Paradox Studio Thread

Favorite Paradox Game?

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After all these years it's good to see the AI can still be goaded into this:

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Never change, Paradox.
 
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I was thinking about how Rome 2 Total War depicts culture. But it's more likely to interest you all, so let's just pretend I'm talking about Paradox.

It had this thing where, since religion in a pagan world just doesn't work like it does in the modern world, culture was their stand-in for thing-that-divides-people. But culture really just boiled down to a euphemism for religion, again, as you promote it mainly through temples. It's also mutually exclusive as far as I can tell. Now, during that period of antiquity there are some examples of cultural warfare that resemble religious warfare. The Romans, as I understand, conducted a cultural genocide of the Celts, liquidated their druids and intentionally destroyed everything meaningful about the culture so they would be demoralized and subject to Romanization.

However, in many places it was nothing like that. Achaemenid Persia preserved its subject cultures. The Hellenistic world influenced its cultures (including Rome, Greco-Romans) but it didn't destroy them. If anything, the period is more notable for how cultures syncretized.

Now, Paradox games have played with this. Imperator Rome has a religious syncretism mechanic, pick features of . Crusader Kings 3 has a cultural syncretism mechanic where you mix and match traits of cultures from the parent cultures you form them out of.

I think an interesting way to go about this - and this can likewise apply to religion in the Dharmic world - is to stop thinking of religion/culture as being rivalrous. It doesn't have to sum to one. Nor do you necessarily have to break it down as percents of adherents, or put people into boxes. Instead you just have an abstract measurement of how deeply the idea has penetrated the local culture. Then, it may be incentivized by having a sort of mechanic where different cultures have entirely different tech trees and only by increasing other cultures influence on your homeland (let's say a homeland is an area where your culture has a notably higher share than other cultures) d you get to absorb their ideas. As I understand, what made Romans remarkable wasn't so much their inventions but the way they diffused other cultures inventions around the empire. On the other hand, people like Greeks, to my understanding, were very productive thinkers but had an elitism about their culture, impacted the people they conquered and colonized but were less influenced by them.

But the downside is you may also have to take on negative traits too (one reason to want the culture gone), or have possible xenophobic backlash, or have situations where the target culture is resisting (like Celts and Jews).

And what does promoting culture look like? Religion is one aspect, but in general, it's civilization. Having a greater degree of artistic achievement (like a well-developed literature, or remarkable visual arts/crafts), philosophy, luxury, remarkable infrastructure. Trade as well. In general, repeated interaction weighted heavier when a civilization is worth emulating (and remembering it's not rivalrous, two productive cultures profit each other by their interaction).
 
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So Project Caesar is pretty much confirmed to be EU5 at this point. They are gonna be introducing pops into it (and Johan has actually said they wanted to introduce the pops system into EU4 DLC back in the day, but they found it would have been way too hard to implement so they used the work on Imperator instead).

The newest Dev Diary has shown cultures, religion and demographics and how they are represented in a similar way to Vicky or Imperator, with minorities being shown as stripped lines over the majority allowing for more realistic portrayal of the mixing up and for stuff like jewish communities in Europe and zoroastrian communities in India and Iran and East Africa to be represented and such.

The maps shown have also shed some light on what the start day might be, with the range appearing to be from 1330s to 1360s.

I think it looks pretty neat. I am not likely to abandon EU4 since it seems like EU5 is gonna be a different game so not really a replacement.
 
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General Emílio Médici said:
So Project Caesar is pretty much confirmed to be EU5 at this point. They are gonna be introducing pops into it (and Johan has actually said they wanted to introduce the pops system into EU4 DLC back in the day, but they found it would have been way too hard to implement so they used the work on Imperator instead).

The newest Dev Diary has shown cultures, religion and demographics and how they are represented in a similar way to Vicky or Imperator, with minorities being shown as stripped lines over the majority allowing for more realistic portrayal of the mixing up and for stuff like jewish communities in Europe and zoroastrian communities in India and Iran and East Africa to be represented and such.

The maps shown have also shed some light on what the start day might be, with the range appearing to be from 1330s to 1360s.

I think it looks pretty neat. I am not likely to abandon EU4 since it seems like EU5 is gonna be a different game so not really a replacement.
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Shame the UI looks like shit, otherwise it is really exciting.
 
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Anything that makes me think of Imperator has me worried, even if the system sounds nice in concept. CK3 was a step back, Vic3 was a fumble, now I'm forced to wonder if EU5 will be a full-on fall down the stairs.
 
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thefreshmaker said:
View attachment 5797707

Latest HoI4 expansion released at 41% positive. They just can't catch a break.

Most reviews imply that there is a free mod on the store that is higher quality, covers more countries, and even has focuses stolen from it for the DLC.
Click to expand...

Hoi4 fans get the DLC they deserve. I remember when the Together to Victory DLC gave all of thr commonwealth countries hard buffs and weaknesses. Decisions between having manpower or industry, etc. It made the game much more interesting for these countries and the fans threw a tantrum because they couldn't map paint as easily.
 
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EU5 looks interesting so far, if nothing else; I want to see what they'll do if the earliest start date is set before the Black Death. I don't have much faith for the base release being good, since Paradox has had a track record of releasing incomplete and buggy games for at least twelve years running. I can only judge too much because I like No Man's Sky, but it's still a bad practice that shouldn't be rewarded.
 
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