They publish it, yeah, but I don't really have a good idea of what the setting is like. Does it have enough substance to support a character-based GSG ala CK? It seems kind of generic in a way that is not conducive to making a good base for Fantasy GSG mods.
March of the Eagles 2 chads rise up, our time is now!
I know it's going to be hoi5 but I uniornically want it to be a March of The Eagles 2 or a cold war game. Just give me that sweet Napoleonic 1789-1819 simulator paradox.
Well should Paradox not deliver maybe this will ease the pain:
Age of Wonders' old lore was very much inspired by HoMM and as such had that sort of generic nineties/early aughts fantasy feeling and the main driving element of the overall narrative was a blood libel between different elven factions and humans. Age of Wonders 4 and to a lesser extent 3 were much more of a pastiche of Warcraft (which, to be fair, was a pastiche of itself by the time 3 came out) and have a much stronger kitchen sink feel.
I had the same hope for CK2 but it was a false one, because modders are fickle swine who'd rather spin their wheels than work on an "outdated" iteration. They had TWO FUCKING YEARS during the debacle of the wait for Royal Court to RVTVRN to CK2... but they preferred to shit their pants and do nothing.
Eh, CK2's code and the way you mod it kind of precludes anything really deep. Anything that can be done, HAS been done, at least with regards to mechanics. You can just add more stuff, but no one is going to be innovating in the same way that you can with later Clauswitz titles.
This whole season appears meh for one reason or another. Nomads are alright as a base idea (having too been teased for a while), but how they interact with Stellaris' existing systems will be the make or break aspect. Already confirmed they ignore borders so there's a lot of unknowns in terms of war declarations, planetary conquest, and fog of war - not to mention the performance hit. The ideology expansion too screams the usual Paradox behaviour where it's yet another system bolted on you can safely ignore outside of one or two specific actions. And I have no idea what they're smoking with the scenario packs: the average player wants asymmetric starts like the historical games, not glorified Civ-esque scenarios, let alone rogue-like variations.
Definitely HOI5 over Stellaris 2 for this one. HOI5 has the larger number of complaints, worse review metrics, and more lethargic development schedule with patches barely dabbling around the edges. For modding, as Cities Skylines 2 shows, the modding scene is not important when it comes to franchise sequels; for modern Paradox modding is only as important as the ease of pushing modders into a Paradox-specific ecosystem with monetization potential. Would be incredibly surprised too if this project is a new IP as Paradox's shareholders are unlikely to tolerate the risk given how the current company operates and how multiple recent publishes have gone.
The more I think about it the less I like the idea of how they will implement this into current Stellaris. To do it justice I just don't think it can be integrated it well, it almost deserves it's own game mode or entirely new game.
I disagree. Base HOI4 is fine, it functions well enough. For the casuals they can play through a game without slowdown. For the autists there are enough mods out there to improve performance for the late game.
Maybe? EU4 is built on the same bones and look at what happened to it.
I'd say that EU4 has more UI elements to hijack, while CK2 has relatively few. Also EU4 has more in the way of delivering discrete content to the more freeform nature of CK2. The lack of UI modding for both is the major limiting factor, as it means you can't make new gameplay without finding something to replace, as a lot CK2 mods used societies and offmaps to add mechanics.
With Ubi sinking, ironically, I think Paradox has a good shot at obtaining the HOMM franchise if they really want to go the fantasy GSG route. HOMM, for various reasons, already lend itself well to the GSG format: discrete races, an already established setting, built-in political entities to use, and more importantly, a lot of wiggle room to do what they want. Erathia alone has shit like Erathia, Av-Lee, Bracada, Kreegans, etc, and they all have their own lil rivalries and shit you can use. (Technically there's that issue of NWC ending the old world in HOMM4 but it's easily retconned lore. Or they can just use the HOMM4 setting, or even the Ubislop HOMM5+ one.)
Considering what Ubisoft has done with M&M (jack shit) I think they could obtain the rights for a crisp 5 euro bill and a smile.
Everyday we stray further from God.
Don't know about Vic3 but PDX does have a lot of pop culture references in their game achievements:
How should they portray Mohammed?
