Paradox Games

Hearts of Iron is certainly more fast-paced than the other Paradox games. It's also more logistics-focused; you have to constantly be producing equipment to outfit your armies and have to keep it up to date, have to take in mind what your generals can do, things like that.

I find it fun, and it has a really good mod in the form of Kaiserreich.

It's less about single army or stack position and more about production, supply, and entire fronts. Operations are also normally done through the battleplanner, with which you draw offensives or falback lines and the AI takes care of the nitty-gritty (though a little intervention is often required to finish off pockets).

Also, buying Hearts of Iron IV also gets you the amazing Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg mod, the very promising upcoming The New Order Last Days Of Europe (the basic premise is the Axis won WWII, but Reality Ensues and the 60s are a time of incredible chaos), Fuhrerreich (double-blind what-if of Kaiserreich (that is to say, it is "what if the Entente won the WWI from the perspective of a universe where they lost WWI), Red Flood (what if the Entente won, but very differently and basically by dragging out the war until Germany succumbs to revolution and Germany and Russia wind up flipped as to who is fascist and who is commie) as well as the less amazing but potentially fun Millennium Dawn, Modern Day 4, Apres Moi Le Deluge, Ante Rebellum, and much much more. A personal favorite among less total-conversions is the Salty Anarchist Mod, which leaves the game mostly the same, but adds anarcho-communism and royalism as ideologies, complete with focus trees to pursue them as majors.

edited 26th Mar '18 6:33:08 PM by Balmung

The ability to engage in grand strategy is somewhat shallow compared to other Paradox titles, but the system for simulating the logistics of supplying arms for a World War are there, if somewhat simplified - once a tank is built you don't need to worry about it running out of gas.

Really, the game is to some extent about preparing for World War 2, especially if you're not one of the Great Powers and have to very carefully manage your resources, military industry and your pool of potential allies.

Also fascists are OP pls nerf paradox.

edited 26th Mar '18 11:47:38 PM by math792d

They probably did that on purpose because the Fascists start off with powerful members of both other factions close by on land routes. Neither the Allies nor the Comintern have that, since seas/Germany separate them from each other.

Also, Germany is ahistorically buffed (and France nerfed, the events of 1940 were far from guaranteed to have progress the way they did) so that the Axis don't get crushed by 1942 in every game.

And of course, the USA is nerfed into the ground - Germany can relatively easily exceed the industrial potential of the USA without even really going off the historical rails, despite the fact that the USA had nearly half of the entire world's industrial capacity, and while WWII saw the very limits of industrial mobilization in the UK, Germany, Japan, and the USSR (not sure about Italy), the United States still had plenty of capacity to expand. In HOI terms, almost everyone was running Total Economic Mobilization and had all their construction slots filled and civilian factories converted, while the the USA was maybe at Partial Mobilization and had over 150 construction slots left to fill and loads of civilian factories left to convert and was still producing as much as everyone else put together.

Yeah, if the US was modeled realistically it would be far too easy.

It was more accurate in the beginning, though. True to history, America getting involved in any war would result in whatever nation they were at war with getting buried under division after division of soldiers.

Ultimately gameplay takes precedence over realism, the name of the game is verisimilitude and balance.

I'd argue that it's bad for gameplay as well - taking on the USA should be a race against time to defeat them before they can gear up their industry for war and outproduce you, but the USA's limited capacity for factories means that time is working against the USA.

Yeah, the US has less potential for factory development than the Soviet Union. The USSR don't start with as many factories, but they have many more states with the capacity for military industry.

I haven't started with Ho I 4 yet so I still don't know first-hand how different it is from the 3rd game lol. I'm still focusing on my CK 2 game.

It’s very different from 3. More user friendly for one thing.

I think I’m gonna do a CK 2 game again. Form Britannia, then go tall. Might even import that over to EU 4

Yesterday I accidentally won my first game as Barbaric Despoiler in Stellaris with a Federation Victory.

Turns out the "can't join a Federation" part of Barbaric Despoiler does not stop you from founding the Free Nations during a War in Heaven. Because of my Corvette fleets over-inflating my fleet power It deemed both empires inferior to me which resulted in everyone else instantly wanting to join me.

Watching fleets from all over the Galaxy pour into those poor bastards systems was an absolute delight.

edited 5th Apr '18 6:38:14 AM by Kiefen

Meanwhile, I'm running a bunch of tech mods that give kind of OP weapons (though I did nerf them somewhat in-line - there's no need for the Titanic Ivory Lance to have thrice the alpha of other T-size weapons or the normal Ivory Lance and Peta Cannon to outdamage all vanilla (and most mod) T-size weapons from an X-size slot (cut Titanic Ivory Lance to 1/3 power and it still beats the Arc-en-Ciel on raw DPS, cut the normal Ivory lance to ~1/3 and it's still really powerful, and the Peta Cannon to 1/2 and it is the DPS king of the X-slot, though it also has unimpressive damage multipliers/penetrations compared to lances and arc weapons). I'd have nerfed down the strikecraft, but that's more complicated.

And why all these toys? To take on all three crises at 5x strength, of course.

edited 5th Apr '18 7:46:57 AM by Balmung

At least you're keeping things balanced over there. Kudos!

I'm in a Poland campaign in CKII. I got tired of RNG fucking me over in Ironman, so I use save scumming. Got the immortality quest, love my first king enough to go for it, only to find out how abysmally low the odds are on that. So I tanked the quest on purpose and consoled it in instead, with the in-game justification that I'd gotten all the way to the grove with the apple, decided I didn't deserve immortality more than the rest of them, and was rewarded by the gods the choice instead. I know, cheat run, but when you spend hours building a Kingdom only for the RNG to say, "Oh silly human. I giveth with one hand and taketh with the other" too many times, I get right pissed off.

edited 5th Apr '18 8:17:46 AM by Journeyman

The sound director (the SFX, not the music) is leaving the Stellaris team to work on another, unannounced PDS project.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/stellaris-dev-diary-110-creation-and-beyond.1086872/

So, something is confirmed for sure.

Yeah, I tried to do Poland once myself. Didn’t work out cuz of gavelkind

Interesting.

Now I'm not saying it's Victoria 3 but it's totally Victoria 3

But we already got Victoria III.

If there is anyone in this thread who doesn't already have it, CK 2 is free on Steam until Saturday (not a 'free weekend', but free to buy).

Filthy lies!

I just picked it up.

Time to crusade some kings

You take that back.◊

edited 5th Apr '18 3:54:27 PM by DrunkenNordmann

I knew what you meant and I stand by my statement

edited 5th Apr '18 3:58:51 PM by Fourthspartan56