-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
Maybe the best looking for paradox but those square trees and those black, pixellised borders would have looked ok(not great; barely ok) in 2002. Some time passed since then.
As far as I am concerned Paradox titles have always been behind when it comes to graphics. I mean, we're not expecting Crysis 2 here.
While the graphics are important, I agree that they don't need to make a masterpiece graphically. It is the gameplay that gets us all hooked after all.
The map looks excellent. I particularly like the first screenshot. I'll be keeping an eye on this game.
Oh I do certainly agree gameplay matters. I only made the comment because people were acting like it was revolutionary.
Since 2000 I'm playing basically only PI games, but even then I had to be blind to say the map is gorgeous. It could be maybe 5 years ago. It's also not the best PI map, IMHO, the one in VicII is much better (I mean terrain view; political one is very unclear and messy). Particulary, castles sprites look very bad - gloomy, blocky something in the countryside. Looking at previous screenshots I'm also suprised with samurai army sprite. Honestly, it's kinda awful, considering you have a much nicer samurai sprite in VicII 
Oh, well, it's gameplay that counts.
Oh, well, it's gameplay that counts.
I like the feel of the map but personally I only play in political view so I hope that looks nice aswell
so far good. and a new update next week already!
so I hope that looks nice aswell so far good. and a new update next week already!
I like the feel of the map but personally I only play in political view
I think most people does. But that's why we try with every title to get a little closer to the goal of actually playing in terrain mode. I think both Sengoku and Crusader Kings II will improve vastly in this aspect.
This is something I most look forward to for PI games. Having played TW for years before I moved on to PI games, I really always missed seeing the landscape of my domains. Vic2 made some gains in that the landscape was atleast differentiable under the political view, but still, it almost felt grayscale compared to the actual terrain view, which though nice, was impracticle for ingame usage (atleast for me). I did always feel that the way TW did it (permenant terrain view, with politics shown by different colored boundaries) was most informative, subtle and nice to look at. I'm not saying you guys should emulate TW - not at all - but rather learn from the things your competitors do well and then do them better in a PI way.
For example, as I said, TW games show political borders with unique colors - something also adopted in Rise of Nations I believe. Basically you get to see the line where red meets blue, or where red, blue and green collide. It achieves everything that the political map provides (with its different color coded countries) but does so in a manner that allows terrain to be completely visible and in full glory too.
However, if you refer to the Sengoku screenshots, you will see that all political borders are RED. Now this may be an alpha stage feature destined to change, but I thought it was worth a mention. So in Sengoku (so far) the political borders convey less information than in TW or RON. You could change it so each country has it's own colored line, dashed by the color of it's banner text. So perhaps we can see something like the yellow and black line of one clan clashing against the black and red line of the other clan.
Also, Gars, though I do like the direction of the new maps, I do have to agree with others (upon second review) that the city models could be improved. Now this need not be done elaborately for vanilla so long as some sort of tools are available for modders to improve them. For example, given years of free time, modder's can, as you surely know come up with insane amounts of detail and flavour in model work. You can see http://lotr-tw.net/viewtopic.php?t=3011 or http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=409073 to see some of the most inspired work I've seen.
But I must say, I really do like the overall feel of the map. The orangish cover really seems good. The elevated mountain tops look nice and blend nicely into the forested valleys below. The trees can probably be improved in detail but their color sets nicely against the color of the land. Overall I think it looks amazing, especially if all the models can be made open to modding (they already may be I don't know).
Anyways, thanks for reading if you've made it this far. Enjoy.
EDIT: "most people do*" - no hard feelings, just figure it would be good to point it out in case English isn't your first language.
I pray that isn't how names are going to be displayed in game? It would be a pity to have all that effort done in research and end up with "Bob of Hojo" and other such names. Uesugi is not a place, it is a family, and even if the heir were not born into the dynasty, he would be adopted, making his family name, legally, Uesugi.
The names should be <clan name> <given name>.
The names should be <clan name> <given name>.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?529084-Development-Diary-1-1st-April-2011&p=12240159#post12240159
Also see this stickied thread for answers to other common questions.
This is Paradox, a handful of dedicated Swedes eating Pot Noodle for years, while their eyes melt staring at endless code. The old maps looked up like suped up Atari graphics. And naval combat has generally been terrible in computer-based war games. Given limited resources, I'm glad they seem to be focusing on trying to get the rest right. I imagine it would take hundreds of hours of coding just to create a bad naval system. How to create a good one in this time period, I can't imagine.
(And damn you for developing a game which has me back trolling these forums. I'd given up on you after HoI3... Life was simpler for a while.)
(And damn you for developing a game which has me back trolling these forums. I'd given up on you after HoI3... Life was simpler for a while.)
Nice Screens.
Well, there are two famous sengoku era boardgames (Shogun, Samurai Swords) which don't use Navies at all.
My only concern for Sengoku is, that you can't travel to far away provinces without rights of way. The board games compensate that, by more sea connections (for example: from Izu to Shima). But these games are Igo-yougo and I understand, that long sealanes from one province to another are a problem in RT.
Well, there are two famous sengoku era boardgames (Shogun, Samurai Swords) which don't use Navies at all.
My only concern for Sengoku is, that you can't travel to far away provinces without rights of way. The board games compensate that, by more sea connections (for example: from Izu to Shima). But these games are Igo-yougo and I understand, that long sealanes from one province to another are a problem in RT.
I actually dislike that. I like to be able to get a quick feel for the size of my country and its position on the map. The terrain is very much a secondary concern for me. It's why I vastly prefer political map mode, and have no desire to play in terrain map mode.
I want option to choose languages on the map. And I want to choose Japanese. Will I can do?
Birken said:
As in... if my old lappy can handle Vicky 2 (which it can, not beautifully, but well enough to play), it can handle CKII and Sengoku? This is wonderful news! I echo Kandletaadu's sentiments in exclaiming, "I love you guys!"