What do you want from Paradox?

[pickelhaube]

Okay the topic name explains itself. I mean what changes would you pesonally like to see in paradox games? I am speaking not about obvious things like patches and fixes "make rebellions in vicky 2 normal" but changes in game concept or technical things.


My opinion -

Improved graphics. I would really love to see better graphics in paradox games, history/alternative history is insanely interesting idea to play with and it can be done visually stunning. I would like to see more beautiful world map, something like napoleon stratgic map or civ5 map. What is even more important I would like to see diverse and pretty units, something of napoleon tw strategic map armies representation. Think about it few hundreds types of units many of which are unique to some states and goverments, that change visually when world advances forward in time. It would be a wonderful eye candy. I'd also like to see culture reflected in cities and units. For example when you draft units from indian population they have obvious indian faces while wearing uniform of whatever power controls them. Or you see city with majority of chinese population and it is in tradiotional chiese style but while your immigrants arrive more and more european-style buildings appear.


Second thing I would like to see 3 different modes to choose from before you start campaign in all paradox games. Historical - heavily scripted where world around you develops pretty much like it did in reality, different outcomes are still possible without your intervention but not very likely.
For example there is 2/3 chance USA will appear in more or less its usual form or with same chance there will be revolution in France. Quite often I miss "realistic" world in paradox games. Other two modes are what paradox already has - historical lucky nations and random lucky nations.


Micromanagement - while EU3 and Vicky 2 are acceptable I cant understand fun in HOI3 wih all those 1 million of provinces. I understand it gives more tactical option but micromanagement kills the fun in that case. Maybe there there shuld be less provinces (like in Vicky 2) but units could simply move around without restrictions? I mean each province consists out of few tiles and military units move from one tile to another? It would still make tactical options quite rich but map wouldnt look and feel so sick. Also you could chose on which tiles you want to build infrastructure and fortifications, while all IC is centered in province "capital" city. I think it would amke sense for HOI.

Last but important for me too. Good-working buil-in offical save converters. That dont "skip" little nations into bigger ones but propely convert everything what happend in previous game. Imagine the fun of playing some communist byzantines in HOI or your so hard-earned Holy roman empire as a single state.

I dont tell anything about AI, bugs and balance because paradox anyway works on it.




So post your opinion and suggestions, what would be your ideal paradox game.

[MehemtAli_Pasha]

WOW Pickelhaube, judging from your over all opinion on Paradox games, this is a positive review. it looks like someone is enjoying the new Vicky lately

any way, i will be brief.. for graphics, yes i am with you, but you will have to consider that Paradox is a small company and nice graphics need time and money. Paradox (and most of it's fans) would rather have them work on polishing the gameplay.

as for the historical modes, i will go against on this one. i personally more of a sandbox kind of person, but if a historical mode is your kind of preference, then it's ok. again, dont forget that a historical mod will need a lot of work and so we return again to the same point; Paradox is a small company.

very less people like micromanagement. i will agree on this one, as well as for the converters.

[Tankfriend]

Improved graphics (...)

More eye-candy and a more representative graphics engine would definitely be nice to increase both the appeal of the engine itself as well as the atmosphere. But as far as I know, there are people around who already have problems with the current engine, and that one isn't exactly the prettiest thing one can think of. The logical consequence for Paradox would be to invest some more time in optimizing the engine, possibly removing a lot of problems and instabilities during the process as well.

Micromanagement

The micromanagement honestly is one of the reasons why I'm playing the series at all - there are so many games around that are playable with almost no thinking at all these days that it's no longer funny. The Paradox series at least gives you a lot of different things to consider if you want to solve any kind of problem. Consequently, I'd like them to add micromanagement and complexity.
However, the key point here is that they should also put a lot of work hours into optimizing the accessibility of the micromanagement. The way it is now, you have to dig through countless of screens, maps, lists etc. to even spot minor problems and then go through all of that again to fix the issue. As a result, the GUI tends to be pretty overloaded and cluttered, which in turn makes it all the more time-consuming and awkward to handle.

One idea would be to introduce a "general report" that you could describe as an extremely compressed (one screen only, subdivided into areas for different displays) and solely issue-oriented variant of the ledger that only displays the information related to the individually selected current issue. Bonus points to Paradox if they make that screen customizeable so that everyone can change the screen to fit their personal opinion of what is important and what isn't. More bonus points if the screen is interconnected to other screens via hotlinks specific to the respective topics.
One example:
A new issue has come into existence.
You get a small screen notification displaying an exclamation mark (possibly flashing). A tool-tip on that icon reads "Issue: Declaration of War likely". If you click on it, it immediately opens the issue screen with the new issue selected (there would be a small list on the left edge of the screen that lists all current issues; clicking on one loads all of the relevant info into the issue screen).
The screen then displays the information you need:
- Who is likely to declare war against you?
- Why?
- Comparison of the individual military strengths (hotlinked to military screen for setting up new troops, mobilizing etc.)
- Comparison of the current diplomatic relations, including alliances (hotlinked to diplomacy screen)
- Possibly a mini-map cut-out that shows you the possibly threatened areas of your empire (hotlinked to a focus-on-area function)

That's just the basic idea for a possible case of war, but the screen could be adapted to any issue. If you have an income deficit, it would list things like your current spending and income, divided into the most basic categories like "taxes", "trade" etc., each hotlinked to the relevant screen. With that overview, you should be easily capable to find out where the problem comes from and what you could do to fix it.
The overall idea could even be adapted for positive reports like "Positive Development: High economic growth due to tax cuts" or a host of other things one could think of.

Maybe there there shuld be less provinces (like in Vicky 2) but units could simply move around without restrictions? I mean each province consists out of few tiles and military units move from one tile to another? It would still make tactical options quite rich but map wouldnt look and feel so sick. Also you could chose on which tiles you want to build infrastructure and fortifications, while all IC is centered in province "capital" city. I think it would amke sense for HOI.

I can't see how that idea really fixes anything. You might have less provinces overall, but all those provinces are subdivided into smaller regions that each have to be micromanaged again in terms of military and improvements. If you were to, say, remove half the number of provinces and then subdivide each province into 2 regions, you have the exact same number of territories to manage, for example. Given that you would likely make more subdivisions than that, you'd end up with even more territories than you started out with.

Last but important for me too. Good-working buil-in offical save converters. (...)

Good idea. The way it is now, the converters tend to come up with somewhat unuseable results. I haven't encountered any really good results, anyway. When I once took a Victoria savegame and converted that to HoI 2, the entire world-wide economy crashed immidiately after the start of the game because there was a huge disparity between IC capacities and ressource production.

[pickelhaube]

Okay guys. I'll answer to you both at same time.

Graphics - yes Paradox is not EA, but nobody asks them to make unit graphics comparable with napoleon TW tactic battle. No just few hundreds of diverse low-polygon models for strategic map. Something of Napoleon startegic map quality is nothing too hard. Paradox are not paupers, also their products get more and more popular. As for the engine, I am afraid its pretty horrible, it works on one core and has unstoppable memory leak I believe, would be better if they hire someone who would make them really fast and modern engine. Modern computers are capable of extreme things, just look at modern games and it becomes visible. Paradox should exploit that. Plus investing in graphics will make their products more popular and give more sales. Better graphics always increase sales.


Micromanagement - I am not talking about startegic planning, but about tedious repetative activities. EU3 and Vicky 2 have acceptable micromanagement, but HOI... ugh. Complexity doesnt equal micromanagement, its about making choices with lots of consequences, not about clicking 3000 times just to set front right. I propose tiles system for HOI3 (not for other titles) just because it will remove provinces clogging and will make transport and fortification system more enjoyable. It will be easier for the eye and mind to move units through standartized tiles instead of countless differently shaped provinces. Tile system will make naval and air bombardment look more believable and reasonable too


Historical mode - for people who love sandbox, it shold eb just an option that you can change. I like sandboxs too, but sometimes I would prefer to see more solid and "realistic" world. It pains me to play EU3 and to never see Prussia, Russia or Ottomans performing adequately well as they did in history.


Converters - yes vicky rev. to hoi armageddon seemed decent until I noticed that half of countries have zero IC and basically are stillborn.

[hellheaven1987]

If you bought like ten copies each game, then Paradox would have enough cash to expand enough men for additional feature.

[CDMan477]

^This.

They have about 10 to 12 people that produce every game.

[kerowhacko]

Better graphics always increase sales.

I can't say I agree with that considering the market Paradox seems to appeal to. The fact that Vicky2 need to only sell 70,000 copies before they could turn a profit is huge in a sense of how small that is compared to any modern games. Fallout 3 need to sell, what, 1mil copies before it turned a profit? God knows that budget didn't go into actual content or writing for Fallout 3 so one can then only wonder where it all went

I'll certainly agree to a more streamlined interface or a way to automate some actions. In Vicky2 it gets annoying when manually buildings railroads everywhere, especially the larger your empire becomes. If there was an "Upgrade All" button that would be amazing. I generally hate waiting on capitalists to get around to building them so I like to do it myself. If that button happens to already exist and I'm just an idiot, please enlighten me.

Also, a wonderful idea is for them to learn how to make smaller f-ing windows. If they're going to design stupid capitalists, please design a streamlined way for us to neuter them without us having to lose sight of our empire or miss something important. A small drop-down menu from hovering over the "Production" box that shows factories being built with an icon of the factory type and a small bar moving from left to right showing the overall completion shouldn't be too hard to come up with. With that, you can left-click once to pause construction, left-click again to demolish it or right-click to resume construction. It's not rocket surgery I imagine but just an oversight.

[hellheaven1987]

I'll certainly agree to a more streamlined interface or a way to automate some actions. In Vicky2 it gets annoying when manually buildings railroads everywhere, especially the larger your empire becomes. If there was an "Upgrade All" button that would be amazing. I generally hate waiting on capitalists to get around to building them so I like to do it myself. If that button happens to already exist and I'm just an idiot, please enlighten me.

That is a great ideas!!! I can use that feature to kill world economy as GB!!!

*Press "building railroad in all provinces" and automatically suck all the iron production into GB for five years, kill other countries economy due to lack of iron resource.*

[pickelhaube]

No contribution except smartassing twice, funny.

Oh and you can do same manually you know, just PAUSE the game and clcik through 1000 of GB provinces. Was that reply witty and smart?...

[kerowhacko]

Oh and you can do same manually you know, just PAUSE the game and clcik through 1000 of GB provinces.

Pretty much, it's just my method takes a load off of the absolutely boring and repetitious task of updating railroads.

[hellheaven1987]

No contribution except smartassing twice, funny.

Well, better than people who complaining Vicky 2 like dirt before its releasing, but immediately bought the game after its releasing and enjoying it everyday (despite they don't admit the fact that they bought the game).

[motiv-8]

I want Crusader Kings 2 from Paradox. That is all.

[Musthavename]

Everything they've been doing. Namely, the 1.2 Vicky 2 Patch, after which i'll probably lose my life to that game (which i've put off playing till after the patch ).

It seems everytime they get fan suggestions on the EU3 forums they churn out another expansion with most of the things in, and it's an almost flawless game to begin with and is highly moddable anyway.

[MehemtAli_Pasha]

i think the problem with most of the OP's suggestions is that he is asking too much from a company that has a very limited budget, and over that, they have to make their games more and more appealing to the mass. unfortunately, not every one is a history buff nor plays a game that needs a book to study first. good news is, they havent driven their games so far off track..yet.

i am relatively new to the series and this is probably the first Paradox game i bought on release. i think it wasnt bad at all. i had a lot of fun with a couple of campaigns but i had to stop mainly due to many abnormalities in the economic system of the game.

[pickelhaube]

This is such a common excuse "small company, limited budget" Paradox is alive for a decade and only expands since then, being what - publisher of mount and blade even, highly successful game, releasing more and more games. So please stop that "small company" excuse. Yes they are not EA, but not some church paupers either already They dont have to implement next-gen graphics in their games also, it would be just be nice to make them much prettier sunce modern computers and video cards are perfectly capable of calculating all paradox AI and scripts while showing reasonably good picture.

My other suggestions have nothing to do with graphics though.

[Musthavename]

I'm honestly not bothered in graphics on Paradox games whatsoever. Infact, I think Vicky 2 looks pretty nice. It's clean, and does the job, which is all i'm really bothered about in these sorts of games. At the end of the day, i'm mostly looking at figures, so aslong as the interface looks clean, nothing really bothers me too much.

[Big War Bird]

I want Crusader Kings 2, and I want it yesterday.

[MehemtAli_Pasha]

This is such a common excuse "small company, limited budget" Paradox is alive for a decade and only expands since then, being what - publisher of mount and blade even, highly successful game, releasing more and more games. So please stop that "small company" excuse. Yes they are not EA, but not some church paupers either already They dont have to implement next-gen graphics in their games also, it would be just be nice to make them much prettier sunce modern computers and video cards are perfectly capable of calculating all paradox AI and scripts while showing reasonably good picture.

My other suggestions have nothing to do with graphics though.

actually they are a small company. so small that they have a relitavely small team and they have the guts to go out there and say that they sometimes have to release a game with issues they know are there but they have no option but to release the game and support it later after. king once said that it's either this way or you wont be enjoing any game at all. despite his attitude that i dont like, i believe him and i dont see any reason why not to. except of course you have your own reasons you would like to share.

[pickelhaube]

Little hint, you know how much minecraft earns? being small independant one person? do you think paradox earns 10 times less than Minecraft with ALL thir games and publishing activity?

[hellheaven1987]

Little hint, you know how much minecraft earns? being small independant one person? do you think paradox earns 10 times less than Minecraft with ALL thir games and publishing activity?

May be, may be not. Minecraft is really quite an exception of all, and I am pretty sure Mount&Blade, which follows same selling method as Minecraft, did not earn as much as Minecraft.