Paradox Studio Thread

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Favorite Paradox Game?


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If they don't have the full slate of mods for autistic builders integrated in the game on day one that will be a boneheaded missed opportunity.
I highly doubt they will, it will most likely be somewhat bare bones. I just hope at least some of the last games public spaces and transportations add ons will be there day one, and that there is a significant improvement in graphics and street level detail that will provide a good base for modders. Shit business model but I'll take what I can get for a good large scale city builder to slate my autism.
 
The only notable ones I see are the city tile ones. Probably just going to be smaller tiles now. A shame. Just another sandbox "sim" to cater to the redditors.

Well, for starters, notice that the highest awarded population level is 100k people, which isn't much. To get to "bughive" and "skyscraper" levels in reality you'll probably need ten times that amount, real life 100k is a self-sustaining sprawlburg. Lafayette, Louisiana, which has been brought up in the "r/fuckcars" thread, is 120k people. It's big enough to have museums, industry, nice apartments, a good retail base, and stuff to see and do, but it's not going to light anyone's world on fire. Now, a 120k pop city could be a wonderful place to live (maybe not Lafayette specifically) but city sims rarely focus on quality of life.

The other is the lack of zoning variety (and still no mixed-use) that's basically carried over since SimCity 1989, with no "best use" zoning, anything unusual, or further fractioning of zoning beyond just offices. Just look at how you can divide out land uses in a single city.
 
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Yeah. Thank goodness it was Cities Skylines 2 instead of yet another damn DLC. They were milking that dry.
The lack of gameplay footage, or really any info at all, is odd for a game that is supposedly going to come out this year though.
Given Paradox's track record and the previous game, I fully expect it to run like shit, for the base game to be completely bare bones with none of the DLC being rolled into it, and for a release of a morbillion DLC packs. Of course, I'll be legitimately surprised if they manage to fix the shitty traffic AI that results in every highway turning into downtown Toronto at 4pm. Probably not given they're more interested in bragging about their feature creep like "rat infestation".

That said, I wonder if the trailer release being on the 10 year anniversary of the SimCity reboot (you know, the one that effectively killed Simcity and directly lead to the result of Paradox green-lighting it's biggest competitor) was deliberate or a happy accident.
 
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They're also adding two new government types (or reforms, rather) to EU4, "Portuguese Monarchy" and "Hispanic Monarchy," so immersive.
It's possible I would actually prefer EU3 - I joined on in the generation of CK2/EU4/HOI4 - because everything I've ever seen about its way of portraying governments was better. There was this sort of idea that the governments obviously corresponded to certain societies, but were given generic enough descriptions, mechanics (such as they existed back then, or more in EU4), and bonii to suggest the pertinent features of a certain style of rule without just being "yep this is the English Monarchy TM with all of its English Monarchy features, fill in the blanks yourself." And this allowed for potentially transforming any society into any other society, if you can make the conditions occur, so you could have a Qing that's an elective monarchy like Polish-Lithuania or an uber-militarized Irish monarchy like Prussia or whatever else.

Policies were similar, they reflected some basic orientation of the society but one that was political in nature, could be changed if needed, and were just sort of more extreme the further you went in a direction. You could look at a nation's policies and get a sense of what in your fantasy world that country is like. Idea groups were meant to suggest something more inherent to the identity of a nation, but... they're just boring. And frustrating. Why should I have to wait through shitty ideas to get to good ones, for example? And they don't indicate anything about a society's politics, like you can't choose to be Smithian or mercantilist or physiocratic, you're just an "economic" country that wears an "economics" hat and is good at "economic" things.

One the places this makes me saltiest is colonization, which is shitty and content-bare in general, but here especially you get one type of "Colonial Government," no ability to tailor your colonial borders or have colonies with subcolonies (like the Viceroyalty of New Spain having a Captaincy-General in the Philippines as a sub-colony), and Trade Companies - this is baffling - never were implemented as colonial nations for the Indian Ocean/African theaters, but instead were just a special bonus to toggle. Like, the whole point of why trade companies are interesting is BECAUSE they were corporate governments that had shares that could be bought and sold like a modern corporation but were also as large as entire empires and maintained their own armies. Things like the EIC/VOC rivalry should have played out in-game as colonial nations (with special bonii/mechanics to trade and naval power) warring on each other and cutting deals with native princes independent of the crown, should have been playable in its own right. That's one (small) thing I like about Victoria 3, that it makes EIC start as a playable state.

The Thirteen Colonies (treated as a single colonial region) is the ultimate example of the colonies lacking content, there's nothing to distinguish the very different societies of the Quakers, Puritans, and Cavaliers from each other, nor those from autocratic viceregal/conquistador rule. Between Conquest of Paradise, El Dorado, and Wealth of Nations there's a ton of stuff that could have been done way beyond what they did. Personally I think colonies should have come in two forms, ones you manually boot the extreme expense and risk for, and proposals you get where someone asks for a charter (specifying government form, religion, culture, and other details), and you can reject it (potentially resulting in them doing it anyways and thumbing their nose at you). Some examples of that would be Puritans establishing Reformed theocratic republics (NOT the majority position) with high autonomy, or Cortez's unsanctioned invasion of Mexico that he just kind of foisted on the New Spanish government.
 
The other is the lack of zoning variety (and still no mixed-use) that's basically carried over since SimCity 1989,
Funny thing is this was added with modding into Simcity 4. There's both mixed use plots and also functioning mixed use RCI. Traffic as well. NAM turns it into a wonderful traffic sim. If only Paradox and co could learn....
 
By the wya, for all I know they've added this already (I'm not touching it), but if they're going to go for empty graphical spectacle Paradox could at least have more variety in children. It's really awkward how it just surges from baby to child to adult, like it feels like one day my daughter just suddenly goes from being a little girl to a grown woman (so kudos on nailing the experience of being a parent har har). There really ought to be a division that kicks in, say age 10-16 to "tween/teen" portraits so there's some kind of visual indication that your heir is about to get more events/come of age.
 
I highly doubt they will, it will most likely be somewhat bare bones. I just hope at least some of the last games public spaces and transportations add ons will be there day one, and that there is a significant improvement in graphics and street level detail that will provide a good base for modders. Shit business model but I'll take what I can get for a good large scale city builder to slate my autism.
apparently it's running UE5, so it will be pretty, still run like ass, and mods needs to be done from scratch.
 
Speaking of the original Cities: Skylines any recommended mods/modpacks? I do enjoy some lazy numbers go up gameplay every now and then when I feel like shutting my brain off a bit, and C:S scratches that itch okay.
 
I actually think it will be running in unity, CO tweeted back to someone confirming use of a newer version.

Edit: should probably cite: https://archive.is/nUfe1
wonder where the UE5 came from, pretty sure I read that on something official...

tbh as much as people shit on unity (mostly because MUH PERFORMANCE) I'm glad they're sticking to it, because unreal5 is even worse in that regard, not to mention modding.
since it's (supposed) to come out this year I'm wondering if they switched to DOTS which feels was made for this kind of game.
 
So the rumored Life Simulation Game, since Rod Humble joined Paradox, will be a thing:


I do hope that the game will be mod-friendly, like how Cities Skylines and The Sims games are.
I hope it's good; that 'Project Rene' The Sims 5 prototype EA showed a little of last year looks suspiciously promising.
I remember when Sim City 5 came out, and how much of a shitshow that was, only for Paradox to come in from left field and clown on EA with Cities Skylines. I wonder if things will go that way again
 
wonder where the UE5 came from, pretty sure I read that on something official...

tbh as much as people shit on unity (mostly because MUH PERFORMANCE) I'm glad they're sticking to it, because unreal5 is even worse in that regard, not to mention modding.
since it's (supposed) to come out this year I'm wondering if they switched to DOTS which feels was made for this kind of game.
People keep speculating that they will use DOTS but I have not seen any confirmation, if they are truly trying to create a deeper simulation, they will need to be able to utilize multi core. I am also fine with Unity for the sake of modding and they didn't need to waste time transitioning to a new engine, plus its speculated from job postings it's a lot newer version of Unity.
 
For the same reason they made Stellaris into an entirely different game than it originally was.
they have no idea what the fuck they're doing
I actually like to posit that it's actually a different problem: Paradox does not understand that generic, one-size-fit-all systems simply cannot hope to even properly simulate the complexity of the time period they're covering. A lot of the complaints of HOI4, CK III and Vicky 3 can be boiled down to that.
 
They're also adding two new government types (or reforms, rather) to EU4, "Portuguese Monarchy" and "Hispanic Monarchy," so immersive.
It's possible I would actually prefer EU3 - I joined on in the generation of CK2/EU4/HOI4 - because everything I've ever seen about its way of portraying governments was better. There was this sort of idea that the governments obviously corresponded to certain societies, but were given generic enough descriptions, mechanics (such as they existed back then, or more in EU4), and bonii to suggest the pertinent features of a certain style of rule without just being "yep this is the English Monarchy TM with all of its English Monarchy features, fill in the blanks yourself." And this allowed for potentially transforming any society into any other society, if you can make the conditions occur, so you could have a Qing that's an elective monarchy like Polish-Lithuania or an uber-militarized Irish monarchy like Prussia or whatever else.

Policies were similar, they reflected some basic orientation of the society but one that was political in nature, could be changed if needed, and were just sort of more extreme the further you went in a direction. You could look at a nation's policies and get a sense of what in your fantasy world that country is like. Idea groups were meant to suggest something more inherent to the identity of a nation, but... they're just boring. And frustrating. Why should I have to wait through shitty ideas to get to good ones, for example? And they don't indicate anything about a society's politics, like you can't choose to be Smithian or mercantilist or physiocratic, you're just an "economic" country that wears an "economics" hat and is good at "economic" things.

One the places this makes me saltiest is colonization, which is shitty and content-bare in general, but here especially you get one type of "Colonial Government," no ability to tailor your colonial borders or have colonies with subcolonies (like the Viceroyalty of New Spain having a Captaincy-General in the Philippines as a sub-colony), and Trade Companies - this is baffling - never were implemented as colonial nations for the Indian Ocean/African theaters, but instead were just a special bonus to toggle. Like, the whole point of why trade companies are interesting is BECAUSE they were corporate governments that had shares that could be bought and sold like a modern corporation but were also as large as entire empires and maintained their own armies. Things like the EIC/VOC rivalry should have played out in-game as colonial nations (with special bonii/mechanics to trade and naval power) warring on each other and cutting deals with native princes independent of the crown, should have been playable in its own right. That's one (small) thing I like about Victoria 3, that it makes EIC start as a playable state.

The Thirteen Colonies (treated as a single colonial region) is the ultimate example of the colonies lacking content, there's nothing to distinguish the very different societies of the Quakers, Puritans, and Cavaliers from each other, nor those from autocratic viceregal/conquistador rule. Between Conquest of Paradise, El Dorado, and Wealth of Nations there's a ton of stuff that could have been done way beyond what they did. Personally I think colonies should have come in two forms, ones you manually boot the extreme expense and risk for, and proposals you get where someone asks for a charter (specifying government form, religion, culture, and other details), and you can reject it (potentially resulting in them doing it anyways and thumbing their nose at you). Some examples of that would be Puritans establishing Reformed theocratic republics (NOT the majority position) with high autonomy, or Cortez's unsanctioned invasion of Mexico that he just kind of foisted on the New Spanish government.

Kinda funny that Eu3 accomplished much of this through its slider system. Want to be really innovative? Get ready for instability and your colonies randomly swapping religions due to pilgrim like people. Want lots of land? Should probably decentralize.

Shame Eu4 was not an intensification of that.
 
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-3-dev-diary-78-update-1-2-changelog.1572529/
Vic3 1.2 patch notes
Screenshot_2023-03-09-18-03-11-959-edit_com.hsv.freeadblockerbrowser.jpg
 
@Slap47 that's what I'm talking about, EU3 sliders. I remember the Paradox community bitching about them but they seem much better than what we currently have.

Edit: Oh, when I said policies that could have been easily confused with the "Policies" from EU4.

The colonies swapping religion sounds really itneresting. Paradox didn't depict that at all except for when they added "Expel Minorities" as a completely ahistorical option for the Spanish (and not the British, who actually did have minority colonies).

It's only relevant to two countries at the very end of the timeframe but by the end you run into problems with how you depict religion in France and America. America didn't have actual disestablishment until the 1800s, states kept state-level churches that varied from what the game would call "Anglican" to "Reformed" and neither really capture the nuance of the Great Awakening creating new churches that were a mix of Anabaptist and Calvinist and other theological influences but socially functioned like a new branch of Protestantism. France straight up banned supernatural religion for civil religion. By the Victoria period, the nuances of Protestantism become unimportant to the point that they're all easily grouped together, and yet by the modern day the pertinent division is no longer theological but cultural, "Mainline" vs "Evangelical." Some mod (MEIOU?) add Wahhabism as an emergent Islamic faith late in the 1700s, and I've thought Evangelicalism would fit the role well in the US and parts of Britain. Some sort of "freedom of religion" state religion could have a thing where the dominant religious group of the primary/accepted culture pops is the de facto religion, but all of them tolerated, so for example all Christians being protected from conversion in the US. France could have had Cult of Reason and Cult of the Supreme Being, and it's pretty gay they never added that. I genuinely like the Cult of the Supreme Being (pure revolutionary deism) and would join it in IRL if it still existed.

Edit: Technically Pennsylvania was Anabaptist. I don't think vanilla or MEIOU has Anabaptist as an option? It really should be for how it was the third big wing of the Reformation.
 
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