Paradox Studio Thread

[Sooty Soot]

Picked up Imperator, went in completely blind with Invictus and I've been doing pretty well for myself. It's currently 265 BC and I had a civil war because the guy in charge of my (only) Legion rebelled with 10k men, my Italian allies have been carrying me since they make for an effective vassal swarm to carpetsiege and snipe enemy armies. I think I get the gist of the game so far, just gotta get Tarentum and the and the last bit of the boot held by Epirus and I can move onto Sicily and Cisalpine Gaul.
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Update, I'm getting to that point in most Paradox games where I'm doing real well at the game until I run into a massive deficit for one reason or another, I integrated all of my Italian puppets and took the rest of southern Italy and the Syracusian half of Sicily and pushed north to Cisalpine Gaul leaving only Piedmont in the hands of a sizeable Gallic tribe. Unfortunately, I'm blowing tons of gold on fort maintenance and considering I went in totally blind I have no clue how the economy works, much less building construction and destruction. I've only built a few buildings in Rome and the surrounding countryside and I don't know how to build roads, I've also set most of my governors to extract wealth when most of them were on cultural assimilation bar Cisalpine Gaul, and most of my provinces have automatic trade yet I'm occasionally getting alerts that Latium (i.e Rome) is low on food. Other than that, I've had times where I've been making 16 gold and others where I'm in a deficit of 5-6 gold, I think I'm due for a 2nd run after I familiarize myself with the economy.

Also for some reason tribals have a tendency to really consolidate rather quickly.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I don't think complacency is as much decadence, but rather a representation that a society without meaningful competition will lower standards and be less innovative, so can compete less with opponents who have been forced to innovate and compete to a higher level of quality. I think that complacency should be able to be staved off by having a freer, more internally competitive society, though that might be seen as taking an ideological/meta stance, which I am not averse to, as I am a bit of whig tbh, but I can see why PDX might not want to.

They're similar in they both have the "you couldn't be fucked to keep the standards you should have" angle.
But one is "you became a gay softboi/an antisocial predator because wealth made you weak" and the other is more specifically institutional ("we haven't fought a war in 30 years, why should I actually maintain this tank").

 

[Computer God Autism]

Do you think decadence is a legitimate cycle in history, and if so, does it belong as a mechanic and how? Not referring specifically to Islamic decadence.

I think entropy is a very real and very observable force throughout history.

How you try to quantify what is ultimately a spiritual rot in a numbers-driven computer simulation map painter, however, is one question, and another is whether institutional collapse, autistic theological slap-fights and embarrassing military losses are a cause or a symptom.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

I think entropy is a very real and very observable force throughout history.

How you try to quantify what is ultimately a spiritual rot in a numbers-driven computer simulation map painter, however, is one question, and another is whether institutional collapse, autistic theological slap-fights and embarrassing military losses are a cause or a symptom.

I was brainstorming it (it overlaps with my real job) and the best I’ve come up with so far is that elites tend to network horizontally because the enjoyment of their wealth requires friends that can buy in to the same activities, poor people constantly scam and beg, and their social needs in a work sense can only be met by people in a similar background. This then makes them a cultural island. Both through natural drift and intentional faggotry they develop elite culture as shibboleths/signals to filter out newcomers and raise costs. Classic stigma and sacrifice model of a club forming. But this psychologically distances them from the public more, plus their horizontal connections past a level reach across borders more easily, and boom, you get cosmopolitan parasites who now have a stake in cannibalizing their society instead of investing in it as sustainable parasites. Decadence.

Then there’s a whole separate source of problems, elite overproduction, where society makes more potential elites than you have elite jobs to fill and it results in revolution from disenfranchised elites using the poor to change the regime. Not a pure Marxist thing with classes, more about oversupply; the Communists themselves are often minor nobility, lawyers, bourgeoisie disaffected.

I don’t know if this can be combined somehow. Like maybe the cost of being elite grows, being elite itself becomes more attractive, and that itself ratchets exploitation.

But at any rate, that take on “decadence” is the “banquets at Versailles while the peasants starve” kind of decadence, and that’s very different from I think the real decadence you see now in democracies with consumerism, indiscipline, do you want etc

 

[Computer God Autism]

But at any rate, that take on “decadence” is the “banquets at Versailles while the peasants starve” kind of decadence, and that’s very different from I think the real decadence you see now in democracies with consumerism, indiscipline, do you want etc

How so? The exact circumstances might have changed but only five years ago the elites of democracies were filming themselves holding parties while the broader public were being forced to stay inside and watch as their countries and savings burned.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

How so? The exact circumstances might have changed but only five years ago the elites of democracies were filming themselves holding parties while the broader public were being forced to stay inside and watch as their countries and savings burned.

Today it’s a mass phenomenon. It isn’t just European aristocrats fucking each other at swinger parties, it’s the village daughters being whores. It isn’t just the count eating a fifteen course meal, it’s the mechanic eating junk food. The scale of what’s a luxury or misbehavior changes with means but the living beyond a persons means and breakdown of regular social mores, I could be wrong - moral panics are as old as time - but I feel like it’s much more widespread now.

Edit: Short answer Jerry Springer, MTV, BET and their spiritual descendants

 

[>IMPLYING]

Do you think decadence is a legitimate cycle in history, and if so, does it belong as a mechanic and how? Not referring specifically to Islamic decadence.

Complacency/stagnation is the rhyme throughout history. I think the decadence mechanic in CK2 was the devs trying to go about implementing the Muslim trend of: Rise/consolidation -> decades/centuries of fuck-all -> decline/stagnation -> inexplicable collapse – if they weren't swallowed by a neighbour first.

Islam is a weird religion because it has within it one oxymoronic characteristic that's unusual to think about. It's a religion that incentivises war on non-adherents, whilst simultaneously disincentivising it. In Islam it's a sin to think about violence during peacetime, and it's also a sin to flee battle. The former stymies technological innovation, the latter means if you start a battle you know you're a risk of losing, then logically you ought not to declare it because you're doing something with full knowledge you're going to sin. It's like a Christian walking into a brothel knowing they'll jump into bed with the first harlot they see, or a Jew biting into a sandwich that it may contain pork – it's just not kosher.

Retreating = sin made Muslims risk-averse because starting a fight knowing you're at risk of being forced to flee means pissing off Allah, so it's less risky to avoid war altogether unless you already know in advance you're going to win it, or expect to, at least.*

So once a Muslim state reaches their ceiling, and the risk of waring with an equally sized neighbour is too high, they more or less just remain as-is until their stagnancy causes their decline. They can't innovate on how they commit/fight war because they're both lacking the necessity that drives innovation whilst at the same time can't do anything viewed as "unislamic" by their people or else said people are fully justified in removing them.

One thing that's unislamic is "violence" (not war, distinction applies here), so to innovate on new means of carrying out violence is unislamic, so trying to invent new shit to best their opponents at war in advance is a no-go - so is building up your army to be larger than your neighbours or something**.

There's a lot of weird little things like that which explain their civilisational trends and once you've become privy to this you can more or less see it everywhere. Since they also believe you can make up for sinful actions with virtuous ones,

You know how Communists say the Soviet Union wasn't real Communism? They think that because the USSR didn't do the whole "self-abolishment of the state"-thing that's supposed to happen under Marxism. This is effectively the same logic employed by Muslims regarding their "peaceful" religion.

TLDR: Islam hastens societal complacency since it shuns risk-taking and "violence" ergo no wars unless neighbour is certain to lose, no innovation in matters of "violence" (nothing says they can't task or commission a non-Muslim to do this on their behalf however or simply steal the innovations of non-Muslims), and keeping society virtuous to increase the odds of their people getting into heaven discourages rocking the boat too.

TLDRTLDR: Islam encourages stagnation since it lacks developmental inertia by discouraging anything Unislamic.

*I think this in part lead to the Muslim use of slave soldiers (Janissaries/Mamluks) because in Islam a slave can't disobey their master, so being commanded to run as an obedient slave cancels out the sin caused by running from battle. The slaves themselves are a loophole because you can't enslave Muslims in Islam, but making them Muslim after the enslavement doesn't violate the rule. So effectively the use of slave soldiers are a double loophole in Islam to facilitate the creation of Muslim soldiers who can retreat without pissing off Allah. At the same time these guys are your elite fighting force so you shower them with shit to keep them happy, but when you've got nothing to send these guys against you've basically got a mass of highly trained, well-equipped soldiers who have all the justification in the world to throw a hissy fit whilst simultaneously not desiring the loss of their slave-status because it came with a lot of benefits.

**The purpose of a Muslim ruler is to more or less shape society in such a way that guarantees their people can get to heaven, so even though some shit isn't strictly banned in Islam (Gambling or Drinking), since a "good Muslim" (paraphrasing) doesn't need either, it's better to force the common people to do without since it'll help them be more virtuous. Some instances of Islamic tolerance are partly because it doesn't matter if a Christian/Hindu/whoever doesn't follow Islam, because the priority is on how the Muslims comport themselves to best increase their odds of getting into heaven. This responsibility on the ruler is also a possible part of the "decadence" mechanic, because if Muslims see their ruler isn't doing a good job of making society virtuous, it then becomes a virtuous act in of itself to remove said ruler. This is also meant to be something of an anti-complacency mechanic within the Islamic faith itself because, like with he Mughals flip-flopping between tolerating and being intolerant of Hindus, it's probably helping to give the illusion of pushing society more towards virtue. Still doesn't help with stagnation though which inevitably kills these states. If a ruler sees things are "good enough" then they won't rock the boat, even as their neighbours surpass them. Surrendering in a war is also unislamic so one risky conflict, a loss of a significant chunk of the army, and a citizenry pissed off their leader who is now a sinner in the eyes of God, is one recipe for disaster. Casualties don't matter, so long as you "win". Saddam Hussein losing (in the process of losing) the war with the coalition had more to do with him being removed from power than the thousands who died in the war with Iran, it's kind've nuts.

(I think complacency and aversion to any and all risk can essentially explain a lot of the decline in the West. Anything see as a "risk" to the ruling classes is basically shunned, and everything is more or less a derivative of what's been done before or is designed to cause/prevent as much harm as possible.)

 

[This User]

sir this is the paradox thread

 

[Computer God Autism]

So once a Muslim state reaches their ceiling, and the risk of waring with an equally sized neighbour is too high, they more or less just remain as-is until their stagnancy causes their decline. They can't innovate on how they commit/fight war because they're both lacking the necessity that drives innovation whilst at the same time can't do anything viewed as "unislamic" by their people or else said people are fully justified in removing them.

One thing that's unislamic is "violence" (not war, distinction applies here), so to innovate on new means of carrying out violence is unislamic, so trying to invent new shit to best their opponents at war in advance is a no-go - so is building up your army to be larger than your neighbours or something**.

This may be a correct academic assessment but I think it falls apart when you consider that the Dar-al Islam's understanding of warfare and violence is fundamentally different to that of the Christian west's. Thousands of officially unaffiliated raiders pouring across a border in yearly raids and completely decimating an area wouldn't be considered war under a Westphalian or even Christian feudal model, but that was the reality of war for Islamic states once they ran into neighbors they couldn't conventional conquer in a single go. It's what turned central Anatolia into a wasteland and Hungary from one of the most prosperous countries in Europe into one of the most depopulated. The Ottoman empire's official state policy was that it was borderless; it was always in a state of warfare with Christendom, and any treaty was just a truce.

What is Unislamic, at least in mainstream Islam, however, is to assert that Allah has a nature, as that could restrict his agency. You know, the thing that implies that there could be a rational order to the world worth investigating.

 

[Slap47]

Do you think decadence is a legitimate cycle in history, and if so, does it belong as a mechanic and how?

Its kinda silly. Atrophy would be a better way to describe it. You create a bureaucratic process to solve a problem and that creates a problem. You then create another bureaucratic process until its a tangled mess and you cannot get anything done or do anything new. Alongside this you have powerful groups using the state to create monopolies and choke out competition.

This happened in Europe through mercantilism and guilds, but then those monopolies and bureaucracies competed with each other through constant wars. They would have otherwise just degenerated and stagnated their countries. One reason attributed to the failure of France to industrialize was their strong guilds and centralized bureaucracy.

Russian orcs

Russian soldiers were quite good during the 18th century. Napoleon comments that they were excellent soldiers lead by atrocious officers and they usually matched the French man for man at battles. A great what-if scenario is general Suvorov actually facing Napoleon in battle because of how well he and his armies performed.

 

[Computer God Autism]

One reason attributed to the failure of France to industrialize was their strong guilds and centralized bureaucracy.

Both of which are bs. The guilds were moribund long before the advent of industrialism, Germany took their bureaucratic proceduralism to greater extremes than France and became more industrialized than it, and the very word sabotage comes from the French 'sabot' from the habit of early French industrial workers in throwing their shoes into new industrial machines so their jobs wouldn't be obsoleted.

The failure of France to industrialize to the scale of Britain and Germany has much more to do with the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars completely and unnecessarily destroying French demography and large portions of their economy in the middle of the first industrial revolution.

 

[Slap47]

The failure of France to industrialize to the scale of Britain and Germany has much more to do with the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars completely and unnecessarily destroying French demography and large portions of their economy in the middle of the first industrial revolution.

The divergence starts waaaay before that. France had much more people working in agriculture in the 17th century and there was very little pressure for them move around due to higher peasant land ownership. French guilds were always powerful because providing stuff like good bread and products was seen as part of the states duty to keep order. Meanwhile Britain had literal bread scares about bakers putting adulterants in bread and a reputation for products being low quality because of how weak their systems were.

Britain bankrolled the coalitions and won the Napoleonic wars because it had a superior economy with more industrialization. France was literally a century behind in GDP. Even Napoleon recognized the importance of denying the British markets for their goods.

You can even see this play out in Canada. French and English culture had different outcomes.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

European aristocrats fucking each other at swinger parties

BTW for all of you this was a real thing, these degenerates had preplanned doors they would knock on at night. At some point this one chief degenerate's sex parties were exposed, some dispute with his wife or something, and it became a major scandal that was reported on like celebrity tabloid journalism. George and Martha Washington followed it religiously.

 

[thefreshmaker]

Are you making sure to draw and assign front lines on a per army basis instead of the field marshal?

>not knowing how to use a poorly-explained system that intentionally dumbs down and removes gameplay is a skill issue

You don't hate HoI4 readers enough

 

[Slap47]

BTW for all of you this was a real thing, these degenerates had preplanned doors they would knock on at night. At some point this one chief degenerate's sex parties were exposed, some dispute with his wife or something, and it became a major scandal that was reported on like celebrity tabloid journalism. George and Martha Washington followed it religiously.

The white makeup and wigs became trendy because certain people needed to coverup rampant syphilis.

 

[Yap]

Some additional info from Johan:

• "When it comes to War Exhaustion the impact has been getting worse for 1.1, with morale 25% worse per point, and the population loss 66% worse from it."
• Occupation impact has doubled.

I would argue they needed to add tactics debuff instead of increasing morale debuff, because it only accomplishes making the enemy loose the battle faster -> loose less men as a result. Walking into a no morale big army just makes it retreat again and not suffer losses, which sucks.
Population loss should not have been made worse tbh, it is punishing as is, for reference play England and try to deal with English civil war disaster via timing the disaster out.
The problem is that to stack War Exhaust you needed to full siege the enemy, which is why doubling the war exhaustion gain from occupation is amazing.

They also should change how AI upgrades it's locations, invading India in 1700 and every location is a city is just AIDS. EVERY PROVINCE COSTS 200 WARSCORE ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME.

 

[Computer God Autism]

The divergence starts waaaay before that. France had much more people working in agriculture in the 17th century and there was very little pressure for them move around due to higher peasant land ownership. French guilds were always powerful because providing stuff like good bread and products was seen as part of the states duty to keep order. Meanwhile Britain had literal bread scares about bakers putting adulterants in bread and a reputation for products being low quality because of how weak their systems were.

Sure, you can trace the divergence in industrialization all the way back to enclosures, unfortunately for this point the changes that occurred in Britain over the sixteenth and seventeenth century to enable its early industrial lead did not produce the economic disparity in the eighteenth century that Britain enjoyed over France by the late nineteenth century. It was a very gradual process, but it produced a disparity that only become clearly insurmountable in the 1860s after the demographic desolation that the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars created started to really manifest.

I also don't think bread scares are particularly useful for measuring the strength of an eighteenth century bureaucracy or early industrialism. All of Europe was repeatedly struck with famine in the eighteenth century despite those quality controls - one bout even contributed to the French Revolution - and the only country that managed to largely avoid famine during that period was Britain. The French did care more about the quality of their goods, that is true, but again that had not produced a significant economic disparity by 1800.

Britain bankrolled the coalitions and won the Napoleonic wars because it had a superior economy with more industrialization.

Britain was able to bankroll the coalitions because London was the center of global finance and the British were willing to levy truly absurd taxes on a populace that was geographically protected from French armies, not because it was more industrialized - this was nothing new either, Britain had bankrolled Frederick the Great to great success and the main contributing factor to the Habsburgs surrendering their claim to Spain in the War of Spanish Succession was that Britain stopped bankrolling them. Even now, despite Britain being a deindustrialized hellhole, London is still one of the world's major financial centers, because changing money between hands and charging interest and taxing your population into the dirt is fundamentally not reliant on making tangible goods.

Even Napoleon recognized the importance of denying the British markets for their goods.

Yes, and it failed because Britain had control of most of the raw inputs that were needed to manufacture alternatives and central Europe was reliant on British imports, not because the French lacked manufacturing capacity. Turns out it's hard to have a fabric industry that can compete with Britain's when Britain can cut off your cotton supply, on top of non-manufactured consumer goods like sugar and coffee.

 

[Chieftain Coke Peanut]

Stellaris might be the easiest Paradox game excluding Ck3. I've been playing it more recently and as long as you can neuter the first empire you come across by taking a planet or killing off their pops, you just snowball within fifty years into being untouchable.

We need 25x crisis but for AI because even with immediate grand admiral scaling these robots just can't keep up. And I'm not even playing hardcore meta builds.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

Russian soldiers were quite good during the 18th century. Napoleon comments that they were excellent soldiers lead by atrocious officers and they usually matched the French man for man at battles. A great what-if scenario is general Suvorov actually facing Napoleon in battle because of how well he and his armies performed.

You're right to correct me on that because that's another thing I only had very slowly drilled into my head and still slip on. Russians = Low quality swarms got drilled into my psyche at some point and isn't always true.

Now, about officers, I don't know that I've ever really heard of a country having bad soldiers in the sense that the individual men are worthless. Usually the officers are the quality. Like, Italians, everybody laughs at them in WW2, but they were great under German command from what I've heard.

Anyways, I remember there being this thing that Russia, like a lot of big, protected countries like that, has a habit of having really shitty armies until life forces them to adapt and then they get Complacent again.

How'd Napoleon roll them over in the Patriotic War? Just by being Napoleon? Amy wasn't actually that big?

 

[Slap47]

Its kinda funny how Vic3 fans love all of their new DLCs while Hoi4/Stellaris are just demoralized and angry about theirs.

Anyways, I remember there being this thing that Russia, like a lot of big, protected countries like that, has a habit of having really shitty armies until life forces them to adapt and then they get Complacent again.

How'd Napoleon roll them over in the Patriotic War? Just by being Napoleon? Amy wasn't actually that big?

The big issue with the Russia campaign was the sheer distances and logistics. If you look at the battles you will find the Russians doing very well and matching the French coalition man for man. Meanwhile both armies lost huge numbers of men to attrition. A common myth is that the Russians waged a guerilla/peoples war, but most Russian peasants were pretty apathetic and disinterested in resisting in the invaders. Armies of this era relied on looting to fuel themselves, but Russia was simply not densely populated enough to support the number of soldiers marching through its land. I remember reading that the prominent Russian historian who came to this conclusion went against Stalin on this and Stalin was the one who bent the knee.

One theory I have seen is that the German-worship of the previous Tzar Paul I resulted in Russia having a higher number of German officers from the Baltics in their army. This could have made them an especially good army. Although, it could also be the case that the Russian army just had alot of veterancy from fighting alot of wars. During the Crimea War alot of Russia's army actually did just degenerate into drunken horde. It was also run by a Nicholas I who was a slavophile lunatic who micromanaged the army to do parades instead of fight.