Is paradox really telling us all to quit the game?

[InsidiousMage]

Instead I’ve been evangelizing Victoria 3, which, is still money for Paradox, but it’s a game with a future I believe in, and am confident in recommending to people.

Its funny you mention Vicky3 because I feel like there are a lot of parallels with the debate over the warfare system, which I actually thought was pretty interesting. It takes away a lot of direct control players have over events but still leaves them with plenty of agency and influence. You improve your economy, build alliances while isolating your enemies, and build up your army but, once you start your diplo play, things are kind of out of your control. It could all be going your way until Britain sides with your target at the last moment and now you have to decide if you want back down and lose money and territory or roll the dice and see if you can get a halfway decent peace deal by going to war.

P.S. Anyone who may have lapsed on Vic 3 should tap back in once the trade overhaul comes out in June, this game is poised to really start hitting its potential.

How's the building micromanagement nowadays because that was one of the main reasons why I dropped off after about 30 hrs and I kind of have a low tolerance for that kind of stuff.

 

[Voidian]

Its funny you mention Vicky3 because I feel like there are a lot of parallels with the debate over the warfare system, which I actually thought was pretty interesting. It takes away a lot of direct control players have over events but still leaves them with plenty of agency and influence. You improve your economy, build alliances while isolating your enemies, and build up your army but, once you start your diplo play, things are kind of out of your control. It could all be going your way until Britain sides with your target at the last moment and now you have to decide if you want back down and lose money and territory or roll the dice and see if you can get a halfway decent peace deal by going to war.


How's the building micromanagement nowadays because that was one of the main reasons why I dropped off after about 30 hrs and I kind of have a low tolerance for that kind of stuff.

The game has improved, a lot, since launch, warfare is still buggy, still not ideal, but choices matter, army compositions matter, different unit types have different roles, different types of armies need to be used, different types of commanders are better for different kinds of armies.

The game ocasionally bugs out and teleports your armies away, or splits your frontlines (less of an issue outside of europe) but it happens far less often than it used to.

As for the economic part you're asking, the game now has a mandatory private sector building up your economy, you can reserve more construction points for them under certain laws, so you certainly do not need to micromanage the building in every state like you used to, the state's contruction by midgame is often going to be focusing on vital infrastructure, education, admin, etc... While capitalists can handle economic growth just fine. Perhaps you'd want to build a giant factory of a certain kind in a single state but you don't have to do it as often as you used to.

With Sphere of influence you don't really "need" to play the multicultural economic game either, if you run out of pops to develop your lands you can get investment rights to other nations to build them up instead, creating more capitalists in your own nation and making some money off their buildings, you can freely build up your willing or unwilling vassals as well, and autoritarian ethnostates have very powerful boosts worth using for certain nations right now.

Vic3 had the 2nd worst launch I can remember, for a paradox game, but the devs have been humble, they did na 180 on their bad initial ideas rejected by the public after launch and have started addressing everything the community have been telling them they wanted, as a result the game stopped bleeding players nov 2023, when they released their first military overhaul, they greatly improved the economy with the new capitalist system & foreign investment, are about to try and fix trade, and still want to touch warfare once again. Those devs deserve mad respect.


Vic3 may not be a perfect game, but it's listening & improving patch by patch.

 

[47pik]

Its funny you mention Vicky3 because I feel like there are a lot of parallels with the debate over the warfare system, which I actually thought was pretty interesting. It takes away a lot of direct control players have over events but still leaves them with plenty of agency and influence. You improve your economy, build alliances while isolating your enemies, and build up your army but, once you start your diplo play, things are kind of out of your control. It could all be going your way until Britain sides with your target at the last moment and now you have to decide if you want back down and lose money and territory or roll the dice and see if you can get a halfway decent peace deal by going to war.

Yeah, while there are definitely things that need to be improved, I really like the system in Vic. A lot of players still complain about it, but the problems are fairly superficial IMO. People who understand the game realize the biggest issues are the limitations of it the diplomatic play itself and not the military, but a lot of players can’t wrap their heads around not being able to move their soldiers around, or Great Britain showing up unexpectedly to ruin their ambitions.

Thankfully the devs seem to be sticking to the vision, because I think it’s great. But yeah Vic is an interesting contrast to CK3 in that it’s a game with significantly more friction that results in a much more engaging game experience IMO, although unfortunately one that has admittedly alienated people. I’m optimistic that as more systems are fleshed out, players will get more comfortable with it though - it suffered early from incoherent design choices that made it hard to set expectations of play patterns.

How's the building micromanagement nowadays because that was one of the main reasons why I dropped off after about 30 hrs and I kind of have a low tolerance for that kind of stuff.

Much better since the full autonomous private capital system was created. Should be even better once autonomous trade is added in June. It’s actually viable to only build things of strategic importance yourself now, and allow the broader economic and social environment to guide the rest of the economy autonomously, although again the upcoming patch should improve this even more from what’s been shown. Very much is about thumbing the scales rather than micro now. However, the game could do more to communicate this desired play pattern to players, and you see a lot of people who find the game irritating or think it’s broken because they aren’t playing it right and fighting the systems instead of leaning in.

Once again, I think this underscores the importance of how PDX can communicate information to new players in-game.

But yeah, if the building micro was your chief problem def check it out again once 1.9 drops, I think you’ll be shocked at how much it’s changed.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Vic3 may not be a perfect game, but it's listening & improving patch by patch.

Yeah, I was impressed when the devs rolled out their initial roadmap for fixes and improvements. I kind of lost interest afterwards and haven't seen anything eye-catching since and of lost track of the game. Nice to hear its made substantial improvements since.

But yeah, if the building micro was your chief problem def check it out again once 1.9 drops, I think you’ll be shocked at how much it’s changed.

Cool, that was definitely a major issue for me.

 

[Bisonmask]

Edit: also what the ai councilmembers did in CK2 wasn't "inscrutable" They had vassal stances which told you exactly how they would vote every time. Including a giant red thumbs down for malcontents who would oppose you. It was annoying back then, and its annoying now that people complain about really cool systems they didn't bother to learn

This is basically the result whenever this topic comes up and its the reason we're probably never getting a system that good again. I don't understand how and why its so common for people to be upset about systems that go this far out of their way to be clear. Even if they didn't have the massive icons on every council member you can just read the components of their opinion like you can with every single character in the game

Its funny you mention Vicky3 because I feel like there are a lot of parallels with the debate over the warfare system, which I actually thought was pretty interesting. It takes away a lot of direct control players have over events but still leaves them with plenty of agency and influence. You improve your economy, build alliances while isolating your enemies, and build up your army but, once you start your diplo play, things are kind of out of your control. It could all be going your way until Britain sides with your target at the last moment and now you have to decide if you want back down and lose money and territory or roll the dice and see if you can get a halfway decent peace deal by going to war.

That risk is what makes Vic 3 fun. When you aren't playing a GP they feel like giants in a playground and planning around them gives your gameplay form. If you could just play Persia and conquer your way through Afghanistan, India, and Iraq without being stepped on the core gameplay might still be engaging but it wouldn't feel motivated

 

[Voidian]

This is basically the result whenever this topic comes up and its the reason we're probably never getting a system that good again. I don't understand how and why its so common for people to be upset about systems that go this far out of their way to be clear. Even if they didn't have the massive icons on every council member you can just read the components of their opinion like you can with every single character in the game


That risk is what makes Vic 3 fun. When you aren't playing a GP they feel like giants in a playground and planning around them gives your gameplay form. If you could just play Persia and conquer your way through Afghanistan, India, and Iraq without being stepped on the core gameplay might still be engaging but it wouldn't feel motivated

Technically, you can do that, I've played as an afghan minor and became the greatest power in the world when their DLC came out.

After uniting the other minors Persia was the first "boss" I had to beat, they required a lot of military spending and a bunch of generals with mountain bonus traits, I'd let them exhaust their manpower trying to advance, getting their men killed, then push them back while they were recovering to make some gains and get a few of their lands while avoiding taking anything that bordered Russia, India, or the sea.

Of course, pushing GB back to the sea is easy, but not when they get to land their troops and attack through India, so I had them release india through war when I could, using Russia as an Ally.

Russia then became an enemy due to unforeseen diplomatic plays putting us both on opposing sides, so I had to fight a loooot of wars against them, merely holding the line with giant defensive armies, using defensive generals and nothing but infantry (best at defense) from time to time.


This also happened during the patch when they tuned up superpower aggression 1000x so they were making moves and gaining infamy the entire game, that was the best time I ever had in a vic3 game. warfare was constant and it never felt like I was just playing by myself, I'd have to constantly seek alliances and understand allies would never fight my wars to the end, at most you can expect them to briefly distract your enemies as you try to take enough goals (or keep them) to reach for a favorable, or white peace.

This is also why I could never think of starting a game with something like France or GB, they already start with the game beaten, so I can't see what could possibly be fun about them.

 

[InsidiousMage]

That risk is what makes Vic 3 fun. When you aren't playing a GP they feel like giants in a playground and planning around them gives your gameplay form. If you could just play Persia and conquer your way through Afghanistan, India, and Iraq without being stepped on the core gameplay might still be engaging but it wouldn't feel motivated

One thing I definitely noticed with the Vicky3 debates is that a lot of players confuse control with agency and I think that is going to be a hard association for a lot of players to break. I honestly think this kind of "lower control, high agency" design is probably the direction Paradox games need to move in but making that kind of system feel fun and fair can be hard to achieve, especially if a subset of players think you only have agency if you also only have complete control.

 

[Voidian]

One thing I definitely noticed with the Vicky3 debates is that a lot of players confuse control with agency and I think that is going to be a hard association for a lot of players to break. I honestly think this kind of "lower control, high agency" design is probably the direction Paradox games need to move in but making that kind of system feel fun and fair can be hard to achieve, especially if a subset of players think you only have agency if you also only have complete control.

Do you mean like in vic2 you could never really push a button to get things done, instead you had to steer systems towards the direction you wanted?

IE: Use mandates to try to increase the number of clery in a state, specially the most populous ones, so they could start increasing literacy rates, which in turn would increase your research speed?

That's kind of one of the big flaws Imperator had on launch, it had a bunch of mana you had to click to get magic done, even trade was boring like that, they reworked most systems to become gradual changes.

But nvm that, talking about Imperator is depressing, it had a terrible launch, but the game was reworked with great care, it is, today, perhaps the best base paradox game, and it still wasn't enough to bring players back, such a shame.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Do you mean like in vic2 you could never really push a button to get things done, instead you had to steer systems towards the direction you wanted?

IE: Use mandates to try to increase the number of clery in a state, specially the most populous ones, so they could start increasing literacy rates, which in turn would increase your research speed?

I've never played Vic2 so I can't comment precisely but, to mix some metaphors, you try and stack the deck as best as you can and then doll the rice to see what result you get. This obvious isn't going to work with every kind of mechanic or system but I think Paradox's game are fundamentally "solved" as this point so the only way to add friction is to remove some control and your example isn't super far off. I hate to bring up Old World again but I like way childhood personality traits are handled in that game compared to CK3. You get a choice between "Good Trait A or Bad Trait C" and then "Good Trait B or Bad Trait D" and choose which dice you want to role. So, you have agency but little control in the actual outcome. I think this is why getting bad traits in CK3 feels bad* is because you had choice and its not a fun choice to make. I think this is why bad outcomes feel so bad in CK3 because you have a lot of control and therefore expectations that you can get always better outcomes. I rarely, if ever, feel awful about bad results in Old World because I never had expectations of complete control in the first place.

Tangentially, I'm curious about Project Caesar because they seem to be going all in on player control and micromanagement and I wonder if they'll get the same kind of issues and push back regarding difficulty that CK3 has. I'll admit I'm not paying super close attention so I could be missing some important details.

*It doesn't help that traits tend to be poorly balanced with traits like Shy and Paranoid being awful from both a mechanical and RP perspective.

 

[47pik]

That risk is what makes Vic 3 fun. When you aren't playing a GP they feel like giants in a playground and planning around them gives your gameplay form. If you could just play Persia and conquer your way through Afghanistan, India, and Iraq without being stepped on the core gameplay might still be engaging but it wouldn't feel motivated

Yeah, I agree this is what CK needs more of. It’s not about being super hardcore and difficult, it’s about having a context to exist in to give structure and meaning to what you do. There should be bounds on what the player can realistically do so that they have to think about how to tackle a situation. I have never once experienced anything in any run of CK3 that comes close to the feeling of cautiously trying to avoid the wrath of Great Britain in any random Vic 3 run.

 

[Benismann]

Again, they can just leave it or mod it. CK3 has issues tho. The devs could always make difficulty levels à la Minecraft. Or they could focus on role play, immersion, grand strategy and merging them nicely together. Isn't it what this game is about? Its genres? Difficulty will increase tho, but at least, I hope, it will be a difficulty that makes sense. Last time I played CK3, the use of console commands was an annoying process, so they could make it more accessible.

Why is this take getting downvoted?.. Isn't this what people want? Or is it coz of the "they can just leave it or mod it" part?

 

[SpiritRiven]

Here’s the problem - the AI is already supposed to be doing this. The only problem is that the effects of personalities are subtle, expressed in terms of weights and rarely in terms of actual intelligence.

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I could write an essay on this topic. I sincerely believe the problem with CK3’s difficulty isn’t that it’s too mechanically simplistic, it’s that it’s too mechanically complex. This is a classic case of misdiagnosis.

The human player plays the game of thrones. They utilize every possible resource, seize every opportunity; even doing so within the context of roleplay, they will develop a deep understanding of their “options” in dealing with any given problem. They never let their debt spiral out of control; they work hard to increase their income by developing their counties and constructing new buildings; they recruit powerful combinations of MAA; they quickly and efficiently resolve their wars whenever possible; they form favorable alliances with neighboring realms; they destabilize rivals by plotting against them. I could go on, and I haven’t even touched on Innovations, Traditions, and lifestyle perk trees.

Compared to CK2, the sprawl of CK3 is absolutely ludicrous. In CK2, you only had so many ways to handle any given problem. That was part of what gave it its depth; you were forced to be creative with what few methods were at your disposal. CK2’s AI seemed much better by comparison because it was navigating an inherently simpler system.

CK3’s AI is equipped with the bare minimum of competence required to exist within the framework of the game. If it possessed anything resembling the logic of the player, half its problems would be solved.

Not every AI ruler should be competent. Many should be incompetent losers who ruin their own prosperous existence. The player will always have an inherent advantage with this in mind. But the AI of an ambitious, ingenious prodigy king should be a formidable foe - and right now, he isn’t, because he differs in no way from a contented duke aside from a few weighted probabilities. Maybe he’ll declare a war, start a scheme, but he will never act in a clever way to benefit himself and his dynasty.

A truly competitive AI needs more than weighted probabilities that it will take certain actions. It needs to take these actions as part of a larger effort and a coherent plan, more akin to the player. I know this is a huge ask, but it’s the truth.

My knowledge of code and programming is very limited, but what the AI should have are “logic paths” as opposed to mere weights for subsequently disjointed behaviors. Conquer neighboring duchy; give duchy to younger son so older son’s succession is secured; quietly murder malcontent brother who has a claim; demand money from the Pope and invest in heir’s future lands…

What I wish more people understood is that the problem of AI incompetence affects everyone. Besides removing all challenge for experienced players, it makes the devs’ job harder, too. It doesn’t matter how intriguing Admin or Nomad governments are on paper if they lifeless when steered by the AI.

Real strategy requires cunning. It’s easy to be cunning when your opponents think the square block belongs in the round hole. CK3’s downfall has never been its lack of depth or dynamism, but the fact that these aspects of the game sink beneath the leaden weight of an AI without any notion of what the game is about.

You've basically stated perfectly what I have always thought has been the fundemental problem with this game. The AI has no way to play this game in the same strategic sense that a human player can.

 

[Benismann]

As a quick example, the regency system would be a lot more interesting if you played a child more often

Yea if only playing as a child wasn't the second most boring thing in the game....

 

[Benismann]

You get a choice between "Good Trait A or Bad Trait C" and then "Good Trait B or Bad Trait D" and choose which dice you want to role. So, you have agency but little control in the actual outcome. I think this is why getting bad traits in CK3 feels bad* is because you had choice and its not a fun choice to make. I think this is why bad outcomes feel so bad in CK3 because you have a lot of control and therefore expectations that you can get always better outcomes.

This is a very interesting idea and honestly devs should probably look into implementing this instead of just picking one of 3 proposed ones. One might think this will lead to more frustrating RNG, but IMO it's already frustrating getting the "wrong" events (THE BEATING) and you already never want to NOT educate your heir yourself coz AI will pick something dumb and you dont want that. Now, you also will pick something dumb time to time, so having your heir be educated by someone better than you might even become a consideration sometimes....

Rewriting all the events, however, even if trying to minimise it is a not a small task. There're currently 26 personality formation events, and each one has a "copy" for the guardian to recieve, so i doubt paradox will actually change it meaningfully without a DLC adjacent to it, and we already had W&W so.....

edit: it's 26 and maybe 3 guardian events PER EACH. No wonder even TCs rarely touch them.

 

[WeeLittleSpoon]

I hate to bring up Old World again but I like way childhood personality traits are handled in that game compared to CK3. You get a choice between "Good Trait A or Bad Trait C" and then "Good Trait B or Bad Trait D" and choose which dice you want to role. So, you have agency but little control in the actual outcome. I think this is why getting bad traits in CK3 feels bad* is because you had choice and its not a fun choice to make. I think this is why bad outcomes feel so bad in CK3 because you have a lot of control and therefore expectations that you can get always better outcomes. I rarely, if ever, feel awful about bad results in Old World because I never had expectations of complete control in the first place.

I agree with this entirely. I've been working on a mod idea forever and a day that looks to limit the amount of options in the game's events, because I believe that a lot of them are less fun because they offer too much agency.

I personally feel that the only thing worse than making no choice is making a meaningless one, and I feel that too many of the game's events are meaningless (or obvious) choices. For me, I think events would be more fun if they just told you something good or bad had happened, and then left you to deal with it. Choices can be good, but I think too many events have options just for the sake of having them. It might be a minor annoyance to get an event that says your heir now has the Sadistic trait, but I think it feels better to just arbitrarily get that bad news, rather than being offered the equivalent of a false choice of where someones promises they're going to beat you, but you get to pick the object they use to do it.

 

[ray243]

I think there's no clear answer to this as people tend to talk around this issue when it comes to saying the game is too easy or too difficult for new players.

To PDX Devs, it could be difficulty is seen as where one new player mastered the UI, how to manage the realm and the basic mechanics of the game.

I gifted a game of CK3 to a friend who has never played grand strategy games by PDX and they find the main thing is just getting lost in regards to things like how to move troops around the map or how to earn money.

To veterans players, this might be seen as easy as you're used to the controls. Once you mastered the controls and the functions of management, the game doesn't really offer you that much challenges afterwards.

This is why I think the idea what should be easy and what should be difficult in CK3 needs to be debated and discussed.

Anyone needs to consider the perspective of making the game easy enough for new players that they won't find the game to overwhelming to lose interest. And same time it should offer more and more challenges for players who mastered the controls more challenging tasks and play paths.

A way to go about it would be to make the difficulty scale to the level of tiers you're managing at.

Easy:

Being an landless adventurer if it is just you and a few companion should be easy. It's mostly just you travelling around on your own with no worries of having too many people to care for. But once you increase your followers, an even build a private army out of it, and becoming a mercenary camp? It should be a lot more challenging. Your soldiers will demand a constant amount of gold and food even if there isn't a lot of contracts available. You either have to travel across the map widely, or watch your band be disbanded or you lose control of them as either you get replaced as adventurer camp leader, or you turn into a bandit and started pillaging various realms.

If you are a count, this should also be easy as you only have to manage your small fief. There's not a lot of people with interest to challenge a small count, and so long as you pay your dues to your liege, it will be not much of a problem for you. You deal with problems that might prop up in your estate from time to time, like a famine or some peasant families not paying their taxes to you, but generally those are easy challenges

Medium:

Duke-tier and above. Yes, Congrats, you are now a duke or someone higher tier. You get more money, more resources, but also more challenges as you get more people to manage. You get more power but also more responsibilities. You need to ensure the different counts under you are managing their counties well, paying enough taxes to you but also to your liege. If the counts is unable to generate enough taxes for you and your liege, you have potential problem of either pay the extra taxes out of your own pocket, or you faced your titles being possibly revoked by your liege. Or if you are not able to bring enough soldiers within your duchy for war to your liege. You also face the issue of having a few powerful counts that might disagreed with your actions, or even hope to supplant you as duke.

The difficulty can only grow because you're managing a bigger part of the map with more people under your jurisdiction. You also get blamed if more things goes wrong. Instead of just worrying about the health of one county, you are worrying about the well-being of several counties. Balancing interest should be more difficult as a result.

Hard:

Congrats. You are now King! The problem is now you have the whole of the realm to worry about. Now everyone in the kingdom expects you to do a good job. If counts faced problems with disasters, you are expected to come down and help. If your dukes are facing some peasant uprising, you are expected to protect your dukes. Maybe some dukes or counts feels you are favouring non-nobles vs nobles for your council positions? That is also another headache you have to deal with.

Having your counts or dukes suffering from constant raids by vikings? Well, that is also another problem as if you can't protect your vassals from such attacks, they might think someone else might make a better king than you. If during a war, you lose battles where too many troops from a given count or duke died in battle? Well, they might be angry with you as you lost them their valuable manpower.

Very Difficult:

So now you're an emperor. You're one of the most powerful individuals in the map by this point. But being a large empire means you have even more people with different cultures, faith to take care of. You have even more vassals to handle as everyone wants you to reward them and treat them well. If you show one side more favouritism, it might provoke more jealously from other factions.

Even more problematic is you find it harder to keep tract of the health of your realm, as not all information reaches you that easily. Maybe a duke in some random part off the empire was abusing their vassals and their subjects there. Maybe they increased taxes for their own benefit without you knowing. Maybe your soldiers started to become bandits in some areas because their pay aren't being paid by the governor. Also, a lot more people might think they can run the empire better than you with a lot more ambitious nobles to deal with in a larger empire.

You can muster a huge army, but how do you prevent that army from not ending up fighting each other if the generals hated each other? Or how do you prevent a frontier army from thinking they are more powerful than the troops in the capital?

Large Empire = more internal threats to deal with.


How would this feel for Ck3? We get an easy mode that can work for newcomers, as long as they stay being a small count or a small landless adventurer party. If they increase in ranks, this means more things to manage and staying top is actually quite hard.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

Threads merged. Again.

It's worth remembering that the Code of Conduct includes (my emphasis):

...When creating a thread of your own, be sure to post in the right forum for the game in question, and take the time to search for an existing/appropriate thread before doing so....​

 

[ray243]

Threads merged. Again.

It's worth remembering that the Code of Conduct includes (my emphasis):

...When creating a thread of your own, be sure to post in the right forum for the game in question, and take the time to search for an existing/appropriate thread before doing so....​

I think it's a different question. And a different discussion from this thread. But up to you to think whether it's the same discussion. Watch as this post just gets drowned out as a result of the merge.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I think it's a different question. And a different discussion from this thread. But up to you to think whether it's the same discussion. Watch as this post just gets drowned out as a result of the merge.

Anyone needs to consider the perspective of making the game easy enough for new players that they won't find the game to overwhelming to lose interest. And same time it should offer more and more challenges for players who mastered the controls more challenging tasks and play paths.

It's literally the same discussion. And there is no special significance to being the OP of a thread.

 

[vandevere]

It seems the Devs have three choices...

1) Make the Game harder and drive the newbies and EZ Moders out
2) Make the Game Easier, and drive the Hard Moders out.
3) Expand the Game Rules to satisfy everyone, and drive no one out...