Paradox Studio Thread

[Slap47]

Out of curiosity, how would you represent the Holocaust in HOI4 if you were a designer?
I've thought about that, because I think games should just represent history as it is (I cannot wrap my head around people who play them but get upset about stuff like that or slavery being present), and the Holocaust seems like a pure negative unless you assume it was real, just like the Great Purges in HOI4 required, before the expansion, assuming the fake Trotskyite conspiracy was real to give the player a reason to do it. (Now you do the purges so that you can control who gets purged instead of it happening unpredictably).

It seems to me that, since this is the Nazi Party and Jews are pretty well known for their subterfuge, it would make sense for a game to model it as some sort of nasty espionage penalties unless you repress, and maybe some political power gain (like, because the government is doing what the Nazis want, they get more unified), but at the expense of production since you have to maintain these concentration camps. And then, especially if the start date is pushed back, the Germans have interesting issues like the Madagascar Plan, the disinterest of Mussolini in anti-Semitism, Franco actively smuggling Jews out, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Sitka proposal. Having a sort of Holocaust subgame to the main game would be an interesting problem, map-painters would ignore it but role-players would care. Add on a Jewish Autonomous Oblast (of all things, i don't think the new expansion has that?) and a Yiddish ethnostate in Germany releasable by Allies.

Would also be fun to have Jewish Madagascar, Israel, an independent Jewish Autonomous Oblast, an independent Sitka Federal District, and Yiddishland coexisting at the same time for the lolsorandom crowd.

Now I'm just imagining a "Jewish plot" modifier that ticks down unless you kill a certain amount of Jews.


Even without the Holocaust most of what the Nazis did makes little sense in real life and is hard to justify with mechanics. The Nazis refused to have women in the factories even late into the war and it took them till near the end of the war to embrace a real war economy with meaningful rationing. The Nazis took traditional roles to the extreme, and Hitler was paranoid about another Wiemar uprising like with what happened in ww1. The Nazis treated people in occupied territories abysmally to their detriment because of racial hatred and a desire to maintain a a high standard of living back home. It was all silly.

The Holocaust itself is harder to represent with mechanics. The concentration camps were inefficient at production, expensive to maintain, and enraged people. I guess the player could just be forced to build them via event and get negative modifiers from that, but thats kinda boring. If anything, the only way to really replicate Nazi theories and the Holocaust without lending credence to Nazism would be to have some kind of debilitating Himmler coup that happens unless the player commits atrocities and embraces strange policies. However, that puts the player in a weird place where they're only doing Nazi stuff reluctantly when in fact Hitler fully supported those policies.

Does anyone know an easy way to pirate CK II DLCs?

Get the subscription at least once so you can shit on all of the bad DLCs in the Steam reviews.

 

[Marshal Mannerheim]

If anything, the only way to really replicate Nazi theories and the Holocaust without lending credence to Nazism would be to have some kind of debilitating Himmler coup that happens unless the player commits atrocities and embraces strange policies. However, that puts the player in a weird place where they're only doing Nazi stuff reluctantly when in fact Hitler fully supported those policies.

Perhaps:
1) Germany gets to choose between "fascism, and maybe restoring the Kaiser", and "full-blown Nazism".
2) Like with Spain, choosing one of those paths makes people who support the other option (in Spain, those factions are the Carlists and the Falange, in Germany they could be the SS and.. I don't know, the Prussian Junkers?) more likely to try and rise up.
3) The Junkers can try and stage a coup along the lines of the 20 July plot, the SS can try and rebel in the same way the Iron Guard did in Romania.
4) You can appease the SS by carrying out war crimes and generally going along with whatever crazy shit was going through Himmler's mind.
5) Doing this nets you massive international relations penalties - eg banning Christianity means Nationalist Spain and Portugal hate you, committing atrocities in Poland means anyone allied to Poland hates you.

 

[highlighter_shitposting]

Out of curiosity, how would you represent the Holocaust in HOI4 if you were a designer?

Not committing autrocities will force you to switch ideologies. If you don't hate jews you aren't a nazi. Player should commit tge optimal amount of crimes against humanity, keeping Himmler and Nazi party happy while not wasting too much resources or antagonising the world

Out of curiosity, how would you represent the Holocaust in HOI4 if you were a designer?

Not committing autrocities will force you to switch ideologies. If you don't hate jews you aren't a nazi. Player should commit the optimal amount of crimes against humanity, keeping Nazi party happy while not wasting too much resources or antagonising the world

 

[Fibrillar Collagen]

0

If you like the idea of EU4 but are turned off by some elements, then EU3 might be worth a try. Mechanics are quite different and playing tall is more viable as a result. Downside is that the base game doesn't share the sheer amount of extra features and flavor content that EU4 has accumulated over the years.

I'd recommend demoing 3 one way or the other and finding out if you like it. If you do, you can download the MEIOU mod which adds way more content.

I remember playing EU3 in middle school. I was a little frustrated at the time by the mechanics that were too different from civ. I might have been my 14 year old brain not being open to change though. I'll have a try, it's one euro fifty when on sale.

In the meantime I tried Anbennar and it's not bad. I just really don't like warfare in eu4. I'll play the elf colonists trying to reclaim their birthright. I don't like being asked to import orc slaves into my colonies. I thought: "I know where this is going" and I really don't want to deal with a commentary on the triangular trade by some out of touch discord tranny.
Also, that feel when you bust your ass discovering the new world, sending colonists, going almost bankrupt trying to migrate there, getting the first colonial nation but then the fucking halflings settle on a fucking island in the middle of nowhere and spawn colonialism while you get your ass kicked by the french because you're not emigrating fast enough. I'm fuming. Good game though.

 

[Slap47]

If you like the idea of EU4 but are turned off by some elements, then EU3 might be worth a try. Mechanics are quite different and playing tall is more viable as a result. Downside is that the base game doesn't share the sheer amount of extra features and flavor content that EU4 has accumulated over the years.

I'd recommend demoing 3 one way or the other and finding out if you like it. If you do, you can download the MEIOU mod which adds way more content.

Eu3's slider system and lack of colonial nations was definitely better at not just making the games a mindless map painter. You actually had to manage your empire and had to make sacrifices. Want to be a highly centralized state like 16th century France? Goodluck managing a large state. Want to be a tech center? Sorry, you have trouble converting people. Want a giant army? Its gonna be low quality unless you're a large country. Want alot of colonies? Better be able to guard them and prevent heresy. Eu4 lets you have it all and it suffers for it.

Divine Wind kinda sucked though. It messed up succession, made Horde mechanics shit and made Asia comically easy to dominate as a foreigner.

 

[Ira the Weatherman]

Eu3's slider system and lack of colonial nations was definitely better at not just making the games a mindless map painter. You actually had to manage your empire and had to make sacrifices. Want to be a highly centralized state like 16th century France? Goodluck managing a large state. Want to be a tech center? Sorry, you have trouble converting people. Want a giant army? Its gonna be low quality unless you're a large country. Want alot of colonies? Better be able to guard them and prevent heresy. Eu4 lets you have it all and it suffers for it.

Yeah, a lot of its features were more organic than 4's mana-fueled mechanics. Blobbing would actually be a challenge because getting cores took a lot of time, flipping cultures wasn't a thing, and converting was expensive, time-consuming and turned the province into a hive of rebellions (which could be a legitimate threat). The stability cost modifier penalty you'd get from expanding too fast could really handicap you in the long run. High infamy can be genuinely harrowing. A few bad events could easily set you down a death spiral, while a small nation can bounce back almost instantenously from negative stability and can therefore afford to take greater risks.

I like that EU4 has individual idea groups for nations and cultures, but it does railroad you into adopting certain playstyles. It almost makes you not want to form new nations because it will completely change the buffs you've been relying on since then. The slider and idea system in 3 was more flexible in allowing you to tailor your country to changing circumstances.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Eu3's slider system and lack of colonial nations was definitely better at not just making the games a mindless map painter. You actually had to manage your empire and had to make sacrifices. Want to be a highly centralized state like 16th century France? Goodluck managing a large state. Want to be a tech center? Sorry, you have trouble converting people. Want a giant army? Its gonna be low quality unless you're a large country. Want alot of colonies? Better be able to guard them and prevent heresy. Eu4 lets you have it all and it suffers for it.

Divine Wind kinda sucked though. It messed up succession, made Horde mechanics shit and made Asia comically easy to dominate as a foreigner.

I never even played EU3 (besides the demo) and I miss sliders.

National Ideas are bullshit, as are a lot of the unique government mechanics that Paradox, for a while, was moving away from but then started adding back in. The idea was that any country, if given the proper circumstances and effort, could be shaped to look like any other.

They went in a very wrong direction when they started making each country a special snowflake with its own special interface buttons and a bunch of other superfluous crap, and pre-built stories with Mission Trees, when all they ever needed was the old event chains like the good mods for Victoria II used to simulate those things that the game mechanics were bad at.

If you are going to add in nation-unique stuff, then at least go full history autist with it like MEIOU and Taxes.

 

[ellroy]

Now I'm just imagining a "Jewish plot" modifier that ticks down unless you kill a certain amount of Jews.


Even without the Holocaust most of what the Nazis did makes little sense in real life and is hard to justify with mechanics. The Nazis refused to have women in the factories even late into the war and it took them till near the end of the war to embrace a real war economy with meaningful rationing. The Nazis took traditional roles to the extreme, and Hitler was paranoid about another Wiemar uprising like with what happened in ww1. The Nazis treated people in occupied territories abysmally to their detriment because of racial hatred and a desire to maintain a a high standard of living back home. It was all silly.

The Holocaust itself is harder to represent with mechanics. The concentration camps were inefficient at production, expensive to maintain, and enraged people. I guess the player could just be forced to build them via event and get negative modifiers from that, but thats kinda boring. If anything, the only way to really replicate Nazi theories and the Holocaust without lending credence to Nazism would be to have some kind of debilitating Himmler coup that happens unless the player commits atrocities and embraces strange policies. However, that puts the player in a weird place where they're only doing Nazi stuff reluctantly when in fact Hitler fully supported those policies.


Get the subscription at least once so you can shit on all of the bad DLCs in the Steam reviews.

Perhaps starting from a concentration camp point of view would help shape this idea. Soviet Union gulags could be represented. Using my knowledge from reading the Gulag Archipelago, here is an idea:

Gulags: destructive labor camps that supported the Soviet Union with work on building updates. Decrease available man power and lower population growth for a temporary bonus on certain construction. Infrastructure, railways, airfields, land and coastal forts get a construction bonus that can be represented as a decrease in construction time. Since civilian factories represent paid economic output of a nation and are used in construction; if you have forced labor, the idea is your economic output shouldn't have be expended to build these buildings. This would be represented in the events menu. You can't have gulags build much else or have them contribute to military factories because sabotage was a thing in more complex forced labor and your forced work force would have certain skill level for labor, not like they could pick up a blow torch and start welding a tank on an assembly line.

You could track the manpower pool that was being shrunk and calculate how much could be alive at certain point for shtrafbat penal battalions. Though that might be tricky as the scripting for modding may not allow for certain calculations.

Food for thought.

 

[Thiletonomics]

So Cities: Skylines is still getting DLC made, this time it's an Airport DLC, which will be released next month. Given the age of the game, at what point do you just make a new game? This seems to be getting to the point of The Sims 4 levels of sheer amounts of DLC available.

 

[Stoneheart]

So Bo is raising money for cancer dressed as sailor moon.
he still is bad at Hoi4 but its fun.

Given the age of the game, at what point do you just make a new game? This seems to be getting to the point of The Sims 4 levels of sheer amounts of DLC available.

Its still new compared to EU4 and well i doubt they have to many new ideas, so why make a new game? thats the paradox way...

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

So Cities: Skylines is still getting DLC made, this time it's an Airport DLC, which will be released next month. Given the age of the game, at what point do you just make a new game? This seems to be getting to the point of The Sims 4 levels of sheer amounts of DLC available.

This is just what Paradox does dude. This is why they are one of the shittiest publishers in the industry today. What makes it worse about Cities: Skylines, is that they are adding shit in their DLC that SimCity had in the base game 25 years ago.

 

[kidney]

It still saddens me that paradox bought prison architect. Every major update is just copious dlc

 

[AcidityLiquidity]

It still saddens me that paradox bought prison architect. Every major update is just copious dlc

Incredibly shitty DLC at that- none of them are even worth it since they are just glorified mods.

If you do want to give them a try be sure to creamapi them

 

[Fibrillar Collagen]

This is just what Paradox does dude. This is why they are one of the shittiest publishers in the industry today. What makes it worse about Cities: Skylines, is that they are adding shit in their DLC that SimCity had in the base game 25 years ago.

Paradox are really uninspired and lazy, yes. I mean, they own the rights to Vampire: the Mascarade, one of the most recognizable tabletop rpg setting with an already existing cult classic video game adaptation that is just begging to be remade/retooled/extended into a video game franchise that a whole lot of old neckbeards and young tumblerista would just throw infinite money at and they just refuse to do it .

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Paradox are really uninspired and lazy, yes. I mean, they own the rights to Vampire: the Mascarade, one of the most recognizable tabletop rpg setting with an already existing cult classic video game adaptation that is just begging to be remade/retooled/extended into a video game franchise that a whole lot of old neckbeards and young tumblerista would just throw infinite money at and they just refuse to do it .

Oh their doing it...poorly. Yet another reason why they are one of the worst publishers in the business.

 

[Slap47]

It still saddens me that paradox bought prison architect. Every major update is just copious dlc

Its so phoned in that they haven't even taken the time to add new Steam achievements.

 

[Big Green]

Have any of you guys ever done a eu4 world conquest? Ive had a several runs where I thought it was possible, but it feels like such a tedious slog.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Have any of you guys ever done a eu4 world conquest? Ive had a several runs where I thought it was possible, but it feels like such a tedious slog.

Never bothered. Taking control over the entire New World, however, is far easier, so easy, the computer can do it with a little help.

 

[Snekposter]

Paradox are really uninspired and lazy, yes. I mean, they own the rights to Vampire: the Mascarade, one of the most recognizable tabletop rpg setting with an already existing cult classic video game adaptation that is just begging to be remade/retooled/extended into a video game franchise that a whole lot of old neckbeards and young tumblerista would just throw infinite money at and they just refuse to do it .

That monkey paw already got wished upon years ago. VtMB2 is in permanent limbo after a group of SJW fishmalk devs fucked it up beyond even Nosferatu recognition.

 

[Slap47]

Naval combat and regional combat look pretty fine.