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Paradox Grand Strategy - Thread of Fighting WW2 as Bithynia

L

Llyranor

Member
Opinions on EU4? (vs EU3)

I got into Paradox games via EU3 and loved it. Poured in many many hours. However, after getting into the other series, it kind of feels like baby's first Paradox game. Not a dig at the game, since Paradox games are all pretty complex, so accessibility is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm just wondering whether EU (4 in particular) still has enough to offer me since I'm craving more than just the EU3 experience. For example, I appreciate HOI2/3 for its more operational/military approach (whereas other Paradox combat is pretty barebones), Vic2 for the global power projection and increasingly convoluted diplomacy of late 19th/20th century, CK2 for its lineage/roleplaying aspect on top of the Paradox grand strategy layer.

If anything, I think it's CK2 that has spoiled me the most. I want to, instead of just playing as France, play as the king of France and have to ensure that my vassals are in order and that my dynasty is secure, while at the same engaging in international diplomacy like I would in a EU game. If you remove that layer, it feels like something is missing. I'm okay with that as long as the game adds another gameplay mechanic/layer that offers additional depth. Does EU4?

What I would find appealing about EU4 would be the exploration element. Colonization of the Americas, dealing with Amerindians, the wars of religion, Napoleonics. Does EU4+xpacs implement the unique elements of its setting/timeline in a compelling way?

I'm not sure if I'm explaining my question correctly. As much as I loved EU3, I find it lacking in (relative) depth compared to other Paradox games. Would EU4 offer a similar experience? Is it just an incremental upgrade from EU3, or does it potentially offer something quite different?
 
P

Purkake4

Banned
Man Paradox added soo much shit with RD.

sMMpV2W.png
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L

Llyranor

Member
Our game of Victoria II is nearing the end.

Throughout the vast majority of the game, Germany has been our (UK) most loyal ally. Through the span of multiple wars, we've massively cut down France and Austria-Hungary (our traditional rivals for a lot of the game) for the benefit of Italy (while also acquiring some land in Normandy for ourselves), the latter also being partitioned into many little Balkan states. Russia, our biggest archenemy, has also been withered down, with Poland and Finland being created from its ashes - our revenge has been so great that it is no longer a Great Power.

However, not all is well in the world of Britannia. While we are the most prestigious nation in the world, with possibly the best modern army in the world (with Germany being second), Germany's industry dwarves ours. It is possibly the only nation that can challenge us (aside from the USA, who has been fairly isolationist and been content with only taking chunks out of Mexico).

A small crisis is gathering up. It, obviously, involves the Balkans as always. Greece and the Ottomans are at odds again. France is supporting Greece's expansionist ambition, while Germany is the champion of the Ottomans. Therein lies our opportunity to weaken Germany, and so we decide to support Greece's cause. It's a noble cause, Germany, nothing personal - we swear! Diplomacy fails, and the lines are drawn. France, UK, Austria-Hungary (and Greece, I gueeeeess) vs Germany, Italy, Ottomans, as well as some other smaller nations. Russia sits out the fight - it knows its place.

Quickly, the troops stationed in the British isles rush to France's aid, being simultaneously invaded by German and Italian troops. France is quickly pushed back, with only the north/Paris holding thanks to British reinforcements, as well as a few remnants bunkering up in the Alps against the Italians. Meanwhile, British troops from Africa and India are quickly being shipped to Austria-Hungary, whose pathetic army isn't really pulling its weight. Before Austria-Hungary gets completely invaded, the reinforcement arrive and force some massive battles against the Germans. The battles tilt in the UK's favor, however attrition takes its toll, and the British troops eventually pull back towards the Ottoman territory to lick its wounds and reinforce.

Our allies are not doing great, but that is mostly to our global scheming to weaken them in the past few decades. Whoops! Meanwhile, almost all of France is almost completely overrun. The Italians are pushing without resistance to the south, while Germany engages in large battles to the north with the UK. Things are not looking particularly hopeful, but time seems to be on our side. The two-front war has taken its toll on bleeding Germany. Its offensive slows to a crawl, and French territory is slowly reclaimed. Meanwhile, the UK troops in their captured Ottoman territory having recuperated, making a marine invasion of Italy. Objective: Rome! The Italian army is defeated and Italy is finally the invadee rather than invader. France is being liberated. Germany is licking its wounds.

It is 1931, and things are looking pretty good for the war. It serves Germany right to have been so powerful. Its loyalty to us throughout most of the game was its downfall, mwahahaha!
 
A

archnemesis

Member
Kabouter said:
This is a pretty essential mod. I always find it unusual when European developers default to American English to be honest.
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Even though we are still taught British English in school, most of us are way more exposed to American culture. As long as you're consistent it doesn't really matter.
 
F

Forerunner

Member
HOI IV patch just released:

Today we released patch 1.2, a.k.a. Sunflower for Hearts of Iron IV.

Highlights of this patch:
- AI improvements
- Custom difficulty settings allow you to adjust the relative power of Germany, France, Italy, the Soviet Union etc.
- Improved peace conferences, based on the popular Steam workshop mod by Neutrino.
- Hotjoin added for multiplayer games
- Resync button added to remedy connection issues without having to re-host multiplayer games
- Added new releasable nations

...and much more!
Click to expand...

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ower-patch-1-2-released-checksum-bb23.969232/
 
B

belushy

Banned
The Crusader Kings 2 Generator tool: https://www.reddit.com/r/ck2generator

Basically the tool will generate, from scratch, a completely new history of humanity from its first exodus from Africa as a new mod to be playable in CK2 (and now optionally an entirely random map!). A random culture and pagan religion is formed (as in completely random, using all the parameters available for religions and cultures in CK2, as well as forming a unique language used to name characters, provinces, kingdoms, gods, religions. These cultures will then spread throughout europe, mutating and changing as they spread, words and language, religions, ethnicity, cultural ideals, laws, looting, river sailing, incest, religious heads, holy sites, wives, concubines and everything, all morphing, mutating and branching off as humans spread through time and land, and form a completely unique world with absolutely none of the vanilla cultures, religions, provinces, de-jure duchies or anything found in the base game.
Click to expand...

20160804224555_1.jpg
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The Mod also, as of a recent update, can let you generate your own map through the program. You can also use most mod maps, like the Westoreos Map (but without the mod features sadly)

And now includes a map drawing feature. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL0ti4crjvI&feature=youtu.be


The tool is super early and the creator plans to add more features later. I think its an amazing start and the creator has been adding new builds everyday.
 
F

Forerunner

Member
This was the fastest I've seen the UK fall. I only had five divisions and they pretty much just walked into London. I was suprised it actucally worked. I guess they weren't expecting Resurrectionist Ireland. lol

E0310843143D76E01BD66C0374624F7A4B6D9774
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B

bonesmccoy

Banned
After failing (gloriously) with Hungary, Italy, France, France again, France again again, the USA and the Soviets, and the Soviets again, I finally won HoI4 with the Soviets. Managed to pull off a massive 'pincer' movement, attacking up through Bulgaria/Hungary (Turkey went communist in 1942) and down through Lithuainia and Belorussia and knocked Germany out of the war by Summer 1944.

For some reason, Vichy France and Italy have redoubts on some Mediterranean islands that no one seems interested in taking.
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
bonesmccoy said:
After failing (gloriously) with Hungary, Italy, France, France again, France again again, the USA and the Soviets, and the Soviets again, I finally won HoI4 with the Soviets. Managed to pull off a massive 'pincer' movement, attacking up through Bulgaria/Hungary (Turkey went communist in 1942) and down through Lithuainia and Belorussia and knocked Germany out of the war by Summer 1944.

For some reason, Vichy France and Italy have redoubts on some Mediterranean islands that no one seems interested in taking.
Click to expand...

You should be able to do it by '42 without much cheese, so I'd say there's likely a lot of room to improve. What templates are you using?
 
D

data

Member
Thought this'd be the place to ask

I'm playing EU4 as Castile, sieged most of Aragon's provinces near Castile. I don't want all of them but just a few but when I sue for peace I can't cede any provinces? The option is greyed out for me. What do I do?

(my wargoal is Taking the capital of Valencia)
 
M

Morfeo

The Chuck Norris of Peace
data said:
Thought this'd be the place to ask

I'm playing EU4 as Castile, sieged most of Aragon's provinces near Castile. I don't want all of them but just a few but when I sue for peace I can't cede any provinces? The option is greyed out for me. What do I do?

(my wargoal is Taking the capital of Valencia)
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You cant cede provinces because they dont occupy them. Try changing from "offer tribute" to "demand tribute".
 
B

bonesmccoy

Banned
ThoseDeafMutes said:
You should be able to do it by '42 without much cheese, so I'd say there's likely a lot of room to improve. What templates are you using?
Click to expand...

Underlined the understatement.

Iirc, my core infantry by then was 2 columns of 4 or 5 infantry, with art, anti tank, anti air, hosp and eng support. My core armour template was 2 columns of 4 med. tanks, 2 mechanized infantry, with eng. art, anti-air and logistics support.

Is it better to use smaller armies of 24 divisions, or larger ones with a Field Marshal?
 
P

Purkake4

Banned
CK2 dev diary on the future

What’s this, a dev diary on a Monday?! Yes, it’s true, we’ve moved them to Mondays so they’ll coincide with CK2 streams. The Reaper’s Due has been out for a while now, and I am very pleased with how both it and the free update were received (I wasn’t sure the focus on Death would be so universally appreciated!) As Game Director, I rarely have time to do much coding and scripting anymore, but I did help out with the optimizations and several of the Game Rules. The game is in safe hands though; the current CK2-team has done an amazing job so far!

Work has now commenced on the next expansion and I can already reveal it’s going to be something a bit similar to Way of Life, which I believe I actually mentioned in my previous dev diary. I also promised optimizations, AI improvements and quality of life stuff. Well, the optimizations are done for now, so the next major free update will feature AI and GUI improvements, which brings me to today’s topic; usability.

Now, we are aiming to tweak several interfaces and while I cannot go into much detail yet, I can say that I’d especially like to address the following main areas:

Plotting (quality of life)
Prisoner management
Guardian vs Educator (clarity)
More space for Traits and Character Modifiers

There are other things in the works too, but when you’ve worked on a game for so many years you tend to get blind to many usability issues and simply accept them as they are. That is why I’d like to hear from you, our faithful fans, what you find most annoying and clunky about the CK2 interfaces. Are there any actions you find hard to do, or useful information you cannot easily find (or not at all)? All feedback is welcome!
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T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
bonesmccoy said:
Underlined the understatement.

Iirc, my core infantry by then was 2 columns of 4 or 5 infantry, with art, anti tank, anti air, hosp and eng support. My core armour template was 2 columns of 4 med. tanks, 2 mechanized infantry, with eng. art, anti-air and logistics support.

Is it better to use smaller armies of 24 divisions, or larger ones with a Field Marshal?
Click to expand...

The current meta for infantry templates is 7x inf, 2x artillery (+ Supports of your choice) for a total of 20 combat width. This is chosen because combat width is always a multiple of 20, and this allows you to slot in as many divisions as possible without taking overloading penalties.

Generally, the best support companies varies a bit by country, but I typically go for:

- Recon (everyone always takes recon)
- Engineers
- Support Artillery
- Maintenance company
- Logistics company

You can probably safely swap logistics for anti-tank if you want to do that. I don't bother a lot of the time because most units you'll be fighting are soft, squishy, and vulnerable to soft attack via artillery. You will need to build *a lot* of artillery to equip all your dudes. Maintenance vs Logistics company as the more important is ambiguous. Maintenance company increases the reliability of your equipment, including stuff you can't actually create variants of like Infantry Equipment. Thus, even when you're low on supplies or moving through rough terrain, the Maintenance Company will reduce the rate at which attrition destroys your equipment. Logistics reduces attrition/supply usage, so the two are related but different.

I put all my infantry under a Field Marshall unless there is a need to split up frontage and do more complicated things (like occupy territory). I keep a fast, hard hitting elite army of tanks and motorised units on a separate commander, whom I use to manually create encirclements. Destroying the enemy army is very important, even if you can only kill a few divisions at a time. Encircled or overrun divisions are deleted outright and you can quickly snowball this to a point where the enemy is just unable to stop your units from advancing in a general line.
 
P

Purkake4

Banned
Hyperactivity said:
oh man, they keep nailing the type of dlc I want

After Rajas and even Horse Lords I was really worried they were going to expand the map instead of more WoL type DLC
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Looks like they managed to get in touch with the players again. I'm really happy that Reaper's Due has pretty much overwhelming support and Paradox is aware of that. I would also love more WoL stuff.
 
U

Uzzy

Member
Trying to get the Big Entente achievement is really quite frustrating. The Czechs always give one damn province to the German Republic, who are democratic, have no world tension and hate France. So there's nothing I can do to them, and they'll likely join the Allies should a war break out.

I guess I'll try again, this time fighting the Germans over the Rhineland decision. See if that works.

Edit: Turns out that's easy mode. You outnumber the Germans heavily, and a few encirclements destroy their ability to fight. You just have to remember to group your mobile forces together, crush the communist uprising, then swing round and blitz the Germans.

dF0lBUJ.png
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F

frontovik

Banned
I had some difficulty with the same achievement as well. In my experience, if I declared war over the Rhineland then I automatically join Britain and the Allies faction, which I assume disqualifies me from the achievement, or is that a non-issue?

It's my understanding France has to create its own Entente faction before declaring war.
 
U

Uzzy

Member
frontovik said:
I had some difficulty with the same achievement as well. In my experience, if I declared war over the Rhineland then I automatically join Britain and the Allies faction, which I assume disqualifies me from the achievement, or is that a non-issue?

It's my understanding France has to create its own Entente faction before declaring war.
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Joining the Allies would disqualify you from the achievement. If you switch on historical focus, then Germany will take Rhineland as their first focus, and Britain shouldn't declare war over it, leaving you fighting Germany alone and letting you take all their cores. If they do for whatever reason, just restart, you'll only have lost 70 days.

I took the focus to form my own faction after winning the war, and still got the achievement.
 
T

Tenebrous

Member
Ahh, I knew there'd be a Paradox thread on GAF. Long-term CKII player here, and I maaaay have made a tiny mistake - I bought Stellaris AND Hearts of Iron IV at the same time. How screwed am I? Bah, who cares. Time to win the war.
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
Tenebrous said:
Ahh, I knew there'd be a Paradox thread on GAF. Long-term CKII player here, and I maaaay have made a tiny mistake - I bought Stellaris AND Hearts of Iron IV at the same time. How screwed am I? Bah, who cares. Time to win the war.
Click to expand...

Neither Stellaris nor HoI4 are really in an ideal state right now. Although HoI4 has more long term prospects imo.
 
Z

ZZMitch

Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
Neither Stellaris nor HoI4 are really in an ideal state right now. Although HoI4 has more long term prospects imo.
Click to expand...

Yeah, coming from CK2 (with expansions) you may be a bit disapointed in what HOI4 and Stellaris have to offer at the moment. I have mostly retreated to modded EU4 (MEIOU & Taxes) in terms of Paradox games until Stellaris and HOI4 get some real expansions and/or comprehensive overhaul mods. In about a year or two I bet they will be great, but they just feel a little bare bones (Stellaris) and the AI is a little too bad (HOI4) for me to be super excited about them right now.
 
T

Tenebrous

Member
Being pretty new to the HoI series, will the AI being bad have much of an effect on me? Sounds to me like the game will be easier to learn & perhaps a tad more forgivable if the AI is a tad naff.

Either way, it's only WoW gold that I spent to get both games. I'm sure I'll get my virtual money's worth outta them over the next few years.
 
T

ThoseDeafMutes

Member
Tenebrous said:
Being pretty new to the HoI series, will the AI being bad have much of an effect on me? Sounds to me like the game will be easier to learn & perhaps a tad more forgivable if the AI is a tad naff.
Click to expand...

It's not so much that the AI isn't a challenge (that can be an issue too), but from time to time it will do truly incomprehensible things like suddenly strategically redeploy its frontline units that are in the middle of combat, or abandon whole fronts and just let an enemy march to Berlin barely opposed. If something like that happens (hopefully it won't), that can kind of ruin your game since you spend all this time building up your invasion or something and then it turns out to be a cake walk.

I'd recommend your first game probably as Germany just to avoid the "Germany falls apart and your time building up as the USA is wasted" phenomenon. That way you get to set the tempo of the war.

The game isn't unplayable as some Paradox forumites would have you believe, but it's certianly in need of a few more patches before I could call it great. With any luck, it will be in a good state with 1.3 in time for Christmas, along with the first expansion DLC.

Dat Field Marshall edition
 
T

Tenebrous

Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
It's not so much that the AI isn't a challenge (that can be an issue too), but from time to time it will do truly incomprehensible things like suddenly strategically redeploy its frontline units that are in the middle of combat, or abandon whole fronts and just let an enemy march to Berlin barely opposed. If something like that happens (hopefully it won't), that can kind of ruin your game since you spend all this time building up your invasion or something and then it turns out to be a cake walk.

I'd recommend your first game probably as Germany just to avoid the "Germany falls apart and your time building up as the USA is wasted" phenomenon. That way you get to set the tempo of the war.

The game isn't unplayable as some Paradox forumites would have you believe, but it's certianly in need of a few more patches before I could call it great. With any luck, it will be in a good state with 1.3 in time for Christmas, along with the first expansion DLC.

Dat Field Marshall edition
Click to expand...

Ahh, I was hoping it was just a case of the AI being a bit of a pushover rather than (seemingly) broken.

I'll take your advice and start my first game as Germany now. Thanks!
 
Labrynian Rebel

Labrynian Rebel

Member
Just got done playing a stressful session of my Khazar --> Great Moravia game. I was sitting high and mighty and then the black death killed about 10 heirs in a row. My dynasty barely survived thanks to a random Ashina courtier in Germany? (No idea how I had a relative there).

Anyways 10/10, would get the plague again.
 
U

Uzzy

Member
With the new EU4 expansion coming tomorrow, I think it's time to start the EU4 multiplayer sessions up again. Anyone up for that?
 
M

Morfeo

The Chuck Norris of Peace
Uzzy said:
With the new EU4 expansion coming tomorrow, I think it's time to start the EU4 multiplayer sessions up again. Anyone up for that?
Click to expand...

I am not sure I will have the time. But it was indeed lovely to crush your Prussian forces after your overly aggressive movements towards the Balkans.
 
F

Fitz

Member
No idea yet, perhaps, but need to check out the DLC first. Civ 6 at the end of the month may throw a spanner into the works.
 
M

Morfeo

The Chuck Norris of Peace
I am not very optimistic about Civ6 unfortunately, so doubt that will affect me much. Maybe Robo (or somebody) should make a new thread to see if there is any interest?
 
K

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
Might be in for MP again. I came back to EU IV while waiting for the post war HOI4 to move one minute at a time, so I'm ready.
 
H

hobblygobbly

Member
Patch is now out (1.18.1). Full changelog.

I'm more excited about the redone tech system than some of the features in the expansion (although the new expansion seems fantastic too). New expansion releases in ~20 mins from this post according to DDRJake on stream any ways.
 
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