Paradox Studio Thread

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

The newest Stellaris DLC comes out today. I'm not particularly hyped on the theme (primitives), but the free update content (archaeology and minor artefacts revamped) give me a desire to try it out once or twice. The pirates will be quick in cracking the DLC, I'm sure.

What are your opinions all y'all?

It is unbelieveably shallow and not worth the money they are charging for it. I might pick it up much, much later at a massive discount, but right now they want to charge you 15 bucks for a couple of stupid origins that any modder can put in, gimmick stealth ship mechanic that brain-dead AI won't be able to utilize and a bunch of questionable technologies that you can get by observing primitives passively (another thing a modder can put up in a day). Oh, and archeotech ship components that cost you artifacts and are mechanically worse than T5.

Oh, and the big bad megacorp nemesis you get from the new origins isn't even a fallen empire, just a regular one that gets gobbled up by its neighbors before you can get your revenge on them. Having a malicious fallen empire megacorp opening its parasitic branches to leech off of your economy would justify the purchase for me, but this is exactly what we are NOT getting.

This DLC literally adds nothing to the game. Even the fluff it provides is meager and the new techs reek of "babby's first mod" quality. "Impactful insults"? Really?

EDIT: The only vaguely intersting new origin is the one where you start with a truncated jump drive instead of actual hyperlane travel (remember jump stations from Stellaris 1.0 when it first released? Good times), but apparently it sometimes gives you shit like this.

Spoiler: The future of space travel

 

[Johan Schmidt]

I'm still annoyed every so often, by the fact that Stellaris started with this interesting idea of three different hyperdrives, and then nixed it. Honestly, Stellaris is not a game that needs to worry about balance, because the AI is retarded, the cheese is easy and real, and there is no actual challenge beyond a self imposed one. Just let people do their flavour stuff paradox you stingy fucks.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Victoria 3 is currently 20% off. Is it worth it?

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

Victoria 3 is currently 20% off. Is it worth it?

Not until it gets its first DLC. It's fun-ish to poke around for your first few hours, but then you realize that all nations play the same (there are practically no unique events associated with most of them) and once you have figured out the ropes, it quickly becomes boring. As of right now, it is a one-trick pony with very little replayability or local flavor. Since they haven't even announced any plans for a DLC and the reception after the initial few days of hype has been lukewarm at best, I am not sure they won't ditch it like they ditched Imperator: Rome.

Maybe Japan stands out a little bit because of its isolationist policy and the ability to maintain complete autarky while the rest of the world keeps paying through the nose for each other's clippers, but that's all I noticed.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

Not until it gets its first DLC. It's fun-ish to poke around for your first few hours, but then you realize that all nations play the same (there are practically no unique events associated with most of them) and once you have figured out the ropes, it quickly becomes boring. As of right now, it is a one-trick pony with very little replayability or local flavor. Since they haven't even announced any plans for a DLC and the reception after the initial few days of hype has been lukewarm at best, I am not sure they won't ditch it like they ditched Imperator: Rome.

Maybe Japan stands out a little bit because of its isolationist policy and the ability to maintain complete autarky while the rest of the world keeps paying through the nose for each other's clippers, but that's all I noticed.

In theory if they ditched it, would that be better for modders? If it went without the PDX DLC cycle mods could grow in a environment where every 6 months a massive DLC releases and breaks everything, could actually be a great service to the game.

 

[Lightning]

This DLC literally adds nothing to the game. Even the fluff it provides is meager and the new techs reek of "babby's first mod" quality. "Impactful insults"? Really?

Sadly I have to agree with you. The origins were decent, good on the flavour events and interaction, but no replay value. Cloaking quickly becomes next to useless because the AI spams detection like a schizo wrapping tinfoil around his head, and primitives nuke themselves regularly upon hitting atomic age (a bug admittedly, but still PDX quality guarantee). Ancient tech is a nice distraction, but almost every single one gets eclipsed quickly.

For anyone else interested in the new DLC, pirate it and don't give PDX money.

 

[Snekposter]

Sadly I have to agree with you. The origins were decent, good on the flavour events and interaction, but no replay value. Cloaking quickly becomes next to useless because the AI spams detection like a schizo wrapping tinfoil around his head, and primitives nuke themselves regularly upon hitting atomic age (a bug admittedly, but still PDX quality guarantee). Ancient tech is a nice distraction, but almost every single one gets eclipsed quickly.

For anyone else interested in the new DLC, pirate it and don't give PDX money.

Way ahead of you.

 

[GulMacet]

I'm still annoyed every so often, by the fact that Stellaris started with this interesting idea of three different hyperdrives, and then nixed it. Honestly, Stellaris is not a game that needs to worry about balance, because the AI is retarded, the cheese is easy and real, and there is no actual challenge beyond a self imposed one. Just let people do their flavour stuff paradox you stingy fucks.

What really pisses me off about that is they removed all the older versions of it from steam, so now you can't rollback if you wanted to play an older version with all the different FTLs. Paradox is pretty frustrating sometimes.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

For anyone else interested in the new DLC, pirate it and don't give PDX money.

This is my recommendation for any PDX game and its DLC.

What really pisses me off about that is they removed all the older versions of it from steam, so now you can't rollback if you wanted to play an older version with all the different FTLs. Paradox is pretty frustrating sometimes.

The Betas tab still lists the versions going back all the way to 1.0.3 "Launch Version". Are they just broken and Paradox never bothered to fix them? I never tried rolling back more than a patch or two.

 

[East_Clintwood]

In theory if they ditched it, would that be better for modders? If it went without the PDX DLC cycle mods could grow in a environment where every 6 months a massive DLC releases and breaks everything, could actually be a great service to the game.

Nah it would be terrible for modders, if only because the base game is so bland and shit they are incredibly limited on what they can build on in terms of cool new features.

 

[WonderWino]

So this was announced today:

Life by You on Steam

Designed to be one of the most moddable and open life-simulation games, we look forward to the humans, stories, and creations that you’ll make with Life by You.

store.steampowered.com

Seems to be a bastardized shit tier version of the sims, which knowing paradox will have even more dlc crammed into it than the real sims before long

Paradox being paradox made a point of showing off the lgbt shit in the trailer, which predictably led to quite the forum post with the troons and at least one intersex nutter acting exactly like you'd expect:

It should be an option to enable or disable to play with 'non binary' characters :: Life by You General Discussions

Getting really tired of these manipulative left-wing politics forced upon us and on our kids (because many kids will play this game). It should be possible to disable non-binary people in the game. It's too controversial to put it in and a game should be objective, so simply add an option. If...

steamcommunity.com

Somehow I suspect that this game is going to be something of a shitshow, especially when the inevitable mods are released doing away with the general troonery adjacent stuff - hell in that post one of them is already talking about wanting to do such things being 'violence' and 'making people feel unsafe' with the level of condescension you would expect. I'd keep my eye on this one as possibly qualifying for its own community thread at some point

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

So this was announced today:

Life by You on Steam

Designed to be one of the most moddable and open life-simulation games, we look forward to the humans, stories, and creations that you’ll make with Life by You.

store.steampowered.com

Seems to be a bastardized shit tier version of the sims, which knowing paradox will have even more dlc crammed into it than the real sims before long

Paradox being paradox made a point of showing off the lgbt shit in the trailer, which predictably led to quite the forum post with the troons and at least one intersex nutter acting exactly like you'd expect:

It should be an option to enable or disable to play with 'non binary' characters :: Life by You General Discussions

Getting really tired of these manipulative left-wing politics forced upon us and on our kids (because many kids will play this game). It should be possible to disable non-binary people in the game. It's too controversial to put it in and a game should be objective, so simply add an option. If...

steamcommunity.com

Somehow I suspect that this game is going to be something of a shitshow, especially when the inevitable mods are released doing away with the general troonery adjacent stuff - hell in that post one of them is already talking about wanting to do such things being 'violence' and 'making people feel unsafe' with the level of condescension you would expect. I'd keep my eye on this one as possibly qualifying for its own community thread at some point

Hopefully this can be like what Cities Skylines was to SimCity, but more than likely it won't reach similar levels as Sims 4 or even 3.

 

[ATandTism]

So this was announced today:

Life by You on Steam

Designed to be one of the most moddable and open life-simulation games, we look forward to the humans, stories, and creations that you’ll make with Life by You.

store.steampowered.com

Seems to be a bastardized shit tier version of the sims, which knowing paradox will have even more dlc crammed into it than the real sims before long

Paradox being paradox made a point of showing off the lgbt shit in the trailer, which predictably led to quite the forum post with the troons and at least one intersex nutter acting exactly like you'd expect:

It should be an option to enable or disable to play with 'non binary' characters :: Life by You General Discussions

Getting really tired of these manipulative left-wing politics forced upon us and on our kids (because many kids will play this game). It should be possible to disable non-binary people in the game. It's too controversial to put it in and a game should be objective, so simply add an option. If...

steamcommunity.com

Somehow I suspect that this game is going to be something of a shitshow, especially when the inevitable mods are released doing away with the general troonery adjacent stuff - hell in that post one of them is already talking about wanting to do such things being 'violence' and 'making people feel unsafe' with the level of condescension you would expect. I'd keep my eye on this one as possibly qualifying for its own community thread at some point

Looks like a bad unity asset flip, and with the Paradox logo on it I don't have high hopes.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

>tfw your character starves because you ran out of mana

 

[Snekposter]

>tfw your character starves because you ran out of mana

Coming soon to a DLC near you, caretaker service for when you don't have the Spoon Mana to spend on feeding yourself.

 

[Jarolleon]

Is CK3 still going to have you able to summon your army at the ass end of your empire at the drop of a hat, though? I'm still mixed on that change from CK2. Yeah, it's less micromanagement and all, and the time does seem to change a bit depending on distance, but it still feels strange being able to set a gathering point and just have every soldier across the land show up there in a couple weeks, rather than your realm's size and shape actually affecting logistics. Having a large kingdom in 2 and seeing your masses of levies march to gather in a county felt good.

Maybe they'll be summoned to you or your marshal's map locations.. but at that point why not just mod Mount and Blade?

This also is, much like seas freezing in winter, something that maybe AI is too stupid to handle (Redditors DEFINITELY too stupid to handle), but didn't armies even as late as the 1800s avoid fighting in Winter for the most part? And even oftentimes disband and go home for the harvest? "Campaign season" should really be a thing. Even Total War makes an effort to disincentivize mindlessly roaming around enemy territory in the snow.

Makes me wonder if armies move so slowly in ck3 to compensate for these factors not being modelled. Harold Godwinson's march from Stamford Bridge to Hastings took 2 weeks IRL and it takes over 2 months in game.

I don't think PDX is smart enough to consciously do this, but they probably noticed in test observations with more realistic army speeds that the AI was blobbing way faster than historically and decided to slow the troops down .

 

[Knud Lavard]

Makes me wonder if armies move so slowly in ck3 to compensate for these factors not being modelled. Harold Godwinson's march from Stamford Bridge to Hastings took 2 weeks IRL and it takes over 2 months in game.

I don't think PDX is smart enough to consciously do this, but they probably noticed in test observations with more realistic army speeds that the AI was blobbing way faster than historically and decided to slow the troops down .

I hadn't thought of this, but it does make sense. I guess it was easier to change one value and just make the problem less noticable instead of dealing with the lack of rise-and-fall mechanics, consequences for wars irregardless of whether you win or lose, as well as CB acquisition being very easy (and guaranteed).

In other CKIII news, they released more info about their next more-than-half-price-of-the-base-game DLC. Seems like one of the largest additions is that they're lifting the Conclave system from CKII but using it for all vassals rather than just your council. While the idea is nice, the implementation seems quite restrained - Conclave only having half a dozen archetypes worked because you only had half a dozen characters on your council, but as a CKIII King or Emperor, you're going to have several dozen vassals with the same amount of archetypes.
Furthermore, archetypes are only decided based on personality, and is therefore entirely blind to the vassal's political/material situation (aside from the "Minor Landowner" archetype, but CKIII barons might as well not exist). CKII's implementation had a basic system for this (i.e. powerful but small vassals were expansionists), but it doesn't sound like this is going to be the case for CKIII. Wouldn't it be nice if bull-headed warriors bordering strong neighbours tempered their lust for war with the knowledge that their lands would be ravaged if it were to break out? If wealthy counts in the heartlands would do their best to preserve the lucrative status-quo?
Aside from having the political/material situation of a vassal help decide their archetype, a system wherein each vassal had a major and minor archetype would also expand its depth - vassals of another culture aren't relegated to the Minority archetype, but could be Minority/Courtly for example. Actions impacting Minority archetypes would affect this vassal 100%, but actions impacting Courtly archetypes would only affect them 50% or something like that. As the Byzantine Emperor, the Georgians might be Glory-Hound/Minority while Ciscaucasia is fragmented and weak - they want you to use your position of strength to establish borderlands, while making sure that their cultural rights are respected. They would probably shift to Parochial/Glory-Hound when the Mongols are staring them down from across the border, however - not instigating conflict while still being prepared for it would be important to them.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

That's boring. CK+ had a more interesting system anyways. I found the unmodded game unplayable without its faction overhaul. You had four faction types the vassals could lead, join, give support (like financial support) to. The faction basically acted as the same collective bargaining type thing, but with persistence and multiple goals, like a Tropico faction. The factions mostly came down to an economic focus, a war/vassal's rights focus, a religious focus, and a court focus, and the court faction was (along with the vassals) the most interesting as it was based on the premise that they're people who want a glittering court life (like Versailles), but will coup you if you don't give them it, so not at all the same thing as "loyalists." It achieved the goal of factions having personality, being much more significant but rare and therefore interesting threats, and factions could even cascade with several factions forming a coalition for/against you.

When Conclave came along it made sense to split up the Crown Authority into different laws, but I kind of missed the old system where there was an appreciable difference between levels (even if that difference was an arbitrary bundle of rules), a natural balance built in where it became more difficult to sway everyone to get a reform passed as the realm grows, and the fact all the nobles got to vote meant thinking about vassals you otherwise wouldn't pay attention to and having to figure out a way to allocate resources to sway them. It made reform into a big, heroic effort that when it passed felt like a real work of statesmanship. That's something Conclave, although more sensible from both a realism and gameplay standpoint, kind of took away.

 

[I don't swear]

Any word on Age of Wonders 4? Or is that not a Paradox game?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I learned some fun facts that relate to my (unsolicited) point about colonies in EU4.
When the Puritans were looking to get a charter, the Dutch made an offer to them but they turned it down.
When a sizable chunk of Belgians were looking to start a colony, the English tried to seduce them but they ended up sticking with the Dutch New Netherlands.

Mechanics like this have been done well in CK+ in two ways. The awful adventurer system from vanilla (where you'd just get randomly screwed over with unrealistic exogenous hordes) was replaced by a system where the adventurer had to petition rulers to chip in support or at least not arrest him, and so it was the closest the game got to letting you wage a proxy war, even if there was very little incentive to do it. The Jew system in CK+ worked similarly too, Jewish ghettos being buildings that can't be expanded except by events (reflecting population growth) and expulsion resulting in those Jews wandering until they find a ruler to take them in.

It's something EU5 could really use, to have playing the colony itself be made more interesting with internal governance and minorities and four basic modes of production/settlement that can interact (light trading presence/native exploitation/imported slave exploitation/homeland settlement), while having the homeland be way more hands-off and instead play into opportunities as they come up. And I think it would end up being more interesting than just bum-rushing specific provinces because you can.

Don't recall if I ever bitched about this before here either, but there's a real problem these games have with the lack of a way for people to carve up claims on territory. Claims do exist as a concept, but what I mean is that when Europeans traded land in treaties, we understand of course that they didn't actually control anything but what they had people on, but the treaty still acted like a (theoretical) monopoly on the right to settle and conquer in that land. The maps you see of colonies were a bit problematic too since often the claims would overlap, it's traditional for example to treat the Thirteen Colonies as terminating at the Appalachians and Spain and France as holding those western lands even though it may just as arbitrarily be treated as though the Colonies did stretch to the Pacific as the British claimed. Most of that land was not even under fealty to their supposed Spanish/French overlords. But either way, if there was a way that the game could shade in an area a lighter version of the national color and make it so there's an actual penalty (or even hard block) on settling in someone's territory, that would allow for some big land shifts while still reflecting the fact that most of North America was basically just tribal protectorates. Some notion of civilizations (like the outdated "tech groups") might be helpful for deciding which nations are subject to "insider" diplomatic rules versus "outsider" diplomatic rules.

This ends up appearing as a problem in Victoria 3 because they have no way to allow for uncolonized land across the Canadian-American or Mexican-American border without it turning into bordergore, nor any means with which to represent something like a Berlin Conference.

Edit: This idea I had forming, at the back of my head, was that there wasn't really a diplomatic community, rather there were diplomatic communities, which I'd wager lined up about with Huntingdon's civilizations. (Huntingdon's civilizations match up pretty much geographically, religiously, and ethnically.) Europeans were the only civilization that actually went out into the world in a big way, but you had things like a China-centered diplomatic system in Asia, or muh caliphs of the Middle East. It's far from necessary, but something a good EU-era game (not from Paradox) might consider is having diplomatic systems exist as actual clubs of countries with mechanics. If it's a world where samurais lash pajeet slaves on Californian grape plantations, then it may be that the Asians treat each other by one set of rules and all honkies by another.