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https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads%2Fdev-diary-8-the-situation-log-and-special-projects.890612%2F New dev diary up. Looks like anomalies can expand into "special projects" just like I thought/hoped!!
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Nov 9, 2015 16:41
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"A subterranean civilization is tunneling towards our colony" Huh, I guess filling that hole with rocks wasn't such a good idea after all
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Nov 9, 2015 18:44
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Better kill the poo poo out of them, you don't want Agartha lasting long enough to cast their "break the seal" spell
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Nov 9, 2015 18:50
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Gort posted:I kind of like Seven Wonders for my 4x boardgame fix, though obviously it's not like you're painting a map your colour or anything. That's because 7 wonders streamlines each of the X's down to be just complex enough to be reasonably calculated in a board game. It's pretty well done.
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Nov 9, 2015 19:13
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Anyone played the board game Republic of Rome? It's basically a game which aims to translate and simulate workings of the Roman republic, mostly the senate, into a part competitive and part co-operative board game. I'd describe it as more complex and spergy Junta set set in Ancient Rome. It also shares some features with EU:Rome such as characters gaining the loyalty of legions and the populist party  Played it a number of times with my friends, but it often takes too long to finish in one session unless we play all day. e: I'm interested in trying to run a long game of it on the forums some time. But I'll have to cook up some rules variations so that it will still work and maybe have each player/poster play a single senator instead of a senate faction. e2: I don't think Europa Universalis would make a pretty good or accessible board game (never played the original), the scale is just too big (trade, war, colonization, 400 years, government change, religious change, several continents etc). However a game using one aspect of EU might be a lot better, say one where the setting is the HRE in the 16th-17th centuries, the players take on the roles of the secular electors+Austria and have navigate both the politics of the Empire and the reformation and the religious wars. That could be a cool setting for making an interesting game for about 5 players. Randarkman fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Nov 9, 2015 |
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Nov 9, 2015 20:31
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An EU boardgame should be a cooperative game where you play as a guild of astrologers. The nation is politically unstable and You see a comet about to pass the near the earth. It is your job, through science, magic, or the dark arts to divert the comet before the plebs see it and Revolution occurs.
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Nov 9, 2015 21:09
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Googling The Republic of Rome taught me that somebody gives awards in the category of "Pre-World War II board games". Goddamn nerds.
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Nov 9, 2015 21:26
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An EU board game should be a cooperative game where the players do what they can to influence random events and the course of history to make the most pretty borders.
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Nov 9, 2015 22:39
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Randarkman posted:Anyone played the board game Republic of Rome? It's basically a game which aims to translate and simulate workings of the Roman republic, mostly the senate, into a part competitive and part co-operative board game. I'd describe it as more complex and spergy Junta set set in Ancient Rome. It also shares some features with EU:Rome such as characters gaining the loyalty of legions and the populist party Ive played it and it either has ended with Rome failing a war so we all die or when where almost of time whoever has the best shot at becoming dictator going for it culminating in everyone trying to assassinate each the other side so they dont lose. And we've lost enough times from losing wars in the early republic period (it almost always became spending the turn raising just enough legions and giving enough bread and circuses [literally] to not die from an angry mob/revolt) that we started to just start in the middle or late period.
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Nov 10, 2015 02:25
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Hey Paradox guys who read this thread. How do you actually collect and compile the history that you have in your games? How do you choose what historical events to put into your games and how do you research them? What kind of sources do you use for your information? Regular history books, academic history books, etc.? How about getting information on national histories where language is a barrier of access to the better researched sources of information? Do you just have a team of historians who do that for you, who you get in touch with when you need something read up and written about? This sorta stuff really interests me, since in my own history reading I am finding it extremely difficult to get well versed enough in just post-Roman Britain, never mind Europe or the world, and I could not imagine the amount of information that actually has to be collected for a game which covers a 400 or 700 year span, so I am interested in knowing precisely how you do it. You can have a team of programmers and coders who build the systems, but I find it hard to believe that they will have the time on their hands to also be researching all of the history of all of the nations over 4 centuries alongside that.
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Nov 10, 2015 07:30
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Another Person posted:Hey Paradox guys who read this thread. How do you actually collect and compile the history that you have in your games? How do you choose what historical events to put into your games and how do you research them? What kind of sources do you use for your information? Regular history books, academic history books, etc.? How about getting information on national histories where language is a barrier of access to the better researched sources of information? We tell a scripter "We are making this" then the scripter looks poo poo up on Wikipedia, sometimes he googles it to find other sources and very rarely read a book. The more obscure some historical detail in the game is, the more probable it is that it was made by some beta that asked us to add it so we added it after he had already done all the heavy work. Disclaimer: I am bastardizing this a lot, it is not as laid back as I've made it sound but it is not as fancy as people expect. quote:Do you just have a team of historians who do that for you, who you get in touch with when you need something read up and written about? I am always surprised by people thinking we have this, why would we? We already have a whole forum that kinda acts like it for us. We all have interest in history but we do not have anyone with the professional title of "Historian". Whoever gets the task of creating the content whatever form it is (art, scripting, design) has the responsibility of researching it and implementing it. Nothing fancy.
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Nov 10, 2015 10:02
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Groogy posted:I am always surprised by people thinking we have this, why would we? We already have a whole forum that kinda acts like it for us. We all have interest in history but we do not have anyone with the professional title of "Historian". Whoever gets the task of creating the content whatever form it is (art, scripting, design) has the responsibility of researching it and implementing it. Nothing fancy. You know, if PDS ever should find itself looking to hire someone with a degree in history... 
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Nov 10, 2015 10:12
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Drone posted:You know, if PDS ever should find itself looking to hire someone with a degree in history... Found the barista.
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Nov 10, 2015 10:52
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Demiurge4 posted:Found the barista. Close! IT!
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Nov 10, 2015 10:54
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Groogy posted:We tell a scripter "We are making this" then the scripter looks poo poo up on Wikipedia, sometimes he googles it to find other sources and very rarely read a book. I like the perspective of "gently caress hiring historians when a bunch of obsessed internet randos will happily complain about our factual accuracy for free."
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Nov 10, 2015 10:59
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The problem is they got their history wrong because they listen to the wrong poster and read the wrong wikipedia. Lets take HoI4 as an example, where are the godlike Swiss soldiers who held the Reduit and could have beaten Nazi Germany if they wanted to? While a Communist Republic of Switzerland WC is impossible HoI4 will remain ahistorical.
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Nov 10, 2015 13:23
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Communist Zombie posted:Ive played it and it either has ended with Rome failing a war so we all die or when where almost of time whoever has the best shot at becoming dictator going for it culminating in everyone trying to assassinate each the other side so they dont lose. And we've lost enough times from losing wars in the early republic period (it almost always became spending the turn raising just enough legions and giving enough bread and circuses [literally] to not die from an angry mob/revolt) that we started to just start in the middle or late period. A lot of people recommend starting in the early era but honestly if you want to really politick with each other the later periods are better for that because you get more opportunities to rebel and such.
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Nov 10, 2015 14:18
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Tahirovic posted:The problem is they got their history wrong because they listen to the wrong poster and read the wrong wikipedia. Actually while I was working on AI for HOI I had a big problem of Switzerland joining the Allies and kicking Germany's and Italy's rear end and conquering huge swaths of their land. Don't think you have anything to worry there. Switzerland is really damned strong, but I believe they are not gonna steamroll anymore but be more focused on defense now.
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Nov 10, 2015 14:51
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Groogy posted:Actually while I was working on AI for HOI I had a big problem of Switzerland joining the Allies and kicking Germany's and Italy's rear end and conquering huge swaths of their land. Don't think you have anything to worry there. Switzerland is really damned strong, but I believe they are not gonna steamroll anymore but be more focused on defense now. Sorta tempted to boot up HoI3 or DH as Germany and try to invade Switzerland and just count up how many casualties the Redoubt costs. That sounds pretty weird out of context I'm sure.
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Nov 10, 2015 15:14
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Groogy posted:Actually while I was working on AI for HOI I had a big problem of Switzerland joining the Allies and kicking Germany's and Italy's rear end and conquering huge swaths of their land. Don't think you have anything to worry there. Switzerland is really damned strong, but I believe they are not gonna steamroll anymore but be more focused on defense now. yeah, the swiss are still OP on the defensive.
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Nov 10, 2015 16:14
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I remember in HoI 3 that if you were playing as the Swiss, even with just militia you could hold onto the border for years because of a combination of the level 10 forts everywhere and the mountains. Or you could build mountain troops and really bring on the pain 
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Nov 10, 2015 16:31
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Now where did I put those screenshots of me pushing through Switzerland in Strategic Command: WW1 as Germany? Made an alternative start scenario alá AGEODs WW1 event for deciding on war plans to follow, fun times.
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Nov 10, 2015 16:46
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It's funny how Switzerland has such a rich martial tradition while barely actually participating in any wars
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Nov 10, 2015 18:01
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unwantedplatypus posted:It's funny how Switzerland has such a rich martial tradition while barely actually participating in any wars They have plenty of history as mercenaries, don't worry about them.
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Nov 10, 2015 18:21
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Me myself really like the idea of Citizens Militia. It is outdated in our day and age but still pretty cool.
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Nov 10, 2015 19:16
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Now that Paradox is exploring the future with Stellaris, I keep thinking about how much I would like a near-future set dystopian cyberpunk game. You could control either a corporation battling for increased market influence/control or a nation state struggling to stay relevant as mega corporations begin to challenge their power. No clue about how the game would work other than the general concept of the blend of Syndicate and Paradox grand strategy being hugely appealing.
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Nov 10, 2015 19:26
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Groogy posted:We tell a scripter "We are making this" then the scripter looks poo poo up on Wikipedia, sometimes he googles it to find other sources and very rarely read a book. hahaha, okay. I assumed since there were so many flavour events, and for CK2, so many historical figures, that some research was required from books, such as a sort of "Who's Who" tome for individual realms. I would be so unsure to trust forum 'historians' though without at least the citing of sources considering some of the 'history' interpretations I have seen reposted in here. I haven't really rummaged around the forums to see if you have anywhere like that already though. The reason I figured a small team of like 4 or 5 historians might be involved is because there is just so much history involved. Thanks for answering though! Also, time to be the beta and make a dumb CK2 request. Please give Charlemagne an event which gives him a single war elephant. Dude had a loving pet elephant gifted to him called Abul-Abbas, which is crazy and funny and he rode it into war. I find the idea of him owning one really funny since he used it to scare people basically. It is in Einhard's account of Charlemagne's life somewhere if I remember rightly. Einhard also contains another great quote which can be re-used for any Paradox game. "Have the Frank for your friend, but not your neighbour." Also, sorry to see your Lithuania problems Groogy. Another Person fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 19:43
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Using wikipedia for research also isn't that weird or bad. Paradox isn't the only one to use it regularly in a professional manner. It's a good resource and really the real reason it ever was seen as terrible is by college professors who didn't want you writing a summary of a summary. It would have been the equivalent of writing a summary of another students paper, or basing your paper on a single paragraph encyclopedia entry. Then it got marred by outrage and unwarranted fears about editing because it's new and scary and technology, OOooOOOoo! Also, the forums are an awesome resource because when someone writes paragraphs about why isn't X represented, Paradox devs can ignore most of that and just google or wikipedia a few key words and get a better source for explaining X and why it's important. It's really not that big of a deal, and it's not like they won't read a book now and then. They've got an army of historians and pseudo-historians to do the heavy lifting for free. Plus, what good would hiring a historian do since most are very niche in what they studied? You'd need to hire multiple historians to cover a game period and that's a lot of money to be honest...
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Nov 10, 2015 20:13
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Bel Monte posted:Using wikipedia for research also isn't that weird or bad. Paradox isn't the only one to use it regularly in a professional manner. It's a good resource and really the real reason it ever was seen as terrible is by college professors who didn't want you writing a summary of a summary. It would have been the equivalent of writing a summary of another students paper, or basing your paper on a single paragraph encyclopedia entry. Then it got marred by outrage and unwarranted fears about editing because it's new and scary and technology, OOooOOOoo! Oh, I wasn't complaining about the way they do research, such as just looking things up like anyone would when they need to know something. I was just saying I wouldn't rely on forums for history, because people on forums I find are less interested in discussing a wider and accepted history, and more niche interpretations or poor representations (such as making something out to be a bigger issue than it truly was). And yeah, the niche of history fields is why I figured they would have a few. I was wrong about that though. I was mostly just wondering how exactly they did it, since it was interesting to me. Another Person fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 20:23
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Bel Monte posted:Using wikipedia for research also isn't that weird or bad. Paradox isn't the only one to use it regularly in a professional manner. It's a good resource and really the real reason it ever was seen as terrible is by college professors who didn't want you writing a summary of a summary. It would have been the equivalent of writing a summary of another students paper, or basing your paper on a single paragraph encyclopedia entry. Then it got marred by outrage and unwarranted fears about editing because it's new and scary and technology, OOooOOOoo! As somebody who works in history in a professional capacity where information accuracy is the most important criteria (archives) I can tell you authoritatively that any article on Wikipedia (outside of Great Man Big Battle articles - so the real bread and butter of history) is highly suspect and won't be accepted as authoritative. We've been burned numerous times in the past from people trying to use Wiki as a source and the information it has is just flat out wrong.
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Nov 10, 2015 20:32
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Another Person posted:I was mostly just wondering how exactly they did it, since it was interesting to me. Oh yeah, it's just not as exciting and in depth as most folks think. No big deal. I'd rather they have historians too, but it's just not feasible. Oberleutnant posted:As somebody who works in history in a professional capacity where information accuracy is the most important criteria (archives) I can tell you authoritatively that any article on Wikipedia (outside of Great Man Big Battle articles - so the real bread and butter of history) is highly suspect and won't be accepted as authoritative. We've been burned numerous times in the past from people trying to use Wiki as a source and the information it has is just flat out wrong. You can find plenty of false information in books too. Probably more so, as just throwing out "Guns, Germs, and Steel" makes plenty of historians grit their teeth. Wikipedia, like most encyclopedias, is useful for pulling together a bunch of sources for you to read further on if you like. It's not like printed encyclopedias are that great either. A friend once had a mini-encyclopedia, and the entry for Germany started with "A cold wet place".... It's not wrong, but still! The most likely alternative would be intro to X era history books for college classes. Not exactly a resource to give you the tools and knowledge needed to replicate an era.
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Nov 10, 2015 20:47
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Wikipedia is not good for looking up sources for further reading since it favors sources that are often incredibly bad (online stuff). And of course print encyclopedias aren't any better, but nobody was ever pretending those were authoritative.Oberleutnant posted:As somebody who works in history in a professional capacity where information accuracy is the most important criteria (archives) I can tell you authoritatively that any article on Wikipedia (outside of Great Man Big Battle articles - so the real bread and butter of history) is highly suspect and won't be accepted as authoritative. We've been burned numerous times in the past from people trying to use Wiki as a source and the information it has is just flat out wrong. and the deeper you go (i.e. the obscure events and decisions that give Paradox games the most flavour) the worse it gets. Wikipedia's very geared towards letting spergs with the time to protect their own series of pet articles shut out any conflicting points of view. Read any page that's remotely contentious and it's incredibly obvious but it's unfortunately relatively omnipresent even when you wouldn't expect it (for instance, an article about loving glass beads). It doesn't help that historians tend to be so loving protective of their research that new findings are often very hard to get into the popular consciousness since it takes like 40 years for anyone to actually see them. e: I gotta be honest that I find this a bit concerning. I mean it's not like Paradox was ever pretending to be the paragon of historical accuracy, but especially with the runaway success of their recent games, hiring a consulting historian shouldn't be out of reach. Koramei fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 20:48
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Oberleutnant posted:As somebody who works in history in a professional capacity where information accuracy is the most important criteria (archives) I can tell you authoritatively that any article on Wikipedia (outside of Great Man Big Battle articles - so the real bread and butter of history) is highly suspect and won't be accepted as authoritative. We've been burned numerous times in the past from people trying to use Wiki as a source and the information it has is just flat out wrong. Wikipedia also has the problem, especially for pre-modern history, of mostly using rather old public domain works as sources rather than newer up-to-date research. If you're looking something before the 19th century and it's not an article about some really famous person like Caesar or Alexander, you'll often find that the sources used can be more than 100 years old. That may not sound like it's too much of a big deal, but quite alot has happened in history and archeology since then. e: I'm currently doing a year of history so I can be qualified to teach it at high school level. And we are of course encouraged to stay away from wikipedia for various reasons, at least from citing it directly. Though wikipedia is often a pretty good place to start to if you are unsure where to begin when researching or writing about something, then you acquire better sources for the actual work, depending on the wiki article that might even be the sources used in the article (check the sources to make sure they agree with the author). Randarkman fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 21:05
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Koramei posted:e: I gotta be honest that I find this a bit concerning. I mean it's not like Paradox was ever pretending to be the paragon of historical accuracy, but especially with the runaway success of their recent games, hiring a consulting historian shouldn't be out of reach. I'm just saying is all.
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Nov 10, 2015 21:11
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Koramei posted:
There's a legion of unemployed/underemployed history PhD students out there too, so, you know, it's not like it'd be difficult to find someone. I made it to the interview stage with Ubisoft Montreal when they were looking for history researchers (for Assassin's Creed, I assume), sadly never got any further. Although it seems like most developers would rather do the research themselves rather than hiring someone to do it.
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Nov 10, 2015 21:22
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Dreylad posted:I made it to the interview stage with Ubisoft Montreal when they were looking for history researchers (for Assassin's Creed, I assume), sadly never got any further. Although it seems like most developers would rather do the research themselves rather than hiring someone to do it. I'd say that's completely understandable. And if there's something you're really unsure about you could probably learn just enough to research the rest yourself and implement it in the game by just shooting a couple of questions at a university professor or something.
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Nov 10, 2015 21:30
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Randarkman posted:I'd say that's completely understandable. And if there's something you're really unsure about you could probably learn just enough to research the rest yourself and implement it in the game by just shooting a couple of questions at a university professor or something. Yeah pretty much. It's getting easier and easier to do research on-line and most video games don't require archival-level research. And yeah, usually profs are happy to field a few questions. Which is too bad since "doing historical research for games" would be a pretty great job.
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Nov 10, 2015 21:41
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If you want to work for a game company and your job requirements to be to "must be able to read books and give sage advice" you want to get into law, not history.
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Nov 10, 2015 22:52
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I have degrees in both history (European focus, too!) and computer science but I think that like 90% of making a good event has to do with grasping the proper game design moreso than the strict historical basis. Almost every time that I think about a mechanic and think "To be truly historical, this mechanic should be <x>" I can usually follow that up with " and that would be pretty unplayable." I think the right balance is being struck. I'm not sure how strictly correct the history needs to be. Wikipedia produces reasonable broad strokes. I do still disagree on a few things, like the lack of an Isaac Newton DLC. Come on. 'And God said, "Let there be Newton", and there was light.' For a game that so triumphally endorses the notions that
its handling of the intellectual life of the presumed Enlightenment is still pretty limited. There's a fantastic narrative about natural philosophers and scholar-kings in the late parts of EU4's timeframe.
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Nov 10, 2015 22:54
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Yeah I don't think the historians should be writing the game or that the devs should have to listen to them 100% of the time, just that there should be some people who genuinely know their poo poo regarding the periods represented, that are consulted about some of the choices. Like it or not (nobody seems to like it, I've noticed) games like these are one of the main ways historical knowledge seems to get pushed out to the general public, at least in younger generations. When they're pushing an outdated/ regressive model of history then there's clearly a bit of an issue there. Then of course some cases like HOI detaching its self from the holocaust and having gameplay focused ideologies are totally understandable decisions even if they don't make a lick of sense from a historical point of view. Koramei fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Nov 10, 2015 |
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Nov 10, 2015 23:16
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