Paradox Interactive Games Thread

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I hate the hours on Steam thing. For instance when I downloaded Victoria Revolutions, and it said 0 hours played, it hurt. Considering I played the hell out of that game from 2005 on-wards off of the CD installation version.


Anyway I took advantage of this offer and acquired Crusader Kings II. I played the tutorial scenario as Leon. Things got dicey about midway through as my training wheels guided invasion of the islands turned into an invasion of my homeland and at the same time my wife gave birth to a daughter and died during the childbirth. So much for merging my kindgom with Aragon.

But things got better, I hired mercs and destroyed the invading Army, conquered the islands, married a Hungarian princess and had two sons (only then realizing that having a second one is not a good thing), and then married that first born daughter of the dead Aragon princess to the future King of France, which she seemed to hate me for.

Also I killed one of the brothers and inherited Castile, but then I realized that upon the death of the current monarch, Leon goes to the older son and Castile to the younger one. I love this succession dynamic and I wish it was like this in EU IV, but it will take some getting use to.

That being said, I wish a lot of features from Paradox games were available in different ones.

Last year, I basically wrote a forum post on steam detailing what my ideal Vicky 3 game is:
1. HOI 4 Army Command and Control (perhaps unlocked late in game with Great Wars or something)
2. Cabinet system from HOI 2
3. More indepth political actions
4. Ability to entice the upper house with bribes, land, threats, murder etc (b/c the idea that an absolute Monarch is stymied by a bunch of nobles seems rather ridiculous considering historical examples of strong willing monarchs "having their way" one way or another). It would work similar to the estates in EU IV.
5. Land Policy being more then just a reform selection like in Vicky 2. This was a critical issues in many 19th century countries and it should have range of impacts on the economy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Has anyone dared to play as Byzantium and restore Rome? You are going to need to ally and get high relations with Poland, Lithuania, Hungary and maybe the Mamlukes. You are going to need all the help you can get as the Ottoman will curbstomp you 1 v 1. You start the game with only 3 provinces. What annoys me to death is when Hungary and Poland rival each other and go to war which ruins everything.

I did in EU II, where it is much harder because the game doesn't scale very well and most small nations are insolvent and can't support any size military force without repeated bankruptcies.


By the time I was done, inflation was like 1000% and my diplomacy screen read "We are despised throughout the known world", because it is impossible to fabricate claims in EU II. THerefore you eat a hit for lacking a Casus Belli every time you go to work with Ottomans, Mamelukes etc. It also hits your badboy score, which is the basis for that reading. The lower your score, the harder to obtain good relations. At the lowest possible score, the relations always default to -200.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

SALE SALE SALE

https://www.humblebundle.com/games/paradox-bundle-2019

donate $1 or more to charity and you get Crusader Kings 2 as well as three other cool games

donate $6 or more and you get Europa Universalis 4 and CK2's The Old Gods DLC

donate $12 or more and get EU4's El Dorado DLC and several other cool games

I have always wanted to get EUIV but was waiting to do so until I had a more powerful computer for it. I don't want to pass this up though.

Do you think a dual core processor with an AMD HD7770 is powerful enough to handle it decently? I recall one of them recommending a 4 core, but maybe that was HOI4.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I decided to check out EU4, and after some months of playing I can with confidence say that this game sucks. I started out as Muscovy, wanted to completely annex Novgorod in one sweep, however, warscore prohibits you from doing sh**t, so you have to wait like 40 years to take over an arctic wasteland because of truces. converting foreign religions is next to impossible, and it takes a butload of money too. Playing as a Western-Central European nation is also annoying, especially when you take a province from the HRE (inb4 100k stacks of coalitons against you). The navy aspect of the game is boring (What's the point of barques anyways?), trade is confusing, you always get bad heirs, you can't get claims on overseas territory, it takes over a hundred years to embrace a new institution, culture conversion is a useless feature, sieges take too long and it completely decimates your manpower, and before you say I should use use mercenaries, they're expensive and they use up much of my economy, colonies are useless and take up to much money, AI allies are braindead when it comes to helping you in a war, and the most ANNOYING problem I have with this game is that when the enemy AI goes to war with you they carpet siege you with a dozen of 2k-1k stacks and proceed to penetrate your provinces, which in turn slaughters your warscore, and you get a ton of war exhaustion, this forces me to chase their units around my lands, which keep in mind is hard since the AI will just proceed to run away from your army and just not be confronted. Also, the Ottomans are OP.

And don't get me started on their DLC pitch, the developers are money hungry. Tell me, why are people buying these games?

I have the same level of frustration with Victoria II. Their international crisis thing causes the same thing, and you do amazingly well, but then look and find out your war score is sh**t because Russia is overrun and occupied, which means you end up losing part of your territory instead.

Victoria Revolutions and EU II are far more playable in that sense, though allies are just as brain dead.

HOI 4 did bring out one rather good feature and that was the AI helping you maintain a front and keep it balanced. I have long said that if Victoria III every happens, this feature needs to be part of it towards the end, possibly with the ability to unlock it in the military tech tree. 

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Paradox has often struggled from one extreme to the other. Either you have to occupy territory through grinding seiges and thus consquests that Napoleon did in ten years, take hundreds to pull off. Or you have a massive battle and that settles it all right there. In history you had both transpire and the the only one that has done somewhat well with some kind of balance is CK II.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If you want to play CK II, watch Arumba's Tutorial Series on Ireland. Very helpful.  CK II is a game about characters, not countries.

You are often able to accomplish more from marrying someone and murdering their brother/father than through war.


Also there are three DLC's that will make it more playable and I got all three for like $20.

Sons of Abraham - Lets you do the borrow money from the Jews/expel the Jews gimmick that Arumba uses a lot. I have not had to use it, but if you are in a bind and need mercs to bail you out, I guess it is an option. Remember though always, always ALWAYS PAY YOUR MERCS!
Way of Life - Helps you better mold and shape your character
Legacy of Rome - Ambitions let you further improve your character stats and you can get retinues.

Retinues are expensive but help skew the power dynamic in your favor against the factions that pop up.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Speaking of CK II, I recently (spread out over a couple weeks) played through a game as William The Conqueror. I did this back in early 2018 before I got the DLCs mentioned above and did miserably at managing the vassals after I conquered England. It is not hard to actually conquer England even if the Norwegians get it first, the problem is holding it since you have a bunch of Saxon vassals and they all hate you. You need to bury them, one way or another. Either by creating Ducal titles for Norman allies or literally burying them six feat under.

This time has gone much better, though I did make one tactical error and that was landing my heir, which hindered my ability to do match maker with my grandchildren and cost me a chance at Scotland via Marry/murder. I did notice a lot of historical names in the court as lowborn courtiers (Mowbray, Mortimer, etc) so I made them Dukes trying to get them as close to their historical lands as possible just for kicks. One of the ahistorical daughters I had after the Conquest, had become "friends" with a lowborn boy, so I betrothed them, tutored the boy into a military man and made him Duke of Lancaster. Sadly he died at like 36. She was one of the younger daughters and something of a favorite with great stats. I married older ones to the King of France and a Kievan Revolt leader that succeeded in forming Ruthenia, but they both died at like 22/23 years of age, though both had managed to have sons first.

I hate to jinx it but for some reason in this play through William is like Superman, its almost 1100, he is over 70 and still kicking. Kind of makes me mad because I was expecting him to die by like 1092 at the latest and my backup after I screwed up with the hair being landed was simply to wait until I became King Robert and then have free reign to marry his son to who I please. I am also going to be disappointed because I would have had the chance to make him Emperor of Britannia had I realized I had 30 years plus after 1066.

I wanted to try merging the lines of Wessex and Normandy like IRL, but I was not able to because one of those pesky Saxon nobles married them first. But I did marry Duke Robert to one of Harold Godwin's daughters. I have also murdered most all of his other children and someone murdered the older daughter around 1091 before I could. That leaves three unmarried sons all chillin Meath, Ireland and all of them are getting older with no sign of reproducing but just to be safe I have started fabricating on Meath.

I actually had more trouble from the Danish Estrids. A host army triggered and I nearly screwed that up trying to defeat it at sea but managed to raise the levies and get enough into London. The idiot dropped a 2.5k stack on London when I had 8k sitting there. I took my eyes of France though and I got notification of a defeat, where the Host destroyed a scattered 200 levy in Normandy. Apparently the rest went after Rouen, so I crossed the channel and massacred them.

I actually achieved my first ever steam achievement, "Exalted Among Men", on this play through, emphasizing the fact that most of my Paradox experience is on older games that were on CD.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Any toughts on Imperator: Rome?

It seems like CK2 but combat focused.

That sounds interesting, though honestly the intrigue elements would also go well with a Rome based game.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I've spent too much money on hoi4 tho.  Why can't they do it for that game?

Probably because it is newer relatively speaking.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Damn it Paradox why do you hate Victoria so much?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Victoria 3 is quickly becoming the HL3 of Paradox.

i been waiting on Victoria 3 for like 7 years now and i'll be waiting 4 it until i am dead

"Apparently you guys aren't ready for that yet...

But your kids are gonna love it"

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

OH MY GOD. IT'S HAPPENING!!!

On one hand, holy crap it’s happening.


On the other hand, I’m really nervous to see what post-CKII paradox (which moved from hardish simulation to ‘lol, spend mana and do what you want’) will do to their best game.

Its worrisome for me as well. Yet at the same time, I for one hated the difficulty level with the political manipulation in Vicky II and the barriers to doing anything if the wrong party is in power. In Victoria Revolution, you can just click set as ruling party (as long as you aren't a Democracy) and get the "freedom" of a State Capitalist political party allowing you to build what you want and where.

This comes with a revolt risk penalty. In some ways this is more realistic, as a number of Absolute Monarchies would do what they want and of course incur the wrath of various groups along the way but they could do it.  In Vicky II, you got to coax this, press that issue and micro your way to anything. This is a large part of the reason why I soured on Vicky II quickly and just kept playing Vicky Revolutions.

I even played Vicky Revolutions last Saturday as Russia in honor of the Vicky III announcement.

For reference, this is a list of features I made in a desired future Vicky III game:

Last year, I basically wrote a forum post on steam detailing what my ideal Vicky 3 game is:
1. HOI 4 Army Command and Control (perhaps unlocked late in game with Great Wars or something)
2. Cabinet system from HOI 2
3. More indepth political actions
4. Ability to entice the upper house with bribes, land, threats, murder etc (b/c the idea that an absolute Monarch is stymied by a bunch of nobles seems rather ridiculous considering historical examples of strong willing monarchs "having their way" one way or another). It would work similar to the estates in EU IV.
5. Land Policy being more then just a reform selection like in Vicky 2. This was a critical issues in many 19th century countries and it should have range of impacts on the economy.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

 In Vicky II, you got to coax this, press that issue and micro your way to anything. This is a large part of the reason why I soured on Vicky II quickly and just kept playing Vicky Revolutions.

I'm fairly certain that you could do this in Vic2 as well (with a similar penalty to militancy), last time I checked?

Yeah, as long as you have absolute or Prussian monarchy you can. You get a militancy hit if you are Prussian monarchy, because hey we had elections what are you doing.

I’m not a fan of the idea of being able to bribe the upper house. The core gameplay is about coxing your nation into the modern world within the restriction of your internal politics. Just getting a ‘screw it, I do what I want button’ would kill allot of the appeal for me. The modifiers and their effect do need to be more clear though

The example for me that comes to mind, is Russia as I play it a lot in Victoria: Revolutions. Russia is a country where inertia, its size and various other factors tend to make it stagnate and become backwards until some driving force blasts its way through to modernizing the country. While I am cognizant of how the real history of the country played out during this period, at the same I am likewise for the impact of say Peter the Great 100 plus years prior. The mechanics of Revolutions, allowed for an assertive push towards industrialization early, whereas Victoria II was far more restrictive in my efforts to industrialize, to convert pops and that doesn't even get into the whole annoyance that is the international crisis mechanic and its penchant for sparking WWI style conflicts over and over again.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I have successfully managed to get Victoria: Revolutions working on Windows 10, with a Radeon RX6600xt. This surprised me since my Windows seven computer with a Radeon HD7770 won't run it.

This is a hard copy that I have had for 16 years (For the main game) and 15 years (for the Revolutions Expansion).

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I have successfully managed to get Victoria: Revolutions working on Windows 10, with a Radeon RX6600xt. This surprised me since my Windows seven computer with a Radeon HD7770 won't run it.

This is a hard copy that I have had for 16 years (For the main game) and 15 years (for the Revolutions Expansion).

How?

Its all from mid 2000s CD's using the optical drive I intentionally included in my Windows 10 build.

I granted administrator access and run in compatibility mode for XP SP3 for each file along the way and then the program itself and it worked. I had to edit the read only permissions on a number of files to use the party editor application and at first this didn't work, but it did after a couple of restarts of the computer.