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[Paradox Interactive] Divine Wind finally on Steam, NEW HoI3 expansion announced
Michael H
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This is a catch-all thread for all things Paradox Interactive. Have you ever been playing Civ IV and thought to yourself, “Are they taking barometric pressure into account when determining the effectiveness of my bombers?” Do you wish Civ V had slightly worse graphics? Do you wish Microsoft Excel had slightly better graphics? Have you ever wanted to see Switzerland realize their true military potential? If so, this is the thread for you!
Paradox Interactive is a developer and publisher of many fine strategy games. Most of their games are historical simulations, allowing the player to pick almost any country throughout the course of history and guide them as they see fit. Have the British conquer the Iberian peninsula or have Prussia expand the way you thought they should have. The games are mostly built on the EUIII engine (some, like CK, are still on an older engine but will be updated soon) and each covers a specific time period. Rather than being the same game in a different time period, each has its own focus and theme:
Europa Universalis: Rome - 280 BC to 27 AD (or CE, if you prefer), Mediterranean fun
Crusader Kings - 1066 to 1482, focuses on your crazy royal family and the plots therein
Europa Universalis III - 1453 to 1879, has the most expansions
Victoria II - 1836 to 1936, the Second Industrial Revolution! Steampunk before it was cool! Factories! Tophats!
Hearts of Iron III - 1936 to 1948, World War II. All war, all the time
In addition to developing these gems, PI publishes all sorts of non-strategy games, like the class-based MP shooter Old Timey Team Fortress 2, er, Lead & Gold, and Mount & Blade: Warband (which has an upcoming expansion that includes muskets!).
How in the holy hell do I play these games?
The learning curve for either of these games can be a bit steep, so prepare to do it wrong a lot before getting it right. There are in-game tutorials, but the information they give is painted in broad strokes. A big stumbling point for most new players is that most of your goals will be self-imposed. There's a score at the end of the game where you are ranked relative to everyone else, but between the start of the game and the end of the game what happens is up to you. Most of the games have quick start manuals to get you going, and there are wikis linked below. RTFM.
I don’t have a manual; I bought these from Steam or another download service!
That’s okay, most documentation is available from Paradox on their forums. The trick is that you need to register an account on their forums, and then register each game’s CD keys on their forums. (“My Games/Registrations” is at the top of the forum.) You can get the CD key for your Steam-purchased games by right-clicking on the game in your Steam library and selecting “View Game CD Key”. Alternatively, Steam will display it every damn time you start the game until you ask it politely to stop.
What I might end up doing is just hosting the files on my website and putting up some links. I’m sure that violates some sort of terms of use blah blah but whatever. Until then, here’s the links (which will work once you register on the forums and register your games.
Hearts of Iron III Resources
Hearts of Iron III Manual
Hearts of Iron III Quick Start
Hearts of Iron III Strategy Guide
Hearts of Iron III Strategies (Includes Newbie Guide)
Hearts of Iron III Quick Start
Hearts of Iron III Strategy Guide
Hearts of Iron III Strategies (Includes Newbie Guide)
Europa Universalis III Resources
Europa Universalis III Manual
It looks like you get this from PI via Gamers Gate (which is lame), but it’s available at Replacement Docs.
Europa Universalis III Strategy Guide
Europa Universalis Strategies (Includes Newbie Guide)]
It looks like you get this from PI via Gamers Gate (which is lame), but it’s available at Replacement Docs.
Europa Universalis III Strategy Guide
Europa Universalis Strategies (Includes Newbie Guide)]
Victoria II Resources
One of your best references is the PI forums, so registering is always a good idea. There’s tons of information and some great developer diaries and other amusing tidbits. In order to get tech support and see all of the available forums, make sure you register your game's key in the "My Games" tab. If you don't, you'll be missing out on all the juicy bits!
Now that I have all these cool documents, I would love to reference them while playing. How do I turn off full screen mode? There’s no setting in the graphics options!
Full screen is easily enabled, though not “officially supported” by PI. For both EUIII and HOI III, simply go to the installation directory and open “settings.txt”. In there change “fullscreen” to “no”. That’s all there is to it. While you’re in there you can set your screen resolution to your preferred setting.
These seem like laptop-friendly games, how can I play on both my desktop and laptop?
Syncing is easy, just set up a redirect using Winbolic to a Dropbox folder. PI conveniently has a dedicated “saved games” folder, so the amount of data put into Dropbox is minimal. I have both games set up this way, so I know it can be done! You can find instructions on ddgamer to get set up.
Michael H on
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Ha ha.
Great OP - Bravo!
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
Inflation is the devil and must be avoided at all costs.
I think the key to my progress in the game was realizing that a large part of strategy is knowing when to do nothing. If you try to keep yourself occupied all the time you'll be destroyed in badboy wars by 1450
It is quite fun, although my blob of 1918 infantry get their ass handed to them whenever I try and attack Europe, and I end up reloading.
Im considering doing a Mexico game of Victoria right now, I think that would be pretty fun.
So one thing I've noticed is that the characters seem to be dying off much faster than they are being born. Does that seem right?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
I think before some patches you could blitz to a capital province, take it, then force the nation to become a vassal. With this exploit I was able to subjugate the whole of Western & Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, and Northern Africa. My nation? Lorraine. :P
When I declared war against someone my computer would scream as hundreds of nations all acted at once.
I tried playing Hearts of Iron 2 first, but it was just to much for me at the time. However EU was simply enough for me and taught me quite a lot that later helped me get in to Hearts of Iron later on.
Speaking of Hearts of Iron, how is HoI3 nowadays? I know Paradox games are pretty rough when released, I imagine by now enough patches/mods are out for HoI3 to smooth things?
The expansions vastly improve the base game, I really wouldn't recommend playing without them. You can get by without the most recent one (Heir to the Throne), but I would recommend picking it up anyway as it adds a lot to the experience (making wars a lot more interesting primarily)
Edit: More specifically declaration and resolution of wars, not the actual process of fighting wars. I was watching someone play without HttT and the war declaration process just seems so lacking in comparison.
Basically, I vassalized the HRE, and half of Europe immediately declares war on me. The other half are my vassals, and jump in on my side. Thank god Austria joined my side, and France decided to remain neutral. About 2 months later, I had enough Imperial Authority to form the HRE. Despite the horrifying wars, I now control almost everything east of France and west of Muscovy.
So, yeah, get HttT. It makes a good game so much better.
Tanks. Just pump out a load of tanks. Maybe some fighters to get Air Superiority. Advance your Steel Wall inexorably towards the Atlantic.
I thought I'd be ok with me HoI experience but apparently not.
France wasn't already a superpower? That's so... unlike EU3.
I'll get destroyed, but it'll be so fun.
Robots Will Be Our Superiors (Blog)
http://michaelhermes.com
And Disney World is nowhere in sight.
In my limited experience I found HoI3 more enjoyable. I'm not sure what the census is amongst the hardcore however.
There are so many new ways to screw up!
Robots Will Be Our Superiors (Blog)
http://michaelhermes.com
I need a word that means a super superpower. A megapower. An unstoppable natural force.
I'd be up for a multiplayer game. I'm still learning the ropes, it would be cool to have other people.
I think so. I think if everyone chooses a time speed that's what it goes to.
edit- The very best thing about it is the new map.
It is the sex.
So hard, but I love this game...
Of course, if you build a strong enough navy, you can trap their armies on one side of the Bosporous (preferably the Turkish side) and conquer half their empire...
That's one of the things that really irritates me about EU3 and EU3:Rome. They have completely locked away one of the most fascinating civilizations in Europe: Byzantium. Byzantium was the 'new Rome' from about 500 AD to about 1300 AD. If it weren't for all the knowledge that the Byzantines had kept from their days in the Roman Empire, there never would have been a Renaissance.
At their height, the Byzantines controlled an equivalent amount of the world as the Romans had. In the end they were more Greek and Asian and less Italian then they started out to be, but that's part of what makes them interesting.
Lately I've taken to attempting middle eastern nations, but all the revolts along with expansionist Ottomans and Timurids make it difficult to get a good start.
Playing as one of the HRE minors and trying to unify Germany is always fun in my book.
The Magna Mundi mod also breaks Japan up in to numerous bickering nation-states and trying to unify that is also entertaining for me.
Heck, one time I tried to take a Native American tribe and colonize Europe. I had to edited their tech group to "Greek" I believe, otherwise they never got ships IIRC. Yeah, it did not turn out well for me. :P
The only tiresome thing about them is the trade/CoT model. For the most part, if you're not at war, you can keep building your savings for a manufactory, preparing for war, or waiting to adjust a policy slider. But there are constant interruptions to send merchants to CoTs to compete for trade revenues and monopolies. Micromanage this aspect of the game, and you can easily alter the map of Europe beyond recognition. Leave it to the AI, and your empire will instead be terminally impovershed.
IIRC you need to have a Conquistidor unit on the ship and have them make landfall.
But it has been awhile since I played, so I may be mistaken.
Paradox games are famous for their mods (even Mount+Blade which they picked up for publishing).
I prefer my own proprietary mod in HOI2/AoD (the files transfer between them incredibly easily), but I used to use Historical Stony Road.
Victoria: An Empire Under the Sun has the Victoria Improvement Project mod, which seems to be the universal adapter (unless you like taking your game to HOI2).
EU3's big mod is Magna Mundi - whose manual will likely teach you more about history than all of the other games you've ever played...combined. Plus it'll probably give you the most historically confining game available if you've got Napoleon's Ambition.
Crusader Kings has the Deus Vult Improvement Pack, which helps prevent weird things like France being ruled by the Muslim king of Egypt or Sweden having a bunch of Berber vassals (plus you can enact some cognatic primogeniture (of dubious usefulness to the player)). Although EU3 is on a different game system now, there are applications for going from CK->EU3 and EU3->Victoria (the original progression was CK->EU2->Victoria->HOI2, letting you play from 1066 to 1964...theoretically).
Also I managed a war of total attrition against Carthage but they only appealed for a white peace over and over and lowered their stabillity down to -3 rejecting my pretty fair offers. Did that have something to do with Carthage itself being occupied or the fact we were both exhausted or were they just being stubborn for some random reason?
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
The two normal 'stepping stone' routes to the New World that I frequently used are:
Canaries -> Cape Verde -> any of the Caribbean Islands or the coast of Brazil
Iceland -> Greenland -> Newfoundland
Odds are for the Canaries/Iceland you'll have to get military access, but that's usually not too hard.
Just win battles, I think. It's been a little while since I played Rome, so I'm not certain.
About exploring, as Ireland I tried to explore, but any ship I sent out seemed to be in terrible shape. By the time I was reaching the caribbean, I could only poke out one more sea zone a trip before I had to turn back if I wanted to keep the ship. I gave up on that and decided to focus on being a regional power. Micromanaging the merchants was a pain, so I just started invading things. I had most of Africa as my vassal for a while, but I sold the provinces for heaps of money. So now I just kind of sit, and occasionally England swings by to stomp my ass.
I think we should start a multiplayer game. What game would everyone want, if you've got a preference?
Should also be mentioned that it's more for people prefering "realism" to empire building. Going from 2 to 50 provinces in MM and playing a viable game is pretty much fiction.
Also, we're on page two and nobody has said it, so here goes: