Paradox Studio Thread

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

An actual trading system is a really tough nut to crack, maybe Imperator would be a place to look (since it had trade while also having a more abstract demographic/economic model), but the political and military issues could 100% be fixed.

EU4 trade system is an unintuitive clusterfuck and the only reason why I never got into the game despite numerous attempts to tackle it. Imperator's "I will import produce A from province X to province Y" is much more logical than "trade steering" and "trade collecting", whatever that is.

I feel Paradox and trade systems are not made for each other. CK2? "Build trade post where the number is highest". CK3? Does not exist. Stellaris? "Connect all starts to your capital and never think about it again". I haven't played Vicky 3, but I expect it to be equally anemic despite the entire game being, theoretically, about trade.

 

[God of Nothing]

EU4 trade system is an unintuitive clusterfuck and the only reason why I never got into the game despite numerous attempts to tackle it. Imperator's "I will import produce A from province X to province Y" is much more logical than "trade steering" and "trade collecting", whatever that is.

I feel Paradox and trade systems are not made for each other. CK2? "Build trade post where the number is highest". CK3? Does not exist. Stellaris? "Connect all starts to your capital and never think about it again". I haven't played Vicky 3, but I expect it to be equally anemic despite the entire game being, theoretically, about trade.

ackshully, it's building trade posts around the same sectors of water to improve the zone's trade value, increasing your earnings from them exponentially

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

EU4 trade system is an unintuitive clusterfuck and the only reason why I never got into the game despite numerous attempts to tackle it. Imperator's "I will import produce A from province X to province Y" is much more logical than "trade steering" and "trade collecting", whatever that is.

I feel Paradox and trade systems are not made for each other. CK2? "Build trade post where the number is highest". CK3? Does not exist. Stellaris? "Connect all starts to your capital and never think about it again". I haven't played Vicky 3, but I expect it to be equally anemic despite the entire game being, theoretically, about trade.

I find EU4 incredibly simple. It's a retarded system from a simulation point of view, but it's simple and if you're European makes sense. Provinces produce tax (just money) and production. Production enters into circulation. Trade power represents your mercantile and maritime infrastructure: marketplaces, shipyards, your floating merchant marine. Some provinces are much more strategic than others. You can either focus on cashing in your trade power or on redirecting it. In general, all trade flows out of Mesoamerica or China over to Europe. It gets right what you would want to build and where to funnel trade your way.

It's horrible as a simulation, though, because first it portrays nations like they only want to import (the complete opposite of the leading economic doctrine of the time, mercantilism), it fucks with anybody not in Europe by forcing them to cash in on the trade away from their home (which is bizarre), and in general it has no micro foundations.

And yeah, Paradox has yet to make a trade system that makes any sense. But it is legitimately really hard to do, at least if you want it based on logistics. Victoria 2 didn't even try, it had the whole world follow a bizarre status system where whoever invented jazz music or expressionism first got first dibs on everything. The main thing I wanted Victoria 3 to do was just add a logistics-based trade system and in the end they didn't even do that while also throwing out everything else good.

 

[Midwit]

I haven't played Vicky 3, but I expect it to be equally anemic despite the entire game being, theoretically, about trade.

A factory in Brisbane can use electricity from a powerplant in Vancouver and transportation from the railway in London because they're all in the same market, shits absolutely fucked in that game.

logistics-based trade system

But then you wouldn't be able to make Ngubuland a Communist Utopia by inviting a French lesbian to your court.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

HoI4's newest Dev Diary has actually teased a new feature that sounds very interesting for both multiplayer and normal campaigns. They are calling it Joint Focuses.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/developer-diary-joint-focus-tree.1594536/

Basically it's a part of a focus tree where if you are in a faction, everyone on the faction uses it. So while you complete a 70 day focus for Army XP and production bonus of tanks your ally can be doing a political focus for their nation. Both of you will have the benefits of that focus, and then your friend/ally can do the focus after that while you then do a focus from our tree.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

HoI4's newest Dev Diary has actually teased a new feature that sounds very interesting for both multiplayer and normal campaigns. They are calling it Joint Focuses.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/developer-diary-joint-focus-tree.1594536/

Basically it's a part of a focus tree where if you are in a faction, everyone on the faction uses it. So while you complete a 70 day focus for Army XP and production bonus of tanks your ally can be doing a political focus for their nation. Both of you will have the benefits of that focus, and then your friend/ally can do the focus after that while you then do a focus from our tree.

Joint focus trees sounds like taking two separate turds and tying them together into one sausage-like chain of turds.


Speaking of trade, something that really would make a lot of sense in EU4 but can't happen due to its river-like, one-direction flow of trade is triangular trades. I don't know if countries having net trade deficits was really a thing in the past, but there's lots of places (besides the Atlantic Triangular Trade) where you have X export to Y who exports to Z who exports to X, each party runs a deficit with one partner and a surplus with another and so it all balances. A design that, even if kept abstract, would have better represented the real world would be a thing where instead of trying to steer a river of imports you're trying to build up a loop of goods whose circulation creates net wealth for all parties. And that requires there to be actual differences in the products moving around instead of generic money points.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

I like the Joint Focus idea actually, but I think it could do with some extra work. Plus some adjustment to have less 70 days focuses and more 35/28/21/14 days ones.

I can see such focuses vastly improving multiplayer games and making it more fun for the factions to actually work together. Such as for example a modification to the UK and Dominion/Subject focuses to off load some of their stuff and make it a bit more dynamic for the development and factories to work.

I agree with the EU4 trade stuff thought, it is very much a weird and unusual system that does not work out well. At this point though fixing it would mean a complete rework and straight up a EU5, which I am not really looking forward to given what we saw with the move from Vic2 to Vic3.

 

[Snekposter]

I can see such focuses vastly improving multiplayer games and making it more fun for the factions to actually work together. Such as for example a modification to the UK and Dominion/Subject focuses to off load some of their stuff and make it a bit more dynamic for the development and factories to work.

Personally I see some fun from Allied cooperation during the war. There were all sorts of joint US/UK/Commonwealth R&D efforts, plus you had spy and intel work, gobs of economic and industrial cooperation... And then of course you have the arms market mechanic, which is great for minors and a good way to have the USA do cash-and-carry sales to the UK and France.

I'm getting excited and I really fucking shouldn't since this is Paradox we're talking about and they'll find a way to screw it up.

 

[Thiletonomics]

Life By You's Early Access release has been pushed back to March 5, 2024. Has Paradox and their studios had a history of development trouble, as in what happened with The Sims 4's development, and the game being released with very limited features from the start?

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I just don't like focuses or anything with the whiff of them (like EU4 missions) because they became a horrible crutch for their design. Paradoxtards used to bitch endlessly about Dynamic Historical Events because of "railroading" even though more recent titles, and especially mods, had lots of sensible preconditions built in for the DHE to fire. Then along came Paradox and they basically turned all of the politics in HOI into DHEs, except because it's framed as a button you press, people don't see it for what it is. Then this leaked out into their other games.

Pop Demand Mod was the gold standard of historical content. Another thing people overlook is that with DHEs you can have surprises and actually discover the game through playing it, this focus tree stuff lays it all out in front of you.

 

[Radola Gajda]

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/dev-diary-132-eccentricity-adoption.1595139/

 

[God of Nothing]

Adoption is just another form of cuckoldry. As in the adopter is the cuckold as he raises another man's spawn.

 

[EsmairneGerhof]

Truly amazing that they added autism and gay adoptions to the medieval strategy game. This is the direction I have always wanted the game to go in.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

This is one hell of an abuse mechanic. Do not marry until you can pick Celibate in the medicine tree (that is what, tier 2? Available almost immediately?), stay childless, adopt the best orphan you can find and groom the perfect heir in every generation without ever worrying about realm partition. If it croaks, immediately adopt a spare from the smorgasbord of orphans of the medieval Europe.

Boo, Paradox. Boo.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Parashit would be better if they didn't worry so much about things being abused. Half of their bad design choices come from them trying to balance things instead of telling the powergamers to suck their dick.

I wish there weren't the really strict restrictions on ability to conquer, that it maybe worked a bit more like Total War. You can never just take over a place like it happened in real life, it's always a series of repetitive tiny wars.

 

[JJLiautaud]

Parashit would be better if they didn't worry so much about things being abused. Half of their bad design choices come from them trying to balance things instead of telling the powergamers to suck their dick.

I wish there weren't the really strict restrictions on ability to conquer, that it maybe worked a bit more like Total War. You can never just take over a place like it happened in real life, it's always a series of repetitive tiny wars.

I mean some autist did a World Conquest in EUIV in 28 in game years you can't balance these games.

 

[Midwit]

you can't balance these games

Half the fun comes from breaking them over your knee and doing wacky shit with the timeline.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

What was your favorite CK2 run?

Mine was the time I took Norman Sicily, made the Latin Empire (it wound up, accidentally, like Justinian's empire), and turned it into a highly cohesive, rock-solid-stability regime by using only my gay lovers as viceroys (totally unrealistic).

I imagine court having just been a bunch of oiled up Norman and Greek men buttfucking each other like a porno.

 

[JJLiautaud]

What was your favorite CK2 run?

Mine was the time I took Norman Sicily, made the Latin Empire (it wound up, accidentally, like Justinian's empire), and turned it into a highly cohesive, rock-solid-stability regime by using only my gay lovers as viceroys (totally unrealistic).

I imagine court having just been a bunch of oiled up Norman and Greek men buttfucking each other like a porno.

My gigachad crusade run where i retook the holy land and then took egypt and burned and razed (through rp) mecca and medina to the ground.

 

[Mr.Miyagi]

Europa Universalis 4 celebrated its 10th anniversary last week, with Johan reflecting on its trials and tribulations here. They also released a free music pack in celebration, featuring remastered versions of the main themes used in popular mods, such as Dawn of an Empire from Anbennar. For all my gripes about Paradox and their games, I do genuinely enjoy EU4 and view it as a great game, with my only wish being that it had less stumbling and nickel and dime-ing. Maybe EU5 will be on the horizon soon (but considering Victoria 3, maybe it's better left unmade.)

CK3's 1.10 update and the accompanying Wards and Wardens DLC have released today. I'll damn with faint praise and say that at least they decided to only charge $5 for an event pack, when I could easily see them going for $10. It doesn't seem like there's much there mechanically. I hope the Persian flavor pack will have something more to it. CK3 seems to still be in that strange state where the DLC is coming out sparse, which is odd for such a flagship title.