Victoria 2

[Faeelin]

HOI DD, Arm, are pretty good games. As long as you only play as Russia or Germany. Because, for a number of reasons, all the other countries are no fun.

Hey, France would be fun if the British AI ever, umm, helped.

[garbon]

Hey, France would be fun if the British AI ever, umm, helped.

WAD

[jimmy olsen]

This thread inspired me to download Vicky from my gamersgate account, and I just realized that I bought the expansion pack at some point in time. However I don't think I ever played it, my goldfish like attention span must have gotten distracted by something and

[Barrister]

This thread inspired me to download Vicky from my gamersgate account, and I just realized that I bought the expansion pack at some point in time. However I don't think I ever played it, my goldfish like attention span must have gotten distracted by something and

[KRonn]

HOI DD, Arm, are pretty good games. As long as you only play as Russia or Germany. Because, for a number of reasons, all the other countries are no fun.

And playing on the eastern front is only fun until one or the other surrenders, cause after that it gets really silly.

Oh, and as long as you don't build nukes. Or use navies. Or airpower.

Other than that, it's quite enjoyable.

Oh, and as long as you don't actually play the DD or Arm scenarios, cause those are a mess.

I usually play as Germany, sometimes Russia or Italy. Naval warfare is a bit broken, subs seem wrong; I hate seeing my subs fighting a carrier fleet. Just doesn't make much sense.

Air power is fun, a favorite part of the game. But I wish that the AI air had range restrictions, and was better at withdrawing its damaged units. The air war can be a sub game of its own with some fixing, but I put a good emphasis on the air war when I play.

I never use nukes, and I'm glad the AI doesn't build them either.

Some games as Germany, probably in DD, I've been able to strangle the UK with sub power. Seems a lot more difficult to do in ARMA, which is probably as it should be.

[Syt]

From the latest developer diary thread:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=448577

Onto the Clergy! Now it is obvious to many here that there weren't many Clergy paid for by the government in the Victoria 2 era. This is one of those little problems where historical reality meets game design reality. First off, we read the forum and knew that Clergy were voted one of the most useless POP types in Victoria. Now this is bad, they should be useful, so we felt we would have to change their role a little. Secondly, they now needed to earn money somehow so we would have to come up with something. So first off was the evolution of the Clergy into educators. Now this does fit the era; a lot of education was done by the Church. It also helps game balance a lot; it was very easy to have 100% literacy in Victoria by maximising your education slider (it was one of those very easy choices, never good in a strategy game). Now the rate at which people gain literacy depends on the amount of clergy in the state, with POPs having their own literacy level, instead of a country wide one, you can have your core Population highly educated (and thus productive) while your Colonial Population is lagging behind a bit and still using more primitive production techniques. Now, in Victoria Clergy had this role of reducing CON, by keeping the superstitious masses backward by peddling yet more superstition. We have decided to keep that but the Clergy's role evolves a bit according to your government religious policy. If you are an atheist state, essentially the Clergy fulfil the role of the modern schoolteacher. We put in this necessary abstraction because we did not want to clutter up the interface with too many POP types.

So, the USSR or any other atheist country will be paying clergy to teach rather then convert them to labourers??? Jesus Christ

If you found clergy useless - just scrap the POP type and introduce something else intstead rather then try to use them in game, doesn't matter if it makes sense or not.

Changing name to 'scholars' wold make much more sense. Or simply indroducing POP which will represent scholars, doctors, solicitors, clergy, etc - etc - the middle class professions. Sticking with the name 'clergy' just becouse you like the name is counterintuitive and simply misleading.

Because we like the name.

[...]

I mean if something is fixed it is fixed. I am not going to sit and pretend that something will change when it won't.

[...]

And the icon as well, comeone people if we use the Victoria name we can simply import the icon and save development time for new features. Thus I think if you thought about it a bit more, or were just simply willing to trust that because I get paid to design games I might know what I was doing, then perhaps my choice was one of the better option.

OHgamer to the rescue:

It's not so much the function of the POP in question that is the issue, it is the decorative label used to communicate what they are to the player.

And communicative labels, as anyone who has played Paradox games before, can easily be redecorate to suit individual tastes.

There will most likely be a file for localisation that provides the onscreen names for all the various elements of the game.

Find the file that contains the names of the various POP type, change the name of clergy to something else that best fits with ones ideological feng shui, save and carry on.

And finally Johan:

It will be called clergy cause that is the design I wanted. That should be enough.

However, it is also the basis for our pop-file setup. Another poptype to research and adapt the pops for one scenario is not just feasible, now matter how "easy" some random person think it is.

There is a reason that King and OHGamer's opinions matters on pop setup issues, as they are the guys that actually KNOW what pops do, and the impact of design for them regarding the amount of work. If the guys that made the research for Victoria1 and the VIP mod think a poptype is best suited then it is.

It's the same old "you don't like what we do, mod it yourself" as with HoI3.

Funnily, Stardock is going a very different route with Elemental. They've brought in user feedback very early, encouraging and demanding feedback that they then work into the game design.

[Crazy_Ivan80]

Aye, and stardock's approach seems to me to be the one that'll lead to the best results.
It's still possible of course but I don't think Elemental will be the turd Hoi3 was at release.

[dps]

From the latest developer diary thread:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=448577


It's the same old "you don't like what we do, mod it yourself" as with HoI3.

Funnily, Stardock is going a very different route with Elemental. They've brought in user feedback very early, encouraging and demanding feedback that they then work into the game design.

Yeah, it's one thing to make lots of stuff modable so that after a game is released, players can change things to suit their taste.  It's quite another thing to ignore feedback from potential customers during the development process.  Of course, it's not possible to incorporate everything that everybody wants, but there are things in EUIII that many actual paying customers have complained about since EUII that simply haven't been addressed.

It will be called clergy cause that is the design I wanted. That should be enough.

It's enough if you just want to design a game for your own amusement.  If you want people to buy it, no, that's not enough.

Paradox used to have more apparant respect for their customers than just about any company I could name.   Now the attitude seems to be, "Fuck you, we'll design the game WE want, and you'll buy it and like it--well, actually, you might not like it, but as long as you buy it, we don't give a shit. So STFU." 

[Habbaku]

And, judging by HOI 3's price-drops, they don't even buy it...

[HisMajestyBOB]

Oh noes, it's called clergy! 

[Sheilbh]

I think there's actually something to the clergy vs educators thing though.  I love a series of stories I read once.  It was set in, I think, a 19th century Italian town.  There was a priest who was doing his best to do pastoral duties and constantly trying to thwart the Communist school teacher. 

So I like to think Paradox are tapping into that

[grumbler]

I think there's actually something to the clergy vs educators thing though.  I love a series of stories I read once.  It was set in, I think, a 19th century Italian town.  There was a priest who was doing his best to do pastoral duties and constantly trying to thwart the Communist school teacher. 

So I like to think Paradox are tapping into that

Clergy should probably increase education in some government/social types, and decrease it in others.  That would be  great dynamic, and you could balance it with some kind of agitator/humanist pop (scientist?) that does the opposite.  Meantime, clergy could always reduce consciousness and the agitator/humanist type increase it.

[Josephus]

It's the same old "you don't like what we do, mod it yourself" as with HoI3.

Or rather, "If you don't like it then don't buy it, as most of you did with HOI3".

all though to be fair, I'm with Johan on this issue.

[Jaron]

RiP Paradox.

If Johan wants to put the good days of Paradox behind him and continue to produce crap that tries to be part of the modern market but fails, yet also fails to address customer concerns then they've lost their niche.

Is it a big deal what they call their POPs? Not really, but Paradox games have always been targetted towards a market that has considerable interest in the fine details like that. Province names, leader names, terrains, etc..

Their attitude over the whole thing just sucks. Its very insulting towards their customers.

[Strix]

RiP Paradox.

If Johan wants to put the good days of Paradox behind him and continue to produce crap that tries to be part of the modern market but fails, yet also fails to address customer concerns then they've lost their niche.

Is it a big deal what they call their POPs? Not really, but Paradox games have always been targetted towards a market that has considerable interest in the fine details like that. Province names, leader names, terrains, etc..

Their attitude over the whole thing just sucks. Its very insulting towards their customers.

QFT