CKII is released.

[vonAchdorf]

With the new settings feature, you can selectively disable many annoyances without disabling the respective DLC, e.g. supernatural stuff (which has been in game long before the current expansion) and satanists. Not the items though.

For Geheimnisnacht, the new mechanics should be great though.

 

[Multiple Sarcasm]

And people pay money for this and then enjoy it...

How dare they.

 

[Zero Credibility]

With the new settings feature, you can selectively disable many annoyances without disabling the respective DLC, e.g. supernatural stuff (which has been in game long before the current expansion) and satanists.

Supernatural stuff is only really present since the last DLC (immortality and that bullshit), before that only clearly supernatural events I remember are those that happen if your ruler is also a lunatic. But since they introduced those settings they went full force on the supernatural fantasy. If your remove satanist stuff and supernatural hermetic events, how much is even left from the latest DLC? The DLC before this one also leaves me confused - remove immortals and werewolves and you are left with more detailed diseases, money-sink hospitals and physicians that the AI either can't use (only AI dukes or above can hire one, and even dukes rarely do it) or uses it very, very badly (physician converts kings / emperor to jew / muslim level bullshit). Yet people somehow love that stuff, go figure. I think Paradox is scraping the bottom of the DLC barrel here.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

For Geheimnisnacht, the new mechanics should be great though.

Oh definately, not only does the cult/society thing have a lot of possibilities in Warhammer World (most obviously in The Empire with the colleges of magic, Chaos cults, witch-hunters, knightly orders, etc), even just for having a better Chaos cultist mechanical base. The inventory system should also greatly simplify the current trait overload problem that tends to develop if you play as an immortal or super-long-lived race which can do magic.

Moreover, I *think* the new patch notes includes a number of fixes that the GNacht team has mentioned having been waiting for because Pdox promised the fixes, since their mod had issues with certain bugs inherent to the base game itself like pathfinding crashes.

 

[IDtenT]

Very disappointed in the DLC part of the DLC. Adds a little bit of flavour and nothing else. I guess they don't want to tweak mechanics anymore. That was the best part of a new DLC, as you're basically playing a different game.

Otherwise the quality of life stuff in the patch is pretty impressive.

 

[Ludovic]

With the new settings feature, you can selectively disable many annoyances without disabling the respective DLC, e.g. supernatural stuff (which has been in game long before the current expansion) and satanists. Not the items though.

Not sure that the supernatural disable works 100%. In my brief game as the pagan chief of Moravia, barely 15 minutes had passed before I got recruited into some Chernobog society, a demon had mauled some random courtier and a guy I sacrificed to the gods maimed me about a week later. I can accept the last one as a bug rather than a zombie event, the Chernobog thing isn't supernatural per se, but a DEMON? I have a feeling a lot of the M&M event chains contain supernatural elements, but cannot be disabled without disabling those societies completely.

 

[Average Manatee]

The "Join Court" filter makes getting good council members a bit too easy. A generation or two in and its basically impossible not to have 20+ stat characters everywhere willing to join you. Rest of the patch is gud.

Secret societies seem to be a big letdown according to paradox forums. Devil stuff is just flat out cheating while the other societies are free OP stat boosts. I'm guessing most of the time went into the society system itself for modders to use rather than actually fleshing out good stuff for the base game. Also apparently lots of artifacts end up stacking too well such that your rulers will get 30+ in their primary stats.

 

[Turisas]

Very disappointed in the DLC part of the DLC. Adds a little bit of flavour and nothing else. I guess they don't want to tweak mechanics anymore. That was the best part of a new DLC, as you're basically playing a different game.

Someone on pdx forums suggested they had to rush it out, which'd make sense given how sparse (monk orders) or non-existent (hermetic alchemy) some of the content in M&M is right now - Paradox has a busy spring schedule for releases and they likely wanted to focus on the larger Stellaris expansion that's coming soonish. This DLC does have potential but like TOG originally where the norse pagans got all the good shit, this time it's the satanic cults which have gotten all the love.

 

[Hellion]

I'm still waiting for another good sale for the "DLC Collection" package that includes all DLC released prior to "Charlemagne" before jumping into the recent overpriced stuff. Last good one was a Humble Bundle ages ago (14.5 euros) but I missed it, most recent sales are all at 30-35 and above.

I need those portrait packs, god dammit.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The Germanic portraits alone are worth the price of Monks and Mystics.

There seems to be a bug with weapon and goldsmiths. Every couple of months I get a message that "XY the Weaponsmith" has joined my court and they are all dead on arrival.

The monastic orders are just a money sink - every once in a while you have to donate 100 gold for little gain.

Items are nice but not cheap (2500 for the best sword, but it's a permanent stat boost for all the following generations).

 

[Turisas]

^ Yeah I had 3 DOA's in a row, and then finally one that made it - the first three were all married and their wives kicked the bucket as well while the survivor was not, but I don't see how that could be relevant to it.

And they still didn't fix the short reign / long reign going poof once you load a save, so vassals are kinda shitty to handle when you're a lunatic devil worshipper.

Until you spend some dark powah and make them your mindless puppets.

 

[34scell]

For Geheimnisnacht, the new mechanics should be great though.

Oh definately, not only does the cult/society thing have a lot of possibilities in Warhammer World (most obviously in The Empire with the colleges of magic, Chaos cults, witch-hunters, knightly orders, etc), even just for having a better Chaos cultist mechanical base. The inventory system should also greatly simplify the current trait overload problem that tends to develop if you play as an immortal or super-long-lived race which can do magic.

Moreover, I *think* the new patch notes includes a number of fixes that the GNacht team has mentioned having been waiting for because Pdox promised the fixes, since their mod had issues with certain bugs inherent to the base game itself like pathfinding crashes.

Due to the one society limit, colleges and anything else that should be corruptible probably won't have a society.

 

[Delterius]

Hah, and people used to joke that Paradox would make a world of darkness CK2 DLC.

 

[Anthedon]

Didn't some dev state that the CKII DLC cycle would end after a "few" more expansions?

Because it looks like there might be more on the way (Johan):

Both CK2 and EU4 have no limit on when we plan to end. As long as you play and buy, we'll keep making expansions.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-planned-dlcs-are-left.1004233/#post-22520392

I was planning to wait it out until they are finally done before jumping back in. Which is not going to work if they keep on going.

 

[Barbarian]

Didn't some dev state that the CKII DLC cycle would end after a "few" more expansions?

Because it looks like there might be more on the way (Johan):

Both CK2 and EU4 have no limit on when we plan to end. As long as you play and buy, we'll keep making expansions.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-planned-dlcs-are-left.1004233/#post-22520392

I was planning to wait it out until they are finally done before jumping back in. Which is not going to work if they keep on going.

Yeah, I find this ridiculous. I imagine the total cost for the players who have been supporting the game since day one already tops 300 bucks. And the game feels and plays unfinished after every new expansion, with performance problems across the board due to the old 32 bit engine.

They should just wrap this up this year and move on to ck3

 

[Alienman]

Problem with CK3 is that it would be bare bones again.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Nothing a DLC or two (or ten, or twenty) won't fix I'm sure. All over again. Just as soon as they milk CK2 dry.

 

[Barbarian]

I have no interest in CK3 to be honest, I imagine they will cuck and dumb down the game to hell and back.

I always played CK2 heavily modded and at this point I will just wait out until the game is actually wrapped up before playing it again. Last time I found I spent more time modding the game than actually playing it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Problem with CK3 is that it would be bare bones again.

Didn't EUIV pretty much incorporate every feature from EUIII? I think they're aware of that.

Oh, no. EUIV lost important features of EUIII (and previous EU games) as far as I know. I never was big on EUIII, it was too ugly for me. They introduced those silly monarch points, and have kept adding various types of "points" to no end, as if adding a points-based resource will fix everything in a game. They removed population and added the nothing-meaning "base tax" resource.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Population was a pretty half-baked thing in EU3 tho, it was a number you'd just watch go up as fast as the grass grows (or practically not at all if the province started with 1000 population) and all it really did was just scale production. Base tax was already in EU3, base production is essentially what population was (as population had no effect on taxation, only production; taxation was determined solely by base tax + modifiers from ideas, events, decisions, and/or buildings).

 

[Average Manatee]

Obviously it wasn't well implemented in EU3, but removing a feature rather than fixing it is bad. Plenty of things that were completely screwed up in EU3 were fixed in mods.

That said most of what was lost from EU3->EU4 was good mechanics being dropped in favor of worse mechanics (e.g. the trade system, tech system, monthly/yearly split income system), not a loss of features. EU3 was pretty feature-bare.

 

[vonAchdorf]

The societies are pretty bald so far, I stand by my observation that the Germanic portraits are the best part of this DLC, followed by quality of life things like not micromanagey council member jobs.

 

[AwesomeButton]

The thing I most dislike in EUIV is the monthly "salary" income. It's probably easy on bad players, but it reduces uncertainty in a bad way + it's unhistorical. Taxes were usually collected once a year.

 

[Wilian]

Problem with CK3 is that it would be bare bones again.

Didn't EUIV pretty much incorporate every feature from EUIII? I think they're aware of that.

Oh, no. EUIV lost important features of EUIII (and previous EU games) as far as I know. I never was big on EUIII, it was too ugly for me. They introduced those silly monarch points, and have kept adding various types of "points" to no end, as if adding a points-based resource will fix everything in a game. They removed population and added the nothing-meaning "base tax" resource.

Eh, can't say EU IV lost much in that transition. You keep saying points but I just keep going back to sliders. Sure there were some things lost in translation/altered but all in all, when EU IV released it did quite good job at bringing most key things along from EU III while introducing it's own things to separate the two games from each others.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I liked the sliders, they gave me the feeling that my country is gradually evolving in a direction. Sure, they weren't perfect, and it was an abstract gamey rule "once in ten years you can change something about the core values of your country" but I still felt more connected to the sliders than to the MP.