Which is what they said about Victoria II.
Paradox Interactive games
- Thread starter Maniacal
- Start date
You'll see.....
Tacit_Exit
King
CK2 Demo is out.
NedimNapoleon
Weird Little Human
Sengoku is really nice, just got it.
Maniacal
the green Napoleon
Demo is out: http://www.fileplanet.com/224596/220000/fileinfo/Crusader-Kings-II-Demo
EDIT: And it is pretty damn awesome so far, it also has many design elements that were first tested out in Sengoku.
EDIT: And it is pretty damn awesome so far, it also has many design elements that were first tested out in Sengoku.
I've played it for about 4 hours today. Started as Sardinia-Piedmont, became a great power in the early 1840s, got Italy in my sphere but no early unification because the diplomacy has sucked (Austria allied with the UK, ouch!). Instead, I snagged Tunis, then Tripoli, Libya, and Cyprus from the Turks. I got the redshirt unification in 1867-68, recruited tons of troops, and now I'm in a massive war taking Lombardy and Venice from Austria. They got Britain on their side, but I've drug Prussia and Russia in on mine, so it's a pretty fair fight at the moment.
No colonization yet, USA couldn't take its MD cores but managed to win the Civil War (happened 1860-1863), Ottomans and Spain fell out of GP spots fairly quickly (as usual), nothing else really major has happened, now that I think about it.
I'm liking the foreign investment tool (I got just enough of a bonus to snag the Papal States from the French SoI with railroads, it was tough). I have been successfully suppressing nationalists in the conquered North Africa territories. The new generals w/ prestige are pretty cool, although my most prestigious commander only has about 8 points because I do more siege work and relatively little fighting. Industrialization feels like v1.4, not too much has changed there.
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
CK2 is sexy as hell, but the demo is too limited.
Polycrates
Emperor
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,288
I'm not sure how to compare AHD, because I haven't played vanilla Vicky 2 in a while, and when I did the economic/political situation was hopelessly broken and spent most of its time collapsing on itself in a horrible mess.
I'm up to 1900 as Argentina, spent the first little while using my big military caste to hoover up Uruguay and Paraguay and southern Bolivia, then fostered upper-class liberalism as much as possible to make a clean transition to a borderline democracy, then rushed through a whole horde of political reforms with some really lucky timing. My liberals were a bit liberal for their own good, extending voting rights to my conservative lower classes who then booted them back out, but not before the political freedom started sending hordes and hordes of new immigrants to my shores. With enough money to set low taxes on the rich and low tariffs, the capitalists then started absolutely going to town with new factory and rail investment which barely even needed my investment to help them along, and the new literate immigrants started filling them en masse and filling my coffers very very full. They took me to 7th most industrialised and with the 6th highest prestige from my little military adventures, I'm now ranking #6 and starting to drag my neighbours into my sphere while my literacy and tech levels skyrocket. I'm trying to get more of my people to turn red and enact some social reforms, but there's still a big agricultural population in my still-profitable RGOs and they're resolutely tory so it might take a while. Anyway I don't see myself becoming #1 before the end (I'm not colonising and I'm not doing as much military expansion as I could), but it's been fun!
AHD clearly still has a few oddities (the collapse of the middle class of any country that can't get tea, the wholesale loss of clergy, and some oddities with population growth and migration) but the whole system feels so much more solid. Some countries have collapsed in bankruptcy (including Greece) and there have been painful downturns in certain industries at times, but pretty much as you'd expect, and the world economy has seemed to keep on trucking well enough. Artisans actually seem profitable at the start now, rather than just a useless source of rebellion. Rebellions seem to be more of an occasional big uprising threat rather than a constant nuisance, which is very cool. And capitalists seem to act sensibly now - I was laissez faire for a while and it was actually very powerful.
The requirement for a casus belli for declaring war works really nicely, I think. If you don't have a CB, you have to spend a while manufacturing justification for one, which takes time and opens you up to being found out and getting a pretty big infamy hit, while giving them warning time to mobilise the troops and drag in some allies.
The political movements seem cool too, though I'm still not 100% clear on how they function. They seem to increase the chance to get reform through conservatives but with the chance to turn into rebels if they're ignored for long enough. In any case, it seems more nuanced than rebel threat or nothing.
Anyway I would classify it as "actually very playable" now, though it could clearly still do with a relatively minor balancing patch or two.
EDIT: Also the new loading splashscreens include undoubtedly the very worst painting of Abraham Lincoln ever made, it is truly astonishing.
I'm up to 1900 as Argentina, spent the first little while using my big military caste to hoover up Uruguay and Paraguay and southern Bolivia, then fostered upper-class liberalism as much as possible to make a clean transition to a borderline democracy, then rushed through a whole horde of political reforms with some really lucky timing. My liberals were a bit liberal for their own good, extending voting rights to my conservative lower classes who then booted them back out, but not before the political freedom started sending hordes and hordes of new immigrants to my shores. With enough money to set low taxes on the rich and low tariffs, the capitalists then started absolutely going to town with new factory and rail investment which barely even needed my investment to help them along, and the new literate immigrants started filling them en masse and filling my coffers very very full. They took me to 7th most industrialised and with the 6th highest prestige from my little military adventures, I'm now ranking #6 and starting to drag my neighbours into my sphere while my literacy and tech levels skyrocket. I'm trying to get more of my people to turn red and enact some social reforms, but there's still a big agricultural population in my still-profitable RGOs and they're resolutely tory so it might take a while. Anyway I don't see myself becoming #1 before the end (I'm not colonising and I'm not doing as much military expansion as I could), but it's been fun!
AHD clearly still has a few oddities (the collapse of the middle class of any country that can't get tea, the wholesale loss of clergy, and some oddities with population growth and migration) but the whole system feels so much more solid. Some countries have collapsed in bankruptcy (including Greece) and there have been painful downturns in certain industries at times, but pretty much as you'd expect, and the world economy has seemed to keep on trucking well enough. Artisans actually seem profitable at the start now, rather than just a useless source of rebellion. Rebellions seem to be more of an occasional big uprising threat rather than a constant nuisance, which is very cool. And capitalists seem to act sensibly now - I was laissez faire for a while and it was actually very powerful.
The requirement for a casus belli for declaring war works really nicely, I think. If you don't have a CB, you have to spend a while manufacturing justification for one, which takes time and opens you up to being found out and getting a pretty big infamy hit, while giving them warning time to mobilise the troops and drag in some allies.
The political movements seem cool too, though I'm still not 100% clear on how they function. They seem to increase the chance to get reform through conservatives but with the chance to turn into rebels if they're ignored for long enough. In any case, it seems more nuanced than rebel threat or nothing.
Anyway I would classify it as "actually very playable" now, though it could clearly still do with a relatively minor balancing patch or two.
EDIT: Also the new loading splashscreens include undoubtedly the very worst painting of Abraham Lincoln ever made, it is truly astonishing.
Thorn
King
I'll second the above. It's a big improvement over plain VictoriaII. I can't set my economy sliders all to the right anymore. The justify war cause is worth the price of admission alone. Of course, I'm a little biased. I loved the original Victoria.
And on a side note: If you have the Crusader Kings II demo you can play as anyone! Pick a country on the map you want to play and click it. Then click a character on the left side. Hit play then quickly click on the country you chose to play while it's loading. Have fun! I'm off to play York...
And on a side note: If you have the Crusader Kings II demo you can play as anyone! Pick a country on the map you want to play and click it. Then click a character on the left side. Hit play then quickly click on the country you chose to play while it's loading. Have fun! I'm off to play York...
Oh, that's Lincoln?
Civ'ed
I ain't gotta explain a thing
My game as united Italy has been rough--although I have solid prestige (got the lead in colonization) and one of the best armies (whipped the Austrians pretty bad for my cores after unification), my industry is utter crap.
I still can't figure out whether or not it's just how my country is run, but basics like canned food, ammunition, wine, even cement just aren't profitable. I'm massively changing it around, though, with a reactionary party in power. More furniture, electrical gear, cars, telephones, fuel, and airplanes. Those are making a pretty sweet profit and are salvaging my crappy industrial score.
I'll take anything positive.
It tends to vary, though. I'll see something like fertilizer making decent enough money nowadays (around 2k profit with a level 1 factory) for months, then it plummets into negative world. I'm not watching closely enough to see if other nations are bringing factories online, etc. Fabric seems to be a great basic factory type, it's been profitable the whole game, but my dummy capitalists seem to like losing all their money on artillery and canned food instead.
I'm trying to go communist or fascist to get control over the political realm as well as the economics. Eff this freedom stuff.
Ergo Sum
Prince
A few notes about AHD from my Austria game, 4-5 hours and 25 years in -
- The new interface is much snappier and more fluid, makes playing a little more pleasing. Vanilla was pretty jerky by comparison so I'm glad to see it improved. Hopefully it's not too taxing on the system, I'm hoping PDM for AHD won't slow down too much. Also watching battles, sorting armies and maneuvering units is significantly easier.
- Economy seems better balanced, maybe even better than PDM. Military maintenance actually squeezed my budget, and I haven't gotten to the point where I can buy anything I want. State capitalism is also less OP. Obviously we'll have to wait for PDM to work out the middle class issues and such, but it seems promising. Also I thought we would get percentages to assess factory productivity instead of numbers? I was excited for that, seemed much more useful.
- Historical accuracy seems to have gone down a bit, France, Austria and Russia all experienced negative population growth in the first 25 years, even after discovering Medicine. Maybe this is because of high CON? Again, we'll have to wait for PDM to fix this. Also I'm constantly spammed with Romanian/Czech/etc. Poet and farmers events, maybe historical but really peeving.
Looking forward to AHD PDM! CK2 sounds interesting too.
- The new interface is much snappier and more fluid, makes playing a little more pleasing. Vanilla was pretty jerky by comparison so I'm glad to see it improved. Hopefully it's not too taxing on the system, I'm hoping PDM for AHD won't slow down too much. Also watching battles, sorting armies and maneuvering units is significantly easier.
- Economy seems better balanced, maybe even better than PDM. Military maintenance actually squeezed my budget, and I haven't gotten to the point where I can buy anything I want. State capitalism is also less OP. Obviously we'll have to wait for PDM to work out the middle class issues and such, but it seems promising. Also I thought we would get percentages to assess factory productivity instead of numbers? I was excited for that, seemed much more useful.
- Historical accuracy seems to have gone down a bit, France, Austria and Russia all experienced negative population growth in the first 25 years, even after discovering Medicine. Maybe this is because of high CON? Again, we'll have to wait for PDM to fix this. Also I'm constantly spammed with Romanian/Czech/etc. Poet and farmers events, maybe historical but really peeving.
Looking forward to AHD PDM! CK2 sounds interesting too.
Strictly speaking, France shouldn't grow all that much. Their population figures were fairly stagnant in the 19th century. They addressed this by slapping a negative pop growth modifier on France, not sure if the immigration mechanics are taking too many people out in your game. I didn't check the other majors' populations, I should do that to see how historical it was.
Interface is definitely smoother, and the economy seems like it is working (no obvious shortages). I just have to get the hang of it.
Interface is definitely smoother, and the economy seems like it is working (no obvious shortages). I just have to get the hang of it.
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