Paradox Studio Thread

[Professor Donger]

 

[Blackstar]

If EU5 fails I guess we'll just keep playing EU4 and OpenVic once that releases, maybe an OpenEuropa would get made?

 

[dame dudi jench]

It is going to be like the Civ7 release-lite in terms of game quality, except the backlash will be worse because Paradox customers are ten times more rabid and autistic than Civ players.

Paradox players have been accepting shitty unfinished games for decades now. I'd love for that to be true but they are pigs at the slop trough.

 

[Slap47]

If Eu5 flops I'm legitimately concerned Johan will kill himself. IR failure took the wind out of him. This is supposed to be his magnum opus, the culmination of 30 years of his lifes work making these games. I honestly don't think it will though. CK3's problem is its 10 miles wide and 10 inches deep. EU5 if anything will have content/system/mechanic overload, but there is enough there for a playerbase to latch onto, even if not the casual/meme audience of CK3. Vic3 sucked because Wiz was a stubborn buffoon that made warfare hardcoded to be unfun and to this day refuses to admit his baby has to go in its entirety.

Perhaps this is naive, but Paradox has released the game to far too many people for the game to be bad. At least a few of these creators would have said the game is dogshit by now.

Not just that but it will be the one to either save or confirm the death of the historical strategy game genre. Firaxis made Civ 7 sucked, Relic's Age of Empires 4 was weighed down with disappointing dlcs, and creative assembly screw the poach with Total War Pharaoh. Everything is on whether EU5 can save the day or not.

Age of Empires 2 quietly dropping constant bangers in the background.

 

[Slur Generator]

Perhaps this is naive, but Paradox has released the game to far too many people for the game to be bad. At least a few of these creators would have said the game is dogshit by now.

I think we could use more of that positive Polly attitude when it comes to EU5. Even if it doesn’t put the grand in grand strategy, I don’t think it will be bad.

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

Age of Empires 2 quietly dropping constant bangers in the background.

I'll admit I've never tried the definitive edition of 2 yet. Is the 3rd one's definitive edition good too?

 

[los pepes]

Wiz was also the guy who did the big 2.0 overhaul of Stellaris that fucked everything originally good. Didn't he also fuck stuff with 4.0?

He was behind 2.0 which fucked performance but overall (after 3-4 years of polish and balance) was for the best. He's been working on V3 since before its release so he has nothing to do with Stellaris or the 4.0 clusterfuck. That's honor goes to Eladrin.

 

[WarrenZHarding]

I'll admit I've never tried the definitive edition of 2 yet. Is the 3rd one's definitive edition good too?

2's def edition is essential to get all the dlc packs and gameplay tweaks that have released over the years. Most of them are pretty solid. 3's is good. Would recommend, but they havent supported it with additional content they way they have (and still do) with 2. 3 has a free to play version if you want to see if you'll like it before buying it.

 

[LovisXVI]

I think we could use more of that positive Polly attitude when it comes to EU5. Even if it doesn’t put the grand in grand strategy, I don’t think it will be bad.

If nothing else, I'll get to play Imperator Rome but finished, which is really all I wanted.

 

[Blackstar]

Ludi et Historia played EU5 for another 250 hours and this is his video on it.

• Performance: He said that it was really bad in the May build and he sugar-coated it, unplayable past the 1500s because of lag, crashes, and performance. All fixed now. Says that it's 8/10 now. Had like 1 crash in 50 hours, no stuttering or lag throughout most of the game.
• UI: It's mostly the same, there is now a new box in the outlier for missions, top right age UI has been extended further to the left, couple extra symbols in the UI for stuff like clicking a symbol to access an international org. Says that it's 10 times better than a very old UI that hasn't been made public. Forts are now more visible on the map, can alter the building sizes. Tab colors vary more now, feels a lot more polished.
  • Production tab is more streamlined, informative and doesn't take up as much space, needs to be color coded more
  • Market screen is still confusing and hard to understand. Trade has been seriously nerfed compared to the May builds where you could make thousands through it by the 1400s you'll now be lucky to make 40/50 (which is still a big amount)
  • UI isn't informative everywhere, he'll have a modifier of "level of neglect" and he knows where he can see its debuffs but he can't find where the actual display of it is. There is a mess of tabs within tabs making it hard to find some information.
  • Final review of the current UI is 7/10
• Flavor:
  • Surprised by how much flavor the game already has. As a gypsy Romanian is upset at the Trannievanian demographics at the start of the game being majority Hungarian and German but acknowledges his bias. Says that some flavor is implemented wrong and has reported it. The Moldovan principalities start out as vassals of the Golden Horde but there's a historical event where Hungary consolidates them into their own march, this happens in the game but it results in you not joining and turning into Moldova if you're playing as one of them because you're a Horde vassal so you're forced to declare war on them to gain independence if you want to become it.
  • Daimyos are now playable, previously were broke as shit but now can make money
  • A cool bit of flavor if you're part of the Tatar Yoke, if you don't pay enough tribute you will lose development, you have an economy slider for paying tribute. Says that development is one of the most important things in the game and that it's hard to get.
  • Final current review: 9/10
• Balance:
  • Current balance is a 8.5/10
    • Historical AI is an option but isn't perfectly balanced. In 1420 owned all of North-East Germany as Brandenburg and could field a standing army of 800 soldiers, while an OPM next to him fielded 3k. Says that it might be a skill issue because of the AI being made a lot better but it still has an issue with handling forts now although Johan is aware of it.
    • Historical nations are very strong, Ottomans usually have half of Anatolia and parts of Balkans by the 1420s, Byzantines collapse in almost every campaign. Is currently playing them and will do another Byzantium AAR after he's done, they now have scripted civil wars, guaranteed 2/3, start at -90 stability, harder to remove estate privileges since they require 95 legitimacy and you're at 0 for the first century. Game is better scripted and fluid now.
    • The AI can handle wars on all of its fronts and has good army composition.
    • AI can colonize properly now, previously it barely could.
    • France is too OP, becomes HRE emperor all the time, has 5x as much base tax as the other countries and by the 1600s is impossible to fight against. Base tax in 1450 in England was around 480, was 4000 in France.
    • AI and automation: AI nations are really good militarily and economically. The automation is decent but trade automation is way less profitable. In the latest versions had 2-3 ducats of automated trade income as Brandenburg on start and had 14 when he did it manually. You can half/half it and automate certain parts of a system and manually do other parts such as automatically taxing certain estates and not others.
    • Castille is insanely overpowered
    • Expansion has been massively nerfed, can only expand in the HRE with a cb after the Golden Bull has been passed, expansionism/AE is way harder on you. No longer possible to have most of the Balkans and half of Anatolia as Byzantium by the 1400s unless you have insanely good RNG
    • Smaller plagues other than the black death kill more pops now, increasing the importance of building hospitals
  • Currently his biggest issue with the game is the UI but it's not as important as the other parts of the game, wonders if there is enough time left to fix all the smaller issues remaining and that he's hopeful for the launch.
    
    

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Not just that but it will be the one to either save or confirm the death of the historical strategy game genre. Firaxis made Civ 7 sucked, Relic's Age of Empires 4 was weighed down with disappointing dlcs, and creative assembly screw the poach with Total War Pharaoh. Everything is on whether EU5 can save the day or not.

That's overly dramatic. Creative Assembly, from what I've heard, hasn't gotten much credit for it but they restored Total War Pharaoh to something decent. Likewise Company of Heroes 3. Old World is better than Civ and very good on its own merits in the 4X space.

If there’s a lot of trash out there that just opens the market up to a newcomer, like Paradox did with Cities Skylines.

 

[Kane Lives]

France is too OP, becomes HRE emperor all the time, has 5x as much base tax as the other countries and by the 1600s is impossible to fight against. Base tax in 1450 in England was around 480, was 4000 in France.

Welcome back, BBB.

Fuck me, France is going to be a nightmare to deal with as a German prince or England again isn't it?

 

[Blackstar]

This most likely includes both all the time paused and not full speed playing.

 

[LovisXVI]

Watched this AAR from Playmaker and I am taking away two main things:
1. Playing tall is not only viable but fun, even to a habitual blobber
2. The modifier stacking is less about ex-nihilo economics, but taking advantage of the existing, real economy through better trade advantage, building RGOs and superior control to extract taxes. Improving infrastructure is actually very important like it was historically.
Looking forward to ROADMAXXING.

 

[Radola Gajda]

That's overly dramatic. Creative Assembly, from what I've heard, hasn't gotten much credit for it but they restored Total War Pharaoh to something decent. Likewise Company of Heroes 3. Old World is better than Civ and very good on its own merits in the 4X space.

I believe Pharaoh was developed by CAs Bulgarian sweatshop.

This most likely includes both all the time paused and not full speed playing.
View attachment 7946151

Question is if there is reason to play so long in eu4 only big thing post absolutism is revolution. And I hate how it was implemented.

 

[Blackstar]

I believe Pharaoh was developed by CAs Bulgarian sweatshop.

Question is if there is reason to play so long in eu4 only big thing post absolutism is revolution. And I hate how it was implemented.

From what they said the game feels way more engaging to play in the mid-late game since you're having to manage internal stuff, whereas EU4 was very shallow on that front and there was very little to do at peace.

 

[Snekposter]

I believe Pharaoh was developed by CAs Bulgarian sweatshop.

They've also moved over to Warhammer 3 now, where they're actually pushing regular updates through unlike the lazy niggers at CA's main studio.

 

[Kane Lives]

They've also moved over to Warhammer 3 now, where they're actually pushing regular updates through unlike the lazy niggers at CA's main studio.

Still not doing a good job, unfortunately. Their latest """update""" to bring Tomb Kings and Lizardmen up to speed just broke the LM AI instead, and there's a growing problem of the AI just squatting around a settlement for some reason.

 

[The Blue Morpho]

Paradox players have been accepting shitty unfinished games for decades now. I'd love for that to be true but they are pigs at the slop trough.

I know what you're trying to say, but this isn't a DLC for a game that the playerbase has already invested a half-grand into, this is a brand new title. The sunk-cost fallacy that usually kicks-in when Paradox shits out a new slop-pack will not engage for this, and we see what happens to games where that is the case. Imperator anyone?

It needs to be better than pretty good, it needs to be the next flagship title for the entire studio.

 

[Lonjil]

Been playing with the latest stellaris DLC to see whats changed and honestly its a really mixed leaning to negative bag for me. There are a few additions that I like, the new ship models and origins are cool imo, but there are still a lot of bugs that have been around for ages. Ai empires still seemingly do nothing on their planets. I've met three other ai empires and all three are crumbling to economic and stability issues, and they have not built anything other than the starter buildings.


I don't know what I really expected from the devs at this point honestly.