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Fintilgin posted:EDIT EDIT: Since I never take ANY action in a Paradox game without first pausing, they're functionally turn based already, with variable length turns. Or, well... that's what I like to tell myself If you don't have every important message set to popup and pause and every unimportant one set to log, you're playing the game wrong. 
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Feb 6, 2013 21:28
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I'd like a turn based Paradox game because it would make it easier to kinda play it in the background, since pausing in a RTS game means nothing is progressing, but alt-tabbing to another window while everyone else takes their turns still means stuff is happening, just not stuff I need to pay attention to. Although this problem could also be solved with me having some self-restraint and just pausing and doing something else and accepting that my game of EUIV doesn't have to progressing at every moment of the day v v.WeaponGradeSadness posted:I liked his "CSA wins the Civil War" series up through WWI, but in the last book of the WWI trilogy, there's a Confederate artillery soldier who bitterly blames the nation's black population on the loss of WWI and writes a memoir of his service and his thoughts on race while in the trenches. I thought "oh no, Turtledove, I've liked the series so far, don't be this intellectually bankrupt" but sure enough, I looked it up on Wikipedia and the interwar and WW2 series are just "OTL WW2 but with 'CSA' instead of 'Germany' and 'blacks' instead of 'Jews.'" I'm in the same boat as you where I read Turtledove's stuff in High School and liked it and wanted to pick the series back up but early on noticed the "OTL WW2 with some nations trading nametags" thing. I will never understand why he decided to take a book about an alternate history and pigeon-hole it into real world history so badly.
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Feb 6, 2013 21:32
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DrProsek posted:I'm in the same boat as you where I read Turtledove's stuff in High School and liked it and wanted to pick the series back up but early on noticed the "OTL WW2 with some nations trading nametags" thing. I will never understand why he decided to take a book about an alternate history and pigeon-hole it into real world history so badly. He doesn't really do it with his other series. His Worldwar series, which is easily the best and also awesome, has the Soviet Union surviving into the 21st century, Germany becoming a nuclear wasteland, etc. etc., although no short supply of his weird sex scenes.
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Feb 6, 2013 21:36
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NihilCredo posted:
100% true. Turnbased should not be present in modern computer games.
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Feb 6, 2013 21:49
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Turn-based play is a legacy design model inherited from board and card games, where it is a necessary limitation. When you have a computer available, a dynamic pausing model is almost always a much more flexible and generally superior approach. Turn-based play for video games is only useful in the face of special requirements such as PBEM / asynchronous multiplayer, and even then it's not always optimal since the computer allows for design improvements like simultaneous turns (think Frozen Synapse).
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Actually, speaking of Turtledove, whoever does the artwork for his book covers should be hired by Paradox.   Yes, that's Mussolini and Rommel helping Einstein into a fighter plane, what of it?
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Feb 6, 2013 21:51
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pdxjohan posted:100% true. Turnbased should not be present in modern computer games. Quick! Go tell Sid Meier before it's too late!
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Feb 6, 2013 21:59
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pdxjohan posted:100% true. Turnbased should not be present in modern computer games. Counterpoint: Turn based play allows for a completely different style of play, in which the player is able to carefully consider all possible tactics and choose the best one at any given moment. The specific subdivision of turns allows for a you-go-I-go system that is very easy to mentally grasp and apply complex tactics to. Turn based systems have a very clear cause and effect feedback system that makes people feel like their choices matter more in the moment. It's a different and equally valid genre of gaming that has nothing to do with computational power but choice in play style. I really do not know how you would make a good real time 4X game like Civilization, with just as much depth and complexity. Slowing everything down to turns makes systems way easier to design, which allows game designers to spend time making more and better systems instead of figuring out how to make what they want fit. My personal opinion: I prefer real time with pause. Even in games like Jagged Alliance, I prefer an in-depth real time system with abundant automatic pause conditions like the one used in 7.62 (I feel like the modern 3D JA games do it poorly). I honestly prefer Infinity Engine style RPG combat to Fallout style RPG combat. For JRPGs, I like both almost equally. For 4Xs, the only real time ones I've played have been Distant Worlds and Pax Imperia, and I never liked either as much as their turn based counterparts. So I guess it depends on the genre. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Feb 6, 2013 |
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Feb 6, 2013 22:01
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pdxjohan posted:100% true. Turnbased should not be present in modern computer games. Hey, look! It's the stupidest thing I've read all day!
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Feb 6, 2013 22:02
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Fintilgin posted:EDIT: I'm not suggesting Paradox games should go turn based, they'd be totally different games. But an equally ambition turn-based game based in the same period would be ~awesome~. Yeah, I play Paradox games the same way -- they're turn-based games where the turns are one day/one hour long and there's an auto-pass turn option unless something happens. Anyway, the real-time versus turn-based distinction is a design/stylistic choice that really depends on what you want the game to accentuate, since a turn-based system is more conducive to a comprehensible narrow set of strategic concerns, while a real-time setup might make more sense for a simulationist game. Trying to force a system onto a certain ruleset can result in a dissonance between the rules and actually playing the game -- just watch a video of Armageddon Chess, it's ridiculous. Saying that turn-based games are pointless in modern games is like saying no movies should be in black and white since we have color now.
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Feb 6, 2013 22:08
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A constant criticism the Three Moves Ahead guys have of Paradox games is that they are effectively turn-based games which are designed to make you miss the moment at which the important part of your turn starts.
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Feb 6, 2013 22:12
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Fintilgin posted:That's all I meant. Paradox games are already turn-based, it's just that they're set up to auto-advance turns rather than the auto-pause turns in Civlikes. Everything uses one-day turns except the HoI games, which use one-hour turns (Personally, I find them too specific for my tastes, but that's just me). Actions have a turn-length duration from "instantaneous" (most decisions) on up through specific amounts- income is tabulated every 30 turns, diplomatic actions effectively take 7 turns to implement (or 24 and 168 in the case of HoI), etc. Star Wars Rebellion had something similar in the basic concept. Now, there's still a place for auto-pause turns, especially where the conceit is such that everything is completely managed and manageable by the player, but these are fairly different games from Civlikes. Civ especially suffers from treating single-turn actions as the default and encouraging micromanagment. Alchenar posted:Quick! Go tell Sid Meier before it's too late! Are you really going to say that the late-game in any Civ game doesn't lag because of the bloating size of turns? I mean, this is an issue with Paradox games too, but the bloating is less of an issue because a lot of actions are multiturn.
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Feb 6, 2013 22:15
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:It's a different and equally valid genre of gaming that has nothing to do with computational power but choice in play style. I really do not know how you would make a good real time 4X game like Civilization, with just as much depth and complexity. Slowing everything down to turns makes systems way easier to design, which allows game designers to spend time making more and better systems instead of figuring out how to make what they want fit. 'Not classic turn-based' doesn't have to mean real-time (although Sins of a Solar Empire proves you can do a good 4x game in full realtime, too). There are many answers to the problem of "how does time pass?".
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Feb 6, 2013 22:15
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On the topic of barbarian migration games - Jon Shafer has left Stardock, started his own company, and started a kickstarter for Jon Shafer's At the Gates. A game focused on barbarian migration!
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Feb 6, 2013 22:15
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NihilCredo posted:Erm, look at the thread we're in. Or if you prefer more pedigree, look at SimCity. Paradox's games have a lot of systems, but they tend to lack fine detail. It's really a result of their scope its and not necessarily a bad thing. Turn based games tend to focus on a more specific subset of systems and are able to really flesh them out with a large amount of detail. Take a look at Jagged Alliance 2 and the 1.13 mod/fan patch for an example of this. Or any of the super grognardy war games that have supply and regimental systems that make HoI3 look like checkers. Sins isn't a 4X game, it's an RTS that wants to make people think it's a 4X game. It has way more in common with Starcraft than it does with MoO.
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Feb 6, 2013 22:23
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I challenge you to a duel, Johan. As my second I appoint Jake Solomon. I hope you've written out your will. 
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Feb 6, 2013 22:25
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Dr. Video Games 0031 posted:Paradox's games have a lot of systems, but they tend to lack fine detail. It's really a result of their scope its and not necessarily a bad thing. Turn based games tend to focus on a more specific subset of systems and are able to really flesh them out with a large amount of detail. Take a look at Jagged Alliance 2 and the 1.13 mod/fan patch for an example of this. Or any of the super grognardy war games that have supply and regimental systems that make HoI3 look like checkers. edit: haven't played it myself, but AI War: Fleet Command comes to mind as another example. NihilCredo fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Feb 6, 2013 |
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Feb 6, 2013 22:32
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Coolodile posted:
That's Eisenhower, not Rommel.
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Feb 6, 2013 22:35
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NihilCredo posted:Falsification of this claim: Dwarf Fortress. Outrageously detailed and complex game, still works in Simcity-esque RTwP. And it's taking him years and years and years to make, and it's still not even close to done, and has massive usability flaws that may never be fixed. Not a great example. edit: I mean this in terms of real time making turn based obsolete. If the example of games that do so are so impractical to develop, I argue that they can never be a major factor in the obsoletion of TBS. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Feb 6, 2013 |
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Feb 6, 2013 22:36
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Fintilgin posted:Hey, look! It's the stupidest thing I've read all day! It's not so much that turn-based is intrinsically bad or obsolete, it's just not the kind of game that Paradox, specifically, is going to make.
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Feb 6, 2013 22:44
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^^^^^ I'm also playing devil's advocate here as I've already said that I prefer real time, for the most part. It's an interesting discussion, though. On a complete side note, one of the things I'd like to see strategy games do more is asymmetric play, like AI Wars. I actually have played a little bit of that, it's neat. The idea of having a big bad out there able to wreck your poo poo if you piss it off enough is an interesting concept for a strategy game. I'd like to see this extrapolated out to Late Antiquity. Someone already posted about At the Gates, but it will have standard 4X everyone starts equal gameplay, despite the very unequal nature of its historical era. How cool would it be to play a strategy game in that era with Rome not being playable, and having it play by a completely different set of rules than everyone else. You'd have to manage your relations and wars with the different barbarian tribes, while trying to placate or avoid the Romans. Until eventually the Romans reach a state of decline and you reach a state of power to where a surprise attack can actually succeed. edit: Actually, reading about At the Gates, that might be what that actually is. It's kind of vague in that department. Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Feb 6, 2013 |
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Feb 6, 2013 22:48
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Shafer has an interview with Tom Chick on Qt3 this week and he talks about all the barbarian tribes being different - some like the Huns can't even own non-movable possessions like farms - and the Romans are unplayable. But they slowly decline through battles between the Eastern and Western emperors, or having child emperors etc, and you have to pick your time when to attack them. Although that means you don't get any more tech off them either. Sounds really cool.
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Feb 6, 2013 23:02
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V for Vegas posted:Shafer has an interview with Tom Chick on Qt3 this week and he talks about all the barbarian tribes being different - some like the Huns can't even own non-movable possessions like farms - and the Romans are unplayable. But they slowly decline through battles between the Eastern and Western emperors, or having child emperors etc, and you have to pick your time when to attack them. Although that means you don't get any more tech off them either. Sounds really cool. Yeah it sounds like he's trying to do something novel in terms of fundamental design rather than USP, so it'll be an interesting project to watch.
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Feb 6, 2013 23:16
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V for Vegas posted:Shafer has an interview with Tom Chick on Qt3 this week and he talks about all the barbarian tribes being different - some like the Huns can't even own non-movable possessions like farms - and the Romans are unplayable. But they slowly decline through battles between the Eastern and Western emperors, or having child emperors etc, and you have to pick your time when to attack them. Although that means you don't get any more tech off them either. Sounds really cool. It says that you also get tech when you take a Roman town
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Feb 6, 2013 23:56
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NextSundayA.D. fucked around with this message at 04:42 on Feb 7, 2013 |
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Feb 7, 2013 01:03
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pdxjohan posted:100% true. Turnbased should not be present in modern computer games. Oh Johan! Everyone responding seriously is precious. We are the Paradox fans, it's us. 
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Feb 7, 2013 01:10
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It would be stupid for a game based around the Cold War to not have a "US Loses" event spiral, but to make it in the same vein as those Russian talking heads predicting the balkanization of the US isn't exactly realistic. The whole "and your country splinters into breakaway ethnic republics this time, nya nya" thing doesn't really hold up to much examination– New England splitting from the USA is more analogous to Kamchatka seceding than the Ukraine seceding. A case could be made that the CSA could split off again, but even during Segregation's violent death, there wasn't much of a push for a Neoconfederate movement. Instead, in a hypothetical "US Loses the Cold War" situation, it would be more of a reverse-containment situation. An aggressive USSR foreign policy causes aligned regimes to deny natural resources to the USA in the mother of all OPEC embargoes. The lack of cheap oil forces the USA to lose its projection capabilities and focus instead on containment in only the new world. Fortress America is proclaimed, a policy of anticommunist isolationism that goes hand-in-hand with police state repression of dissent at the declining standard of living. To control a stagnant and demand-poor economy, state capitalism is instituted. The result? US loses by becoming an isolationist and nationally pessimistic version of modern China dependent on the Comecon for help.
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Feb 7, 2013 01:14
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NextSundayA.D. posted:Looks like I still have a Chronicles code if anyone wants it. EDIT: Thank you! Useless Shotgun fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Feb 7, 2013 |
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Feb 7, 2013 02:14
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After hundreds of hours on Victoria 2, I only learned just now that in the election decisions, the policy stance supported by every party is displayed on the upper right. I was memorizing them from the Politics screen this entire time 
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Feb 7, 2013 02:25
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Spiderfist Island posted:It would be stupid for a game based around the Cold War to not have a "US Loses" event spiral, but to make it in the same vein as those Russian talking heads predicting the balkanization of the US isn't exactly realistic. The whole "and your country splinters into breakaway ethnic republics this time, nya nya" thing doesn't really hold up to much examination– New England splitting from the USA is more analogous to Kamchatka seceding than the Ukraine seceding. A case could be made that the CSA could split off again, but even during Segregation's violent death, there wasn't much of a push for a Neoconfederate movement. There still may be secessions. Not between cultural or ethnic lines, but ideological. Various state governments would pass resolutions condemning the more radical federal government and some would pass measures to completely ignore new laws, conscript their own militias, etc. I could totally see that happening, with the way state and federal government is divided. The more liberal states would definitely resist. Useless Shotgun posted:Could I have it if still available at dsmaster007 at gmail.com Bots can see through spoiler tags, you know.
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Feb 7, 2013 02:32
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NihilCredo posted:(although Sins of a Solar Empire proves you can do a good 4x game in full realtime, too). How does a bad game prove you can do a good game in that style?  (You can but the proof is Distant Worlds)
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Feb 7, 2013 02:49
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I'm curious to anybody who's more knowledgeable about it. Admittedly to me it's just hard to imagine since the US "won" in real life but how realistic is the US collapsing, in all seriousness? The US was hardly in lockstep but the idea of parts seceding in the 60s and 70s or collapsing and reforming into Communist (the "winning" ideology in this hypothetical situation) just seems really crazy.
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Feb 7, 2013 02:58
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Yeah while I like the idea of the CSA or New England succeeding depending on what route the USA goes when it loses, I don't think it would have happened if the USA were somehow defeated in the Cold War, I think Spiderfist Island's scenario of no succession but a isolationist police state would be far more likely. That said succession could be a problem that in some games a failing USA may have to deal with, it's just that I think something REALLY bad would have to happen, like DC being nuked levels of clusterfuck.
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Feb 7, 2013 03:08
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RagnarokAngel posted:I'm curious to anybody who's more knowledgeable about it. Admittedly to me it's just hard to imagine since the US "won" in real life but how realistic is the US collapsing, in all seriousness? The US was hardly in lockstep but the idea of parts seceding in the 60s and 70s or collapsing and reforming into Communist (the "winning" ideology in this hypothetical situation) just seems really crazy. Fantasy, I'd think. People just like it because it mirrors the Soviet collapse. I'd see a US failure scenario going down a route of economic failure, military withdrawals, and a return of isolationism. The proverbial whimper rather than a bang.
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Feb 7, 2013 03:08
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Since people are talking about the "Why the USSR fell" question I'd like to bring up Stephen Kotkin's Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970-2000, which argues that nationalism was the least important factor in the collapse of the USSR. Instead, he points his finger at three things: one, the Soviet industrial base was centered around factories built in the 1930s and 1950s and, much like the decline of industry in the USA and UK, the same process happened in the USSR, but was masked by the artificially high oil prices due to the Oil Shock 1974-1986. Once the price of oil crashed in 1986, economic collapse was around the corner. Two: the satellite states actually required massive amounts of subsidizing in order to keep them solvent. He argues that Gorbachev actually had the right idea in cutting Eastern Europe satellite states loose, and that it might have worked if not for problem 3. 3 was that glastnost and perestroika undermined the entire premise of the system: by constant condemnation of the old Communist state of yesteryear, it undermined the legitimacy of the idea of the Communist Party being the agent of change to a system it built. Kotkin's recipe for preserving the USSR revolved around it ditching Eastern Europe far earlier and not pissing away the wealth of the oil boom and never going into Afghanistan.
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Feb 7, 2013 03:19
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Useless Shotgun posted:Could I have it if still available at dsmaster007 at gmail.com I sent you code have fun.
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Feb 7, 2013 04:41
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RagnarokAngel posted:I'm curious to anybody who's more knowledgeable about it. Admittedly to me it's just hard to imagine since the US "won" in real life but how realistic is the US collapsing, in all seriousness? The US was hardly in lockstep but the idea of parts seceding in the 60s and 70s or collapsing and reforming into Communist (the "winning" ideology in this hypothetical situation) just seems really crazy. Pretty unlikely, but it's a popular idea both as analog to the USSR falling apart and because balkanization is usually awesome in Paradox games. It also really mixes things up because the USA has been a pretty huge and monolithic power almost since independence, so the idea of the place splitting up on a long-term basis is sufficiently wacky to be fun. (The best mods are always the ones that let you conquer people and split them up into a dozen small countries.) My own inclination is to say it shouldn't be impossible, but it shouldn't be the most likely outcome of a US (non-nuclear) loss in the Cold War either. If the nukes are involved to any significant degree then there shouldn't be anything larger than a state government left but I imagine that'll have to wait for mods because Paradox never lets the USA be sufficiently balkanized 
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Feb 7, 2013 04:44
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I'm not sure how people are defining winning and losing in this context. We say that the USSR "lost" the Cold War because it broke up and abandoned socialism. It seems that the American equivalent would have to involve abandoning capitalism and similarly losing its major exterior entanglements. I guess maybe turning into some sort of attempt at autarkic non-capitalist economics, if we don't want to have it go full communist and balkanized, but I doubt that EvW will be able to define that sort of thing well anyways.
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Feb 7, 2013 04:55
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DrProsek posted:Yeah while I like the idea of the CSA or New England succeeding depending on what route the USA goes when it loses, I don't think it would have happened if the USA were somehow defeated in the Cold War, I think Spiderfist Island's scenario of no succession but a isolationist police state would be far more likely. That said succession could be a problem that in some games a failing USA may have to deal with, it's just that I think something REALLY bad would have to happen, like DC being nuked levels of clusterfuck. The only thing akin to secession in such a scenario is various groups of varying legitimacy claiming to be the 'true' American government. I cannot really see separatist groups within the US, but I can envision different groups vying for total control of the total country and fighting one another to a standstill.
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Feb 7, 2013 04:57
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Fintilgin posted:Seriously, it's fun, and there's something to be said for a human comprehensible, board game like mechanical simplicity.
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Feb 7, 2013 05:11
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I'm sure this has been covered in this thread a dozen times over, but...what's the best AAR to read for someone starting out with EU3?
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Feb 7, 2013 05:23
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