Paradox Interactive - Spectacle Strategy?

[thestor]

Many years ago, Yahtzee coined the phrase “Spectacle Fighter” for fighting games that focused on looking cool, all too often at the expense of engaging gameplay.

Paradox Interactive is known among its fans for their deep and complex strategy games, namely the franchises Hearts of Iron, Victoria, Europa Univeralis and Crusader Kings. However, I worry the publisher is moving away from making deep, admittedly complex games towards, well, spectacle strategy game, filled with features that sound good but are poorly implemented and feel more bolted on.

Two games that make me worry:

Stellaris:
This I bought and played, and extensively so. I liked it very much and still do, for a strategy game, it offers amazing opportunities to roleplay your empire from being a threat to the rest of the galaxy that gives the Dalek a run for being THE evil empire to a benevolent savior that would make Star Trek’s Federation weep at their own wickedness, I mostly enjoy what different backgrounds and politics you can give your empire.
But the gameplay has major issues and frankly, it has had the same issues too long. Planetary Management was improved but towards the end, it remains a tedious chose while combat remains lackluster, as there just isn’t much strategy besides throwing your fleet at the enemies. And while this remains unfixed, DLC after DLC is churned out adding archaeological dig-sites, federation mechanics etc., admittedly cool looking but doing nothing for the core gameplay.

Hearts of Iron 4:
This I have neither bought nor played, so my impression comes from what I read on the net. I have played Hearts of Iron 2, especially Arsenal of Democracy and Darkest Hour. I enjoyed these, but I am not sure I would enjoy HoI 4 by comparison. Again, I see a flood of DLCs and on the forums, people seem to complain about the same issues for a long long time now, so it looks suspiciously similar to my Stellaris experience above. But maybe someone here plays the game and can give some first hand-experience?

And what about the other three franchises, Victoria, Europa Univeralis and Crusader Kings? I played a the first Victoria and read that Victoria 2 was poorly received among the fans, is this true and if so, why? I got Europa Universalis IV and went back to III because the never-ending stream of DLCs made the game’s wiki rather useless, so I am waiting for Paradox to be finished with the game. Crusader King’s I have never played, so I am curious how CKIII compares to the predecessor.

 

[Satinavian]

Stellaris is a really good game but really has performance issues. Issues they have not been able to fix for years. I think they just gave up on that and now produce gimmics that don't change the core campaign much but allow to do runs that are closer to specific science fiction scenarios. The reason just might be that they failed again and again to make the game run smoother and have now given up, letting hardware improvements handle the rest.

Never got far into HoI or Victoria.

CKIII is... disappointing. It still feels as if CKII was more fun with more things to do. I know that is unfair as i habve pretty much all CKII expansions, but still. Especcially early game with less stuff to build is somewhat boring. I'll wait for the next big expansion next month to give it another chance.

EU IV is probably my favourite game of all time. It is also basically done. They already said so. But it was years ago that i played it vanilla.

 

[Agema]

Paradox Interactive is known among its fans for their deep and complex strategy games, namely the franchises Hearts of Iron, Victoria, Europa Univeralis and Crusader Kings. However, I worry the publisher is moving away from making deep, admittedly complex games towards, well, spectacle strategy game, filled with features that sound good but are poorly implemented and feel more bolted on.

I fear a lot of this relates to the business model: when you start totting up the total cost including DLC they are extortionate. But DLC needs to offer "new stuff", and it can't be important game mechanic otherwise people won't buy the base game. I know they have updated a lot of mechanics on Stellaris, but...

I did leave Stellaris for a long gap a few years ago, came back and found they'd made even more resources (consumer goods or something?) and buildings. Well, okay - but adding this complexity is I think as you say more like an additional chore than it is real depth or better coded opponents.

 

[Bedinsis]

I thought the emphasis of Spectacle Fighters were that the objective was doing things in a spectacular way, without any statement on "engaging gameplay" being made? Since after all, a combat system is gameplay, so is it creative enough it can be engaging.

The only paradox title I've played is Ck2. It was a long time ago I last played it, but once upon a time I called my favourite of all time. I've also watched enough Victoria II let's plays that I probably could run a decent campaign if I were to acquire it.

I can raise my own issues about ck2. For instance, back when they made the Sword of Islam expansion with playable Muslims as a selling point they were a company that one could expect to churn out perhaps three major expansions to their titles, so if the mechanics of Muslims were less fun/accurate it might not be a solid core gameplay loop but it could at least from a gameplay perspective be argued that they provided variety. I don't like playing as a Muslim, the way one has to keep track of the entire family so no one turns Decadent and causes rebellions to occur feels ridiculous and tedious. And I suspect I am not alone in that since the other aspects that were unique to Muslims (multiple spouses, going on a hajj to Mecca) were mechanics that eventually was brought over to other groups (oh, hey, pagans can now have concubines, and won't you know it: Christians can now go on a pilgrimage) whereas the Decadence system remained exclusively Muslim, and they did not bring it along to ck3.

As a minor mechanic to provide flavor that makes sense, but ck2 turned out to be a beast with a total of 15 major expansions released. And if they had removed or reworked the Decadence mechanic then the entire game balance could be upended and the people that actually like the Decadence system would rightly be angry that something they paid for is no longer part of the experience. What's more, someone at Paradox probably sat down and weighted the amount of engagement playing as a Muslim generated contra other mechanics and weighted that against how much new engagement would be generated by a Decadence overhaul and against the effort needed to overhaul it and came to the conclusion that it was not worth doing. So the mechanic remained. In a way I suspect similar to how you described player issues with Stellaris and HoI4.

I don't know about Victoria II being poorly received. Ahead of development of the title one of the leads said that he'd shave his head if it turned a profit, which it did, so I suspect Victoria I was poorly received and Victoria II was not.

 

[meiam]

Stellaris had a rough couple of year where the content added was just completly uninteresting (culminating with the last big DLC adding a whole gameplay around being a genocidal empire, as if there wasn't already multiple way to do this and it wasn't already the strongest way to play). But in the last year it seems they finally realise the problem with that aspect and now they've spending a good amount of time toward improving older mechanic. They've finally redid the tradition trees, they're giving another look at planatery management and they're tackling the poor AI and end game performance.

 

[thestor]

Stellaris had a rough couple of year where the content added was just completly uninteresting (culminating with the last big DLC adding a whole gameplay around being a genocidal empire, as if there wasn't already multiple way to do this and it wasn't already the strongest way to play). But in the last year it seems they finally realise the problem with that aspect and now they've spending a good amount of time toward improving older mechanic. They've finally redid the tradition trees, they're giving another look at planatery management and they're tackling the poor AI and end game performance.

Really? That would be fantastic!

EDIT: I wanted to add a smiley with heart-eyes, but that doesn't work ("oops we ran into some problems").

 

[Dalisclock]

Really? That would be fantastic!

EDIT: I wanted to add a smiley with heart-eyes, but that doesn't work ("oops we ran into some problems").

Yeah, emojis mess up the posting at times. Kind of a shame. If something doesn't post that's the first thing I delete.

 

[Terminal Blue]

As someone who owns all the modern PDS games and has sunk a huge amount of time into them, I feel like a problem many of the games end up suffering from is a reliance on novelty. I don't think it's entirely the developers fault, although I think their DLC policy feeds into it, but I think much of it is actually being driven by fans.

I think the absolute best example of this is Imperator: Rome. In particular, the Imperator: Rome 2.0 patch.

Imperator: Rome had a dreadful release. It was just not the game anyone wanted and had a really regressive design philosophy that felt like something from a previous era. In the year or so after the game released, it was completely overhauled, and the ultimate result of this was the 2.0 patch. The 2.0 patch should have been the release. It is not just a good game, it is a great game. It has some of the most elegant and innovative mechanics ever put into a strategy game. But, most importantly, it is a game where the enjoyment comes from the fundamentally compelling puzzle posed by those mechanics.

But even in its current state, there is a large proportion of the community who don't like it, and the reason they don't like it is because they don't want a compelling strategy game, they want a 1:1 simulation of a historical era. They want Rome or Carthage or Egypt to have a billion unique events and buffs and special minigames and things that reflect the unique historical situation of those states and make playing them feel superficially different to playing any other state.

EU4 is a fun game. It is just very compelling to play. It has that fun dopamine thing of pressing buttons to do things. it is also, however, an actual monster. It is barely even a game any more, it is so many mechanics and events and modifiers welded together into this Frankenstein's monster of an experience that only a handful of human beings will ever really get a handle on. Knowing how to play EU4 is not a case of figuring out a puzzle, it's an exercise in navigating the ocean of bullshit added by so many DLCs and expansions and free patches. In short, it's what all PDS games tend to turn into over time, and the end result of this fascination with novelty.

HOI4 is also a fun game. It is also very compelling to play. It is a game built from the ground up around novelty. The best mods for HOI4 are those that figured out that HOI4 is actually a narrative choose your own adventure game tangentially attached to a strategy game, like TNO or Kaiserreich. The defining moments of HOI4 are, for the most part, not created by the mechanics or through true emergent gameplay, they're created by the national focus system, which is basically a machine for throwing up novel scenarios. Woah! The UK installed Edward VII as an absolute monarch and now they're invading the US through Canada! Woah, the USA went fascist and became the confederacy! The thing is, the game can't produce these scenarios outside of national focuses, so they're really just constructed narrative, and that's fine but it's not particularly deep gameplay.

CK3 is really good. As a game, it's much better than CK2. The systems are tighter, it has much less RNG and there's generally more emphasis on a core puzzle than making every playthrough distinct. A lot of people don't like CK3 for this reason, but to me it signals a really good direction, and its upcoming DLC is shaping up to be the most well-thought-out DLC in a long time (probably since the Utopia expansion for Stellaris), with actual meaningful improvements to core systems and some fun looking flavour and immersion stuff that isn't focused on making every playthrough feel superficially unique. Most importantly though, it's a game that feels like it was given that bit of extra time before release to get everything right.

And here's where we come to the ray of hope. Victoria 2 is an incredibly shitty and flawed game. It is often frustrating to play. It is also the most brilliant game PDS ever made and is absolutely adored by the small minority of people who got into it. It is a game where the player is often irrelevant and powerless, reduced to making overarching decisions and then watching a very clever series of interconnected mechanics play them out. It's a game where two countries going to war can crash the world economy and ruin countries on the other side of the world without needing a single event to make it happen. It is this wonderful, simulationist machine for creating emergent gameplay, and it's getting a sequel!

CK3 kind of indicated to me that PDS does understand the core problems with their games. Victoria 3 would absolutely be the game to fix them in. I really hope they manage it, because otherwise I'm probably going to be a lot less hyped for their stuff in future.

 

[meiam]

I really don't think PDS player want historical stuff, a very vocal group does but around the time CK3 was release they talked about how most people played CK2 and most people play it like an RPG game where they made their own story. Also stellaris is really popular (possibly their most popular game) and it has no historical side to it. The CK are popular, but a lot of that popularity comes from all the crazy history that arise and get told trough the internet (horse pope and stuff). If anything I'd say paradox are the one trying to push the historical aspect more and most player just want more interesting features, but its a lot easier to market "play as the viking" than "here's a list of 15 new features".

I think all their game have the same issue, you eventually get to the point where military expansion is the only thing to do but military expansion brings its own sets of problem (micro management in stellaris, sheep herding in game with internal politic). CK3 next expansion seems like it trying to expand the number of stuff you can do outside military so maybe that'll work.

 

[Terminal Blue]

I really don't think PDS player want historical stuff, a very vocal group does but around the time CK3 was release they talked about how most people played CK2 and most people play it like an RPG game where they made their own story.

I don't actually think what I described is a demand for historical accuracy, I think it's a thinly veiled demand for novelty.

The same thing actually happened to Stellaris earlier on its development cycle. In particular Stellaris was constantly criticized by a significant proportion of players for being "soulless", and when you dug into what being soulless meant, the answer you'd get is that each playthrough felt the same. The thing is, that's kind of how games work. If a game has no consistent mechanics and is just constantly throwing new content at you to keep you playing, it's relying on novelty rather than the strength of its mechanics. Frankly, I was more happy when the custodian initiative was announced than I have been for any recent Stellaris DLC, because Stellaris is in danger of turning into EU4. It needs a consistent vision, and consistent mechanics that make sense, rather than just assaulting the player with lots of new stuff all the time.

I think all their game have the same issue, you eventually get to the point where military expansion is the only thing to do but military expansion brings its own sets of problem (micro management in stellaris, sheep herding in game with internal politic).

Something I noticed with CK2 in particular is that players will talk about wanting more to do besides blobbing right up until the point where doing other things makes blobbing harder.

CK2 was my gateway into Paradox games, and I came in as someone who liked games like Dwarf Fortress. My initial experiences with CK2 were the most enjoyable part of my time with the game because I didn't really care about "winning". I was just trying to survive and see what happened. "Gitting gud" at CK2 actually kind of ruined it for me.

CK3 I find way more enjoyable than CK2 because it brings me back to that headspace of actually being immersed and not really caring about playing optimally. Yeah, there's some very fragrant cheese in CK3, but most of it is just normal balance stuff rather than abusable novelty mechanics. There's never that sense of "oh, I'll just switch to Islam again so I don't have to deal with succession problems", "oh, I'll just convert my heir to Norwegian culture so I can raid and get infinite money". It feels like everyone is much closer to playing by the same rules.

 

[Agema]

CK2 was my gateway into Paradox games, and I came in as someone who liked games like Dwarf Fortress. My initial experiences with CK2 were the most enjoyable part of my time with the game because I didn't really care about "winning". I was just trying to survive and see what happened. "Gitting gud" at CK2 actually kind of ruined it for me.

CKII had some of my most fun gaming moments. In the sense of what they'd represent in real life, occasionally horrible things to do - like when my 60+ year old dynastic patriarch lost all his heirs in a few years, and lacking a divorce option, I assassinated his postmenopausal wife so that he could marry a fertile nymphomaniac and they could pump out a couple of new ones before he died of old age (the older daughter went on became the greatest leader of the dynasty).

 

[Terminal Blue]

CKII had some of my most fun gaming moments. In the sense of what they'd represent in real life, occasionally horrible things to do - like when my 60+ year old dynastic patriarch lost all his heirs in a few years, and lacking a divorce option, I assassinated his postmenopausal wife so that he could marry a fertile nymphomaniac and they could pump out a couple of new ones before he died of old age (the older daughter went on became the greatest leader of the dynasty).

I think that's why CK2 was such a huge gateway for me, I really love emergent narratives in games, and I love weird moments like that which get stuck in my memory. One of my favourite memories is playing a two year old empress of Scandinavia. Everything about her was awful, as she grew up she just picked up more and more negative traits. There were constant civil wars because everyone hated this horrible child ruling them. She not only survived, but ended up living into her 80s and dying beloved by her entire empire. She's still my favourite character CK2 has ever produced just because I had to fight so hard to keep her on the throne and I got so invested.

CK2, CK3 and Stellaris were all originally directed by Henrik Fåhraeus, and I think that emergent storytelling aspect of Paradox Games has always very much been central to his games. Stellaris also churns out some really great stories. I love the crisis system, it takes a bit too long to get to under default rules but it produces these incredible wars that could easily be the backdrop for space opera series. As I kind of implied, I don't think Stellaris has very strong underlying mechanics, but I don't think it needs them because it is a game about emergent narratives.

But I think there's a whole different appeal to a game like Imperator Rome or Victoria 2 that took me much longer to get into but I think is really something special.

My most played nation in Victoria 2 is Haiti. Haiti consists of a single state. The economy revolves entirely around growing a useless cash crop (tobacco). The population is small and almost entirely illiterate. The government is a reactionary dictatorship. For context, in Victoria 2 unless you are one of the great powers or have the ability to fight one of the great powers, going to war is a ridiculously bad idea most of the time. Even considering that Haiti can't support an army without going into debt, conquest as Haiti is basically impossible. So why do I play Haiti so much? Because turning Haiti around is an exercise in pushing the mechanics of Victoria 2, and those mechanics are interesting enough that trying to see how far you can push them is inherently a lot of fun.

The fact that what's going on in the rest of the world massive affects things just makes it more entertaining for me. It adds the novelty without even needing new mechanics. Probably my "best" Haiti run was one where the USA got taken over by anarcho-liberals who turned it into a bourgeois oligarchy (just like real life). This meant noone wanted to emigrate there, and because Haiti was on its way to becoming a social democratic utopia they all went to Haiti instead. The result was Haiti turning into a kind of densely populated megacity full of people from all over the world, enjoying all the free education and social welfare. That is actually the only time I've pushed Haiti to the point of becoming a great power, because that massive immigration resulted in massive industry and a comparatively massive army considering it was all built on one island.

Conversely, one time the first world war broke out between Germany and Russia. Demand for all kinds of goods skyrocketed as the European powers mobilized their massive armies, and Haiti's newly industrialized economy collapsed because it was entirely dependent on imports and the prices had risen so high noone could afford them any more. I had to impose massive negative tariffs and government subsidies just to prevent the economy collapsing, but that just dragged the government into debt. The resulting recession completely stagnated growth for a decade.

Like, there is a human story here, but ultimately one that is being lead by mechanics, and I think that's why Victoria 2 is so special and why I hope it's a model Paradox games look back to in the future.

 

[thestor]

@Terminal Blue if I may tell you about my favorite moment from Stellaris:
A Fallen Empire had turned into an Awakened Empire an aggressively expanded, swallowing up its neighbors left and right. Luckily for me, it was far away or so I thought. Then i noticed something odd, they didn't take over one neighbor. Everyone else was annexed, but that one state remained a smirch of different color on the map. I didn't understand why for awhile, until I noticed it: ages ago, I had guaranteed that empire's independence!

For me, that was a sweat moment the fallen empire awakening, being all high and mighty "We have returned, we are better than you, blablabla", they they encounter an empire that attacking would mean war with my empire an suddenly, nervous hand-wringing.

What do you make of this? What kind of appeal is this? For some reason, this moment stuck with me, unlike all the Grey Tempests/Unbidden and what else the game threw at me.

 

[Terminal Blue]

What do you make of this? What kind of appeal is this? For some reason, this moment stuck with me, unlike all the Grey Tempests/Unbidden and what else the game threw at me.

I mean, it's no secret that Stellaris' AI kind of struggles at the moment, and as mentioned I think the endgame date is too late for where most players will be at that point. I'm not super sweaty or anything, but I do feel like I kind of have to turn it up to the maximum difficulty setting and aggression (I do use the scaling feature though, otherwise the early game is kind of horrible) or else AI empires tend to remain very weak which doesn't make for a fun endgame.

Stellaris is better when you struggle. Fighting wars you aren't ready for just to survive creates investment. Before galaxy generation options existed, a lot of my best experiences came from doing silly roleplaying challenges and then having to fight the crisis anyway, or underestimating the difficulty of attacking a fallen empire. It's a lot easier to set yourself up to struggle now with the current galaxy generation options, just turn up the crisis strength and/or set the endgame year to be earlier.

Actually, one of my favourite recent experiences was a game where one of the genocidal empires became the crisis around the midgame. That was the most grimdark galaxy I have ever seen in a Stellaris game. Almost everyone died. When I finally turned the tide, I had to stop playing because no other empires had survived in any kind of state to continue.

I guess there's probably a certain appeal in having things that are supposed to be ultimate threats show up and be weaker than you, but it's symptomatic of a problem, and it's a problem that's actually very easy to fix.

 

[Agema]

snip

I actually like games where player control is kind of limited.

One of my favourite strategy games was a Napoleonic wargame from the Amiga era. You sit on a hill writing orders, seeing only what you can see from your vantage point and everything else communicated by letter. Your orders have to be taken off to your corps commanders, who have to organise, so there's a hefty time delay. And expect to get letters back where the subordinates refuse your orders because they don't have enough troops, or whatever. Actually, I think in one of those games a cavalry corps collapsed the entire enemy flank without me even quite realising (on the other side of a ridge).

Games like Stellaris represent this only as events - otherwise you can custom build everything. But I prefer the idea that in a sort of liberal capitalist state, your economy is actually driven by private enterprise and many individuals doing their thing. In a sense, that you don't decide to invest in discovering certain techs, they come out a little bit randomly. You can shift the odds with funding, but that's about it. Arguably, CKII is a little like this - each province has a random chance to go up a tech level depending on its knowledge creation and length of time since last level, but you don't really control it.

 

[Terminal Blue]

Games like Stellaris represent this only as events - otherwise you can custom build everything. But I prefer the idea that in a sort of liberal capitalist state, your economy is actually driven by private enterprise and many individuals doing their thing.

Victoria 2 actually works that way.

In Victoria 2, capitalist pops accumulate their own wealth and can spend it on building up industry. The player can build, upgrade or subsidize industries only if the ruling party has the right economic policy. How do you get a party with the right economic policy? Well, in a democracy they have to win an election. Monarchies can appoint the ruling party, but in constitutional monarchies people will get annoyed about it. How does a party win an election? Well, they have to win the majority of the vote. Who votes? It depends on what the law governing the franchise says. How do you change the law? It needs majority approval in the upper house. What determines the approval of the upper house? Well, that depends on the share of party control within the upper house, which is different from the electorate because the criteria for being in the upper house is determined by a different law..

This is why Victoria 2 is the best game Paradox ever made, and also why it's a deeply flawed nightmare game because in practice this system is kind of a mess.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Not really a fan of Paradox. I played a bunch of Stellaris, but there are just too many problems with the gameplay being tedious for me to really like it. I tried to get into CKII, but just bounced off hard. You need to take a 2 week course just to understand what's going on, and even when you start to get it, the game just feels like you're constantly treading water trying to keep what land you own under your control and just wasn't fun. The rest of the game was just RNG events popping up.

I thought the emphasis of Spectacle Fighters were that the objective was doing things in a spectacular way, without any statement on "engaging gameplay" being made? Since after all, a combat system is gameplay, so is it creative enough it can be engaging.

Yes, I don't think the word 'spectacle' belongs anywhere near a description of a Paradox game, they are about as opposite of a spectacle as you can get. Something being a spectacle doesn't mean that you need to put on your glasses in order to appreciate it, if it did OP would have a point because there is a ton of pouring over minutia in these games.

 

[thestor]

One of my favourite strategy games was a Napoleonic wargame from the Amiga era. You sit on a hill writing orders, seeing only what you can see from your vantage point and everything else communicated by letter. Your orders have to be taken off to your corps commanders, who have to organise, so there's a hefty time delay. And expect to get letters back where the subordinates refuse your orders because they don't have enough troops, or whatever. Actually, I think in one of those games a cavalry corps collapsed the entire enemy flank without me even quite realising (on the other side of a ridge).

I remember reading about that game! Do you remember the name?

Regarding "Spectacle Strategy", I didn't meant "Spectacle" in a visual sense, more in the sense that new elements are added into because they appear to be interesting and cool, but are actually rather shallow. For Stellaris, I especially think about the archaeological sites, they were cool when introduced, but once you know their stories, they loose considerable appeal IMHO.

 

[meiam]

Not really a fan of Paradox. I played a bunch of Stellaris, but there are just too many problems with the gameplay being tedious for me to really like it. I tried to get into CKII, but just bounced off hard. You need to take a 2 week course just to understand what's going on, and even when you start to get it, the game just feels like you're constantly treading water trying to keep what land you own under your control and just wasn't fun. The rest of the game was just RNG events popping up.


Yes, I don't think the word 'spectacle' belongs anywhere near a description of a Paradox game, they are about as opposite of a spectacle as you can get. Something being a spectacle doesn't mean that you need to put on your glasses in order to appreciate it, if it did OP would have a point because there is a ton of pouring over minutia in these games.

Paradox game tend to be along the line of hard to learn but easy to master. Once you figure out how most of the mechanic function, the AI can only barely play the game so it tend to be very easy at that point and its more about emergent weird story and run with rule you make for yourself. If you ever want to give CK2 (or 3) a shoot its really fun once you get past the initial hurdle and there's only a couple of really important thing you need to learn (succession, internal politic and breeding game/family management).