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Grand Strategy Paradox games : Europa engine vs. Clausewitz engine

zool

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2009
Messages
897
So I recently started playing Victoria : Revolutions for the first time (I have a habit of playing games for the first time 10+ years after their release) and enjoying very much trying to restore the Ottoman Empire to its former glory. Victoria made me realize how much I like Paradox's Europa engine : maybe it's just the nostalgia googles but I like the 2D map, the sometimes clunky-interface and more generally the old-school feel of the games.

Basically for me, the Europa engine games go like this :

- Hearts of Iron I : played this one years ago and I remember enjoying it, it was my first Paradox game. never played HoI II though I hear it's a much-improved version of HoI I.
- Crusader Kings : still my favorite Paradox game to this day with DVIP installed. I just love those medieval-looking portraits.
- Victoria : started playing now with the VIP mod and, once you've spent a few hours reading the manual and the wiki to get the hang of the economics, it's a blast.

Never played Europa Universalis though as I'm not very interested in that time period.

In contrast, I haven't played any of the newer games running on the Clausewith engine. While lack of time is the main culprit, I also don't see very much incentive to buy them :

- Hearts of Iron III : seems they decided to mainly improve and complexify the military part of the game, while HoI I was never only about war for me (even though it's obviously the most war-oriented Paradox game)
- Crusader Kings II : was eagerly awaiting CK's sequel but then when I saw screenshots of the map and those ugly-ass portraits, I decided to stick to CK. Some improvements seem nice (like the expanded possibilities to imprison, ransom, execute people etc) but the look of the game just doesn't do it for me. That and the retarded India DLCs and whatnot.
- Victoria II : haven't followed this one very closely since I hadn't played Victoria before but do the improvements in Victoria II really justify playing it instead of Victoria : Revolutions?


So what do you guys think? Would you recommend any of the Clausewitz engine games over the Europa engine counterparts?
 

Makabb

Arcane
Shitposter Bethestard
Joined
Sep 19, 2014
Messages
11,753
The series started with Europa Universalis, so you can consider this to be the main game, the CK HOI Victoria, are spin-offs or afterthoughts of the EU.

EU peaked with EU 3 divine wind, I played it the most out of all the series.

EU 4 is good but somewhat is lacking..... EU 3 was more about war and map painting, EU 4 is more of managing a nation.
While in CK2 you manage a character, it feels like in EU 4 you are the nation, while as in Eu3 it felt like the nation is only your tool to conquer and you are NOT the nation, if that makes sense.
 

rezaf

Cipher
Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
650
I'm part of this audience that Paradox intentionally left behind when they moved away from the Europa engine in that I really liked the "living historybook" approach.
It was so cool having most things usually (though not always!) play out in roughly the same fashion as in actual history, but also have deviations which for the most part seemed roughly plausible.
You could look at the map in every part of the game and usually see a lot of things that (player intervention notwithstanding) looked as if you looked at the actual historical state of affairs at this point in time.
The "modern approach" of the Clausewitz games almost completely lose this basically at the point you start your game. Before you know it, Scotland has annexed England and Wales, Sweden has gobbled up Scandinavia, Spain failed to form, Austria is colonizing North America ... and so on and so forth, it becomes just a game with a very thin historical veil.
I realize this is exactly what Paradox wanted, but I still miss the olden days.
There was a time when the AGC mod was in a stage that you could play as almost any minor and get a ton of events, actually learning a lot about history in the process.
Later on, when they merged with EEP, there were just too many events for a lot of countries though, especially majors. Instead of being gently pushed into a historical direction you were forced with a cattleprod.

Anyway, I still very much miss these old days - but when it comes to the engine itself, I think Clausewitz has become a very solid engine. In the early EU3 days, my god was everything awfully looking, but CK2 and EU4 look fine as far as I'm concerned.
 

zool

Arcane
Joined
Oct 26, 2009
Messages
897
They're all improvements to previous games, some dlc excluded.

Ok but how so? As I stated, I dislike the look of the newer games but I would of course be willing to overlook that if there are some genuine improvements to the gameplay.

Calling in Trash for good measure.
 

vota DC

Augur
Joined
Aug 23, 2016
Messages
2,258
New engine is a hell to mod, you can mod it better but it will require more time.
Just an example is how provinces property is managed: in Hoi 2 you had .inc files for each country so you delete the number of provinces from one country and you put in another while in Hoi 3 you need to change tons of files because each province has a different file.
 

rezaf

Cipher
Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
650
I can understand the line of reasoning and it's a moot point anyway since sandboxism won, but EU2 in this fashion was a really unique game.
The systems driven approach of the later games got fleshed out massively in tons and tons of expansions, yet the same feeling of reliving history it didn't reproduce. Now it's just another generic historically themed strategy game franchise.

I do however agree that CK2 is the best of the Paradox bunch. Except for the mongols, that is. I harbor a burning hatred about how they were implemented. Might as well spawn Abrams tanks or an alien invasion. Usually, when I see their horses on the eastern horizon, I presume the game is over and retire rather than dealing with that (pun intended) horseshit.
 

rezaf

Cipher
Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
650
Bad events to me are heavy-handed crap like "In 1500 whatever the Portuguese went to India and took Goa, which they made into a trade post blablablablabla" and then you click on the button (there is often only one choice) and this results in:
- Portuguese automagically take over Goa and get a brand-new COT on it, even if you said "fuck this" to the whole India bussiness and meta-gamed your way to the Caribbean and Mexico instead.
- You lose money (which you didn't want to lose in the first place) to do this
- You get troops elsewhere. Troops you didn't want, in a place you didn't care for.
- Some foreigners you don't care about get butthurt
- Someone loses land for lol reasons.

Oh, I agree with that notion - but as you wrote yourself, the problem there is that it's a bad event, not that events are bad.

I recently watched a couple of EU4 streams and they really emphasize how generic everything looks and feels without handcrafted events.
For example, a guy is playing some african nation, and all the events that pop up still have eurocentric artwork and flavour text. There are a few notable examples, for example dealing with pagan religion, but by and large, it just lacks any notion of character.
And then, no matter where in the world you are, you basically westernize and from then on where you started and what your background was becomes practically meaningless. Starting in africa will probably mean you'll paint some of africa your color, starting in asia you paint some of asia and starting in europe you paint some of europe. But you'll deal with the same problems, get the exact same popups, go through the exact same motions.

A perfectly designed set of systems would probably allow for emergent storytelling - this is why CK2 and it's character focused approach works so much better - but imo this is a goal as hard to reach in EU as trying to cover for all eventualities in hand crafted events.
 
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Next steps:
- Consolide
- Stash some good jewgold
- Build a decent army (60-80k should be enough). I already have the biggest fleet in the Mediterranean, bitchslaping Venice and Genoa and all their buttbuddies was delicious.
- Make friends, allies and diplovassalize a few minor powers. Get Bulgaria, Albania, Athens, Knights of Rhodes and Trebizond onside with the program.
- Conquer Bosnia, make a Orthodox Bosnian vassal out of it so I can have the AI do the dirty work of converting catholic heathens for me, just like I did with Athens. I allowed those fuckers to remain catholic, didn't work.
- Wait for Ragusa not to be allied and vassalized by Venice, then diplovassal the hell out of it. Previous war already made it orthodox, let's hope it eventually suceeds in conversion.
- War against the Black Sheep Turkomans and the Mamluks.
- Tear the weak Mamluks apart and go down until all I can see are black people. Dat Alexandria COT!
- Take all of my utterly ridiculous cores. Start with Mamluks and Black Sheep Turkomans (Kara Koyunlu), then turn the Balkans and Eastern Europe into Roman Land.
- Vassalize and diploannex Georgia.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,756
So what do you guys think? Would you recommend any of the Clausewitz engine games over the Europa engine counterparts?
No, the best Paradox games are EUII and Victoria, and the original EU has the best music.

You should have started as Trebizond and then transformed into the Byzantine Empire after liberating Constantinople for extra :obviously:.
 

kris

Arcane
Joined
Oct 27, 2004
Messages
8,835
Location
Lulea, Sweden
Oh, I agree with that notion - but as you wrote yourself, the problem there is that it's a bad event, not that events are bad.

The problem is that the events are not tied to conditions. in the end the events will then be the opposite of their historical counterparts since those happened due to the direction and status of the countries as the time.
 

rezaf

Cipher
Joined
Jan 26, 2015
Messages
650
The problem is that the events are not tied to conditions. in the end the events will then be the opposite of their historical counterparts since those happened due to the direction and status of the countries as the time.

I ... uh ... I don't really understand what you mean by that. All events are tied to conditions and have certain conditions that must be fulfilled for them to fire.
And the AGC/EEP events tried a lot to cover as many bases as possible - sometimes with more, sometimes with less success.
Of course, with some events the condition was just "date = 05.03.1605 AND country = Spain" or whatever, but most were considerably more complicated.

Anyway, if what you're really trying to say is that EU2 didn't sport the systems on which such events could be based, I'd be inclined to agree. For example, playing as Japan it was easily possible to be a perfectly stable nation with +3 stability, sound finances and an overall very solid position, and then - out of the blue - being hit by the civil war events sending you to -3 Stab with revolts and whatever. Such things just required you to roll with whatever the events threw at you.
As I wrote earlier, late AGCEEP often overdid such event chains to the point where you could only constantly try to react to these events - or not. Some even made everything you did effectively inconsequential by destroying the country in some events and then rebuilding it in others, complete with free spawned troops and money conjured from thin air. Those were not so cool.

However, even EU4 sports more than a few events/systems that don't make ANY sense in the context, which is basically the same thing.
 
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Oh, I agree with that notion - but as you wrote yourself, the problem there is that it's a bad event, not that events are bad.

Indeed.
My guideline to events is that they should display special situations, stuff that can't happen merely with player intervention.

I recently watched a couple of EU4 streams and they really emphasize how generic everything looks and feels without handcrafted events.
For example, a guy is playing some african nation, and all the events that pop up still have eurocentric artwork and flavour text.

Yeah, that's a big problem. Paradox games are fundamebntally eurocentric.

There are a few notable examples, for example dealing with pagan religion, but by and large, it just lacks any notion of character.
And then, no matter where in the world you are, you basically westernize and from then on where you started and what your background was becomes practically meaningless. Starting in africa will probably mean you'll paint some of africa your color, starting in asia you paint some of asia and starting in europe you paint some of europe. But you'll deal with the same problems, get the exact same popups, go through the exact same motions.

A perfectly designed set of systems would probably allow for emergent storytelling - this is why CK2 and it's character focused approach works so much better - but imo this is a goal as hard to reach in EU as trying to cover for all eventualities in hand crafted events.

I think the way Paradox has been heading since CKII is the best path - as in, divide regions of the world into certain mechanics. Roman Catholics, Orthodox Catholics, Tribes, Nomads, Merchant Republics, Islam, Heresies, Nordic Vikings, etc. Its not enough yet, but its on the right way.

There's the problems of lack of internal politics in general (CKII gets better incrementally at this).

One thing I also don't like is the fact of "Institutions" meta-mechanics - say, EU is bizarrely westphalian and absolutist, when the early-game for most nations should be a lot like CK. Who says Nation-States should win out?

You should have started as Trebizond and then transformed into the Byzantine Empire after liberating Constantinople for extra :obviously:.


Ah, a fan of the Komnenoi I see! :obviously:

I remember trying this in assorted EU3 mods, but always failed. Perhaps I shall do that someday.


Oh, I agree with that notion - but as you wrote yourself, the problem there is that it's a bad event, not that events are bad.

The problem is that the events are not tied to conditions. in the end the events will then be the opposite of their historical counterparts since those happened due to the direction and status of the countries as the time.


AGCEEP and Kaiserreich are probably the apex of event-driven gameplay. In those, events are all about facilitating interesting possibilities. In KR rarely a event happens as bolt out of blue.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
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I think the new engine is fine but takes far too long on an initial load, shit's irritating even on an SSD.
 

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