Paradox Games

I mostly played the same nation all the time - Syracuse - but from my experience, while the core game is solid, there's a lot of room for improvement.

Some things I'd like to see:

• Flavour - most nations *feel* the same gameplay-wise. Only a few (like the Diadochi or Epirus) have some unique stuff going on, but not nearly enough. There's virtually no difference between playing the Roman Republic, a republic in Greece or a former barbarian tribe that turned into a republic.
• Culture/religion mechanics - right now you either have to work on assimilating your lands (either through policies or by investing mana) or hope that the inventions reducing wrong culture (group) happiness show up in your tech list
• Tribal rework, as tribes seem rather broken right now
• Character system needs to be more intuitive - it's very easy to literally run out of characters, especially as a republic, as there's no way to get new families outside of annexing other nations and special events. CK 2 has decisions to basically create characters out of thin air ("Invite Commander/Courtier/Noble"), so something like that'd be useful for Imperator as well.
• More government types, maybe a more in-depth system like in EU 4 (DLC added selection of government "features")

One thing I really value in Paradox games is immersion - while I do like giving the nations I play a story in my head, it'd be nice to have some distinguishing features to them or maybe even let players work towards such features.

For example, the empire I created as Syracuse is deeply multicultural - I always heavily relied on foreign families to expand my recruitment pool, resulting in the ruling class being made up of many different cultures. Yet to colonise some provinces in Africa, I was basically forced to culturally assimilate provinces down there because you can't use cities that aren't predominantly of your culture/religion to colonise neighbouring ones. Not to mention that whenever I appointed a new governor, they kept implementing assimilation politics, despite me doubling down on tolerance bonuses.

While there are mechanical things that need some work, I've always been mainly focused on flavour and I think what I'd like to see is two-fold: Firstly, there should be some distinguishing flavour to different nations and secondly, players should be able to develop their nation into a specific direction.

Though what Paradox should avoid is railroading - a good negative example of that are EU4's national ideas and missions that basically force the player down a specific playing style. Prussia will always be a militarist powerhouse, Great Britain will always be a naval coloniser. While you can divert from the set course, it tends to feel "suboptimal", which is not a great feeling to have.

Long story short: Make the game more immersive without railroading the player.

IDK, but for some reason EU IV never really grew on me. Maybe I'm just used to the CKII style gameplay, but EU IV ticks me off. I can't quite place my finger on why.

Maybe it's just insipid to me after the utterly random nature of CKII, but I can't say for sure.

I always felt that National Ideas in EU4 are supposed to give flavour to each nation in a more direct manner beyond just using different sprites for troops or ships and the like. Otherwise all of the nations in each continent would be like copycats of each, only different through small text details or visual stuff.

We could ask for randomised national ideas as an option before playing though, much like we have randomised new world and stuff.

They are already somewhat randomised, the AI will not always pick the same ideas every time, though some are near guaranteed (like exploration for Castille and Portugal, for instance).

I think there's also an option to replace all countries with randomly generated countries using national ideas from the nation designer in addition to the now-dynamic idea group choices.

Something I feel Imperator Rome has done right is its' multiplayer mode. As someone who likes to play Paradox games in a weekly Multiplayer campaign (12+ players), I really appreciate how smooth it runs. And the more sophisticated war mechanics (compared to Eu 4, CK 2 and Stellaris) make wars between players very complex and engaging. Even Naval warfare (which is honestly very barebone) is more important due to the nature of the map and can not be ignored.

So apparently the Cities: Skylines devs added a Holocaust reference to their game by accident.

Apparently this term isn't as well-known as I expected it to be.

I like the sound of "The Final Answer" that someone suggested.

They could even got a for a Hitchhiker reference.

Huh, I'm surprised that there's anyone who wouldn't know that name for the Holocaust.

Regardless I'm glad that they're going to correct that, it's not the kind of reference that one wants to make accidentally.

It probably slipped past the editors by mistake. These things do happen.

^^As another Finnish person, I just realized we don't have Finnish equivalent term for Final Solution that I know of O-o

Edited by SpookyMask on Jun 3rd 2019 at 9:19:19 PM

You'd be surprised how many don't know that term. Which honestly was kind of the point when they called it that.

The Nazis did use a Deadly Euphemism for anything that would cause trouble. A pity it keeps being forgotten.

Still, a (darkly) amusing oversight.

Edited by TechPriest90 on Jun 3rd 2019 at 12:08:38 PM

Ugh, I hate that my preferred starting position in New England in After The End is next to one of those most BS factions.

Yeah, that always sucks.

I was trying out that one Han ruler in the Iron Century start last week - I completely forgot starting right next to nomad factions in CK2 is like, having played mostly nomads or far away from them for a while.

Not that being far away from nomads ever did me any good either - AI raiders always have it in for me, to the point of a friend I play with making jokes about my kingdom seems to always be on fire.

Yeah, New York's only saving grace is that it's a filthy fucking rich merchant Republic that can hire enough mercenaries to take on anything that comes at it, while piddly little Long Island is just there.

So, I just played an hour or two of Ancient Relics. It's cool. Excavations work like EUIV sieges, with periodic dice rolls and bonuses based on different things happening. I haven't done anything with the new automation outside of setting up my first colony to be automated. It'll be interesting to see what the computer does with it as a generator world.

ETA: As you can expect, excavations take a long time unless you luck out. Probably better treating most of them like high level anomalies and not doing them until you've surveyed everything you can.

Edited by Journeyman on Jun 4th 2019 at 11:26:07 AM

^ Or having a crapton of scientists. That also works.

THE GREAT JOURNEY

Or that. I never do, so for me it slowed things down a bit until I just hired another and built a ship for them.

The best thing I can say about this patch is that they seem to have finally fixed the optimization problem. Game runs pretty smoothly now.

The Relics are pretty cool - I got the Baol Relic. Which, in my very humble opinion, is ridiculously OP.

Seriously? (Almost) Free Terraforming to Gaia Worlds plus new plantoid pops? You can't get much more insanely buffed than that.

The Digsites are fun too - just make sure you have a Level 3+ scientist for most of them, or else it'll probably fail.

On the weird side, in my current playthrough, a fanatical purifier called the Prikki-Ti cropped up and started opening can after can of whoop-ass on every empire on the other side of the galaxy - while being pinioned by an Militant Isolationist Fallen Empire on it's other side. It's pretty much Evil Versus Evil in the Northern Quadrants of the Galaxy.

Which, given that the southern half is being governed by two Federations of Xenophiles, makes for a very interesting scenario.

I played a start of a game last night but got declared on by an empire that I wasn't really prepared for because I was too busy trying to get to more digsites, lol. I only got one, and it had a depressing ending; millions of people on a planet in the past going into huge underground bunkers to escape an ice age and be cryogenically frozen, only to be incinerated when the planet rapidly re-warming knocked the pods out of calibration.

Oh, did Stellaris got a new DLC? I'm still trying to figure it out how to manipulate the new Pop system, I can never get the crime and homelessness to stay down.

Lots of jobs. More jobs and housing. Once the planet fills up, pass an edict on the planet discouraging growth.

If that fails, Precinct Houses. All the Precinct Houses. Declare Martial Law too if you like. In all likelihood, it's probably because of a MegaCorp that is also a Crime Syndicate with a Branch Office on your planet - check the Corporate Tab.

Which is why if I see a Criminal MegaCorp, I usually break out the Colossus. Because screw those guys.

I got like six digsites. Some were black comedy incarnate - and gave me a relic called the Replicator. Which spawned a Leviathan that promptly wiped out my entire fleet, forcing me to use Federation Fleets to take it down - after five tries.

Some were just depressing - in one instance, it was the ruins of a pre-spaceflight civilization that got to the Nuclear Age and promptly wiped itself out, combined with runaway pollution.

Which I suppose is Paradox's way of a thinly veiled Take That Us against Humanity.

Edited by TechPriest90 on Jun 7th 2019 at 12:04:43 PM

Yeah, it's called Ancient Ruins or something like that. Two new precursor species and planets have the possibility to have digsites on them that you can have your scientists examine for artifacts and sometimes you get big rewards like a Titan or something.