Paradox Studio Thread

[Lonjil]

Tried another playthrough of Stellaris on the latest patch: It's actually quite unplayable IMHO. The most obvious bug is that every ai empire acts kinda like fallen empires in that they never build anything. Every single AI empire I ran across had planets on the verge of revolt, zero economy, and after 10-20 years was so far behind in tech, economy, and fleet power, that the game became a sleep walk.

Guess I will rollback my game version and wait for the million hotfixes to fix this.

 

[Blackstar]

Restricting millitary access would help fight the annoyance.

You'll need to pay money for mil access in EUV, and the AI will hopefully get improved. Johan said himself that this was the earliest into development that a pdx game got previewed and it was before optimisations and AI improvements.

 

[Radola Gajda]

D

Tried another playthrough of Stellaris on the latest patch: It's actually quite unplayable IMHO. The most obvious bug is that every ai empire acts kinda like fallen empires in that they never build anything. Every single AI empire I ran across had planets on the verge of revolt, zero economy, and after 10-20 years was so far behind in tech, economy, and fleet power, that the game became a sleep walk.

Guess I will rollback my game version and wait for the million hotfixes to fix this.

Three fucking months and 21 patches later and this is result?
Lol how long before pdx does needful and takes BioGenesis behind the barn and puts bullet into its head. And pretends this DLC did not happen.
With Summer break in Swedistan I think it will be another 3 months atleast, before stellaris is playable again.

 

[Lonjil]

D

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Three fucking months and 21 patches later and this is result?
Lol how long before pdx does needful and takes BioGenesis behind the barn and puts bullet into its head. And pretends this DLC did not happen.
With Summer break in Swedistan I think it will be another 3 months atleast, before stellaris is playable again.

I don't really know what the issue they are having is since I do not work in this field, but it does seem bizarre that the game just keeps breaking every single hotfix/patch. Are they not play testing stuff before releasing it? The Ai not building stuff is a game breaking bug, I find it really hard to believe NO ONE noticed it

 

[WarrenZHarding]

If Koei stopped trying to reinvent the wheel and actually started iterating on what worked they very easily could. They were the pioneers of character driven strategy games and RotK and Nobunaga's Ambition are still going but get hamstrung every time by them trying to fundamentally rework a basic features to justify a new game instead of just iterating on the good ideas they had.

I still love Nobunaga's Ambition. I think Awakening is pretty good. They do a much better job of making the ai feel active instead of reactive, but yeah, I agree with you. Between Awakening and SOI/Ascension, and arguably far before that, Koei has had the foundation to make a truly genre defining grand strategy game. The fact they always release the same one with fresh paint rather than meaningful change is frustrating. But at least the series has stayed fairly decent up to now (Taishi aside). CK3 strays further from God every day.

I have been brooding over how nobody has been able to pull off what Crusader Kings II did with characters. Especially as I play State of Decay (which came out around the same time).

I think what really makes CK2 work is some combination of:
1) (Very important) Characters are playing the game too
1a) They're gunning for your job
2) You need the characters
3) They have enough flexibility and abstractness that you can read more characterization into them

CK2 remains lightning in a bottle. I dont even know if Paradox realizes what they made with that game. It isnt just how the game truly feels like it plays against you from all sides, its the way characters act in accordance with their traits. And how those traits can change. I still dont think you can do this in CK3, but i remember how my cruel character in CK2 could lose that trait and even become compassionate if he started doing "kind" things like release prisoners without ransoms and such. CK3 has an absurd number of systems, but they are all so unsatisfying compared to the simpler but more believable way a CK2 character not only behaved, but grew as a person.

https://youtu.be/qzkVTDfxIUI?si=90eA0eQSQkI5qnAp

The trailer for CK2 is still one of my all time favorite game trailers. It tells you EXACTLY what a typical game in CK2 is like. Your character is a retard, and literally everyone is out to kill you. Its so minimalistic, but it brings out the tone and flavor of the game perfectly. To see how far we've fallen from this design is honestly a little depressing.

 

[The best and greatest]

I tried Vicky3 since it was free. First I played as portugal and then as Iran. Both playthroughs were largely uneventful. Its the Hearts of Iron problem (aside from feeling too much like hearts of iron to begin with) where two thirds of the game is just build up for the last third, only there is no last third. It really does feel like "Nothing Ever Happens: The videogame" you just watch your life tick away while things slooooowly get built to make line go up.

Maybe this is my fault because I dont know how to play Vicky3 but all it made me want to do is go back to EU4

 

[Lonjil]

The videogame" you just watch your life tick away while things slooooowly get built to make line go up.

This is what turned me off Vic3. It really did just feel like an idle clicker game where I just made lines go up on a chart for better in game point. I also keep running into an issue where the ai never seems to do anything war wise.

 

[Super Hans v2]

You'll need to pay money for mil access in EUV, and the AI will hopefully get improved. Johan said himself that this was the earliest into development that a pdx game got previewed and it was before optimisations and AI improvements.

I wonder how that'll play with alliances being called into war. It'd be annoying with the AI calling you into one but refusing or unable to pay for mil access. But at least it can't take up a diploma slot anymore.

 

[Imam Shamil]

This is what turned me off Vic3. It really did just feel like an idle clicker game where I just made lines go up on a chart for better in game point. I also keep running into an issue where the ai never seems to do anything war wise.

That's why I'm not excited for EU5. Modern Paradox doesn't seem to be pushing out good shit. They'll likely do the same thing to EU5 that they did with CK3 -- release a polished game with little to no bugs, but with bare minimum content while the fanbase proclaims "its a good foundation".
And EU4 will likely have more content than EU5 for 2-3 years before they release sufficient dlc.

 

[NvII iS 8ulLt f0R 88C]

That's why I'm not excited for EU5. Modern Paradox doesn't seem to be pushing out good shit. They'll likely do the same thing to EU5 that they did with CK3 -- release a polished game with little to no bugs, but with bare minimum content while the fanbase proclaims "its a good foundation".
And EU4 will likely have more content than EU5 for 2-3 years before they release sufficient dlc.

>He doesn't believe in the pvnished Johan arc
grim.

 

[Super Hans v2]

>He doesn't believe in the pvnished Johan arc
grim.

Johan is capable of great things, sure. But the Spanish, they haven't done a good thing in 500 years. And Franco doesn't count, similar to how me mopping the floor isn't a good thing when I only did it after shitting on it.

 

[NvII iS 8ulLt f0R 88C]

Johan is capable of great things, sure. But the Spanish, they haven't done a good thing in 500 years. And Franco doesn't count, similar to how me mopping the floor isn't a good thing when I only did it after shitting on it.

They make good olive oil (mostly with our olives, it's an olive laundering thing).

 

[Vermilion A]

Three fucking months and 21 patches later and this is result?

22+n patches, now. The main team is on holiday but they have a beta branch which is updating every week.

I recommend anyone who's playing Stellaris switch to the 'Wilderness' beta branch in Steam. You get some bugs (a pretty nasty CTD whenever you sell something from the Archive if you own the DLC) but that's no different from the 4.21 experience except the bugs have a reasonable chance of getting fixed.

Stellaris is simultaneously the best and worst managed PDX game. The curator team was a stroke of genius and what every Paradox game needs, but the overall game direction is misguided. Cosmic Storms, Grand Archive, and Astral Rifts added nothing but balance breaking bloat. Instead of introducing extraneous systems, they could have created a big event pack for each of the major authorities (democratic, oligarchic, etc.) or a religion DLC.

 

[Slur Generator]

 

[LovisXVI]

I hate that they included Doom again. It's some pop history understanding of Mesoamerican religion. It's better than EU4, but I would have preferred something different altogether.

 

[PrimeRadiant]

22+n patches, now. The main team is on holiday but they have a beta branch which is updating every week.

I recommend anyone who's playing Stellaris switch to the 'Wilderness' beta branch in Steam. You get some bugs (a pretty nasty CTD whenever you sell something from the Archive if you own the DLC) but that's no different from the 4.21 experience except the bugs have a reasonable chance of getting fixed.

Stellaris is simultaneously the best and worst managed PDX game. The curator team was a stroke of genius and what every Paradox game needs, but the overall game direction is misguided. Cosmic Storms, Grand Archive, and Astral Rifts added nothing but balance breaking bloat. Instead of introducing extraneous systems, they could have created a big event pack for each of the major authorities (democratic, oligarchic, etc.) or a religion DLC.

Id like to see a complete overhaul of the end game crises, make them more varied and more interesting.

 

[Blackstar]

 

[Lonjil]

Id like to see a complete overhaul of the end game crises, make them more varied and more interesting.

Id much prefer they revamp stuff like this, diplomacy, warfare, etc. Instead they just keep adding half baked buggy "new" features.

 

[Throng of Titans]

I have been brooding over how nobody has been able to pull off what Crusader Kings II did with characters. Especially as I play State of Decay (which came out around the same time).

I think what really makes CK2 work is some combination of:
1) (Very important) Characters are playing the game too
1a) They're gunning for your job
2) You need the characters
3) They have enough flexibility and abstractness that you can read more characterization into them

A lot of shitty games have tried to do these procedurally-generated character-driven games in everything from 4X to zombie survival to whaling, and it doesn't work because the people amount to little more than lifeless equipment (bundles of stats) that maybe sometimes spawn an event for your eyes to glaze over. CK2 characters are so alive that the game can play itself without you. They may potentially have their own events, mechanics or other stuff going on underneath the hood, but you know that most of it is the same, and they have agendas that may or may not collide with yours, and you get emergent gameplay resulting from the collision of different people's decisions, and you can't just ignore or play around them.

Nobody has done this properly since and I'm starting to suspect nobody will.

I wanted to set this as a reply to this post to help people understand a choice that both enshittified CK2, but also affected CK3 as a result.

Prior to Rajas of India, any landed character, even barons/bishops/mayors, were fully simulated, they had families (in the case of barons), played the game, and were influential in the world.

But when PDX decided they wanted to add the land of pooless loos to the game, they ran into a problem with performance completely tanking due to too many characters being tracked. They had to choose between either cutting India, or permanently neutering baron-level AI, and they chose the latter. It made the game much more sterile and theme-parky as you could effectively treat barons as non-entities who existed to hold land for you. CK3 has retained this stupid design of brainless barons, and seems to be taking the same retarded path of "expand the map to add more slop" with the new DLCs rather than shore up areas of weakness (ie: Christendom, you know, the entire beating heart of the game). Not to mention adding pointless land with zero historical records from the era like empty steppe land or central Africa.

If I have a want for EU5, it's that they focus on deepening mechanics and expanding them, rather than adding new ones that always come out half baked and are never explored again.

 

[Slap47]

I tried Vicky3 since it was free. First I played as portugal and then as Iran. Both playthroughs were largely uneventful. Its the Hearts of Iron problem (aside from feeling too much like hearts of iron to begin with) where two thirds of the game is just build up for the last third, only there is no last third. It really does feel like "Nothing Ever Happens: The videogame" you just watch your life tick away while things slooooowly get built to make line go up.

Maybe this is my fault because I dont know how to play Vicky3 but all it made me want to do is go back to EU4

It really depends on the country and goals. As Iran you can remain shockingly stable keeping the landowners in power just modestly growing the economy, but if you want to a create a greater Persia that is a Great Power you'll need to be risk revolutions for reforms, balance allying and fighting the British and Russians and making gambles with deficit spending.

enshittified CK2

The worst change to CK2 happened well before that with the addition of retinues. Managing vassals became much less interesting because you could just terrify them into never rebelling.