Paradox Studio Thread

[Strelok]

CK2, like all paradox games, gets better when you add mods made by people who are actually more autistically motivated than even people who program for a living. Such as CK2+ for Crusader Kings (which resulted in them hiring the origional mod dev IIRC). It's much harder to blob out of control when seccessions actually threaten to tear your kingdom apart, and you can't just create ubermeensch by selective breeding. Or HPM for Victoria 2, which among other things adds an entirely new POP, which while that doesn't sound like much required a ton of hacky work to not burst into flames, all when, tbh, you probably could have just used the existing Slave POPS to represent serfs instead of making them their own pop.

This isn't due to any weakness in it mind you, but because paradox games are so piss easy to mod (most of the stuff is still in plaintext), each usually has at least a half dozen large scale mods, meaning you'll always have something that fixes whatever you didn't like, while keeping what you did. Plus Game of Thrones and Warhammer Fantasy for CK2, which is great.

The only exception to this rule is Black ICE, because frankly I want to know who the fuck looked at Hearts of Iron 3 and went "this needs to be made even more complex and obtuse".

 

[Dudeofteenage]

It's all about how many daughters you can bang though.
And if you're a Zoroastrian, you can bang their daughters, get them pregnant, then bang their granddaughters.

Yes that's the example of the kind of gameplay I find it very boring to read people bragging about.

 

[Splendid]

Yes that's the example of the kind of gameplay I find it very boring to read people bragging about.

You don't like bangin bro? Maybe a dating sim would be more your speed.

 

[Vitriol]

You don't like bangin bro? Maybe a dating sim would be more your speed.

zoroastrians are one of the most fun playthroughs imo- the bonus for banging close relatives is offset by reduced chance of inbred and increased chance of insanity, which when coupled with persian geopolitics putting whatever kingdom you bolt together between steppe nomads, indians, islams and mongols always leads to interesting games imo.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

You don't like bangin bro? Maybe a dating sim would be more your speed.

I got into CK2 because I liked history. I don't so much like bragging to a bunch of basement dwellers about banging my pixelated imaginary daughter. It's kind of sad this makes me a minority in CK2 fandom but w/e

 

[Splendid]

I got into CK2 because I liked history. I don't so much like bragging to a bunch of basement dwellers about banging my pixelated imaginary daughter. It's kind of sad this makes me a minority in CK2 fandom but w/e

Most people are into it for the history, but fucking with people or just being a historical dick is fun too. It's kinda like playing Britain in Victoria II and deciding to colonize Oklahoma before the USA can. There's no point to it and all you'll do is piss them off, but it's funny.

 

[Lackadaisy]

One of my favorite ways to play CK2 is build up a dynasty from 792 (or whenever the first bookmark is) to about halfway through the game and then switch over to another dynasty to topple the first one. It's always interesting to watch empires shit themselves the second you hand them over to the AI.

I'm also a fan of 'importing' religions into my dynasties for extra fun, like trying to spread Judaism through the HRE or launching a reformed Tengri crusade against Rome.

 

[Pepsi-Cola]

how u like my Jerusalem, fam?

 

[Strelok]

Stellaris is out now, and like most paradox games at launch it's a bit barebones and glitchy, but has a really, REALLY good core behind it. It's sorta the opposite of most 4x games where instead it has a frankly amazing early game, but falters a lot in the mid to late game, before picking up again when the end-game crisis events fire. I'm around 150 years in to a max size game, and the galaxy is starting to settle down. My empire is a large, stagnant backwater that despite having a truly massive population, is beset by a lack of technological progress, a large poorly defended frontier with multiple fronts, and an undersized fleet that is poorly armed and costs bundles to maintain.

What's worrying me is that, while I am a fanatically spirtualist empire investing into psionics and such, a lot of my neighbors are fucking about with AI, and I'm pretty sure one of them is going to kick off the AI rebellion.

 

[Gym Leader Elesa]

Stellaris is out now, and like most paradox games at launch it's a bit barebones and glitchy, but has a really, REALLY good core behind it. It's sorta the opposite of most 4x games where instead it has a frankly amazing early game, but falters a lot in the mid to late game, before picking up again when the end-game crisis events fire. I'm around 150 years in to a max size game, and the galaxy is starting to settle down. My empire is a large, stagnant backwater that despite having a truly massive population, is beset by a lack of technological progress, a large poorly defended frontier with multiple fronts, and an undersized fleet that is poorly armed and costs bundles to maintain.

What's worrying me is that, while I am a fanatically spirtualist empire investing into psionics and such, a lot of my neighbors are fucking about with AI, and I'm pretty sure one of them is going to kick off the AI rebellion.

I did a fanatic spiritualist pacifist play through as some just-too-adorable mollusk people for my first game, and it went swimmingly- until about 200 years in, when I encountered a fallen empire who were, of all things, fanatic xenophobes. Really weird for a group of sentient fungi but there you go. TL;DR, I was in a ring galaxy and after trading for some star charts, I noticed that Sol, the system Earth would be in, lay on the other side of these guys. Earth had just randomly generated.

"I absolutely must contact the people of Earth, and fuck with them in all kinds of ways." I thought to myself, because who honestly wouldn't.

My FTL method was Wormholes, so I tried to build a series of them (and some frontier outposts) stretching across/around my many vassals (I was a very hypocritical pacifist who needed ocean worlds more than he needed philosophical consistency) and I ran right up into the borders of the Fallen fungi empire. They did not like that.

I had a fully upgraded, 30k strength fleet with gamma lasers and all kinds of shit, but they just tore right through it. I have been playing Paradox grand strategy games for a decade, and have almost never gotten my ass kicked that hard. I really love Stellaris.

 

[Strelok]

I did a fanatic spiritualist pacifist play through as some just-too-adorable mollusk people for my first game, and it went swimmingly- until about 200 years in, when I encountered a fallen empire who were, of all things, fanatic xenophobes. Really weird for a group of sentient fungi but there you go. TL;DR, I was in a ring galaxy and after trading for some star charts, I noticed that Sol, the system Earth would be in, lay on the other side of these guys. Earth had just randomly generated.

"I absolutely must contact the people of Earth, and fuck with them in all kinds of ways." I thought to myself, because who honestly wouldn't.

My FTL method was Wormholes, so I tried to build a series of them (and some frontier outposts) stretching across/around my many vassals (I was a very hypocritical pacifist who needed ocean worlds more than he needed philosophical consistency) and I ran right up into the borders of the Fallen fungi empire. They did not like that.

I had a fully upgraded, 30k strength fleet with gamma lasers and all kinds of shit, but they just tore right through it. I have been playing Paradox grand strategy games for a decade, and have almost never gotten my ass kicked that hard. I really love Stellaris.

Thankfully my Fallen Empires are Spiritualists (Get mad if you're dumb enough to colonize their holy worlds) Xenophiles (Get mad if you Purge or Enslave) and Materialists (get Mad if you research dangerous tech). I'm an Individualist Fanatic Spirtualist empire, so I have 0 chance of pissing off any of them.

The real problem is two of the largest, meanest empires are perma rivals with me. Here's my current galaxy circa 2365. And yes, I did add some vidya races in, specifically Planetside and Startopia.

For the record I don't use Hyperlanes, I'm a bog standard warp empire, I just have the tech that allows me to see them.

 

[Sallet Lad Jim]

Is it bad that I never allow non-hyperlanes in my games?

I dunno, hyper lanes are just so much fun to use and I like the consistency.

 

[Gym Leader Elesa]

Thankfully my Fallen Empires are Spiritualists (Get mad if you're dumb enough to colonize their holy worlds) Xenophiles (Get mad if you Purge or Enslave) and Materialists (get Mad if you research dangerous tech). I'm an Individualist Fanatic Spirtualist empire, so I have 0 chance of pissing off any of them.

The real problem is two of the largest, meanest empires are perma rivals with me. Here's my current galaxy circa 2365. And yes, I did add some vidya races in, specifically Planetside and Startopia.

For the record I don't use Hyperlanes, I'm a bog standard warp empire, I just have the tech that allows me to see them.

Oh man, that is a crowded galaxy right there. I can only imagine trying to maneuver through that. Is the pink empire next to you, the "Foundation of Nhemto" the one who is pursuing dangerous research? Because that would be fucked.

Is it bad that I never allow non-hyperlanes in my games?

I dunno, hyper lanes are just so much fun to use and I like the consistency.

I actually feel like if I were going to use hyperlanes, I probably would do what you do. Otherwise, hyperlane FTL is actually the one I never use. I strongly prefer wormholes, but really just because I think they are very cool and I like the particular element of strategy I feel they add as opposed to hyperspace. One thing I like is that if used carefully they can be used to cross dark space or around other empires borders that you might otherwise have no way to get around. The extra mobility is cool, especially because I always tend to go "tall" rather than "wide" even where it is not necessarily the best idea.

 

[Strelok]

Oh man, that is a crowded galaxy right there. I can only imagine trying to maneuver through that. Is the pink empire next to you, the "Foundation of Nhemto" the one who is pursuing dangerous research? Because that would be fucked.



I actually feel like if I were going to use hyperlanes, I probably would do what you do. Otherwise, hyperlane FTL is actually the one I never use. I strongly prefer wormholes, but really just because I think they are very cool and I like the particular element of strategy I feel they add as opposed to hyperspace. One thing I like is that if used carefully they can be used to cross dark space or around other empires borders that you might otherwise have no way to get around. The extra mobility is cool, especially because I always tend to go "tall" rather than "wide" even where it is not necessarily the best idea.

Both them, the Red "Groulien Workers Party", and the Green "Blorg Commonality" (The race from the prerelease streams) are all pursuing robot tech (And I assume the Grey blob known as the Grey Council are as well), and I've been forcibly dismantling any robot pops I come across in the few worlds I've taken by force. It's not enough though, as the species ledger says there are 26 Robot Pops, 151 Droid Pops, and extraordinarily worryingly, 27 of the actually sentient Synth Pops. That said, my empire is now about 100 planets, and boasts 1000ish pops. Only around 200 are of my race, a combination of migration access treaties and flagging new planets with the "land of opportunity" edict has resulting in a shitton of alien immigration to worlds that would otherwise be barely habitable by my desert foxes.

That said, I did manage to annex those two OPM (One Plane Minors) holdouts finally, and since the Blorg are "Fanatical Befrienders" I probably should be able to bring them into the Freedom Entente dispite having been at war with them recently. Just have to wait for them to peace out of the war against the guys to the south that started. The three of us then should be able to start dismantling the Pink Blob.

Anyway here's my space furry empire's demographics. The Light Blue and Light Teal slices are my race, the teal being those that have had our negative trait removed via gene therapy. Everything is is various alien races. The Yellow is a Oceanic race we uplifted from pre-sentience that has been immensely useful in colonizing worlds of the opposite alignment, and their uplifted trait makes them extrodinarily (+20%) loyal to their benefactors, aka us. They are actually less likely to cause trouble than even my primary race.

My empire itself is 984 pops spread acorss 77 worlds.

And sadly for Solar Humans, they achieved spaceflight far too late to be a galactic power, and are stuck as a one planet vassal to the Yellow Guys.

Edit: Finally got around to removing the neg trait of all of my people. Amusingly enough the population screen says there are 0 of my primary race in existance, because it considered modified people to be seperate species. Which while technically I agree with, if THE ENTIRE RACE has been modified, I feel it should recognize that it's still the primary race.

 

[Strelok]

Also someone made an AI tweak mod that makes the AI less shit at wars. It also changes the start year to year 0, which is nice, although the author said it's just a way to confirm it's loaded for now while he's still tweaking the mod. When he changes that back to nomral I'll look for another, because aliens using the human year 2200 is a bit odd, but an alien empire marking time as "After FTL" makes perfect sense.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=683412153

Untill the game is patched more, I'd consider this to be a fairly good mod.

 

[sugoi-chan]

I'm with the group that thinks it's a solid start, but missing a lot to feel truly like a full game. Lots of repetition, lots of tedium. I pirated it to see if I'd like it and I put about 15 hours into it. I'm definitely going to grab it in a DLC or two once it's more fleshed out (as tends to happen with Paradox games of late),

 

[Strelok]

I'm with the group that thinks it's a solid start, but missing a lot to feel truly like a full game. Lots of repetition, lots of tedium. I pirated it to see if I'd like it and I put about 15 hours into it. I'm definitely going to grab it in a DLC or two once it's more fleshed out (as tends to happen with Paradox games of late),

Whereas previously it was an expansion or two before it even worked.

I bought HOI3 on release and I'm STILL salty about that one.

 

[KingGeedorah]

Man, Stellaris looks amazing. I can't wait to sink some time into this later this weekend.

 

[Strelok]

Little bit of advice for Stellaris. If you run that AI mod, hardmode is the 4 spiral galaxy option. Unless you are running Wormhole (Wormhole empires can usually jump between spiral arms with starting tech), you are pretty quickly going to start butting heads with several empires, and the border frictions will cause things to get violent fast.

My new game with some mods (Mostly cosmetic, plus the top ranked traits mod on the steam workshop) has that issue, where while I'm a wormhole, the guys further down the arm aren't, and as such their only way to expand is through me, and I think they know that. Took a planet from them due to wormhole fuckery (If the stations are close enough that you don't have to double jump, ships can move alarmingly fast as you aren't waiting for the wormhole stations to cooldown), but I imagine without the two front issue they had, the next war they'll be able to be a tad more organized.

I imaigne in MP Wormhole will be a bit less

 

[sugoi-chan]

Playing the "Commonwealth of Man" start. Basically super xenophobic human offshoot. Approaching CK2 levels of evil.

Industrial, pre-space age race sits on a crappy but resource rich world that I want. Pre-sentient race sits on a near-perfect Gaia world that I want to colonize. I uplift the latter, tweaking their genetic profile to make them well-suited to live on the crappy world. Enslave them. Conquer the bird people there, purge them, move my new slave race to their world, leaving the slave race's perfect world for the Master Species.

I hope that there's a DLC that puts swarm mechanics into the game. Playing as races like the Zerg or the Tyrannids could be fun.

EDIT - I think that AI mod is working nice too. I'm surrounded by xeno-scum that I'm fairly aggressive towards and they've since banded together into an alliance. Presumably against me. They're also at war with each other a lot more than previous games. Thanks @Strelok.

EDIT AGAIN - Start a new game without the AI mod enabled, save, and restart the game with the mod on and it should be on - with the correct date. Based on the AI's level of aggressiveness, I believe it's still on. If previous paradox games are anything to go by, then the date is just stored as a text value in a save file anyway.