I’ve seen some good buzz coming from streamers that were able to play an in-dev version of the game.
deep breathing intensifies
It’s funny, because yesterday there was a reddit thread about how little interest the dev diaries were creating for the game. Then of course, typical comments about how Paradox has lost their way, etc.
Johan had been handling dev diaries throughout development, and there were a lot of complaints about how he wrote them. Martin Anward can really add the flair when discussing the new mechanics coming down the pipe, but my take on it was that Johan tends to be very cut and dry: “Here’s three features: A, B, C. See you next week”. They seemed more like a spec sheet enumerating mechanics, rather than a diary providing context and explanations of how many of these things work and interact together. It seems not everyone is cut out to be a hype man. :)
Anyway, I think they acknowledged the dev diaries weren’t being received as well as they are for other games, as they handed over responsibility for them to Trin Tragula just a little while ago.
The complaint is that it’s just another version of EU with bare mechanics (just a bunch of modifiers everywhere) and not enough period dressing. Which I kind of agree with, I’m not really feeling any excitement outside of the map.
30 minutes of gameplay footage by Marbozir
omg paradox, I can see the fonts !! they finally pulled their heads out of their collective asses so all of us aging gamers can see the fonts
map is purty
Fonts are scalable/readable in Stellaris. I assume it’s the standard going forward with new games using the engine.
I believe the functionality also got ported back to CK2 as of the recent expansion. It’s been a bit of a nightmare to implement from what I understand, but I’m glad it’s finally there.
For me, Paradox games have been endless loop of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Bought all the games and a lot of the DLCs, but something about each game always stops me.
A couple never ran well on my computer. Map painting wears thin for me. My brain and family tree complexities seems to be like oil and water. etc.
But I watched Quill 18’s video yesterday.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vWdqTncl8w
No doubt, I am going to fall for another Paradox game here, but I really have my hopes up. This just sounds so great. It sounds like for once a game is capturing the really interesting aspects of history, the (largely domestic) limits on becoming and remaining a great empire.
Trade sounds like it is more interesting, too. More three dimensional and consequential. (EU IV makes it feel complex but yawn-inducing for me.) Though as far as Quill described it, it may be totally unrealistic in that you can just pick your trade goods on a strategic basis, without any overwhelming need to deal with what could actually be produced efficiently there?
Lots of cultural, religious, and political counterforces to your autocratic rule. (For all the raging criticisms of Civ, not many people seem to mind that even when you are supposedly a democracy, you simply dictate what your civ will do, with extremely little blowback. Thus, taking the long view is easy. When in real life, the long view is not only extremely difficult to perceive, but enormous forces check any government’s ability to make decisions with that in mind.)
And the concept of colonization. Game after game, colonization is abstracted into a cliche that is dry and unrealistic and uninteresting. What Quill is describing here, it sounds like we finally have a game that addresses the real colonization process, complete with its historical tribulations. You move some of your people into land inhabited by people with limited ability to prevent your settlements – but those earlier inhabitants continue to exist on that land and they are likely to present problems for quite a long time, requiring ongoing actions on your part.
And tech… Games tend to distort technological advances in a way that tires me. Build tech buildings, rack up tech points, win. (Civ VI really did improve this a bit, in that production could become the bottleneck, more than tech, but just a little.) So in Imperator, it sounds as though tech only advances in proportion to the number of pops in the highest level group, and it requires some enormous tradeoffs to increase the proportion of your people in that highest group, and even then there is the matter of converting these advances into inventions. Sounds good, at least as Quill describes it.
I realize – Quill18 mentions it – that in the end there will emerge simple min-max strategies to short circuit all these historical systems and turn it back into a fairly simple formula for painting the map your color, with little sense of the experience of all the forces that actually existed in the time. Choose this government, this trade good, these three internal decisions in this order, and you have the points to insulate yourself from what it was like to live in those times. But I am hoping the game turns out to be something that can play as an immersive historical simulation, for those who are looking for that.
One thing for sure. Paradox is going to get some more of my money. :)
They revisit trade again today. It sounds like a nice system to me.
Also, a screenshot because I find the map to be so purdy:
I so wish we had that gorgeous map and interface in CK2.
Such quality map making and interface design was forgotten by the time of Crusader Kings 2.
Ohhh good one! Such good cross-pollinating you do. A veritable Bumble bee! :)
Agreed. I’m really liking the sound of this. Trade in this game could be an interesting thing all on its own. At least that is my hope.
Up for per-order…just in time for the sale…oh paradox, you never miss a greedy opportunity
Nice, I figured it had to be coming up but it’s good to have a date (April 25).
Also, what’s greedy about kicking off the pre-order during the sale? If you were planning on pre-ordering it anyway, isn’t that beneficial to customers?
Look forward to trying this once it’s below $20.
If you’re willing to wait that’s a great approach. That’s especially true since the first 50% discount would likely coincide with the first expansion pack, which means a whole bunch of issues have been ironed out and some sought after features are about to be released.
Yes, that’s exactly what their other games have taught me - 1.0 is early access, the time to dip in is around expansion 1 or 2. (At a discount!)