Paradox Games

My usual tall run involves basically playing low-key for as long as I can, investing lots of influence to befriend the empires around me, while also having just enough of a fleet to discourage those who hate me from declaring war.

Once I have enough ascension perks, a matter decompressor and a colossus I go into total war mode.

Pops from conquered worlds get resettled to fill up my core worlds, and the worlds themselves are gifted to a giant blob vassal state which I always call "The Conquered".

Having a giant blob puppet state makes galaxy conquest a breeze as they eventually get their own fleets going and thus quickly respond to enemy flanks.

The new CK2 bookmark is coming out this Tuesday.

So yesterday I got home from college a earlier than usual (one of the teachers was sick), booted up my computer, the clock showed it was about 9 pm, I decided to play Stellaris for just about an hour before going to bed.

After colonizing three habitable planets, accidentally making one a vassal rather than putting a Governor in place, getting my fleet annihilated by pirates, solving a energy crisis, striking up a friendship with a Theocratical empire and getting into war with a slaving one (which I can't win because my influence is in the negatives and I can't assign a leader to my rebuilt fleet), I turn off the game and double take at the clock, now showing it is 3 am.

So what I'm trying to say is that, even though my head is currently killing me and the game is partly responsible, I'm really enjoying Stellaris. It's very relaxing but quite addicting, reminds me when I first played Harvest Moon on the Play Station.

Ay, you should always have a clock in your line of sight when playing Paradox games.

I always do. My current run involves both a Federation in the making as well as vassals. Though my vassals will mostly be enlightened primitives, because other kinds of states will usually require a massive beatdown to submit.

So, apparently Imperator is getting a massive redesign already.

I haven't played the game yet myself, but I know of the controversy regarding the monarch powers and, personally, their implementation was a big factor for me to not jump onboard immediately (the other being college). To me the problem was less the concept of power itself and more how immediate all the actions are. Pop promotion, colonization, cb fabrication, all happening immediately with a click makes the game too artificial and remove a lot of the immersion, I think. Still, not sad to see another mechanic taking its place

That being said, I am actually more concerned now than before, to be honest. It just seem too soon. That is not the first time Paradox done a major revamp of gaming mechanic, EU 4 and specially Stellaris suffered drastic changes since release. But that is the first time it is happening before even a single patch or DLC is released. That kinda feels a hasty course correction to cave to negative reception, which can just makes things worse. I mean, maybe they weren't very satisfied with what they had to begin with, but didn't want to delay the game anymore for a major redesign but, still, this is concerning, I think.

A new GSG developed by Paradox is being announced at PDXCON, we also know that it's definitely not Victoria 3.

Also, with regards to Imperator, I think that's great news. I respect Johan for recognizing that he was wrong and listening to criticism. There's a risk of course but everything has risk, the Imperator timeframe is too great to be wasted on a subpar game. I'm happy to see they intend to address that.

Yeah, a redesign could help the game get off the ground better.

Sounds like Imperator is just moving faster than usual. None of the main GSG games remotely resemble their launch version anymore. There is no sin in admitting problems or deficiencies and fixing them.

Its either that, or it gets left on the vine to rot like March of the Eagles and so forth.

Edited by Rationalinsanity on May 26th 2019 at 11:04:32 AM

This could be a wonderful thing. They should switch from the Europa model to the Crusader model. Let character stats still be critical, but not for mana points. Instead let the characters' primary stats affect the development of secondary ones. Like in CK 2 where a character's martial affects their levy size, or their stewardship affects income and maximum domain.

Does... Does Paradox just hate money or something?

Paradox stated multiple times before that any in-house developed game needs somebody to champion it, i.e. a person with the vision of how that game's supposed to look.

If there's no guy championing Victoria 3 right now, there'll be no Victoria 3.

Is Victoria II still supported? It says here it was the turning point in the PDS, and I was planning on checking it out after Stellaris.

Victoria II was the last Paradox game to use the old expansion model, rather than the more modular DLC approach used by Crusader Kings II and later games.

It also hasn't aged that well, in my opinion.

It works on a technical level but otherwise . . .

It's just not for me. I reinstalled and tried playing it recently and ragequit when I realized if you weren't playing as a western European civilization, you were never going to gain any technology without "Westernizing" first. I can understand penalizing tech to a degree, considering during this historical period us Westerners were more advanced than most others, but not to the point where you literally can't learn anything new without basically stealing culture points off the West. There should be a way for an "Uncivilized" nation like Persia to grow technologically without playing games like that.

Especially since, until the Mongol invasion, the Middle East was able to keep up fairly well with the West and even teach us quite a bit.

ETA: Honestly, I think most of the appeal to the game if you're not an Alt-Right fanboy is in the complex pop system, and the inability to directly control it. Stellaris started moving in this direction, but nowhere close to actually hitting it yet.

Edited by Journeyman on May 28th 2019 at 8:52:30 AM

The pop system is probably the only thing I like about Victoria 2. I always found the economy mechanics to be overly complicated, not to mention that your campaign can literally run out of money.

A lot of the time people clamour for Paradox games to be more like Victoria 2, what they mean is making them complex purely for complexity's sake.

Not to mention that Victoria 2 is one of the railroad-heaviest games Paradox ever made. And a lot of mods for it aim to make it even heavier on the railroading for some reason.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on May 28th 2019 at 5:17:35 PM

Yeah, I've played some of the older Paradox games (HOI 3 and Victoria 2) and they were both about as user-friendly as a wild goose. I don't see the appeal in making Paradox games like that again.

> both about as user-friendly as a wild goose

I just have image of you being chased around by a Pardox goose

The thing is that Victoria and HOI never got past the railroadedness that they inherited from being spun off of EU 2. For HOI, that isn't so much of a problem because it's less of a grand strategy game and more of...well, a WWII game. But Victoria is going to be stuck with the inherent problem of being a map painter set in an era where most of the map isn't really up for painting.

To keep the plebs out, of course!

But in truth, there is another factor beyond elitism: see, a lot of people got into Paradox back during the times where it was nearly impossible to play, and part of the fun for those folks was getting to master the unintuitive, overcomplicated mechanics.

So making the games more accessible becomes a downgrade.

Of course, PDS isn't ToadyOne, they actually want to make money off of their products, since when the realities of bussiness stopped any of us complainimg that They Changed It, Now It Sucks!?

Usually Crusader Kings 2, the game released after Victoria 2, is seen as a turning point where Paradox switched over to a new dlc model, started putting a lot more effort on intuitive interfaces and tutorials, and started selling a lot more copies than they were used to.

Speaking of Crusader Kings 2, the new startdate is making me play the game for the first time since about Charlemagne. Anything in particular I need to know that has changed?

Holy Fury made pagan reformation much more dynamic

There's a neat new inventory system

Societies are interesting and let you do various neat things

You can duel people and it works better now

There are three new succession laws - Eldership (elders vote, automatically available to Romuva and African pagans, even unreformed and tribal), Imperial Elective (Byz only, commanders are also valid candidates), and Princely Elective (HRE only, only when formed through certain decisions, only certain duchies get to vote)

There's a neat Silk Road mechanic if you have Horse Lords or Jade Dragon

The new patch is adding a court size limit and finally separating out prisoners from the rest of the court

Hellenic Pagans are now playable and can restore the Roman Empire like Christians can or can be brought back when you restore Rome. There's also a decision to revive it if you're in the Byzantine or Latin culture groups and a scholar, mystic, or lunatic, and it now exists in one county in 769.

Edited by Balmung on May 28th 2019 at 5:16:58 AM

Doing an Otto the Great run in CK2. Like Charlemagne, he also has an event chain that gives him the claims he needs to form the HRE (there's a game rule that allows you to disable this, just like with Charlemagne's chain). However, he's not as overpowered as Karl: Otto's stats and traits are a mixed bag (high martial, mediocre diplomacy) and Germany is not as powerful as West and Central Francias are in 769.

Edited by lrrose on May 28th 2019 at 8:13:13 AM