A fundamental problem with Paradox ''commanders''

[Axe99]

The problem, in my opinion, is that at the end of the day it still comes down to modifiers. With games as moddable as these, the user will be able to know exactly what those modifiers are, by looking at some file.

Take Victoria II for example. In Victoria II generals have a background and a personality trait. You can see them and then you can see a list of exactly what it modifes. For example:

Background: Aristocrat
Personality: Chivalrous
+30% Morale
+2 Attack

If you remove the exact modifiers, you are left with two vage indications that tell you nothing. Even if the explanations are more detailed, let's be realistic, you'd just go to the game files or even esier, to the wiki, that you can access in-game, so you can exactly tell which of your generals has a higher attack stat so you can put him in charge of your mighty army.

Aye, I guess so - the issue is MP. In SP, I'm sure a lot of players would happily not look at the files and enjoy the more historically plausible gameplay, but in MP people would be shooting themselves in the foot not to.

The only alternative would be to keep the actual modifier in-engine, but that'd hurt moddability, which I wouldn't be a fan of.

 

[Atlantians]

Acquired traits should balance this out.

There are ways in an RPG context to make this work better.

Really poor decisions by the player regarding general placement and strategies should also potentially result in negative effects and traits for the general.

 

[Groogy]

Aye, I guess so - the issue is MP. In SP, I'm sure a lot of players would happily not look at the files

I wouldn't.
Though then again I also broke Rome Total War by having a maxed out Spartan (only one left in the regiment) win entire battles for me. Yes not kidding, he would make armies of 2k sizes route upon him charging against them....

 

[Axe99]

Acquired traits should balance this out.

There are ways in an RPG context to make this work better.

Really poor decisions by the player regarding general placement and strategies should also potentially result in negative effects and traits for the general.

If (in the HoI4 context) you had acquired traits and a PP cost for removing a general, that could give the potential for bad performance (general acquires a poor trait, but there's a trade off, in terms of alternative PP cost, for getting rid of them - noting that at the moment the 'PP economy' tends to balloon a bit late game, so that'd need some reining in for it to have much in the way of meaning) - and as you say, bad traits being more likely if generals are put in an inappropriate situation.

I wouldn't.
Though then again I also broke Rome Total War by having a maxed out Spartan (only one left in the regiment) win entire battles for me. Yes not kidding, he would make armies of 2k sizes route upon him charging against them....

That's one scary Spartan! I guess I'm trying to think of ways for there to be emergent gameplay that feels plausible (in this case, finding out that the admiral in charge of a particular fleet actually isn't much chop, requiring player action and decision making, preferably with trade-offs, to manage), so that games don't tend too much towards the a relatively formulaic stacking of bonuses (for example, at the moment in HoI4 there's pretty clear early techs to go for, and very little reason not to do pretty much the same thing each time, because the situation is exactly the same each time, as a player knows exactly how long it takes to research each tech and exactly what benefit they get for researching it). Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a go at PDS games, I love 'em, just throwing ideas around .

 

[misterderp]

Though then again I also broke Rome Total War by having a maxed out Spartan (only one left in the regiment) win entire battles for me. Yes not kidding, he would make armies of 2k sizes route upon him charging against them....

Did that spartan shout stuff about killing gods? Did he have two swords connected with chains to his forearms?

 

[Chief of Staff]

Here's my coptomans spreadsheet.

Currently working on the one for my next campaign.


Well all of the games, ever since EU3(when I got on the wagon) has always in essence of its core been "Use your modifiers against other people's modifiers to gain more modifiers"
At least that's how I look at it. I still role play and subconsciously create stories for events in the game that fits the environment around it. Like my favorite campaign in EU3 where I had the Great Swedish Empire spanning the northern hemisphere defending the oppressed Lutheran German states against the vile alliance of the Catholic French and Moslem Turks. Modifiers is the mechanic that make things work in the game at all and doing anything interesting, modifiers themselves don't remove plausible historicity in itself. Unless you think only way to properly represent historicity is by individually simulating every farmer of a county, these things will be abstracted into modifiers.

Your spreadsheets is impressive. You would've fit well into the Prussian General Staff. I hear they like details and plans.

 

[mursolini]

Maybe look at something other than just the stats?
IRL people don't get into positions because they are so great for fulfilling that function, but rather because they got friends at the right places or because the really good people might be too dangerous (they could overthrow you). Instead of confusing the player with obscure stats, why not limit their ability to switch commanders?

Especially in peacetime, military personnel would get promoted for reasons other than their skill.

It can relatively easily be done by rebalancing of political power. Make "loyalists" have generally worse traits, but provide you with + daily political power(there are already a few people like this, but more.are.needed). Then have a few people that are both loyal and competent, those are worth their weight in gold

Then just have more need for political power, and make player balance his need for skilled people with need for political loyalty and general controllability of government.

 

[Mortheim]

I dont..

I think that your knowledge of the game is too good to have spreadsheet.

 

[Person012345]

You will always be able to make a spreadsheet for a game and it's bonuses, and there will always be people who do it. The trick is to make as balanced a game as possible for those people, whilst also keeping a natural feeling game with natural prompts for those who just play for immersion.

One thing that might help is that I'd like to be able to more easily keep track of a characters progression. I want the process of commanders gaining levels and traits to be more involved so that I actually care about a given general. Maybe give him a history so I can see his accomplishments and failures. Right now I just pick the guy with the best traits for the job because my generals are all interchangable, just portraits with bonuses. That being said, I don't see this as a super important part of the game that pressingly needs to be fixed. It's something that would be nice to improve, but I'd much rather see more unique focus trees for as many countries as possible and so on be added first.