Paradox Games

Wait so you have to basically remake your religion to keep being Norse with the raiding and prepared invasions?

No, but when you do reform it, you either need to take Sons of Ragnarok or lose said qualities.

I think you always keep the raiding (including boat raiding) unless another doctrine you choose (eg. Pacifist) disables it. The special Norse doctrine, however, is the only way for Norse to keep river travel and prepared invasions when you reform (each of which would otherwise be separate doctrines).

That said, I'm actually not sure I want that because vassals launching prepared invasions is a huge pain in the ass when it comes to realm management.

Edited by Balmung on Oct 2nd 2018 at 9:02:24 AM

If you keep boat raiding, then I'd skip Sons of Ragnarok for a better ideology myself.

Now, if Bloodthirsty Gods doesn't remain baked into the Aztecs...well, actually, that might make a certain amount of sense, since there may have been just such a reformation attempt under the Toltecs. But it's still kind of iconic to the Aztec gods.

What this about EU 4 having synthetic dawn event

Boat raiding is not a distinct mechanic from land raiding. If you can raid and you have boats, you can do overseas raiding. The tooltips "Rulers can raid infidel neighbors for loot" and "Can raid overseas with ships" do not describe specific abilities, but rather, AI behavior - AI of a culture, religion, or government without the latter descriptor won't raid your coasts.

Ah, gotcha.

In that case, Sons of Ragnarok is definitely a doctrine to ditch when the Northmen go from mere raiders to an unstoppable empire. The drop in naval support costs only matters if you raise your own boats, and once you become feudal, boats are a city levy.

Edited by Ramidel on Oct 3rd 2018 at 1:15:20 AM

On the other hand, there is a very distinct degree of utility to being able to use rivers for rapid transit

Well, yeah - and I'd seriously consider Seafaring for Slavic or otherwise Russian play. (Ceiling Cat damn whoever came up with the idea that river navigation was something special - much of the Khazars' wealth came from tolls on the Volga-Don portage!). If I didn't plan to use the Russian rivers as part of my strategy, I probably wouldn't consider it worth a doctrine.

Welp, newest Equestria at War game was the Arcturius Order. Despite 48 different divisions of troops with muskets and artillery, we were very swiftly overrun by the Dread League, likely because we couldn't finish our land fort defensive line before they declared war on us.

Now there's a reason to take Sea-Bound: the Viking trait is linked to it.

So Paradox released the first bit of footage of Man the Guns, including the new focus tree for the U.S Of A.

Highlights so far (in spoiler tags) are:

The part of the focus tree that sets you down the fascism path is called 'America First' ('Everyone Else Second' is part of the description text) and involves sabotaging the US economy by re-adopting the gold standard.

You can also only go down the fascism path if the Republicans win the 1936 elections, as the entire right half of the tree where the fascist diplomacy options are located are 'locked off' if you have FDR as your leader.

In non-Paradox-memeing, there's now an option for a US player to start intervening earlier, but it locks off the 'The Giant Wakes' focus and the associated economic bonuses, so it's a tradeoff of whether you want to have a longer, safer buildup of forces or want to get into the action immediately.

Doctrines now take longer to research, but can be reduced with XP. Also, the tech bonuses you get will now no longer allow you to dramatically cut down on research time for technology that's way ahead of everyone else. It'll still provide a noticeable bonus, but it won't just cut the research time in half regardless of how long it is.

Oh goody, Republicans are gonna get their knickers in a twist over this -_- They're fascist, deliberately sabotaging the economy, and the focus uses "America First", all things that make them go berserk.

But considering FDR was a Democrat it's hard to portray the Democrats in any other light than historically correct.

I mean, the Communist/socialist focuses are locked behind an FDR victory in 1936, so I'm sure there'll be quite the hubbub over that too.

Really, so far the most unrealistic part is that blatantly siding with the fascists leads the country on the inevitable path to civil war, which thus far has not been terribly accurate to the real world.

Also, the last owner of focus tree has been leaked - Mexico. Odds are good that they'll get options to interact with with 2ACW and some improvement to their interactions with Canada's anti-USA focuses.

Of course. I can imagine the fascist path is essentially “take back the land America stole from us and rebuild the Mexican Empire”, along with the possibility of conquering other Central American (and possibly Caribbean countries)

I've never played Ho I 4 but I have a hard timeunderstanding the focus trees. They seem to be extremely reliant on the rest of the world sticking to the status quo with no failsafe for if that status quo changes. Like some countries have allying with Germany as part of their Fascist focus tree, somehow ignoring the possibility that Germany isn't fascist anymore, isn't a major power anymore, has been destroyed completely or even the possibility that they've declared war on you. How can this system hold up through any actual playthrough?

Well it depends. There are a number of focuses that are reliant on certain things happening, and some are also on mutually exclusive paths.

Also focuses will be bypassed if something has either already happened, or will not be accessible otherwise in situations like you said. It's much easier to understand if you actually play the game.

Edited by theLibrarian on Oct 7th 2018 at 4:36:43 AM

Mexico, huh? Sounds interesting. I will have to check it out when that Dev Diary arrives...

I wonder if Trotsky gets to do anything in a theoretical Communist route? He was in exile there. Or Diego Rivera and Fridha Kahlo could be interesting to include in some form...

In other news, Kaiserreich's update seems to have been pushed back again. I'm pretty excited to be picking that up again. Its been a while.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Oct 9th 2018 at 10:54:29 AM

FYI; Holy Fury is set for a November 13th release, priced at 19.99 USD.

Woo! Can't wait. I already want to build the Wendish Empire as a counterpart to the Carolingians, or a Scandanavian empire.

I have a handful of Paradox titles but I am currently playing Stellaris. For those who have played are the various expansions worth it?

Yes. They add a lot to the game.

If you're referring to Stellaris expansions, that really depends on how much expendable income you have. But if I had to rank them:

• Utopia - Ascension perks and megastructures can have such a huge impact on gameplay that I can't imagine the game without them.
• Synthetic Dawn - Probably the meatiest expansions in that it introduces an entire new species type with a totally different style of play from the rest. Even if there are only four varieties of Machine Intelligence.
• Leviathans - Slightly less meaty than the above, but the Artist/Curator/Trader Enclaves are extremely useful throughout the game. The space beasties add a lot of excitement to exploration and can lead to powerful technologies, but it won't be until the lategame that you're able to take advantage of them, and there's only so many of them.
• Apocalypse - Only a must-have if you want to blow up a planet at some point. The Marauders at least will have an impact on your game even if you're going a less destructive route, but sometimes I find them distractions and annoyances instead of a fun challenge.
• Distant Stars - More anomalies are always welcome, and the L-Cluster gives you something to build towards through the early- and midgame. But sometimes it's an exciting midgame crisis, while other times it's just one or two worlds to settle and some OP strategic resources to claim.
• Humanoids - Totally cosmetic, though at least it allows you to recreate fantasy races in space.
• Plantoids - Totally cosmetic and not hugely different from the Fungoid species portraits.

I don't regret buying any of them, but I have to agree that they're probably overpriced, especially when they add features that do so much to improve gameplay that you have to wonder why they aren't in the base game. Good news is we're nearing the season for Steam sales, so I'm sure they'll all be available for a better price in the near future.

DLC features are generally non-essential extras that exist to augment the game rather than act as core mechanics, when they are better as core mechanics the devs will add them to the main game. An example of this would be Ascension perks, they were originally part of Utopia but Paradox decided that their potential for expansion would be better served if they were in the main game and thus could be improved via free patches.

What constitutes a reasonable price is obviously subjective but I have to point out that it's kind of odd to say they're overpriced and then say that some of the content is good enough that it should be part of the base game, that seems kind of contradictory.