Paradox Studio Thread

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Favorite Paradox Game?


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In the CK2 version. I actually have yet to encounter one in the CK3 version.
I haven't gotten one myself, but I did see somebody get one in CK3 through playing as the salvage guys (Rust Cultists? Whatever the industry guys are called now) and doing their special salvaging decision to go search for relics. I think it gives you bonuses as modifiers, rather than artifacts you can equip, which seems like a missed opportunity. It gives you a huge boost to prowess, as you'd expect.
 
HOI4 is $10 on sale right now, is it worth it for somebody who never played a paradox RTS game?

Give it a shot. Of all their games I've played, it has the least steep learning curve and least shit tutorial. And if you do, the best leader to play as to get a grasp on things is unironically Mean Mr Mustache.
 
I've been away from Stellaris for a year or so and decided to pick it back up. Is it just me or did the game get way, way, way, way, WAY harder? I know the AI got better, but that's not what I mean. I used to play on scaled Grand Admiral with midgame in 2275 and end game in 2350, with victory year being 2450. I could win pretty consistently and I didn't even consider myself a particularly good player. I turned down the difficulty by two and it took me 2 or 3 attempts not to get steamrolled, and I STILL ended up losing to an Awakened Empire who are about 5 times as deadly as I remember. I'm not even making it to the Crisis.

The main thing seems to be that, beyond the normal and expected the resources advantages, even a standard AI faction can just instantly crap out fleets of arbitrary size with absolutely no regard for what numbers are actually possible. I'm seeing 2 or 3 times my fleet power AT LEAST in every single war I fight.

Is it just me?
The main thing that had been holding back AI fleets had been their absolutely shitty ship builds and composition, as well as having absolutely nonsensical planet builds. (There was a period where AI would select PD guns for all slots because it had the highest theoretical DPS despite it doing absolutely no damage otherwise).

So if Paradox actually managed to fix that, it would explain their sudden lethality, especially since AI bonuses was tuned to them being dumb and gay.
 
Are they still adding shit to EUIV? And is any of it good? Was thinking of playing again but it has been a while.
I think Leviathan from last year was still the last big expansion. They did some immersion pack stuff this year, like for the Baltic, but that's about it, I think. The patches/future patches in dev diaries are still fucking around with the AI and combat/unit pip balance and idea groups, but don't think there's any big expansion announcement yet.
 
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It's a fun game for sure. It's best to play with mods on like Road to 56 or New Ways (whenever that is going to be updated)
I also highly suggest playing Black Ice- basically doubles game content- playing without feels like foreplay without sex. Just your basic infantry division requires about 8 types of equipment to be produced (MGs, mortarts, infatnry guns, atrillery etc.).
I also highly suggest Fallout mod- they went as far as putting new mechanics into the game- trade routes and money. Its clunky and crude, but it works.
 
I think Leviathan from last year was still the last big expansion. They did some immersion pack stuff this year, like for the Baltic, but that's about it, I think. The patches/future patches in dev diaries are still fucking around with the AI and combat/unit pip balance and idea groups, but don't think there's any big expansion announcement yet.
Yep they are still doing balance and regional flavour. Finally in last patch they nerfed injun federations. That shit was ridiculous. But it is still not enough to make colonialism in America viable.
 
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I also highly suggest playing Black Ice- basically doubles game content- playing without feels like foreplay without sex. Just your basic infantry division requires about 8 types of equipment to be produced (MGs, mortarts, infatnry guns, atrillery etc.).
I also highly suggest Fallout mod- they went as far as putting new mechanics into the game- trade routes and money. Its clunky and crude, but it works.
Play World Ablaze instead. 7.6 just dropped with some brand new focus trees and a cabinet system, as well as re-done, historical commanders.

Far less production autism than BICE, and far, far more historically accurate stats for unique equipment. I strongly recommend having total aerial domination before 1944 as Germany because once Mustang D's start leaving US factories the Allies will be able to toss up top-quality fighters that have range all the way to the Rhineland from the UK, and a contest turns into a slaughter.
 
Play World Ablaze instead. 7.6 just dropped with some brand new focus trees and a cabinet system, as well as re-done, historical commanders.

Far less production autism than BICE, and far, far more historically accurate stats for unique equipment. I strongly recommend having total aerial domination before 1944 as Germany because once Mustang D's start leaving US factories the Allies will be able to toss up top-quality fighters that have range all the way to the Rhineland from the UK, and a contest turns into a slaughter.
Never heard of World Ablaze, thanks.
I actually like the production autism. In my opinion it really allows you to fine-tune your army equipment once WW2 really starts going. Balance and sacrafices- will you as germany lower th production of, for example, infantry MGs or infanty mortars to ramp up the production of fighter?
I also really enjoy the "assault infantry battalions" concept- the start using SMGs and being oriented towards offensives. But once you hit the assault rifle tech and production- they become better than the regular infantry in all respects. I like it because its a simplified historic development- once german STGs became a thing everyone at first thought that its an assault weapon, not "mainline" weapon.
I always fought allied attempts at bombing germany with simply building more fighters and putting them around europe with the lowest reinforce/upgrade priority. 100-200 per "air province" set on "intercept" would do perfectly. Then problem is the fuel, naturally.
 
Never heard of World Ablaze, thanks.
I actually like the production autism. In my opinion it really allows you to fine-tune your army equipment once WW2 really starts going. Balance and sacrafices- will you as germany lower th production of, for example, infantry MGs or infanty mortars to ramp up the production of fighter?
I also really enjoy the "assault infantry battalions" concept- the start using SMGs and being oriented towards offensives. But once you hit the assault rifle tech and production- they become better than the regular infantry in all respects. I like it because its a simplified historic development- once german STGs became a thing everyone at first thought that its an assault weapon, not "mainline" weapon.
I always fought allied attempts at bombing germany with simply building more fighters and putting them around europe with the lowest reinforce/upgrade priority. 100-200 per "air province" set on "intercept" would do perfectly. Then problem is the fuel, naturally.
Oh, there's plenty of production autism, mostly because for anyone not the USA you're going to need to make harsh, harsh choices on what to build due to resource and industry constraints, much like IRL. Germany is in an especially bad spot there, with a severe need for Swedish iron and Romanian oil for literally everything. If you even think about motorizing your support companies you'll run out of fuel halfway between Warsaw and Moscow, and then you're dead.

As to bombers specifically, good luck with that. The USA will be building 5 or more B-29's a day plus 10 Mustangs. Even if they all crash and burn they're still going to hit your factories when they explode on impact and eventually wear you down to nothing. You'll be able to hold them off so long as the Panthers are running, but again, fuel and the fact your factories keep getting bombed will mean the Allies will win the day if they're able to keep pushing slowly but steadily. I'm not kidding when I say the USAAF is Nazi Germany's biggest foe after the endless hordes of Russians. The P-51D is just as good, if not better than the Bf 109 K-4 while being cheaper even before the absurd USA production bonuses stack on, and American fighter-bombers have more ground attack than your dedicated CAS planes while still being able to look after themselves against most fighters, mostly because they've got high enough speed and air attack to counter-act the worst effects of their low agility.
 
As to bombers specifically, good luck with that. The USA will be building 5 or more B-29's a day plus 10 Mustangs. Even if they all crash and burn they're still going to hit your factories when they explode on impact and eventually wear you down to nothing. You'll be able to hold them off so long as the Panthers are running, but again, fuel and the fact your factories keep getting bombed will mean the Allies will win the day if they're able to keep pushing slowly but steadily. I'm not kidding when I say the USAAF is Nazi Germany's biggest foe after the endless hordes of Russians. The P-51D is just as good, if not better than the Bf 109 K-4 while being cheaper even before the absurd USA production bonuses stack on, and American fighter-bombers have more ground attack than your dedicated CAS planes while still being able to look after themselves against most fighters, mostly because they've got high enough speed and air attack to counter-act the worst effects of their low agility.
That sounds like unfunny bullshit AI cheats.
There is no way in IRL americans would've looked at the casualties and said "well, we lose X bombers and Y fighters everyday, we can still outproduce them!" with absolutely no adjustments to the production and tactics. And the most important part of interception is, after all, disruption.
 
There is no way in IRL americans would've looked at the casualties and said "well, we lose X bombers and Y fighters everyday, we can still outproduce them!"
A. its impossible to simulate things like pilot training time in HoI IV and B. you underestimate the attritive nature of air combat, mostly because HoI does a dogshit job of it. The Mosquito being such an impressive plane was a happy little accident when originally it was designed to take advantage of all the woodworkers in the UK because a plane made of wood is better than no plane at all. Planes, much like ships, are the sort of thing where it can be amazingly cost-effective to just massively out-produce the foe, simply because its almost impossible to come back from behind due to the immense training needs and time-consuming, expensive war machines involved.

And yeah, you should go look into the losses sustained during the strategic bombing campaign before the Luftwaffe was finally worn down to nothing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Week
According to McFarland & Newton (1991), Big Week was not primarily a bombing campaign, but a campaign designed to kill Luftwaffe fighters. Two tactical factors made this difficult. First, Luftwaffe fighters avoided Allied fighters and would simply ignore the fighter sweeps. Thus, the Allies could not entice the Luftwaffe fighters to engage. Second, during escort missions, Allied fighters remained in close escort formation with bombers. This tactic limited bomber casualties but it also reduced Allied pursuit and destruction of Luftwaffe fighters. Recognizing these problems, Major General Jimmy Doolittle, commander of Eighth Air Force from the end of 1943, ordered bombing missions of key aircraft factories that the Luftwaffe could not ignore. In addition, Allied fighters were ordered to abandon the bombers with the primary goal of shooting down Luftwaffe fighters. In effect, the primary purpose of the bombing missions was to bring up the Luftwaffe and the real role of the Allied bombers was to be used and sacrificed as bait.

On the other hand, Brinkhuis (1984) contended that the operation's target was attacking Germany's aircraft industry, 'going back to a plan that had already been made in October 1943. This plan, operation Argument, was the biggest Allied air action so far. The ambitious enterprise had the total destruction of the German aircraft industry as its goal.' 'The manufacture of these [fighters, such as Messerschitt 109, 110, Focke-Wulf 190, and Me-109], saw such a steep rise that the USAAF and RAF had good reason to fear that the defence of Hitler's Festung Europa with all these aircraft would lead to a horrible massacre amongst Allied flight crews. Therefore, the primary goal of the Allied airforce became the destruction of the factories producing these aircraft.' Planners estimated that the Allies would lose between 7% to 18% of their aircraft every day; given that the campaign was to last six days, the expectation was thus that between 42% and 100% of all aircraft (981 bombers in total) would be lost. In order to achieve the objective, U.S. commander Frederick L. Anderson was prepared to sacrifice three quarters of all planes and crew (meaning 736 bombers). The Allies proceeded to gather intelligence on all parts of German industry involved in producing parts, engines, wings and airframes, as well as assembling factories. However, operational success was foreseen to heavily depend on several consecutive days of good weather, meaning ideal cloud covers between about 600 to 4,000 metres above England, but no clouds above the target areas in Germany. As such a situation was extremely rare, leadership decided to launch the campaign anyway as soon as the forecast showed the smallest signs of acceptable flying weather.

During Big Week, the Eighth Air Force lost 97 B-17s, 40 B-24s and another 20 scrapped due to damage. The operational strength of the Eighth Air Force bomber units had dropped from 75 percent at the start of the week to 54 percent, and its fighter units strength had dropped from 72 percent of establishment strength to 65 percent. The Fifteenth Air Force lost 14.6 percent (90 bombers) of establishment strength, and RAF Bomber Command lost 131 bombers (5.7 percent) during Big Week. Although these numbers are high in absolute terms, the numbers of bombers involved in the missions were much higher than previously, and the losses represented a much smaller percentage of the attacking force. The earlier Schweinfurt missions had cost the force nearly 30 percent of their aircraft per mission.

US aircrews claimed more than 500 German fighters destroyed, though the numbers were massively exaggerated. The Luftwaffe losses were high amongst their twin-engined Zerstörer units, and the Bf 110 and Me 410 groups were severely depleted. More worrying for the Jagdwaffe (fighter force) than the loss of 355 aircraft was the loss of nearly 100 pilots (14 percent) who had been killed. In contrast to the raids of the previous year, the US losses were replaceable, while the Germans were already hard pressed due to the war in the East. Although not fatal, Big Week was an extremely worrying development for the Germans. The lack of skilled pilots due to an attrition in the three-front war was the factor eroding the capability of the Jagdwaffe.

According to McFarland & Newton (1991), the purported Allied strategy of sacrificing bombers in order to lure and kill Luftwaffe fighters was very effective. Freed of close bomber escort duty, Allied fighters, particularly the P-51s, decimated the Luftwaffe. German aircraft and pilot losses could not be sufficiently replaced. As a result, the Allies achieved air superiority by the time of the D-Day invasion.
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Yes, we deliberately traded 226 heavy bombers and their crews for a mere 100 pilots, simply because we could make good on those losses and the Germans could not. Its almost like the Willow Run plant shat out a B-24 every hour with crews bunking there at the factory waiting for their planes to come off the line or something...

EDIT: I'm not saying you're 100% wrong on the change in tactics and the like, but I am saying its impossible to properly duplicate that given just how terrible air combat is in HoI... but in the end if the Allies could replace 3 planes for every 2 the Germans lost but could only manage parity in losses... they'd accept that.

But I also just did a game where I was killing around 10 Bf 109's for the loss of like 5 Mustangs every sortie, so you should maybe take what I said about pure production with a grain of salt.
 
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That sounds like unfunny bullshit AI cheats.
There is no way in IRL americans would've looked at the casualties and said "well, we lose X bombers and Y fighters everyday, we can still outproduce them!" with absolutely no adjustments to the production and tactics. And the most important part of interception is, after all, disruption.
That funny because that's almost exactly what the US did the USAAF was one of they most dangerous branches after infantry and merchant seamen.
 
I've been away from Stellaris for a year or so and decided to pick it back up. Is it just me or did the game get way, way, way, way, WAY harder? I know the AI got better, but that's not what I mean. I used to play on scaled Grand Admiral with midgame in 2275 and end game in 2350, with victory year being 2450. I could win pretty consistently and I didn't even consider myself a particularly good player. I turned down the difficulty by two and it took me 2 or 3 attempts not to get steamrolled, and I STILL ended up losing to an Awakened Empire who are about 5 times as deadly as I remember. I'm not even making it to the Crisis.

The main thing seems to be that, beyond the normal and expected the resources advantages, even a standard AI faction can just instantly crap out fleets of arbitrary size with absolutely no regard for what numbers are actually possible. I'm seeing 2 or 3 times my fleet power AT LEAST in every single war I fight.

Is it just me?
They buffed the AI a ton.
Try some bullshit builds like technocracy necrophage progenitor hive or megacorp clone soldiers. These builds can steamroll anything. If you want to play genocidal you can try lithoid necrophage fanatic purifiers. The strategy there is just to pump out corvettes and rush any AI before 2230. You can win pretty much every war before 2220 with 40 corvettes as a FP.
 
I bought Stellaris and refunded it an hour later
Thoughts
- When I buy a game I want to play the game and feel like I'm getting the full experience, not to have non-stop advertising for whatever DLC I didn't buy. RECOMMENDED DLC PACK!!! from the very start. And all the humans are niggers.
- The tutorial is horseshit. I understand these games are complex, but if you can't make a decent tutorial to ease me into it, then I'm not prepared to spend hours learning how to play your DLC Autism simulator.
- Sound kept crackling and was annoying as shit.
 
I bought Stellaris and refunded it an hour later
Thoughts
- When I buy a game I want to play the game and feel like I'm getting the full experience, not to have non-stop advertising for whatever DLC I didn't buy. RECOMMENDED DLC PACK!!! from the very start. And all the humans are niggers.
- The tutorial is horseshit. I understand these games are complex, but if you can't make a decent tutorial to ease me into it, then I'm not prepared to spend hours learning how to play your DLC Autism simulator.
- Sound kept crackling and was annoying as shit.
Stellaris and all it's DLC is on GOG so you can easily pirate it from gog-games. Also like with most parado$h games; look into creamapi if you have the basegame. It unlocks all the DLC for you if you slap in the files. Or with stellaris- just pirate it
 
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