> Crusader Kings III doesn’t actually feature any states in the narrow sense of the word; none of these rulers have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force
I find this kind of adaptations incredible interesting. Most games look at the past with modern eyes and create duplicates of all institutions from Judges to teachers. But it is not as simple as that.
I hope to see more this kind of approach in more movies and other mass media, even if it could be more historical accurate.
> none of these rulers have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force
It's a bit of a weird thing to say. It's an internal definition i.e. legitimacy is defined by the sovereign. There's no external force that grants legitimacy on a state or its actions; within a state, the sovereign (even popular ones) will attack uses of force that it hasn't sanctioned.
Legality is defined by the sovereign. Legitimacy is by definition external to the ruler - i.e. by society or at least some part of it (the "elites"). If the society accepts that some use of force by entities other than the nominal ruler is also legitimate - for example, if the nobles can have private armies and deploy them against each other in some conditions - then the ruler does not have monopoly on the use of force.
Man, I wish I could get into 4X games. Stellaris and CKII are games I've tried to put "tutorial time" into, but they don't catch as much as Factorio or Rimworld.
I find Stellaris 100% easier to grasp than any other Paradox game. I think it's due to a fact in other Paradox games you essentially start in a middle of someone else's save. In Stellaris, for the most part, everyone starts at the same time.
Just start as a fanatic militarist monarch, and you're playing a nearly regular strategy at this point.
I would say CK3 have much better new player introduction (I also bounced of CK2), but if you bounced off Stellaris, which is the easiest of Paradox titles to get into, you'd probably have same problem. But you can always wait for free week I guess
I love the idea of the Paradox grand strategy games, but they seem to me to be almost gratuitously complex. Everything has so. many. parameters. In turn, this seems to make the games (1) require learning a lot of details that are 'coincidental complexity' rather than 'essential complexity' (like a staggering number of unit types and combinations), serving only the purpose of having a (superficially) richer backdrop, and (2) involve a lot of micro-management at the most miniscule levels, again seemingly just to have those things in there, not necessarily because they make a big difference in how the game plays out.
This has kept me from jumping in. From my point of view, I would love it if there would be simple way to dumb down some of the systems, have the game handle some of the micro-management, possibly remove some of the nuance of units, traits, and so on. I know it exists in the games to some extent, but from what I have seen enabling these things in itself required quite a bit of work. Perhaps I just haven't looked hard enough.
So for now I am resorted to watching youtube playthroughs with some fascination. Maybe one day when I have a few weeks of time to spare, I will try my hand at one of these games.
I think Paradox games tend to scare people away by leading them to think that all of the minutiae of their mechanics matter far more than they actually do.
It seems incredibly complicated at a glance, but as you say a lot of the details might as well be inconsequential unless you're somebody obsessed with min-maxing your game experience.
Agreed, I also think fans of Paradox games are doing the games a disservice by encouraging people to watch long youtube tutorials before they start instead of just jumping in and experiencing the mechanics. The important ones will become obvious after some time.
You do need to be a little engaged with the community just to learn about all the knobs that at some point you need to twist, which is I think the point of this thread after all.
As an example, a beginner might never realize that they need to redesign the starting division templates in HOI4 unless and until told - and this is a common issue on threads in r/hoi4.
This. Stellaris intimidated me at first because of the sheer, crushing depth I saw on YouTube.
After finally jumping in I found that yes, it’s more complex than other games, but the core systems that actually drive the game forward are fun enough and you can disregard the rest until you’re ready.
Each play-through of Stellaris I’ll say something like, “okay now this time I’ll actually engage with that espionage mechanic that keeps popping up…” etc.
It helps that you start from very little in Stellaris. At start you do minimum of building and just fly around with your science ship discovering stuff, the more complex stuff is more gradual.
In case of game like CK you start with already running empire, which means you need to take care of everything at once.
I may be biased since I have literally thousands of hours in pdx games, but honestly the games are only superficially complex, and they could really use additional complex8ty and meaningful mechanics.
>I love the idea of the Paradox grand strategy games, but they seem to me to be almost gratuitously complex. Everything has so. many. parameters. In turn, this seems to make the games (1) require learning a lot of details that are 'coincidental complexity' rather than 'essential complexity' (like a staggering number of unit types and combinations), serving only the purpose of having a (superficially) richer backdrop, and (2) involve a lot of micro-management at the most miniscule levels, again seemingly just to have those things in there, not necessarily because they make a big difference in how the game plays out.
Well, the idea is to simulate running a country, so "a mass of small things that funnel into few things" is kinda the point. The richer backdrop is entire point here, and the bunch of smaller systems have storytelling purpose aside from purely mechanical one. And on occasion some small decision does play role much farther in. Like, hell, I had cases where me getting a cat saved me in the long term coz I got stress reduction from it in a moment where I really needed it.
Factorio would be on the other end of that, there is very little unneeded complexity and very well paced gameplay.
There are games like Distant Worlds that allow for varied level of automation (up to fully AI running empire), which is in itself pretty interesting idea when it comes to teaching players complex games.
>This has kept me from jumping in. From my point of view, I would love it if there would be simple way to dumb down some of the systems, have the game handle some of the micro-management, possibly remove some of the nuance of units, traits, and so on. I know it exists in the games to some extent, but from what I have seen enabling these things in itself required quite a bit of work. Perhaps I just haven't looked hard enough.
CK3 is significantly easier than CK2 to get in. I hit the ground running with CK3, bounced hard off CKII. The builtin mini-tutorials and "tooltips that have tooltips" make discovery of game systems so much easier, and game have a system that will inform you when there is a problem in your empire and what would be the ways to solve it
It gets worse than that. They change mechanics with updates and DLC. So all the work I took to learn EU4 was gone in two DLCs. I don't know what the estates are, and I no longer care, because it would be far too much work to figure out how the game plays now.
There are some people that play with a full appreciation of the numbers and want to min-max everything, as you’d expect. But this is absolutely not my experience of Crusader Kings II and especially III. You can approach it almost entirely as a role playing game, or even a story-telling sandbox. You find yourself in situations that aren’t just “how do I beat this neighbouring power with greater attack/defence numbers” but more like “oh no, my oldest children died, I’ve married off my remaining daughter for an alliance and all her heirs are of the wrong house, how can I get her to remarry while forcing the kids to all to become monks or die?” All while writing love poetry to your wife and looking after your favourite horse.
Crusader Kings 2 were the only single-player game I could play, where AI wouldn’t be immersion-breaking reminder that I am simply doing another version of computer work.
If anyone has any interest in gaming whatsoever you owe to yourself to check out that (or Crusader Kings 3) masterpiece.
It’s also the closest I’ve ever seen the game come to a book reading experience. It usually delivers the same sensation as reading some Crusade’s chronicles. Incredible, really.
Also, incredibly, it’s a game where winning doesn’t matter. Not in a GTA-like sandbox where you aimlessly wander. In CK2/CK3 you are trying to fulfill your dynansty’s destiny. And sometimes you’ll conquer Europe, but sometimes you’ll rise and fall and fizzle on the outskirts of the civilized world. The story is always there.
I liked many things about CKII, but I think the expansions very quickly began to jump the shark, and they sometimes sacrificed historical accuracy to cater to popular perceptions. For instance, Paradox knew well that the kind of "haw-haw let's sacrifice our enemies to Odin" paganism that people wanted didn't resemble those historical belief systems very much, so they came up with the option of establishing "reformed pagan" faiths which just happened to be what people wanted. And don't even get me started on secret societies. You could play without those expansions, but then you felt like you were playing a long-abandoned game.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 66.2 ms ] threadI find this kind of adaptations incredible interesting. Most games look at the past with modern eyes and create duplicates of all institutions from Judges to teachers. But it is not as simple as that.
I hope to see more this kind of approach in more movies and other mass media, even if it could be more historical accurate.
It's a bit of a weird thing to say. It's an internal definition i.e. legitimacy is defined by the sovereign. There's no external force that grants legitimacy on a state or its actions; within a state, the sovereign (even popular ones) will attack uses of force that it hasn't sanctioned.
Just start as a fanatic militarist monarch, and you're playing a nearly regular strategy at this point.
This has kept me from jumping in. From my point of view, I would love it if there would be simple way to dumb down some of the systems, have the game handle some of the micro-management, possibly remove some of the nuance of units, traits, and so on. I know it exists in the games to some extent, but from what I have seen enabling these things in itself required quite a bit of work. Perhaps I just haven't looked hard enough.
So for now I am resorted to watching youtube playthroughs with some fascination. Maybe one day when I have a few weeks of time to spare, I will try my hand at one of these games.
It seems incredibly complicated at a glance, but as you say a lot of the details might as well be inconsequential unless you're somebody obsessed with min-maxing your game experience.
As an example, a beginner might never realize that they need to redesign the starting division templates in HOI4 unless and until told - and this is a common issue on threads in r/hoi4.
After finally jumping in I found that yes, it’s more complex than other games, but the core systems that actually drive the game forward are fun enough and you can disregard the rest until you’re ready.
Each play-through of Stellaris I’ll say something like, “okay now this time I’ll actually engage with that espionage mechanic that keeps popping up…” etc.
In case of game like CK you start with already running empire, which means you need to take care of everything at once.
The advice is so taken to heart that the tutorial for CK3 starts in a slightly modified Ireland, which used to be referred to as “tutorial island.”
Well, the idea is to simulate running a country, so "a mass of small things that funnel into few things" is kinda the point. The richer backdrop is entire point here, and the bunch of smaller systems have storytelling purpose aside from purely mechanical one. And on occasion some small decision does play role much farther in. Like, hell, I had cases where me getting a cat saved me in the long term coz I got stress reduction from it in a moment where I really needed it.
Factorio would be on the other end of that, there is very little unneeded complexity and very well paced gameplay.
There are games like Distant Worlds that allow for varied level of automation (up to fully AI running empire), which is in itself pretty interesting idea when it comes to teaching players complex games.
>This has kept me from jumping in. From my point of view, I would love it if there would be simple way to dumb down some of the systems, have the game handle some of the micro-management, possibly remove some of the nuance of units, traits, and so on. I know it exists in the games to some extent, but from what I have seen enabling these things in itself required quite a bit of work. Perhaps I just haven't looked hard enough.
CK3 is significantly easier than CK2 to get in. I hit the ground running with CK3, bounced hard off CKII. The builtin mini-tutorials and "tooltips that have tooltips" make discovery of game systems so much easier, and game have a system that will inform you when there is a problem in your empire and what would be the ways to solve it
If anyone has any interest in gaming whatsoever you owe to yourself to check out that (or Crusader Kings 3) masterpiece.
It’s also the closest I’ve ever seen the game come to a book reading experience. It usually delivers the same sensation as reading some Crusade’s chronicles. Incredible, really.
Also, incredibly, it’s a game where winning doesn’t matter. Not in a GTA-like sandbox where you aimlessly wander. In CK2/CK3 you are trying to fulfill your dynansty’s destiny. And sometimes you’ll conquer Europe, but sometimes you’ll rise and fall and fizzle on the outskirts of the civilized world. The story is always there.