Paradox Studio Thread

[Zaryiu2]

Modern Paradox at the idea of putting effort in their games

 

[JJLiautaud]

Some gigachad of an autist managed to WC EUIV in 28 years.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Any word on Age of Wonders 4? Or is that not a Paradox game?

They've got a site up here with news and whatnot. The latest update was earlier this month and was (of course) about pre-ordering for bonus junk and buying the premium edition for the expansion pack junk.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Some gigachad of an autist managed to WC EUIV in 28 years.

King shit. Great use of music as well. Makes me hype for EUIV 1.35.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

So far I've seen too much talking about things and not actual interface or specific descriptions of mechanics, but this is another great idea from Espiocracy.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1670650/view/3647388792204849853

Their Historical Realism slider will let you randomize the world state by both randomizing basic facts of the world (like resource deposit locations) and simming, longer back the looser it is, history up to the start. By default, 8/10, is like a typical historical grand strategy set up.

I think this is a much better take on how to do random maps, and the random deposits also sound very useful for games where you want to adequately represent the uncertainty that goes into prospecting instead of having the benefit of hindsight to know exactly where and when resources will come online (like the vast expansion of North Sea and Gulf of Mexico oil in the 1980s).

 

[Radola Gajda]

So EU4 achievments for next DLC are out.

Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 4th of April 2023 - Achievements

Hello everybody! Welcome to today’s Developer Diary! My name is Arnau, I am an Internal QA Tester working at Tinto. And I'm here with @Pintu to bring you this week's Dev Diary where we will focus on one of our favorite topics, the new...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

And all of them are shitty memes. Form Jerusalem and after that Inca as German city. Be Emperor of HRE and Emperor of China as Russia. But what is most ridiculous is conquer this in 56years.

As Ottomans .
Trying to do something like this. Will make pretty much every single Christian and Muslim state join coalition against you

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

The two latest dev diaries for CK3 systems were unexpectedly significant after two years of half-heared nothingburgers. The new regency mechanic looks good on paper and combined with bringing back different vassal stances from CK2 Conclave will contribute to the internal strife mechanic. Hopefully playing as vassals will actually be interesting now instead of just "say goodbye to your renown forever". I'm cautiously optimistic.

 

[crowabunga]

Modern Paradox at the idea of putting effort in their games
View attachment 4883414

I just want Stellaris DLC with effort, the custodian team has been doing more interesting stuff with their free changes to previous DLCs than the team making new paid content.

 

[whatever I feel like]

So EU4 achievments for next DLC are out.

Europa Universalis IV - Development Diary 4th of April 2023 - Achievements

Hello everybody! Welcome to today’s Developer Diary! My name is Arnau, I am an Internal QA Tester working at Tinto. And I'm here with @Pintu to bring you this week's Dev Diary where we will focus on one of our favorite topics, the new...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

And all of them are shitty memes. Form Jerusalem and after that Inca as German city. Be Emperor of HRE and Emperor of China as Russia. But what is most ridiculous is conquer this in 56years.
View attachment 4983857
As Ottomans .
Trying to do something like this. Will make pretty much every single Christian and Muslim state join coalition against you

so what you're saying is the Achievements are actually achievements instead of "beat level 1" stuff?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I really like what they're talking about with the regencies.
There was a whole period of Ottoman history when the government was run by the mothers of the sultans instead of the sultans themselves. (One of them, Roxelana, was a redhaired Ruthenian concubine). Be neat to see things like that emerge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultanate_of_Women

 

[Knud Lavard]

As the Venerable Sir @Ughubughughughughughghlug Esq. mentions, CK2+ had a robust and simple system for grouping vassals together in 'interest groups', so to speak. It made sense and played well - I especially liked how you had dedicated loyalists in uprisings, and how they weren't just people who had 60+ opinion of you. They could just be nobles who didn't want the(ir) realm to suffer from the ravages and chaos of civil war.

As for the upcoming CKIII mechanics, it would be nice if there were reasons to have regents/co-rulers beyond "you have to", but it doesn't seem like there is. It would make sense if, the further along the 'Scales of Power' bar you got, the more benefits you received - you are leaving more and more responsibilities in the more capable hands of your regent/co-ruler. The player would decide themselves what level they'd aim for, instead of the ruler always wanting the bar to be at the bottom, and the regent always wanting it to be at the top. If your loving and good-hearted mother is your regent, you would probably entrust her with more powers than if Stabiebaque de Moustachetweurle, count of Meurderville had the role. Events and your political situation would shake this up - giving more power to Stabiebaque could result in him seizing the throne. But the greater realm organization will definitely help in the upcoming war against the English, which will happen. You can trust your good-hearted mother to not abuse her power, but the more you give her, the more of a target she becomes. Will you be greedy and reap the rewards of a powerful and loyal regent, but run the risk her being ousted by a disgruntled noble? Or do you keep her powers limited, but have her regency be tolerated? The system would be risk/reward instead of "ruler = empty bar" and "regent = full bar".

The "Invite Conspirators to Coup" options are what schemes should look more like, in my mind. I would love it if you could give people meaningful reasons to join your plot that aren't just a big bag of money. I would also love it if these offers could back-fire and make the person distrust you, have your scheme be revealed, etc. etc.. I never liked to mass-invite random people to my plots in CKII because of the greater risk of the beans being spilled. Something like this would make who your conspirators are matter, and make schemes more interesting than "spend 160 gold and this person will be murdered in 12 months with 90% certainty".

Overall, the new stuff looks good. Seeing is believing, though.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Maybe if ruler stats mattered bigly and age and or experience applied a huge multiplier to them, having a regent substitutes their stats but applies a penalty but how bad is reduced the more power they have.

That even gives something a little bit like an early constitutional monarchy with a prime minister that is subject to meddling/recall but imposing in themselves.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Two more articles about Life By You are out, where Rod Humble discusses about the game:

Life By You could lock The Sims in a swimming pool and delete the ladder

You can make friends with them, you can have romantic interactions with them, you can ask them to teach you skills, or you can teach them skills, you can ask them to improve your relationship with a third person,” Humble says. “And that's quite important because often that's how friendships work, like, ‘Hey, I think that person's super hot.’ You can get pregnant, you can die, all of the bodily functions are there.”

Rod Humble stated that they originally had disease as a possible death, but they removed it due to COVID:

“So we had the idea of sickness and death by unfortunate means, but it just didn't really sit right. And it's not that game. The game doesn't come with any violence in it.

It does come with nudity and romantic relationships. And that's really more about the emphasis of that kind of storytelling, the important stuff. I think there are a lot of games out there that already do violence and the dark side a lot better. We're also life sim, and you can make Grandma and your family. We don't want people to see horrible things happen to Grandma. That's not cool. So yeah, we've tried to make it as nice as we can.”

Natural death is a part of Life By You, but like everything else in the game, it’s a choice. When your death day comes, you can just tell the Reaper to come back another time and carry on.

While Rod's sentiments and reasoning makes sense in a way, it does seem like it takes away a form of drama, and possible gameplay if you don't take care of your humans. Where is the life simulator, where making bad health choices will result in your humans living shorter lives? The Sims didn't implement something like this either, as the closest they got to that is the length of the Elder lifestage in TS2 is dependent on the aspiration state during aging, as in the higher the bar, the more days they'll live as an Elder before dying of Old Age.

The part about delaying death seems off to me as well, since in The Sims, once a Sim reaches the end of their lifespan, that's it, for the most part.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

No it doesn't, Rod is a pussy and if people don't want to see Grandma die they can turn that setting off. It's not a modern life simulator/dollhouse if you can't have one son die of vaccine-induced myocarditis and another of school shooting.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

Two more articles about Life By You are out, where Rod Humble discusses about the game:

And just like that all my hopes for this game are gone, it seems like a even more pozzed version of Sims 4.
I can only hope the modding community for the game can do the leg work to make it something truly special, but if the devs try to kill certain mods it will all go to shit.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Changelog for EUIV 1.35, both DLC and Free features. It is dropping next week. I am probably gonna buy it not gonna lie, but only on Friday or so to make sure we do not have a Leviathan situation.

 

[East_Clintwood]

Changelog for EUIV 1.35, both DLC and Free features. It is dropping next week. I am probably gonna buy it not gonna lie, but only on Friday or so to make sure we do not have a Leviathan situation.

Given the absolute state of Paradox releases I'm gonna pirate and test the shit out of it before I even think about buying it.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

A perfectly valid course of action tbh.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #81 - New Laws in 1.3

Hello. This is Victoria, also known as Pacifica, and today we will be going over the new laws added in 1.3. By and large, these laws exist to grant an experience that allows for more “modern” forms of states, to represent the changing ideologies...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Decent looking content that should have been in from the start.

1. Your Communist state can now actually be a one-party state with state atheism, though I'm sure your wholesome big chungus Communist state with elections and tolerance but everybody voluntarily becomes atheist and votes Communist is still an option. It's a joke that it wasn't in it from the get go. I don't particularly like having an Atheism religion, either, I feel like religion acts as much as a cultural background (what sort of allusions do a people understand, for example) that for all purposes just nuking the Devout IG would be enough.

2. Agriculture has been split off to be its own reform, with an option specifically to represent American pioneers (Homesteading). They even had the presence of mind to make a distinction in it between cash crop agriculture (empowers Landowners) and other products (empowers Rural Folk), which might in a natural way fix the problem of the Civil War (that the Landowners were dominant EVERYWHERE because the game didn't bother distinguishing between Northern landowners and Southern slave owners). Of course, you could question why it's a reform when other reforms, Tenant Farming and Commercialized Agriculture, just as well describe later American agriculture. So it's still not GOOD, it's just better.

Can also run a Luddite or technocratic state now, too.

I do like (though everything else is completely screwed up) that Victoria 3 has reforms be more abstract, big picture issues. In Victoria 2 it was totally backwards where your major reforms, the major efforts, were things like how many hours a day your workers work and yet fundamentals of your society like whether you had a market society could change with the election.

 

[Radola Gajda]

Your Communist state can now actually be a one-party state with state atheism, though I'm sure your wholesome big chungus Communist state with elections and tolerance but everybody voluntarily becomes atheist and votes Communist is still an option.

I mean most of Communist states maintained elections, but there was only one party allowed. So Commies achieved Our democracy.
As for state atheism I agree it should allow you to destroy devout quickly , but at cost of increased unrest for time and potential revolts if church is strong enough.