Hey you, my chollowers! What do you imagine your likes mean, when you hit that like button?
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The existence of Left and Right Twix suggests there may be up to four additional orientations of Twix as of yet undiscovered by physicists. For $127 billion over 18 years, we propose to build NOUGaT, the world's largest candy supercollider. The following three-hour proposal will
wait hang on that's the cohost equivalent of going viral
Honey wake up my chost went chiral
or A disjointed tirade against map painting
It's past the point that I don't lament anymore how low Paradox has fallen, or far their idea of ideal strategy game has gone from mine. Crusader Kings 2 and Victoria 3 are all I can stomach now, the others have lost that spark of fooling around and having mechanics unrelated to +X and +x% bonuses.
I had highest hopes for Stellaris, as old fan of Space Empires and expecting bold choices beyond human history in their other titles. I gave up on it after Nemesis released in March 2021, no idea if they've made reacting with elements inside one's nation (like factions) more interesting or not.
Overall my greatest disappointments in Paradox's modern school of design are:
- little to no compelling internal things going on in your empire
- no good ways to bounce back from defeat
- elements of emergent storytelling are missing (my personal interest)
The problems 1 and 2 could help each other with internal stress weakening powerful empires and allowing shifts in power. 2, from what I've played online and offline, wars are total, AI and human players alike tend to go for bitter end and dissolution, no middle grounds usually.
Crusader Kings' focus on people and dynasties manages to avoid #3's problems to give credit where due. Stellaris falls short bitterly. Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron are so strongly grounded in real world history and operate at such high level of abstraction that default back towards being own country borders go wides (with country DLC's with proper and silly ways to do it).
Tl;dr Victoria 3 sucks least in its design philosophy trying to be simulation first (Economic foundation!) with nudging towards historical outcomes but being able to toss it entirely, while other Paradox strategies have gone full map painter with railroading or absolutely no idea what they want.