Paradox Studio Thread

[Solid Snek]

You can roll back patches using free codes from their website, but you need an account for some bullshit reason. IMO 1.2.2 or 1.2.5 is the best patch, though I haven't played it much lately. If you like going for WC like Siu-King then everything past that has been fucked up, but if you like playing tall you're the target demographic for the new changes.

Also I can't help but think that the "Pillage Capital" war demand from Leviathan was based on this stupid cartoon.

Probably not for me, then. I enjoy playing tall on an abstract level - I usually start as OPMs in every Paradox game, and I can still remember playing CK3, really loving the idea of Decentralized Capitalist merchant republics with crazy growth potential, always telling myself that THIS TIME I'm going to play through an entire campaign only owning three or four provinces, tops. But the truth is, I'm a blobber at heart. I always wind up going for WC. I once did a WC with Bhutan in HoI4, that's how badly I'm a dirty filthy blobber.

As for the cartoon, lol, that's possible! I doubt the Pillage Capital war demand was directly based on that specific cartoon, but PDX has a lot of lukewarm neo-Marxists who buy into the very same historical narrative the cartoon is expressing - that global interactions are a zero-sum game (every man's gain is another man's loss), and the reason Europe and North America were successful was because they plundered Africa (ignoring South America and Asia, as well as the history of European plunder in North America, and in Europe too).

It's one of the reasons I'm not particularly optimistic about the new Vicky. Original Vicky was already riddled with problems (why did my entire country flip overnight from Conservative to Socialist after I won the American Civil War with an army composed largely of Radical Liberals?); this time around, it's likely going to be little more than a highbrow Sid Meier's Civilization.

 

[Bobbobson]

Probably not for me, then. I enjoy playing tall on an abstract level - I usually start as OPMs in every Paradox game, and I can still remember playing CK3, really loving the idea of Decentralized Capitalist merchant republics with crazy growth potential, always telling myself that THIS TIME I'm going to play through an entire campaign only owning three or four provinces, tops. But the truth is, I'm a blobber at heart. I always wind up going for WC. I once did a WC with Bhutan in HoI4, that's how badly I'm a dirty filthy blobber.

As for the cartoon, lol, that's possible! I doubt the Pillage Capital war demand was directly based on that specific cartoon, but PDX has a lot of lukewarm neo-Marxists who buy into the very same historical narrative the cartoon is expressing - that global interactions are a zero-sum game (every man's gain is another man's loss), and the reason Europe and North America were successful was because they plundered Africa (ignoring South America and Asia, as well as the history of European plunder in North America, and in Europe too).

It's one of the reasons I'm not particularly optimistic about the new Vicky. Original Vicky was already riddled with problems (why did my entire country flip overnight from Conservative to Socialist after I won the American Civil War with an army composed largely of Radical Liberals?); this time around, it's likely going to be little more than a highbrow Sid Meier's Civilization.

EU IV even after recent patches is still pretty much about blobbing rather than playing tall, especially for the second half when you unlock absolutism and imperialism allowing you to swallow large chunk of land in a single war. Once you get the basics it’s fairly easy to blob into huge empire from the small nation and after few games, you’ll be able to have empire covering entire continents. I would suggest playing as Japanese Daimyo or some other small nation in India, as the anti-blobbing mechanics of EU IV, are even less restrictive there as the land is less developed and you don’t have to deal with HRE. Just remember to develop for institutions or you’ll find yourself technologically backwards once Europeans come knocking. With a decent knowledge of game mechanics WC is still achievable.

There are three mechanics meant to slow down your expansion but they don’t really affect you that much even if you blob a lot. They only become relevant when you go for literal world conquest but even then, they can be managed if you know what you’re doing. Aggressive expansion can be dealt with by truce juggling, improving relations, using vassals for reconquest cassus beli. Overextension is just a number and you can easily survive 200% overextension although rebels can become quite annoying. You can also feed land to your vassals and integrate them diplomatically later. Administrative capacity can be managed by building courthouses everywhere.

Playing tall in EU IV is a meme. I’d even say it’s the worst PDX game if playing tall is your thing. It can be fun playing for a short while trying to build trade nation like Netherlands or Portugal but even then, you want to conquer large parts of India and China to gain as many trade goods as possible. If you want to play tall but are not interested in colonisation and trade you will usually achieve any goals you might have in 100 years or less and then there’s nothing left to do. Recent expansion, Leviathan, was intended to introduce some new toys to encourage playing tall, but it failed. Low quality of DLC aside, any tools that would help you get stronger while playing tall can also be used to get a boost when playing wide often being even more effective.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Does anyone have any thoughts on the new vicky 3 dev diary?

 

[Snekposter]

I once did a WC with Bhutan in HoI4

THUNDER DRAGON EMPIRE FTW! Or is it the Thunder Snek Empire?

 

[Zaryiu2]

Did anyone post this or something similar because holy shit it's official Vic3 is even more awful than previously thought, they decided to with the warfare mechanics https://www.pcgamesn.com/victoria-3/warfare-mechanics

__________________________________________________​

Warfare in Victoria 3 will be a radical departure from other grand strategy games​

Ever since Victoria 3 was announced earlier this year, there’s been one topic I, and many others, have been waiting patiently to hear about – Warfare. As much as grand strategy games have evolved beyond map-painting in recent years, warfare is at the heart of all of them. Even Crusader Kings, the infamous family murder simulator, has a robust combat system where you order armies around the map.
That’s all set to change with Victoria 3, it seems, and my feelings are decidedly Mixed™. In this week’s development diary, game director Martin ‘Whizzington’ Anward laid out the fundamental vision for the strategy game’s warfare mechanics, in a similar way he laid out the vision for the game at large just after announcement.
He outlines several pillars, such as warfare being costly, being a concept that’s in flux due to the technological changes that happened during this period, even about preparation. The most important and game-changing pillar though is that Victoria 3 will no longer let you order individual units or armies around the map. “All decisions you make regarding warfare are on the strategic level,” the diary reads. “Warfare in Victoria 3 is focused on supplying and allocating troops to frontlines between you and your enemies. The decisions you make during war are about matters such as what front you send your generals to and what overall strategy they should be following there.”
This is a fairly radical departure from how grand strategy games usually handle warfare, but then Victoria 3 has felt – from the beginning – like the start of a new era of grand strategy design for Paradox.

Last week’s dev diary explored the Diplomatic Plays system in more detail. This is one of Victoria 3’s headline innovations, and a fascinating extension of grand strategy diplomacy. The end result is whatever you used to try and gain via warfare in past Paradox games, you can now gain without firing a shot if you play your cards right.
Locking warfare to strategic concerns – how many armies are in a region, what weapons is the military using, who’s in charge etc. – is in keeping with how the rest of the game seems to be shaping together, but it’s also a bold, risky move. Anward talks more about the thinking behind this new approach at the end of the diary:
“We of course still want Victoria 3 to have interesting and meaningful warfare mechanics,” he says, “but we want the player to be engaging on a higher level of decision-making, making decisions about the overall war strategy and just how much they’re willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals rather than deciding which exact battalions should be battling it out in which exact province next.”

I have previously expressed concerns about how the Victoria 3 development team seem to be speaking about warfare, and about how they seem very keen to downplay the expansionist elements of existing strategy games. Depending on the details, which are due to be revealed in subsequent dev diaries, I could end up liking this new approach, but I also won’t lie in the sense that I was looking forward to pushing my Victorian armies around the map as I fight for the glory of my nation. Others like me will have to wait and see how this plays out.
Victoria 3 will release on PC via Steam and the Paradox Store, but it doesn’t currently have a release date.
----------------------------------------------------
This is so absolutely R etarded even for Paradox Studios

 

[Snekposter]

Damn, and here I was looking forwards to liberating the Bongs from their monarchy to save the modern era from them and their choices.

 

[Radola Gajda]

EU IV even after recent patches is still pretty much about blobbing rather than playing tall, especially for the second half when you unlock absolutism and imperialism allowing you to swallow large chunk of land in a single war. Once you get the basics it’s fairly easy to blob into huge empire from the small nation and after few games, you’ll be able to have empire covering entire continents. I would suggest playing as Japanese Daimyo or some other small nation in India, as the anti-blobbing mechanics of EU IV, are even less restrictive there as the land is less developed and you don’t have to deal with HRE. Just remember to develop for institutions or you’ll find yourself technologically backwards once Europeans come knocking. With a decent knowledge of game mechanics WC is still achievable.

There are three mechanics meant to slow down your expansion but they don’t really affect you that much even if you blob a lot. They only become relevant when you go for literal world conquest but even then, they can be managed if you know what you’re doing. Aggressive expansion can be dealt with by truce juggling, improving relations, using vassals for reconquest cassus beli. Overextension is just a number and you can easily survive 200% overextension although rebels can become quite annoying. You can also feed land to your vassals and integrate them diplomatically later. Administrative capacity can be managed by building courthouses everywhere.

Playing tall in EU IV is a meme. I’d even say it’s the worst PDX game if playing tall is your thing. It can be fun playing for a short while trying to build trade nation like Netherlands or Portugal but even then, you want to conquer large parts of India and China to gain as many trade goods as possible. If you want to play tall but are not interested in colonisation and trade you will usually achieve any goals you might have in 100 years or less and then there’s nothing left to do. Recent expansion, Leviathan, was intended to introduce some new toys to encourage playing tall, but it failed. Low quality of DLC aside, any tools that would help you get stronger while playing tall can also be used to get a boost when playing wide often being even more effective.

Yeah concentrate development makes wide playstyle even easier.
You can concentrate development in non core provincies so you can do it and make coring cheaper. So you can get more land from war +
All transfered development goes to your Capital. And your capital does not use governing capacity = more land.



Victoria 3.
I can see this game crush and burn harder than Imperator. Thanks to the all the hype.
And this whole Warfare thing is retarded I want to control my Army. All I asked from you PDX Is to take good ideas from Imperator and allow me to give control of part of my armies to AI if I want.
Medieval 2 total war had this option over decade and half ago.

 

[Fuck Y'all]

Did anyone post this or something similar because holy shit it's official Vic3 is even more awful than previously thought, they decided to with the warfare mechanics https://www.pcgamesn.com/victoria-3/warfare-mechanics

__________________________________________________​

Warfare in Victoria 3 will be a radical departure from other grand strategy games​

Ever since Victoria 3 was announced earlier this year, there’s been one topic I, and many others, have been waiting patiently to hear about – Warfare. As much as grand strategy games have evolved beyond map-painting in recent years, warfare is at the heart of all of them. Even Crusader Kings, the infamous family murder simulator, has a robust combat system where you order armies around the map.
That’s all set to change with Victoria 3, it seems, and my feelings are decidedly Mixed™. In this week’s development diary, game director Martin ‘Whizzington’ Anward laid out the fundamental vision for the strategy game’s warfare mechanics, in a similar way he laid out the vision for the game at large just after announcement.
He outlines several pillars, such as warfare being costly, being a concept that’s in flux due to the technological changes that happened during this period, even about preparation. The most important and game-changing pillar though is that Victoria 3 will no longer let you order individual units or armies around the map. “All decisions you make regarding warfare are on the strategic level,” the diary reads. “Warfare in Victoria 3 is focused on supplying and allocating troops to frontlines between you and your enemies. The decisions you make during war are about matters such as what front you send your generals to and what overall strategy they should be following there.”
This is a fairly radical departure from how grand strategy games usually handle warfare, but then Victoria 3 has felt – from the beginning – like the start of a new era of grand strategy design for Paradox.

Last week’s dev diary explored the Diplomatic Plays system in more detail. This is one of Victoria 3’s headline innovations, and a fascinating extension of grand strategy diplomacy. The end result is whatever you used to try and gain via warfare in past Paradox games, you can now gain without firing a shot if you play your cards right.
Locking warfare to strategic concerns – how many armies are in a region, what weapons is the military using, who’s in charge etc. – is in keeping with how the rest of the game seems to be shaping together, but it’s also a bold, risky move. Anward talks more about the thinking behind this new approach at the end of the diary:
“We of course still want Victoria 3 to have interesting and meaningful warfare mechanics,” he says, “but we want the player to be engaging on a higher level of decision-making, making decisions about the overall war strategy and just how much they’re willing to sacrifice to achieve their goals rather than deciding which exact battalions should be battling it out in which exact province next.”

I have previously expressed concerns about how the Victoria 3 development team seem to be speaking about warfare, and about how they seem very keen to downplay the expansionist elements of existing strategy games. Depending on the details, which are due to be revealed in subsequent dev diaries, I could end up liking this new approach, but I also won’t lie in the sense that I was looking forward to pushing my Victorian armies around the map as I fight for the glory of my nation. Others like me will have to wait and see how this plays out.
Victoria 3 will release on PC via Steam and the Paradox Store, but it doesn’t currently have a release date.
----------------------------------------------------
This is so absolutely R etarded even for Paradox Studios

 

[Bobbobson]

I guess they just gave up on trying to improve their braided ai and its army management. I would even be fine with it if the diplomatic plays they try to push were interesting, but judging from the previous dev diaries it's basically you demanding something from other nation, other nations joining you or the oponent, and then each side deciding whether to yield or not.

 

[Solid Snek]

Did anyone post this or something similar because holy shit it's official Vic3 is even more awful than previously thought, they decided to with the warfare mechanics https://www.pcgamesn.com/victoria-3/warfare-mechanics

__________________________________________________​

Warfare in Victoria 3 will be a radical departure from other grand strategy games​

----------------------------------------------------
This is so absolutely R etarded even for Paradox Studios

As as Vicky 3's warfare idea sounds, from what I recall, Old Vicky also had a really shitty warfare system. It's been ages since I played Vicky, and it's easily my least favorite of the Paradox titles (unless you include Tyranny, which I don't), but I distinctly remember finding both the warfare, and the expansion/colonization aspects, to be woefully inadequate. Most nations were functionally unable to engage in war or colonization; the ones who could reasonably engage in war only had a few local targets, and the ones who could colonize where limited to East Africa (for Europoors) or a few islands in the Pacific (Japan and America, maybe).

Also, I love how diplomatic this journo is trying to be; saying it's horseshit, while all the while trying to appear as positive as possible in vain attempts to appease the PDX troons. Something something ethics in something something?

THUNDER DRAGON EMPIRE FTW! Or is it the Thunder Snek Empire?

Predated any Snek names, but yes! Thunder Snek is awesome. I highly doubt I could manage a Thunder Dragon Empire WC on Current Patch, as when I did it, it was one of the first couple patches, back when the AI was so shit I could solo all of India with two CAV divisions running encirclements, and there was no limit on Paras and Mountain troops.

 

[Fuck Y'all]

I guess they just gave up on trying to improve their braided ai and its army management. I would even be fine with it if the diplomatic plays they try to push were interesting, but judging from the previous dev diaries it's basically you demanding something from other nation, other nations joining you or the oponent, and then each side deciding whether to yield or not.

so, it's a crises from Vicky2

 

[Snekposter]

Predated any Snek names, but yes! Thunder Snek is awesome. I highly doubt I could manage a Thunder Dragon Empire WC on Current Patch, as when I did it, it was one of the first couple patches, back when the AI was so shit I could solo all of India with two CAV divisions running encirclements, and there was no limit on Paras and Mountain troops.

Oh, I'm aware of the Thunder Dragon Empire memes, but an Eastern dragon is just a really big snake when you think about it.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

If the new warfare system has the units still appear on the map and fight each other in battles where you can see the outcome (set-piece battles like Chickamauga and Tannenberg), I can tolerate that, though it doesn't make me happy.

If the map doesn't even interact with units in a meaningful way, then there's no point.

Their dumbass fanbase has a habit of running with an idea way too far and half of them have convinced themselves that because the game has a more detailed model of production that means it shouldn't have warfare at all.

 

[The Grognard]

They should at least make setting up the necessary war economy things interesting, if they're going with this route.

 

[Unyielding Stupidity]

This change will just make playing as smaller nations impossible, as relying on being able to take advantage of the garbage AI was the only way that certain smaller nations could actually survive against great powers.

 

[Jarolleon]

EU IV even after recent patches is still pretty much about blobbing rather than playing tall, especially for the second half when you unlock absolutism and imperialism allowing you to swallow large chunk of land in a single war. Once you get the basics it’s fairly easy to blob into huge empire from the small nation and after few games, you’ll be able to have empire covering entire continents. I would suggest playing as Japanese Daimyo or some other small nation in India, as the anti-blobbing mechanics of EU IV, are even less restrictive there as the land is less developed and you don’t have to deal with HRE. Just remember to develop for institutions or you’ll find yourself technologically backwards once Europeans come knocking. With a decent knowledge of game mechanics WC is still achievable.

There are three mechanics meant to slow down your expansion but they don’t really affect you that much even if you blob a lot. They only become relevant when you go for literal world conquest but even then, they can be managed if you know what you’re doing. Aggressive expansion can be dealt with by truce juggling, improving relations, using vassals for reconquest cassus beli. Overextension is just a number and you can easily survive 200% overextension although rebels can become quite annoying. You can also feed land to your vassals and integrate them diplomatically later. Administrative capacity can be managed by building courthouses everywhere.

Playing tall in EU IV is a meme. I’d even say it’s the worst PDX game if playing tall is your thing. It can be fun playing for a short while trying to build trade nation like Netherlands or Portugal but even then, you want to conquer large parts of India and China to gain as many trade goods as possible. If you want to play tall but are not interested in colonisation and trade you will usually achieve any goals you might have in 100 years or less and then there’s nothing left to do. Recent expansion, Leviathan, was intended to introduce some new toys to encourage playing tall, but it failed. Low quality of DLC aside, any tools that would help you get stronger while playing tall can also be used to get a boost when playing wide often being even more effective.

Worse than Stellaris? Where you'll fall behind in tech if you don't have enough planets, a new planet with one pop on it breeds as many new pops per decade as your homeworld with all blockers cleared, and all the downsides of expansion (besides making more enemies) can be countered by employing about 5-10% of your population in bureaucracy. Though to be fair playing tall in a 4X game is like playing pacifist in Doom so it's apples to oranges.

 

[Slap47]

If the new warfare system has the units still appear on the map and fight each other in battles where you can see the outcome (set-piece battles like Chickamauga and Tannenberg), I can tolerate that, though it doesn't make me happy.

If the map doesn't even interact with units in a meaningful way, then there's no point.

Their dumbass fanbase has a habit of running with an idea way too far and half of them have convinced themselves that because the game has a more detailed model of production that means it shouldn't have warfare at all.

One Paradox game that isn't just map painting would be nice. War was definitely always on the table in the 19th century, but this is literally an era defined by its 99 year peace in Europe.

I like the idea of the regional war system at least.

 

[Snekposter]

One Paradox game that isn't just map painting would be nice. War was definitely always on the table in the 19th century, but this is literally an era defined by its 99 year peace in Europe.

I like the idea of the regional war system at least.

Yeah, real peaceful aside from the Prussians going at it with the Danes twice, the Austrians and the French once each, and the Russians and Turks going at it three times, the Crimean War, and once before and after.

 

[Dubu Kimchi]

One Paradox game that isn't just map painting would be nice. War was definitely always on the table in the 19th century, but this is literally an era defined by its 99 year peace in Europe.

I like the idea of the regional war system at least.

There were still wars, it was a peace from the knock down years long slogs of war that the continent saw during the Napoleonic wars, Europe still had short wars.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Yeah, real peaceful aside from the Prussians going at it with the Danes twice, the Austrians and the French once each, and the Russians and Turks going at it three times, the Crimean War, and once before and after.

1850 - 1870 or so was an unusual period in that 1815 - 1914 era of peace in Europe, I read a good explanation of it once that IIRC was the initial struggle to adapt to the age of nationalism after the Revolutions of 1848 that Europe eventually "solved".

I think the problem with abstracting war is that Paradox isn't going to do it well and they won't make the other features interesting enough to devote your time to. I think it's a bit of a cop out to the fact that a war in the mid-1800s and a war in the early 1900s are two entirely different things with how the armies are organized. The Hearts of Iron system fits a lot more for the post-1900 era since Victoria 2 struggled at representing the sort of operations a WWI-era army did. And there's other very important shit from that era like naval races that are omitted entirely, like all building the biggest, baddest pack of battleships does is add to your prestige score to a lesser degree than going to Africa and shooting black people does.

On the other hand, it could make conquering Africa more realistic and dare I say fun than just dropping a stack of troops to overwhelm some poor negro nation's large but backwards army. But that's probably locked behind a $15 DLC that will break the game on release.