Grand Strategy Games /gsg/

Kill yourself.

I get it for the asian countries, especially china and MAYBE japan, but africa? Fucking really?

Aside from the maghrebi barbarians and the mamluks, why the fuck would you even give the sub-saharans some 'equality' technology-wise? Shit makes no sense, they're supposed to be backward shitholes with no use at all other than being colonized; this is just another excuse for WE WUZ KANGZ & SHEIT

Removing westernization is just silly.

This whole update can be summed up in just 1 word:

Any good tutorials for EU3?

I've played hours of EU4, but when I try to get into EU3 I'm confused and can't tell what's going on half the time.

I suppose I should just keep playing until I get the hang of it.

Africans haven't reached early modern age yet even today, half of them still living in mudhuts, the rest squatting in what the colonising nations built and then abandoned. Fucking Johan. At least, given they're isolated until colonisation, they're fucked anyway as none of the new institutions will spread to them

Not even them. It makes no sense.

youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsA5w4_hzVgF9MPsx7362EjPl-6VbKFT8
The guy also has one on Vic2.

Thanks.

Vic2 is my favorite Paradox game, I know how to play it fine.

BTW are there any "required" mods for EU3?

It makes sense if you're an egalitarian (read: retard) and believe all people to be equal, differences being caused merely by circumstance

I don't know if I would call them required, but Miscmod and Death and Taxes among the popular ones.

Even if you believe, and if you are not a "terrible racist" you appreciate their culture that did not have the "terrible colonialist" technology of the west.

...

They are popular but they aren't required. More like something to spice things up after you're bored of the vanilla

tfw
f
w

Have you ever tried playing as kebab?

Never, not in EU4, CK2, Vicky2 or HoI3.

It's always the Balkans or Russia Or Poland and Lithuania, I've had fun with those but I always end up helping everyone remove kebab.

Give it a try sometime. It's fun to be the bad guy.

I know that feel bro.

I don't think I'd enjoy that very much, user.

It's been 563 years my friend, 563 long years.

Christ is in our midst, brethren

...

Rome shall rise again

And it'll be another 563 years until you Byzantiboo faggots get over it.
The Hagia Sophia will NEVER EVER lose its minarets.

...

Turkroach detected

Nah.
Much worse.

vomitingweebslut.jpg

How's the independence movement going, faggot?

I hope your stinky city sinks into the ocean or gets overrun by niggers from the EU

People always talk about the liberation of Constantinople, but what about Rome?

Liberate it from who? Italians? And who will you replace them with? With Constantinople it's easy, as almost anyone is better than Turks, but who is more Roman than Italians? Perhaps if ancient latin was enforced as an official language and there were very strict ethnic citizenship restrictions, along with a major effort to bring back ancient Roman traditions… It's just unfeasible.

What's the point of taking back Constantinople if it is going to stay a shitty tourist attraction no one even wants to visit now, because of terrorism. Just because you own it, it doesn't mean it is a symbol of glory. Making it great is what makes it a symbol of glory.

What terrorism? Kebab would be gone and all Islam forbidden. It wouldn't be about glory as much as restoring honour to all of Europe

Taking Constantinople is not a synonym of removing all Muslims. And even if you do somehow achieve that you have taken back some land. The every fact you don't plan to make anything of it is a sign of how stupid you are yourself. Having a historic tourist attraction is not honour. Actually turn in it into a strong cultural centre that influences everyone. You wouldn't be happy about a Constantinople run by western cucks, so what is with this simplistic thinking?

It is in the context of this thread.

You cannot plan because you don't have anything to plan with. You'd first need to know HOW Constantinople gets retaken. How can you plan to regain Anatolia when you don't have the tiniest sense of what your current situation looks like? Are you fielding an immense army of right-wingers pooled from the entire world? A bunch of Greek autists that managed to chase kebab out through constant guerrila warfare? An elite horde of neo-crusaders? How does the rest of the world view you? Are you supported by the governments of the West, ignored, or are you in the middle of preparations to fend off a US intervention?

Until there is a scenario present for HOW Constantinople gets retaken, any plans further than that are pure folly.

How can Turks be butthurt while they die?

I require more pictures showing off amazing military blunders.

My favorite

This is a screenplay that's already written itself.

kek

Reconquista

Feels bad I can never show them cocky Greeks who is the boss of the Mediterranean.

Starting as the Hautevilles of Sicily i first assassinated my relative that was Duke of Antioch so my cousin in Apulia got that duchy, i participated in a Crusade for Andalusia and was given that kingdom, i vassalized my cousin and formed the Kingdom of Sicily.

I plan to split my realm in two, one son gets Andalusia and i keep playing as Sicily and diplomatically uniting Itay over multiples generations. I plan to conquer land in the ME until i can form a kingdom that i will give to a relative while doing the same in NA.

Is my plan decent?

All cultures are equal, didn't you know?
Africans would be a major power if it hadn't been for EVIL WHITES.

...

fuck off muzzie

Best trait right there

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

I went through all the EU4 dev diaries up to date for the upcoming DLC. Summary:
-rulers now have traits (can get up to 3 at once, depending on how long they rule). They give passive modifiers and sometimes affect events
-land leaders also have one trait
-technology groups axed, replaced by institutions
-can now manually choose which culture to accept
-countires with most development and best technology will now be Great Powers. They will get some bonuses, and be able to interfere in great wars, bully nations into breaking alliances, or pay other nation's debts for favours and relations boost
-Ottomans get a big buff, and their dynasty cannot die out any more
-Copts get a holy site mechanic that gives them blessings (passive modifiers to various shit) depending on how many such sites are under coptic control
-Queens now exist, have their own stats and personality like rulers, and will take control during regencies. You will be able to declare war during regencies thanks to that
-Fetishists (niggers) now have cults. They have a different selection from them depending on where they start, but can unlock more of them as they expand. Picking a cult will give you passive modifiers depending on the cult
-three more military focuses for vassals.
-can spend mana to improve vassal's development, in exchange for lower liberty desire (you'd have to be a complete retard to do something like that, though)
-rulers can now abdicate the throne
-can disinherit heirs
-Prussia gets a new government, along with a massive buff to military
-can now spend 100 military mana to gain 10 legitimacy instantly
-can now break personal union as the senior
-can now get a loan-sized amount of money for 2 corruption

Overall, shit-tier. It makes an already easy game even easier, with the actual features being minor gimmicks.

My god that art is shit.

Why do paracucks keep insisting in this shit? I mean, they are fairly nigh-OP as they are, up to the point of LULZ50%DISCIPLINE. At least this will make the removal even sweeter.

Ant the

Seems fairly stupid, you can accept whatever culture you want, but what about the people living in your realm? Accepting a culture comes from hard work and dedication, not from a ruler telling his peasants to accept X because they're cool.

I guess the modifiers for Copts and niggers are sorta cool, Prussia doesn't need more buffs to military, though. As for the other stuff, the removal of westernization is stupid, although I do somewhat agree about the:

Seems fairly legit, but it's gonna be applied in a shit way.

Do these people have no idea what happened in history in real life?

Ottomans getting a buff is idiotic, but the dynasty not being able to die out is a nice touch. It helps reflects the system of harem produced heirs.

I wanted Muscovy to be my greatest allies, not my greatest bitches.

Honestly this is something I did not want. Should I go along with my fuckhuge vassal or reload an earlier save? All I wanted to do was form Rome ;-;

The exact same thing happened to me. They're pretty great to have - they form an excellent eastern bulwark, and you can press their CBs for eastern europe whenever the Commonwealth decides to be a bother. Be a bro and help them form Russia

Then I guess it's time for subsidies.

yeah but they were already shit, maybe this will be better

the culture groups were shit too, but for this one they should go back to vanilla eu3 and its religion slider

fugg

but they had 100% heir chance from religion

How do I fix the negative monthly balance in EU3? I understand that I get more money at the end of the year, but the game ends up getting me loans.

Increase the treasury slider at the bottom of the tab. It'll mean less investment in tech and result in higher inflation, but it can be necessary sometimes for situations like you're in - at least until you can get your financials sorted out.

I guess there is just nothing else to do. Decide to see if a Japanese run would be fun (played only as European countries in EU4). Particularists are taking over Kyoto and I can't even do something. How is that even suppose to work?

To clarify: what they do is they let you pick from an assortment of heirs when the sultan reaches 30, showing their stats, so you can pick the one with the best mana points. It's the big buff I'm talking about, as having a good ruler generates extreme amounts of mana compared to a shitter. Pic related. The only time this doesn't apply is if the sultan dies without an heir, in which case it'll get replaced by some shitter, who also is the same dynasty.

This is terribly OP, as it effectively means that you will always get a Mary Sue, unless your sultan somehow dies before the age of 30. I don't think that's even possible unless you make him a general and send him to battles, which is something you'll never ever do if the ruler has good stats.

The mary sue of villains
i got mad

:^)

u done fugged up

So much for my ottoman queens.

any instect race would do, because you would ally them

Of everything in V2, rebels are easily the worst part.

They're nonsensical in the late game.

You ain't kidding.

especially when you do everything to please them. Lower taxes to absolute minimum, raise soldier wages as high as possible, pass ALL the social reforms and provide the biggest gibs in the world. If you pass the political reforms, not only do you lose control over half the things in your country, but instead of Jacobins, you'll get reactionaries, so there's no winning. People don't fucking revolt when they're being pampered like this, especially when every other country treats its population like shit. Maybe a few autistic shitters shouting "muh liberty!" but that'd be less than 0.001% of populace, and they certainly wouldn't be radical enough to rise in open revolt.

New Stellaris dev diary
Summary:
-space creatures now keep to their regions in the galaxy, rarely venturing out of it
-each space creature has a 'home' where you'll encounter a boss of said feature. If you kill it, you gain some unspecified reward
-more variants of space creatures. Made stronger and less numerous
-pirates are now space creatures too. Why? As the dev put it: "we lack a real trade system for them to prey on" so they just took the lazy option.

That's it. Shit dev diary.

This is not how it worked in the real world.

The next sultan was rarely chosen for his competence, and was usually the one, or the focus of the ones, that managed to win the inevitable internal struggle.

This, in turn, first led to near ritualistic fratricide of all the half-brothers, and later on to their permanent, solitary confinement in a separate part of the harem. The vast majority of them was insane because of this, which turned to be a big problem when you asked them to sit on the throne.

Are Paracucks trying to outdo themselves? What the fuck is this bullshit?

Might as well make every nation "equal" and "balanced" and stop pretending this is a GSG.

Sound sensible. Did they fix the constant spam of "Enemy detected" if you accidently attacked even one of the space cows?

Without a trade system, pirates should be completely meaningless to a space empire. Some ragtag bunch of space people posing a threat to military fleets is stupid and if they are only a threat to science/construction vessels they would just turn into a huge unnecessary chore.

Fortunately, given the way the institutions work, it's pretty much guaranteed that Africa and other shitholes will always lag behind europe at the very least until something near them gets colonised. Still, it's some retarded bullshit. Technology groups did need some serious polishing, but they shouldn't have been fucking axed. This is cultural marxism at its finest. "All humans and cultures are equal, the differences in progress are just a result of circumstance :^)"

I think the timeframe of Europe Universalis goes back enough for east Asian countries to have a decent chance to remain more or less on equal terms with European countries even without player's cheesing. From gameplay perspective a possibility of bipolar modern period world is nice.

This makes no sense. East asian countries didn't have some sort of an event holding them back that they'd need additional time to catch up with the west. Their problem was that they advanced at a much, much slower rate than Europe, meaning they got left behind in the dust more and more with additional time. From a gameplay perspective, that's bullshit too, as, due to the nature of the institution spread, you won't have a bipolar world, you'll have Europe, and one gargantuan blob in the east, as the technology spreads province by province (slowly), not by entire region, meaning it'll make the nation it reaches first considerably stronger than the others, allowing it to simply swallow them without real opposition

That's complete bullshit.

China got fucked by the Mongol invasion and subsequent weak leadership, internal strife and rampant corruption. It's safe to assume they would have stayed the course if the rape horde hadn't overrun them and didn't get pozzed by Marxist filth.

And look at them today, despite large numbers of their inland population being inbred niggers, they are crawling up the ladder again.

Japan mainly fucked itself over because it insulated itself from the outside world.

In the 19th century Japan was still a feudal country. In under a century they were already powerful and modernized enough to challenge Western powers in the region. Today they are the third largest economy of the world.

And this all while being the first world nation with the least amount of natural resources within their territory.

Another funny note is that the Japanese, with the introduction of firearms, were very quickly starting to create their own pike and shot formations, and likely would have gone the same route as Europeans in that regard if the country hadn't been unified.

I wasn't talking about EU4's game mechanics specifically. I haven't even played the game. In general the culture group is an iffy mechanic. It makes sense some countries need drastic reforms to ever compare to European countries, but on the other hand there really is no reason for some countries to start bound to slower technological development even though they are comparable to European countries at the start of the time period. It's a pretty clumsy crutch to keep the history from going full Believable Worlds™.

If only Paradox introduced a race mechanic, suddenly you wouldn't need gimped mechanics to explain why some races prosper while others perpetually fail.

China could never achieve what the West achieved simple because they would not even think about it culturally. And not because they were peaceful, they were just disinterested by Barbarians.

Japan is an even worse example, because the reason for seclusion was that they just acted against the colonisation that the west was doing. Not only they saw what was happening in the rest of Asia they were starting to have major problems inside with Christianity spreading. They were also extra lucky by being preserved as a poor shitty country (which it was) especially compared to China or India. If they didn't close the country chances are they wouldn't also achieve what the did later. It was a combination of luck and leaders that were able to spot the proper time to act.

And yet the technology groups end up simulating eurocentric racial supremacist view of history. It's a wonder it hasn't triggered people earlier. The alternative cultural relativism would require more effort from game mechanical standpoint unless they are going turn everyone completely equal for maximum 4X experience, so no wonder Paradox hasn't done that yet.

Because they came in contact with western civilisations and westernised, discardiung large parts of their cultural heritage that held them back! They never would have advanced without being in contact with Europe first. Hell, all of Japan's progress was due to literally copying western technologies. Their entire navy was made by buying british outdated ships and copying them! And China was and still is a major shithole.

Because european countries were the most important elements of history, drastically changing all of the continents.
All of America: Colonised by europeans
Australia: Europeans
Middle East, India, Siberia - heavily influenced by colonia conquest
Africa: colonial conquest
Far East: heavy european influenes that completely transformed the countries in question

EU is eurocentric because all of history (in the given time period, at least) is eurocentric!

It's early days yet. I have faith Paradox will find a way to fuck it up and signal how virtuous they are.

Looks like Europa isn't so Universal anymore.

You know, these games are built around alternative history, not replaying through what happened in ours. China, Korea and/or Japan getting their shit together in the late 15th century is in plausible category in a game where last stand of Constantinople might not happen.

How would you rank the historical games in therms of political mechanics and events? What about with mods like NWO?

What about EU3+ and MEIOU?

Why not adapt the Victoria westernization? Importing weapons should be cheap and cause little unrest. Adopting tactics for them causes some problems, probably a minor rebellion. Adopting societal change has a very high chance of rebels sending the the country back to square 1.

The unrest and required mana decrease the longer the institutions have been here. A higher gap to bridge increases these costs. This way Morocco will not be too behind, but AI Brunei shouldn't even try modernizing.

So let me guess, school started and everyone fucked off. I hate you.

So is EU4 completely unsalvageable or are Paradox just a bunch of fuckheads who keep making it worse? At this point does the current version even resemble the original release at all?

Really a vanilla problem to be honest due to Paradox's swedish love of democracy getting projected onto the rest of the world. In HPM I get a comfy Fascist Dictatorship soon into the 20th century and never face any more rebels.

Are there any other games like Victoria 2? None of the other paradox games come close to scratching that itch for me.

Yes, yes, and no. I prefer EU3 at this point.

It's always like this. GSG threads move slowly.

I'd say it is salvageable,it's just that Paradox always misses the fucking point. They keep focusing on flaws (actual real flaws, most of the time) and try to fix them, but half the time their 'fixes' just make the whole thing worse. Case in point, technology. Technology groups needed some refining and balancing (westernised countires kept their shit-tier unit types, tribals had mana out the ass due to being unable to spend it on technology, etc.), but rather than doing just that, they just axed the whole fucking thing and replaced it with a brand new mechanic. One that, I guarantee, will need to be balanced and fixed twenty more times before it's in a manageable state. Then you also got Johan, the king of cucks, who gets assravaged every time someone tells him some of the mechanics suck balls, such as shattered retreat. You'll then get indignant proclamations about how it's the best mechanic ever, that it definitely won't be removed, and some quiet AI changes in the subsequent patches that try to salvage the thing, because rather than removing an actually shit mechanic, they'll spend forever trying to fix it (in CK2, shattered retreat actually can be turned off in the settings, as a compromise. Kek.)

As for the state of the game right now, it's fairly comfy, but way less challenging than EU3. Who knows what'll happen after shit hits the fan with the next DLC

Haven't played CK2 yet, but I want to do for a mod. The mod works only on 2.5.x Is there are DLC or something I should avoid?

What mod?

Nova Monumenta Iaponiae Historica. It requires Rajas of India to be played.

Not really. From what I played Anno 1404 sorta did pop management on a city scale but I didn't care to play it very much.

There is no GS like Vicky 2.

I don't play CK2 very much, but I know anything with india fucks up the game.

It doesn't fuck up the game, it makes it slower, because there is a lot to look at. But considering you asked for the mod you should have taken at least a look at it. It probably uses mechanics from the mod, but the map as a whole is gone.

Rajas of India simply add a lot of provinces, nations, and characters, and thus slow the performance a lot.

Anyway, grab everything. Paradox changes shit with free updates, and if you don't get the DLCs, you'll get a very clearly incomplete game (the lack of it is very visible) and the worst shit tends to be packaged in with the free patch

I have everything, I pirated it after all. Don't you guys complain all the time about stupid new stuff like the grim ripper and zombie shit? And there was something about retreat too.

I think the better question is, how long until there's a mod that randomizes innovations and innovation spawns for really random games.

but you get almost all of that shit anyway because you need 2.5.x. You gotta understand, the difference between CK2 1.0 and 2.5 aren't just bugfixes. Paradox actively pushes a lot of content into the patches, so that you just can't avoid the most controversial bits

Is it safe to use compress autosaves?

Is there any way to fully integrate a province in Darkest Hour other than through events?

USSR/Texas/Cali here, I won't be able to make it to the game on Sat or other Saturdays for the forseeable future. It seems like other people are having trouble making it as well, is there any chance we want to switch back to Sundays?

Might as well try.

Didn't they have a "race to capital" of sorts to decide who ruled and then switch to oldest rules as the others have orgies in some special palace?

IIRC there's something in the game settings where you'll get a core on a province after owning it for enough time, like EU3. By default its set to 50 years (same as EU3) so that it never happens.

You could allow full IC takeover. Basically gives you 100% of captured provinces IC, resources and infrastructure.

God I hate every fucking thing about mana in EU4.

So, I think I finally got to learn this fucking game. Turns out the key to learning was to turn off the AI for nearly everything, as it's absolutely retarded and refuses to prioritise manual orders.

After you completely conquer an empire, is there any benefit in systematically purging its populace and replacing it with your own? Also, how the fuck do I obliterate the pirates? I'm trying to starve them by giving every colony a defensive base and some PDFs, but then they just start raiding mining bases

You have to kill all their constructor ships or they'll build a new base.

Use sensors on spaceports & monitor stations to track them down and obliterate them.

In Distant Worlds, multiculturalism is the strictly best option. You need to purge all the bugs though.

I guess I needn't have purged those 6 billion Kiadians then. Eh, they'll get replaced by humans soon enough anyway

You need to spread them around your empire so you all can learn from each other's culture. Not really, just keep a small reservation of each non-shit species for the species bonus.

How does one conquer shit like this? Invasion is all but impossible thanks to troop spam + massive population + fortified bunker, and I can't bombard them into extinction (like I did with the other empire) due to the planetary shield. So far I'm stuck subjugating them, but that's absolutely useless, as it doesn't seem to have any noticeable effect except small monetary tribute

Can't special forces take out planetary facilities or something?

Otherwise just spam more troops. If you have 50 planets then you can build 50 troops at once. Aside from the horrible micro of picking them up there's nothing to prevent you from dropping 500 and taking the planet instantly.

Based Estonians butchering commies like there's no tomorrow.

Is that Revolution Under Siege?

Yes it is.

Is it fun?

Yes it is.

Any advice/online resources to point out for new players or is it easy enough to get the hang of within a game or two?

Allahu Akbar
It is a sign, Europe will fall under the banner of the One True God, alhamdulillah.

As far as I know the're no online turorials/guides for beginners. Best way to learn the game is by playing smaller scenarios which last only few turns and by reading a manual.

Inshallah

I understand there's a lot of variables and database values that go into a GSG, but how complex is the actual programming for one?
disregarding stuff like models, animation, and all that other flashy stuff, how intensive are the actual algorithms that calculate battles, economy, politics, and so forth?

also just in case you wanted to know, I was thinking about making a GSG that emphasizes automation and minimizes micromanaging, but still lets you direct the various processes to go in the direction you want. Also I wanted to make everything more random, as well as trying to encourage "narratives", kind of like dwarf fortress. stuff that adds flavor to the history, except rather than being a plastic coating that changes minor labels it being a primary focus of the game.

First time playing DW, I managed to carve myself a pretty nice corner of space (I'm the blue empire). The green empire (Ikkuros) are, however, pushing everyone's shit in and rapidly approaching the victory conditions. I was in the middle of invasion preparations, when Shakturi appeared. I gather from the various lore that the shakturi are hot shit and all, but so far they're squatting in their one colony of shit and want to trade with me. Should I ignore them and invade the green mence, or should I pre-emptively attack the shakturi first? (Note that Ikkuros are an absolute fucking blight and grow by at least 15 colonies per year)

Remove shakturi REMOVE SHAKTURI

Why don't you play a few and see for yourself? The algorithms themselves aren't, as far as I know, too complex, but there's the matter of so extremely many of them running simulataneously at all times. In CK2, you got thousands of landed characters, each of which has to be kept track of constantly and readjusted opinion against every other character (including non-landed), run the dozens of battles that take place at every moment, diplomacy nad marriage between the characters, etc. It means you need to optimise them as much as possible, else the processor is going to shit itself (see: Rajas of India DLC, and how it fucked with performance)

Map coloring simulator for neo-nationalist NEET shut-ins.

Quality post.

But they seem friendly…

Its not like they gonna fuck you up or anything.

Which map graphics mod do you guys recommend for EU 4?

EU3

If your not a bug you need to kill them before they go Antaran on your ass.

ancient guardians just contacted me about a joint assault, so I guess that's what I'm gonna do. Shakturi only have one planet anyway - how hard could it possibly be to squash them?

Impressive but why isn't he named muhammad? Is he some kind of infidel?

I bet he'll get the Son of Satan event later on.

Very hard, as it turns out. Welp.

He didn't

Such a good heir and I can't even play as him.

...

Naming every son Muhammad is for depersonalizing the peons. Most with any worth are not named Muhammed, though local variations of the name are more acceptable.

No, he is named after Gabriel, the angel who came down to the prophet(pbuh) to reveal to him the holy word of the Qur'an.
It is you who is the infidel, for not even knowing such a major thing, kafir.

Why not a fucking camel, while you're at it?

...

He's keeping the noble Sayyid line pure.

Wew. Didn't realise muzzies wanted to imitate jews this badly

.>>10656093
To be honest, when playing CK2 I usually try to keep my guy looking the same through inbreeding even when not playing semites.

Infidel.

What to acquire next?

Doesn't it cause retardation, or is that too much for Swedes? Any quick guides to CK2?

Rome, duh.

If you overdo it. There's no realistic taking into account of recessivity, so it's mostly random and only based on the distance of the parents. Some religions that feature ritualistic incest go insane instead of inbred, too. I've rarely got a child with the inbred trait, but I've seen it on NPCs that are significantly less inbred than my character's family so there might be some protection for the player (atleast in some mod I'm using). Might be confirmation bias.

...

What a glorious mess. All because the AI went through the first 150 years of the game without bothering to change succession laws to anything other than gavelkind.

Christ in heaven what the fuck is going on there?

You did this to yourself, you fool.

Always loved CKII, always hated that border gore

The continent regularly yo-yos between almost fully united and something like that.

Everyone has claims to everything else, and once every few years someone presses all their claims, beats everyone else in various wars and then ends up with a gigantic France or Burgundy. Then they die, everything splits apart, and the process begins all over again.

The gore isn't as bad on proper starts (1066 onward) wheew decent/de-jure borders are more entrenched instead of the game starting with assorted succesor realms and Karling dystanic fuckery.

How's Khazaria looking?
Every time I play from the Charlemagne start they manage to conquer their way to Saxony.

I'm mirin' that Bohemia, though

Are you using graphic mods? Looks different from vanilla CKII

He appears to be running HIP which isn't a graphical mod, but rather something of a total overhaul.

Kicking kebab in the balls as Byzantium never gets old, especially in EU3. Really forces you to exploit the game mechanics and push your economy to the brink of ruin for a few extra shekels to throw to military

Just got CK2; no idea what I'm doing. The only other GSG I played in depth was HoI3 and even then only 150 hours or so. Do I need to completely re-align my brain to start thinking in characters and bloodlines and just scrub out all the distracting nation/state stuff?

More or less. Absolutely everything in the game is tied to the characters. Nothing happens which isn't a character interaction in some form. Wars are declared between characters, and, depending on the kind of war, if a character dies often a war will immediately end inconclusively. Land you add to your realm via conquest can easily leave it because the relevant titles are inherited by the wrong people. In the same way, however, you can take over huge swathes of land bloodlessly simply by marrying the right people. You also have to get used to the fact that there are other people within your realm who have power and can prevent you from doing whatever you want, even if you're the king.

It seems like there's thousands of characters, keeping track of them all like with countries is obviously impossible. Is there somewhere I should be looking that points out which characters are most relevant to my own?

Just check your sucessors and your strongest vassals. Everyone else is pretty much irrelevant

I sometimes like having a game running with me as an observer that I can check in on while I do other things.
It's always fun when the game can't figure out where to write the country's name.

I liked this game; there are some subtle things in addition to the border gore that really make it. Like Cairo in Italy, or the capital of the Kingdom of Poland in Scotland.

Why is this bullshit allowed?
fuck this game

Because they consider you a bigger threath than muslims.

...

Apparently everyone just has much more exciting games than me. My games, even those that I observe, always follow a predictable pattern from the Charlemange start.
Maybe I should just start from a more fun time in the game, but I liked trying to reform pagan religions. It's just no matter how hard and aggressive I conquer, I can't handle the Catholics once they get three free holy orders. Even if they've lost Rome, most of England, most of Europe and lost Spain to the Muslims.

Stop excusing shitty code.

Your head is far to stuck in kebab removal mode to see properly.

no
also im the buffer between muzzies and christians
no one wants muzzies in his neighbourhood right?

You've not taken just 6 provinces in Italy, you've been making a near 1:1 recreation of ancient Rome minus the parts in Europe.

Now you're moving into Europe. Being Christian or Muslim has nothing to do with it, you ARE going to take France eventually, that's the whole point of your game, so the AI is entirely justified in not being dumb enough to not see a byzaboo for what it is.

Northern italian provinces have the highest development in the game. Northern Italy is literally the most valuable pice of land to have, so of course

They vastly preffer a few sand monkeys that they can crush at any time than a gigantic, strong empire that has ancient claims on their land.

So my only solution is to accept my fate and fight?

Just take the european front slowly. Make them think you're done with the expansion (hah, as if). In the meantime, crush muslims. Europe doesn't give a shit about how many muslims you kill, just be very careful when slaughtering christians. Also, diplovassalising and annexing is the way to go if you don't want any AE

Shit now i remember, its over 100%
Doesnt matter what i do, i get DP by a muslim and a european coalition 3 months after my save
I did annex lots of vassals before, serbia, wallachia, circassia(which i released from crimea and then vassalized lel)
But i havent bothered with Europe for at least 50 years.
AE is the problem, its too high at this point, didnt think about it, its my second playthrough after all.

...

I've been an avid EU3 player years ago, before EU4 came out, but then switched. Now I came back to EU3, and I gotta say that while many mechanics are indeed better (no shattered retreat or mana probably the most significant among them), to say that EU4 is worse in every aspect is a lie:
-utter shit trade system
-no claims, only cores
-significantly less provinces with lesser detail
-less cultures and nations
-all buildings destroyed after conquering a province
-much higher reliance on RNG when it comes to timed events
-region mapmode a shit
-too few mapmodes
-no autonomy mechanic for provinces
-infamy mechanic inferior to AE mechanic
-worse UI and lack of critical information (for example, terrain)
There's more, but I only listed the things I considered to be unquestionably better in EU4.

You're in for some rape. If it's really too high to deteoriate naturally, cede some provinces or release some nation (if you play your cards right, you might be able to diplovassal it right afterwards). Those things take considerable chunks from your AE.

EU4 trade is shit because its just blobbing. EU3 trade is actually a distinctly different source of income from production and tax.
EU3 had claims, which you got through missions or spy actions. EU4 makes it stupidly easy to get a claim, it's supposed to be hard to get a CB.
Mods
Mods
Hardly a big deal
wat?
Autonomy is fucking stupid as implemented. Just makes the AI weaker while letting the player avoid 100% of revolts.
Yeah, these are better. But if EU3 had gotten a dozen expansions or w/e like EU4 did it would be way better by now.

Yes, but that's the thing. If you produce 90% of everything that goes through the centre of trade, you should have a strong advantage over some faggot from the bumfuck of nowhere. Right now it's "Give me shekels and send your merchant into the big RNG generator, goy, I'm sure you'll get a good result this time :^)"

Missions are, again, RNG which may never happen, and spy missions, IIRC, give you a claim on the throne of the entire country, not just on a province. Also, it's not just about CBs, but about having a more realistic game. If I go, for example, as byzantium, I shouldn't be welcomed without opposition into turkish lands. On the other hand, I should also definitely have some sort of CB on the provinces that the turk took.

I thought we all agreed this argument is bullshit after Skyrim and FO4

It is a big fucking deal, however, when each building eats up a magistrate, which takes relatively long time to reappear. It may not be a big issue when you play a minor, but as a larger empire trying to prop up its economy, this is a major issue, as all of its provinces are utterly undeveloped, and redeveloping them would take an insane amount of time. As for the RNG, it is very bad. Waiting for decades for a province with 1k people to convert is bullshit, and its hardly just conversions that have this problem.

The region mapmode is an absolute tangled mess, and I heavily lack stuff like base income mapmode, or even just a mode where not just culture groups, but separate cultures get a different colour

Not true, revolts still happen no problem. The mechanic itself should be rebalanced, true, but it is definitely a step forward

Probably. But it didn't. Similarly, if Parajew axed shattered retreat and mana, and did some intelligent rebalancing, EU4 would be awesome

You do in EU3. You have a huge advantage. You've never broken the game in EU3 with a super-monopoly in the new world?

EU4's system means that historical trade never happens. In RL Europeans traded with China with less than half a dozen ports in between. In EU4 to get chinese trade you have to protectorate half of Asia like its the 19th century.

It's easy to get missions to give your claims. Spy missions giving claims might be one of the mods.

If you want byzantium to have cores then mod byzantium to have cores. Simple as that. Should byzantium be forced to fabricate claims? That's just as dumb. EU4 is dumb.

Every paradox game needs mods to not suck

If you are a big empire in EU3 or EU4 and don't have infinite dosh then you need to kill yourself. Magistrates are no excuse, you need to be Russia-sized or a massive colonizer for Magistrates to be a problem.

It's trivially easy to avoid revolts most of the time and it makes the AI way too weak since it ends up with 100% autonomy provinces that are useless and give nothing.

Mana is 90% of the problems that EU4 has. But its also the central game mechanic of EU4. It would be like removing minerals from Starcraft.

This has been fun, released Yazd as the Timmurids (Yazd is Zoroastrian in 1444) and started with a shitty 1-province Persia slowly climbing up to the top. A nice change from Byzantium/Rome.

Greeks, Turks. What's the difference? Both are smelly brown heathens.

I want a game that is a full blown political sim, from managing the country itself to foreign affairs. I'm not too bright but I'm willing to put in effort to learning such a game.

Paradox games are not as complex as made out to be, Victoria 2 is incredibly simple, just build factories, tax and conquer shit. HoI 3, combat can be somewhat complex, but once you figure it out, it's not hard you can get autistic with the numbers but you don't have to.

Have you tried those Democracy games? Seemed pretty simplistic but they have churned out some DLC since so I think I'm going to try it again.

wut mod?

Looks neat, but I forgot, I still want a map to paint, if I could get Vic2 with a lot more complexity.

These games are just spreadsheets and stuff, which does look neat.

Yeah, internal matters don't feel that important when there is no wars to wage and province to bucket tool.

There's a hellish thought I could have done without

just Enhanced Vanila Experience

I made a Custom Nation and just named it ERE.

Alright. This Democracy 3 doesn't really work with anything out of moderate politics or mods. I enacted pretty much sharia by banning homos and killing most criminals and I still got award for total equality for flooding the country with migrants and ridiculous debt fueled welfare.

I don't think you fully understand the kind of hell I know of.

Might as well end that game, unless you want to bore yourself to death.

I suppose that's true. I never fully got to the bottom of trade in EU3 due to there being absolute zero information about it in game, and one has to go to the wiki for everything.

you don't understand. Byzantium HAS cores on lands inhabited with kebab that are fully muslim, meaning that once they get taken, the populace pretty much welcomes you back in. But that's nonsense. Claims as a mechanic provide another layer to the game. Perhaps it's too easy to fabricate them in EU4, but that could be fixed with some simple rebalancing.

Nah. They need mods to maintain replayability after a certain point, but they're still perfectly playable in vanilla (maybe except HoI4, which is inherently terrible).

All you need is HRE and it becomes a massive problem. Also

Then rebalance it and fix the AI. I've played some mods that worked wonders with autonomy

I may play king maker and just mess with parts of the world. This game has 4 Shia kingdoms and some Zoroastian realms, which has never happened to me.

I had a better post written out but closed the tab by accident and lost it.

I still want a more complex gsg, I wish we could get a game that mixes mechanics, such as HoI IC, or better yet a new gsg that puts paradox out of business, that would be great.

I didn't think the game would make sense in a way.

Every thread, there is always at least one faggot talking about how he's going to make one.

How did the freedom alliance do user? Did you get exterminated?

I'm trying, honest. I'm just lazy.

Is the multiplayer game today or tomorrow?

We were holding the off pretty nicely. They went stright for me, despite being quarter of galaxy away and them having a hostile empire literally right next to them. Blasted two of my planets. Together with the guardians, we contained them to their one system, and I was in the process of gathering my fleets in a nearby system for a grand, final push. Then I ran out of enthusiasm for some reason and just didn't feel like playing anymore. I went for EU3 instead.

There must be at least five of you by now. I recall another user talking about some fall of rome GSG, for example

I'm actually trying to get something done though. I see a lot of people talking, and that's it. Granted, at the rate I'm going it will be done in 10 years.

are you going for a handcrafted galaxy, or a procedurally generated one?

Sounds sexy.

Both, eventually. I'm starting it out with a procedural galaxy and 4X style play. After basic mechanics are in I'm going to move from widening the game to making it as deep as possible. This will be where handcrafted nations, galaxy, deeper mechanics, etc go in. Time will tell whether its considered a gsg or an autistic 4X.

That being said, I am trying to go for a game that writes its own history. It won't be script driven like paradox games. I want everything that happens in a game to be a result of previous events. This does not mean RNG out the ass, my goal is use RNG for galaxy generation only.

Yeah, that's why I ask.

sounds like a shitload of event chains. Also "writes its own history" kinda sounds like you'd make each space civ play roughly the same. One of the best things about GSGs is, however, the diversity of playstyles between the nations. Better to give the civs in the galaxy some history and flavour, and only after that let the event chains take care of the rest

Hybrid approach could have offer the stucture fo a historical gsg while giving the benefits of random generation (less time spent on less important details, unpredictability). Backstory is what gives autistic map painting in gsgs a meaning. In space 4X games most planets feel incredibly meaningless, even capital worlds. Compare that to how provinces like Thrace become focal points in many players's games in gsgs. I'd like to see a space game where factions don't look and feel like bacterial growth in a petri dish.

Sound like the Kaiserreich approach of setting up each country's history at the start but then letting events take them to almost anywhere.

I believe your still thinking Paradox events. First, there are no real event chains to follow. Any and all actions can be taken whenever you want to. Second, a minor history of how nations have become space faring will be the start. History will be an actual mechanic, with most every event being tracked. Its something that can influence decisions later and can be used to a nation's advantage. Like how 600 million chosen were killed by the martians, and now they must pay reparations

Let me try to give a simple, albeit shitty example of what I'm going for:

Politics, foreign and domestic are going to be a major focus. And again, everything will happen for a reason, well, the AI will commit to actions for a reason. I suppose a human player would still be able to do whatever the fuck they wanted. The only limit will be what your own nation can handle. Unlike paradox, I won't restrict any action because you don't have the right idea group. Instead, you just risk pissing off the wrong people and staring conflict you don't want, be it war or a political feud.

Tips for Albania in Vic 2?

Extradite back to Caucasus.

apply gun to forehead and pull the trigger for even playing Albania

Remove thyself.

I got it on the random country website but after playing 15 minutes i can understand your replies.

Immigrating back to Caucasus would be a good challenge, though.

Jesus Christ

MP game is starting at 21 UTC today. It will be shorter than usual.

But then there's no flavour.

Wait, you mean they'd all start as only now becoming space faring? An equal start? That's a terrible, terrible idea for a GSG

again, bad idea. "You can do anything!" is one of the reasons why Beth's games lack replayability and are so shit. On the contrary, you should restrict, restrict and yet more restrict shit for as many civilisations as possible, so that each needs a different approach. If every nation can do the exact same shit then, well, there's little reason to do more than one playthrough. Everything you wrote points at this game being 4X, not GSG

Event chains with handfuls of preset options along with a few a stories are not the flavour I want. Let's take for instance, HOI3's German events. You get some events explaining how Hitler justified his expansion and then you press a button and Austria or Czechoslovakia fall. Rather than a few sentences explaining the history of the event, the lead up to annexation will be something you control. The story that pops up won't be pre-written, it will be the culmination of the actions you've previously taken.

Yes, in the sense that while its in development it will be more akin to 4X. After basic mechanics are functioning, more options for varied starts will be put together. Some nations may not have even entered their own information age, or there may already be an ancient empire with incredible technology. These starting points will both be a part of procedural games and handcrafted galaxies. And in either case, a full history for how the galaxy got that way will be laid for you to read through. For handcrafted galaxies, the history will be, obviously, handcrafted.

No, you don't seem to understand that "do anything" and "nothing to do" are different. Bethesda game's lack replayability because there isn't anything to do. Technically, you can do most anything within the game, there is just a lack of things to do.

It's not my problem if retards must press every single button they see regardless of potential pitfalls. This is the reason Paradox makes shit games. They restrict you from doing things just because you don't have 200 leader mana. In my game, if you are playing as a liberty loving, democratic nation and decide to start commiting genocide on random populaces within your nation, then you will suffer massive revolts. Some likely from your own military. I'm not going to stop you from commiting such actions, but common sense should tell you it isn't the best option at the moment.

Again it's about what SHOULD be done, not what CAN. Just because an action can be taken, doesn't mean the current political climate is appropriate for it.

You may wonder why I would bother allowing an action that would only harm the player's nation. It's quite simple: Unlike Todd, I actually do care about player freedom. Based on the current climate of a game, it may actually be useful for player to sabotage their own nation. Who knows what kind of situation someone could end up in? I don't want to be the one telling them they can't because of some arbitrary bullshit.

So one hour from now?

Yes.

But even HoI has triggered events, such as fall of Paris or Bitter Peace. Also, HoI3 is a wargame, not a GSG, and the vast majority of flavour there only exists because its concentrated in a small timeframe with the general course of war being railroaded in. If one played Mongolia, for example, he wouldn't get almost any events - all of HoI3 stands on the probability of several different courses - Germany will either win the war against Allies or lose it, but it will definitely always go into war. There is no contingency for Germany not declaring war.

No, you're wrong. The lack of gated content is often cited as one of the reasons why Beth's games lack any kind of replayability.

You misunderstand. If every nation can do the same stuff, then there is no difference between them. Take CK2, for example. Each religion and form of government have different mechanics requiring different form of play. Playing as Ivar the Boneless invading british isles with great heathen army will be very different from playing the doge of venice, which will be different from forming a khanate in the nomad steppes. They all have different mechanics that make them unique. It's the difference of mechanics and decisions/events between countries that make GSGs replayable.

I had a response typed out, but this is getting repetitive.
I will not use Paradox games for reference. They are nothing like what I feel a gsg should be except maybe Pops in V2 . In a few months time, I will put out some beta, and add/remove what people like/don't like.

Game is up.

71.239.121.92

Where is everyone? We only have 2 players.

See >>10631332

Darn, I didn't notice that. I won't be able to host this Sunday. Possibly next Sunday.

Host down.

Moscow soon.

What's your system specs? I have 8 GB of RAM and I've never been able to run even a 700 star/8x8 galaxy without crashing on saves due to out of memory errors.

I think you mean it forces you to build the biggest navy ever and just camp the straight. Then you destroy the Ottoman European territories.

If you set a patrol between the port and the strait, you can block their army without their navy interfering. Alternatively, you can lure away their fleet with multiple navies and then block the straight with another navy before retreating back. There's always a way to manipulate the AI in such a way that lets you block a straight without engaging in naval combat.

I did no such thing. In fact, I spent next to nothing on navy. Instead, I did this:

I was legit surprised one can actually win with byzantium without allies (except wallachia, that is) or Greece against Turks

Strange, Ottoman navy was actually fairly smart, and always blocked the strait immediately, regardless of where my fleet was

Got 8GB RAM too. I got those errors here and there, but only about once in ten saves, so it was manageable. I ran the biggest possible galaxy too.

Anybody got a torrent for CK2 2.6.1 with TRD, now that KAT is down?

Kickass is not down and read the OP.

How big are your save files getting?

I've found that past around 65MB I get crashes on saving 90% of the time

...

Hmm. My best guess is that I'm having problems due to running high difficulty/max cost tech/lots of pirates, which together means the AI has tons of money and builds huge amounts of small ships.

Played a normal difficulty game with only 480k tech, kind of hilarious how easy it is to beat the AI if you know what you are doing. Only found 6 out of 19 alien empires and already winning.

Rob, I know you are here. What do you know about how province/RGO sizes work?

Province size is based on the number of pops in the province in the bookmark you start as. e.g. if you edit the 1836 pops in New York to be millions it will start with China-tier province size in the 1836 bookmark, but in the 1861 bookmark will remain 1. Province Size can't change I believe.

RGO size is based off Province size and can be modified by a bunch of other things. I think it also depends on something in production_types but I don't have V2 installed atm so I can't check.

If you wanted to arbitrarily make an individual province bigger or smaller you could mod the starting pop sizes then have an AI decision take on day 1 to lower pops back to their normal level. Like have major US cities start at 100x the normal pop then have the decision reduce them by 99%. This way the cities would have more room to grow. Would fuck up the lobby numbers and possibly the starting GP ranks though.

So whats up with the RGO size bonuses in the industry techs? Also I noticed the 10x rgo size bonus from vanilla in the continent data isnt in vickymod, whats the reason behind this?

Lower initial RGO cap helps spread out immigration/migration better over time if you make sure that all immigrants don't go to a few RGO types early on. Given that migration is stronger it would be silly if a gold province in Timbuktu became the most populous place of your country, and with so many things going into determining it its a good thing to have a bit of a cap before things get silly.

Higher RGOs later are needed to prevent mass unemployment caused by lack of jobs in RGOs (for obvious reasons) and lack of jobs in factories (due to not having enough RGO inputs). You could argue that what the game really needs is less unrealistic pop growth but I didn't want to move too far away from vanilla. People like cheesing early health care laws to flood the world and stuff so instead I just made it more expensive to do so.

Wasn't one of my changes, so I don't know. I could guess that its a way to help USA/Canada industrialize by forcing pops to promote away from farmers. Or a way to force immigrants to spread out a bit more. Giving every province in the new world 10x is a bit much considering IIRC most European capitals are significantly smaller than that.

Why is he so perfect, /gsg/?

I should just google this, but I'll ask just to discuss. I want to start modding a grand strategy game. Any of them.

Okay.

And you have no game in mind? No mod in mind for that game?

Good luck.

Because only the Vozd can restore Russia and defeat international syndicalism, tovarish

It's easy as fuck, but very, very tedious if you're going for something bigger like total conversion

...

New Stellaris dev diary
-some ship classes rebalance
-evasion and tracking - smaller ships have higher evasion, bigger guns have lower tracking which counters evasion
-bigger guns also have higher armour penetration
-missiles now can be evaded, but have very high tracking
-four new slot types for components
-most weapons rebalanced to fit this new design

Don't have an opinion on this one. It's all hanging on the implementation.

finaly its over

You forgot to take the middle east. Other than that, a pretty okay Byzantine run. Congrats for pushing to the end date - I almost always get bored long before that.

ill have to take france and iberia first, then ill worry about then ill worry about mashr iq so i can form the roman empire

It's pretty impossible to take all that shit without cheesing the game in some way, such as savescumming until you get a PU with france or the like. Good ol' conquest gives too much AE, which is why fucking northern italy can take an entire century to conquer, due to waiting for that shit to drop down.

it took me an entire century to take northern italy
the problem is that if you start as byzantium, you start as trash, you are 100-200 years behind compared to an already big nations such as france or ottomans
i did savescum tbh and added a bit of adm to be able to core
i hate mana in this game
it justs costs waaayyy too much to, no other mana is neede that much, mil goes to ideas or tech same goes for DIP, I dont even bother changing culture since it takes like 20 years in high developed provinces and costs a few hundread points

culture should change like in CK 2, automatically after some time, it should spread.

at least converting is faster and doesnt cost anything, compared to ck2 .

...

Beginner modder here again.

This seems too simple.

If you want something harder make a mod that allows me to save at any time in Darkest Hour.

The whole maintenance system in this game sucks my dick.

It makes me mad real life doesn't work like Mobile Suit Gundam either.

Trying to keep in accordance with the standard physics model and square cube law when you have tons of science fantasy shit in aurora makes it inexcusable. Especially considering the AI doesn't have to worry about any of this stuff like the player does. One of the more glaring things is why energy weapons have to follow conventional physics when active sensors do not? Missile spam is fun and all but it means a cookie cutter design for every single military ship that doesn't have tons of point defense to become immune to missiles and actually have a chance to close in for beam combat.

Aurora is far from a "realistic" portrayal.

I'm a gigantic byzaboo, I know all about that shit. Still, I find being able to rise up from shit and become great all the more rewarding

True. MIL is always abundant, and so is DIP unless you culture convert. ADM is used for everything important

Heh, I recall one of the often brought up complaints against vanilla EU4 being that culture conversion was, because of mana, way too easy. Pretend all that mana is just all the effort going into covert ethnic cleansing so that other nations don't throw a shitfit

Anyway, EU3 addresses most of the issues you've brought up. You might want to give it a try and see if it suits you

it's the same in CK2 and EU4. One of the things paradox does well is making their games easy to mod. Even a completely new map is just a matter of being good in MS paint and having the patience to make a new text file for each province

Thats why I like to play as byzantium, cause its rewarding to grow up from nothing.
also because im greek, fuck the 4th crusade seriously
I dont know if I m gonna like Eu 3, I know the game isnt about the graphics, but holy shit does it look ugly.

Also, I cant play as anything else, than byzantium, if I dont remove kebab, there is no purpose in playing the game, I tried as a shekel maker, but I didnt last for 2 years, tried as England to colonize, gave up after war of the roses, tried as portugal, nuffin.

There is one way, the roman way.

I've played a couple games as Byzantium, and it is never not-rewarding to beat the shit out of the Turks.

Wew, way to go Paradox. Is there a way I can downgrade my game back to 2.4.5 or am I going to have to download the game all over again?

Sorry fam

t. Western Europe

yeah removing Otto pest is great
but the most enjoyable moment for me was when Venice declared war one me, got their ass handed and I demanded their capital.

yeah there is,right click on ck2 on steam, go to settings, and opt out for beta, and choose the version you want

Byzantium recovered from that eventually, though, and it even allowed for the longest-ruling byzantine dynasty to gain the throne. The moment when Byzantium lost all hope was when it was unable to sufficiently capitalise on the fracturing of the Sultanate of Rum.

Bohemia is also fun because HRE, and I've tried playing some savages, but in the end there's just not enough RP. There's no historical reason to attack france or Russia as HRE. No revenge to take against the persians as Ethiopia. Only Byzantium provides a sufficient amount of targets and objectives. Also Great Britain, maybe, but colonising is boring as shit, and conquering India is like squashing pests due to the much higher tech level.

Paradox bragged in the dev diaries about how much better optimised the game is with the new DLC

So, i have one simple question, and my english is particularly poor.
Why HOI4 is bad?
I prefer EU, but i want try something new, and had bad experience with HOI3.
Can i learn mechanic with last version and then translate them in better games? Or it's irredimable even for learning?

I know, right? If it's not BYZ then it's either Armenia or Georgia, Theodoro, Trebizond or Russia. Hell, even as Zoroastrian Persia I removed huge quantities of kebab. Even as fucking Tibet I'm removing kebab back and forth from the Tarim and the curryshitholes, assisting Hinduist and Sikhist countries get rid of kebab while the chinks drool over my wool-producing, 1 base tax provinces.

And that's how real life works, doesn't it? kebab is so shit even Buddhist hate their guts.

You can't play this game if you ain't removing kebab.

It's a clusterfuck of poorly implemented new systems and dumbing-down of older systems. Darkest Hour: Hearts of Iron is a much better way of getting into Hearts of Iron because it's not as difficult to get into as HOI3, but once you learn the mechanics of Darkest Hour you can more easily learn how to play HOI3. HOI4 won't be worthwhile to play until they release a few expansions as is typical with a lot of these newer Paradox games

Yeah, get it, as usual. So, what nation are better for traning?
It's really difficult for me, adapt to new rules of diplomacy and…
Is it true that manpower are precious and there is no way to restore it in game time, if you had a blunder?

Fun fact: Trebizond is just pretender Byzantine empire. After the Komnenos dynasty got couped, its members fled to trebizond and formed a pretender kingdom.

Germany is always good for getting into the thick of things but the entire weight of the war is on your shoulders.
Great Britain is a good safe choice because the island means you're well protected from Germany and you can direct operations in North Africa and the Pacific safely. However, you will have to get a handle on sea and air combat and your army will be spread thin. America will bail you out but you can assist in the invasion and take the Mediterranean isles or Norway, etc.
In Darkest Hour, yes. Once manpower is gone it's gone and the only way to get more is to heighten mobilization. Spend it wisely.

no it didnt, 2 great fires destroyed a big part of the city which never recovered
the latins didnt know how to take care of the city so the population left
eventually from 500.000 people there were 50.000 left.
also the imperial palance was degrading, the stupid latins even sold the roofs
not to mention the pillaging that took place, every statue made of bronze, the library that burned, all the ancient cultural things that were protected in this great city, all the venetians didnt pillage like the franks did, they took items back home, for example the famous lions of the hippodrome that are now in venice.

The Palaiologoi were after the Komnenoi the greatest dynasty with no doubt, they tried their best, and what was best to keep the empire together, but there were too many enemies, many latin now duchies in Greece and non stop agression from the muslims from the east, not to mention the orthodox serbs also being a pain in the ass.

Byzantium and Greece in general till today had no allies to rely on.

What makes the game fun is the LARPing imo, and getting a boner just by seeing what you created or just by removing kebab and seeing otto getting squashed.

Yes exactly, for some reason it gives me great joy,even taking my rightful clay (italy), makes me feel kinda bad because I have to fight Europeans, but removing Otto, AQ, QQ, Mamluks, Tunnis, Morocco? Fucking hell i'd even join the others wars just to send my Legions have fun.

I started with custom nations and named my dynasty Komnenos, and I was connected with Trebizond, funny that you mention it, too bad the Komnenoi never took back what was theirs.

Probably some of the greatest rulers that ever lived, all 3 of them, turned ERE into a power house, the only reason constantinople fell to the crusaders is because the emperor was a faggot who abandoned the city, what a disgrace.

So, I'm about to become a Theocracy in my EU4 Tibet game (my heir's basically retarded), which triggers a free event to turn from monarchy into theocracy. I this a good idea? I've never played Theocracies before. I read from some fags that you can't diplo-annex, is this true? Because I love to diplo-annex and vassalize random shitholes and molding them to my linking.

I want to enrich kebab with my 'peaceful' Dalai-Lemonade. I also own the only Sikh province in the world and that means even MORE kebab is gonna be removed.

...

wtf? am I missing something really obvious here because why would they make resource shortages such a priority and then have no screen to even track it.

expansion planner

Why don't we just remove the need for in the first place?

oh, and steal the ancient guardians' galactic map when you meet them for locations on them resources.

send a constructor for high-priority resource needs, automate the ones you aren't micro'ing. your civilian ships will help you with trading and adhoc mining.

say no to retrofitting until your economy is strong. if you need to retrofit, do it manually. the advisor will retrofit every fucking ship and station you have. this will also fuck up your automated constructors who should be out building mining bases for you.

Are these games actually fun?

I'm giving Götterdämmerung a shot, it's the late 1944 scenario in HoI3.

Here's my general plan.

I'm ordering The Miracle at Brandenburg an orderly retreat against the soviets, abandoning Russia, Poland, Romania and the majority of the Balkans to the red terror so I can shorten my line and have a more defensible position along the Oder river and the Alps.
In this process I hope to concentrate and re-organise my armour and mechanised in Moravia and Slovakia then spread them along the flat sections of the line to hold against soviet armour.

I'm abandoning Norway and Finland to their fate, I currently can't afford to hold the areas and those troops will be vital in holding the line against the soviets.

I'll be gathering all troops in France to begin a counter offensive in Normandy, and once the forces there have been dislodged the armoured, mechanised and motorised forces from Normandy will be moved to Italy, to begin an offensive down to Italy.

Once Italy is secured I will move the forces I can spare from that front over to the Netherlands, to begin a landing in Britain.

I'm hoping once I have secured Britain allied naval and air forces will no longer threaten me on the Atlantic, allowing me to move troops back against the Russians. From there I have no idea what to do.

Sounds like a good plan. How many divisions are there on each front?

About 150k in Norway and Finland, including the naval and air forces.
750k in the Balkans and Romania, although many of these are Romanian and Croatian.
1.2 million against the main Soviet front.
220k against the Italians.
45k in Denmark.
135k in Southern France.
410k in Northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands.

Around 3 million men all up.

Our Normandy counter-offensive went swimmingly, their forces were crushed, I'm now in the process of transferring armour to the Italian front.

In the east, only a single infantry division has been cut off, but a pair of mechanised brigades are dangerously close to being cut off.

forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/arcade-mode.480137/

Those damned SJW.

I wonder if the US will keep on sending invasion fleets even after sealion

I'm lazy so I didn't bother, I could just put the tga file in from any other mod if I wanted to.

I've successfully pulled back to the defensive line, there are a few gaps at the moment but I should have them filled within a few days.

why not copy the polish border?

The Soviets have met our border, we're slowly going down Italy and I'm rapidly reorganising the line to try and get tanks and mechanised on the plains areas without rivers but god damn this level of micro is insane.

A lot of the border has no natural defences, holding the line against Soviet armoured units with mostly infantry means I really need to rely on terrain bonuses, and the Oder river gives me a pretty fucking nice bonus.
Here's a terrain map to show you how the forests, hills and mountains look.

Which vicky mods are worthwhile?

Damn, the situation is worse than I thought. Be wary of the soviet southern push - they did that to me once, and it's HELL trying to push them out of the balkans due to the million mountains and rivers and shit. Also, don't count on Italy ever being useful again. I checked their techs for this scenario once, and IIRC they have worse shit than Germany in 1936

New World Order, Kaiserreich, HPM, Ultimate/Rebooted, others victoria2wiki.com/List_of_mods

An encirclement in Italy means we push down and take the rest of the peninsula, unfortunately Croatia and Finland have surrendered now, leaving only Hungary and the Italian Social State as our allies in Europe.

How far are you with researching nukes? Also, what's Japan's situation?

Why does Germany has 2nd reich flag?

Oh yeah, I should do that.

Because I'm too lazy to mod it in and paradox are Jews.

Wait, it's censored actually?

I've seen so many screencaps with the normal flag that I thought thats the normal.

Most people just mod it back in.

Japan is pretty fucked, they beat China but I took a long look around and most of their navy is gone, they've got a few carriers, battleships and subs around, but no escort ships or heavy cruisers left.

My invasion force for Britain is prepared, I have landing craft ready to transport these 250k men, of which 2/3rds are either mechanised, motorised or armour.

Supply will be a problem, so I have made every single HQ a logistics expert to help deal with that, I'm hoping it will save us some hassle as we struggle to keep the supply convoys open.

Get fucked you limey bastards.

They should be able to hold out, then, provided US doesn't spam them with nukes

Is there a surrender event like in DH? It's been a while since I played HoI3 and I don't remember

I need a good division composition for a country with shit Manpower/Leadership. I'm running INF/ART/ART/AT and while it's amazing on the offense, it sucks in defending. Is there a more effective composition I could use? Yes, I'd love to use SHARM/ART/ART/ART, but leadership is a bottleneck to that.

I see no boundries, I think I m gonna make Rome, after that, I dont know if theres anyone who can fight me.

Got a mod that extends the end date?

Are you playing the pre-warp start or normal start?

Pre-warp basically requires you to offer the pirates contracts to supply stuff.

Mining stations and stuff can take up to 4 mining components. If you use only 1 (default) you are mining incredibly slowly.

Otherwise keep in mind that there is no constant demand for most resources, the only constant demand is maintenance credits. Resources are only used to build new ships or upgrade old ships. The only exception is your fuel (which is the main obstacle building large fleets, running a fuel deficit fucking sucks).

Personally I recommend limiting your space ports to a few large ones, since space ports are where your stockpiles are stored. If you build lots of small ones then you'll have more shortages everywhere.

Enhanced Vanilla Experience

France got what it deserved for joining a coalition against me in the past.
Fuck France, fuck their gold fleets, fuck their colonies, fuck their trade.
I rule the seas, got 400 light ships privateering right now.

You are an invincible blob. What's the point?

Make Rome?

No sadly, I'll have to occupy the lot and even then I doubt they'll surrender.

I'm not really that sure, I tend to play as a small ally when I play low manpower nations.

It would all be much more impressive if you didn't cheat that mana.