Paradox Games

Kinda, yeah. In South America the US will start influencing countries towards democracy and they'll convert.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

The AI only coups nations by focus, but it never uses the diplomatic action.

Ah, good. The idea of middle powers couping major nations is a bit too sandbox for my tastes.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Between the million-plus wasted lives assaulting Indian ports and the German-Polish war, the Allies are finally letting up, and China seems to be holding the Japanese back.

EDIT: Oh, also, the Socialist American Navy is probably also helping.

edited 21st Jul '16 11:37:51 AM by Balmung

Not a fan of forcing gavelkind. It seems far too easy.

(Plus, I tend to juggle my under-kingdoms around after every revolt anyhow.)

Why wait for revolts? I only issue kingdoms as viceroyalties.

I don't make kingdoms if I don't have to - which I often don't because I'm not the blobbing kind of player. My current Islam multiplayer game has me uniting Iberia and not moving one inch outside of it, except to liberate Corsica and the Canarias - or to support my Tunisian ally's expansion into Egypt and Arabia.

That's what I like about most Paradox titles: You're not obliged to blob and fulfill some arbitrary goal, you just set your own goals. My goal often just is "conquer this region under my rule and then set up some buffers around me".

Sitting around and trying to make Iberia Andalusian is its own challenge, if you can't rid of the Visigothic rulers.

At some point I'll probably expand into Gascony to set up a buffer zone there. And I really want to get 'Imperial Administration' at some point and do away with the inheritable emirates - mostly because some of my vassals keep using weak claims to ruin my internal borders and I don't have any way to intervene outside of just killing off the aggressor or bank-rolling the defender.

The whole "force peace on subject" thing will be a blessing for me.

edited 21st Jul '16 3:03:01 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Yeah. Plus, in CK 2, blobbing means "rest of the game is taken up with fighting civil wars against your ungrateful sonuvabitch vassals" because they all want what you have.

Eh, that game begins the moment you're large enough that you can't just hold everything personally. My goal is always to make sure that every worthless piece of insurrectionist trash under me is so individually insignificant and and sufficiently marginalized that I don't care what they do or think. I rarely have to go beyond a cloud of pathetic little duchies, even with an enormous empire (eg. Oregon to Ohio in ATE).

Yeah, but there's also the eventuality that you run out of courtiers to make into one-and-two province lords that can't rise up against you.

this seems a bit ahistorical (shouldn't the government turn 'non-aligned' authoritarian?) but makes sense for gameplay purposes i guess.

Courtiers aren't really a problem. If I run out, just invite or generate some schmucks and land them.

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The Monroe Doctrine focus tree actually sways the other American nations towards whatever ideology America is following when it completes the relevant focuses.

edited 21st Jul '16 5:48:19 PM by Balmung

Looking forward to getting back to my flat in 1 1/2 weeks; I finally got the group together for a "continental Axis" game, with us playing as Spain, Germany, Italy and Turkey.

No inviting Japan because screw these guys and their mucking up our peace conference. We're also probably going to push for fascism in the US to keep them out of the Allies.

Just have to get a new monitor first, after mine died a few days ago. -.-

edited 21st Jul '16 6:19:46 PM by DrunkenNordmann

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.

Ugh, I'm stuck in Hearts of Iron >_< I want to conquer the Middle East as Iraq and can roll over Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Oman pretty quickly, but Iran is an entirely different story. Even when I had technological parity with them and I'm pretty sure I also had numbers, they rolled over me. Why? Is it because of the river, the mountains, or what? I had plenty of mountaineers, I had a decryption advantage, I had air superiority...

Iran's a bit beefier than its neighbors, in part because they actually have resources, and ones other countries actually bother to trade for, so they are also gaining IC from other countries, allowing them to build up more and faster.

Also, Iran's pretty much all mountains and desert.

If you need more "oomph" to break through their lines, try mixing in CAS or TAC - air superiority weakens your enemies and is enough for most enemies, but air support adds buffs for your own guys and does direct damage to the enemy units, and this can make a major difference when doing tough attacks.

Yeah, I've also heard that I should stick to infantry and cavalry for pretty much everything (though I do still want tanks eventually), and have 7 inf and 2 art battalions in my regular infantry divisions. I eventually hope to spread out through the rest of the Middle East and maybe a lot of Africa, especially Turkey since it has a ton of chromium and a lot of steel.

Also, double post, but what the heck happened to all of the mod subforums on the Paradox website?

The CK 2 ones are still there for me.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Huh. I can't see it in the top categories anymore.

edited 24th Jul '16 8:55:57 PM by theLibrarian

Did you happen to get logged out? The forums sometimes do that.

Regardless, the subforum is definitely still there for me.

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I don't think I've ever heard anyone saying you should stick with cavalry, save for use in suppresion units, as it misses out on several buffs that otherwise apply to all infantry (basic leg INF, special forces (marines, mountaineers, and paratroopers), and other mobile infantry (MOT and MECH).

edited 24th Jul '16 9:37:03 PM by Balmung

Yeah, I was logged out, all fixed now.

And the justification they gave was that cavalry were fast, and that tanks and mechanized stuff were a waste of my factories.

edited 24th Jul '16 9:38:06 PM by theLibrarian

Mechanized is probably wasteful, but tanks are great (add armor (usually enough in a single battalion of medium or heavy armor to keep AI divisions from penetrating whatever division you attach them to - if you're a cheapskate and just want the armor bonus, use tank destroyers instead - they have the same armor per battalion as tanks, but cost less IC per battalion (same IC per vehicle, but a tank destroyer battalion is only a little larger than half the size of a tank battalion of the same weight class), generous soft attack, and hardness to a division) and motorized is much cheaper than mechanized, benefits from almost all the same techs (MECH III is the only tech I can think of that gives a percentage boost to MECH, but not MOT), is necessary for some nice support companies, and is nearly twice as fast as CAV. Also, self-propelled artillery gives better soft attack per IC and much better soft attack per frontage than line artillery, since especially with variants, SPART can have insane soft attack.

CAV is basically a poor nation's stand-in for MOT before doctrines and various infantry techs (cavalry generally gets less from the percentage boost techs in the infantry equipment trees) give MOT better stats. Other than that, they're nice for suppressing rebels and conveniently have about the same speed as a 1941/1943 heavy tank, making CAV/HARM divisions work pretty well.

So, my quasi-ally, China capitulated to the Japanese and Iran went democratic, took the "reform the judiciary" focus, which causes a civil war and the republic of Iran joined the Allies against me.

And I'm stoked - now I can take the fight to my enemies, even though my navy is five cowardly battleships (seriously, they consistently disengage the moment they come under even the most token fire, even though they're bleeding-edge vessels with more armor and firepower than any other battleships at sea) and about 40 destroyers with balls of brass, meaning I'm not much of a match for the Royal Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy, though I did manage to island hop through Indonesia, Ceylon, and Australia (incidentally, with my conquests, I am now, for all intents and purposes, the world's sole rubber producer (Brazil and the USSA make a little, and there are a few even more insignificant deposits, but nothing meaningful), the largest producer of oil after the USSA, and mine unspeakable amounts of tungsten. On the downside, I use much of my civilian IC on buying steel from the USSA.

Anyway, my air tech is catching up, as is my naval tech, and I'm finally grinding down the enemy navies.

Other world news: Germany has stopped the Soviet advance just after Poland and is slowly driving the Soviet aggressors' forces back to Moscow. Somehow, I don't imagine either will ever have the steam to actually make the other capitulate, at least until I decide to conquer them both, since unlike the Germans and Soviets, I will never run out of manpower (at limited conscription plus NF bonuses minus total mobilization, I have more manpower than the USSR can muster when scraping the barrel).

Now to figure out if I take the Axis and Comintern out before I finish the Allies or after. If I do it before, I'm gonna have to occupy and suppress rebels in almost all of Afroeurasia, but I'll get an easy route to invade the UK from. If I do it after, I need to find an alternatile way into the UK, but I'll be able to free up my occupation forces for the offensive.

edited 25th Jul '16 12:50:32 PM by Balmung

New CK2 Dev Diary is out.

Welcome to Estalia, gentlemen.