or non-strategic or something. He cares about it feels like it's too much about waiting for enough resources to instantly do a thing as opposed to following the progress as it is with tech. It's also telling that he has his own impression of the importance of specific types of power: he says Oratory is the most important while many people cry about it being useless. Which to me tells that there are different playstyles that people naturally fall into. This guy seems credible (even though he mentions that Greeks should have a Phalanx tactic or something... which they have). He says he played 300 hours and it was fun. So perhaps he's right and 300 hours later I'd say that I'm done with that game while I have much more in EU4 which I consider inferior as a game. It's still fine. Even 10 hour strategy game (like Into the Breach or something) is great and costs its money as long as it feels good.
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May 2, 2019 11:04
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NoNotTheMindProbe posted:You'd have to have a broken mind to consider this anything other then a glowing recommendation. In this specific instance, the guy had made a lot of sponsored content so hi might have needed to play those 300 hours to make an opinion. There are cases when it's true. Not in the case of Skyrim, but I can totally see how you may have a lot of hours played in strategy game before you realize that it is a bad game. Strategy games work on a promise of a great gameplay, interplay of systems. Something like Stellaris may taunt you with an idea of a galaxy divided by federations and politics and grand mysteries. So you play for dozens of hours that you see as tutorial, as a preparation. And only after playing a lot you may realize that AI is not able to play the game even with all the bonuses, it wasn't your fault for playing on lower difficulty. Galaxy generates in a boring way, you spend hours for naught trying to find proper settings. Every type of civilization plays in the same boring way, and you needed 10 times you've started playing as various factions. You saw numerous patches and expansions and people saying that the game is great so you've tried again. So I have around 100 hours in Stellaris and I guess I like the music but the game in general is boring as hell and I regret trying to get into it. Some other person might have the same amount of time in Stellaris, think it's great and move on. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 13:26 on May 2, 2019 |
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May 2, 2019 13:21
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TorakFade posted:Couple questions: what are you people spending all your Oratory power for? I don't change laws very often, I'm loving tired of clicking "assimilate" (I should do it on, uhhhh, about 7000 pops?) and since a single claim for a province usually gives you a fairly big chunk of land, most often you can't even spend it all in claims (btw do claims ever expire?) For those who ask who thinks oratory power is useless - here's an example. He doesn't say it's useless but he struggles to find an application. I've seen on Reddit people claim that Civic is the only thing you ever need and everything else is useless. Also, about civil wars: the enemy leader may just die from any cause and then it's over. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 13:28 on May 2, 2019 |
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May 2, 2019 13:25
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Weebus posted:Being able to hire mercenaries in enemy territory is colossal bullshit. loving love it when egypt hires 60000 mercenaries standing on top of rome and burns my capital down. There should at least be a notification when your enemies hire mercenaries in your territory. Those troops start exiled. They'll need to go to Egypt territory to be of any use.
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May 2, 2019 15:08
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One of the things I'm angry about in I:R is fog. I highly recommend using this mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1723465882
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May 2, 2019 15:09
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nessin posted:Just a general note to anyone, please don't do this. I get it, sometimes you want to like a game or think it has great potential so you force yourself to play it and end up just feeling burned and regretful but that's basically just self-torture. Plenty of games may need more than 2 hours to really feel whether you like them or not, but after a good 10-20 or so don't force yourself to like/play a game you just don't like. Yes, too much time was spent on the stuff I don't like because I trusted people. They said it's good, they said I don't understand. But no more. No trusting anymore. Only cold, stone heart.
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May 2, 2019 19:27
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Gantolandon posted:In case of Stellaris, it's pretty good at obfuscating its blandness behind meaningless mechanics (such as the Factions). This initially makes the game quite fun until you realize that 90% of things you were doing didn't serve any purpose and could have been ignored with no consequences. At this point you already have sunk at least several hours into the game, so you might as well try to finish it. Rinse and repeat the same process every time a major patch comes out and everyone claims OMG, it's a completely different game now! Add some hours spent just after each minor patch to check if it's still a buggy mess and you can easily end up with 100+ hours spent on a game which you didn't really enjoy. Exactly that. I:R is different as it's immediately obvious that fundamental mechanics allow for interesting gameplay for a long time even if no mechanics are ever redone. Another example of such a game with 100 hours played negative reviews would be RPGs. They feed you mechanics but then turns out that you don't really need any of them and the game is much simpler than it pretends to be, and then the story gets out of steam and you're in the world of empty locations filled with trash fights. Really many RPGs do that, and you've already 20 hours in by the time you realize you're bored, but you need to finish it if only to see the story. And then it turns out that the ending is 80 hours away. That's Pathfinder: Kingmaker, for example. Stellaris adds to it major reworks that promise you that now it's a good game. Usually when RPGs get one of those (Divinity Original Sin, Witcher 1-2) they really mean it.
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May 2, 2019 20:48
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RabidWeasel posted:Unfortunately they rejected their obviously better "CK2 but Space Empires" pitch and so Wiz is stuck with the horrible job of trying to make these two genres mash together What Went Wrong with Stellaris might be a theme for a big book. But it would be moot cause commercially it's probably the biggest Paradox game. And you can't say it's dumbed down or anything, it's just that they didn't focus much on strategy aspects of the game and didn't add AI and still managed to make it entertaining for a lot of people through events and flavor and story generation mostly involving genocide. All the while leaving a lot of padding with the need to micromanage huge empire in the style of an advanced clicker. Reminds me of modern RPGs like, say, Dragon Age Inqusition who went a similar road: they've added a ton of lore in their games, a lot of dialogue and small scale reactivity, romances and optional content enough to fill three games. They've simplified combat so that it's less involved and more attrition-style a la older Might & Magic games... But it's not like they've made combat a lesser focus, there's a lot of it even though they consciously made a decision to concentrate on story and characters and made combat something you can not go deep into. I personally think that Stellaris very much suffers from too many cooks issue. Henrick (initial designer) clearly had a very different vision from Wiz. He probably wanted Star Trekkish game where civilizations are defined by their values and diplomacy, coalitions and scientific advancements create a lived in a galaxy that is later tested by a crisis. Wiz had made every non-DLC faction act the same with ethos mostly defining who you'll be friends with (almost railroading it) and other differences like FTL type and starting weapons stripped out and replaced by unique DLC factions that mostly sidestep ethos system. He also doubled down on events so it's more like King of the Dragon Pass or something and there are more small crises and other stuff that makes you reactive to the emergent story. Not saying that Henrick had a better vision in mind but it resulted in that for 3 years devs didn't make Stellaris better, they made it different. Which makes it constantly fresh, so if you want games that are long tutorials it keeps you entertained. With EU4 or CK2 we had a lot of changes, but even the biggest of them - probably development and later institutions in EU4 - pales in comparison to what has been done to Stellaris. Stellaris today looks like a sequel to itself to some people and this makes them ecstatic. I've talked to several people (on Reddit  ) who said that it's great, you only buy the game once and it's like you're getting a sequel. I didn't even try to argue that to get to 1.0 Stellaris diversity you now have to buy several DLCs that add factions that play at least somewhat differently, I've argued about Galactic Civilization 3. After a couple of patches, it was playable and always stayed playable. Stability, performance, AI and amount of content improved with time, it never went backward. It had big expansions with lots of content adding a lot of stuff without the need of removing anything. And you can buy "full" GalCiv3 for less than "full" Stellaris. I've been told that GalCiv didn't need that amount of rework so it doesn't count. But what do I care, I asked, I'm a player and I see two games claiming to have a long support cycle but only one of them actually works decently on the machine that usually allows me to run AAA games in 4K, and the only one gives me challenge after I learned basic rules. I've been told that I don't understand how software development works and how hard it is for a niche developer like Paradox. Stellaris sold more than 2 million copies on PC, by the way.
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May 3, 2019 09:18
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Weebus posted:Has anyone had a bug where armies can't stop building roads? The button for road building's blocked out for me and hovering over it gives no explanation so now I have a veteran legion permanently stuck on road building mode. I can't disband them either so for the moment they are just on an epic construction quest from illyria to egypt. I want to turn this bug on and off cause I'm tired of babysitting my armies and telling them that today you're building a road again. Or is there a way to schedule road building across several provinces.
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May 3, 2019 17:29
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Chomp8645 posted:Wow, the patch completely mucked up my Ironman save lol. My Republican Rome has been transformed into a Monarchy, all the faces are different, there are some Greeks in my government posts, there are no slots for national ideas, etc. And I'm not even using the beta patch. Every settled tribe in my game turned Imperial Cult.
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May 4, 2019 09:41
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Sampatrick posted:On the brightside, there's so much about I:R that's not fantastic but has potential that we are certainly going to get years of DLC so that we can spend more money on making a game go from being bad to being great This never happens. No game that had "potential" on instead of quality on release had ever become great. If you didn't like EU4 or CK2 or Stellaris on release you won't like them years later. I don't think I:R is bad. I'm ok with its gameplay. And I think that very few people who don't like it now will change their mind even if paradox fixes every problem with UI and adds tons of favor.
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May 4, 2019 23:07
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Yep, what @steinrokkan said. Fixing UI issues and bugs is not turning around the game, they turn the game you like but have some problems into game you like and have fewer issues. Maybe games like Final Fantasy 14 were salvaged but this case was more like remaking a game and putting an old label on it. Still, if you say that the game "has potential" it means you won't like playing it later, unless it's some specific case like it's a sequel that changed a lot and you need time to get used to a new paradigm (like Civilization 5).
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May 5, 2019 00:32
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canepazzo posted:What I don't get is the giant hangups people have with "mana". What's the issue with it exactly? Why is it different from ducats, prestige, piety, unity, political power etc.? I think one of the big arguments is people think that it's not "real". Like many think that teleporting magical substance that summons armies and never inflates is somehow more realistic than a numerical representation of your government's power in a specific area just because one is called "gold" which is real and the other isn't. The other thing is disappointment with EU4 DLCs which added a lot of "buttons". Like spend military points to get legitimacy, spend diplomacy points to get mercantilism and every special government has similar stuff. Many think that ability to turn gold into MP in I:R removes all the strategic thinking. Many of the complaints are about how the system would be used if taken to absurdity. It's true that it'd be nice to see more intricate mechanics that EU4's "spend X resource to instantly gain Y resource or buff" but it's sorta stripped down and straightforward decision. And EU4 is all about removing bullshit like waiting for stuff to progress, a bar to fill.
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May 5, 2019 19:24
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Spiderfist Island posted:That Heritages thing along with actual variation between religions will go a long way towards giving real mechanical flavor for all the regions. It sounds like the Heritages mechanic will sort of act like the unique national ideas from EUIV. The problem is most of those ideas are fluff. Kinda like historical events. Of course if you're minmaxer and optimize stuff then for you +10% to trade power of Novgorod or something is important, but in reality Novgorod is defined by it's geography and relations and religion and government system (and special mechanics if you own DLC). Those national ideas are very rarely focused and greately affect play outside of several examples where they make Exploration ideas unnecessary for Russia and Berbers get raiding and France gets a lot of focused military bonuses. Even so when we talk about some special countries we have to watch out for they're mostly defined by special government like Prussian monarchy. So those heritages look to me like a bone thrown to a community. The Roman one makes Heavy Infantry cheaper the way a single invention (and you'll have hundred of inventions by the end game) could do. And Roman characters may have more rivals. Not sure how will it affect anything at all. I:R made starting location and government and populace much more important than it was in previous games (even Victoria, I would argue) and defining how you play the game. But those countries don't have flavor and guidance. If you start as Savoy in EU4 you'll see that they have fort defense bonuses and diplomatic reputation and you get the idea of Savoy. Those bonuses are nothing, if you try to stack those bonuses as, say, Ethiopia, you'll probably have 60% bonus fort defense while Savoy has 70% or something, and some random event bonus can uplift Ethiopia even higher than Savoy. And when you play against Savoy or Ethiopia you don't care about all their bonuses beyond direct military ones, you'll barely notice this fort defense. So really strategic part doesn't get any meaningful update even from EU4 expansive national bonuses, those Imperator Rome bonuses look as important as dynamic historical events giving you 3 prestige in EU4. Some variety to religion is nice though, especially if it means that conversion becomes possible and meaningful. Though I'm afraid they'll have to go into fantasy land: even current descriptions of many religions blatantly say that we know nothing about them.
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May 6, 2019 11:17
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Yes, they do love flavor and fluff. So from the tone that Johan uses, I can see him imagining himself being Leonardo Da Vinchi making a beautiful portrait of a girl with a mysterious smile... And the whole art community says that he should've painted bigger tits. Still that flavor doesn't harm at least. And he ignores the peasant rabble where it's important, underlining that they can easily change the game from being MP-focused but he knows it makes for a better game. And as long as they work on imporving UI and AI and base mechanics I won't be regretful about additional events and unique Iceni bonus to female ruler martial skill or Spartan button to throw babies from a cliff (-manpower, +discipline).
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May 6, 2019 11:43
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Naval combat seems... Complex. I'm all for more interesting mechanics but it makes me sad with how EU4 did it. No matter how much complexity they added to ships you only need those for transport. And in case of war bigger fleet wins but all it does afterwards is just adding some penalties to enemy trade income, so it only ever makes sense when it's a naval trade empire against naval trade empire. I'm afraid that navies will be complex but useless. They still have that rule from EU4 that if you control both sides of the straight then you don't care about enemy blocking the way, right? I'm afraid that navy will still be a drain on your resources and attention without being all that important unless you're Crete or something.
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May 6, 2019 17:58
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RabidWeasel posted:Being able to zoom down the Nile etc. and dump troops wherever the gently caress you want seems like a big deal Dunno. All the important cities are in the delta. And it's just one country. Was it ever a historical concern? This is a very situational concern. I understand that devs are very hesitant to make fleet as necessary as it was for a decent empire. So pirates are rare and small. If they'd wanted they'd have coastal cities gain a fort level or two unless they're blockaded. But this would make for a very one-sided relations, e.g. landlocked tribals not being able to do much except raiding a countryside. Which would be realistic and add interesting dynamics but it would be very frustrating to players I guess.
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May 6, 2019 19:29
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Firebatgyro posted:They do gain a bonus That bonus is negligible. I:R has a nice system where each level of fort means you need 5000 more people to siege. So you put 3 level fort on a border with barbarian lands and it's fine forever, or force enemy to get a lot of attrition on siege. Something like an additional fort level for every coastal city (so you need 5000 more people to siege it and it will take longer) would make the dynamics between naval and land powers much more interesting.
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May 6, 2019 21:26
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Ham posted:- The characters are meaningless fluff and don't hold a candle to the CK2 character focus. While I understand it was probably not Johan's intention to have the game focused on characters, why even include them and make them a big focus of your game and pre-release marketing? Surely they understand why people like the character focus of CK2, so you're only setting yourself up to fail by just having nice portraits and cool trait icons. This argument I don't get at all and it makes me mad. Again, it's about flavor, not strategy. I:R has much more interesting strategic decisions about characters. In CK2 all you care about is the single number for their council job and how much your vassals and spymaster like you. All of your army is commanded by a loathsome guy who hates you? No problem, you only want him to have a high sword stat. Character traits affect AI behavior and special events but you'll only see it in extreme cases when they're mad. Choosing a governor in I:R (all of his stats have some effect on his effectiveness) or general (need someone good at war and someone I could control) is much more interesting than any character decision in CK2. But, of course, you don't have events about horses and manure bombs, so there's no depth.
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May 7, 2019 08:49
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Ham posted:Not sure where you're getting strategy from that post, but if you mean making meaningful decisions, CK2 is much more than select best stat for council. Even if Imperator takes more of the governors stats into account when determining their effectiveness, the characters don't feel real or realized. Case in point, I hire the governer once and can then happily ignore him for the rest of the game till he dies and I have to replace him, because there is nothing else to do with him. Strange that I have to explain how character choices in I:R are important but fine. Hiring a governor in I:R means that he's free to plot against you. Depending on his traits he applies different policies to provinces. His traits define which of systemic events will happen at that province. His corruption stat (which is important in many character interactions) affects the province greatly. In case of civil war he may chose a side depending on his relations. If you set troops to patrol the province the governor will command it himself. His own religion and culture interact with the populace in addition to the state own. CK2 councilors get plot power but apart from spymaster none of them does anything with that. There are very rare random events for lunatic councilors but that's it. You don't empower a family by putting someone in a council seat, it's a political decision only if you have Council DLC and even then it's trivial. I remember some time ago CK2 had events where characters asked to be placed in council but I think they removed those events. Character ambitions are more varied and they actually ask to get a job. Sometimes you get a character with some sort of plan that will require taking one of the seats. Plus there's this whole government thing with clans/preferred successor/party that adds to the character. And yes, outside of poop jokes I don't see any character in CK2 characters. They've got a lot of traits but all of it is noise, AI is affected by those traits but you won't notice unless it's those extreme events, or when they summon demons I guess. You don't care about any of those traits and thus you make no strategic decisions. In I:R chosing a character for any job is a balancing act. In CK2 you can generate characters for your council with trivial cost till you get the biggest number and it describes the depth of the system perfectly well. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 12:11 on May 7, 2019 |
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May 7, 2019 12:08
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