Paradox Grand Strategy: From the Carnival of Lust to the Enlightened Times

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gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

DStecks posted:

Re: crazy numbers of provinces, I think a solution that could make both camps happy (the "We need more provinces for interesting troop movements" and "Holy poo poo, we need a manageable number of provinces" sides) would actually be pretty straightforward, and not even unprecedented for a Paradox game: decouple the number of places troops can be placed from the number of provinces. The most simple way to implement this would be to do what V2 does with having provinces lumped into states. So you can have the USA divided up into counties for the purposes of troop maneuvering, but all the infrastructure exists at a state level.

Megadyptes posted:

Doesn't HOI3 already do that? Can't remember since it's been so long since I've played.

Nope. You still have to build things like Infra, IC, Anti-Air and Radar at the individual small province level.

And I don't think handling things on a state level the way Victoria does it would really help: An unmanageable number of provinces has (IMO) very little to do with building stuff in the provinces and rather has to do with the sheer number of forces involved. If the German-Polish border is 8 provinces wide, then that's 8 stacks that you have to manage as you plan out your invasion.

If, on the other hand, the border is 30 provinces wide, then even if you're only invading across 8 provinces with your spearheads, you still have fill up all 30 border provinces with at least 1 division/stack each, and you will eventually have to move all 30 divisions/stacks as pockets complete and infantry has to move up, or at the bare minimum relocate them once Poland falls. Multiply that by an order of magnitude for Barbarossa and the game still turns into micromanagement hell on June 22 1941. Even if you only have to worry about building IC in 8 German "states", you still have to worry about the movements of 120 divisions across as many provinces.

Yes, the game does have an "hand-off to AI" feature, but it always felt kind of awkward to try and play with 25-50% of the front (just the Panzers) under direct human control and the rest to AI. Handing off entire fronts does work, but then I would question if HOI3 was always supposed to be a "build up your country and give large-scale strategic targets to the military AI" type of game in the first place.

So yeah, when I'm talking about an unmanageable number of provinces, I really mean that the absolute number of provinces needs to go down, because all of the tedious busywork involved with too many divisions to juggle stems directly from having to fill in all of the "maneuver space" on the map.

# ? Jan 5, 2014 17:54

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# ? May 1, 2024 14:19

cool new Metroid game: Oct 7, 2009; hail satan

Hexes for life.
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# ? Jan 5, 2014 17:55

Raskolnikov38: Mar 3, 2007; We were somewhere around Manila when the drugs began to take hold

DStecks posted:

I actually don't know, but if it does, then I don't see why huge numbers of provinces are a problem.

It wouldn't be a problem if hoi3 went past 1948. However since it doesn't there isn't really a need to model a billion provinces in sub-saharan Africa or South America because they're never going to see meaningful combat.

# ? Jan 5, 2014 18:05

Ms Adequate: Oct 30, 2011; Baby even when I'm dead and gone
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Pimpmust posted:

I was kinda "alright, sure, whatever" until I saw Africa, Saudi Arabia, the US and India in the map

What's the matter? Sure, India now has so many provinces there's more border than province, and they become actually unclickable, and there's no reason for it because it's pretty drat rare any large-scale maneuver warfare takes place in the central-northern subcontinent, but there are MORE PROVINCES!

# ? Jan 5, 2014 18:28

Gort: Aug 18, 2003; Good day what ho cup of tea

gradenko_2000 posted:

Nope. You still have to build things like Infra, IC, Anti-Air and Radar at the individual small province level.

And I don't think handling things on a state level the way Victoria does it would really help: An unmanageable number of provinces has (IMO) very little to do with building stuff in the provinces and rather has to do with the sheer number of forces involved. If the German-Polish border is 8 provinces wide, then that's 8 stacks that you have to manage as you plan out your invasion.

If, on the other hand, the border is 30 provinces wide, then even if you're only invading across 8 provinces with your spearheads, you still have fill up all 30 border provinces with at least 1 division/stack each, and you will eventually have to move all 30 divisions/stacks as pockets complete and infantry has to move up, or at the bare minimum relocate them once Poland falls. Multiply that by an order of magnitude for Barbarossa and the game still turns into micromanagement hell on June 22 1941. Even if you only have to worry about building IC in 8 German "states", you still have to worry about the movements of 120 divisions across as many provinces.

Yes, the game does have an "hand-off to AI" feature, but it always felt kind of awkward to try and play with 25-50% of the front (just the Panzers) under direct human control and the rest to AI. Handing off entire fronts does work, but then I would question if HOI3 was always supposed to be a "build up your country and give large-scale strategic targets to the military AI" type of game in the first place.

So yeah, when I'm talking about an unmanageable number of provinces, I really mean that the absolute number of provinces needs to go down, because all of the tedious busywork involved with too many divisions to juggle stems directly from having to fill in all of the "maneuver space" on the map.

I don't think they can ever get the number of provinces "right", since what the correct number is is entirely subject to opinion, but something like CK2 or Victoria has the province count a lot closer to my preference than HoI3 does.

I suppose the rationale for having a billion provinces is so the player can micromanage encirclement battles by driving fast forces around slow enemy units, but I'd be quite happy having encirclements like that modelled "off-screen" via combat event than making the game a huge chore to play.

# ? Jan 5, 2014 18:34

ChrisAsmadi: Apr 19, 2007; :D

Patter Song posted:

To me the problem with extending V2's timeline that far back for V3 is that you'd end up with an effectively alien world almost every game. Even extending the timeline back to 1821 would lead to the problem of having much of Latin America likely remaining Spanish most games. You could have Mexico and Colombia as independent states at war with Spain in the beginning, but even then there's a decent chance that Bolivia/Peru and Argentina/Chile would stick with Spain most of the time. Not to mention having to make sure that the Ottoman starting war with Greece is a likely failure to avoid super-Ottomans showing up every game.

Could the new EU4 mechanics for colonial nations not work to deal with this to some extent?

# ? Jan 6, 2014 03:07

Empress Theonora: Feb 19, 2001; She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time.

It looks like a Great War is about to break out in 1934 in my Victoria 2 game. Is there any way to extend the playtime so I can at least see how the war would end?

Edit: Crisis averted, none of the other Great Powers wanted to ally with Fascist half-France I guess. It'd still be nice to know for future reference, though.

Empress Theonora fucked around with this message at 03:13 on Jan 6, 2014

# ? Jan 6, 2014 03:10

Top Hats Monthly: Jun 22, 2011; People are people so why should it be, that you and I should get along so awfully blink blink recall STOP IT YOU POSH LITTLE SHIT

Kavak posted:

Oh man, I gotta see where they say this.

There's also The Map of Abominations, which I was convinced was designed by someone related to Iron Cross until I asked him. There's an upcoming 1980's Cold War mod that plans to use it that I'm actually kind of looking forward to- the Gulf War and the Yugoslav Wars could actually benefit from it.

You know once Thief River Falls is a province in one of your games...

Cold War games would benefit from tons of provinces, granted WWIII would be extremely hard to manage (As it should, great job breaking the world, fuckwad :colbert:

), low scale conflicts would allow more management than the Six Day War being the Six Province War

Top Hats Monthly fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Jan 6, 2014

# ? Jan 6, 2014 03:30

PleasingFungus: Oct 10, 2012; idiot asshole bitch who should fuck off

ChrisAsmadi posted:

Could the new EU4 mechanics for colonial nations not work to deal with this to some extent?

Let's hold off on suggesting that new mechanics be brought to other games before we see them actually work in the original game.

Personally, I have low confidence; I haven't seen anything out of the Conquest of Paradise dev diaries that makes me think they've finally cracked the colonial-revolutionary nut. We'll see.

Rincewind posted:

It looks like a Great War is about to break out in 1934 in my Victoria 2 game. Is there any way to extend the playtime so I can at least see how the war would end?

Edit: Crisis averted, none of the other Great Powers wanted to ally with Fascist half-France I guess. It'd still be nice to know for future reference, though.

Open <gamedir>/common/defines.lua. (It's a text file.)

You should see a line reading "end_date = '1935.12.31',", near the top. Change that.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 03:59

Empress Theonora: Feb 19, 2001; She was a sword glinting in the depths of night, a lance of light piercing the darkness. There would be no mistakes this time.

PleasingFungus posted:

Let's hold off on suggesting that new mechanics be brought to other games before we see them actually work in the original game.

Personally, I have low confidence; I haven't seen anything out of the Conquest of Paradise dev diaries that makes me think they've finally cracked the colonial-revolutionary nut. We'll see.

Open <gamedir>/common/defines.lua. (It's a text file.)

You should see a line reading "end_date = '1935.12.31',", near the top. Change that.

Ah, thanks! I'll do that if something interesting is happening in 1935 the next time I play.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 04:15

QuoProQuid: Jan 12, 2012; Tr*ckin' and F*ckin' all the way to tha
T O P

ExtraNoise posted:

Divided We Stand version 1.6 is released officially! This release includes some small tweaks and (more importantly) the new American Unions that players can form in their games.

Mod thread: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?738215-HoD-Divided-We-Stand-(Balkanized-North-America)

Just give me the download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/qcu1gqn3btgvjq2/DWS16.zip

I sat down and played a game until 1900 to see how it fared, and I'm glad to see that United Virginia didn't create a massive blob that steamrolled everyone in their path. Here's how North America looked by the end of the game:

You'll notice Nebraska got a lot of help in smashing Montana. Montana actually revolted into the Plains Federation, which then fell to Nebraska after Montana was conquered. Montana was then released by Lincoln about a decade later.

Communism was very popular in this game. I'd estimate half the nations in the game went full-on Communist. This included Georgia, the Confederate State"s", Manhattan, Jefferson, and Texas. It also included...

...which happened to gain a foothold in Massachusetts territories before somehow gobbling up Alaska. Otherwise the USA didn't hold any territories.

And of course, a gratuitous shot of Europe:

Europe was in constant war most of the game, with the UK and Prussia as allies against France and Russia. Once the German Empire formed, everything flopped and the UK allied itself with Spain and Poland, while the Russian Empire allied with Austria-Hungary. The Vatican actually was a power for most of the game before they were absorbed into Italy. And the Ottomans had an empire that stretched through most of the Middle East and Africa.

Fun game. I'm anxious to see what others do with it now that it has a lot of its bigger bugs solved.

I have the entire Great Lakes region in my sphere of influence. How do I form the Great Lakes Republic? Is there a decision or event that I should be waiting for?

# ? Jan 6, 2014 15:38

ExtraNoise: Apr 11, 2007

QuoProQuid posted:

I have the entire Great Lakes region in my sphere of influence. How do I form the Great Lakes Republic? Is there a decision or event that I should be waiting for?

Paging DrSunshine. Is that something we can add?

(I'm terrible at writing events.)

# ? Jan 6, 2014 19:23

DrSunshine: Mar 23, 2009; Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

ExtraNoise posted:

Paging DrSunshine. Is that something we can add?

(I'm terrible at writing events.)

The "Form [X]" decision should be there. Zip up your save file and lemme take a look.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 19:37

Top Hats Monthly: Jun 22, 2011; People are people so why should it be, that you and I should get along so awfully blink blink recall STOP IT YOU POSH LITTLE SHIT

ExtraNoise posted:

Divided We Stand version 1.6 is released officially! This release includes some small tweaks and (more importantly) the new American Unions that players can form in their games.

Mod thread: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?738215-HoD-Divided-We-Stand-(Balkanized-North-America)

Just give me the download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/qcu1gqn3btgvjq2/DWS16.zip

I sat down and played a game until 1900 to see how it fared, and I'm glad to see that United Virginia didn't create a massive blob that steamrolled everyone in their path. Here's how North America looked by the end of the game:

You'll notice Nebraska got a lot of help in smashing Montana. Montana actually revolted into the Plains Federation, which then fell to Nebraska after Montana was conquered. Montana was then released by Lincoln about a decade later.

Communism was very popular in this game. I'd estimate half the nations in the game went full-on Communist. This included Georgia, the Confederate State"s", Manhattan, Jefferson, and Texas. It also included...

...which happened to gain a foothold in Massachusetts territories before somehow gobbling up Alaska. Otherwise the USA didn't hold any territories.

And of course, a gratuitous shot of Europe:

Europe was in constant war most of the game, with the UK and Prussia as allies against France and Russia. Once the German Empire formed, everything flopped and the UK allied itself with Spain and Poland, while the Russian Empire allied with Austria-Hungary. The Vatican actually was a power for most of the game before they were absorbed into Italy. And the Ottomans had an empire that stretched through most of the Middle East and Africa.

Fun game. I'm anxious to see what others do with it now that it has a lot of its bigger bugs solved.

This looks like fun! But what happened to Minnesota :stonk:

# ? Jan 6, 2014 19:40

DStecks: Feb 6, 2012

DStecks posted:

Re: crazy numbers of provinces, I think a solution that could make both camps happy (the "We need more provinces for interesting troop movements" and "Holy poo poo, we need a manageable number of provinces" sides) would actually be pretty straightforward, and not even unprecedented for a Paradox game: decouple the number of places troops can be placed from the number of provinces. The most simple way to implement this would be to do what V2 does with having provinces lumped into states. So you can have the USA divided up into counties for the purposes of troop maneuvering, but all the infrastructure exists at a state level.

The real solution is to remove provinces entirely and use zones of control to create continuous fronts. It's a real time game, there's no need for arbitrary delineations of provinces to control troop movement.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 20:17

DrSunshine: Mar 23, 2009; Did I just say that out loud~~?!!!

How about decoupling army movement and other considerations like that from provinces, and making provinces just important for administrative and economic things? Then you could have wars lining up on fronts and whatnot, with terrain being the primary factor since the armies would be represented as freely-moving "blobs" rather than individual units.

QuoProQuid posted:

I have the entire Great Lakes region in my sphere of influence. How do I form the Great Lakes Republic? Is there a decision or event that I should be waiting for?

Looking at the decision again: one of the requirements for forming the Great Lakes Union is that the USA does not also exist. Is there a United States nation anywhere?

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:07

Darkrenown: Jul 18, 2012; please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

uPen posted:

The real solution is to remove provinces entirely and use zones of control to create continuous fronts. It's a real time game, there's no need for arbitrary delineations of provinces to control troop movement.

Well, there's pathfinding, ease of forming fronts, familiarity for players of our other games, and the fact the engine is based on provinces

Probably more, but just off the top of my head it's not a trivial change.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:08

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

Darkrenown posted:

Well, there's pathfinding, ease of forming fronts, familiarity for players of our other games, and the fact the engine is based on provinces Probably more, but just off the top of my head it's not a trivial change.

Also that the engine isn't real-time at all and is simultaneous turn-based.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:14

Ofaloaf: Feb 15, 2013

Darkrenown posted:

Well, there's pathfinding, ease of forming fronts, familiarity for players of our other games, and the fact the engine is based on provinces Probably more, but just off the top of my head it's not a trivial change.

What, you can't just whip up a new game engine over the weekend? Some gaming company you work for, then! :rolleyes:

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:17

Pryor on Fire: May 14, 2013; they don't know all alien abduction experiences can be explained by people thinking saving private ryan was a documentary

Wait hold on some guy didn't know what 7zip was a few pages ago and you didn't shame him out of the thread? What kind of PC gaming grognards are you?

Whatever happened with that East vs West game? Is it coming out this year maybe?

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:19

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

Darkrenown posted:

Well, there's pathfinding, ease of forming fronts, familiarity for players of our other games, and the fact the engine is based on provinces Probably more, but just off the top of my head it's not a trivial change.

What you mean you can't just remove the things that all your games are based around in a quick patch? :colbert:

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:19

Fintilgin: Sep 29, 2004; Fintilgin sweeps!

Darkrenown posted:

Well, there's pathfinding, ease of forming fronts, familiarity for players of our other games, and the fact the engine is based on provinces Probably more, but just off the top of my head it's not a trivial change.

Just go to hexes and turns, like a real wargame. :colbert:

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:25

Drone: Aug 22, 2003; Incredible machine

Pryor on Fire posted:

Wait hold on some guy didn't know what 7zip was a few pages ago and you didn't shame him out of the thread? What kind of PC gaming grognards are you?

Whatever happened with that East vs West game? Is it coming out this year maybe?

"You can't cut back on provinces from the game! YOU WILL REGRET THIS!"
/

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:26

DStecks: Feb 6, 2012

A hard province-based system will never be ideal for micromanaged combat, unless combat is a self-contained minigame. Which wouldn't be the worst thing, by any means, but at that point you're basically making Total War: WWII.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:28

Punished Chuck: Dec 27, 2010

The Supreme Ruler games used that province-less zone of control system, with distinct cities/army bases/etc on the map to be defended, and it was a pretty neat system. I don't think there was any real way to negotiate territory changes, though. Just whoever controlled what at the end of the war kept it, since there weren't distinct provinces to demand. Other than that it made wars flow a bit more naturally instead of the binary in/out province system.

As Darkrenown said, it wouldn't really work in existing series. But I wouldn't mind seeing it more in other games.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:28

Flappy Bert: Dec 11, 2011; I have seen the light, and it is a string

Is there any workaround or file edit or something to make V2 revolts less frustrating? Lately I've been dropping all my games around 1880 because I really don't feel like playing 'murder rebel carpets' every 6 months.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:34

Darkrenown: Jul 18, 2012; please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

uPen posted:

What you mean you can't just remove the things that all your games are based around in a quick patch?

Pryor on Fire posted:

Whatever happened with that East vs West game? Is it coming out this year maybe?

It got delayed a bit, it's still coming though. They released a bunch of unit info for xmas/new year on their forum recently.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:46

Riso: Oct 11, 2008; by merry exmarx

DerLeo posted:

Is there any workaround or file edit or something to make V2 revolts less frustrating? Lately I've been dropping all my games around 1880 because I really don't feel like playing 'murder rebel carpets' every 6 months.

Yeah that's ridiculous. And yet, DARKRENOWN DOESNT CARE.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:48

Pimpmust: Oct 1, 2008

After having bought and played Supreme Ruler Cold War I can safely say that no game like East vs West got me both excited and terrified in quite the same way, at the same time, be good damnit I need my cold war fix :ohdear:

# ? Jan 6, 2014 21:56

ExtraNoise: Apr 11, 2007

DrSunshine posted:

Looking at the decision again: one of the requirements for forming the Great Lakes Union is that the USA does not also exist. Is there a United States nation anywhere?

I had the US pop up in my game too, though it controls no land at the start of the game. Is it possible Seward's Folly happens as scheduled and Alaska becomes the United States?

# ? Jan 6, 2014 22:19

Darkrenown: Jul 18, 2012; please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

DerLeo posted:

Is there any workaround or file edit or something to make V2 revolts less frustrating? Lately I've been dropping all my games around 1880 because I really don't feel like playing 'murder rebel carpets' every 6 months.

There's something in defines along the lines of MILITANCY_LOST_ON_RISING, if you set that to 9 most rebels should give up as soon as they revolt. I think. It's a been a bit since I modded V2.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 22:22

Sindai: Jan 24, 2007; i want to achieve immortality through not dying

Pryor on Fire posted:

Whatever happened with that East vs West game? Is it coming out this year maybe?

Funny you should mention that... http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?745246-East-vs-West-MP

Johan posted:

Sadly, it is looking very likely that MP will be cut from the game.

Johan posted:

When games get severe delays, eventually you have to cut things in order to get the game finished at all. Usually you do not announce any feature that have a risk of being cut to avoid outrage, but sometimes you have no choice.

As soon as the game reaches beta, we will ramp up announcements and dev diaries at a rapid speed, for the final six months until release.

The really funny part is the EvW devs in the thread responding by quoting the multiplayer bullet point from http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/east-vs-west

Sindai fucked around with this message at 23:11 on Jan 6, 2014

# ? Jan 6, 2014 23:09

burnishedfume: Mar 8, 2011; You really are a louse...

Sindai posted:

Funny you should mention that... http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?745246-East-vs-West-MP

The really funny part is the EvW devs in the thread responding by quoting the multiplayer bullet point from http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/east-vs-west

I am actually legitimately disappointed there won't be multiplayer. It seems like it would be the kind of crazy Paradox game that would work well with it; like players playing as Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria, and Iraq, and slowly forming a third military alliance against NATO and the Warsaw Pact; the People's Caliphate :ussr:

# ? Jan 6, 2014 23:13

vanity slug: Jul 20, 2010

EvW kinda sounds like it would suck with just AI.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 23:21

V for Vegas: Sep 1, 2004; THUNDERDOME LOSER

haha, good to see the paradox forums are as horrible as ever.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 23:21

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

Sindai posted:

Funny you should mention that... http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?745246-East-vs-West-MP

The really funny part is the EvW devs in the thread responding by quoting the multiplayer bullet point from http://www.paradoxplaza.com/games/east-vs-west

More shocking than no MP is that the game is over 6 months out from release, goddamn.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 23:27

cool new Metroid game: Oct 7, 2009; hail satan

Heh Johan just strolls by and mentions that MP will probably have to be cut and the guys who are developing the game can't even respond to it because of some NDA poo poo. You'd think they'd handle it a bit better than that, maybe via a community manager or something.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 23:37

Kavak: Aug 23, 2009

uPen posted:

More shocking than no MP is that the game is over 6 months out from release, goddamn.

They're reworking the whole thing AFAIK, and I think the beta is due in half a year, or at least Q2.

# ? Jan 6, 2014 23:41

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# ? May 1, 2024 14:19

Darkrenown: Jul 18, 2012; please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

quote:

paradox

i thought aztecs were bad

then you came out with randomised americas for eu4

now this???

this is the last straw

paradox is finished

Oh no!

# ? Jan 6, 2014 23:43

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Paradox Grand Strategy: From the Carnival of Lust to the Enlightened Times

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