Paradox Studio Thread

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The only evidence that he was in an outright romantic relationship with Hephaestion is some people comparing him to Achilles and Patroclus and rather broad speculation that Macedonian royalty were expected to fuck dudes. Meanwhile he outright had kids with women and is described as falling in love with Roxana at first sight. If he did fuck dudes he was almost certainly either bi or "straight but fucking dudes in the ass is totally manly bro."

Bi would describe most Hellenic aristocracy.

 

[Jan_Hus]

Never buy eu4 dlc on day one. I usually give it about three to six months to let them iron out the bugs and balance the new mechanics.

The big hre rework dlc was so horrifically unbalanced that the AI could manage to revoke the priviligia within the first fifty years of the game. Hell a player could do it in ten to fifteen years.

It's odd. I don't remember these types of issues with ck2's dlcs. (Save for monks and mystics.)

 

[vulg]

Speaking of Paradox fucking up, Leviathan DLC for EU4 released today and it's probably the biggest shitshow of Paradox release I've seen in over 10 years of playing. It was developed by their new Spanish studio and man, did they fuck up:

-It added some new half-assed mechanics - ability to siphon development from subjects/enemies as a wargoal, monuments, some decisions to encourage tall play etc. People complained about them even before release and most of the videos made by content creators who got early access to the DLC featured them abusing the shit out of the mechanics.
-We got bizzare amount of dev stacking in the capital, abuse of the new CB given to Majahapit etc. It's not even exploits, just playing the game as intended. I've seen a screenshot of a guy having 105 dev in Beijing in 1445 just by taking dev from his tributaries as Ming. Even AI OPM natives have 40 dev for some reason.
-Some of the monuments are joke while other are extremely OP. Alhambra gives you 15% admin efficiency which basically means that any WC game in Europe will start with no CB against Granada.
-The amount of bugs and unfinished content led some people to unironically believe that Paradox released earlier build of the game.
-Pacific nations are missing some icons in the menu. There are literally placeholder assets and text used for sikhism. Mission trees are missing images.
-One of the newly added horde policies gives you a 100% missionary strength meaning you can convert every province within a month.
-Newly added native federations are unplayable as members keep joining and immediately leaving.
-Game can't properly calculate relative strength between two countries. The stronger the country is, the faster you gain favours with it while it should be the opposite.
-Game crashes when you mouse over certain elements when playing new Australian nations.
-New free patch broke the game. Diplomatic window doesn't work unless you have DLC.
-Despite free patch being called "Majapahit", the nation is basically unplayable without DLC. Majapahit has a nasty crisis that fucks you over. To prevent it you need to complete a mission which is locked behind a DLC. Crisis will occur even if you don't have Leviathan.
-And many more...

I am a Paradox whore and usually buy their DLC, but I'm sure glad I didn't buy this one. The new mechanics introduced seemed lame from the start but I was interested to try new content as I like playing outside Europe and still have some achievement missing for SEA nations who lacked unique ideas and mission trees before.

The biggest problem that EUIV has always had is their inability to portray "influence," I was originally hopeful that with the "great power" system that influence could be properly explored a la VickyII but it seems like they keep on wanting to make EUIV more and more of an arcade game.

"building tall" is never, never the right option other than if you want to roleplay, and a big reason for this is that EUIV's only form of influence is by map painting. How can you tell that state is a regional power? Well, they painted every surrounding county in their colour! It's incredibly linear.

 

[Marshal Mannerheim]

"building tall" is never, never the right option other than if you want to roleplay

That's basically how the various CK games work. You invariably end up painting the map unless you specifically set out not to.

 

[vulg]

That's basically how the various CK games work. You invariably end up painting the map unless you specifically set out not to.

all Paradox games suffer from the same problems, but CK isn't as bad as EUIV because CK has both state management and character management, which is more dynamic and interesting.

EUIV only has state mechanics, and they're really not that much more in depth than CK.

 

[Lord Neeba]

The Stellaris devs are flying by the seat of their pants worse than the average manga author. Every change just introduces new problems that need their own fixes which in turn create their own problems... Maybe you should decide these things, I don't know, before releasing the game? Imagine Doom suddenly patching in turn based combat, that's how bad some of these changes have been. But nobody notices because the game just has to look pretty and play itself for most people to be satisfied. Most players didn't even realize back when the AI was so terminally fucked that it stopped playing halfway through the game.

The problems with 2.0 were because they completely switched teams multiple years into development, and the new team's design vision was massively different than the old teams. Rather than the accept this and work within the framework of the old team's vision, the new team decided to completely revamp the game to fit their new vision. Haven't played Stellaris much since 2.0 because hated the changes it made, so can't give you can explanation for the problems with 3.0.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Speaking of Paradox fucking up, Leviathan DLC for EU4 released today and it's probably the biggest shitshow of Paradox release I've seen in over 10 years of playing. It was developed by their new Spanish studio and man, did they fuck up:

-It added some new half-assed mechanics - ability to siphon development from subjects/enemies as a wargoal, monuments, some decisions to encourage tall play etc. People complained about them even before release and most of the videos made by content creators who got early access to the DLC featured them abusing the shit out of the mechanics.
-We got bizzare amount of dev stacking in the capital, abuse of the new CB given to Majahapit etc. It's not even exploits, just playing the game as intended. I've seen a screenshot of a guy having 105 dev in Beijing in 1445 just by taking dev from his tributaries as Ming. Even AI OPM natives have 40 dev for some reason.
-Some of the monuments are joke while other are extremely OP. Alhambra gives you 15% admin efficiency which basically means that any WC game in Europe will start with no CB against Granada.
-The amount of bugs and unfinished content led some people to unironically believe that Paradox released earlier build of the game.
-Pacific nations are missing some icons in the menu. There are literally placeholder assets and text used for sikhism. Mission trees are missing images.
-One of the newly added horde policies gives you a 100% missionary strength meaning you can convert every province within a month.
-Newly added native federations are unplayable as members keep joining and immediately leaving.
-Game can't properly calculate relative strength between two countries. The stronger the country is, the faster you gain favours with it while it should be the opposite.
-Game crashes when you mouse over certain elements when playing new Australian nations.
-New free patch broke the game. Diplomatic window doesn't work unless you have DLC.
-Despite free patch being called "Majapahit", the nation is basically unplayable without DLC. Majapahit has a nasty crisis that fucks you over. To prevent it you need to complete a mission which is locked behind a DLC. Crisis will occur even if you don't have Leviathan.
-And many more...

I am a Paradox whore and usually buy their DLC, but I'm sure glad I didn't buy this one. The new mechanics introduced seemed lame from the start but I was interested to try new content as I like playing outside Europe and still have some achievement missing for SEA nations who lacked unique ideas and mission trees before.

Never play EU4. Only play MEIOU and Taxes.

I just wish Paradox would fuck off with their updates that you can’t decline which fuck up every mod until the modders have time to fix it.

 

[Lord Neeba]

all Paradox games suffer from the same problems, but CK isn't as bad as EUIV because CK has both state management and character management, which is more dynamic and interesting.

EUIV only has state mechanics, and they're really not that much more in depth than CK.

The one that's least about map painting is Vicky 2. Ironic, given that its the one covering the time period where colonial powers actually did take over completely useless hunks of territory for the sole purpose of painting more of the map their color.

 

[Jan_Hus]

Eu4 is at its best when it delves into historically plausible alt history.

Hell my favorite nation to play is Oirat for this exact reason

In history, the Oirat horde was one of the mongol empire's successor khanates. And probably the strongest one. Their khan at the time, one Essen Choros declared himself great khan and it wasn't a baseless claim. Guy styled his state as northern yuan and sent deliberately inflated tribute numbers to the Ming emperor next door. In response the Ming closed their border so Choros invaded.

To make a long story short, the Ming emperor decided to personally lead a force of half a million to crush the yuan invaders and the fucker made the mistake of getting trapped on open ground against a mongol army. It was a route and the emperor got captured. Choros then laid siege to the ming's northern capitol.

Where he promptly had a massive fucking heart attack and died.

In game if you manage to stackwipe the army their emperor is leading. easy to do if you catch them on flat ground. Like desert or ideally steppes with an all cavalry horde army with a high shock general. You'll capture him and halve the morale of their armies and temporarily tank their mandate. If you manage to seige Beijing and capture it before choros dies, you'll instantly occupy the entire North China region.

At this point you want to demand peace. Take a territory or two for feudalism and to raze for horde unity. And then cart off the entire ming treasury and force them to their knees with loans. The goal is to get them to start vomiting out substates that you can easily snap up at your leisure. Provided Uzbek and Chagatai don't team up to fuck you, you can easily grow to be the dominant eastern power in a few decades and form Yuan.

China games go much more smoothly when your map color is rich Yuan red instead of that tan cry for help that ming gets for a map color.

Plus their ideas are god tier, easily some of the best for mass map painting

Also Timurids are probably a close second. Honestly the nations with unique gameplay mechanics are the best and its a shame pdox never went fully in that direction for some of the dlcs

 

[Snekposter]

the AI was so terminally fucked that it stopped playing halfway through the game

Wait, what? Are you telling me they finally fixed that issue? News to me.

 

[Intelligent Calcium]

Wait, what? Are you telling me they finally fixed that issue? News to me.

What, that's still going? I stopped playing a while ago and assumed they would have at least fixed that. Hey, at least the game is balanced for multiplayer, huh?

 

[Jan_Hus]

Stellaris multiplayer is an insane amount of fun if you do it roleplay style with a couple friends

Oh I wanted to add something about oirat games. It's usually a good idea to net an alliance with Korchin or Jianzhou to occupy some of Ming's troops and give them more to siege down

 

[Fuck Y'all]

>paradox has worse review score than turd pushers from Team6

 

[vulg]

View attachment 2126287
>paradox has worse review score than turd pushers from Team6

the entire review thread is just cope/seethe something something.

 

[Kane Lives]

View attachment 2126287
>paradox has worse review score than turd pushers from Team6

EU4 has been trending downwards for quite some time but this is on a whole new level.

Amazing. Bravo, Paradox.

 

[Snekposter]

What, that's still going? I stopped playing a while ago and assumed they would have at least fixed that. Hey, at least the game is balanced for multiplayer, huh?

Honestly? I play with so many mods its impossible to tell if they are or just Stellaris itself is shitting the bed, but AFAICT the AI just collapses in a drooling tard mess once it runs into something that can halt its expansion and does nothing at all.

 

[Stoneheart]

That means an effective bottleneck on fleet size as well then, since you can only really access large amounts of crystal, gas and motes from the on planet buildings that make them; and they need large pops to be available to build. Paradox drops the ball again it seems.

nahh you go for Crisis and get super cheap fleets with insane power for their cost. who cares if you have twice the fleet limit if the cost is super low?

Most players didn't even realize back when the AI was so terminally fucked that it stopped playing halfway through the game.

That was never fixed and for some reasons it gets worse the harder mode you play.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

nahh you go for Crisis and get super cheap fleets with insane power for their cost. who cares if you have twice the fleet limit if the cost is super low?

Yeah, I did find it kind of funny that one of the nemesis perks literally just rolls back the game and lets you make ships with minerals. It'd be like if a HOI4 add on just let you disable fuel as a thing entirely.

Paradoxs modus operandi literally seems to be 'Make base game -> Break base game -> Make fifteen DLC's to bring things back to base game level of functionality -> Fail -> Make new base game.'

Also the new 'menacing ships' are literally just pirate ships. I didn't even pay for the DLC and I want a fucking refund for that shit, lazy bastards.

 

[Stoneheart]

Also the new 'menacing ships' are literally just pirate ships.

yeah, but they get super buffed. just use them to attack bases and shit while you watch your pretty fleet with the new models smashing shit.

 

[LatinasAreTheFuture]

Oh my god they broke eu4 so bad.

*I just can’t understand why devs just can’t have fun? Why can’t we have a game where I am able to smoothly build an empire? The thing is the game already has a good feel, it’s nice to play as an opm and build an empire by carving your way through a region of states. It’s best moments are when im thinking like an absolute monarch, starting wars I can’t win for territories I don’t need and the reason being that I’m the king and if I want this or that province it can be mine. It’s really fun to play as a power drunk monarch that totally intends on taking over the world and it would be really nice if the devs would just let me have my fun. Instead they cater to autismos who want to pause every day to achieve whatever min max the numbers work out too. And not even to mention the brain dead fucking ai that has to be cheated like for ffs. And for the love of god I hope paradox does pops down to the individual. It’s easily the best way to build game mechanics, give each pop a name, age, family, race, religion, culture, and then you can do all the pie charts you want for any grouping of any people in the world. With the population number and ages you can have a demographics tree. This could be used to build an economy with jobs, any kind of currency could be made; whatever silver or gold coins could be tracked, track how pops save wealth, all this shit and it doesn’t have to be abstract bullshit. A game like this really needs to be simulation heavy.