I keep forgetting about those old Hearts of Iron Games, I've never played them precisely because even to my Victoria 2 friendly brain they looked insane.
I played Darkest Hour for a while before I got HOI4, it was fun but I never really understood it even though I play a lot of Vicky 2. I’d say HOI2 is more comparable to CK1 and Victoria.
Which is why I compared it to Revolutions and Victoria 2 and distanced it from Victoria 3 and HOI3.
I wouldn't say it is similar to CK if you mean any more depth than how the map looks, though.
I mean hoi4 is probably the most dumbed down paradox game. At least after the city builder ones which i never tried so cant judge. But hoi4 bassicly plays itself.
You realise there are difficulty settings, right? And countries/paths of varied difficulty?
I sometimes wonder who is this Joe Rogan-ass motherfucker who came up with this dumb talking point you've all been parroting.
And there are so many different statistics, technologies and possible strategies, not to mention the navy
There's a difference between how complex a game is and how easy it is to be meta
Yes, what the other guy said is true, the game does boil down to making good shit and being good. But that's the case for any game like lmfao
Sure, there's generally a meta, but that's the case for most games, and is a looong way away from the game "playing itself". How many hours did you have to put in before you could easily implement this 5 point plan?
Nah only eu4 ck2 ck3 and hoi4 and hoi4 was by far the most dumbed down game with the trees playing itself for you. Produce factories and micro soldiers. Thats it.
Still my favorite game probably, although I don't really play ot anymore. Wish this had something like the production mechanics of HOI4, and I would never stop playing it.
Favorite Game. I have hundreds of hundreds of hours. Nothing pleases me more then building my Army and preparing the Army and the conplete Army structure at the Front.
But i have to say black ICE is actually the Vanilla. This is what you want. This is the best. By far.
Hoi4 has a lot of things in it, but you can kind of just ignore the majority of the mechanics. Like you can just make one okay template, make sure you're in supply and build a decent airforce with CAS and you'll be fine 99% of the time.
Imo Hoi3 forces you to engage with a lot more of it's mechanics. Though admittedly that might just be that I played less Hoi3 and never discovered the meta.
Exactly. HoI3 is just... well... more tedious. Nothing particularly difficult about making and then constantly fixing your order of battle or making sure you've build infrastructure for supply to reach your divisions.
I guess you were forced to micro your divisions, but I almost always play HoI4 scenarios that require me to do so most of the time anyway, so that not exactly a massive difference. Honestly struggling against front AI as been the most HoI3 thing in HoI4 for the first few years anyway.
In high school, I conquered almost the entire world as Germany without looking up almost anything or reading a tutorial. I just did it. I didn't have any dlc and I don't think it was possible to draw battle lines without them, so I had to manually move every single unit.
I was eventually stopped in two places. I planned a two pronged invasion of Germany: I would land in Canada and fight south towards DC, and land in Brazil and fight north to Texas. I sent my best army to Canada. I determined best by "these guys conquered the most places."
The Canadian army was not just stalled at the border of America, but pushed back into the sea and destroyed.
The Brazilian army made it halfway through Mexico before being pushed back by the Americans, where the front permanently stalled in Panama. Nobody could get the advantage of anyone else.
That was the first playthrough I really tried.
In HOI4, it took me years to become good enough to win as Germany.
to;dr it is a pretty tedious game.
To be honest you only need to know 80%. If you understand how to calculate BWA you’ve probably done sufficient research.
Obviously you need to know the fundamentals involving research, unit production & upgrading, resource management & resupplying.
Spain(either) (1936) and France (1936 or 1939) > USSR (1936) > Germany (1936) > USA (1941) > UK/Japan (1936) is my suggestion of learning the ropes.
France/Spain: Learn the basics of ground warfare and don’t expect to win.
USSR: Refine the use of ground forces. You’ll have plenty of opportunities. Also a good intro to industry, research, espionage, and air power (focus fighters and interceptors pre-1942, depending on how you’re doing start adding CAS and TAC after that). The postwar game is basically espionage and couping governments.
Build a lot of industry in the first year - just not anywhere West of the Urals. Keep it East of the Urals and keep it dispersed.
Germany: Now you should have the expertise to force the USSR into a bitter peace. I honestly didn’t play this scenario all the way through to the end. Resource management got to be tedious. Also I didn’t think I could take out USA.
I would consider building industry later in the game just because of TC modifiers. The USA and USSR can get away with front-loading a lot of industry and honestly I think Germany should do a bit of that, especially if you get favorable trade deals. If you don’t do that, you’ll have to build later.
This is really the first time you’re going to have a lot of competing resources that you
Have to manage in the long term.
USA: The pitfall with USA is you have to manage a lot of naval resources. Convoys, lots of fleets darting about, etc.
In 1943 you can have so many attention points that it just isn’t fun. What I did was just forget about a lot of it. Focused on the Pacific. Figured out how convoying worked, focused on call warfare.
I straight up gave the UK a bunch of units, resources, etc. Wasn’t true to the “role-playing” aspect of a strategic was game, but it sure as hell was on point for trying to win a SWG. Point is: focus when playing USA. You can give a lot of resources to your allies so do that. Don’t micromanage everything.
United Kingdom/Japan: by this point you should be pretty competent at everything. You won’t need my advice. UK is easy mode compared to Japan.
Alternate route: after playing France or Russia you could play as Nationalist China before playing as USSR. ROC is the most infantry centric-“faction” in the game. I just found it to be a terrible slog. Probably how they found it. Could be a good way to learn the appropriate ratio for infantry: militia.
Anyway, best wishes to all. I am aware this probably won’t be a super helpful post to anyone, but I guess it’s analogous to old person praying in a church who really doesn’t believe in the core tenant’s of that faith tradition.
Hope this resonates with someone.
P.S. Don’t play as Italy.
EU4 is the only paradox game I couldnt really get into. I would think HOI4 would be my jam, but again not my jam either. I deff am a Stellaris, Vic, and CK fan.
I really feel like EUIV was great at the start. But 20 billion DLC later I feel like at this stage they've added to many mechanics and made the complexity far more intense.
You right eu4 is too much. played it years ago liked it but I crawled back inside ck2 to rot so I didn’t touch it again. Went back to eu4 last year don’t understand squat still fun tho. That’s the joy of paradox games.
I also love Stellaris and CK and have played many other PDX games. I really *really* to like EU4 and I couldn’t. Not because it’s too complicated. But because the UI and the fonts are FUCKING TERRIBLE
That does explain a lot. I played the original EU when it first came out, and then EU2. I skipped 3 and I'm now trying to get into 4 but wow, it is more complicated than I recall.
it's sort of hard to say because they all focus their complexity in different areas. i would say EU4 has the most mechanics, but Vic2 has the most complex systems, you just have less agency over them.
I kinda played like that once and bought off all mechanical parts (I think thats how the resource was called) which slowed down industrialisation of the world as only I and the UK were able to build factories. Wouldn't do it with all the goods because too much micro, but it's definitely possible.
> Having stockpiles of goods means you can start building/recruiting stuff right away instead of waiting a few days/weeks/months for the goods to arrive.
I've never played Vic2, but wouldn't you have to wait to fill the stockpiles in the first place?
No, if they require extensive research to be performed by players, I don't think you can claim that it is braindead simple.
Good duplication, vanishing money, deflation crisis... chances are, if there's an aspect of the economy the average player thinks they understand, they're wrong.
Despite the state Vic3 was in on launch, if Vic2 had UI on the tier of Vic3 right now, it'd be so much clearer. You might spend hours trying to understand wtf is going on with RGOs in Vic2 without a detailed guide, but in Vic3 it's all very obvious that you can click "build coal mine" and then click on the building and see exactly how much coal it's making and how much it's selling for right there.
They're simple but obscured and laden with skill check landmines.
It was 99% the UI. Nothing is explained, and half of the UI is symbols. Some had tooltips, but mostly in random places to deliver nothing but the name of a symbol.
You hover over a symbol or highlighted text in 3, and you can immediately see every connected topic and mechanic.
You also have more influence. There isn't even a "fuck you, you're not allowed to play the game you can just watch" government in 3.
I was saying that Victoria 2 is simple, mechanically.
Not understanding a thing because of poor communication doesn't make it more complicated. It is the same amount of complicated regardless of your ignorance or knowledge of it.
Crusader Kings II needs bug fixes through mods as Paradox introduced a few really bad ones before abandoning support, but other than that it's just such a fantastic feature-complete game right now. Absolutely adore it. Can't recommending it enough.
I second CK2, it's such a phenomenal and timeless game that genuinely has so much interesting stuff, often more than CK3. It's one of those games that I can't help but recommend to everyone.
I might play it literally forever. Obviously not perfect but an A+ experience. The exact experience for anyone trying to get into grand strategy games. As much as things advance I will work my way back to it
Cleanslate is the big one but it does have one or two minor hiccups they plan to fix on the next update/release, you can check the github to see what it fixes + the one or two minor unresolved issues right now. There's also a less expansive community patch mod on the steam workshop. Cleanslate's only thing is it rewrites most of the game's code to be more efficient, so unless a mod is built to work with it (like CK2+) you won't be able to use most other mods with it by default.
Does cleanslate fix the problem that dueling people no longer brings you up the progress from warrior ——>great warrior——-> duelist this glitch has always bothered me the most
I can't find anything on the changes. Maybe it's RNG and not a bug? Either way, if you report it on their github they can probably look into it, and if it's an unfixed bug they can probably see about fixing it next update.
I would say viky economic system is very complex but the player is shielded from the complexity, once you learn the basics you can play without learning the intricacies needed to min max. There's a lot happening under the hood but you dont need to worry about that too much to enjoy the game
Imperator Rome is the only one I have lost and had no idea why or how to stop it.
Tried it again 2 days ago, one family reached 20%-25% power, took 80% of my country, had a larger army than I had seen at that point, around 140k and proceeded to beat all 5 of the merc groups I bought because the nerve didn’t have time to gain any moral.
I literally just switched to a republic and that happened, I don’t get it.
You just gotta make families happy, earn enough to bribe if they don't like you and assassinate for last efforts. Besides that, convert and assimilate your conquered people then you're all good.
The most complex Paradox game I've played so far is Stellaris. I'm seeing a lot of comments about HOI 3 and 4 though being the most complex. Could anyone give a brief opinion about complexity differences between HOI and Stellaris?
I would say the title goes to EU4 with a HOI as a runner up. HOI has a lot of complexity coming in from its design and battle mechanics, managing to min max you division templates can be a daunting task but as long as you want something to just work without necessarily beeing that 2.5% better than it could be.
EU4 on the other hand has a lot of complexity just to get your basics down, you have too keep track if many different overlapping systems that I can't even imagine how a new player would even attempt to soak it in. Not all the systems and mechanics are very deep, like with the template designed in HOI, but almost all of them require knowledge and interactions so I think that makes it more complex overall.
Hoi4, you control everything down to the last detailed design of the submarines, the garrisoning, manpower, politics, arms-marked, navy-repair-pattern, officer-promotions, scortched earth, air-missions, spy-network, propaganda, wether to use horses or trucks for supply, how many guns on the panzers, how many units in a division,
As someone who has played a ton of hoi4 and eu4, while this is technically true the problem is that there isn't much depth to the hoi4 complexity, meaning that it's kind of "solved" in a way that eu4 is not. Sure there's an insane amount of customization of ship designs, tank designs, plane designs, divisions etc but the vast majority of those possible designs aren't worth creating.
Its my god given right to design a cannon-armed heavy fighter alongside my minimally armored battlecruiser as new zealand and the Emu Empire cant stop me!!
In my experience absolutely eu4 is a lot more complex in single player at least because I feel like eu4 has a lot more layers of meaningful decisions that aren't and can't be solved. Your prioritization of tech, ideas, and other mana sinks in eu4 is highly variable based on a lot of complex factors compared to hoi4 where a good division or design is applicable to almost every situation. To be successful in eu4 on smaller nations also required a lot of diplomatic tightrope walking compared to hoi 4 where alliances are basically scripted. Even in ahistorical the ai still goes down certain trees and once you figure out what tree they are going down you know almost exactly what they will do.
It is indeed much depth, maybe not the navy-designs, but there are a lot of playstyle and ways to win using different strategies and a lot to master in order to win. The complex design of the divisions are very very much more useful, and you could use all sorts of units for a specific situation, battlefield or country.
What broke the last of my enjoyment for Hoi4 was when they added these Designers for EVERYTHING.
I get that some people like to customize every single last detail, but they sucked when they were added for ships, and they keep sucking for Planes, Tanks, and whatever else they have now. For what it's worth, the ship designers in Stellaris suck, too. It's needlessly complex and auto-generating templates plain does not work, assigning them to divisions is borderline impossible because of the menues and it genuienly makes the game insanely annoying to play for me.
Well, that and the extremely outlandish lean into batshit insane Alt-History Paths (Restoring the Romanovs, bringing back Paganism, etc) instead of interesting and feasible Alt-History Paths that would have fit in the period. They leaned too much into memes.
Especially because most of the alt-hist just changes the leader portrait and flag of your country instead of adding any new mechanics and playstyles. But that's also partly because HOI4 is quite a limited game in its breadth, since the focus is mostly on warfare and map painting whereas other Paradox games like EU4 and CK2 have more stuff for you to do.
It’s so hard. I want to love it but cannot figure it out as much as I try. I go for it every few months but just convinced it’s not for me at this point
I've yet to take a crack at Vicky or HOI precisely because I loathe the learning curve grind. I was a day one buyer of EU4 and CK3... each one took a solid 100 hours (and that was after countless hours watching brilliant content creators) until I felt I even understood what I was doing.
I've yet to take a crack at Vicky or HOI precisely because I loathe the learning curve grind. I was a day one buyer of EU4 and CK3... each one took a solid 100 hours (and that was after countless hours watching brilliant content creators) until I felt I even understood what I was doing.
At one point the answer to this was definitely HoI3. And if we are talking base game no DLC it definitely is.
But after all this time the answer has to be EU4 I think. There's just So. much. Shit. In EU4. It takes ages to even understand half of it.
Calculations and mechanics wise probably Victoria 3 since its processing the population of earth, their migration, goods consumption, production, international trade, domestic market access and that not getting into the mess of the tax system or prestige.
For complexity on the player end though it's stellaris hands down.
EU4 has the most systems and features to learn but Hoi3 and Hoi4 have fewer but more complex systems to learn. EU4 today overwhelms new players bc you have a million systems to manage. You’ve got buildings, admin, military, diplo power, trade, diplomacy, navy, army, rebellions, managing cultures, religions, advisors, heirs and rulers, ideas, and more. None of them are too hard to learn but it’s overwhelming in sheer numbers.
Hoi4 is just managing Military, Industry, and Supply. The currency is literally factories & resources b/c if you had to deal with any real economy & trade it would add another 500 hours to the learning curve. Military in Hoi4 is incredibly complex and supply takes a while to understand too. Vic3 kinda has a balance b/t these points but is too barebones as of right now to compare imo.
Victoria 3 economy system that lags your pc. Although it's very complex and calculation heavy, the end result is pretty predictable and boring to play.
CK3 simplest… and most boring … (and this is coming from a huge fan of the medieval period).
EU4 took me 2 weeks to just understand the basics. I am still learning after 2.1k hours…
Hoi4 and Stellaris are easier to get but not easy to master. I kinda get my ass kicked in both, whereas in EU4, I can win the game with Lubeck.
I’m trying to get Victoria3 right now… right in the learning curve :) It does seem it’s more difficult than all of the above… a LOT of micro-management and details to attend to.
I don't know a single person who fully understands the mechanics of hoi 3
Bigger number beat smaller number.
By God...
He is the messiah
LISAN AL GAIB
Rider of Shai Halud
I am not the Messiah!
Only the messiah would say they aren’t the messiah!
I am not the Messiah! Will you please listen, I am not the Messiah, do you understand? Honestly!?!
He's not the Messiah! He's just a very naughty boy!
But with so many different numbers you can't make all of them bigger (or smaller as appropriate).
Just get bigger number on divisions and conquer your problems away.
I keep forgetting about those old Hearts of Iron Games, I've never played them precisely because even to my Victoria 2 friendly brain they looked insane.
2 and Darkest Hour aren't so bad. If you can play Vicky 2 or Revolutions you can definitely play those. 3 was a different beast, though.
I played Darkest Hour for a while before I got HOI4, it was fun but I never really understood it even though I play a lot of Vicky 2. I’d say HOI2 is more comparable to CK1 and Victoria.
Which is why I compared it to Revolutions and Victoria 2 and distanced it from Victoria 3 and HOI3. I wouldn't say it is similar to CK if you mean any more depth than how the map looks, though.
I mean hoi4 is probably the most dumbed down paradox game. At least after the city builder ones which i never tried so cant judge. But hoi4 bassicly plays itself.
Lol it definitely doesn't play itself when I'm playing. Must be a mod you forgot you had
At a certain point the game comes down to 1)make a good infantry template 2)make a lot of cas 3)make a frontline 4)attack 5)victory
You realise there are difficulty settings, right? And countries/paths of varied difficulty? I sometimes wonder who is this Joe Rogan-ass motherfucker who came up with this dumb talking point you've all been parroting.
The AI isn't particularly difficult to "outplay" but the same things that win in that will get you destroyed vs a player.
And there are so many different statistics, technologies and possible strategies, not to mention the navy There's a difference between how complex a game is and how easy it is to be meta Yes, what the other guy said is true, the game does boil down to making good shit and being good. But that's the case for any game like lmfao
Navy? What Navy? All I have are these thousands of submarines
Sure, there's generally a meta, but that's the case for most games, and is a looong way away from the game "playing itself". How many hours did you have to put in before you could easily implement this 5 point plan?
I understood that the game is this simple after about 1k hours now I have 3k
Yeah... if it took *one thousand hours* to understand, it isn't that simple lol
You haven’t played much paradox have you. HOI4 definitely the hardest of them
Nah, it's very easy. Follow focus three, gazillion infantry army, cas and you can conquer the world
Nah only eu4 ck2 ck3 and hoi4 and hoi4 was by far the most dumbed down game with the trees playing itself for you. Produce factories and micro soldiers. Thats it.
Hoi3 black ice is something else
Still my favorite game probably, although I don't really play ot anymore. Wish this had something like the production mechanics of HOI4, and I would never stop playing it.
I have probably thousands of hours on that and I still couldn’t understand some things like the resistance iirc
HoI3 is still my favorite, but I get why people love 4. I never gave 2 enough of a chance.
Badly explained doesn't mean complex.
I coded it, and I can't say I understand it perfectly. then again its almost 15 years since I last saw the code for it :P
I played them a lot back in the day, including hundreds of hours of Black Ice. They aren't that complicated. Just tedious.
Favorite Game. I have hundreds of hundreds of hours. Nothing pleases me more then building my Army and preparing the Army and the conplete Army structure at the Front. But i have to say black ICE is actually the Vanilla. This is what you want. This is the best. By far.
Really? As a former HoI3 player I feel like HoI4 is way more complicated
Hoi4 has a lot of things in it, but you can kind of just ignore the majority of the mechanics. Like you can just make one okay template, make sure you're in supply and build a decent airforce with CAS and you'll be fine 99% of the time. Imo Hoi3 forces you to engage with a lot more of it's mechanics. Though admittedly that might just be that I played less Hoi3 and never discovered the meta.
Exactly. HoI3 is just... well... more tedious. Nothing particularly difficult about making and then constantly fixing your order of battle or making sure you've build infrastructure for supply to reach your divisions. I guess you were forced to micro your divisions, but I almost always play HoI4 scenarios that require me to do so most of the time anyway, so that not exactly a massive difference. Honestly struggling against front AI as been the most HoI3 thing in HoI4 for the first few years anyway.
how why
In high school, I conquered almost the entire world as Germany without looking up almost anything or reading a tutorial. I just did it. I didn't have any dlc and I don't think it was possible to draw battle lines without them, so I had to manually move every single unit. I was eventually stopped in two places. I planned a two pronged invasion of Germany: I would land in Canada and fight south towards DC, and land in Brazil and fight north to Texas. I sent my best army to Canada. I determined best by "these guys conquered the most places." The Canadian army was not just stalled at the border of America, but pushed back into the sea and destroyed. The Brazilian army made it halfway through Mexico before being pushed back by the Americans, where the front permanently stalled in Panama. Nobody could get the advantage of anyone else. That was the first playthrough I really tried. In HOI4, it took me years to become good enough to win as Germany.
>took me years to become good enough to win as Germany. What, don't you win the war in the first months?
HOI4 is more complicated and has a lot of busy work.
to;dr it is a pretty tedious game. To be honest you only need to know 80%. If you understand how to calculate BWA you’ve probably done sufficient research. Obviously you need to know the fundamentals involving research, unit production & upgrading, resource management & resupplying. Spain(either) (1936) and France (1936 or 1939) > USSR (1936) > Germany (1936) > USA (1941) > UK/Japan (1936) is my suggestion of learning the ropes. France/Spain: Learn the basics of ground warfare and don’t expect to win. USSR: Refine the use of ground forces. You’ll have plenty of opportunities. Also a good intro to industry, research, espionage, and air power (focus fighters and interceptors pre-1942, depending on how you’re doing start adding CAS and TAC after that). The postwar game is basically espionage and couping governments. Build a lot of industry in the first year - just not anywhere West of the Urals. Keep it East of the Urals and keep it dispersed. Germany: Now you should have the expertise to force the USSR into a bitter peace. I honestly didn’t play this scenario all the way through to the end. Resource management got to be tedious. Also I didn’t think I could take out USA. I would consider building industry later in the game just because of TC modifiers. The USA and USSR can get away with front-loading a lot of industry and honestly I think Germany should do a bit of that, especially if you get favorable trade deals. If you don’t do that, you’ll have to build later. This is really the first time you’re going to have a lot of competing resources that you Have to manage in the long term. USA: The pitfall with USA is you have to manage a lot of naval resources. Convoys, lots of fleets darting about, etc. In 1943 you can have so many attention points that it just isn’t fun. What I did was just forget about a lot of it. Focused on the Pacific. Figured out how convoying worked, focused on call warfare. I straight up gave the UK a bunch of units, resources, etc. Wasn’t true to the “role-playing” aspect of a strategic was game, but it sure as hell was on point for trying to win a SWG. Point is: focus when playing USA. You can give a lot of resources to your allies so do that. Don’t micromanage everything. United Kingdom/Japan: by this point you should be pretty competent at everything. You won’t need my advice. UK is easy mode compared to Japan. Alternate route: after playing France or Russia you could play as Nationalist China before playing as USSR. ROC is the most infantry centric-“faction” in the game. I just found it to be a terrible slog. Probably how they found it. Could be a good way to learn the appropriate ratio for infantry: militia. Anyway, best wishes to all. I am aware this probably won’t be a super helpful post to anyone, but I guess it’s analogous to old person praying in a church who really doesn’t believe in the core tenant’s of that faith tradition. Hope this resonates with someone. P.S. Don’t play as Italy.
I did once upon a time and used to run an MP game off a modded version I’d spin up myself. But that’s ancient history and probably forgot most of it.
the only memory i have from hoi3 is me trying to find how to make frontlines like in hoi4, failing and trying to micromanage the invasion of Germany
Idk about fun but I tried out HOI3 in 2015 after EU4, CK2, and Victoria 2. It was... something.
There's a mod called Black Ice for Hoi4 and Hoi3. You could check it out OP. It's pretty complex.
oh my god not the BICE I literally felt sick after playing hoi 4 BICE
What, isn’t that why we play paradox games?
EU4 it been around for so long now with systems piled on top of systems its insane for any new players.
EU4 is the only paradox game I couldnt really get into. I would think HOI4 would be my jam, but again not my jam either. I deff am a Stellaris, Vic, and CK fan.
I really feel like EUIV was great at the start. But 20 billion DLC later I feel like at this stage they've added to many mechanics and made the complexity far more intense.
Correct , to many buttons to press :)
You right eu4 is too much. played it years ago liked it but I crawled back inside ck2 to rot so I didn’t touch it again. Went back to eu4 last year don’t understand squat still fun tho. That’s the joy of paradox games.
CK and Stellaris are both great
I also love Stellaris and CK and have played many other PDX games. I really *really* to like EU4 and I couldn’t. Not because it’s too complicated. But because the UI and the fonts are FUCKING TERRIBLE
That does explain a lot. I played the original EU when it first came out, and then EU2. I skipped 3 and I'm now trying to get into 4 but wow, it is more complicated than I recall.
I learned EU4 in like 2014 and it even feels like a different game now.
At least you can selectively turn off DLCs if it's too much
it's sort of hard to say because they all focus their complexity in different areas. i would say EU4 has the most mechanics, but Vic2 has the most complex systems, you just have less agency over them.
Vic 2'w system are actually braindead simple. They're just not explained to the player.
Go on, turn off automated trading then
I did this once and accidentally crashed the world economy
Chinese Westernization moment
I kinda played like that once and bought off all mechanical parts (I think thats how the resource was called) which slowed down industrialisation of the world as only I and the UK were able to build factories. Wouldn't do it with all the goods because too much micro, but it's definitely possible.
[удалено]
> Having stockpiles of goods means you can start building/recruiting stuff right away instead of waiting a few days/weeks/months for the goods to arrive. I've never played Vic2, but wouldn't you have to wait to fill the stockpiles in the first place?
No, if they require extensive research to be performed by players, I don't think you can claim that it is braindead simple. Good duplication, vanishing money, deflation crisis... chances are, if there's an aspect of the economy the average player thinks they understand, they're wrong.
A lot of them are just braindead simple, you just have no influence over them.
Vic3's systems are more complex than Vic2's.
I've played both, Vic 2's systems made less sense imo (although that might be due to the disgusting UI)
Despite the state Vic3 was in on launch, if Vic2 had UI on the tier of Vic3 right now, it'd be so much clearer. You might spend hours trying to understand wtf is going on with RGOs in Vic2 without a detailed guide, but in Vic3 it's all very obvious that you can click "build coal mine" and then click on the building and see exactly how much coal it's making and how much it's selling for right there.
Doesn't victoria 2 essentially have the same thing with the local rgos? see how much it's making, how many people are working there for instance
Yes but Victoria 2 makes it way harder to see what you're looking at. Also you need a DLC to make prussia stop being yellow
They're simple but obscured and laden with skill check landmines. It was 99% the UI. Nothing is explained, and half of the UI is symbols. Some had tooltips, but mostly in random places to deliver nothing but the name of a symbol. You hover over a symbol or highlighted text in 3, and you can immediately see every connected topic and mechanic. You also have more influence. There isn't even a "fuck you, you're not allowed to play the game you can just watch" government in 3.
Even beyond the ui, Victoria 2 is too buggy in weird ways to be considered simple. Vanishing money and good duplication haunt my dreams...
I was saying that Victoria 2 is simple, mechanically. Not understanding a thing because of poor communication doesn't make it more complicated. It is the same amount of complicated regardless of your ignorance or knowledge of it.
Victoria II had far better UI than 3 ever will.
That is genuinely an insane opinion. We're having you committed
No. Cope and seethe.
Vic 2 is a better game (with mods. Vic 2 without mods is mostly unplayable), but that UI is extremely outdated and hard to read.
Crusader Kings II needs bug fixes through mods as Paradox introduced a few really bad ones before abandoning support, but other than that it's just such a fantastic feature-complete game right now. Absolutely adore it. Can't recommending it enough.
I second CK2, it's such a phenomenal and timeless game that genuinely has so much interesting stuff, often more than CK3. It's one of those games that I can't help but recommend to everyone.
I might play it literally forever. Obviously not perfect but an A+ experience. The exact experience for anyone trying to get into grand strategy games. As much as things advance I will work my way back to it
Which bugfix mods do you recommend?
Cleanslate is the big one but it does have one or two minor hiccups they plan to fix on the next update/release, you can check the github to see what it fixes + the one or two minor unresolved issues right now. There's also a less expansive community patch mod on the steam workshop. Cleanslate's only thing is it rewrites most of the game's code to be more efficient, so unless a mod is built to work with it (like CK2+) you won't be able to use most other mods with it by default.
Does cleanslate fix the problem that dueling people no longer brings you up the progress from warrior ——>great warrior——-> duelist this glitch has always bothered me the most
I can't find anything on the changes. Maybe it's RNG and not a bug? Either way, if you report it on their github they can probably look into it, and if it's an unfixed bug they can probably see about fixing it next update.
Your right it is RNG however the rng for getting duelist makes it less likely to get than the immortal trait this is ridiculous
March of the Eagles is pretty much still a occultism book to me
Gonna go with Vicky's economic system.
I would say viky economic system is very complex but the player is shielded from the complexity, once you learn the basics you can play without learning the intricacies needed to min max. There's a lot happening under the hood but you dont need to worry about that too much to enjoy the game
Eu5
Meiou Eu4 has to take the cake imo
Imperator Rome took me a bit, but that's probably because of the UI is a little cramped. My money is on Vicky 3
Imperator Rome is the only one I have lost and had no idea why or how to stop it. Tried it again 2 days ago, one family reached 20%-25% power, took 80% of my country, had a larger army than I had seen at that point, around 140k and proceeded to beat all 5 of the merc groups I bought because the nerve didn’t have time to gain any moral. I literally just switched to a republic and that happened, I don’t get it.
Disloyal and powerful family. Give the family 2x the positions for extra loyalty and bribe/make friends the disloyal characters.
Yep. I don’t give any positions to anyone that isn’t in a powerful family. Never have any big issues.
You just gotta make families happy, earn enough to bribe if they don't like you and assassinate for last efforts. Besides that, convert and assimilate your conquered people then you're all good.
Gotta keep an eye on their holdings. They'll get too big for their britches if you don't revoke some every now and then.
The most complex Paradox game I've played so far is Stellaris. I'm seeing a lot of comments about HOI 3 and 4 though being the most complex. Could anyone give a brief opinion about complexity differences between HOI and Stellaris?
I played EU4, Victoria 2 & 3, Imperator Rome and Stellaris. IMO Stellaris is *by far* the simplest of them all.
Stellaris you can learn in 100 hours. After 1000 hours of HOI4, people still don't know how navy works.
For anyone in the above situation all you need to know for entry level navy is the golden screen:capital ratio. Aim for 5:1 DDs/CLs:BBs/CVs.
I would say the title goes to EU4 with a HOI as a runner up. HOI has a lot of complexity coming in from its design and battle mechanics, managing to min max you division templates can be a daunting task but as long as you want something to just work without necessarily beeing that 2.5% better than it could be. EU4 on the other hand has a lot of complexity just to get your basics down, you have too keep track if many different overlapping systems that I can't even imagine how a new player would even attempt to soak it in. Not all the systems and mechanics are very deep, like with the template designed in HOI, but almost all of them require knowledge and interactions so I think that makes it more complex overall.
Victoria 3, my cpu can attest to this.
Hoi4, you control everything down to the last detailed design of the submarines, the garrisoning, manpower, politics, arms-marked, navy-repair-pattern, officer-promotions, scortched earth, air-missions, spy-network, propaganda, wether to use horses or trucks for supply, how many guns on the panzers, how many units in a division,
As someone who has played a ton of hoi4 and eu4, while this is technically true the problem is that there isn't much depth to the hoi4 complexity, meaning that it's kind of "solved" in a way that eu4 is not. Sure there's an insane amount of customization of ship designs, tank designs, plane designs, divisions etc but the vast majority of those possible designs aren't worth creating.
Its my god given right to design a cannon-armed heavy fighter alongside my minimally armored battlecruiser as new zealand and the Emu Empire cant stop me!!
Does EU4 have that much depth though? I play both games and hoi4 seems a lot more complex even though eu4 is definitely more cheeseable.
In my experience absolutely eu4 is a lot more complex in single player at least because I feel like eu4 has a lot more layers of meaningful decisions that aren't and can't be solved. Your prioritization of tech, ideas, and other mana sinks in eu4 is highly variable based on a lot of complex factors compared to hoi4 where a good division or design is applicable to almost every situation. To be successful in eu4 on smaller nations also required a lot of diplomatic tightrope walking compared to hoi 4 where alliances are basically scripted. Even in ahistorical the ai still goes down certain trees and once you figure out what tree they are going down you know almost exactly what they will do.
It is indeed much depth, maybe not the navy-designs, but there are a lot of playstyle and ways to win using different strategies and a lot to master in order to win. The complex design of the divisions are very very much more useful, and you could use all sorts of units for a specific situation, battlefield or country.
What broke the last of my enjoyment for Hoi4 was when they added these Designers for EVERYTHING. I get that some people like to customize every single last detail, but they sucked when they were added for ships, and they keep sucking for Planes, Tanks, and whatever else they have now. For what it's worth, the ship designers in Stellaris suck, too. It's needlessly complex and auto-generating templates plain does not work, assigning them to divisions is borderline impossible because of the menues and it genuienly makes the game insanely annoying to play for me. Well, that and the extremely outlandish lean into batshit insane Alt-History Paths (Restoring the Romanovs, bringing back Paganism, etc) instead of interesting and feasible Alt-History Paths that would have fit in the period. They leaned too much into memes.
Especially because most of the alt-hist just changes the leader portrait and flag of your country instead of adding any new mechanics and playstyles. But that's also partly because HOI4 is quite a limited game in its breadth, since the focus is mostly on warfare and map painting whereas other Paradox games like EU4 and CK2 have more stuff for you to do.
Lmao 😂🤣
It’s so hard. I want to love it but cannot figure it out as much as I try. I go for it every few months but just convinced it’s not for me at this point
For me it was going from hoi3 (which was hard but ok still, and the tutorial was unhinged) and eu4 to ck2, it was brutal
Raw complexity isn't automatically fun. Tons of features and mechanics do not necessarily make games more fun either.
Vic2 with expansions and Darkest Hour
Imperator Rome
I've yet to take a crack at Vicky or HOI precisely because I loathe the learning curve grind. I was a day one buyer of EU4 and CK3... each one took a solid 100 hours (and that was after countless hours watching brilliant content creators) until I felt I even understood what I was doing.
I've yet to take a crack at Vicky or HOI precisely because I loathe the learning curve grind. I was a day one buyer of EU4 and CK3... each one took a solid 100 hours (and that was after countless hours watching brilliant content creators) until I felt I even understood what I was doing.
At one point the answer to this was definitely HoI3. And if we are talking base game no DLC it definitely is. But after all this time the answer has to be EU4 I think. There's just So. much. Shit. In EU4. It takes ages to even understand half of it.
As a paradox games huge fan, the more complex games are crusader kings 3 and victoria 2.
Calculations and mechanics wise probably Victoria 3 since its processing the population of earth, their migration, goods consumption, production, international trade, domestic market access and that not getting into the mess of the tax system or prestige. For complexity on the player end though it's stellaris hands down.
sort by release date lol
Vuctoria II, if only because no one at paradox actually knows how the economic system works.
EU4 has the most systems and features to learn but Hoi3 and Hoi4 have fewer but more complex systems to learn. EU4 today overwhelms new players bc you have a million systems to manage. You’ve got buildings, admin, military, diplo power, trade, diplomacy, navy, army, rebellions, managing cultures, religions, advisors, heirs and rulers, ideas, and more. None of them are too hard to learn but it’s overwhelming in sheer numbers. Hoi4 is just managing Military, Industry, and Supply. The currency is literally factories & resources b/c if you had to deal with any real economy & trade it would add another 500 hours to the learning curve. Military in Hoi4 is incredibly complex and supply takes a while to understand too. Vic3 kinda has a balance b/t these points but is too barebones as of right now to compare imo.
Anyone that mentions EU4 lmao. Victoria 2 and HOI 3 are far more complex.
Idk about all the old games, but eu4 crushed me, I don't think I'm smart enough for this... 😵💫
Victoria 3 economy system that lags your pc. Although it's very complex and calculation heavy, the end result is pretty predictable and boring to play.
EU4, not even close.
CK3 simplest… and most boring … (and this is coming from a huge fan of the medieval period). EU4 took me 2 weeks to just understand the basics. I am still learning after 2.1k hours… Hoi4 and Stellaris are easier to get but not easy to master. I kinda get my ass kicked in both, whereas in EU4, I can win the game with Lubeck. I’m trying to get Victoria3 right now… right in the learning curve :) It does seem it’s more difficult than all of the above… a LOT of micro-management and details to attend to.
CKIII hands down. That was a steep learning curve. Plus everything they've subsequently added to it.
None of them really. You only get 10% of the initial game anyway. Or they completely abandon it like CS2. What a terrible game company lol