Paradox Games

So, I turned off "historical nation focuses", and I noticed three main things: First, almost every minor takes liberty focus unless they're already fascist or communist.

Second, Germany started WWII backwards - Poland led its own alliance, so the Allies didn't try to bail them out. After that, Germany immediately DOWed the USSR and made impressive (and remarkably historical) progress before bogging down - then they tried to repeat the concession of the Sudetenland on Yugoslavia's Slovenia, but this time, the Allies grew a spine and started a war over that, adding a new front to the war. Then, since Germany clearly wasn't in deep enough shit, they declared on OP Denmark and inaccessible Norway. And then Belgium. Did I mention that Germany's going it (almost) alone, too? All they have on their side is puppet Slovakia. Italy has their own faction with Bulgaria. Finland, Hungary, and Romania are sitting this out. And the Free American Empire is at war with Chile, but can't seem to actually land troops.

Third, a lot more factions get started, which diminishes the big three.

Edit: And those German sons of bitches just took Moscow (probably my fault - I killed like one and a half million Soviet soldiers in east Siberia, trying to conquer the USSR from the east). I get the feeling that despite me doing like 80% of the work, me occupying like five times as much land, and me not being allied with them, Germany's going to get the lion's share of the land. Still, with any luck, I can get Baku oil and a good amount of steel. And yet, the Danes will probably remain unconquered for the next four years.

edited 20th Jun '16 6:41:47 PM by Balmung

Beta 1.2 patch for Stellaris is active.

I like that they made Spiritualist a more viable ethos. Still not sure how to build trust if other empires won't sign any treaties with me because they don't trust me.

please call me "XionKuriyama" or some variation, thanks! | What is the good deed that you can do right now?

Give gifts.

And the Abandon Planet wargoal is something I've wanted for a while. So many useless planets in my way...

...and hey. I actually liked the old Spiritualist. Must have just been me.

Mmkay. The reforms to slavery tolerance are a fancy way of telling me that the Holy Sirian Empire has run its course and the next patch is gonna be "Hivemind or Bust," because only Fanatic Collectivists have a good slavery tolerance anymore.

edited 21st Jun '16 4:14:16 PM by Ramidel

Doesn't divine mandate still have massive slavery tolerance for all subjects?

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Well, I now have a real world war in which all factions are at war with each other - I declared war on Germany to gain my rightful conquests from the Japanese-Soviet war before Hitler strolled in and took like twice as much land for less than a third the work, thus a war with the Axis (Germany, Slovakia, Turkey). Also, the Australian Civil War has turned into a world war in its own right, with the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (JPR, APR, IPR, PRA, CAI (communist veraions of Japan, Australia, India, Afghanistan, and Iran, and hopefully Siam will join soon)) versus the Allies (UK, Netherlands, Luxembourg (capitulated to Germany), Belgium, Denmark, Norway, France, Canada, South Africa, Hellenic Republic, Yugoslavia, and nominally the British Raj and Australia, but those are fully annexed by their communist counterparts.

Also, UK OP - Berlin fell in 1941 due to a British naval invasion.

Interesting DD released for CK 2; centering on peasants thinking the end times are coming (including them getting worked up because they think the dead are rising) and a potential immortality quest.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/ck2-developer-diary-11-the-end-of-days.950847/

edited 21st Jun '16 6:51:02 PM by Rationalinsanity

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

@Balmung: According to the patchnotes, not after Asimov.

Conquered Hawaii, now I just have to wait for my fleets to clear the way between Hawaii and the West Coast and then I can land 75 Japanese divisions on US soil. And it's 1949.

I have become Death, Destroyer of Worlds - World War II (officially the Australian Civil War) is now the first nuclear war.

France is out of the fight, largely thanks to unrestricted nuclear warfare. I may have reduced the Eifel Tower to a heap of molten slag, but France's NU was so low that they capitulated almost as soon as JPR soldiers set foot in France.

What's more, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace are no more and all industry in southern Great Britain is out of commission. Now, I just need to bring the Combined Fleet all the way from the Pacific to the English Channel, crush the Home Fleet, and launch an invasion.

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Next game will probably be France or some ridiculous Czech derailment (Germany cannot into Anschluss if you conquer Austria first, which then blocks off a huge part of their focus tree, including all the rest of their free land focuses and most of their war goal focuses.

edited 22nd Jun '16 6:32:35 AM by Balmung

I actually think that, even though my losses have been relatively low during this war, that once I land in the US my casualties are going to skyrocket XD

Well, I've for all intents and purposes won - The FAE has capitulated, and with it gone and annexed, no major power remains outside of my faction. By virtue of owning all of the former USSR, all of China, about 90% of Europe, all non-Portuguese land in Africa, and the former Free American Empire, the Japanese People's Republic is the sole hyperpower - an absolute majority of all world industry and population is under JPR control and no conceivable (or inconceivable) alliance of remaining powers could hope to challenge that.

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Time to fire up France. And just for kicks, I intend to completely skip medium tanks - all heavies, all the time.

edited 24th Jun '16 3:41:52 AM by Balmung

How are you going to compensate for the speed issue? You could focus mainly on propulsion tech to bring them up to speed, or focus on industry so you can roll out enough of them to form an unstoppable wave of juggernauts to steamroll the enemy. That second is how I used to play HOI 3. I'd set up enough brigades to cover an entire enemy line and I'd just roll them all forward as close in speed to each other as possible.

Welp, Stellaris disappointed me on the sale. Only a ten percent discount?

I guess I could wait for the winter sale, though if nothing else comes up that peaks my interest I could buy it close to the end.

It was just released. It wouldn't be anything else.

Not even gonna bother - just gonna smash right through. Though if I really need something quick, MOT/MECH + MOT RART.

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Well, the heavy tanks are definitely getting results, and since I just unlocked AMX (+5% speed and +10% reliability), I have a lot more room to play around with the stats on the ARL 44 than I did with the B1. If it wasn't for the fact that cavalry never get any upgrades outside of those that affect the entire army or all frontline divisions (they count as neither leg infantry nor MOT/MECH, so a whole lot of doctrines do not buff them at all), I'd be planning up divisions with a lot of CAV and heavy tanks, as they have about the same top speed. Un the up side, without medium and light tanks, there's no drawback to introducing MECH units with relatively slow level 1 MECH.

edited 24th Jun '16 4:02:19 PM by Balmung

Ah crap. So my invasion of the US finally went through but because of supply difficulties it couldn't get very far and I lost like 300,000 men in it. Still got millions more but I'm already building a new force that I can hopefully get to move across the entirety of the Pacific instead of having to wait in Hawaii. It's the attrition that's the issue, I think >.>

I'm pretty sold on heavy armor after this French game - heavy tanks use less precious oil (1943 medium tanks use 2 oil/factory, while 1943 heavies use 1 oil/factory) than medium tanks and no tungsten, and instead uses otherwise largely unused chromium (only shared with the navy and modern armor), meaning that they don't compete with artillery, rocket artillery, jets, or towed AT guns, and I generally find chromium to be more plentiful than tungsten. I mean, I guess it also comes down to what you have a lot of available, and France has a LOT of chromium and rather little tungsten. Then again, not many countries have huge tungsten reserves.

Hm. So I tried Brazil, and I'm disappointed. It doesn't have very many building slots in its provinces, the US might intervene in any war that you do (making coups the only real way to try and build a faction), and you also have three (admittedly minor areas) European colonies next to you.

I mean, I can make it work but still.

So, I learned a lesson in my multiplayer game today: Never invite AI nations to your wars if you can avoid it. Otherwise this happens.◊ Had to go into singleplayer to fix this nonsense.

I really hope they'll fix the peace conference system soon. Nations puppeting stuff on the other side of the world just because they can is annoying as heck.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

I had the Soviets declare war on the Axis when the Axis was nothing but the Japanese home islands and I was two weeks from being able to launch a naval invasion. They occupied Sakhalin and nothing else, and that was enough to puppet three warlords, Japan, and Hungary.

They contributed nothing of value to the war and got substantial payout.

Yeah, apparently that's a really big problem right now, one that Paradox is planning to fix in the next patch.

Is there any way to ensure that some of the pre-set species don't appear in a game of Stellaris?

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Only if they take the Nf focus for that. Guaranties are not necessarely applied if both belligerent countries are guarantied by the same person (and Brazil is guarantied by the US).

You could remove them by modding. I think it is the only way,

With modding you could just disable random spawning.

I want to be the only humans in the Galaxy, don't want to deal with the two silly pre-set human civilizations. I suppose I could just go into the textfiles and erase them.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.