Paradox Grand Strategy |OT| Conquering the World one DLC at a time

[jtb]

Agh, just came ~1.5k dev short of my first world conquest with Prussia. Ended up tag switching to Italy to see if I could speed up the process with their traditions, but I forgot that you inherit all of Ming's tributaries when you annex them so those truces basically ended my run in 1815 or so.

Always hard to find new countries to play when your old favorites are so fun to play, and starting a new run can turn into such an enormous time investment. Prussia in particular is just so damn fun to play as.

 

[Uzzy]

Agh, just came ~1.5k dev short of my first world conquest with Prussia. Ended up tag switching to Italy to see if I could speed up the process with their traditions, but I forgot that you inherit all of Ming's tributaries when you annex them so those truces basically ended my run in 1815 or so.

Always hard to find new countries to play when your old favorites are so fun to play, and starting a new run can turn into such an enormous time investment. Prussia in particular is just so damn fun to play as.

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Truce Breaking is always an option?

 

[eonden]

Truce Breaking is always an option?

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What is next, using no-CB in wars?

 

[Uzzy]

What is next, using no-CB in wars?

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BEST CB.

 

[RedSparrows]

I think I play by the rules too much. I guess when you get to MEGABLOB stage and still have 100+ years left, you can take pretty much any hits you like because you've got so much going for you. I always play cautiously. I will never get close to World Conq, ever.

 

[eonden]

I think I play by the rules too much. I guess when you get to MEGABLOB stage and still have 100+ years left, you can take pretty much any hits you like because you've got so much going for you. I always play cautiously. I will never get close to World Conq, ever.

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Once you are a megablob, all rules are out. Heck, even when being half big, rules are out, as you can just truce rotate to avoid coalitions (as you cannot join a coalition while you are at truce with the coalition objective and coalitions wont form if they dont reach a size big enough to rival the target + allies).
Also yeah, by the megablob state, you are just making too much money that you dont really care too much about stat hits.

 

[RedSparrows]

Hah, so the solution to coalitions forming over AE is being extra aggressive in different areas at different times.

 

[eonden]

Hah, so the solution to coalitions forming over AE is being extra aggressive in different areas at different times.

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Yeah:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/coalition-handling-guide.956958/

It hasnt changed too much. It is also important to know that conquering provinces in an area mostly generates AE in that Area, for instance as England conquering all the British Isles will generate minor AE outside of it.

Edit: a trick to juggle a coalition that has already been created is also to attack an ally of the big power in the coalition that is not in the coalition, calling him into that war and by force of truce taking him out of the coalition.

Edit 2: Me right now:

 

[SaberVS7]

A tl;dr guide to EU4 as it stands: Be absolutely relentless in your aggression against anyone weaker/smaller than you. EU4 is not a peacetime game - You need to be in constant war to be truly advancing. It doesn't necessarily need to be expansionist wars, but wars in general. Anything to at a bare minimum weaken your enemies even if it doesn't make you stronger directly. Basically the same as IRL 1400-1800.

We'll see how the Mercenary changes in the next expansion change things.

 

[eonden]

A tl;dr guide to EU4 as it stands: Be absolutely relentless in your aggression against anyone weaker/smaller than you. EU4 is not a peacetime game - You need to be in constant war to be truly advancing. It doesn't necessarily need to be expansionist wars, but wars in general. Anything to at a bare minimum weaken your enemies even if it doesn't make you stronger directly. Basically the same as IRL 1400-1800.

We'll see how the Mercenary changes in the next expansion change things.

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Seems they are taking lessons from Imperator, with mercenaries being more about local stuff AND being depleatable. It might actually make military drills and professionality decent.
If they also address Revolutionary times, it might make the end-game more interesting.

 

[jtb]

Truce Breaking is always an option?

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I know, I know :p The annoying thing about megablob runs is that I always know I probably could WC with a little bit more micromanagement once the ball really gets rolling, especially with an easier country like France or Prussia, but I just lose interest and come up a bit short.

 

[ZZMitch]

I prefer to play EU4 as more as a roleplay type game. After 1300 hours I have kind of gotten over min-maxing haha

 

[Hella]

Crusader Kings 2's Great Works patch is now live!

 

[eonden]

Crusader Kings 2's Great Works patch is now live!

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On other news, I saw this in my youtube subscribtions:

 

[John Dunbar]

been watching the imperator dev clashes and i have pretty mixed feelings. love the setting, but rome isn't even that big and it already requires a three-front coalition to contain them. single player seems to be a total cake-walk based on this. was hoping that the families and other stuff would offer some peace time challenges as well, but it seems like the only efficient way to play is to just keep dumping people into the meat grinder.

 

[eonden]

been watching the imperator dev clashes and i have pretty mixed feelings. love the setting, but rome isn't even that big and it already requires a three-front coalition to contain them. single player seems to be a total cake-walk based on this. was hoping that the families and other stuff would offer some peace time challenges as well, but it seems like the only efficient way to play is to just keep dumping people into the meat grinder.

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Rome has a ton of population and manpower (with great manpower regen), together with better military (mainly heavy infantry). Barbarians light infantry just gets wrecked.

The main thing about families seems to be about evading civil wars, which i am actually worried about as Rome has more or less evaded them despite supposedly being the one that should be the heaviest thread.

 

[John Dunbar]

Rome has a ton of population and manpower (with great manpower regen), together with better military (mainly heavy infantry). Barbarians light infantry just gets wrecked.

The main thing about families seems to be about evading civil wars, which i am actually worried about as Rome has more or less evaded them despite supposedly being the one that should be the heaviest thread.

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rome maintained that war with pretty much nothing but merc spam. and somehow pritania matched them in that game. there are too many mercs and too much money.

and at first the idea of having actual pops in the game was exciting, but when decades of war with millions of casualties has no meaningful impact on population or economy and war exhaustion is non existent or can be erased with a click of a button, what's even the point?

 

[eonden]

rome maintained that war with pretty much nothing but merc spam. there's too many mercs and too much money.

and at first the idea of having actual pops in the game was exciting, but when decades of war with millions of casualties has no meaningful impact on population or economy and war exhaustion is non existent or can be erased with a click of a button, what's even the point?

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Yeah, there has to be some correlation between pop and military. Not in the level of Vicky, which made it tedious, but manpower should be related to population / economy in other sense than just wages.
That is one of the main issues with CK2 (edit:prosperity is cool mechanic but should do more and be more natural) and EU4 too. Wars should fuck you up way more even when winning.

 

[Anno]

Isn't manpower based on your tribesmen and freemen? I agree there should be more, but there is some reliance on your pop levels to generate manpower.

I don't think a dev clash in general is the best place to see non-war gameplay tbh. It's just not what the audience is really there for. Plus they've talked a good amount about how some of the players are where they are (Pritania especially) because of either bugs or taking advantage of features and changes that hadn't been implemented yet that made things easier for them to quickly acquire all that land.

It's also maybe just weird to give probably the most powerful country to probably the best Paradox multiplayer. KJ kinda always crushes these things no matter what right?

 

[John Dunbar]

It's also maybe just weird to give probably the most powerful country to probably the best Paradox multiplayer. KJ kinda always crushes these things no matter what right?

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it is still promotion, so it's understandable they would want a strong rome in the dev clash.

i was pretty disappointed in carthage, though. if you're playing multiplayer, how isn't your main goal as carthage to destroy or at least contain rome from the start? once rome gets the italian peninsula and sicily, carthage is going to have a bad time.

 

[Anno]

Yeah I understand it from that standpoint. KJ was talking about how he was in the minority internally that put a lot of weight on quickly building a huge navy, and I think we can see how important that was.

 

[eonden]

it is still promotion, so it's understandable they would want a strong rome in the dev clash.

i was pretty disappointed in carthage, though. if you're playing multiplayer, how isn't your main goal as carthage to destroy or at least contain rome from the start? once rome gets the italian peninsula and sicily, carthage is going to have a bad time.

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I mean, it seems Hispania players told him to do control Rome before they got the Italian peninsula, but he didnt. I guess he wanted to make the Punic war more interesting (which it was in the 1st and second!!)... but then got demolished in the third one, where the whole Roman navy destroyed them as they were unprepared.

 

[Deleted member 25600]

I've only been paying a mild bit of attention to the development, bu Imperator: Rome is actually looking pretty simple to pick up for existing EU4 and CK2 players. Lots of familiar mechanics.

 

[eonden]

Imperator Rome keys going to influencers now.

(Pls Paradox giv me keys)

 

[Hella]

i didnt realise imperator was gonna be so EU like. should've looked at footage earlier, i guess.

was kinda hoping it'd be more CK2ish. that kind of roleplaing/strategy mix is why i like gs titles so much

for pure blobbing/conquest i lean more to total war for some reason.

 

[Deleted member 25600]

i didnt realise imperator was gonna be so EU like. should've looked at footage earlier, i guess.

was kinda hoping it'd be more CK2ish. that kind of roleplaing/strategy mix is why i like gs titles so much

for pure blobbing/conquest i lean more to total war for some reason.

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It looks to me like there's a lot of character management like in CK2, with combat and research mechanics from EU4. I think it's a nice balance.

 

[Hella]

It looks to me like there's a lot of character management like in CK2, with combat and research mechanics from EU4. I think it's a nice balance.

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yeah i take that back. i had only seen the first yt vid above, but the second one shows more character stuff. shoulda waited a bit longer before making any conclusions

im back onboard

 

[ZZMitch]

Well this was a fun game! Began as that Ruthenian culture country you can release from Lithuania. Finally broke the Ottomans in the last 30 or so years of the game. Russia and I were allies for pretty much the whole game.

 

[Geido]

I'm thinking of doing a Three Mountains daimyo swarm run soon in EU4. If should be an opportune time to do so before any new expansions or patches break the strategy.

It'll be a slog, but it also seems pretty fun.

 

[Zedelima]

I just played a entire campaign of stellaris with all DLC and expansions and...

I dont understand the hate people have after the 2.2 patch. There's more micro management? Sure, but i quite liked it lol

 

[Deleted member 29682]

I just played a entire campaign of stellaris with all DLC and expansions and...

I dont understand the hate people have after the 2.2 patch. There's more micro management? Sure, but i quite liked it lol

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I thought the complaints about 2.2 were about bugs. My impression elsewhere was that people were positive about the planetary changes, both before and after release.

 

[Zedelima]

I thought the complaints about 2.2 were about bugs. My impression elsewhere was that people were positive about the planetary changes, both before and after release.

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What i could gather from people (mostly on steam) is that people didn't liked the fact that are more micro in the game.

Im totally fine with it and is a improvement over what we got on the release

 

[jtb]

When the hell is the next Paradox sale... I only want/need Dharma and Cossacks at this point, but these DLC prices are ridiculous, even for the amount of time I invest in these games. Might pick up Mare Nostrum just for completionist's sake.

Also, I actually really like the huge nerf that Exploration took (not sure how recent this was), it makes colonization a comparable MP investment (assuming you pair it with Expansion) considering it's all free cores and gives you an enormous leg up on trade and production wealth.

 

[Hella]

some folks are vehemently against any core changes to stellaris. i still see an odd comment about bringing the ftl trinity back on patch notes comments, occasionally. the pop-tile folks are more common right now.

 

[Xaszatm]

What's the OT's policy on trying to do AAR on here?

 

[Deleted member 29682]

some folks are vehemently against any core changes to stellaris. i still see an odd comment about bringing the ftl trinity back on patch notes comments, occasionally. the pop-tile folks are more common right now.

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I don't know if Stellaris' new director (Daniel Moregard) is likely to make any major changes to the core gameplay the same way Wiz did, but that was mostly because Wiz was openly unsatisfied about a lot of things when he was first put in charge. Maybe the new director will have some gripes with the direction Wiz took with the game, but we'll probably have to wait for the next major update/DLC to get an idea of Daniel's vision for the game.

 

[eonden]

What's the OT's policy on trying to do AAR on here?

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I think from my side, I am happy to see more activity in here and AARs are really interesting to see in development and are quite nice to share.

However, we can probably ask Uzzy about what he thinks, but I believe he will give the aOK

 

[Xando]

I got to say i was not that interested in imperator when it was announced but the recent footage has me more intrigued than initally expected.

The dev clashes have been quite good to watch imo.

 

[jtb]

anything that turns Stellaris from a generic space 4x game (which are a dime a dozen) into Victoria 3.0 is good in my book.

 

[BringBackSonics]

The Embargo is up, so you have a bunch of people putting up their let's plays and tutorials for Imperator Rome.

 

[eonden]

The Embargo is up, so you have a bunch of people putting up their let's plays and tutorials for Imperator Rome.

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Technically they started giving keys away one week ago or so to influencers (my youtube feed can attest to that).
DOESNT HELP THAT THE GAME SHOULD HAVE LAUNCHED THIS WEEK.

On other news, first music score of the Romero x Paradox Strategy game. Anyone can play it to see if we get something from it?

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Subscribe to know more here:
https://www.romeroxparadox.com/

 

[Captjohnboyd]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask but I've been itching to get into Stellaris again. I had it on my MacBook in its first iteration but unfortunately it slowed my old Mac to a crawl so I could never get far. Is it worth picking up the PS4 version? I've only dabbled in these deep 4X games (a little CKII and a smidge of hearts of iron) but really want to give a full game a go. I'm mostly curious if it's a decent version on the PlayStation and if it's been kept sort of up to date with the PC patches

 

[Anno]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask but I've been itching to get into Stellaris again. I had it on my MacBook in its first iteration but unfortunately it slowed my old Mac to a crawl so I could never get far. Is it worth picking up the PS4 version? I've only dabbled in these deep 4X games (a little CKII and a smidge of hearts of iron) but really want to give a full game a go. I'm mostly curious if it's a decent version on the PlayStation and if it's been kept sort of up to date with the PC patches

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The PS4 version is probably over a year behind the PC version, and in terms of how much the game has actually changed it's even more different. I'm not sure how it runs, unfortunately, but people seemed happy enough with how it controlled.

Depending on when you tried it on PC first time it could be in a better spot now in terms of slowdown. Maybe fire up a small galaxy and give it a shot.

 

[Captjohnboyd]

The PS4 version is probably over a year behind the PC version, and in terms of how much the game has actually changed it's even more different. I'm not sure how it runs, unfortunately, but people seemed happy enough with how it controlled.

Depending on when you tried it on PC first time it could be in a better spot now in terms of slowdown. Maybe fire up a small galaxy and give it a shot.

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I'm inclined to think no matter the patch my Mac will have trouble with it. It's already 8 years old and chugged along with older paradox titles enough that I'd never play them for long. Still I suppose it's worth a shot thanks for the heads up

 

[Deleted member 2379]

I'm at 600 hrs in CK2. Am I allowed here?

 

[eonden]

I'm at 600 hrs in CK2. Am I allowed here?

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400 hours left so that you can be considered a newbie! (jk)

The more people the merrier :D

 

[Deleted member 25600]

Whelp, I've started IR as a Scandinavian Migratory tribe.

Turns out loyalty is super important for clan chiefs.

 

[SaberVS7]

Whelp, I've started IR as a Scandinavian Migratory tribe.

Turns out loyalty is super important for clan chiefs.

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Ohohohohoho, so ironically the Norse play more like CK2 here then, after the Norse in CK2 were basically Europa Universalis: Vikings?

 

[Deleted member 25600]

Ohohohohoho, so ironically the Norse play more like CK2 here then, after the Norse in CK2 were basically Europa Universalis: Vikings?

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I've so far spent most of my time trying to find ways to stop my clain chiefs losing loyalty and starting civil wars. At the moment, I can't make them gain loyalty, so I've been building my army as much as possible as a deterrent.

.....Ive had to restart several times.

 

[Zedelima]

Soo i just finished my second campaing in stellaris, now as a trader with the new megacorp expansion

Man, this game is amazing. I even think now that is the best game paradox currently have.
It feels paradox, but at the same time is different. My only downside is that they could have more different techs...but maybe they will improve later