Grand Strategy Victoria 3

[Heroic Liberator]

As much as that'll likely be a problem, vanilla vicky 2 is also kind of prone to border gore. I think we'll need an HPM equivalent before we get actual borders that make sense. That goes for starting countries too, eg I'm pretty sure vanilla V3 doesn't represent the Baltic Governates as a Russian substate, same as V2, whereas HPM etc represent it correctly as a substate rather than an integral territory, and have it be fully annexed into the Russian Empire only later on in the game to reflect how it was eventually more tightly integrated. I could be wrong, but that's how it looked last time I peeked at the V3 map.

Yep, that's how it is. And what's more annoying is that the formable United Baltic Duchy tag doesn't have North German as one of the primary cultures alongside Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian (arguably it should be the only one, with the others being discriminated depending on the tag's laws) despite the fact that such a project was proposed by the local German nobility rather than by Baltic nationalists.

 

[Axioms]

I never understood the nonsense about border gore. Like, what do you expect? Do people think the "historical" borders are the only possible borders? Borders sometimes have reasoning behind them, but even big geographical stuff is only "reasonable" based on the socio-politcal context.

This is a huge problem Paradox has. Half the player base is obsessed with minut historical details that make virtually no sense in a system driven game.

Explains why Stellaris was so successful, none of the bullshit. Of course the mechanics in Stellaris are iffy but at least they don't need to be carried so hard by "history".

 

[Malakal]

I never understood the nonsense about border gore. Like, what do you expect? Do people think the "historical" borders are the only possible borders? Borders sometimes have reasoning behind them, but even big geographical stuff is only "reasonable" based on the socio-politcal context.

This is a huge problem Paradox has. Half the player base is obsessed with minut historical details that make virtually no sense in a system driven game.

Explains why Stellaris was so successful, none of the bullshit. Of course the mechanics in Stellaris are iffy but at least they don't need to be carried so hard by "history".

Look I don't see a situation where XIX century France would eat half of Spain ok? There is map painting and there is nonsense, any game set in this time has to at leas consider the possibilities.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Look I don't see a situation where XIX century France would eat half of Spain ok? There is map painting and there is nonsense, any game set in this time has to at leas consider the possibilities.

Pretty much my stance. It has to be plausible in its simulation of an alternative history rather than just a silly sandbox, otherwise we might as well be playing Risk if map painting in itself is all that matters.

Also somewhat related to the border gore discussion, the lack of map granularity really is an issue in such titles. Paradox tries to make borders that would mirror the historical borders between countries in certain periods covered by one of their games, but what you end up with is nonsensical borders that wouldn't make sense outside of those historical situations. I can understand the excuse of too much granularity being too CPU-intensive, but at the very least they should allow the player to split states and not the AI. I'm always annoyed when I can't get a nice natural border (e.g. on a large river, on a mountain range) just because such a border wasn't achieved by a country or another during that timeline when it is historically plausible that that's precisely the sort of border that they would've gone for were it possible for them to expand that far.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

 

[Axioms]

I never understood the nonsense about border gore. Like, what do you expect? Do people think the "historical" borders are the only possible borders? Borders sometimes have reasoning behind them, but even big geographical stuff is only "reasonable" based on the socio-politcal context.

This is a huge problem Paradox has. Half the player base is obsessed with minut historical details that make virtually no sense in a system driven game.

Explains why Stellaris was so successful, none of the bullshit. Of course the mechanics in Stellaris are iffy but at least they don't need to be carried so hard by "history".

Look I don't see a situation where XIX century France would eat half of Spain ok? There is map painting and there is nonsense, any game set in this time has to at leas consider the possibilities.

There's no way to systematically restrict the game to plausibility with such a low level of simulation detail. Paradox games are shallow detail wise. You can either go full historical railroad or full alt-history. Additionally different people will have different opinions on what is plausible and furthermore plenty of bordergore complaints are about way more plausible stuff.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

There's no way to systematically restrict the game to plausibility with such a low level of simulation detail. Paradox games are shallow detail wise.

No simulation is perfect, but you can tweak the various parameters as to obtain more conservative border changes. Otherwise, as I've already said, you might as well be playing Risk.

 

[thesecret1]

I never understood the nonsense about border gore. Like, what do you expect? Do people think the "historical" borders are the only possible borders? Borders sometimes have reasoning behind them, but even big geographical stuff is only "reasonable" based on the socio-politcal context.

You should see some EU3 Bohemia snakes, lol. Borders need to follow some manner of logic. Imagine France taking a strip of land from Lyon to Münich to Berlin, just because it could, and literally only that strip of land, a few kilometres wide. Good places economically, sure, and technically the fastest way to unite them with the rest of France, but utterly indefensible. Or the US deciding to invade through the Black Sea to take some steppe land – why? How could the land there possibly be worth the trouble of defending it, or administering the hostile population there? If the US blobs to Mexico, fine, sure, why not. If it skips Mexico and invades Argentina, it elicits a couple head scratches for why they'd do that, but sure, fine, maybe they just really want the land there for some reason. But if they take over Thailand and proceed to take the shortest possible way to conquer Tibet, then it's just retarded, and clearly shows that the game is seriously lacking.

 

[thesecret1]

To illustrate, check the Korea in this pic, that's how real border gore looks like:

 

[Space Satan]

Borders need to follow some manner of logic.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Borders need to follow some manner of logic.

It's almost as if a preexisting state seceded from a broader country, eh?

Borders need to follow some manner of logic.

And it's almost as if geography plays a role in what constitute defensible borders and good connections for developing a national infrastructure that unites the various regions,

 

[Axioms]

To illustrate, check the Korea in this pic, that's how real border gore looks like:

Isn't that something a player did?

 

[Axioms]

There's no way to systematically restrict the game to plausibility with such a low level of simulation detail. Paradox games are shallow detail wise.

No simulation is perfect, but you can tweak the various parameters as to obtain more conservative border changes. Otherwise, as I've already said, you might as well be playing Risk.

You are just playing Risk, though? Sounds like people just lying to themselves.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

There's no way to systematically restrict the game to plausibility with such a low level of simulation detail. Paradox games are shallow detail wise.

No simulation is perfect, but you can tweak the various parameters as to obtain more conservative border changes. Otherwise, as I've already said, you might as well be playing Risk.

You are just playing Risk, though? Sounds like people just lying to themselves.

No, I'm playing games that offer the best degree of grand strategy simulation. Far from perfect, but better than nothing. Meanwhile you seem to be a proponent of dumbing down even those meager mechanics further since they can't reach your purity spiraling expectations.

 

[Axioms]

There's no way to systematically restrict the game to plausibility with such a low level of simulation detail. Paradox games are shallow detail wise.

No simulation is perfect, but you can tweak the various parameters as to obtain more conservative border changes. Otherwise, as I've already said, you might as well be playing Risk.

You are just playing Risk, though? Sounds like people just lying to themselves.

No, I'm playing games that offer the best degree of grand strategy simulation. Far from perfect, but better than nothing. Meanwhile you seem to be a proponent of dumbing down even those meager mechanics further since they can't reach your purity spiraling expectations.

I'm not a "proponent" of any specific strategy. I just think you can have "historical plausibility" and "simulation" in the same game without a certain level of simulation detail.

 

[Sranchammer]

Look I don't see a situation where XIX century France would eat half of Spain ok?

 

[Malakal]

Look I don't see a situation where XIX century France would eat half of Spain ok?

Fairly sure he did not annex even a part just put relative on the throne.

 

[Sranchammer]

Look I don't see a situation where XIX century France would eat half of Spain ok?

Fairly sure he did not annex even a part just put relative on the throne.

Which would make it French-controlled. Just like Charlemagne and Louis XIV. Invading and failing to conquer Spain is a French tradition.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

 

[thesecret1]

Isn't that something a player did?

Yeah, but why does that matter? You attacked caring about border gore as a concept, as if it was invalid regardless of circumstance. Besides, the AI in EU3 created these snakes too, albeit not as long.

 

[Malakal]

Look I don't see a situation where XIX century France would eat half of Spain ok?

Fairly sure he did not annex even a part just put relative on the throne.

Which would make it French-controlled. Just like Charlemagne and Louis XIV. Invading and failing to conquer Spain is a French tradition.

No thats just regime change and a puppet nation war goal.

Anyway very easy to avoid border gore in areas that it was ahistorical with simple cost adjustment for infamy and CB cost, maybe remove some limits with Great Wars seeing what crazy plans Germany had. Can be done given some thought.

Africa/Asia should be free for all obviously. More thought for other continents but I'm sure they could do something sensible.

 

[Axioms]

Isn't that something a player did?

Yeah, but why does that matter? You attacked caring about border gore as a concept, as if it was invalid regardless of circumstance. Besides, the AI in EU3 created these snakes too, albeit not as long.

Player has almost limitless capability to subvert the rules of any game. I care *less* about player border gore than AI border gore.

 

[Hace El Oso]

The AI has been tuned a lot since the leak, especially to make things like border gore more sensible. The worst I’ve seen in their recent streams is the USA taking part of ‘future Canada’ (red indian territory in game at that time) and Russia taking significant pieces of Japan.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Final pre-release dev diary focusing on the game's audio. Few more days, lads.

 

[Heroic Liberator]