Paradox Games

Context for anyone not following Imperator?

More info here, but to repost:

Admittedly EU 4 and CK 2 didn't quite have province system like Imperator or HOI 4, so there's some adaptation difference needed to be done. Maybe the states in EU 4 can server something similar?

Edited by onyhow on Oct 11th 2019 at 10:17:24 AM

I would take this system over EU4's fort clusterfuck any day. Tho some places should do attrition even with full supplies - tropical deseases and general winter don't care how full your belly is.

Edited by Prany on Oct 11th 2019 at 10:34:05 AM

Sounds like this is going to change the war dynamic quite a bit.

Yeah, the fact that you can't reinforce while suffering attrition means either you have to retreat to friendly territory if your loss is bad, or try and push to cap the provincial capital ASAP. I think that's a big change.

Also there might be excuse to put down a few more forts just to delay and thus tie up enemy supply. Chasing might also be more difficult, since supply train is slow, so you'll have to detach them, which means they'll be vulnerable against raids without guards. Oh, and there's set rate on how much food is replenished per...day? Month? To troops.

Also Johan said that severe terrain like desert and such massively up food consumption. (I think "food" here means more like general supply and such? Or maybe it means that the terrain is so crappy you can't forage things to help with consumption rate)

It also means that it's now possible to lose sieges.

Edited by onyhow on Oct 12th 2019 at 6:29:21 AM

I think that's supposed to represent increased water intake.

It's probably a good thing to make wars more difficult and complex, since currently it is a bit too easy for experienced players to just steamroll the entire world.

This also favor seasonal campaigns, right? Assuming winter will have an effect on either attrition or food supply then you will be much more incentivized to stop advancing (and even retreat) on winter and to start again on spring. That fascet of historical combat have never been well represented in Paradox games so I hope this will change things.

Now, the kicker is to know if the AI will be able to handle this. That is always my concern when learning of a new cool military system in a strategic game. No matter how cool the idea is, if the AI can't handle it then it is just an advantage to the play and can actually make the game actually worse as a result.

Edited by Heatth on Oct 12th 2019 at 2:16:27 PM

Is Imperator good now, by the way? Or does it still need more work? I've been holding off on it until it gets better.

^^ Probably yeah. Although some people might just double down and build tons of supply train just to brute force through that.

The EU team was known to disable features for the AI if it couldn't handle them. Like Naval Attrition. Which lead to the AI being insane in EUIII and conquering things it shouldn't have. So if the AI can't handle this new system, it's a toss-up what'll happen.

733 hours in Stellaris and I'm still seeing new things. Like, I finally got the Scrapbot encounter cheevo, because he just wasn't showing up in any of my other games, but the Marauders also threw me for a loop last session.

I'm a Egalitarian-Pacifist-Spiritualist in a galaxy full of assholes - xenophobes, slavers, Fanatical Purifiers, Driven Assimilators, and two Devouring Swarms. Which means I'm a Pacifist who's been going on decades-long campaigns to exterminate hive minds and rehabilitate murderous xenophobes, so maybe it worked out alright. Mid-game rolled around without anything happening, and once I got the tech and infrastructure to support two fleets of ~40k strength, I decided to do something about the Marauders just to the north of my homeworld, between me and one of the least objectionable normal star empires.

As soon as I stomped one of the lesser Marauder systems, the Great Khan instantly appeared in response to my attack, and suddenly my doomstacks were about to jump into the Marauders' home system with every single one of the Khan's ships hanging around. So I had to quickly pull them back and then play defense for a bit, having each fleet patrol two systems and jumping on any Marauders that tried to move into my territory. Managed to save a late-arrival star nation with the misfortune to be blocked by the Marauders in the process, and in short order I had a new protectorate.

Anyway, once I'd thinned out enough of the Marauders' fleets and routed the Great Khan herself, I made a move on their main system and took it, then held my fleets there since it was a natural chokepoint between me and my neighbor. Meanwhile the Marauders took two of my neighbor's systems and were preparing to land troops on a third when the Great Khan returned right on top of my fleets. The Marauders are thrown into confusion, and one year later... somehow they form a Successor Khanate. With two systems to their name, and only one planet.

The hilarious thing is that my poor neighbor is too weak to take back their territory, while the Khanate has several leftover mid-game doomstacks but no means of supporting them. So it's an epic stalemate between bankrupt and backwards.

So the time of pre-release teaser twittering is upon Stellaris. Here is an imgur album featuring everything revealed so far.

Most interesting is the new ethics screen, which not only implies that one now can take 4 Ethics but the "Stable" label in the top corner makes me think we might actually be able to take opposing Ethics.

I wonder if that means that we will also get a faction rework of sorts.

But let's not forget the biggest change of all: LEGS....IN SPAAACE! (Leg space?)

Edited by Kiefen on Oct 14th 2019 at 9:39:42 PM

They've already stated it's not for the PC version but for something else, probably a mobile or switch spinoff.

^ Wouldn't the Switch version just use the same base as the PS/Xbox version?

I really hope the new ethics screen and the political hierarchy screen (which isn't in that album) is ported over to PC Stellaris in one form or another because they look really cool.

Okay so apparently the Stellaris thing they’ve been teasing is a mobile game but that’s not even the important part or the most disappointing

Some of you might remember that way back in Feb 2018 I mentioned in this thread that I'd identified a piece of art in Stellaris as stolen from the old Star Wars trading card game, specifically a commissioned piece titled “Rebel Strike” by Darren “Wraith DT” Tan, and how I contacted them both and the issue was resolved

Well apparently this mobile game was IMMEDIATELY pulled from the App Store for having plagiarized art assets in it

You cannot make this shit up

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Oct 15th 2019 at 6:39:15 AM

Yeah, someone in the company plagiarized and neither the devs nor Paradox caught them.

It's an extremely inauspicious start for their forway into the mobile market.

Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Oct 15th 2019 at 6:07:37 AM

Considering who the developer is (a Hong Kong firm with a shaddy reputation, though that isn't odd in the mobile industry), Paradox really should have gone over the beta with a fine tooth comb first.

And the offending image was (poorly) altered as well, so this was clearly intentional on someone's part.

Furthermore, the game is apparently a reskin of one of the dev's previous titles.

Edited by Rationalinsanity on Oct 15th 2019 at 10:39:36 AM

Yeah, the image this time was from Halo. You can clearly see the iconic Scorpion tanks and Warthog cars in the art, lol

Edited by Dirtyblue929 on Oct 15th 2019 at 7:06:43 AM

With UNSC markings left intact...

That's what happens when you outsource to China. They have no respect for trademarks or copyright, which is why all those shitty Clash of Clans-like mobile games are able to use screenshots and gameplay footage from Total War games in their advertising.

You can't expect an oligarchy wearing the skin of communism to respect property rights. They're in it purely for the self service. Go to one of the Capitalist nations like Korea or Japan if you wanna do this stuff.

Of course, this is Hong Kong, not China proper. They should've known better.

Yeah Paradox definitely should have check, but these things do crop up once in a while. I mean Hunter the Vigil once got DMC Dante art snuck in without White Wolf knowing.

Also apparently it's a reskin game without too much changes either (the crash message apparently lists the original game's name that the dev didn't bother to change.

Okay, so I finally ran into the new Stellaris launcher. Hopefully all the mods update soon.

New DLC for Stellaris accidentally listed early, it looks like?

Lithoids looks promising, assuming it's more than a cosmetic pack like Plantoids and Humanoids. Having rock aliens with entirely different habitability interests than carbon-based life forms would add some nice nuance to the galaxy. And machine empires would probably benefit too.

But just the name of Federations makes me dubious, because they're already in the game, and pretty lackluster, just glorified military alliances without any nuance or flavor. So stuff like Apocalypse and Distant Stars and Ancient Relics all added new mechanics, but now we're expected to pay to make an existing feature not suck?

Of course this is all a moot point for me, I'm playing version 2.1.3. So I'm just making conversation and/or complaining, I suppose.