Paradox Games

Sounds like you had poor luck with the randomly generated AI empires.

If you wanna try beating up somebody look for someone weak with existing enemies and in no alliances.

Yeah, sometimes the RNG of setups just isn't with you. I once spawned within the borders of a Fallen Empire, who proceeded to demand that I abandon my "colony" or face war. I abandoned my world, and lost the game.

I mean I am Mr Appeasement. My first game I colonised a Holy world and got ROFLSTOMPED by the Awakened empire right next door. Hence the UNE restart.

I may try the vassal route, to at least get some home grown empires. And reduce the strain a wee bit.

We shall see! So far all the Empires are clustered together and I'm on the fringe, being left alone whilst they just get involved in a bun fight. A few more techs, may split a vassal off and see how it goes...

Stellaris did a 180 on some things. In the old versions, you were encouraged to hodge podge your worlds because the tile bonuses were usually better than the boost you got from those special resource buildings, even if you only put one kind of resource into play on that world. Now, though, after your colonies get through that almost-invisible New Colony stage, the game takes a look at what you've done with your worlds and assigns a title to them. Agri-world, Industrial world, Rural world. Something like that. Each title confers a bonus based on what you did. Like, a Rural World gets a 2% bonus to all worker output. Industrial gets a specific 2% bonus strictly to Artisans. Nobody else. Whereas something like a straight mining or agri world will get a 5% bonus to whichever resource you specced into. So you really want to focus your planets on something in particular.

Also one of the big reasons to go Xenophobe is the reduction in influence cost for plopping down an outpost. You can get serious blobbing out of that if you keep your alloy income high enough. Kind of hard for enemies to compete when you're the one taking the chokepoints to the mineral rich constellations next to them. Personally I prefer going Fanatic Materialist for the major research bonuses, then taking something like Authoritarian. My current favorite nation, the Yehner Dominion, Fan Mat Auth and has a bent toward biology to help with their Heschel syncretic race. Both lizards, but the Heschel are built for work and war while the Yehner work on science and energy.

What do people think of the new culture eviction mechanic in EU 4? I think it's a bit too powerful. For instance, when Great Britain takes hold of Scotland and Ireland, it inevitably forces out Irish and Scottish culture through colonialism.

I don't see an issue with making irish a problem somewhere else.

What do you mean by eviction? Where you send out Scots and Irishmen to colonies and allow English people to settle in their place?

Yes, that's what I mean. I see the AI doing it, too.

We can now add Prison Architect to this thread, it seems.

No this thread is only for games made Paradox the developer, not games owned by Paradox the publisher.

Edited by Druplesnubb on Jan 9th 2019 at 6:44:35 PM

Why the distinction?

Well a lot of the games published by Paradox have little to do gameplay-wise with the games made by Paradox Interactive, like Magicka. There's also a lot of games that already have their own separate threads from before Paradox got them, like Pillar of Eternity. But mostly it's just tradition. I don't think anyone would outright prevent you from talking about Prison Architect, and it might be for the best if you think it can't sustain its own thread, but it's kinda like talking about Hearthstone in the Wo W thread.

Edited by Druplesnubb on Jan 9th 2019 at 7:52:43 PM

All Paradox games have very similar themes and gameplay, so it make sense to discuss them together. The games they publish are just other random games with vastly different styles. There is no reason to discuss them together.

Hearthstone and WoW at least have some explicit connection, so discussing one in the other thread make some sense, in some contexts. Prison Architect have nothing to do with anything Paradox develops.

Edited by Heatth on Jan 9th 2019 at 5:21:23 PM

It will probably come down to what Paradox do with the IP, they didn’t buy the studio so they are going to set up their own studio or farm it out to an existing one. If they make their own new studio for the IP they may well do some tie in stuff with their own other I Ps.

Also I’m pretty sure we’ve talked Surving Mars and Cities Skylines in this thread before.

Plus we’re not in OTC, we don’t have to be super strict about topic limits.

First gameplay of Imperator.

This map projection will need some getting used to, I think.

When they first moved around the map, I think it made my head hurt. :/

How can you be unsure about whether or not it made your head hurt?

Well, I finally managed to outpace my neighbours, took back my sector AND one of their planets AND bombed their capital enough to make them have to rebuild. And that was even with their ally dumping a couple of 10k fleets on me... which I promptly trounced.

Now own nearly half the galaxy as the UNE and am only behind the two FE in terms of score. It's 2448 and I reckon I'm due a crisis. The eastern part of the galaxy has balkanised after the Khan failed in their push and a few of the marauder splinter factions have fallen by the wayside. I've managed to uplift space nazi starfish by mistake... so considering revassaling them and absorbing them into the empire.

The only federation is made up of a hive mind, my aforementioned rivals and a monarchy...

So, yeah, the galaxy is in a weird stalemate. I need to push further north, remove the slaver empire up there... and then decide if I get rid of my rival and HOW as I can't afford a claim war and I'm not sure I can change my civics enough to go for a complete "total war" either. Maybe I just need to take enough planets to remove their ability to function. But that does mean taking on a federation solo.

It's doable with the right stellar geography. And Hell, you don't necessarily need to wipe them out in one shot. If you can weaken the core force enough, they might split their federation apart. It's happened to me. I've found the joy of bandit kingdoms and faced down a defensive alliance of my two southern neighbors. One was getting trounced by the local purifiers, so I took a chance and trounced the other. As the war drove on this morning, I watched my enemies dissolve their alliance and switch to a rivalry for reasons unclear to me.

ETA: And it's even easier if there's other enemies for them to focus on, and you time your war to start in the middle of another one. I've beaten way nastier things than me just by waiting for a distraction to put the enemy off balance.

I've also discovered multiplayer and am loving it. My "server" got a visit from a Twitch streamer named Shiba Strats and we played a nine hour match against some advanced start total war races on Monday. Went from collectively cringing to being in the top three competitors of that galaxy before we called it quits.

Edited by Journeyman on Jan 11th 2019 at 9:31:58 AM

That sounds cool! I'm looking into the Rock Paper Shotgun Stellaris MP - it's hosted by a Brit regularly so seeing if I can dabble.

In my current game, the hyperlanes have given me some good natural choke points to fortify. AND as luck would have it the Prethoryn have turned up on the opposite side... which means they'll probably mop up most of the AI whilst I frantically balance my economy, colonise some more planets to spread pops around (I seem to have many filthy xenos in my egalitarian empire).

I've not started making robots yet so wondering if that might be worth it. I killed the Spectre, which felt sad... haven't tried the stellarite devourer - that think utterly NAILED my fleets when I tried. Think I may need better disruptors / torpedoes. But first, the Scourge.

Why do native Americans in EU 4 refuse to colonize, even when they have colonists, unless they change their religion to something non-native?

I imagine it's because the devs want to leave much of America as pristine wilderness for Europe to absorb.

Because the game treats all Totemists, as well as unreformed Nahuatl, Mayans, and Incans as "primitives", which pretty much shuts down their AI.

If they get another religion, they stop being "primitives" and they start acting like normal countries.

And people wonder why Paradox games attract racist shitbirds...

Historical accuracy attracts racist shitbirds because most of history is a racist's wet dream about white people dominating and breaking in other nations to steal their stuff and their people. I could see giving primitives maybe a debuff for colonizing, like taking a longer time to fill a colony thanks to the lower tech food production and medical knowledge slowing down their growth rate, but to flat out break the AI into not doing it at all is over the top.