If you can manage V2, the HoI franchise shouldn't be a big problem. HoI 3 is probably the most accessible game they made aside from CK2 (and maybe Sengoku, I haven't played that because everyone said it was shit)
Paradox Grand Strategy - Thread of Fighting WW2 as Bithynia
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If you can manage V2, the HoI franchise shouldn't be a big problem. HoI 3 is probably the most accessible game they made aside from CK2 (and maybe Sengoku, I haven't played that because everyone said it was shit)
Basileus777
Member
Hearts of Iron is still their most complicated and micromanagement heavy series. You could make a case for Victoria being ahead there, but definitely not any of Paradox's other games.
Eh, Hearts of Iron 3 is as micro-management intensive as you make it. I usually control no more than ten or twenty divisions directly myself, just a fast armoured reserve, some air support and maybe a smaller front like the North African or Karelian theatres depending on whether I'm even playing a nation with a smaller theatre.
ThoseDeafMutes
Member
HoI lets you delegate to the point where it plays itself with you just setting the theaters to automate and giving objectives, but realistically it is very complicated if you want to get anything out of it beyond a CPU intensive screensaver. Automating all the combat in HoI seems like almost missing the point unless you're just doing it to introduce yourself to the other mechanics. Even now I get screwed over by supply lines and don't even remotely understand how to use navies effectively, and I've dumped 130 hours into it.
For anyone interested: Balkanizing Victoria2 in Russia now. Wrote myself a small program that rewrites most of the text files after I made the flag and searched out the region numbers:
Should still be a while until I am done with Russia, but if anyone is interested, I could share a combined file with the US, Australia, Scandinavia and now partly Russia being split up.
Random aside, also got it to work with VRRP
Should still be a while until I am done with Russia, but if anyone is interested, I could share a combined file with the US, Australia, Scandinavia and now partly Russia being split up.
Random aside, also got it to work with VRRP
Does Victoria 2 not have an upper limit for how many nations there can be? I was thinking about modding HoI2 to make every area its own country years ago, but without expansions that game was ridiculous like that. You could add something like three nations and then you reached some sort of hard limit.
Including the US nations, there are about 80 new nations or something already. Besides, there is another mod which makes each single instance into its own country. I wanted to keep the regions at least, so I am more interested in that. Not too worried about region counts though, looking at the other mod.
There's something fascinating to me about just letting a game of something run for 600 years starting with every province as its own country, seeing what kinds of political superpowers emerge and fall and so on. I guess depending on the game, there would be a decent chance of something just taking over the entire world or nothing being able to form at all, but that's sort of interesting too.
Yep, to me as well. Which is why I want smaller countries and longer game time. But as I said, there is a mod that divides it into the smallest possible units if you prefer that.
Having played the current version of the mod as made by the guy on the Paradox forums, I'm going to say that New York won't take very long to emerge as a superpower. Tried a game as them, good lord, you're so dominant over every other nation near you thanks to your population, and they give you an annexation casus belli on every province that belonged to the United States in real life. Damn. Illinois, Ohio and Michigan were the only other competitors.
Well they are the biggest state, so no wonder they are strongest. Maybe one should strip the CB on whole US though so that its not as easy. I was also considering randomizing the trade goods in an alternate version later, but I guess I'll need to do some more map splitting. I'll probably playtest a bit once Russia, China and the bigger african nations are split up. I'd really like to do europe as well, but apparently someone is working on that already. Hm. Really hope the modder gets back to me. Otherwise, I'll just create a new thread for it once I have Russia, China and the big african nations done.
Any other suggestions to make that scenario more interesting?
Yeah, adjusting the casus belli is best. As New York you can form the 'Free States of America' after capturing a few of the neighbouring states. Maybe the free casus belli should end there? I also noticed that many states didn't form alliances for some reason, particularly as I went West. I was able to sweep up like eight states in a year or two that way. When actually forming the United States by the way, maybe there should also be a decision to move the capital to Washington DC? Though I suppose that's just a flavour thing. I also noticed there's a bunch of broken names for wars around, particularly reunification wars in Australia.
Other than that, hmmm. Nothing really comes to mind for now.
Russia done
Will you be posting the mod when you finish? Definitely sounds interesting to play.
That region will probably become Vladivostok. I'll probably kill out Russia completely since otherwise the unifciation of Russia will become a bit wonky later.
Son1x said:
Sure, I was initially planning on including that into the Shattered USA mod, since the modder wanted to make it a "Shattered World" mod anyway, but he is not responding, which is a bit annoying. I can make you a merged version of the USA one (plus australia) and my scandinavia/russia one for now though.
Also, I need to add that there havent been any major conflicts modded in yet. No nation has a core on another nation etc, and no unification ideas have yet been included. Will probably do the fragmenting thing first as much as I can do, and then do other things. If you have suggestions, let me know.
Mr. Luchador
Member
For some reason have the urge to play through the timelines.
EU: Rome
CK II
EU III
Vic II
HoU III
EU: Rome
CK II
EU III
Vic II
HoU III
Hearts of Urn, funeral tactics simulator.
Hearts of the Underworld, Cthulhu HoI mod.
There's a hilarious event chain in CK2 where your regent tries to kill you: it's a chain of four or five different events where for each one you've got a 20% chance to die, and if you survive you get 20 points in some attribute. The assassination attempts get more and more hilariously obvious until this, the last one:
I love CK2.
I love CK2.
Victoria 2 at least comes standard with Cthulhu content these days.
Hm. Currently considering how much I should split this part up. I might have a way of randomizing cores a country gets on another country (or even a random vassalization on start up), which means I could just split everything down to the smallest unit and then randomize. Unfortunately, I dont know yet whether I can do that. I basically need a list of adjacent provinces to a certain province and I dont think I can easily read that from the game files. Hm.
Anyway, asia with still huge China (double the population of the next biggest state):
I might even leave them that way, if I dont get to randomize some cores etc, so there'll still be some bigger powers left in a corner of the world.
Anyway, asia with still huge China (double the population of the next biggest state):
I might even leave them that way, if I dont get to randomize some cores etc, so there'll still be some bigger powers left in a corner of the world.
It is certainly possible to play from CK II to HoI III. There are converters are out there for CK II -> EU III -> Vicky 2 -> HoI III (this one might be incomplete or for HoI II?).
Playing vanilla is a requirement though.
Mods improve sooo much of stuff bugging me about the vanilla versions. Not sure I will (or even am able to) ever play a paradox game vanilla again.
Basileus777
Member
That sounds really boring. You run out of things to do before finishing a full playthrough of one game, let alone 5.
Mr. Luchador
Member
Not sure I've ever experienced that, however I didn't much like EU: Rome.
Mod us up, Toma!
Hm? Want modding recommendation on a certain game? Usually the games already have all kinds of mods, but V2 has some minor annoyances that I'd like to fix for myself and cant properly find mods for since many older mods got outdated with AHD. I am actually not that proficient with modding this yet, but it seems easy enough.
Mr. Luchador
Member
Just recommendations really. Only really use the GoT mod on CKII.
Which other Paradox games are you playing?
Mr. Luchador
Member
I play them all on and off. Mainly CK II, EU III and Vic II.
Its mostly the popular ones that really deserve a look since they change a lot and add quite a bit of "new" stuff for a seasoned player, offering interesting new playing experiences. There are various smaller interesting mods too, but considering the quality of the big ones... and that they are usually not compatible..
Ck2 - GOT and if you want to mix up the setting to the regular one: Prince and the Thane.
V2 AHD - This map pack (adding a flat painted map and accentuated oceans) + VRRP or a Pop Divided (APD, I havent actually tested yet).
Eu3 - My favourite one lately was Death&Taxes, since I think MEIOU changes the balance weirdly. Thats mostly just a preference though, they are both good. MEIOU is also considered harder, so if you want to make it harder, you should give MEIOU a whirl. Oh and I noticed lately that my favourite EU3 mod back then, Magna Mundi, was finally made Divine Wind compatible as well. But I havent actually played it in its current state.
These mods can offer more events, more diplomacy options, adjusted/corrected start setup etc. as I said, they are usually improving the base game by quite a bit, you just need to find the modder that had same vision that you would have about improving the game.
Finished an EU3 game for the first time I think today 
. Always used to quit well before the end, now went all the way to Jan 1st 1821. Playing as Yemen, went for Africa first, then West through Anatolia. The one province in Canada came from Modena, which I'd annexed, I hadn't noticed that one of my vassals had also occupied a province in the new world to make that possible. Unsure how they got access. I didn't notice the province at all until actually making these maps hahah.
. Always used to quit well before the end, now went all the way to Jan 1st 1821. Playing as Yemen, went for Africa first, then West through Anatolia. The one province in Canada came from Modena, which I'd annexed, I hadn't noticed that one of my vassals had also occupied a province in the new world to make that possible. Unsure how they got access. I didn't notice the province at all until actually making these maps hahah.
Finished an EU3 game for the first time I think today
Huh, way to go. Can't say I've ever finished an EU3 game. By the time I hit the 1600s, I've already picked up steam and it's clear I'ma own half the world by the time I finish, so I usually quit. Looks like you decided to hunker down and go through the conquering
So, I have an issue. I play Victoria 2 and EU3 all the time, but Crusader Kings 2 is beyond me. I've tried to get into it, but I always end up incredibly confused....and I used to play the first Victoria game.
Any advice?
Start by playing as the smallest count or duke you can find in CK2 and stay far away from conflict. You can't learn the game if you're playing as the Holy Roman Kaiser or the Byzantine Emperor to start off with. In general I consider it way simpler than EU3, if you can grasp EU3 then CK2 should be pretty easy to understand.
I'd suggest playing as one of the Irish mini-countries because you can ignore the rest of the world and focus on your neighbours.
I'd suggest playing as one of the Irish mini-countries because you can ignore the rest of the world and focus on your neighbours.
Will do, thanks a bunch!
.Mgoblue201
Won't stop picking the right nation
The danger of choosing the HRE to begin with (which I had done, though don't necessarily regret) is that there are too many vassals, and with all of the micro-managing it's tempting to let everything go on auto-pilot without actually learning the mechanics of the game. It took me far too long, for example, to learn the usefulness of titles - how to create them, usurp them, and delegate them in a way that makes sense, in addition to how they are inherited after death. Even small things, like the fact that vassals will look disapprovingly upon you if you hold too many duchy titles, can make a huge difference. I'll echo Rapstah's sentiment that it's probably better to start smaller (Ireland is a good suggestion) so that you can learn the basic mechanics before involving yourself in the wider aspects of the game.
Grand Funk Carwash
Banned
Huh, way to go. Can't say I've ever finished an EU3 game. By the time I hit the 1600s, I've already picked up steam and it's clear I'ma own half the world by the time I finish, so I usually quit. Looks like you decided to hunker down and go through the conquering
So, I have an issue. I play Victoria 2 and EU3 all the time, but Crusader Kings 2 is beyond me. I've tried to get into it, but I always end up incredibly confused....and I used to play the first Victoria game.
Any advice?
IMO the best way to learn paradox games is to play as Ireland (tutorial island) and save scum. Save everytime you make a major decision and if it all goes wrong, work out why and then try again. Its still going to take 4-5 hours before you get it but I still think it is a bit smoother learning process.
Ireland in CK2 is particularly good because (in my experience) you stay fairly isolated and with the 7 or 8 independent provinces you can play around with all the systems on a smaller scale.
Ireland in EU3 is a scary, scary place in my experience, what with England consistently getting missions to annex you.
So far, it's going pretty well(I think). My old king snuffed it, I'm trying to marry into some Welsh lines, and trying to not get assassinated. I'm playing as....Connacht?
My one issue so far is that when I tried to raise an army to invade a small realm in the middle of Ireland that I apparently have claims to, my army got utterly trounced and I had no idea how to fix/improve my military from that point onwards.
One small but important thing to watch out for which screwed me on my first playthrough:
When you or your heir are betrothed to someone, when they and the girl both come of age the head of that girl's group will eventually request they get married. BUT READ THE FINE PRINT OF THEIR OFFER. Sometimes they ask if you can get matrilineally (as opposed to matrimonially) married to their daughter, which means that all of their children will go into her family's dynasty and not yours. Bad thing. Bad bad thing.
Your army automatically replenishes over time. You can tell your marshal to train troops in your county, which will hasten the levy reinforcement and will increase how many soldiers that it can have while that marshal is set to that task. If you mean you don't know how to improve your army in general, you have to click on the county and then click on the small squares that show towns and castles. In those are a bunch of things you can pay gold to improve in your county. Improvements range from how many soldiers you can have to how quickly that county gets conquered to increased tax revenue.
Also, when you raise armies, make sure you hit the "Raise realm armies" or something like that. That raises everything you have, including your vassal armies. For a while in my first game I had no idea I had a personal army and then my vassals had more troops I could use. I suck at strategy games.
Mgoblue201
Won't stop picking the right nation
Are you assigning leaders, paying careful attention to geography, etc? For a long time I noticed that I could never win a numerically equal fight and always needed 10 to 20% more troops than the opposition. I think it had something to do with the fact that it took me awhile to realize that I was forgetting to assign leaders as an important component of battle (another bad habit from playing the HRE, since they can simply beat almost everyone with numerical superiority). It's slightly different from EU3; you can assign up to three of them to a single unit.
Thank you both, that advice really helped (although I think I married off my heir matrilineally to a kingdom in Wales by accident and now my King is Welsh and my Irishmen hate me .-.).
I decided to start over, and did much better the second time around. I've been winning most of my battles by using your advice, and have also youtube'd some CK2 Let's Plays that taught me some important things, namely, why you don't want to have half your vassals pissed off at you.
I managed to declare the Kingdom of Ireland, but my succession is a mess. I'm at risk of losing a duchy at a minimum whenever my king dies, and I only get around that by carefully switching around succession laws. I'm guessing I should be gunning for high Crown Authority so as to force all of my land and titles to go to only one heir? It's a good thing that my kings have all been unusually long-lived which has allowed me to get enough time to steer the ship around and keep my titles united.
I then decided to restart again, but this time to play as the Kingdom of Leon. What followed during the reign of my first King was basically me taking all of Galicia, Castille, and Navarre, now regulated to Zaragosa, as well as managing to get all of Galicia, as well as Asturias and some other provinces directly held by me or my heir rather than vassals.
It was quite a glorious curbstomping, but I'm having issues keeping my vassals happy. They always seem to come to hate me no matter what I do. Is it the fact that I'm holding several dukes in prison for plotting treason? Or that I'm basically setting up my heir to directly own a third of non-Muslim Iberia?
I decided to start over, and did much better the second time around. I've been winning most of my battles by using your advice, and have also youtube'd some CK2 Let's Plays that taught me some important things, namely, why you don't want to have half your vassals pissed off at you.
I managed to declare the Kingdom of Ireland, but my succession is a mess. I'm at risk of losing a duchy at a minimum whenever my king dies, and I only get around that by carefully switching around succession laws. I'm guessing I should be gunning for high Crown Authority so as to force all of my land and titles to go to only one heir? It's a good thing that my kings have all been unusually long-lived which has allowed me to get enough time to steer the ship around and keep my titles united.
I then decided to restart again, but this time to play as the Kingdom of Leon. What followed during the reign of my first King was basically me taking all of Galicia, Castille, and Navarre, now regulated to Zaragosa, as well as managing to get all of Galicia, as well as Asturias and some other provinces directly held by me or my heir rather than vassals.
It was quite a glorious curbstomping, but I'm having issues keeping my vassals happy. They always seem to come to hate me no matter what I do. Is it the fact that I'm holding several dukes in prison for plotting treason? Or that I'm basically setting up my heir to directly own a third of non-Muslim Iberia?
Go to a vassal's page and hover over the red or green number indicating how much they like or dislike you. When you hover over that, it'll show you all the reasons they like and hate you and you might be able to figure it out from there.
They shouldn't hate you for the reasons you said.
28 Posts Later
Member
If you're a subscriber to their newsletter Paradox should have sent you a Europa Universalis III: Chronicles Steam code as celebration due to their forums reaching half a million members.
Prophane33
Member
Quote to reveal an EU3:Chronicles steam key!
Thank you very much for this!
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