Oh man, I've sunk countless hours into CK2. Such a rich game and I highly recommend it.
This post pretty much lays out a facet of what I love and alludes to the bigger picture: start with a historical setting and run with it, often diverging.
One game I became the king of Ireland and then somehow the king of Britanny. I then only had female child heirs. They got overthrown and ended up cast out of Ireland.
I was intrigued by that so I started a game as a count in Britanny. Worked my way up to the petty king of Britanny. Somehow engineered inheritance of another duchy - became a proper king of Britanny and then somehow became king of Aquitaine (so the king of half of modern day France).
EU4 is another fantastic game based on the same engine. Less focused on dynasties and more geopolitics/colonisation, this also throws you into historical settings. As Portugal, I became holy Roman emperor - they got into a fluff where no one liked each other so I was the only choice even though I wasn't in the HRE.
I'd love for Paradox to officially "link up" all the games so you can go from ancient Rome all the way to say the modern world. That would mean EU: Rome and Victoria on the new engine and also a new cold war era game they definitely need to make (focusing on modern geopolitics).
Paradox games like CK2 are great because they have enough complexity in them to create decent variety from game to game, so it's your own personal story that's unfolding. CK2 in particular, because of the human drama element, is very good at this.
The point about historical divergence is spot-on; a lot of the fun is in having some familiarity with the way things actually turned out, and comparing it with whatever ended up happening. During lulls in activity in my own kingdoms, for example, it's enjoyable just to look around the map and see what the heck is going on elsewhere.
Speaking of alternate history, I recently started getting into Hearts of Iron IV (which takes place during WW2), but actually have been getting a lot more enjoyment out of the mod "Kaiserreich" instead of the base game. Kaiserreich is an alt-history mod where Germany wins the First World War, and so by the time the game starts in 1936, the world is already quite different-yet-familiar (the US on the brink of a second civil war, France and Britain taken over by syndicalist revolutions, the British royal family exiled to Canada and attempting to retake the Home Islands, etc). Definitely recommend looking into it, if for no other reason than to read the lore on their project wiki ( http://kaiserreich.wikia.com/ ).
I've also thought about how interesting it would be to link up the Paradox games, and there are importing tools that kind of do the job, but having everything in a single game would be hard to achieve and still have the deep complexity that we enjoy. Modelling the feudal world of medieval Europe is fundamentally different than the nation-state-focused world in EU4 a few centuries later. I fear that any attempt to merge the two would end up like the Civilization games, which achieves a start-to-finish continuity but at the expense of losing a lot of interesting detail.
Paradox is doing most things right, not like some of their competitors. No pay-to-win or other ingame buys, but optional DLCs, that actually enhance the game, and constant development and care over years for their games, and excellent multiplatform support. Also, they are successfully producing some of the games with the highest (hours of gameplay)/(price) ratio, second only to some indie games and the unbeatable Dwarf Fortress.
These games are not for everyone. Also, not entirely unlike Dwarf Fortress, they might seem a bit off-putting due to their complexity. But they have a much better GUI, and learning the basics is faster. It still takes time, though.
Rome would be a difficult thing to model (IIRC some Paradox folks have talked about this) given the way their games usually work. The biggest problem with Rome itself is the amount of internecine warfare and plotting that doesn't map to the CK2-style feudal mode. And that doesn't map to a lot of other powers in Europe and the Near East at the time. In CK2 and EU4, most players operate under very similar rules (like, Islam in CK2 is basically a slightly tweaked European feudalism)--a Rome game would have to come out of the box with a number of compatible-but-divergent systems in the ballpark of what CK2 was 2-3 years after release to seem like it fit with the rest of the games they do.
Which is not to say I wouldn't love to see it happen, but it's a hard problem.
In my most recent playthrough, I've found that some of the mechanics don't make a lot of sense from an ontological perspective:
"Friends, countrymen. The rampaging horsemen of Kirghiz have long plundered the world and burned down cities and used the bones of our fellow Christians to fertilize their fields. We have heard from our friends in Gotland that Kirghiz intends to do the same to their houses, and we shall prevent this. Sound the alarms, muster the levies!" Two months later: "Er, never mind, Gotland surrenders." And a month later, "Friends, countrymen…"
Beyond that, it can be fun to watch just how screwed up the game can get sometimes. I had one playthrough where the Kingdom of Andalusia was located in Hungary, the Kingdom of Africa in Italy and the Kingdom of Italy in Africa.
Do you similarly feel creeped-the-fuck-out when hearing the Muslim call to prayer from a mosque, just because the first line "Allahu akbar" has a relation to the catchphrase uttered by radical Islamists? Gut reactions are completely normal but they should be the beginning of understanding and conversation rather than being a rhetorical stop sign.
Strategy games always have a bit of player indulgence in role-playing. Part of the fun is putting yourself into the role and play-acting -- and having some ironic amusement at how out-of-place it sounds. There's even an entire subreddit about the crazy things people say when playing CK2 ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitCrusaderKingsSay/ ). Example: https://i.imgur.com/qI4s0hJ.jpg
It's a shame that modern commentary on video games tends to point out a link between something in a game and something unsavory or "problematic" and think that's the end of the discussion. I thought we had left behind that sort of thing with Jack Thompson.
The world doesn't revolve around the moral whims of the American middle class. Deus Vult is a thematic headline for a historical wargame. People shouldn't stop using it because of meme culture. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_vult 4chan loves to prey on these concerns by hijacking harmless symbols e.g. green frogs, OK sign, rainbow flags.
Deus Vult is an expansion to the original Crusader Kings and predates the stupid meme by well over a decade. Any relation is one foisted upon later on.
jwdunne|8 years ago
This post pretty much lays out a facet of what I love and alludes to the bigger picture: start with a historical setting and run with it, often diverging.
One game I became the king of Ireland and then somehow the king of Britanny. I then only had female child heirs. They got overthrown and ended up cast out of Ireland.
I was intrigued by that so I started a game as a count in Britanny. Worked my way up to the petty king of Britanny. Somehow engineered inheritance of another duchy - became a proper king of Britanny and then somehow became king of Aquitaine (so the king of half of modern day France).
EU4 is another fantastic game based on the same engine. Less focused on dynasties and more geopolitics/colonisation, this also throws you into historical settings. As Portugal, I became holy Roman emperor - they got into a fluff where no one liked each other so I was the only choice even though I wasn't in the HRE.
I'd love for Paradox to officially "link up" all the games so you can go from ancient Rome all the way to say the modern world. That would mean EU: Rome and Victoria on the new engine and also a new cold war era game they definitely need to make (focusing on modern geopolitics).
Clearly a secret Paradox fanboy!
DanAndersen|8 years ago
The point about historical divergence is spot-on; a lot of the fun is in having some familiarity with the way things actually turned out, and comparing it with whatever ended up happening. During lulls in activity in my own kingdoms, for example, it's enjoyable just to look around the map and see what the heck is going on elsewhere.
Speaking of alternate history, I recently started getting into Hearts of Iron IV (which takes place during WW2), but actually have been getting a lot more enjoyment out of the mod "Kaiserreich" instead of the base game. Kaiserreich is an alt-history mod where Germany wins the First World War, and so by the time the game starts in 1936, the world is already quite different-yet-familiar (the US on the brink of a second civil war, France and Britain taken over by syndicalist revolutions, the British royal family exiled to Canada and attempting to retake the Home Islands, etc). Definitely recommend looking into it, if for no other reason than to read the lore on their project wiki ( http://kaiserreich.wikia.com/ ).
I've also thought about how interesting it would be to link up the Paradox games, and there are importing tools that kind of do the job, but having everything in a single game would be hard to achieve and still have the deep complexity that we enjoy. Modelling the feudal world of medieval Europe is fundamentally different than the nation-state-focused world in EU4 a few centuries later. I fear that any attempt to merge the two would end up like the Civilization games, which achieves a start-to-finish continuity but at the expense of losing a lot of interesting detail.
madez|8 years ago
These games are not for everyone. Also, not entirely unlike Dwarf Fortress, they might seem a bit off-putting due to their complexity. But they have a much better GUI, and learning the basics is faster. It still takes time, though.
eropple|8 years ago
Which is not to say I wouldn't love to see it happen, but it's a hard problem.
jcranmer|8 years ago
"Friends, countrymen. The rampaging horsemen of Kirghiz have long plundered the world and burned down cities and used the bones of our fellow Christians to fertilize their fields. We have heard from our friends in Gotland that Kirghiz intends to do the same to their houses, and we shall prevent this. Sound the alarms, muster the levies!" Two months later: "Er, never mind, Gotland surrenders." And a month later, "Friends, countrymen…"
Beyond that, it can be fun to watch just how screwed up the game can get sometimes. I had one playthrough where the Kingdom of Andalusia was located in Hungary, the Kingdom of Africa in Italy and the Kingdom of Italy in Africa.
alien_at_work|8 years ago
payamb|8 years ago
j_s|8 years ago
http://steamcommunity.com/app/42960/discussions/
It appears to be still for sale ($20), without overwhelming reports of technical issues:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/42960/Victoria_II/
cliftoncburton|8 years ago
ipsin|8 years ago
[deleted]
DanAndersen|8 years ago
Strategy games always have a bit of player indulgence in role-playing. Part of the fun is putting yourself into the role and play-acting -- and having some ironic amusement at how out-of-place it sounds. There's even an entire subreddit about the crazy things people say when playing CK2 ( https://www.reddit.com/r/ShitCrusaderKingsSay/ ). Example: https://i.imgur.com/qI4s0hJ.jpg
It's a shame that modern commentary on video games tends to point out a link between something in a game and something unsavory or "problematic" and think that's the end of the discussion. I thought we had left behind that sort of thing with Jack Thompson.
Red_Tarsius|8 years ago
mmanfrin|8 years ago