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Paradox Grand Strategy - Thread of Fighting WW2 as Bithynia

Uzzy

Member
Wasn't even my pic Red, so I've no idea. Just one I grabbed off the forums. As you should know, my pics have waifus in place of flags!

But if I do get a chance to play the beta, it's good to know that feedback can get passed onto DDRJake. Good stuff Red.
 

Fitz

Member
Good. I like what they're trying to do with the fort system, far more interesting than the old system of having to siege down every province, but it's clear that it's got some way to go yet.
 
I'm not gonna lie: I have never, ever understood how the Zone of Control system is supposed to work. Oh, I can parse it if I'm reading through a description on the wiki, but actually playing the game it makes 0 intuitive sense why I can't just keep moving my dudes through this province or that province.

Personally, I'd be in favor of Forts not even restricting movement at all, just causing a MASSIVE attrition spike on armies looking to walk through nearby provinces without stopping, as well as offering a buff to friendly armies fighting in their ZoC. This, I feel, best represents the role of Forts as bases for garrisons that can sally forth and harass passing armies at will, as well as providing reinforcements to nearby skirmishes and battles. Bonus only applies if the Fort is not actively being Seiged.
 

Purkake4

Banned
I'm not gonna lie: I have never, ever understood how the Zone of Control system is supposed to work. Oh, I can parse it if I'm reading through a description on the wiki, but actually playing the game it makes 0 intuitive sense why I can't just keep moving my dudes through this province or that province.

Personally, I'd be in favor of Forts not even restricting movement at all, just causing a MASSIVE attrition spike on armies looking to walk through nearby provinces without stopping, as well as offering a buff to friendly armies fighting in their ZoC. This, I feel, best represents the role of Forts as bases for garrisons that can sally forth and harass passing armies at will, as well as providing reinforcements to nearby skirmishes and battles. Bonus only applies if the Fort is not actively being Seiged.
It doesn't help that the AI ignores those rules half the time.
 
It doesn't help that the AI ignores those rules half the time.

If you see AI ignoring fort rules, make screenshots and submit them to Paradox's bug sections. The QAs are looking at them.

I've heard so many tales of the AI constantly ignoring fort rules and yet nobody ever comes up with a screenshot/video of that happening.
 

Uzzy

Member
It's not necessarily that the AI are ignoring ZOC rules. It's that the rules are so unintuitive that it often feels that way. Maybe I'm just dumb but I just don't get the current fort system at all.
 
It's not necessarily that the AI are ignoring ZOC rules. It's that the rules are so unintuitive that it often feels that way. Maybe I'm just dumb but I just don't get the current fort system at all.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, the ZoC rules are obtuse and only made even more complicated to figure out with military accesses.
But I hear so often "AI just ignores ZoC!!!" and nobody ever backs it up with evidence.
 

Purkake4

Banned
If you see AI ignoring fort rules, make screenshots and submit them to Paradox's bug sections. The QAs are looking at them.

I've heard so many tales of the AI constantly ignoring fort rules and yet nobody ever comes up with a screenshot/video of that happening.
I think Arumba caught it on a few occasions and submitted it as well.
 

Spirited

Mine is pretty and pink
So what came of the last time people showed interest in starting a new EU MP campaign?
I feel like playing eu4 again after being burnt out on it for half a year.
Though I'll probably never get a game as great in mp again as my Japan mp game as for that one all the stars aligned, got a foothold in Manchuria like 10 years into the game and Ming didn't really care too much about me and Russia got killed so I could snag up all of Siberia, good old times :(

I can organize it but I don't have the two latest DLCs so someone else would have to host.
 

Morfeo

The Chuck Norris of Peace
In this increasingly frightening world we live in, i miss being able to fight for peace twice a week. So if we could stay with more or less the same schedule as we had, i would probably join. Im waaay behind on the expansions though. Think i only have the first two.
 

Spirited

Mine is pretty and pink
Should I just make a thread for it, do you believe that would make more people come out of the woodworks to join in?
 

Morfeo

The Chuck Norris of Peace
You could try it, maybe people are not checking this thread as frequently? But honestly, to me it just seems like the interest is not that great.
 
Either I'm totally misreading this situation, or they amped up the level of AI cheating when I wasn't paying attention.

So, through various maneuverings, I managed to get an imbecile child appointed as the Fatmid caliph (playing as Axum). He's beset on all sides, a hundred gold in debt, and only has some 6k troops to his name after a serious of disastrous losses against the Seljuks, including the invasion of Jerusalem that he's still fighting. So, naturally, I declare war; it's a Holy War, looking to snatch one of the more southern Egyptian duchies. Immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY, he goes from -100 something gold to 250. His levies start rebuilding at a rate of something like 1000 every week, if not faster. I still manage to run him off at first, pushing his guys around, moving towards defeat in detail... for a while. But while I was off chasing a 4k stack down, another 3k moved in on the territory I was occupying. I go back for that, and literally in the month or so it took me to get there, the first stack that I was chasing hits 6k. I can't handle that, so I move up some mercenaries. In the time it takes THOSE guys to get there, before my eyes, the newly formed doomstack hits 12k. How does that even work? If I want to pick up new vassal or liege levies, I have to disband everything, then reform them, THEN drag them all together. This guy literally just reinflates his guys. I don't get it.
 
Either I'm totally misreading this situation, or they amped up the level of AI cheating when I wasn't paying attention.

So, through various maneuverings, I managed to get an imbecile child appointed as the Fatmid caliph (playing as Axum). He's beset on all sides, a hundred gold in debt, and only has some 6k troops to his name after a serious of disastrous losses against the Seljuks, including the invasion of Jerusalem that he's still fighting. So, naturally, I declare war; it's a Holy War, looking to snatch one of the more southern Egyptian duchies. Immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY, he goes from -100 something gold to 250. His levies start rebuilding at a rate of something like 1000 every week, if not faster. I still manage to run him off at first, pushing his guys around, moving towards defeat in detail... for a while. But while I was off chasing a 4k stack down, another 3k moved in on the territory I was occupying. I go back for that, and literally in the month or so it took me to get there, the first stack that I was chasing hits 6k. I can't handle that, so I move up some mercenaries. In the time it takes THOSE guys to get there, before my eyes, the newly formed doomstack hits 12k. How does that even work? If I want to pick up new vassal or liege levies, I have to disband everything, then reform them, THEN drag them all together. This guy literally just reinflates his guys. I don't get it.

Yeah, you need to watch out for the mistake you made there.

The moment you declare war on him, he's now defending the realm against a heathen/heretic (which also allows nearby rulers of same faith to join the defensive side due to holy war), which boosts all of his vassals' opinion of him (+50 opinion).

Then, the specific vassals whose holdings you declared a holy war for are going to get another even larger boost in opinion towards their liege (+100 opinion)

On top of that, the AI might have been more likely, under even more threat, to give vassals titles or requests they asked for.

Thus, he now has new access to levies and tax that he previously couldn't have the chance to waste. He can both raise those individual levies if he so wishes, but more likely from your description, he auto reinforced them.

If you go to your forces/military page, it should tell you how much of each vassals' forces you have access to. As you suffer attrition, casualties, etc, your armies, which are made of different levies, will deplete. But every month, your standing armies suffer a certain amount of attrition, but at the same time, those depleted soldiers that "died" and are not a part of your standing army are now instead at the vassals' holdings recovering up to the max levy (including your percentage of those troops) (which is why sometimes after getting all of your levies you'll see there are more levies to recruit after a few months). Unraised troops will reinforce far quicker than raised levies.

When vassal opinion goes up, they're willing to give you a greater percentage of their troops, and it will be a sudden increase in percentage as the months ticks. So now your opponent should both have more available troops to actually raise, and has more troops from his vassals for passive reinforcement.

On top of that, increased opinion makes it more likely that vassals or perhaps even other rulers that dislike you might send the ruler a gift. And with his increased troop counts, they wouldn't see his cause as hopeless, but still judge him to be the underdog because of Seljuk numbers adding on to the "Character's enemies" troop count, iirc.

Add to the fact that this is the Fatimid Empire, which will have a ton of relatively powerful vassals (and those vassals whose land you're going far were less likely to have had their lands damaged by the other wars)....

Yeah, you screwed up there.

Btw, you can raise levies individually, per each of your individual vassals. Rather than raising all your levies at once, you can click the raise levy button next to the individual vassals on the war menu, and even specifically raise them in a county due to a holding that vassal holds in some other land (so the Duke of Croatia, if he had a holding in England, could raise said troops in England, although the counts underneath him would be restricted to their own holdings. When you raise all levies, it auto raises them in the capital holdings). On top of that, if you just click raise all levies, after your army has been depleted for a while, there should be some reinforcements you can raise.

Also, yeah, you should've avoided the holy war. Just attacking the realm with claims (and you can declare for multiple claims at once, so stack them up if you're going for the duchy), you would've only increased the opinion of whoever had his holdings claimed by you, not every vassal that thought you were an infidel.
 

Aaron D.

Member
C5bgoKC.png


Crusader Kings II: Monks and Mystics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWEMq0JiB0Y

Oh hell yeah.

Introducing mystics into the game will lead to some craaaazy random story events.

Bring it.
 

frontovik

Banned
Nicely done. I gave up trying to form Germany by the 1700s as Austria and France had become allies.

I like your map mod as well .. except for the anime figures.
 

Purkake4

Banned
Nice to see new stuff, but by the looks of it this will take another year or so to balance. I'd like to see dynamic start and end dates for the ages and objectives at least technically achievable by most nations to start.

Also, will forts ever be fixed all the way?
 

Fitz

Member
Was expecting more from "probably be the biggest feature added to the game since we started EU4". Doesn't look bad, but just looks like a fancy version of the triggered modifiers already in game.

Is "splendor" the US spelling? Or just outright wrong?
 

CzarTim

Member
Yeah it seems a bit rigid in that it's the same every game no matter what happens. I am sure it will be cool for modders tho!
Actually, good point. Would be cool if the objectives and rewards were a bit random to spice things up. One game it's"have two personal unions" the next it's "integrate three vassals" or whatever
 

Purkake4

Banned
Yeah golden ages and dividing the game into ages seems really bizarre, civ-like. Both CK2 and EU4 are pretty much end of life as far as I'm concerned, they've added enough, they just need to stop and move on to other games.
At least CK2 is getting some pretty awesome (and sorely needed) quality of life improvements.
 
Yeah it seems a bit rigid in that it's the same every game no matter what happens. I am sure it will be cool for modders tho!

It sounds like something a lot of mods will cut out. I can already see it on the Meiou and Taxes chopping block. Speaking of which, the next version of that mod looks pretty amazing for whenever they finally release it.

Yeah golden ages and dividing the game into ages seems really bizarre, civ-like. Both CK2 and EU4 are pretty much end of life as far as I'm concerned, they've added enough, they just need to stop and move on to other games.
I'd take a few more CK2 style region specific expansions for EU4. But since they're not doing those I wonder if those don't sell as well.
 
Anyone know if the next two expansions will have the same price point as TFV?

They will not, it will be more like $20-25. TfV was not originally intended to come out as it did, instead they planned 2 "very large" expansion DLCs to be the two that were covered by the expansion pass. Development timetables and other difficulties meant they decided to release a smaller one sooner, and so they changed the expansion pass to cover the first 3 DLCs instead of the first 2 to compensate for the fact that TfV was only a $15 dlc (the expansion pass costs $50, so 2x 25 was the expected value).

As far as we have been told, the next two expansions will be very large, as the first two were originally intended to be.

The price for TfV is higher than you might expect because there are no cosmetic packs, music packs or other content that would usually be separate and charged extra for. All of the portraits, national focuses and music is bundled into TfV. It's probably more like a $12 DLC + $5 cosmetic pack, but it's all one discrete unit for now at $15.
 
Yeah that gets rid of 20% (and apparently only for democratic nations) but there's another 69% penalty.

No way to eliminate the base modifier. It's supposed to reflect the fact that huge portions of India were tied up in agricultural production compared to the developed nations. From Podcat on the official forums:

yeah it doesnt really make sense to be able to change something like this so quickly. As for china a similar thing wouldnt be out of place for realism
 

Xando

Member
No way to eliminate the base modifier. It's supposed to reflect the fact that huge portions of India were tied up in agricultural production compared to the developed nations. From Podcat on the official forums:
I guess i can understand why they do it but it makes going communist or fascist pretty annoying since you don't even can remove the -20% modifier if you don't go democratic/independent.
 

frontovik

Banned
I wonder what the theme of the next expansions will be? Hopefully they'll do something to touch up the Eastern Front theatre and the Pacific War.
 
I wonder what the theme of the next expansions will be? Hopefully they'll do something to touch up the Eastern Front theatre and the Pacific War.

China is the most obvious area to add flavor. If they were doing themes they could go the "Asia focus" direction or they could do a civil wars direction and also flesh out SCW and tweak the mechanics.

In general they will probably make changes to air war based on statements from podcat et al being unsatisfied with how it currently is, but that could be saved for the expansion after that, who knows.

I guess i can understand why they do it but it makes going communist or fascist pretty annoying since you don't even can remove the -20% modifier if you don't go democratic/independent.

I guess it's annoying from a power gaming perspective but I think it does "make sense". Fascist Hindu majority states don't feel like they're going to be nice to minority groups. In South Africa the Communists are theoretically egalitarian (in a racial sense), but for religious minorities it's a bit of a different story.
 

Zeknurn

Member
They will not, it will be more like $20-25. TfV was not originally intended to come out as it did, instead they planned 2 "very large" expansion DLCs to be the two that were covered by the expansion pass. Development timetables and other difficulties meant they decided to release a smaller one sooner, and so they changed the expansion pass to cover the first 3 DLCs instead of the first 2 to compensate for the fact that TfV was only a $15 dlc (the expansion pass costs $50, so 2x 25 was the expected value).

As far as we have been told, the next two expansions will be very large, as the first two were originally intended to be.

The price for TfV is higher than you might expect because there are no cosmetic packs, music packs or other content that would usually be separate and charged extra for. All of the portraits, national focuses and music is bundled into TfV. It's probably more like a $12 DLC + $5 cosmetic pack, but it's all one discrete unit for now at $15.

The expansion pass is $40 though. Which is why I thought 3*$15 would have made more sense, but I guess they decided to throw in TFV as a bonus to stem any potential community outrage, and the next two expansions will be each $20 of value.

It makes the pass a better value but I still think it's wiser to buy the expansions piece meal.
Decisions..
 

Sarek

Member
Winter sale got me buy all the CK2 DLC I was missing, and have spent almost 20 hours this weekend playing it... Anyway suddenly my personal wealth went from about 300 to 5500! I guess I somehow inherited the fortune of the prince I matrilinearilly married my daughter to? Or where did all that money come? Almost feels like cheating, almost.
 
Winter sale got me buy all the CK2 DLC I was missing, and have spent almost 20 hours this weekend playing it... Anyway suddenly my personal wealth went from about 300 to 5500! I guess I somehow inherited the fortune of the prince I matrilinearilly married my daughter to? Or where did all that money come? Almost feels like cheating, almost.

If a courtier with no parents or children in the court dies in your court, the money is inherited by you. Because you matrilineally married your daughter to him, he came to your court, died, and had nobody in the court who could claim his inheritance.

And yes, this is an effective way of farming money: invite a bunch of old well off courtiers across the lands to your court, have them die, inherit money. Create a retirement home/cash farm in your court.

On top of that, without land to govern, the prince wouldn't have many expenses, and so he could easily pile up money, especially if he inherited from older generations of his family. Add Reaper's Due making death much more likely, and yeah, that easily explains what happened.

Comparing CK2 to, say EU4, EU4 a good player has to be more well balanced with multiple aspects of the games, while with CK2 the detail can get so ridiculous that there are multiple ways to break the game. The fun in CK2 is trying to break the game in as many different ways as you can, find a bunch of different ways to earn money, etc. It's not worth it to micromanage the game, but occasionally going out of your way to do some stuff can seriously break the game XD.

Btw, does anyone know a general rule of them for assaulting castles in EU4? I know to wait for breached walls, but I'm not sure what my troop count should be or how much manpower I should have for it to be worth doing. In CK2, the general rule of thumb, 10x the besiegers as defenders, at the bare minimum, was a good shorthand for me to remember.
 
Wow, holy shit this CK2 story is insane

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ightmare-why-this-is-the-best-dlc-yet.736028/

I just bought all the major expansion DLC because to it

Also Kotaku's 2016 re-review is great
http://kotaku.com/crusader-kings-ii-the-kotaku-re-review-1783955128
This particularly sounds very exciting
RPG elements that, at a basic level, let you craft your character, choosing a type of class, a skills focus and even customising their appearance. You can then influence the creation of your bloodline by educating them in certain ways and stepping in at key points of their development.

I'm hoping this is the time it finally clicks. This link from the OT seems very helpful:
http://lparchive.org/Crusader-Kings-2/
 
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