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Paradox to announce two new games in May

Rostere

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I have seen some strangely advanced africans, too.

EUIV seems to lead everyone to being around -3 to +3 techs from a world average. Some natives isolated from everybody are like -10 techlevels from the average, at best. So you're in tech level 20 and everyone else is at 17 or 23, with american and african peoples being at 15 max.

Compare to EUIII: Muslim techgroup started slightly ahead of the western techgroup, orthodox and eastern started more or less equal, it keeps pace for a while and then by 1500s or so the Western techgroup starts to get ahead of everyone else, and by 1600s you're looking at either westernizing or falling far behind the western techgroup. Beating a Western techgroup army is an archievment in itself.

Meanwhile the African and American techgroups are not even really in this race, you will lag far behind the better techgroups until some europeans come around.

The problem is that particularly in Africa (never had the same problem in the Americas for some reason), Westernization (switching from African to Western tech group) seems to happen way too easily. I have never played as an African nation, so I don't know exactly what it would entail.

IRL no African nation ever reached parity with Western technology, so it's absurd that it pretty much always happens in EUIV.

Consider the Matabeles, a typical sub-Saharan tribe from the Zimbabwe area which was beaten by Europeans in the 1890s in battles like this with massive discrepancy in numbers. The Matabeles agricultural level was slash-and-burn agriculture, meaning equivalent to a practice the Romans thought ridiculous and primitive when Germanic peoples practiced it around 100 AD. This has been around since the earliest neolithic in Europe, while it had reached Zimbabwe only around 1000 AD. The peak achievement of Africans in Zimbabwe is considered the "great Zimbabwe": a ruin consisting of stones put on top of each other without mortar - equivalent time period for these type of buildings in Northern Europe is around 4000 BC. They, or indeed any other Zulu tribe, never managed to create even a system of writing, which was first found in Europe in 1500 BC or even as early as 5500 BC, if you believe the Vinca tablets contain writing.

This is how Matabele warriors looked like in the 1890s (note that their armies technically had riflemen, but they only barely knew how to use them in battle):

matabele-warrior-group.jpg


Bulawayo_native_c1890_large.jpg


This is what EUIV believes Matabeles typically look like in the 1700s:

Hessian-Troops.jpg


It is when they start pushing this kind of weird historical fabrication that you realize how fucking batshit insane the current PC culture is.
 
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Space Satan

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It is not due to Paradox want to promote niggers, it's because new westernization is linked to developement and bordering nations. So backward shit could earn a hefty bonus to institution spread just because they have some colony from euro nation
 

KazikluBey

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It is when they start pushing this kind of weird historical fabrication that you realize how fucking batshit insane the current PC culture is.
I'd say most of the reason for this is just due to gamification - "it's not fun to play African tech group!" "If I'm not supposed to play it and have a normal game experience, why do you let me?!" "But this is just alt-history anyway!" - and not quite so much outright pushing of PC viewpoints, even if PDS adoption of PC culture perhaps lowers the threshold for folding to these complaints.
 

Vaarna_Aarne

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It's generally a change for the better I'd say, since EU already diverges from history by hundreds of years in the ability to ship vast armies overseas with ease and colonizing well beyond historical extent in 1800s by 1600s. It's not a particularly nitty-gritty game series when it comes to this stuff (ie horses spawn from piles of cash), so having more ways to alter things beyond the set-up is welcome, and it's kind of obvious since if they aren't given means to be played outside borderline exploit strategy, why even have them playable in the first place?

I wouldn't fret about it as Paradox doesn't really have a history of forcing or shoehorning politics in.
If anything, Paradox has a history of avoiding politics at any cost. Like, the most famous example of this is that Hearts of Iron maintains a strict policy of not making even the tiniest allusion to the Holocaust, and the whole swastika thing.
 

Delterius

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IRL no African nation ever reached parity with Western technology, so it's absurd that it pretty much always happens in EUIV.
Technically, that's not a possibility in EUIV anymore. Military power has been decoupled from westernization, which doesn't exist. What African and Asian players may do is spend thousands of mana to build up institutions within their own territory, therefore gaining a discount on tech level. However, they'll always have the worst units. While west europe has the best ones. Military parity being left to heavy idea investment and such.

Modernization by the AI is mostly left to chance. Global Trade and Manufactories can turn up anywhere, so the real game changers are Feudalism (for Africans), Renaissance, Printing Press and Colonialism. If those four reach and spread throught Asia and Africa more quickly (maybe because one of the coastals saved so much money that the second the institutitons reach one province they can just buy them), then things get a bit hectic. Although Europe is still much, much richer and stronger by default.

I'm surprised you've seen a relevant Songhai, since most often Spain owns the whole of West Africa in my games. Neither of which happened IRL.

I miss the times when just surviving as Iroquois was an achievement. But I sure love turning Ceylon into the global trading hub.

Also,

VICTORIA 3 OR I'LL BURN ALL OF SCANDINAVIA DURING THE END TIMES
 
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Vaarna_Aarne

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Yea usually I see Spain swallow up Africa pretty fast, since the additional advantage euros have is that since they don't need thousands of peepee to maintain technological parity they will not maintain even remote economic/force limit parity, and the institution system discourages blobbing to protect yourself since that just means needing MORE peepee to get the institutions. That's really the conundrum Asians/Africans/Native Americans face in EU4 much of the time, having to balance juggling both the economic/force limit parity and technological parity (as mentioned since you have worse units the problem of maintaing sufficient local numbers advantage and not having MASSIVELY worse units due to lagging behind in technology during critical unit type up points is a balancing act) but having to make sacrifices much of the time.
 

Raghar

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IRL no African nation ever reached parity with Western technology, so it's absurd that it pretty much always happens in EUIV.

Actually, from about 1100 to 1310 Europe was known as these white beggars with naked butts, who have fuck all, and they just have an overpopulation problem. For Arabians they were nice source of white slaves, but that was about it.

When you look at Ancient Egypt and Nubia, you can see Nubians were sufficiently advanced to have antibiotics.
 

Preben

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The poz just hit the fan.

Paradox' new CEO has a Twitter feed full of DRUUUUUMPF and generic SJW bullshit.

This might be Rome 2, but it will be a complete fucking disgrace and rape of actual history. Imagine this laughably idiotic misrepresentation but six million times worse:



"Diversity is our strength, especially those violent Goths"
"The Goths would never pillage Rome, what are you, intolerant? EUGH!"
"Placating Romans with grain handouts financed by taxes is totally sustainable for our society"

The truth is, any game featuring the late Roman era is potentially a huge fucking powder keg straight up the ass of current leftism. Juvenal is as relevant today as any YouTuber E-celeb. Paradox has already pandered to SJWism in its treatment of Africa in EUIV, this new game can only be a huge mess, especially if it is Rome 2.



In their latest game you can literally genocide or enslave entire species. And their flagship franchise, i.e. EU, is all about conquering primitive societies and has slaves as a tradeable resource. Whatever PC/SJW bullshit they might privately believe it, it does not affect their games.
 

Quigs

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I'm hoping for CK2. It's strange to me how alien EU4 is. I've got 1000+ hours in CK2, but can't get an hour into Europa. It seems different for the sake of being different half the time.
 

Preben

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Actually, from about 1100 to 1310 Europe was known as these white beggars with naked butts, who have fuck all, and they just have an overpopulation problem. For Arabians they were nice source of white slaves, but that was about it.

If it was just slaves, they wouldn't try to conquer and/or plunder Europe so much. Europe during the so-called Dark Ages wasn't as poor and uncivilized as the common belief holds. If fact, it was to the very contrary. The Dark Ages marked the expansion of Latin civilisation beyond its traditional borders, that is core lands of the former Roman Empire. Due to a combination of historical processes these new territories quickly assumed political domination over old dominions. Now because the lands like France (whose core was on the former fringes of the Roman World), Germany, England, Bohemia, Scandinavia or Poland started at the very low level of development owing to being outside of the Roman world, it creates false impression that Middle Ages started with some sort of societal collapse. In reality though the standard of living in the Mediterranean, while lowered, didn't collapse. Life in cities of Spain or Italy rolled on like it did before.
 

Rostere

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Maybe I should play more with current patches, most recollections are from a few years back.

The Songhai anecdote is very recent though (not from me personally though, heard it from a friend). Loaded up a recent game from a few months ago (year 1799), and most sub-Saharan African (and Native American!) nations are on same tech level as European nations.
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014

Announcement Show is 11.00-12.30 during the 19th of May, and I think it will be streamed.

At 12.30-13.00 on the Sunday 20th, I'll be doing a quick demonstration exclusive for the PDXCon visitors.

Check https://pdxcon.paradoxplaza.com/agenda for details.

Is it popular demand?

Johan Andersson is the gamedirector and designer of this game.

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,39146/
 

Fedora Master

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Whatever popular title they'll make a sequel for, it'll be ruined with SWEDEN YES and their inability to come up with mechanics other than ruler mana and "click buttan receiv buffs".
 
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Aren't they supposed to announce three, or at least two, new titles? Who knows, we might get both Rome and Victoria and perhaps even something extra.

But it's probably just DLCs.
 
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Like this guy said:

There are many cultural minorities in Victoria 2, although political minorities can exist in the Roman Senate as well. Religious minorities could fit into both.

I don't understand the Cold War fixation, let alone the modern world one. Even Victoria and Hearts of Iron kinda struggle with their humongous differences in power between various countries. The superpower and hyperpower eras don't translate well into grand strategy, I'm afraid.

There's a reason I mentioned Sumer and Greece with their multitudes of more or less equally powerful states that are still different enough to make every playthrough feel like a new experience.
 
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'Europa Universalis: Rome 2' is probably harder to spell than 'Victoria 3'. I've seen people mention 'SPQR' but there already is a game with that name.

Perhaps it's an acronym for some Roman saying?

I mean, I guess it could simply be a Cold War game named 'MAD' but a map painting simulator set in an era when no map painting is allowed because of the thing in the title sounds like a parody.
 

Hellraiser

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I mean, I guess it could simply be a Cold War game named 'MAD' but a map painting simulator set in an era when no map painting is allowed because of the thing in the title sounds like a parody.

It would be allowed, only nukes would start flying. Fun, fun, fun. A proper world war 3 simulator would make for a nice experience.

Also for a change it might be a game where the superpowers (as of the game start) don't blob into your shit or where the minors have a chance to thrive, after the big players get bombed back to the stoneage. Then you could blob as much as you want, until your rivals get nukes and repeat the cycle. Really MAD would make for an interesting and non-predictable experience, as depending on who allies with whom and who stays neutral lots of big and small nations could get nuked into oblivion leaving a blank slate for those not nuked.
 

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