1701

Let’s clear at least the picture whether you agree with it or not.

CK2 has always been the most polished, bug free and fun of all the Paradox games. It’s only since last December that opinions changed. The game is now rather buggy and lots of features are being added that either do not work properly or aren’t well balanced. It became more of a patchwork game than an elegant one, and it lost a lot of the polish it had. Right now, CK2 is considered not being in a good status, otherwise it was.

EU4. Lots of people who played EU3 think that neither is a clear winner. Usually people like one feature better in one or the other, so it’s mixed. Which one is better comes down more to personal preference. EU3 was also received rather poorly at release, and only with time it improved. Right now it’s post-DLC buggyness. It’s STILL more playable that CK2 currently is and the last DLC was well received.

In any case, both CK2 and EU4 are considered the easiest games by Paradox, whereas on the opposite side you have Victoria 2 and the HoIs.

HoI3 vs HoI2. It’s a bit like EU3/4 in the sense there’s no clear winner. HoI2 with the latest improvement like Arsenal of Democracy or The Darkest Hour is definitely a contender for HoI3. The biggest negative point is the engine itself, but HoI3 is more a mess of design and execution. Also, HoI3 was terrible at release. It simply was utterly broken. It took patches and expansions to make it even decent, yet lots of those design decision go directly against the fun (like the neutrality feature). So HoI3 is a worse game not because it’s unfinished or because of bugs, but because it has a worse design.

HoI3 is a worse game than 2 on many aspects. Being “fiddly” is not one, since you can automate every part individually and even play the game hands-off. That’s a perfect ideal of the control a game like this should give: you decide yourself whether to unload things to AI, or have a manual, detailed control. It’s choice. The problem is that HoI3 also built walls around player choice, which negates directly the fun since you try to do something and you find out you can’t just because you crash against one of the many “invisible walls” the game design has built. As Italy you can’t even annex Ethiopia at the start of the game, which is what actually happens historically. Everything is hardcoded. Who you can attack is hardcoded as if you play Risk and the game itself tells you where to attack, you just roll the dice.

And even the tech tree has been purged of personality, becoming just a list of linear bonuses and the removal of the national industries.

As for dumbing down we went from this:
http://gamersgate.http.internapcdn.net/gamersgate/screenshots_img/DD-IRCR/167242_ironcross_screen_4_medium.jpg
to this:

and now this:

So I’m a little worried.

1702

It’s world war 2 game, not fantasy island, however ther is a custom setup you can start as, it enables you to choose techs, diplomatic status and other stuff, so you can go ahistorical ahoy within some limits.

if there is something I can wish for, well hoi 3 is superior to hoi 2 in every respect really, it’s less axis and allies province speaking, but the province system is not good for strategic thinking, I wish they ditched it exept for administrative purposes, so that I can place my forces exactly where I want in a seamless environment.

1703

Can’t work. It would turn a strategic game into a tactical one, and a tactical game would need a lot more detail to work well.

You could try to use hexes and it could still keep the strategic focus, like A World At War or Advanced Third Reich, but I’m pretty sure Paradox will never go there.

1704

Don’t confuse being fiddly and overly complicated with strategic depth or complexity. I love HOI3 but it has the former in spades, often without contributing much to the latter.

Examples are a detailed supply system that took three full expansions to try to iron out the kinks, a weather system that still doesn’t work right and is nearly impossible to plan for, and a division level OOB that while cool on paper just ends up being extremely tedious while adding very little in the way of consequential decision making.

You can’t compare screenshots and say “Look, more fiddly bits! It’s a better strategy game!”. EU4 is a much deeper strategy game than EU3 but people see the lack of fiddly sliders and decry how it’s been dumbed down. It’s silly.

1705

Thank fuck they “dumbed” it down because I never had a hope of playing the earlier versions.

1706

EU2 was very accessible, it just had importation information that was completely opaque to the player (especially when it came to battles). Flawed, but accessible and surprisingly easy to pick up and play. The added events of AGCEEP even gave it a narrative and direction of sorts, to suggest/guide you along certain paths.

1707

Just thought I’d say I’m always kind of annoyed when they have a massive bundle sale on Steam with all existing DLC+game, but not one for just the DLC. I feel like I’m being punished for having bought the game earlier. I mean, I get that you pay more when you buy a game earlier, it will be on sale later. But when you also have to pay more for the DLC because you bought the game early? Bleeeh. I’d buy it but I’m too annoyed at the principle of the thing.

1708

That’s pretty odd, this is the first time I’ve seen such a sale where the individual packages aren’t available at the discounted price. Weird.

Oh well, should be a Thanksgiving sale sometime soon?

1709

I recently bought the Wealth of Nations cheap, for around $2.50 from Green Man Gaming. It’s $2.50 now at Gamers Gate for another 7 hours. Other DLC is on sale too.

1710

HAHA! I laughed my butt off when I read this. Sums up my feelings on HOI3 exactly as well - lololol.

1711

Sengoku is. ;)

HoI3 is a worse game than 2 on many aspects. Being “fiddly” is not one, since you can automate every part individually and even play the game hands-off. That’s a perfect ideal of the control a game like this should give: you decide yourself whether to unload things to AI, or have a manual, detailed control. It’s choice. The problem is that HoI3 also built walls around player choice, which negates directly the fun since you try to do something and you find out you can’t just because you crash against one of the many “invisible walls” the game design has built. As Italy you can’t even annex Ethiopia at the start of the game, which is what actually happens historically. Everything is hardcoded. Who you can attack is hardcoded as if you play Risk and the game itself tells you where to attack, you just roll the dice.

How can EU3 be considered “hardcoded” when EU2 is quite literally a playthrough of our actual history, with events going off simply because they did at the same point in real history, not because they make any in-game sense? EU3 is a lot more freeform in that sense. You can attack whoever you want…

As for dumbing down we went from this:
http://gamersgate.http.internapcdn.net/gamersgate/screenshots_img/DD-IRCR/167242_ironcross_screen_4_medium.jpg
to this:
http://i.imgur.com/5QjiO.jpg
and now this:
http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/Hearts-of-Iron-IV-Delivers-More-Info-on-Air-Tech-New-Chassis-Evolution-458917-2.jpg

So I’m a little worried.

Pointless complexity isn’t better gameplay, and removing something pointless isn’t ‘dumbing down’. If you like to sit there crunching millions of numbers for the same of a single issue, become a CPU for the day or something.

1712

Thats a vast exaggeration of the hardcodings that are admittedly in place in EU2. Like, vaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast.

All the HoI games are more hardcoded than EU2 was - and it’s reasonable. For example, you only have the allies and the axis and the comintern. You can’t have a south american alliance and just do some internal warfare in that area with no relation to the other alliances (or with your own set of diplomatic relations). It’s all hardcoded.
And, this being a game about WW2, this makes perfect sense.

rezaf

1713

The event system in EU2 is definitely more “it happened this way IRL, deal with it” than EU3. I’m not saying EU2 is like that mod whose name escapes me right now – the one that’s nothing but a bunch of history buffs trying to turn EU2 into a play through of real life. But to claim EU3 is more “hardcoded” than EU2 is pretty ridiculous.

edit: Oh wait, I misread HOI3 as EU3.

I actually agree with that. HOI3 is a bit too limiting. Off map industry pisses me off. I made Hungary STRONK, but even though I owned Turkey/Arabia/Most of the Balkans I couldn’t actually build or research anything. I had the same physical number of industry on the map as Germany, but it’d take me 'til the 50s to research a new tank.

Given that bombing people’s industry or taking it over is a valid tactic, I don’t understand why it wouldn’t all be on the map?

1714

Yeah, EU3 vs EU2 is an endless argument. EU2 was definately more of a historical straitjacked than EU3 was, but a lot of the unique personality all the events provided was lost when everything became much more generic. On the upside, those things that didn’t make much sense in the context of the game (Treaty of Tordesillas when both Spain and Portugal were weak powers not even exploring the new world for example) worked usually much better.
The mod you’re thinking of is probably AGCEEP, and back in the day when both where still seperate projects, I think the AGC had a near-perfect balance of retelling history and making decisions to change history. Now, there are far too many events for a lot of countries, so while you can still make a considerable difference, as many powers you’ll be at the mercy of those events, which can be annoying.

I’ll still always prefer EU2 to EU3 just for the atmosphere and personality, but I do understand the complaints.

And it’s not like arguing about it makes any sense, since if you disagree and prefer EU3, congrats, you already won!

Going back to EU4, I think all they achieved is moving the straitjackets elsewhere and rip out a ton of personality, but it’s a complicated process and each EU incarnation had some things going for it.

The offscreen stuff in HoI can be annoying, but it’s their attempt to prevent stuff like Hungary single-handedly becoming a superpower I guess.
In the short timespan depicted, it’s kinda unreasonable for a minor power to suddenly outperform the major players of the war - or for anyone to truly assimilate the production capabilities of any conquered territory.

rezaf

1715

It is all on the map, I thought? Were you playing a specific scenario? If you play a campaign, it all seemed to be there on the map for me.

Are you aware that you don’t get nearly as much from conquered/occupied territory as you do “core” territory? If you have annexed a country (which is the same as the Total Exploitation occupation policy, IIRC) you only get 40% of the IC and 1% of the Leadership. If you occupy territory and choose Collaborative Government, you get 30% of their leadership but only 5% of their IC.

That bothered me to no end initially, as I love empire building games. I wanted to take Brazil or Hungary or some other minor power and turn them into a superpower. That just doesn’t fit WW2 or a 13-year timespan, though. Once I realized that HOI3 was a team faction game as opposed to a build-your-own-empire game, and once they patched the AI so that it would give it’s allies blueprints for advanced weapons systems, I wasn’t bothered by it so much.

1716

I can’t remember the numbers as it was long ago. Infact it was so long ago that I didn’t have the AI patch. I distinctly remember Germany refusing to give me any blueprints or even selling me completed mech infantry. I was completely defenceless other than 30’s level riflemen and crappy tanks when the Soviets rolled through my borders. But I’m fairly sure all of the industry I was concerned about was inside Hungary. I have no idea if Iw as playing a scenario or whatever – I’m fairly sure it was the main campaign. I remember looking it up at the time and being told (or reading on a wiki) that it’s “off-map industry”, and Germany had like +500 or something and Hungary had +5.

Either way, it doesn’t wash with me. If the game allows me to build Industry and place it, it should count. (I would expect taking over other industry to be limited, but I don’t recall Turkey of Afghanistan having more than 1 each on the map or whatever). I spent AGES building industry to speed up my production of more industry. I was so happy when I had the same physical number of units that Germany had, but that mystified why I couldn’t research or build like they could.

If they intend for off map IC to help prevent Germany from being able to lose it’s IC so easily, then they should give them more AA guns or something. (Maybe they did in a later patch. This would have been right after release). It killed the game for me, like when I found out that the Civ3 AI is the most obvious cheat in existence and would happily build cities in the artic at 500BC that would starve to death, all because they could ‘see’ the plutonium and oil or whatever there that wouldn’t be useful for another 1000 game turns.

edit: A search for off map IC shows this wonderful exchange between two QT3 posters…
Given the replies here and there, it’s possible I was playing some scenario? I remember it started at the earliest possible date, so surely that’s a grand campaign?

1717

That’s funny, Pod! I remember having a previous discussion about off-map industry some time in the past, but I didn’t recall it was between the two of us, haha.

Regarding the AI: Yea, it was beyond stupid that they were stingy with their blueprints, it made no sense. Paradox made a couple excellent changes regarding this over the course of two expansions (which is one reason their new DLC model is sooo much better):

  1. The AI was willing to provide blueprints to their allies. This was huge to Minors, who had no hope whatsoever of keeping up to date militarily without them. It had a major drawback, though: Units built via the blueprints used the Minor’s Doctrine techs, leaving their units at a significant disadvantage, still.

  2. They made a further change so that the Major’s Doctrine tech levels were part of the blueprint. Finally, after 2 or 3 expansions, Minors could be pretty competitive unit-per-unit.

Regarding IC, as far as I can recall I was able to strategic bomb Germany into the stone age. I wasn’t able to find any info about off-map industry bonuses or the like, but that might just be poor Google Fu on my part. You’ve got me curious as hell, though, so when I get home I’m tempted to fire up HOI3, play as Germany, and total up all the IC on the map. :)

1718

I have to say I think they finally made colonization fun for me. Before it was a bit of a drag and a simple race to lock up your area of the map you wanted to colonize. That was easy when there weren’t shit tons of provinces but now it’s virtually impossible to lock up the coast and deny interior access to other colonizers! This makes things a lot more interesting. Also Africans are numerous and tougher this time around. I’ve been having some issues with them as Great Britain. They even invaded some of my unguarded Indian holdings and those persky rebels!

EHVkGSS.jpg1920×1200

AS6ioi8.jpg1920×1200

EDIT: Managed to get everything back under control without losses but had to cut the war vs Kilwa very short. Only managed to get 2 provinces when I was going for as many as possible. There’s always next war! I think that’s the first time I’ve had Africans actually stop me from getting exactly what I wanted. Granted there were also numerous rebels in India and West Africa but still. Now that I’ve been pumping out Arsenals everywhere and upped my force limit dramatically (from like 60->98 and still going up, and I’m over by 20) things will be well in hand next time.

1719

Then you’ll find out that I’m completely incorrect and that you wasted many hours doing this…

of course, THEN you realise that to do this properly you need v1.0, and so you waste more hours trying to get that version and do the same thing…

Basically: I absolve my self from blame for any wasted hours here. ;)

1720

I’m playing a game as Denmark and I’m having some trouble integrating Sweden. When I try to annex Sweden, it says that I need to have her as a personal union partner for 50 years. Well, it’s been more than 50 years, and the only reason I can think that she won’t join is because she’s tried twice to break away. I’ve taken her back both times but I wonder if that resets the clock. I’ve tried to improve relations with her and have relations at +190, but she is still hostile (flame icon). How can I get her less hostile towards me?