Didn’t Victoria 2 have state traits also? It’s been so long since i played i’ve forgotten.
I don’t recall them but it’s been so long I may have just forgotten.
I don’t remember it, but could be. Most Paradox games have some sort of special province modifiers and are somewhat abused by mods to add new features. So I guess the modding potential is the same, but I like the way the base game appears to be using them here.
A historian analyses Vicky 2. You may remember him from his analyses of EU4.
I am 110% here for Vicky 2 on ACOUP.
Thanks, that was a pleasure to read.
Only a 3 part series? Come on Bret, I expect 7 parts and an addendum about Vicky 3.
Thanks for this. The references to Stellaris make me wish it the pops in that game were more like Vicky pops.
That was a pleasure to read. He is a good writer and very nicely captured my love hate relationship with Vicky 2.
I had not heard the term janky with respect to game design, it is a great word. Have other used it?
I read him every Friday or every other Friday. I find his writing rather good, and his thought often echo mine, just in a more refined form lol.
I especially liked the series he did on ethnicity in Rome.
I have seen it used often, and used it myself. it means, as far as I know, basically unrefined, unsmooth, unpolished.
Afaik, parts of a game can be janky even when the thing as a whole is not.
Planetfall has some minor animation issues sometimes, and sometimes sound effects don’t trigger, for example.
what a fantastic article! many thanks for posting it.
More details on how the economy works. Once again, things seem pretty flexible and satisfactory.
Part two is up:
Bret Devereaux’s piece is outstanding.
Aww yeah
I think it gets at the sense in which I like a game to be “realistic”. It’s not that I care whether the border of a state is historically correct or if the Spitfire has the right air attack value.
What interests me (to a kind of insane degree) is how can you design tractable mechanics that capture some kind of coherent theory of what they are depicting, and have consequences of that theory pop out as a natural consequence.
I think I even prefer not to have historical borders at all. Rather, I want to experience running countries facing the kinds of problems faced during that point in history, which I think is akin to what you are saying.
And this runs counter to certain kinds of historical accuracy when you know that a spate of revolutions or a specific nationalistic event or a civil war is fated to come 8 years down the road. But I do want the general pressure that you must expand for the sake of not becoming a victim, and for that pressure to change, in general, to pressure to industrialize and gain access to ever more resources.
Yeah this is an old debate on the Paradox forums, and I’ve never really understood those who want the same events to happen in the same place on the same date when everything else about the world is different. I want the world simulation to respond in a believable way to developing situations, and locked-in events is definitely not believable.
I like having the option for historical especially for a game like HOI IV. I’m very likely to play the first game with new Russia DLC, as Germany with historical options ON.
I think national focuses in HoI4 are a different beast than say historical events in EU2.
In my dream version of HoI, there is a detailed underlying model if the politics and most of the things the focuses represent. However, that’s not the case and the focuses are used to fill in the yawning gaps in the simulation - or drive it in fairly silly directions.
If you play with historical focuses on, its a little overly predictable and inflexible. But if you turn historical focuses of, its not like the AIs now respond to your moves when choosing their focuses - or at least not that I’ve noticed. It just becomes very random and sometimes absurd.
I was more thinking about how events in early versions of EU tended to lack contrxt-sensitivity. The details of things would be the same even if the whole world was pretty different.