Paradox Studio Thread

[Lightning]

Any opinions on the latest Stellaris dlc?

Consoomer minded redditors would have you believe it's the greatest addition since Utopia, but I'm sorta sceptical on the matter:

• Individualistic machines have little to no flavour about them: it's like playing organics with a machine portrait (with mandatory pop assembly). They still get pop growth techs without actual organics present, event chains that only make sense for organics, and overall just seem like a tacked on addition.
• The new crisis, while definitely well made and lore rich, is rather heavily scripted in its sequence. It will always beat up fallen empires, give you demands and special projects (technically optional, though she does punish you for not going with them) while the crisis sits and does nothing, and you can only fight it after doing a bunch of those projects/the crisis' doom timer reaches a certain point (AI can only declare war under the same conditions, and AI being incompetent means you're largely on your own). Now it's true the old crises weren't exactly impressive in what they do (spawn and burnrape), but their lack of scripted sequence gives them a sort of unpredictable outcome for the ongoing storyline.
• Related to the above, despite being the machine/synth expansion, the crisis is most easily beaten by calling up daddy Shroud and paying some space crack to bail you out. Psionic bias strikes again!
• Balance is completely out of line with new machine ascensions and Cosmogenesis giving you stupid amounts of resources/research right after they had the tech nerf update. They are planning on balancing it soon so at least they're aware of it.

It's not all negatives, though, the new kilostructures are definitely welcome additions, the soundtrack is a banger, and the origins and civics are quite satisfying.

 

[thefreshmaker]

Any opinions on the latest Stellaris dlc?

It's just as bad as Total War DLC.

Just because you add a few pages of text to pop-up screens and some reskins of the character models to go with your +5% energy generation -10% charisma effects does not mean anything.

I know with abstraction it makes more sense to change modifiers, but I'm just getting sick and tired of every new piece of "cawntent" or "gameplay" just being buttons or graphics assets that add or reduce modifiers to statistics.

 

[foreman 89]

Has anyone here every player the Imperium Universalis mod for EU4?

 

[The Gene Genie]

For any CS1fags, how the FUCK do I install the mods properly? Every time I load up half of the mods don't engage properly and either conflict or say they're all fucked up. The tutorial videos on Youtube don't make any sense to me.

 

[Slap47]

I want to give Crusader Kings another spin, should I go with 2 or 3? (So the actual question is apparently, is CK3 a proper game now) Any essential mods if so? I know it sucks when somebody walks into a thread and asks a question like that, but I haven't played any of these in years.

CK2 is free and all of its DLCs are optional.

 

[Blackstar]

New Tinto Talks, this time about a new feature, inspiring by EU4 incidents and Vic2 international crisis
Situations! Described by Johan as a narrative and mechanical guide for the game, "content that involves multiple countries over a period of time. In Project Caesar, we are using this feature to create a historical narrative that creates different experiences, as our goal is to have an immersive and varied experience for the player."

Black Death will be a situation, which can be set to occur randomly or be disabled in the game rules



The Italian Wars will be another situation triggered by French/Iberian major powers or the Emperor declaring war on an Italian power. Up to 6 possible leagues, French, Iberian, Imperial, and 3 Italian. A League wins the situation by controlling 60% of the region via conquest or diplomacy. Italians Leagues can also win be using special peace deals to dismantle the foreign leagues.



The Red Turban rebellion will occur in China if Yuan is under 25 stability and the estates are discontent. The rebellion will be an International Organization and the Situation will spawn events force releasing Chinese tags that will join the IO and declare war on Yuan. Rebel countries will have loyalty ranging from -100 to 100, and if they get over 0 they will leave the revellion.

Green are loyal, orange are rebels, and red is the strongest rebel

Other situations that were mentioned were the Western Schism, 100 Years War, and Sengoku Jidai.

 

[General Emílio Médici]

Looking past the scenarios displayed, this seems to showcase how the new engine and code handles the aspects of gameplay needed to make a simulation of the contrived feudal-international conflicts of the period work. I approve.

 

[NvII iS 8ulLt f0R 88C]

Johan is making my knees touch the ground again:


This is just more proof that the pvnished Johan arc is real.

 

[Slap47]

Play Victoria 3 -> It's good

Dunno why everybody was bitching.

 

[NvII iS 8ulLt f0R 88C]

Play Victoria 3 -> It's good

Dunno why everybody was bitching.

>nooooo I SNEED my heckin' toy soldierooskies nooooooooooo!
I say this and do this.

Spoiler

Them not adding soldier stacks to move around and deep war mechanics shows a design policy against putting yourself in shoes of generals, larping, etc. Vic 2 devs unironically think their audience should get a monocle and a glass of wine and watch the green line go up in a glorified calculator. But even then an economics simulator where the economic aspect is shit (they copied the civilian factory system form hoi4). Also the devs have an obnoxious political agenda/gameplay bias, and have to compensate with putting "le wacky scenarios!" so soymen go soyface over it.

 

[Serbian Peacekeepers]

(they copied the civilian factory system form hoi4)

Wait did they just straight copy them? Why take that and not the war system too, why take the worst part of HoI4 and not the best part? Hell why take anything from HoI4 at all?

 

[Monopolywheel]

View attachment 6036665
>nooooo I SNEED my heckin' toy soldierooskies nooooooooooo!
I say this and do this.

Don't forget the multiculturalism policy
Very overpowered and super gay

 

[Blackstar]

Also don't forget that Vic 3 was so bad that people are now making an open source remake of Vic 2 (with paradox's permission). There haven't been any updates since my last post on the topic since they're doing it all in their free time and focusing on getting work done instead of trying to publish something every week but the github for the project is constantly getting updated and worked on.

 

[thefreshmaker]

Play Victoria 3 -> It's good

All there is the economy and it's worse than something like Command and Conquer or Total War where economics = widget extraction.

Wait did they just straight copy them?

Not exactly - the "economy" is 90% building though, and it's not a real economy. It may as well be HoI4 because it's not about market forces, it's about rock paper scissors; just replace "I must build more factories to build more rifles to take more tiles" with "I must build more construction sectors to build more iron mines to build more machine tools to build more construction sectors".

Victoria 3 has close to the simplest game play loop of any game I've played since the Commodore 64 era. The AI is brain dead so there's no diplomacy and nothing happens - you are really only competing to be the largest economy, which becomes the exact same loop for every single country in every playthrough. You can't even play as an agricultural or resource exporter to industrial giants and make a killing ala Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, etc, because trade routes are limited to a maximum of a randomly selected 50-150 units (Russia with +2,000 oil could never trade it all to -2,000 oil UK, only say 100 units).

If you want to do anything other than subsistence farming (which would mean literally just hitting go and staring at the screen as that type of building is automated on pop count) you need to build construction sectors, mine iron, and build machine tools. Tier 1 agricultural buildings can't compete with subsistence farms except at huge scales (as in dozens more of the building in the same state when subsistence farms usually start in the hundreds of slots), and Tier 2 begins to require fertilizer. Fertilizer needs sulfur, which needs to be mined. Mines require machine tools, machine tools require iron. You can't find enough people to trade because they are only able to send you so much, so you end up turning into an industrial giant anyway because there are zero other options.

Contrast with Vicky 2 where the market was global. There were problems (eg: the strongest country had first dibs and could just absorb the world's supply of a certain goods and starve everyone else) but at least it recognized that in real life there is no law of physics preventing more than 100 units of wheat having the same end destination.

 

[Anti Alien Alarm]

I'll never forget the game in which I went from 58 AD to 1800 AD playing as a native American tribe in Extended Timeline. Took me like 2 months, and I only stopped once my save started glitching up.

I started in Alabama, conquered all the petty tribes in the southeast (didn't have the New World DLCs and others that make playing as a Native American a different experience than playing as a normal European country). Used a console command to give myself a settler (in order to get a settler through the focus tree normally, you need to conquer Powhatan, which is impossible as they're geographically isolated). Then gradually settled provinces further and further north until I reached the tribes in the rust belt and New England and conquered them all. Next couple of hundred years was then spent colonizing the coast to get access to Mexico and block off the eventual arrival of European colonizers.

Conquering Mexico and its coalition wars was easy, on part of southeastern America being chock-full of tobacco provinces (seriously, I was making serious ganja with 3.00 ducats per whatever (I forget what that number means)), which suffered constant plagues and drought due to Extended Timeline's feature of keeping development of the provinces below 21 before the mainline game time of 1444 to 1821 of But by now I was suffering SERIOUS overextension, not like it mattered anyway lol.

Now with so much money, conquering what little there was in South America was a cakewalk. Then moved on to South Africa, colonized that. And then began the instability. In which I gave up on the run during a mega death hyper war with India over Mozambique.

Would like to do it again with a European country, but don't have months of free time anymore.

 

[Happy Camper]

I'll never forget the game in which I went from 58 AD to 1800 AD playing as a native American tribe in Extended Timeline. Took me like 2 months, and I only stopped once my save started glitching up.

I started in Alabama, conquered all the petty tribes in the southeast (didn't have the New World DLCs and others that make playing as a Native American a different experience than playing as a normal European country). Used a console command to give myself a settler (in order to get a settler through the focus tree normally, you need to conquer Powhatan, which is impossible as they're geographically isolated). Then gradually settled provinces further and further north until I reached the tribes in the rust belt and New England and conquered them all. Next couple of hundred years was then spent colonizing the coast to get access to Mexico and block off the eventual arrival of European colonizers.

Conquering Mexico and its coalition wars was easy, on part of southeastern America being chock-full of tobacco provinces (seriously, I was making serious ganja with 3.00 ducats per whatever (I forget what that number means)), which suffered constant plagues and drought due to Extended Timeline's feature of keeping development of the provinces below 21 before the mainline game time of 1444 to 1821 of But by now I was suffering SERIOUS overextension, not like it mattered anyway lol.

Now with so much money, conquering what little there was in South America was a cakewalk. Then moved on to South Africa, colonized that. And then began the instability. In which I gave up on the run during a mega death hyper war with India over Mozambique.

Would like to do it again with a European country, but don't have months of free time anymore.

Sounds like a fun campaign at least, that's for sure. Hope you can find time to enjoy some more campaigns in the future as well.

 

[Anti Alien Alarm]

Sounds like a fun campaign at least, that's for sure. Hope you can find time to enjoy some more campaigns in the future as well.

Really need to get back into the game. Haven't properly played since the 1.31 days.

 

[Slap47]

View attachment 6036665
>nooooo I SNEED my heckin' toy soldierooskies nooooooooooo!
I say this and do this.

Spoiler

Them not adding soldier stacks to move around and deep war mechanics shows a design policy against putting yourself in shoes of generals, larping, etc. Vic 2 devs unironically think their audience should get a monocle and a glass of wine and watch the green line go up in a glorified calculator. But even then an economics simulator where the economic aspect is shit (they copied the civilian factory system form hoi4). Also the devs have an obnoxious political agenda/gameplay bias, and have to compensate with putting "le wacky scenarios!" so soymen go soyface over it.

I don't see the point of getting mad about this. People can only pay attention to so much and having to tick-perfectly manage your armies distracts from the everything else. Your job is to keep the armies well supplied and equipped with the best.

Being able to overcome tech superior and huge numbers of enemies by gaming the AI defeats the purpose of everything else.

 

[Happy Camper]

I don't see the point of getting mad about this. People can only pay attention to so much and having to tick-perfectly manage your armies distracts from the everything else. Your job is to keep the armies well supplied and equipped with the best.

Being able to overcome tech superior and huge numbers of enemies by gaming the AI defeats the purpose of everything else.

Being able to overcome superior tech and huge numbers with a good strategy, a well-timed gambit or even the luck of the draw when the odds were stacked against you have led to some of my favorite moments in Paradox games over the years. Having a good run in something like EU4 where your underdog manages to beat back an Ottoman charge because the terrain and general turned the tide against what would've been an unbeatable foe in a "fair fight" on open ground can be exhilarating! I bet just about everyone has one of those stories around here. Even the inverse can make for some fun memories especially if it was shared with friends.

Just having it all go down to a numbers game makes it feel very sterile and overly mechanical to me. It robs the game of something I really enjoy about Paradox's titles, which is the more direct strategic element on the battlefield and the more personal touch you can have in campaigns. I'm not saying you can't enjoy the game for what it is, but hopefully you can see why other people prefer commanding their armies more directly and why not having that option would be a big deal to a lot of people.

 

[Blackstar]

New Tinto Maps! Poland, Ruthenia, and the Baltics

A bigger picture of what’s going on in this region today, as we hadn’t shown it entirely before. To the west, the Kingdom of Poland is ruled by Casimir III of the House of Piast. It is not a completely unified kingdom, as there are several powerful vassals under him, most of them also Piasts themselves.

To the east, the Duchy of Lithuania is ruled by Gediminas, who has greatly expanded the influence of the country into Russian lands (side note: Gediminas entitled himself in his diplomatic correspondence ‘king’, but was considered by the Pope ‘king or duke’, and the title of Grand Duke wouldn’t be formally adopted until later [most likely replicating the Russian title ‘Grand Prince’]. That’s why Lithuania starts as a Duchy, although it will have an event that would make it possible to adopt the dynamic country name of ‘Grand Duchy’).

To the south, the principalities of Kyiv and Galicia-Volhynia have recently fallen under foreign influence, the first ruled by Theodor, brother of Gediminas of Lithuania; and the second by Yuri II, also from the Piast dynasty.

To the north, the Teutonic and Livonian Orders, which conquered the lands of Prussia and Livonia a century ago, are at war against Poland and Lithuania, after a long-established rivalry.

Also, a side note: we will talk about Moldavia in the Tinto Maps devoted to the Carpathian region, as it’s currently in a ‘placeholder’ spot.

A new map mode, the Diplomatic one! The game starts with an ongoing war between Poland, Lithuania, and their respective vassals, on one side, and the Teutonic and Livonian Orders, and Bohemia and its vassals, on the other.

Locations

Provinces



Terrain

The Baltic lands have an interesting mix of different cultures. ‘Western Baltic’ culture represents the people speaking a West Baltic language (Old Prussians, Yotvingians, Curonians, etc.), while ‘Prussian’ is the culture of the German settlers of that area; on that style, we have a ‘Baltic German’ culture in the lands of Livonia and Estonia that also got settled by German-speaking people. The divide between Polish, Ruthenian, and Aukstaitian might be too deep, so we will most likely add a bit more mixed situation in the borders between these cultures.

A region with a more interesting religious setup! Apart from the Catholic-Orthodox divide, you can also see the Romuva religion, which was a hot topic in 1337 (shall the Dukes of Lithuania convert to Catholicism, or stay Pagan?). Red stripes to the north are other Animist populations. Also, disregard the Sunni region to the southeast, as we have to review all the pops of the Pontic Steppes, as well.

From the distribution of the materials, maybe a couple of things might catch your eye. The first is that there’s an Amber good present on the shores of the Baltic Sea. The second is that the Tatra Mountains, in Slovakia, have a bunch of precious metals, which makes them a very interesting area to exploit and develop.


The population of the region is divided into country and location views. Two notes: The total population of Estonia is not 711K people, that’s the total for its owner, Denmark. Second, we’ve read your feedback regarding the population map mode, and we’ll take a look at how to improve the visualization of the data, making it better for you.

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