Paradox Studio Thread

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

Naval combat and regional combat look pretty fine.

The game will still get raped by bad DLC practices. Also, are they still trying to make the game more "palatable" to "modern audiences" by removing things like the "primitive" and "uncivilized" countries? And will they design an economic system that will default towards pushing for a state capitalist or socialist economy as being the ideal?

Edit: I do, on the face of it, like the idea of making the game less of a war game and more of a grand strategy, since these games have never been very good war games to begin with.

 

[BONE_Buddy]

The problem with just about any "economy simulator" games, much like "statecraft simulator" games is that they are naturally informed by the creator's politics. Which means that unless you align with said creator's ideologies, you are much more likely to have fundamental problems with the game design. It's unfortunate because I really do like the genre, but it is one of the most politically dependent sectors of gaming outside of those faggot magnet depression quest "games".

All that being said, I'll chime in and agree that VKIII looks like it will be a train-wreck, but that is really a pretty safe bet considering the track-record of Paradox as of late.

 

[Slap47]

+500 gold.

 

[Johan Schmidt]

The game will still get raped by bad DLC practices. Also, are they still trying to make the game more "palatable" to "modern audiences" by removing things like the "primitive" and "uncivilized" countries? And will they design an economic system that will default towards pushing for a state capitalist or socialist economy as being the ideal?

Edit: I do, on the face of it, like the idea of making the game less of a war game and more of a grand strategy, since these games have never been very good war games to begin with.

They also haven't been particularly good at grand strategy either though. The 'strategies' in HOI4 typically consist of either building a million Heavy tanks and grinding your way through the entire planet one country at a time, or following a focus tree that lets you annex all your neighbours; and then building a million heavy tanks to grind through the whole planet. Paradox games aren't war sims, or grand strategy games, they're political roleplaying games.

 

[capitalBBustard]

The 'strategies' in HOI4 typically consist of either building a million Heavy tanks

Jokes on you, the tank rework dlc made all the tanks shit. Meta is mechanised inf now.

 

[Fibrillar Collagen]

They also haven't been particularly good at grand strategy either though. The 'strategies' in HOI4 typically consist of either building a million Heavy tanks and grinding your way through the entire planet one country at a time, or following a focus tree that lets you annex all your neighbours; and then building a million heavy tanks to grind through the whole planet. Paradox games aren't war sims, or grand strategy games, they're political roleplaying games.

Focus trees are the worst thing. It's litteral non-gameplay, just click button and wait. Want to fundamentally change the political make-up of your country? Click button. Do you want to annex half of your neighbours for free? Click button.
Why bother having to code in events that react dynamically to ingame situations, to decisions you and the other players make whose consequences are not explicit and predictable when you can just make a list of button with timers.
What I really hate about it is how premeditated everything feels. Like you can't ever switch ideology without meaning to do it. You can't even get embroiled into a civil war without clicking on the civil war button and waiting 40 days. It feels so dumb down.

 

[Slap47]

Focus trees are the worst thing. It's litteral non-gameplay, just click button and wait. Want to fundamentally change the political make-up of your country? Click button. Do you want to annex half of your neighbours for free? Click button.
Why bother having to code in events that react dynamically to ingame situations, to decisions you and the other players make whose consequences are not explicit and predictable when you can just make a list of button with timers.
What I really hate about it is how premeditated everything feels. Like you can't ever switch ideology without meaning to do it. You can't even get embroiled into a civil war without clicking on the civil war button and waiting 40 days. It feels so dumb down.

It was pretty genius marketing wise. You can basically monetize alternate history.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

It was pretty genius marketing wise. You can basically monetize alternate history.

To bad a lot of the alternate history focus trees suck.

 

[Fibrillar Collagen]

It was pretty genius marketing wise. You can basically monetize alternate history.

I know, that's the worst part about them. You can make people pay for the privilege of clicking the "become fascist" button without having to code a complex political simulation.
I'm of the idea that paradox aficionados don't actually like playing the games that much. Every guide, every let's play of eu4 ends in the 1500s. For ck it's all about invading the world on 1 or 2 characters, for hoi it's either competitive mp (which looks super autistic) or speedrunning a wc.
The whole "it's not a game because there are no objectives, it's a simulation and you make your own fun" went out of the window at some point and it's really dumb.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

View attachment 2819307

+500 gold.

I love the CK2 reference.

They also haven't been particularly good at grand strategy either though. The 'strategies' in HOI4 typically consist of either building a million Heavy tanks and grinding your way through the entire planet one country at a time, or following a focus tree that lets you annex all your neighbours; and then building a million heavy tanks to grind through the whole planet. Paradox games aren't war sims, or grand strategy games, they're political roleplaying games.

HOI 3 could be a decent war simulator if you had the right mod given how you could set the leader of every single division and optimize yourself if you looked up who the generals were and of course the insanely detailed tech tree.

 

[Koko Jambo]

The game will still get raped by bad DLC practices.

Paradox has probably the most horrific DLC policy in the whole gaming industry. All the DLCs for Hoi4 alone cost more then the base game now while you still don't have a complete game experience since countries like Italy still lack content. On the other hand countries like Germany who already got their focus trees reworked are now outdated again since they added so many new country specific mechanics especially with the new Soviet Union update/DLC.

 

[ellroy]

I love the CK2 reference.

HOI 3 could be a decent war simulator if you had the right mod given how you could set the leader of every single division and optimize yourself if you looked up who the generals were and of course the insanely detailed tech tree.

That’s what makes HOI4 so disappointing. The military sim has been replaced with a memey mini EU4. HOI3 would be fondly remembered if the AI wasn’t a scripted, buggy mess.

 

[Seora]

I was relatively new to paradox games I played the original hearts of iron and I had recently enjoyed CK3 (modded to shit naturally.) found out about Victoria 3 (haven’t played the other two.) coming out and thought it looked interesting I went on their Twitter and the first thing I saw was something about sexism and remarks made towards a woman staff member with purple hair, safe to say my optimism went down like a lead balloon.
What’s with historical alt history games that attract this type of bs or maybe it’s the fact that it’s a Swedish company and we all know swedes hate themselves.

 

[milk]

Naval combat and regional combat look pretty fine.

I've only played CK and HOI, what is the selling point of the Vicky games?

 

[MidnightSto]

I've only played CK and HOI, what is the selling point of the Vicky games?

short answer :Being a socio-economical simulator.More economical and social stuff and less wars.
long answer:What sets apart vic2 from the rest of the games is that managing the country is way more indepth than "click button get money" and "click button,boom new culture".Wars can be prevented by the crisis system where u can get what u want without going to war tho half the time it never works.
The population counts for once as manpower depends on soldier pops,factories depend on clerks/craftsmen and research on the smart pops(forgot their name).Each province has their own pops with different cultures religions and ocupations.Passing new laws is way more complex than eu4 decision making for example.Out of all paradox games the vic series is the best at roleplaying as a country if u want something else than just war

 

[Slap47]

Germany gets a pretty obscene economy if you play on Very Hard.

I've only played CK and HOI, what is the selling point of the Vicky games?

Its basically just Eu4 combat before that big fort update and routing update. Lots of ways to play, but people tend to avoid big wars and just seize stuff to fuel their industry.

The United Kingdom is the only country with a machine parts factory, has an overwhelmingly huge navy, and millions of Indians. You can cheese them, but most gameplay is just not pissing them off. War kills pops and foreign pops are rebellious so you want to avoid lots of big wars.

 

[wopirish]

Or just use your rebellious/Dixie pops as soldiers to die in african/chinese wars. If the soldier pops of those groups are dead. Well its just free real estate.

 

[Slap47]

Or just use your rebellious/Dixie pops as soldiers to die in african/chinese wars. If the soldier pops of those groups are dead. Well its just free real estate.

Oddly enough, this would be historically accurate. Most US soldiers have always been southerners and 44% of the American military is still southerners. Thats kinda why they did so well during the Civil War.

 

[The Demon Pimp of Razgriz]

I've only played CK and HOI, what is the selling point of the Vicky games?

To create Greater Germany and bend the world to your will.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

Or just use your rebellious/Dixie pops as soldiers to die in african/chinese wars. If the soldier pops of those groups are dead. Well its just free real estate.

My favorite was colonizing Africa and spamming African troops everywhere. Even though in the mod I had they aren't regulars so have inferior stats, you can still recruit the inferior but speedier artillery from African pops so can form decent units from them which are cheap to raise and easy to support. They kick ass in Africa or in Europe if you ship them over there.

To create Greater Germany and bend the world to your will.

Just don't play Prussia because it's too easy. The best Germany game I had was with Austria where I decided to form the South German Confederation with Bavaria/other small states (you have to spin off the rest of the Habsburg Empire as puppets first) and the minute I did got into a war with France with almost no preparation and somehow managed to claw my way to victory.

I know you can do well with Bavaria too but I never figured it out since you're so far behind Austria and Prussia in terms of everything, and everyone else in Germany like Hannover is even worse off.