No we are not talking about car mechanics. Anyway something something money please: ko-fi.com/lemoncake101 Come talk about Civ 3 with me here: discord.gg/bSs2e9YsFv
currently hoping the dealership mechanics can figure out why a brand new car has "occasionally will just coast in neutral when you wanted to accelerate" in its featureset
Never played any civ game. I found paradox games through total war as I enjoyed the nation huilding and map painting there but always auto-resolved the battles and then I found out EU4 is basically perfect for what I enjoyed.
@@LemonCake101just starting out on the -downward spiral- journey that is paradox games. Never played similar games before but isp got me into hoi4. Still ass as it but it is pretty fun!
What I learned to today is if I play Civ 3 I must Mine all Plains Cow tiles and Irrigate all Plains Sugar tiles and also avoid Anarchy at all costs because the game starts you with the best government - Despotism. Noted. Thank you Lemon Cake, very cool!
As a person who has never touched a civ game i just watched youtubers like isp and bokoen 1 so much to the point that i knew the basics of most mechanics and all that was needed to learn was putting it all together
In defense of the despotism penalty: It has an equalizing effect. It weakens players with strong land and bonus resources, while not really hurting players with bad land. I think this was the idea. 2 birds with one stone, equalize land early game while encouraging players to explore other governments. Just really sloppy communication within the game, and a bunch of unintended consequences.
In the regards of normalizing bad land, I guess it does work somewhat: although I would say making something like cows less objectively 'better' then every other bonus resource would also help in that sense.
That's interesting. And very well possible. But, perhaps unsurprisingly, I think there's more to it. Suede, imagine Sid level AIs without the despotism penalty and you're playing on a map with a lot of grassland. Do you even get down 4 cities before they settle? OK, I have a more extensive comment elsewhere, but the standard tile penalty also ends up favoring the intelligent human player since the AIs won't rework mines or irrigation. But, the human player can! So, I think the standard tile penalty encourages a mentality of "don't play like a preprogrammed AI. Play like a human player thinking about what to do!" Also, the religious trait would end up even worse comparatively without the standard tile penalty. Because then tiles wouldn't lose bonus food during anarchy. But since they do, a player with a late game revolution to Communism or Democracy really doesn't want to lose extra food for 8 turns, they would prefer the 2 turn anarchy from a religious civilization.
@@Spoonwood I think you're approaching this from the wrong angle. Sid difficulty only exists because the game was completely abusable by a smart human player, and the players lobbied for a harder challenge when the Conquests expansion was released. There's more to the game than crushing a maximum toughness AI, and fun, accessible game mechanics is important. That being said, I value strategic depth too. But I just wouldn't say that a mechanic giving an advantage over the AI makes the mechanic better.
@@suedeciviii7142 So what about Sid difficulty though? The point about the standard tile penalty making for an advantage for the intelligent human player applies at all levels. In the original Deity version of the game, and all other levels, that applies also. AIs would expand faster on Deity, Emperor, etc. all the way down without the standard tile penalty. The standard tile penalty does add more strategic depth, because the best worker moves more clearly end up different than what AIs do. At any level. And it encourages getting out of despotism and not using anarchy all that much. Using anarchy minimally encourages planning.
Speaking of estates - estate privilege tier list when? I would really like to learn why I would use some of the more obscure ones or if I use mine suboptimally. Thanks for the vid and congrats on good growth rate!
that's the issue - most of the privileges grant you both of these indirectly, while also taking something away, be it influence, absolutism, loyalty or control
@sgtburden8482 in a timing way, older people were around and played civ then and may still play now. Younger people weren't around before, but were around at the perfect time for the paradox game era. It's not a good thing or bad thing, just that different games are more popular at different points in time.
“How did you get into pdx without playing civ first?” I was watching drew durnil Reddit videos and got recommended one of his old mega campaigns. Next thing I knew I was getting recommended videos from every pdx UA-camr on the planet and it made me want to try one
My journey to Paradox games was basically: 12/13 year old me playing my first game on Steam called "Robocraft" (was only ever allowed to play it 4 times on one of my aunt's company laptop), one of those times I would see CK2 on sale (2013-2014). I already liked drawing wars on maps in school at the time, so it intrigued me. I remember scrolling through the CK2 store page and thought it looked ugly AF, instead there was this EU4 game that I thought looked much better. Since I was in a "no online purchases/no games purchases" household + bad financial situation, so I knew I could've never played the game I then started watching Arumba, Benjamin Magnus etc. for like a year solely of EU4 campaigns, then I finally started watching their CK2 stuff, and shortly after Rights of Man (2016), my mom bought me EU4 and all the DLCs at the time. In like 2017 I was brave enough to download cracks of games, which included CK2 and Hoi4, but I did end up buying most of the games I pirated when I got my bank debit card in 2019. My only exposure to Civ pre-2019 was this weird game Drew Durnil played/reacted to. I did end up buying Civ 6 3 years ago, turn based strategy just doesn't interest me. Sidenote: Robocraft was almost completely revamped at some point in 2014/2015. I just didn't like the changes and never went back to play it later on.
I started playing paradox games with my friends recommendation to eu4 to play together. I was 14, was already enjoying total war games and age of empires type of strategy. A year later when I was 15 I fell in love with it. 10 Years later still nothing hits like a paradox game :)
2:48 I got into paradox games by watching Drew Durnil. Ik he also made Civ videos but I just didn’t watch them. It wasn’t till about 4 years after a started watching Drew that I played my first Civ game. I spent about an hour on it and hated it, never touched it since.
12:06 this criticism doesn't make sense, both the old and new fuel system didn't distinguish between specific fuel types for vehicles, so why bring that up? Even if it did in the new system, it would make the mechanic (needlessly) harder to manage/understand and you just called it 'more complicated' 20 seconds ago. There is also a clearly visible fuel indicator always visible in your hud which goes red when depleting, showing how many days left until you're out. An attentive player should be able to connect the dots and either cancel their naval mission or increase oil production accordingly. There's also a fuel usage breakdown when you mouse over it, albeit a bit convoluted. I agree that the mechanic is decent, not something that deserves high praise but still good. But the quality of your argument in that section pales in comparison to the rest of the vid!
I was more bringing up 'what the mechanic could be' and not arguing specifically for or against it to be clear, just an example of inherently un-intuitive behavior.
Estates are a pretty cool example, honestly. I always tend either get rid of them, or at least abuse the shit out of them (not in the game-y sense, but making them mad and less influential, ex. Petition for Redress random event), so while I don't really experience that mechanic like most players do, it's good that you can interact with it however you want. As for "bad" mechanics... Revolution, maybe? Like, being revolutionary is a lot of fun, and maybe just a tiny bit strong, but actually getting CoR to spawn in your state, or at least spread to you, is abysmal. What's that? It spawned in Nepal and you're playing Italy? Sucks to be you.
The revolution has been nerfed into the ground. Back when having it in provinces increased autonomy I just didn't even play into the age of revolutions because you could get the revolution and it turn you from #1 GP to weaker then 12th place. It's kind a speed bump now if you don't care about revolutions and just don't want to even interact with the mechanic. I never thought about it from wanting to get the revolution since it had always been a big negative whenever I played the game for the longest time. That sounds absolutely awful, playing to age of revolutions then being unable to even become revolutionary sounds awful.
@@domehammer I've not played pre-revork, so I don't know what revolution was like back then, but autonomy increase sounds painful. But then again, nowadays you can just ignore it if you don't want to go revolutionary, because unrest isn't that meaningful without crazy OE. Paradox work in mysterious ways. But yeah, playing for 250 years wanting to go revolutionary and then getting completely fucked over by the game is infuriating. Even more so when revolution actually spreads to you, but you're so big that it won't spread naturally, and since rebels are a stupid annoyance at their worst, you can't even rely on them. Russia and Ottos are the worst offenders I found (ottos have an event for early revolution, but it didn't fire in my orthomans run for some reason). At least when you finally got it, it's good. Revguard is powerful, zeal is easy to maintain, and the unique cb is actually usable! (that is, you don't need to demand "spread the revolution" option at peace deal, though I'm not sure if it's just like that or you need to do something)
So help me if it uses the Civ 6 map generation, that map generation was complete ass. It was so bad I had to stop playing Civ 6 and go back to Civ 5 modded with Lekmod. Map generation peaked in Civ 5 and the maps from Civ 5 would benefit the dumb sprawling city style of Civ 6... maybe I just hate Civ 6.
I never play a Civ game yet, however what got me into playing EU4 was Warcraft III, very different game, but that made me a fan of strategy games, so I tried my first paradox game which is Hearts of Iron III, Imo I prefer the mechanics in that over the more flavored HOI4, cuz I like longer wars and micromanaging, 2nd game is EU4, after I while I got a bit bored playing vanilla, so I play Imperium Universalis mod instead, imo they did everything right, instead of devs, they use pops for nations growth, including mechanics like they use archers, which is missing in vanilla
As a person who only touched Civ 6 after about 2000 hours in EUIV, I got into EUIV first because I really enjoy historical maps and settings, and was exposed to it first because of this. EUIV is much more grounded in that sort of thing -- it has actual provinces instead of hexagons, actual historical wars and settings, and is a lot more in-depth in the details I like. I picked up Civ 6 after hearing the soundtrack. Going from EUIV to Civ felt like getting out of a sports car to drive a golf cart, but I still had fun.
I do think something else with the estates in EU4, specifically the last point about newer missions requiring you interact with the estates, is mostly that they are connected to DLC. I would generally find and would recommend new players learn the basics of the game before getting or playing with a bunch of DLC, now for what is considered “the basics” is not simple, I would say understanding trade nodes would be the time to activate some of the more recent DLC’s, but that can vary.
I started with a game called european war 4 on my old tablet, then played a bunch more games of those devs and randomly stumbled on eu4 via youtube recommendation and instantly loved the game and bought it not long after on sale
My journey into Paradox games occurred in 2020 when I was overall dissatisfied with the core experience and historicity of Total War: Medieval 2 and the SSHIP mod. I saw people on the mod's forums discussing their complaints with it as well and some recommended that we might enjoy Crusader Kings 2 more instead, and that we could mod that game as well, which was a big selling point to me as I am a Skyrim and FNV modder. While CK3 had just come out, my research, these comments and the advice of my wife led me to choosing CK2. I fell in love with the game and some of the mods for it and I haven't been able to enjoy Medieval 2 from that point forward. I'm not a fan of EUIV or CK3 even with mods, never played Stellaris, barely played around with Vic2, but CK2 is my beloved.
Im glad the reworked estates into what they are now. I used to keep the dlc disabled because estates were, quite literally, just a hundred or so clicks to make your country weaker in exchange for like 100 monach points every 5 years.
I was actually initially upset when my 'free 150 points button' was replaced with a +1 a month tick, but honestly I changed my mind about it so quickly when I didn't have to micro it any more!
I did play civ 5 before i got introduced to paradox games but it was really minibuilding roblox games (emberrassing i know) that got me into paradox games like eu4 and hoi4 and such
Eu4 was my first paradox game, never heard of civ at the time. I started with idle games, which lead me to games like factorio, and from there I got into grand strategy for the nation building aspect.
Missions that forces you to interact with an estate is actually a good thing for a new player, it's a nudge to the new player saying something like "hey you should check out this mechanic for this cool bonus". They are usually in a small off-shoot branch of the tree so ignoring those mission is not the end of it either. And a new player that does not interact with some mechanics in the game wont ever be able to finnish most main-branches of their mission trees either.
I really think the addition of characters to eu5 will make estates a lot more interesting in events when you actually know the characters involved in the factions
Never heard of Civ before like a year ago, I somehow found paradox by learning about EU4 first, and at the time I found out about it I wasn't even that much into history/strategy games
Found both civ and eu4 around the same time through Drew Durnil back when he used to do playthroughs of both and his channel was still called BAStartGaming with like 20k subs. I think he played Rome in civ 5 and savoy in eu4
I played Rise of Nations for being an RTS game that tried to do something different, except cost of foods go up each villagers I hired is something I don't like imo, is how I got into paradox games such as EU4
Never played, barely heard of a Civ Game. Got into paradox games through Drew Durnil's Hoi4 videos 7 years ago (when he actually played the game), and then progressed to eu4 due to an interest in colonization/exploration.
i was a bit of a weird kid. i'd use to draw maps in my free time and simulate "wars" by drawing and redrawing borders between countries - quite literally map painting, so to speak. i got hooked onto paradox games through youtube let's plays of EU3 and the original kaiserreich mod for hoi2, but i was too young back then to actually buy those games or know how to pirate them. eventually i got around to playing eu4 when i was 13 or so, and from that i branched out to playing pretty much every map game paradox has put out (including the oldies like hoi2). i did play a free version of civ around the same time i started playing eu4, but it wasn't what made me find out about the latter in the first place.
As someone who played a few hundred hours of Civ III when I was younger, I had no idea the despotism penalty was a thing. I just knew that it was a good thing to change my government type, because that's what my brothers taught me.
My first Paradox game was eu4. I was looking through the family Steam library one day, thought “this looks kinda fun”, hit “install”, and drowned in the complex mechanics. That was fun, so much to learn, so much to discover. I didn’t like how online tutorials always used DLCs though. “Release Fez as a vassal”…
I never played strategy games but I saw a UA-cam video from Arumba playing ck2 and it looked interesting and for the last 10+ years I've been hanging around the Paradox sphere, occasionally dipping in. I still haven't touched Civilization, Total War or any other non-Paradox strategy franchise
It would be nice if you could split your fuel stores between army/navy/air force, so when you accidentally send your navy out of port, it doesn’t grind your grand offensive to a halt due to lack of fuel. It could just be a percentage thing, ie. army gets 40% of stores, planes 40% and navy 20%.
Only started playing civ a few days ago. Got into paradox games because of city skylines and then learned they made a rts that starts in the early modern period and now I have 600 hours in eu4
Well I have heard about Civ games but I have never played any Civ games though. I got into paradox when I was playing City Skylines in 2019 and then I started EU4 in late 2021.
I've seen historical simulator where I can rule as a count duke or a king and my hometown was ruled by a person I recognized from history. Never needed any other games, especially when I saw musketeers firing at bowmen in civ
Never played Civ. I pirated Shogun and Napoleon when those games came out but never played them past a few days. I was mostly an RTS gamer growing up, Brood War and WC3 especially. Then a friend told me about EU4 and I learned about Paradox games
I would argue that missions that require you to look at new mechanics are a good idea. Several mission trees can be seen as more advanced tutorials as they can give the player an idea of what to do next and reward them for engaging with new mechanics. This can work well or be frustrating to no end depending on the design of the missions.
I got introduced to HoI4 by youtubers before I'd ever played a Civ game. I did play Civ 5 when I got it for free via limited promotion, and went back to HoI4 when civ crashed-to-desktop in under five turns.
I got into paradox games the ussualy way. Got a brain concussion on a waterslide as a child, and when i was stuck in hospital my father pirated for me a random bag of stategy games, which included one Europa Universalis game (dont remember now which).
I think fuel is well implemented in HoI4. Imagine having to worry about converting oil to specific types of fuel and the like, a nightmare. Fuel will punish a new player, but in the way of "Oh gosh diggidy darn it, I won't do this again." My first game I got pushed pretty hard by the USSR and couldn't break through France, my second game was basically historical in that I pushed through France, almost reached Moskva, and then was beaten. My third game was me being pretty good already. This is three games totaling about 20 hours, most of which I was having fun and not thinking too deeply about mechanics. Spies are another good mechanic as they do not punish you at all if you ignore them (except that the AI sometimes gets a bit of a buff when they decrypt your cypher but that is pretty much negligible), but when you learn of them you will start using them, not well at first, but then you find out about collaboration governments and how powerful those are, and it all goes uphill from there, making you incredibly strong.
Estates are obviously good as they are but i do kinda miss a little bit of the og system where they existed on the map a bit more and had effects in more specifc provinces. They have got around that somewhat recently with privelleges for the clergy for example that specifically target provinces with churches but something about the old system had a little bit more direct impact. That may just be me though. The other thing with them though is how formulaic they end up playing out when you really understand them, eg 90% of the time starting with taking as many of the mana privileges as you can and then when absolution hits you remove everything from them as quickly as possible bar the mana privileges. Especially with mission tree based privileges that in reality more so lean into being cultural practices or understandings, such as developing deserts in arabia, a penalty of absolution cap seems really unsusual. Maybe it might be more interesting if the absolution penalty was multiplied by their influence but divided by their loyalty, prefering towards highly loyal factions without much influence rather than just estates that are actively just doing nothing so you can gain as much absolution as possible. Also maybe increasing the absolution penalty for specific privileges such as the mana point ones or supremacy over the crown.
That's very fair, but I played recently with an MP mod that added the OG estates with bulk mana instead of the +1 monthly, and the manual province assignment, and let me tell you personally I very quickly remembered why I was not a fan: its a lot more tedious that way.
I do feel the interaction with the map is largely missing, special state edicts might help but it is still limited. EU5 does fix these problems, looking at current dev diaries.
Civ III was my first Civ game, and I ironically completely avoided most of this mechanic due to use of roads, which you funnily enough didn't mention in the examples. Roads provide commerce, which is the third major tile resource in Civ III used for money and science, as well as connect luxury and strategic resources to your empire and last but not least provide a movement bonus for units in your empire on those tiles that have roads. They are also the cheapest in worker time to build. There are only three scenarios where building a road would result in three commerce in the early game: Dyes, Spices and Ivory, all of which are luxury resources. Their effects as luxury resources out ways the fact as making your empire more complacent/happy saves on not using your money on the luxury slider, which can more be focused on science for tech in the early game. The only other resources that may have the same minus effect already blow past the three minimum, such as gold the bonus resource, or are whales, which are sea resources anyway, and are not going to have roads on them anyway. Or, there's Oil and Rubber, which are two commerce as well, but it'd be the industrial revolution by that stage in the game, and if you somehow played up to that point, you're either off Despotism or something has gone horribly wrong/ you're doing this as a challenge. So, in short, roads are the OP tile improvement, which all subsequent games have nerfed into oblivion, removing the commerce element in IV, removing the need for them for strategic and luxury resources in V, and removing them from Workers in VI, relegating them to trade units and military engineers in mid game.
I actually stumbled upon the EU3: In Nomine demo somehow, and instantly fell in love. Bought EU3: Divine Wind and Victoria 2 and have been in love ever since. Never played Civ or Total War.
I love quality of life game mechanics, especially ones not hidden behind 200€ of DLC. Like, i dont know, Reconquering cores of vassals, playing as released colonies etc. .
What I hate about estates in eu4 is that you are forced to not use them when absolutism hits or you will have low absolutism unless you are a tag that gets max absolutism trough their missions or government
@LemonCake101 Even with court and country, you have enough absolutism to use mana privileges, the nobility one that gives 10 loyalty to every estate and maybe one or two more, and that is if you use the extra absolutism from government reforms. Or you know, play Russia or Denmark and have an ability to have all estate slots full while having absolutsm left over
I would say that it is the fault of absolutism, not of the estates. It is so good that it became a must-have, instead of just some cool buffs that you could sacrifice a bit of in the favor of some priviledges.
@adisca2k After thinking about it some more, it's more that absolutism is such a a brain dead mechanic that just get a number high, and that is all while at the same time being a must-have while estates are interesting and fun
I placed paradox earlier then civ. I used to play total war and enjoyed world map way more then battles. But i played lot's off civ after eu4 and Victoria 2
ive actually not heard many people talk about civ 3 Which is funny because its the only one ive played at all, and alot - i dont really like the newer ones much i love its exact set of features idk lmao
The issue with the despotism penalty seems to be more with the UI and communication than the mechanic itself. I would say it's actually a decent mechanic.
I never heard of or played civ. I got into paradox games though a chance incontrovertible with the hoi4 trailer on UA-cam bought the game. And I've been map painting ever since
The Despotism Penalty may be a contender for the worst game mechanic ever in an otherwise solid game. I played Civ III when it came out - I was like 12 years old and I could _not_ make sense of that mechanic for the life of me. It demands some serious big-brain thinking from a new player who's probably already overwhelmed by the sheer amount of _stuff_ Civ makes you think about. It's complicated, it's unintuitive, it's intrusive, it's not fun... it forces the player to learn a parallel set of rules that only apply for the first 10% of the game. Gross.
Well I do know what Civ is (I played two games of Civ 6 to about a halfway point) but I got into it because Id already gotten into Paradox via HoI4 youtube, and the other PDX games too (those just came naturally once I was immersed into staring at maps for hours).
I am not really sold on the fuel mechanics being only ok. The idea is simple: all your tanks, planes, and navy use fuel, which you get from oil. There is one pool of fuel for everyone, so you have to take all three types of units into account. It is the same as looking at the production sheet and remembering, that you need steel for guns, navy, and planes and a lack of said steel will affect all three of those productions. Is one resource affecting a few different parts of the game really that bad?
dear god just looked at your uploads because I thought I'd seen your stuff before... (turns out no but) dear lord, that upload schedule?? are you doing this fulltime?? if not, yikes pal, you're gonna slam into burnout! take care, ok?
I also found paradox through total war. It went total war rome --> empire --> rome 2 --> eu4 I think lionheart the youtuber mentioned paradox games and then i never looked back lol
I would like go make a small note, a mechanic is not bad just if it forces you to interact with it, its bad if it comes out of no where with no way of really finding out about it before it kicks you in the balls. Fuel has a semi large indicator on the top bar that is on by default that tells you what it does and its visible from the start, i feel like the despotism penalty would be fine-ish if the game told you about it from the start and didn't hide it behind a decent amount of advancing.
Despotism penalty enjoyer here. Civ 3 is a third game in the franchise and both previous games had the penalty so most players should all be familiar with it - it being explained in obscure part of Civilopedia is not a problem. Furthermore, it is very simple: If you have over 2 yields, you get one less (10 words), and thus easy to remember. It takes literally 3 seconds to calculate tile yields after improvement, you don't need any rules like "irrigate brown unless sugar" - this is making it complicated. Also, you cannot just "remove the penalty but make despotism weaker" because increasing war weariness will render early war unplayable and lowering support will cause you to quickly lose all of your money which can easily halve your research (and is annoying). Finally, despotism penalty and the government itself makes sense in the setting as a whole (good immersion). Primitive societies are warlike (no weariness) and can mobilize most of their populations (large support compared to republic/democracy). However, they lack the knowledge and organization skills which render most improvements useless, unless their yields are so high, that even savages can benefit from them. The only downside to despotism penalty is that it often forces you into gameplay where you are forced to mine grassland which is boring, looks weird and ruins immersion (mines should only be allowed on hills and mountains imo).
That's pretty fair, although I have to say coming in to the genre at Civ 3, it still was quite jarring. You won't tell someone trying to get into Civ 6 to start with a game of Civ 1 after all. With that said, no the bonus isn't that bad, and frankly it does solve a problem, but in my opinion it introduces far too many new problems, and could overall be implemented better.
believe it or not i became a paradox grts enjoyer by making a horizontal switch from .................. TOTAL WAR. i had a cousin who had me really interested in total war with medieval 1 and shogun 2. and one day in 2018 i guess i saw him play timurids eu4. and then i made the switch from total war to paradox grts game that way. now im in hundreds of hours in pdx games. and i only truly learned of civ games when civ 6 dropped the introduction trailer for gathering storm dlc Suleiman the magnificent. the internet algorithm must understood i liked ottomans, as i am a turk and just dropped the civ6 to me that way. i played civ6 for a few dozen hours but coudlnt really get a good grip of it.
No we are not talking about car mechanics.
Anyway something something money please: ko-fi.com/lemoncake101
Come talk about Civ 3 with me here: discord.gg/bSs2e9YsFv
You expect us to have enough clams to toss in your bin?
also 10:57 you dont need rubber for any kind of tank
@@NKVD.Officer average modern economy for sure :(
@@NKVD.Officer true, oops.
currently hoping the dealership mechanics can figure out why a brand new car has "occasionally will just coast in neutral when you wanted to accelerate" in its featureset
Never played any civ game. I found paradox games through total war as I enjoyed the nation huilding and map painting there but always auto-resolved the battles and then I found out EU4 is basically perfect for what I enjoyed.
Huh fair enough: I guess I forgot about the TW pipeline option!
Same here.
@@LemonCake101just starting out on the -downward spiral- journey that is paradox games. Never played similar games before but isp got me into hoi4. Still ass as it but it is pretty fun!
Same, but I enjoyed the tw battles, just felt that tw lacked depth on the campaign map
Started playing total war games, but felt it wasn't enough (short timescale), and found Victoria 2. Then played eu3, have never played eu4 however.
Babe wake up, funny cake man tells me about map games again
"Small German fleet can suck a nation dry in a week". Tell me more Lemon....
👀👀👀
is this that german p..n thing i've been hearing about for many years now?
Of course, it's gotta be the navy.
hey this isn't Azur Lane.....
yup, this is a paradox video comment section alright...
"Basically, you're not avoiding despotism" goes hard af.
What I learned to today is if I play Civ 3 I must Mine all Plains Cow tiles and Irrigate all Plains Sugar tiles and also avoid Anarchy at all costs because the game starts you with the best government - Despotism. Noted. Thank you Lemon Cake, very cool!
As a person who has never touched a civ game i just watched youtubers like isp and bokoen 1 so much to the point that i knew the basics of most mechanics and all that was needed to learn was putting it all together
Same
In defense of the despotism penalty: It has an equalizing effect. It weakens players with strong land and bonus resources, while not really hurting players with bad land.
I think this was the idea. 2 birds with one stone, equalize land early game while encouraging players to explore other governments. Just really sloppy communication within the game, and a bunch of unintended consequences.
In the regards of normalizing bad land, I guess it does work somewhat: although I would say making something like cows less objectively 'better' then every other bonus resource would also help in that sense.
That's interesting. And very well possible.
But, perhaps unsurprisingly, I think there's more to it. Suede, imagine Sid level AIs without the despotism penalty and you're playing on a map with a lot of grassland. Do you even get down 4 cities before they settle?
OK, I have a more extensive comment elsewhere, but the standard tile penalty also ends up favoring the intelligent human player since the AIs won't rework mines or irrigation. But, the human player can! So, I think the standard tile penalty encourages a mentality of "don't play like a preprogrammed AI. Play like a human player thinking about what to do!"
Also, the religious trait would end up even worse comparatively without the standard tile penalty. Because then tiles wouldn't lose bonus food during anarchy. But since they do, a player with a late game revolution to Communism or Democracy really doesn't want to lose extra food for 8 turns, they would prefer the 2 turn anarchy from a religious civilization.
@@Spoonwood I think you're approaching this from the wrong angle. Sid difficulty only exists because the game was completely abusable by a smart human player, and the players lobbied for a harder challenge when the Conquests expansion was released.
There's more to the game than crushing a maximum toughness AI, and fun, accessible game mechanics is important. That being said, I value strategic depth too. But I just wouldn't say that a mechanic giving an advantage over the AI makes the mechanic better.
@@suedeciviii7142 So what about Sid difficulty though? The point about the standard tile penalty making for an advantage for the intelligent human player applies at all levels. In the original Deity version of the game, and all other levels, that applies also. AIs would expand faster on Deity, Emperor, etc. all the way down without the standard tile penalty.
The standard tile penalty does add more strategic depth, because the best worker moves more clearly end up different than what AIs do. At any level. And it encourages getting out of despotism and not using anarchy all that much. Using anarchy minimally encourages planning.
Speaking of estates - estate privilege tier list when? I would really like to learn why I would use some of the more obscure ones or if I use mine suboptimally. Thanks for the vid and congrats on good growth rate!
Estate Tier list could be a mood: and thanks, grinding away!
Estate privilege tier list:
S tier: mana
A tier: cheap money
C-F tier: everything else
that's the issue - most of the privileges grant you both of these indirectly, while also taking something away, be it influence, absolutism, loyalty or control
Euhhh hello Religious Diplomats ?
S+ tier
@@pierremaggi8661 Religious Diplomats used to be A tier before nerf from +25 to +10. Now it's like C tier, the bonus is too small to overcome AE.
Had never played Civ. Found Paradox through some friends who told me to buy HOI4 and do funny WW2 stuff
Fair enough, seems to be more common then I thought!
@@LemonCake101 It's 100% a age thing.....
@@josephbeccalori4970 in a good or bad way?
@sgtburden8482 in a timing way, older people were around and played civ then and may still play now. Younger people weren't around before, but were around at the perfect time for the paradox game era.
It's not a good thing or bad thing, just that different games are more popular at different points in time.
“How did you get into pdx without playing civ first?”
I was watching drew durnil Reddit videos and got recommended one of his old mega campaigns. Next thing I knew I was getting recommended videos from every pdx UA-camr on the planet and it made me want to try one
If it was a bad mechanic, I wouldn't sitting here discussing it with ya, now would I!?
… true!
"Let's do it!"
Omg its THE pelinal whitestrake!!!
My journey to Paradox games was basically:
12/13 year old me playing my first game on Steam called "Robocraft" (was only ever allowed to play it 4 times on one of my aunt's company laptop), one of those times I would see CK2 on sale (2013-2014). I already liked drawing wars on maps in school at the time, so it intrigued me.
I remember scrolling through the CK2 store page and thought it looked ugly AF, instead there was this EU4 game that I thought looked much better.
Since I was in a "no online purchases/no games purchases" household + bad financial situation, so I knew I could've never played the game
I then started watching Arumba, Benjamin Magnus etc. for like a year solely of EU4 campaigns, then I finally started watching their CK2 stuff, and shortly after Rights of Man (2016), my mom bought me EU4 and all the DLCs at the time.
In like 2017 I was brave enough to download cracks of games, which included CK2 and Hoi4, but I did end up buying most of the games I pirated when I got my bank debit card in 2019.
My only exposure to Civ pre-2019 was this weird game Drew Durnil played/reacted to.
I did end up buying Civ 6 3 years ago, turn based strategy just doesn't interest me.
Sidenote: Robocraft was almost completely revamped at some point in 2014/2015. I just didn't like the changes and never went back to play it later on.
Huh quite a journey: but one with Eu4 right away is quite impressive!
2:43, a friend bought me eu4 and forced me to play it with them.
I’m aware of civ games and I knew about them before paradox games, but my introduction to paradox/map games was through watching hoi4 UA-camrs
estates good but i still dread asigning every buff every game everytime i start someone new
That's fair, although I also find that it can be campaign dependent, especially for example nations like Ming.
I started playing paradox games with my friends recommendation to eu4 to play together. I was 14, was already enjoying total war games and age of empires type of strategy. A year later when I was 15 I fell in love with it. 10 Years later still nothing hits like a paradox game :)
For some reason when you said property I heard proper tea.
Mhmmm could go for a proper tea indeed
2:48 I got into paradox games by watching Drew Durnil. Ik he also made Civ videos but I just didn’t watch them. It wasn’t till about 4 years after a started watching Drew that I played my first Civ game. I spent about an hour on it and hated it, never touched it since.
12:06 this criticism doesn't make sense, both the old and new fuel system didn't distinguish between specific fuel types for vehicles, so why bring that up? Even if it did in the new system, it would make the mechanic (needlessly) harder to manage/understand and you just called it 'more complicated' 20 seconds ago.
There is also a clearly visible fuel indicator always visible in your hud which goes red when depleting, showing how many days left until you're out. An attentive player should be able to connect the dots and either cancel their naval mission or increase oil production accordingly. There's also a fuel usage breakdown when you mouse over it, albeit a bit convoluted.
I agree that the mechanic is decent, not something that deserves high praise but still good. But the quality of your argument in that section pales in comparison to the rest of the vid!
I was more bringing up 'what the mechanic could be' and not arguing specifically for or against it to be clear, just an example of inherently un-intuitive behavior.
Estates are a pretty cool example, honestly. I always tend either get rid of them, or at least abuse the shit out of them (not in the game-y sense, but making them mad and less influential, ex. Petition for Redress random event), so while I don't really experience that mechanic like most players do, it's good that you can interact with it however you want.
As for "bad" mechanics... Revolution, maybe? Like, being revolutionary is a lot of fun, and maybe just a tiny bit strong, but actually getting CoR to spawn in your state, or at least spread to you, is abysmal. What's that? It spawned in Nepal and you're playing Italy? Sucks to be you.
The revolution has been nerfed into the ground. Back when having it in provinces increased autonomy I just didn't even play into the age of revolutions because you could get the revolution and it turn you from #1 GP to weaker then 12th place. It's kind a speed bump now if you don't care about revolutions and just don't want to even interact with the mechanic.
I never thought about it from wanting to get the revolution since it had always been a big negative whenever I played the game for the longest time. That sounds absolutely awful, playing to age of revolutions then being unable to even become revolutionary sounds awful.
@@domehammer I've not played pre-revork, so I don't know what revolution was like back then, but autonomy increase sounds painful. But then again, nowadays you can just ignore it if you don't want to go revolutionary, because unrest isn't that meaningful without crazy OE. Paradox work in mysterious ways.
But yeah, playing for 250 years wanting to go revolutionary and then getting completely fucked over by the game is infuriating. Even more so when revolution actually spreads to you, but you're so big that it won't spread naturally, and since rebels are a stupid annoyance at their worst, you can't even rely on them. Russia and Ottos are the worst offenders I found (ottos have an event for early revolution, but it didn't fire in my orthomans run for some reason). At least when you finally got it, it's good. Revguard is powerful, zeal is easy to maintain, and the unique cb is actually usable! (that is, you don't need to demand "spread the revolution" option at peace deal, though I'm not sure if it's just like that or you need to do something)
Who else here is excited for all the terrible mechanics that will be in Civ 7? 🙋
I love that my two favorite strategy gamers watch each other’s videos
@@perrybeamer890 Lemon Cake actually used to play multiplayer civ 3! And I used to play a ton of EU3 back in the day
So help me if it uses the Civ 6 map generation, that map generation was complete ass. It was so bad I had to stop playing Civ 6 and go back to Civ 5 modded with Lekmod.
Map generation peaked in Civ 5 and the maps from Civ 5 would benefit the dumb sprawling city style of Civ 6... maybe I just hate Civ 6.
@@domehammer Good map generation is crucial and should be as easily modable as possible.
To be honest it might not be completely horrible because firaxis knows that if this flops they’re going to go bankrupt
I never play a Civ game yet, however what got me into playing EU4 was Warcraft III, very different game, but that made me a fan of strategy games, so I tried my first paradox game which is Hearts of Iron III, Imo I prefer the mechanics in that over the more flavored HOI4, cuz I like longer wars and micromanaging, 2nd game is EU4, after I while I got a bit bored playing vanilla, so I play Imperium Universalis mod instead, imo they did everything right, instead of devs, they use pops for nations growth, including mechanics like they use archers, which is missing in vanilla
Warcraft III? Damn that is not one I would have expected!
@@LemonCake101 Classic for a time, I still play it occasionally
As a person who only touched Civ 6 after about 2000 hours in EUIV, I got into EUIV first because I really enjoy historical maps and settings, and was exposed to it first because of this. EUIV is much more grounded in that sort of thing -- it has actual provinces instead of hexagons, actual historical wars and settings, and is a lot more in-depth in the details I like.
I picked up Civ 6 after hearing the soundtrack. Going from EUIV to Civ felt like getting out of a sports car to drive a golf cart, but I still had fun.
@lemoncake101 Keep the Civ 3 content coming and I'll keep watching. Subbed!
"We can have a nice chat about it in the comments" - bold of you to assume the comments section can be anywhere near nice
Hey I still read the whole thing!
I do think something else with the estates in EU4, specifically the last point about newer missions requiring you interact with the estates, is mostly that they are connected to DLC. I would generally find and would recommend new players learn the basics of the game before getting or playing with a bunch of DLC, now for what is considered “the basics” is not simple, I would say understanding trade nodes would be the time to activate some of the more recent DLC’s, but that can vary.
Oh so that's why Irrigation didn't do anything in Civ 3 - a game I last played 20 years ago.
Glad I learned this in a EU4 video.
How did I get into Paradox without playing Civ first?
Cities Skylines
I forgot about the Sim City 4 pipeline!
I started with a game called european war 4 on my old tablet, then played a bunch more games of those devs and randomly stumbled on eu4 via youtube recommendation and instantly loved the game and bought it not long after on sale
Huh, neat: I honestly assumed Civ would be a much more common entry point then it was!
Arumba...
'Nuff said...
My journey into Paradox games occurred in 2020 when I was overall dissatisfied with the core experience and historicity of Total War: Medieval 2 and the SSHIP mod.
I saw people on the mod's forums discussing their complaints with it as well and some recommended that we might enjoy Crusader Kings 2 more instead, and that we could mod that game as well, which was a big selling point to me as I am a Skyrim and FNV modder.
While CK3 had just come out, my research, these comments and the advice of my wife led me to choosing CK2. I fell in love with the game and some of the mods for it and I haven't been able to enjoy Medieval 2 from that point forward.
I'm not a fan of EUIV or CK3 even with mods, never played Stellaris, barely played around with Vic2, but CK2 is my beloved.
And that's one more subscriber for you
Thanks, welcome!
Older games usually had massive player manual books included where it usually explained game mechanics
Your thumbnails have a very interesting style
Im glad the reworked estates into what they are now. I used to keep the dlc disabled because estates were, quite literally, just a hundred or so clicks to make your country weaker in exchange for like 100 monach points every 5 years.
I was actually initially upset when my 'free 150 points button' was replaced with a +1 a month tick, but honestly I changed my mind about it so quickly when I didn't have to micro it any more!
@@LemonCake101 Its so nice lol
I did play civ 5 before i got introduced to paradox games but it was really minibuilding roblox games (emberrassing i know) that got me into paradox games like eu4 and hoi4 and such
Eu4 was my first paradox game, never heard of civ at the time. I started with idle games, which lead me to games like factorio, and from there I got into grand strategy for the nation building aspect.
Huh that’s a pretty unusual paths I have to admit
Province tierlist when :D
Please no
Missions that forces you to interact with an estate is actually a good thing for a new player, it's a nudge to the new player saying something like "hey you should check out this mechanic for this cool bonus". They are usually in a small off-shoot branch of the tree so ignoring those mission is not the end of it either. And a new player that does not interact with some mechanics in the game wont ever be able to finnish most main-branches of their mission trees either.
I really think the addition of characters to eu5 will make estates a lot more interesting in events when you actually know the characters involved in the factions
I played total war when i was a kid and i got introduced to Paradox games when i was going through a ww2 eastern front addiction phase in highschool
when it make my dopamine receptors fire
Ive tried to play Civ 5 (both vanilla and woth Vox Populi) but EU4 spoiled me so early game and non-war victories bore me severely
Never heard of Civ before like a year ago, I somehow found paradox by learning about EU4 first, and at the time I found out about it I wasn't even that much into history/strategy games
Found both civ and eu4 around the same time through Drew Durnil back when he used to do playthroughs of both and his channel was still called BAStartGaming with like 20k subs. I think he played Rome in civ 5 and savoy in eu4
I played Rise of Nations for being an RTS game that tried to do something different, except cost of foods go up each villagers I hired is something I don't like imo, is how I got into paradox games such as EU4
Never played, barely heard of a Civ Game. Got into paradox games through Drew Durnil's Hoi4 videos 7 years ago (when he actually played the game), and then progressed to eu4 due to an interest in colonization/exploration.
Huh fair enough; and damn, Drew actually playing a game? Impossible...
i was a bit of a weird kid. i'd use to draw maps in my free time and simulate "wars" by drawing and redrawing borders between countries - quite literally map painting, so to speak. i got hooked onto paradox games through youtube let's plays of EU3 and the original kaiserreich mod for hoi2, but i was too young back then to actually buy those games or know how to pirate them. eventually i got around to playing eu4 when i was 13 or so, and from that i branched out to playing pretty much every map game paradox has put out (including the oldies like hoi2). i did play a free version of civ around the same time i started playing eu4, but it wasn't what made me find out about the latter in the first place.
As someone who played a few hundred hours of Civ III when I was younger, I had no idea the despotism penalty was a thing. I just knew that it was a good thing to change my government type, because that's what my brothers taught me.
My first Paradox game was eu4. I was looking through the family Steam library one day, thought “this looks kinda fun”, hit “install”, and drowned in the complex mechanics. That was fun, so much to learn, so much to discover.
I didn’t like how online tutorials always used DLCs though. “Release Fez as a vassal”…
I never played strategy games but I saw a UA-cam video from Arumba playing ck2 and it looked interesting and for the last 10+ years I've been hanging around the Paradox sphere, occasionally dipping in. I still haven't touched Civilization, Total War or any other non-Paradox strategy franchise
RIP the count Cristo subscriber goal
bfdi cake is talking to me about pdx and civ
It would be nice if you could split your fuel stores between army/navy/air force, so when you accidentally send your navy out of port, it doesn’t grind your grand offensive to a halt due to lack of fuel. It could just be a percentage thing, ie. army gets 40% of stores, planes 40% and navy 20%.
Only started playing civ a few days ago. Got into paradox games because of city skylines and then learned they made a rts that starts in the early modern period and now I have 600 hours in eu4
Well I have heard about Civ games but I have never played any Civ games though. I got into paradox when I was playing City Skylines in 2019 and then I started EU4 in late 2021.
I've seen historical simulator where I can rule as a count duke or a king and my hometown was ruled by a person I recognized from history. Never needed any other games, especially when I saw musketeers firing at bowmen in civ
Never played Civ. I saw my mom playing eu4 and so I also bought it, and now I have 6000+ hours.
Never played Civ. I pirated Shogun and Napoleon when those games came out but never played them past a few days. I was mostly an RTS gamer growing up, Brood War and WC3 especially. Then a friend told me about EU4 and I learned about Paradox games
I would argue that missions that require you to look at new mechanics are a good idea. Several mission trees can be seen as more advanced tutorials as they can give the player an idea of what to do next and reward them for engaging with new mechanics. This can work well or be frustrating to no end depending on the design of the missions.
I got introduced to HoI4 by youtubers before I'd ever played a Civ game. I did play Civ 5 when I got it for free via limited promotion, and went back to HoI4 when civ
crashed-to-desktop in under five turns.
I got into paradox games the ussualy way. Got a brain concussion on a waterslide as a child, and when i was stuck in hospital my father pirated for me a random bag of stategy games, which included one Europa Universalis game (dont remember now which).
I got into Paradox without going into Civilization first because I got introduced via Drew Durnil's eu4 US states battle royale videos~ :)
Damn Drew seems like a popular introduction!
Mana and capacities are fair and balanced! *sarcasm* Anyway, gonna watch the video now.
... of course! Anyway enjoy!
I think fuel is well implemented in HoI4. Imagine having to worry about converting oil to specific types of fuel and the like, a nightmare. Fuel will punish a new player, but in the way of "Oh gosh diggidy darn it, I won't do this again." My first game I got pushed pretty hard by the USSR and couldn't break through France, my second game was basically historical in that I pushed through France, almost reached Moskva, and then was beaten. My third game was me being pretty good already. This is three games totaling about 20 hours, most of which I was having fun and not thinking too deeply about mechanics.
Spies are another good mechanic as they do not punish you at all if you ignore them (except that the AI sometimes gets a bit of a buff when they decrypt your cypher but that is pretty much negligible), but when you learn of them you will start using them, not well at first, but then you find out about collaboration governments and how powerful those are, and it all goes uphill from there, making you incredibly strong.
How did I get into PDX games?
Well it was a youtuber called Quill18 when EU4 was first released in beta.
Then a lot, and I mean a lot of autism.
Autism is a bell of a drug for sure
Estates are obviously good as they are but i do kinda miss a little bit of the og system where they existed on the map a bit more and had effects in more specifc provinces. They have got around that somewhat recently with privelleges for the clergy for example that specifically target provinces with churches but something about the old system had a little bit more direct impact. That may just be me though.
The other thing with them though is how formulaic they end up playing out when you really understand them, eg 90% of the time starting with taking as many of the mana privileges as you can and then when absolution hits you remove everything from them as quickly as possible bar the mana privileges. Especially with mission tree based privileges that in reality more so lean into being cultural practices or understandings, such as developing deserts in arabia, a penalty of absolution cap seems really unsusual. Maybe it might be more interesting if the absolution penalty was multiplied by their influence but divided by their loyalty, prefering towards highly loyal factions without much influence rather than just estates that are actively just doing nothing so you can gain as much absolution as possible. Also maybe increasing the absolution penalty for specific privileges such as the mana point ones or supremacy over the crown.
That's very fair, but I played recently with an MP mod that added the OG estates with bulk mana instead of the +1 monthly, and the manual province assignment, and let me tell you personally I very quickly remembered why I was not a fan: its a lot more tedious that way.
I do feel the interaction with the map is largely missing, special state edicts might help but it is still limited. EU5 does fix these problems, looking at current dev diaries.
I got into paradox through polandball comics
never played civ'
I got into paradox through the Oversimplified ww2 video -> Hoi4 pipeline
Civ III was my first Civ game, and I ironically completely avoided most of this mechanic due to use of roads, which you funnily enough didn't mention in the examples. Roads provide commerce, which is the third major tile resource in Civ III used for money and science, as well as connect luxury and strategic resources to your empire and last but not least provide a movement bonus for units in your empire on those tiles that have roads. They are also the cheapest in worker time to build.
There are only three scenarios where building a road would result in three commerce in the early game: Dyes, Spices and Ivory, all of which are luxury resources. Their effects as luxury resources out ways the fact as making your empire more complacent/happy saves on not using your money on the luxury slider, which can more be focused on science for tech in the early game. The only other resources that may have the same minus effect already blow past the three minimum, such as gold the bonus resource, or are whales, which are sea resources anyway, and are not going to have roads on them anyway. Or, there's Oil and Rubber, which are two commerce as well, but it'd be the industrial revolution by that stage in the game, and if you somehow played up to that point, you're either off Despotism or something has gone horribly wrong/ you're doing this as a challenge.
So, in short, roads are the OP tile improvement, which all subsequent games have nerfed into oblivion, removing the commerce element in IV, removing the need for them for strategic and luxury resources in V, and removing them from Workers in VI, relegating them to trade units and military engineers in mid game.
Civ 5 was my gateway drug to paradox games
I gotta thank the one and only: Internet Service Provider to get me addicted to pdx games. I will never forgive him
I actually stumbled upon the EU3: In Nomine demo somehow, and instantly fell in love. Bought EU3: Divine Wind and Victoria 2 and have been in love ever since.
Never played Civ or Total War.
I love quality of life game mechanics, especially ones not hidden behind 200€ of DLC. Like, i dont know, Reconquering cores of vassals, playing as released colonies etc.
.
That is a classic paradox moment in fairness
What I hate about estates in eu4 is that you are forced to not use them when absolutism hits or you will have low absolutism unless you are a tag that gets max absolutism trough their missions or government
I think of it more as ‘Court and Country, or don’t use estates to avoid the disaster’
@LemonCake101 Even with court and country, you have enough absolutism to use mana privileges, the nobility one that gives 10 loyalty to every estate and maybe one or two more, and that is if you use the extra absolutism from government reforms. Or you know, play Russia or Denmark and have an ability to have all estate slots full while having absolutsm left over
@@TheUckActor I mean yes, but I always like to go for more things :)
I would say that it is the fault of absolutism, not of the estates. It is so good that it became a must-have, instead of just some cool buffs that you could sacrifice a bit of in the favor of some priviledges.
@adisca2k After thinking about it some more, it's more that absolutism is such a a brain dead mechanic that just get a number high, and that is all while at the same time being a must-have while estates are interesting and fun
I placed paradox earlier then civ. I used to play total war and enjoyed world map way more then battles. But i played lot's off civ after eu4 and Victoria 2
Total War does seem to be a pretty common starting ground then
man, you sound like Josh Strife Hayes, love that
ive actually not heard many people talk about civ 3
Which is funny because its the only one ive played at all, and alot - i dont really like the newer ones much
i love its exact set of features idk lmao
I got into eu4 without playing civ I think civ is pretty mid
tierlist of eu4 mechanics (all of them) when?
No
The issue with the despotism penalty seems to be more with the UI and communication than the mechanic itself. I would say it's actually a decent mechanic.
I never heard of or played civ. I got into paradox games though a chance incontrovertible with the hoi4 trailer on UA-cam bought the game. And I've been map painting ever since
I played Hearts of Iron IV before I played any civ game however here's how I got into paradox interactive:
Plague Inc Evolved
The Despotism Penalty may be a contender for the worst game mechanic ever in an otherwise solid game. I played Civ III when it came out - I was like 12 years old and I could _not_ make sense of that mechanic for the life of me.
It demands some serious big-brain thinking from a new player who's probably already overwhelmed by the sheer amount of _stuff_ Civ makes you think about. It's complicated, it's unintuitive, it's intrusive, it's not fun... it forces the player to learn a parallel set of rules that only apply for the first 10% of the game. Gross.
Never played civ or total war, I started with CK2 and Stellaris, then got HOI4, Vic2, and then finally EU4.
Well I do know what Civ is (I played two games of Civ 6 to about a halfway point) but I got into it because Id already gotten into Paradox via HoI4 youtube, and the other PDX games too (those just came naturally once I was immersed into staring at maps for hours).
Estate privilege tier list?
Maybe?
I am not really sold on the fuel mechanics being only ok. The idea is simple: all your tanks, planes, and navy use fuel, which you get from oil. There is one pool of fuel for everyone, so you have to take all three types of units into account. It is the same as looking at the production sheet and remembering, that you need steel for guns, navy, and planes and a lack of said steel will affect all three of those productions. Is one resource affecting a few different parts of the game really that bad?
I played civ first only to be beaten into the ground by my brother thats how i found paradox
I thought I was good at Ck3 only to have my fragile Hope's removed by my brother yet again
Eu4 starting months tier list when???
Civ 3 > Rome TW > EU 2 was my progression.
I've been staring at maps for almost 25 years now...
dear god just looked at your uploads because I thought I'd seen your stuff before... (turns out no but) dear lord, that upload schedule?? are you doing this fulltime?? if not, yikes pal, you're gonna slam into burnout! take care, ok?
I am not full time or anything but I had a lot of free time recently, and well putting the hours in now!
I also found paradox through total war. It went total war rome --> empire --> rome 2 --> eu4 I think lionheart the youtuber mentioned paradox games and then i never looked back lol
I would like go make a small note, a mechanic is not bad just if it forces you to interact with it, its bad if it comes out of no where with no way of really finding out about it before it kicks you in the balls.
Fuel has a semi large indicator on the top bar that is on by default that tells you what it does and its visible from the start, i feel like the despotism penalty would be fine-ish if the game told you about it from the start and didn't hide it behind a decent amount of advancing.
Despotism penalty enjoyer here. Civ 3 is a third game in the franchise and both previous games had the penalty so most players should all be familiar with it - it being explained in obscure part of Civilopedia is not a problem. Furthermore, it is very simple: If you have over 2 yields, you get one less (10 words), and thus easy to remember. It takes literally 3 seconds to calculate tile yields after improvement, you don't need any rules like "irrigate brown unless sugar" - this is making it complicated. Also, you cannot just "remove the penalty but make despotism weaker" because increasing war weariness will render early war unplayable and lowering support will cause you to quickly lose all of your money which can easily halve your research (and is annoying). Finally, despotism penalty and the government itself makes sense in the setting as a whole (good immersion). Primitive societies are warlike (no weariness) and can mobilize most of their populations (large support compared to republic/democracy). However, they lack the knowledge and organization skills which render most improvements useless, unless their yields are so high, that even savages can benefit from them.
The only downside to despotism penalty is that it often forces you into gameplay where you are forced to mine grassland which is boring, looks weird and ruins immersion (mines should only be allowed on hills and mountains imo).
That's pretty fair, although I have to say coming in to the genre at Civ 3, it still was quite jarring. You won't tell someone trying to get into Civ 6 to start with a game of Civ 1 after all.
With that said, no the bonus isn't that bad, and frankly it does solve a problem, but in my opinion it introduces far too many new problems, and could overall be implemented better.
I think you have mistaken "how to properly present a mechanic" with "what's a good mechanic" in case of despotism.
I feel like he did the same with the fuel mechanics.
Never played a Civ game. Got into Paradox through UA-cam.
Huh fair. I think I over-estimated Civ then
believe it or not i became a paradox grts enjoyer by making a horizontal switch from .................. TOTAL WAR. i had a cousin who had me really interested in total war with medieval 1 and shogun 2. and one day in 2018 i guess i saw him play timurids eu4. and then i made the switch from total war to paradox grts game that way. now im in hundreds of hours in pdx games. and i only truly learned of civ games when civ 6 dropped the introduction trailer for gathering storm dlc Suleiman the magnificent. the internet algorithm must understood i liked ottomans, as i am a turk and just dropped the civ6 to me that way. i played civ6 for a few dozen hours but coudlnt really get a good grip of it.
You make me hungry.