Paradox Studio Thread

[MoldyAsbestos]

Unity gets bad rep due to all the asset flips that are forced to show Unity logo at the start (great PR move from Unity btw.) For an example, Cuphead runs on Unity but because they paid for a professional, commercial license, they don't have to show Unity logo at the start.

Dev team has overlap from MEIOU and Taxes dev team, not that it's absolute guarantee of success. While they've managed to push the aging EU4 version of Clausewitz to it's absolute limits, modding an existing game and creating a brand new one are two different beasts. Also the mod pretty much runs like ass (on my machine, the game runs at decent speed but monthly ticks take longer than in base game, yearly ticks freeze the game for what feels like a minute, and even the load time from launching the game to getting to the main menu takes ages. Again this might be simply a limitation of the game they chose to mod but it might indicate certain degree of overt ambitiousness.

 

[Blackstar]

mod pretty much runs like ass (on my machine,

That's because older PDX games are shit at multi-core rendering, meanwhile CK3 runs faster for me than any other game from them despite almost a decade between them

 

[Elwin Ransom]

Grey Eminence does look very promising, but I do agree the timeline is way too long. 1453-1815 would be ambitious enough.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

So, with Victoria 3, people have been arguing about electricity, and I think most rational people agree that it would be better to have it be a service (the obvious thing, but also the thing that Paradox is not doing) and it isn't a big deal if it doesn't represent grids. But the more I think about it, a good economic simulation NEEDS grids because there's lots of things besides electricity that operate on grids.

Of course, Victoria 3 also has everything at a state level with provinces being a meaningless lightshow during war, but let's play make-believe for a moment that it actually has meaningful provinces like Victoria II did. A grid could be defined as any system in which exchange can take place between two points only if there is a chain of connections between them, or, kind of like a service that can be projected over multiple province by virtue of them sharing a grid. Of course in a more complex system the grid can have throughput in any province.

Any transportation system at all is a grid, you can sort of assume everything is connected on some level by trails but then the connection between provinces of roads and railroads is important. But communications is also a grid. Telegrams were a big deal, even laying cables down across the ocean floor to link up the Americas with Europe and the colonies with the metropole. They allowed modern-style communication, inconvenient but much better than couriers. Obviously you can't send a telegram where you don't have lines running. The game really ought to have them be significant both for civilian commerce (raise productivity in industry and be a service in their own right) and military use (better coordination of forces).

If there's a generic grid system in place then you can make that can handle anything from railroads to electric power generation depending to even, say, sewerage (if you were making a total conversion mod that scales down to a single city, like those weird CK2 Mafia mods) just depending on how you specify it.

Expect to see a shitty version of this implemented for $30 in a DLC

 

[HeyYou]

So, with Victoria 3, people have been arguing about electricity, and I think most rational people agree that it would be better to have it be a service (the obvious thing, but also the thing that Paradox is not doing) and it isn't a big deal if it doesn't represent grids. But the more I think about it, a good economic simulation NEEDS grids because there's lots of things besides electricity that operate on grids.

Of course, Victoria 3 also has everything at a state level with provinces being a meaningless lightshow during war, but let's play make-believe for a moment that it actually has meaningful provinces like Victoria II did. A grid could be defined as any system in which exchange can take place between two points only if there is a chain of connections between them, or, kind of like a service that can be projected over multiple province by virtue of them sharing a grid. Of course in a more complex system the grid can have throughput in any province.

Any transportation system at all is a grid, you can sort of assume everything is connected on some level by trails but then the connection between provinces of roads and railroads is important. But communications is also a grid. Telegrams were a big deal, even laying cables down across the ocean floor to link up the Americas with Europe and the colonies with the metropole. They allowed modern-style communication, inconvenient but much better than couriers. Obviously you can't send a telegram where you don't have lines running. The game really ought to have them be significant both for civilian commerce (raise productivity in industry and be a service in their own right) and military use (better coordination of forces).

If there's a generic grid system in place then you can make that can handle anything from railroads to electric power generation depending to even, say, sewerage (if you were making a total conversion mod that scales down to a single city, like those weird CK2 Mafia mods) just depending on how you specify it.

Expect to see a shitty version of this implemented for $30 in a DLC

Modern Paradox wouldn't even do that for a $30 DLC, too much work. Instead there's going to be a decision popup where you have to spend mana to establish an electricity grid in your country and it will help you earn mana faster.

 

[Zaryiu2]

On the one hand Grey Eminence sounds like it could be fun, on the other it sounds too good to be true

 

[MoldyAsbestos]

Can't blame you. Some things do anchor it to reality: fact that they have a technology page based on existing game engine, instead of claiming to have some magical solution that would be worth billion dollars if licensed out. Also the devs consistently answer certain questions with things like "outside of our scope" "too performance intensive" etc. instead of saying yes to anything like a scammer would to create hype/being unware of what is possible and what is not. I also thought they could've made more money from KickFundMer, but I'm probably wrong as people might FINALLY be waking up to all the scams and unrealistic projects. Also Grand Strategy Games are a niche and suckering up few whales through Patreon as long as possible could be the more viable option. Heck, even YandereDev is still getting relatively fat Patreon bux.

Alternative, darker timeline is one where they're serious about making the game but are too overambitious and the game either never comes out or maybe even comes out but is simply not fun outside of selecting to be an observer and watching the simulation go wild.

I don't know enough about programming to say anything about the viability of their technical solution but I haven't hear anyone debunking it in any way. Also even if everything goes right on this front on the GE side, there's still the fact that Unity (the company) is led by former CEO of EA who had to apologize for calling developers "fucking idiots" for not filling up their games with advertisements.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I'm curious is Grey Eminence is planning to have a CK3-style system spawn in heresies or if they do intend to have premade historical ones. I don't like the former, I get what they were going for with Reformations in Holy Fury and the religion system in CK3, but a lot of schisms are over small bullshit like how many fingers to hold up while praying (instead of if you want to have murderrapeincestcannibalism be legal) and flavor content related to the specific movement. If you make things work entirely modular you create a system where you can build your own bear faith, but then you don't really get anything that feels real. I'd rather have a game with things like Lutheranism and Sikhism and Mormonism popping up (given appropriate conditions) than Shlutheranism and Shmikhism and Shmormonism. As long as they include content for historical/plausible alternate history outcomes in addition to a more general system than it should be fine.

Really interesting how its having terrain be modular and determined by a climate model. Something the dev diary on it brings up then doesn't explain is how plateaus are going to work. I've seen people point out before that there's awkwardness when a province is technically part of mountains, but it's a plateau, so maneuvering ON the plateau shouldn't be any more difficult than doing it anywhere else, but getting onto the plateau should be a problem. It seems obvious to have there be more choices for borders than just rivers, so that a plateau can be treated like a malus where if you cross it transportation is harder/attacking armies are at a disadvantage. Think of this in terms of things like sending an army/running roads through the Cumberland Plateau, Ethiopian Highlands, or Tibetan Plateau, if you break through it shouldn't be hard fighting on it but the breakthrough is the issue. Similarly, depending on how small these provinces are going to be, perhaps valleys (like the Shenandoah, for example).

 

[Bush King]

Also even if everything goes right on this front on the GE side, there's still the fact that Unity (the company) is led by former CEO of EA who had to apologize for calling developers "fucking idiots" for not filling up their games with advertisements.

I hate to defend EA's CEOs, but in the first part of that comment he also called them "brilliant"- he was talking about how creative types get into gaming, have amazing ideas and great work ethic, but ultimately flounder because they treat it like a hobby (think kids on the school yard wanting to get into game dev because it would be so fun to make games) instead of starting out with the position that anything you make needs to make money first and foremost or you'll end up in development hell and bankrupt. Spiderweb Software comes to mind as a success of both- they started wanting to create hardcore, niche RPGs, but also with the knowledge that to do so beyond a one shot game they needed to skimp on fancy graphics, focus on story, and use aggressive grass-roots marketing.

Ultimately you are a fucking idiot if you are spending real money and time on a project with no horizon or planning for how to actually monetize it beyond a vague "upload to Steam, have 20% off sale, open bank, roll around in dough". Having in-game advertising is very annoying, but an indie studio can very much make smart moves by releasing a full project that otherwise has no name or reputation for free or something like a $2, then make money over time. I don't think Grey Eminence will have trouble here simply because they're the first thing that pops up when someone looks for a Paradox clone or competitor now, but for the 99% of independent studios that fail they need those source of revenue. The GE devs are open about how their family and friends invested and money's running out, they'll want it back eventually.

As someone who invests in almost everything, it's a fine line between monetization and a good product, but ultimately the ones that are successful are the ones that make money instead of making the perfect game that crashes before it even takes off. If I owned a stake in anything developed on Unity I'd be pushing for it even if I thought the game was worse off at the end (to a point).

 

[Elwin Ransom]

The other thing that encourages me about GE is that quite a few of its dev team are former MEIOU devs, so the vision is about 70% there; it just needs translated to a more modern engine than Clausewitz.

Definitely the thing I'm most interested if they can pull off in-game is limited and regional wars, which have plagued the EU and CK series for forever. That and having your elites conspire with foreign powers which will finally give some teeth to being a giant world-spanning empire.
I also like that you have more control over personal unions. The way EU handles it is extremely annoying.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

The other thing that encourages me about GE is that quite a few of its dev team are former MEIOU devs, so the vision is about 70% there; it just needs translated to a more modern engine than Clausewitz.

Definitely the thing I'm most interested if they can pull off in-game is limited and regional wars, which have plagued the EU and CK series for forever. That and having your elites conspire with foreign powers which will finally give some teeth to being a giant world-spanning empire.
I also like that you have more control over personal unions. The way EU handles it is extremely annoying.

Ooh, I know a way they can do regional and limited wars.

What there needs to be, and this may be a bit complicated but it already exists in some fashion in the original Victoria and HOI4, is a thing where you can have units be limited to maneuvering and fighting in certain regions. In Victoria (the original) it was used for colonial wars where you could invade provinces that were colonial but not homeland. EU4 has colonial wars that can escalate into major wars (like the French and Indian War, but this would allow for doing it without requiring colonial vassals). In HOI4 it's the border conflicts where the fighting is locked to one state.

So I like to imagine an Escalation mechanic where you can designate certain areas as theaters of warfare, and then either power can escalate by extending the theater, but doing so is like tacking on wargoals, it is politically costly/limited. Then there'd be a way to have, for example, great powers both be belligerents in a proxy war or fight for colonies without it automatically escalating to total war. Similarly, there could be political limits on deployments (like if it's only a colonial war, you can't mobilize), and things like naval warfare (like Quasi War) where two powers are trying to destroy each other's navies but are not engaged in combat, or (especially for modern day) the ability to send your own air force in to an area (not just supplying the planes, but actually sending YOUR units) or bombing it with missiles without having the ability to send in the entire army all at once.

 

[Bush King]

I just want a Hearts of Iron clone that doesn't break or soft lock you because you didn't follow the AI's autistic national focuses to the letter.

 

[MoldyAsbestos]

I just want a Hearts of Iron clone that doesn't break or soft lock you because you didn't follow the AI's autistic national focuses to the letter.

At one point, the trick to survive as Poland was to annex Czechoslovakia before Germany gets to them. German AI stubbornly tried to select "Demand Sudetenland" -focus every day, it cancels daily due to conditions not being met but was somehow still able to be selected by the AI. (This meant that they would be softlocked out of taking the "Danzig or War" -focus that's supposed to trigger the German invasion of Poland and the entire WW2.)

One commenter presented an amusing mental image of autistic Hitler being repeatedly told that Czechoslovakia no longer exists and him going "but I want Sudetenland REE."

 

[Bush King]

At one point, the trick to survive as Poland was to annex Czechoslovakia before Germany gets to them. German AI stubbornly tried to select "Demand Sudetenland" -focus every day, it cancels daily due to conditions not being met but was somehow still able to be selected by the AI. (This meant that they would be softlocked out of taking the "Danzig or War" -focus that's supposed to trigger the German invasion of Poland and the entire WW2.)

One commenter presented an amusing mental image of autistic Hitler being repeatedly told that Czechoslovakia no longer exists and him going "but I want Sudetenland REE."

HoI4 1.0 was severely autistic, but somehow less autistic than after TfV and DoD released. Waking the Tiger and Man the Guns did a lot to save the game from just wallowing. It also meant the game actually had an alt-hist path for the majors.

 

[MoldyAsbestos]

When Paradox announced they're laying of most (or all?) of their internal QA department, most people's reaction was "they had a QA department?"

 

[Stoneheart]

When Paradox announced they're laying of most (or all?) of their internal QA department, most people's reaction was "they had a QA department?"

that was the best part of the company, they just never listened to them. jake told us about that tiwce, once as member of QA and once as member of the dev team.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

One upside to nu-Victoria warfare is that it may at least enable ways to represent things like Cortez in Mexico and Caesar in Gaul, situations where a commander goes completely rogue and picks fights the central government doesn’t even condone.

 

[JJLiautaud]

¹!awqa

One upside to nu-Victoria warfare is that it may at least enable ways to represent things like Cortez in Mexico and Caesar in Gaul, situations where a commander goes completely rogue and picks fights the central government doesn’t even condone.

Another aspect to be considered is the whole transition from napoleonic warfare to industrial warfare of definite fronts.

 

[HeyYou]

One upside to nu-Victoria warfare is that it may at least enable ways to represent things like Cortez in Mexico and Caesar in Gaul, situations where a commander goes completely rogue and picks fights the central government doesn’t even condone.

Nothing I've seen in the dev diaries so far indicates that your generals can act against your orders and actually start a war. Their traits and such seem only to affect their performance in battles, like a reckless general losing more troops and such. I haven't played the leaked version so maybe someone can confirm if generals can escalate a diplomatic play into a war without your consent.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Nothing I've seen in the dev diaries so far indicates that your generals can act against your orders and actually start a war. Their traits and such seem only to affect their performance in battles, like a reckless general losing more troops and such. I haven't played the leaked version so maybe someone can confirm if generals can escalate a diplomatic play into a war without your consent.

It’s not in Victoria 3, but it’s something w system like that could be extended to do.

Victoria 3: ancient mod
- general Julius Caesar has Ambitious trait and high Popularity
- Event fires starting a war with Gallic tribes, Caesar locked in as commander on that front with his legions
- Can take event or decision dealing with how to respond to it