Paradox Studio Thread

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What are your expectations for the EU5 release?


  • Total voters
    83
  • Poll closed .
LegendTotalWar says that Paradox is a better company and that part of this is because much of their audience isn't cattle who will tolerate slop and mindlessly preorder.
Paradox is marginally better than CA because they do actually have faster turnarounds on patching their shit and (eventually) responding to complaints, even if the actual quality of individual game releases and DLCs is contentious*. Say what you want about Stellaris' 21+ hotfixes (Jesus Christ), at least they deign to release their patches within a week of a fucked release, not outright ignore bugs (Siege gate bug) or completely redesign the way their games work due to bugs (General-less armies being gone was due to a bug they didn't want to bother fixing). Pinning Paradox's marginal quality over CA (actually patching their shit from time to time) to their audience is hilarious though. This is a company whose official forum's strongest rebuke is a "respectfully disagree", and their tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater when a game doesn't get a warm response (Star Trek Stellaris reskin, Cities Skylines 2, Imperator Rome, Victoria 2, etcetera) is well documented.

Paradox being better than CA is by and large down to the simplicity of the games they make. Outside of Victoria 2, eldritch code abominations don't exist with make it easier for Paradox and modders to add shit onto it but more importantly: fix. The most infuriating thing about CA is that one bug will ruin the game, the community will actually make noise about it, and then the patch to fix said bug comes out 3 months later.

CA's best game is Alien Isolation.
 
Say what you want about Stellaris' 21+ hotfixes (Jesus Christ), at least they deign to release their patches within a week of a fucked release, not outright ignore bugs (Siege gate bug) or completely redesign the way their games work due to bugs (General-less armies being gone was due to a bug they didn't want to bother fixing).
Funny you should mention that. Given how fucked that game has been since they removed the population tile system and how long it took to fix the AI and performance and how they're all fucking it up again. With the latest population and economy reworked being said to be for improving performance. Which they made three times as worse than before.

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for fuck's sake i ran a deficit again after trying to integrate the utrecht lands, it's like EU4 all over again dood :lossmanjack:
 
for fuck's sake i ran a deficit again after trying to integrate the utrecht lands, it's like EU4 all over again dood :lossmanjack:
I would say it is almost the opposite; mindless blobbing is really punished hard. I have to reprogram myself to make vassals, not annex, this is late medieval not early modern, I canot integrate the land, I have to vassalize it if I want to extract anything from it. Control really is a game changer, I have to actually work to extract any gain from my lands.
 
Having more fun this time around. Still playing Japan. Finally taking the training wheels off and deautomting trade and construction bits at a time. The more I play, the more I realize, holy shit there is a lot of stuff here. You actually have full control over your State's succession laws(which was a level of detail I wasnt expecting), and can set them to be agnatic, congnatic, or any number of things in between. Its CK2 levels of laws just for succession. Also turning on the learning missions made things a little easier. Have a pretty stong economy after 30 years and am actually considered the 2nd strongest nation in the world right now. The Red Turban rebellion just fired in Chee-yina, so Im looking to make an alliance with Korea and maybe try to take some turf around the coast if I can ever resolve this goddamn two court situation. Kind of a moot point until I have more tool and mason buildings to support ship building operations. Anyway, Im starting to sort things out, and the more things make sense, the more Im enjoying things. Did have my first crash, which was annoying, but that aside, the game is growing on me. Will also say, Shinto is pretty powerful. You gain Honor in it, and you can spend it on things like instantly boosting estate happiness, or getting the Imperial Court to agree to a royal marriage. Someone should teach CK3 about implementing religious systems that are actually worth engaging with,
 
It's day 2 of EU5, and I still trying to figure out how the game works(:_(
I thought it was just crusader kings with colonies and shit, but it's way more complex

Which country would you guys recommend for a new player?
My original plan was to go with Portugal, sodomize Spain and the Islamists at the south, and then conquer south America, but that might be too ambitious
 
It's day 2 of EU5, and I still trying to figure out how the game works(:_(
I thought it was just crusader kings with colonies and shit, but it's way more complex

Which country would you guys recommend for a new player?
My original plan was to go with Portugal, sodomize Spain and the Islamists at the south, and then conquer south America, but that might be too ambitious
Portugrill is actually the perfect country to learn with. Just buddy buddy with Castile to get your European side covered, and you can go crusading in North Africa and colonise at your leisure.
 
As soon as this goes on a reasonable price probably going to snag it thanks to your guys' thoughts.

First nation: England. Goal: Remove escargot. Wish me luck, Kiwis.
 
I think Legend's brain is truly broken with how awful of a company CA is lol. Plus his viewership is not like it used to be, probably thinks this is his big move to keep it going!
CA is one of the shittiest, most retarded companies in the world and their customers really are the most braindead fucking idiots that just care about the visual spectacle of large groups of men fighting. The games are also visually ugly.
 
Just learned that the military strength description for countries counts levies + professional + Mercs that are hire able out in the world. It said Aragon had 22k troops so I formed a defensive league, turns out they have 4k levies and the rest are mercs that "COULD" be hire able.

For more context on what I mean, the actual army size they have when I hover this "Aragonese Armies" is currently 4.3k NOT 16k. This feels really misleading but I could be stupid.

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It's probably because some people were complaining in CK and other games that they attacked nation with less levies than they had just for them to summon mercs or 5k holy order stack. This way they are playing it safe. Nobody will cry about war being easier than expected.
I would say it is almost the opposite; mindless blobbing is really punished hard. I have to reprogram myself to make vassals, not annex, this is late medieval not early modern, I canot integrate the land, I have to vassalize it if I want to extract anything from it. Control really is a game changer, I have to actually work to extract any gain from my lands.
Yes, control is a really good anti-blobbing mechanic. I also like that it finally makes you take account of geography when expanding since rivers and coasts make easier to build control due to proximity modifier, while mountains and swamps are harder to control. In retrospect it seems weird that it took PDX 25 years to come up with such a basic ass idea.
 
It's probably because some people were complaining in CK and other games that they attacked nation with less levies than they had just for them to summon mercs or 5k holy order stack. This way they are playing it safe. Nobody will cry about war being easier than expected.
Still really stupid and inaccurate.
These days, you just need to bait them into attacking you when you're in mountainous terrain, but you could Hannibal their asses with a good enough martial commander and having all troops in his center flank. Only really an issue if you have no resources yourself. In which case, you shouldn't be invading anyone in the first place.
 
A 41% (ACK!) game speed boost was found. In this video implementing it reduced the first year in Lord Lambert's game from taking 68 seconds at speed 5 to 40 seconds. It does fuck up the frame rate though but when wanting speed that's irrelevant. Trying it myself in a save in the 1500s I can confirm that it really speeds it up.

 
Someone here earlier, I forgot who sorry, made a comment how snowballing is really present in this game and yeah it is lol. Once you get the ball rolling the ai is basically never able to stop you. It is 1390 and as tuscany I own about half of Italy. I have yet to fight anyone (other than when France tried to death war me over Aragon and for some reason wanted half of Tuscancy lol) who even remotely stands a chance. The antagonism system seems kinda broken at the moment since if you just wait to get claims from Parliament every 5 years and then full annex you seemingly never have any consequences.

Not sure if my ai game is just unlucky but England seems turbo fucked. They keep losing wars to their Nobles (Which revolt every 1-2 years on repeat) and France is just slowly eating the isles. The ai does not seem capable of handling the new systems at all lol. There are so many revolts everywhere. Ottomans? gone to noble revolts that bulgaria took advantage of.


Even the knights beat the ottomans in a war 🤣
 
I doubt that anybody will ever make a game like this that's both realistic (even in the broad sense of just feeling like an alternate history) and can control snowballing. It's not just a matter of mechanics. The way people play strategy games - mindless, relentless expansionism sustained from generation to generation with some kind of big plan - just isn't how real governments are run. If you do get an AI working that's good at that, you'll get blobs everywhere.

Have to roleplay if you don't want snowballing.
 
I doubt that anybody will ever make a game like this that's both realistic (even in the broad sense of just feeling like an alternate history) and can control snowballing. It's not just a matter of mechanics. The way people play strategy games - mindless, relentless expansionism sustained from generation to generation with some kind of big plan - just isn't how real governments are run. If you do get an AI working that's good at that, you'll get blobs everywhere.

Have to roleplay if you don't want snowballing.
I've had major plans change because of a bad succession at the worst time resulting in me having to regain control of my vassals with a new ruler. But that's just in CK2. Paradox AI does the weirdest shit, like having minor counts wage war against empires for baronies their relatives have claims on.
 
I doubt that anybody will ever make a game like this that's both realistic (even in the broad sense of just feeling like an alternate history) and can control snowballing. It's not just a matter of mechanics. The way people play strategy games - mindless, relentless expansionism sustained from generation to generation with some kind of big plan - just isn't how real governments are run. If you do get an AI working that's good at that, you'll get blobs everywhere.

Have to roleplay if you don't want snowballing.
Roleplaying in CK2 is really fun, I've tried to keep my actions in line with my characters traits and it's forced me to get creative with the way I play the game, my charitable kind patient Dominician friar of a king isn't going to try to steal the Crown of Thorns for example, even if I can easily pull it off + get the ambitious trait.
 
I doubt that anybody will ever make a game like this that's both realistic (even in the broad sense of just feeling like an alternate history) and can control snowballing. It's not just a matter of mechanics. The way people play strategy games - mindless, relentless expansionism sustained from generation to generation with some kind of big plan - just isn't how real governments are run. If you do get an AI working that's good at that, you'll get blobs everywhere.

Have to roleplay if you don't want snowballing.
Im a pro AI snowballing hard, like players, in a fantasy world. They need a way to give the AI some sort of Long term plan.
 
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