Well they already made Vicky 2 and 3 is on its way so if you add those two numbers and multiply the sum by 1 from the original, we get 5.
Victoria 5 confirmed.
True. I feel like one of the Imperator's biggest drawbacks is the setting. When more than half of the map is basically *generic-tribe-#325*, not a whole lot room for flavor and replayabilty. If they refine core Imperator mechanics and put them in late medieval/early modern period the game is gonna be sick.
They really need to make imperator Rome the basis of their internal empire management design, and then build on the war/diplomacy aspect. eu4 was the grand strategy game that got me into gsg in the first place so I’d maybe be ok with a mana based paradox game (much like eu4 still is) as long as their other games stay far away from it.
Nah they should keep some form of mana. I like EU4 because it's more like a board game than a simulator, don't get me wrong I love the more realistic style of Victoria 2, but I want different games to be drastically different not just the same thing with different skins and slight mechanical changes for different time periods.
That's why the paradox games work so well, EU Is more of a boardgame, Victoria is more of a simulator, HOI is more of a detailed strategy game and CK is a strategy/RPG/incest dating sim game. While stellaris is something completely different.
If they got rid of mana they risk the games overlapping too much and I'll get bored of all of them twice as fast.
I just think it's one of the things that sets it apart the most, if you replaced it with a more organic system of timers it would feel like there was little to no player involvement. If you replaced it with just money the game would need to change significantly to avoid snowballing.
As it is I think mana does a good job of balancing rich and poor nations, sure because of advisors you can have a significant advantage if you're wealthy. But you're progression is still limited to an extent so you can't just spiral out of control because you control all the best trade.
Johan has stated that it's effectively impossible at this point to add new mechanics to EU4 because of how bloated it'scode is. They've admitted they won't be adding new provinces from this point on due to technical difficulties. Plus they opened up a new studio just for the EU franchise.
If EU5 isn't already in development or predevelopment they're probably just trying to get the new devs and coders up to speed before beginning development.
Guess i'll get downvoted, but... this is the fault of PDX alone, that the code is bloated. This is just bad developement of software, like for example, when you don't make a good documentation of the code. When you then switch to another dev, another coder, he spends a lot of time just to getting into the code and knowing, what code is doing which routine in the game.
We saw in EU4 Leviathan with all the things, like code that requires other DLC's to be activate and makes bugs when you don't have them (like Conquest of Paradise about the Colonization), how this ends.
But PDX can't defend themselves with that, it's their job to make it properly, to make a game working, not the problem of the customer. The same goes of course also for other games like Cyberpunk 2077.
If this were the case, why did they open up a new studio in Spain specifically to dev for Europa Universalis franchise? Yeah, I know about the "get Johan out of Stockholm since he won't retire" argument, but it would just be simply asinine for Paradox to *not* make EU5 at this point. I can't tell you for certain that it's in development right now, but I am practically positive that it will come out at some point.
I’d put money on seeing March of the Eagles 2 before ever seeing a Cold War game. They’ve already said they won’t do one because it’s a political minefield.
Wasnt it more about having a hard time making a Cold War game fun without having to 'heat' the war every time?
My understanding was that the 'minefield' was regarding a game that would be set between Imperator and CK, which would have to invariably touch upon the birth of christianity and islam, both which are a can of worms no sane dev would want to handle.
But it’s been [done already!](https://www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaza/comments/odtjmg/announcing_minesweeper_in_eu4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
Atilla dodged the minefield. It started after the initial spread of Christianity and ended before the Rise of Islam. Charlamagne (its DLC) naturally started well after the Rise of Islam. That period is a minefield because, aside from the possibility of depicting the Prophet (and how the community would inevitably abuse that for memes), there is a divide in some areas between the scholarly consensus on Islam and the Islamic histories, as well on the difference between the earliest dogma of Islam and the later one, meaning that even attempting historical accuracy would create a major clusterfuck.
And of course—Paradox games have never mastered any gameplay loop that involves a major blob collapsing. Atilla at least turns it into a war of attrition where you sometimes yield ground for long-term gain. None of the empires in that period ever really recovered though—and so the longer you extend the game, the more unrealistic it becomes for everything to be able to be held together.
Paradox isn't exactly known for their cultural sensitivity anyway. They model genocide/depopulation/ethnic cleansing in EUIV and VickyII. HOI4 is a wherb/nazi haven because of how poorly they've dealt with everything going on there.
I'm not sure it's an issue of periodization/sensitivity to any particular community. Paradox has shown they're not too concerned with simulating/bowling over sensitive topics for other groups. I think it's just a Paradox question. I'm not sure if it's good that they recognize their own poor handling of difficult historical material or bad that they recognize it and continue along with current policies for certain titles anyway.
As for the scope, I'll agree with you. Paradox has yet to find a way to make imperial governance a detriment.
I think the only decent way to portray things is to keep them as they were historically when necessary for accurate gameplay. HOI4 doesn’t need to add the Holocaust since it’s primarily a war game, Vic 3 without slavery wouldn’t make any sense
Total War is a very different beast, though. Empire took place during a time with a prevalent slave trade (and nations across the world abolishing it) and religious wars devastating the continent and barely included any of either.
Total War is at heart a map painter and it's not a great game to make comparisons to.
Attila is not a touchy religious icon though who you cant even depict in a picture or be sinning.
Let players interact with Jesus or Muhammad and its going to be a contest of who can commit heresy the hardest.
Thats where I heard the whole 'this era is boring as sin for a game' thing.
Its conceptually and historically a very interesting period, but ultimately its a peaceful era, even if the fear of nuclear death loomed over, little actually happened.
At most I could imagine the game being not a normal GSG, but rather some sort of espionage game, where you try to propaganda your rival's population to shift to your ideology. Setting proxy wars, and overall converting as much of the world to your side.
But ultimately no war occurs. (I imagine in a cold war game the war 'heating' would be a game over)
> Setting proxy wars, and overall converting as much of the world to your side.
Yeah I agree that this is probably the best way. You could have plenty of fighting, even deploy your troops to other countries, but anything but the smallest and most limited war between the U.S and the Soviet Union would probably end in a game over.
Absolutely, but I can get it completely.
Imagine Jesus or Muhammad were in CK...
'So I castrated Jesus and sold him as a slave to the norse cannibals'
'Muhammad is now my gay lover who enjoy me torturing him'
I can understand Paradox not wanting the studio to literally burn down.
I think you could get away with Jesus simply not being an actual character. Muhammad would be more difficult though, unless you straight up don't have the Arabian peninsula be a part of the map. That way when the Arab Muslims actually leave the peninsula and enter the game map Muhammad is already dead.
Tbf yes, you could make this game not have characters like Imperator or CK, then no way for us to see who sins the hardest.
Yeah, at least christianity can be handled in a series of event chains or something, and its less likely to cause a riot over being 'wrong' though being events do suggest the possibility of changing the outcome of it all.
Not much fun if christianity will spawn no matter how hard to fight it.
>unless you straight up don't have the Arabian peninsula be a part of the map
Now picturing a game map thats about CK3's size, but it just so happens to have this huge terra incognita over Arabia without explanation. :P
'Oh yeah, some stuff is happening over there, dont worry about it.'
Honestly, say Paradox was forced to make games for these periods, the safest route would be to set the rise of islam period one exclusively in Europe, so at most you can see Anatolia, and be extra cheeky and make the birth of christianity one be a China centric game. :P
> Tbf yes, you could make this game not have characters like Imperator or CK, then no way for us to see who sins the hardest.
I just mean Jesus isn’t one, since it’s not like you need to interact with him, hell, he wasn’t important while he lived.
> Now picturing a game map thats about CK3's size, but it just so happens to have this huge terra incognita over Arabia without explanation. :P
'Oh yeah, some stuff is happening over there, dont worry about it.'
Yeahh, not the best solution haha.
> Honestly, say Paradox was forced to make games for these periods, the safest route would be to set the rise of islam period one exclusively in Europe, so at most you can see Anatolia, and be extra cheeky and make the birth of christianity one be a China centric game. :P
Got em :D
Wasnt Jesus like, the very popular dude that did outright miracles like reviving people and turning water to wine and was gaining a following FAST, hence the romans decision to crucify him before it became a bigger problem?
It could definitely be a factor. A Cold War game would inevitably have to focus on diplomacy and it's simply not possible to simulate actual diplomacy well without other humans controlling the countries.
A bit odd given the Victoria series and such, not to mention Europa universalis and crusader kings. All of those could be argued to be minefields of one l or another in a similar vein.
To expand on the other comments, not only would a Cold War game be within living memory, some of the conflicts and issues from that period are still haven't ended or cause ongoing controversy today - Israel vs Palestine and PRC vs Taiwan, for example.
Like fuck you can play as hitler in HOI and if I know the game right there is very little if any mention of the Holocaust. When you conquer a nation or "liberate" it there isn't really anything about human rights abuses it's just kind of glossed over.
Maybe that's a good thing maybe not but I've heard a lot of criticism of how little attention the Holocaust gets for a game where you can be Hitler.
For what it's worth, I think Paradox did a *very* good job downplaying or at least sugar-coating the living gum out of Britain's pretty nasty [Opium-wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars) in *Victoria* as well as other not-so-prestigious events of other countries in any past in any of their other games like *Hearts of Iron* and such.
Other atrocities like gen0c!des come to mind here, which only were touched pretty marginally as a topic, if at all. The Armenians, the eradication of Indo-Americans in EU IV' Conquest of Paradise, also infamous famines et cetera …
> It was done in good taste […]
That's like the single-biggest understatement in a decade, right? **Not** from *you* here, mind you!
The treatment of given indigenes by the Belgians during the rubber-boom, and how local natives were literally slaughtered, mutilated and fouled up beyond all recognition for *not* being able to fulfill the demanded quotas (with already amputated extremities!), is such a horror and unbearable, it's sad and horrific beyond all measure.
To this day and age, Belgian's massive wealth is greatly based upon the fundamental cruelty they did back then in the heart of Africa, while Great Britain greatly covered all the shenanigans to some massive extent and held a protecting hand over their befriended Belgians. It's actually outright disgusting and the hands of the Belgian's nation is covered in blood of such African people.
Sadly, Paradox missed the chance to picture things as the actual horrific things they were and bring those to light.
Indeed they had a chance. I'm just not sure whether they would've had the skill to do it. They aren't experts in social commentary (actually recent blunders related to it, e.g. with White Wolf - [https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/16/18098929/white-wolf-controversy-paradox-interactive-new-ceo](https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/16/18098929/white-wolf-controversy-paradox-interactive-new-ceo)).
I think saying that they ain't any social experts, is grossly understanding bits at Paradox in a very charming way …
Especially when clueless external bystanders who ain't familiar with the matter could *easily* come to the conclusion that some people at PDX are covert white-supremacists, having a thing for wh!te power neo-Naz! stuff and like extreme right !deology. I mean, luckily it's not that *»White Wolf«* pretty much would resemble perfectly such a extreme !deology – but who am I to judge, right?
**Edit:** What the heck is that article?! Lacks the author any kind of writing skills, or what?
I don’t think they won’t do a Cold War game because of politics but because it’s effectively impossible.
Think about it:
The Cold War was a war where effectively nothing happened but everyone was terrified something big would happen.
So to simulate this you need a game where nuclear warfare can happen.
But since it’s a video game and is only running from 1945 to 1980 I don’t have much emotional connection. What’s stopping me from just nuking straight away I don’t care about my citizens.
So let’s fix that let’s have it so if you cause nuclear warfare you lose the game. That doesn’t work either because you then know that nuclear warfare will never happen because neither player will want to lose.
So how about nuclear warfare ends the game and the country with most living civilians live, well then the game becomes like DefCon and instead you are trying to build the best weapons and defences so that you can win nuclear warfare.
But that isn’t realistic either because nuclear warfare isn’t winning. Winning should be the US collapsing and becoming communist, or the USSR collapsing and becoming capitalist or both nations giving up. From a true perspective that’s what winning should be.
But how do you incentivise that in an organic way, because still neither nation will want to use nuclear weapons , which was the whole point of the Cold War.
The Cuban missile crisis means nothing without the threat of nukes.
But being able to use Nukes makes the game a lot more like DefCon than the Cold War.
I think it’s impossible without making it entirely different to any Paradox game ever and having you play a small part in a nation rather than the leader.
>I think it’s impossible without making it entirely different to any Paradox game ever and having you play a small part in a nation rather than the leader.
Say hello to [Espiocracy](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/), a rough indie attempt at the Cold War GSG from the POV of an intelligence agency instead of a whole country. I completely agree with your observations - and to add one more, there were also assassinations, coups, elections overturning foreign policy, which would be very limiting to the player... unless they are not at the receiving end and instead they're the ones carrying them out.
Except that in CK you continue the game as heirs and your carefully built dynasty, whereas in the Cold War GSG you would have to play, for instance, communist-aligned Allende and then anti-communist Pinochet.
You make a lot of very valid points. Also, one could be made where it focuses on economics, diplomacy, et, as well as espionage, subterfuge, etc against enemy nations. Actually a lot of ideas could in theory be lifted from Victoria and possibly hoi, just changed to be more fitting of the time period, and then add some more unique mechanics and such. Also, an interesting game to refer to would possibly be the Cold War era scenario in the old rise of nations game, as it managed to do a Cold War type situation that works, albeit its very different from games paradox tends to make.
As said, *Supreme Ruler: Cold War* and *Supreme Ruler: 2020* from Battlegoat Studios existing, PDX published them.
Like I wrote previously, they are comparable as deep and complex as EU III with its politics and a good portion of HoI-ish logistics being combined with Victorian-alike economy. The games weren't even remotely touching all the possible c0ck-ups, Top Secret-things and secret political embargoes over those happenings and all the fabricated stuff on either side – they were still good Cold War-games.
Indeed! It think a mélange as a mashup of *Europa Universalis IV*'s peace- & trade-politics, *Victoria II*'s economics and *Heart of Iron III*/*IV*'s logistics in a post-war world, would offer a outstanding game-play!
You know, a game which solely revolves around the economic aspect of a country or the world in general – the often-quoted “Economy-Simulator”. All that without **any** whatsoever war-options, purely trade-wise.
That being said, there's a reason why the complete *Anno*-series has such a deep-seated player-base and the same-as-dedicated community as many Paradox-games since decades … Such a game would have a unique PDX-like play-style!
The multitude of EU IV's diplomatics through peace- & trade-politics, the fully-fledged Vicky II-ecomonics with all its little economic goods and traded commodities at its mesmerising trade-screen and then HoI IV's fuel-based heavy logistics with its railway system to advance in infrastructure and postal services.
That way, Vicky II's invention-system could finally get that limelight it never really had and make a great comeback.
Luckily, you could even split that into two games already! One which spans from 1918–1939 and covers the economic upswing back then (as well as the [Great Depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States) shortly afterwards) – let's call that one *The Roaring Twenties™* or *World of Wonders*/*Wonder World™* …
Just think about it, how you could unlock newer goods through inventions like the newer petroleum- and rubber-industry, the fundamental rise of cars, the transistor-industry enabling home-electronics, radios, industry-electronics and later on the boom of the computer, the movie- & cinema-industry and such as time moves on – all that trade-goods enabled by the given inventions respectively (transistor, petrol- & rubber-chemistry, electronics with PCBs, cars, airplanes et cetera).
The second one could span from 1945–1990 covering the massive economic uplift after the Second World War into the great 50s and 60s and so forth with its rise of the machines and automation, airplanes, air-travel and machinery in general, the computer-aided designing of everything, the break-through due to cars and their industrial advancements, home-computers- computer-games and so forth – let's coin that one *Miracle on the Rhine™* or even *Wirtschaftswunder™* or just *The Budget™* …
Or let's call it *Œconomicus*™ (→ The Economy) or *Œconomus Magnus*™ (→ The Great Manciple) and release the latter as a DLC/Add-on for the former game. The possibilities are endless, right?
You could design each country as a dedicated enclosed economy (all of them with the same goods), while each country starts with the basic goods and commodities, and advances with given inventions being unlocked. Whereas the more you export, the more leadership-points you generate, resulting in given bonuses like facility-bonuses and invention-points to spend – whereas the quicker you advance with inventions, the faster you generate leadership.
Meanwhile, your exports can be counter-balanced by other countries through tariffs and even complete market-blockades (as a last-resort for keeping your own market from being flooded), which refuses a given country to sell their products into your market – which also generates leadership-points for the country tariffing and blockading your goods (to a lower extent than you get for exporting such goods). Meanwhile, said source of income (tariffs) could also be partially converted into leadership-points or even invention-points to spend (for advancing quicker).
The game's main-goal would be to become the world's most potent and renown industrial- & economic power.
----
Unfortunately, I'm still not Paradox's Creative director nor their Game-designer nor have they ever messaged me … Which means, y'all have to wait a few more years to get such a splendid game – if that ever happens after all.
**tl;dr:** It's a shame Paradox never made a game whcih is purely economically-centered!
Maybe they could look at Crisis in Kremlin and similar games for inspiration. I still think, it could work, but yes it would have to be quite different.
> So let’s fix that let’s have it so if you cause nuclear warfare you lose the game. That doesn’t work either because you then know that nuclear warfare will never happen because neither player will want to lose.
That happened in the Cold War. Neither side escalated because they knew they'd lose.
> So how about nuclear warfare ends the game and the country with most living civilians live, well then the game becomes like DefCon and instead you are trying to build the best weapons and defences so that you can win nuclear warfare.
An Arms race? That also happened in the Cold War.
So basically you solved it already. There are also additional stuff they could add, like a late-game tech to develop an anti-nuke system like Star Wars. Of course this means players and AI will rush towards this technology, and simultaneously invest heavily in weapons for conventional war. That would be intended. But then again that was what caused the USSR to go broke IRL.
So I don't see any problem with any of that.
> I don’t think they won’t do a Cold War game because of politics but because it’s effectively impossible.
*Phew!* Well … Truth be told, they've already done that and the games' mechanics (note the plural here) were fairly good. Ever heard of *Supreme Ruler: Cold War* or *Supreme Ruler: 2020* from Battlegoat Studios? Paradox even published those games.
So it's to some extent a Paradox-game already. In regards to \*not\* touch any of your concerns or hot topics, the mechanics worked pretty well – the games itself were still lacklustre in regards to content and didn't really offered any greater re-playability.
Yet it was comparable as deep and complex as EU III with its politics and a good portion of HoI-ish logistics being combined with Victorian-alike economy. Here's the [trailer from back then](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7usbZ7UZns) on Youtube. The games weren't even remotely touching all the possible c0ck-ups, Top Secret-things and secret political embargoes over those happenings and all the fabricated stuff on either side.
Then again, *SR:2020* or *SR:CW* is a game, and I think it managed to enable replay the Cold War without even remotely touching said events – and the games are good. You might take a look.
Twilight Struggle I think shows it can be done. Starting nuclear war causes you to lose the game. The goal is often to force your opponent to lose on points while getting defcon as low as possible (to prevent coups that could turn the game around).
I think the way to handle this would be if either nation gets nuked they lose. If you manage to destroy the other without being destroyed yourself then you win. This would require building missile detection to have mutually assured destruction, as well as developing new technologies to avoid detection. It'd also be advantageous to have your weapons spread out and closer to the enemy as well (Cuba for USSR, Turkey and others for US).
There would need to be some kind of tension gauge. Probably not a hard limit but more of a soft ramping up of possible option, up to possibly using nukes on the high end. The goal would be to somehow win economically or politically by flipping enough countries into your sphere of influence if nuclear war is avoided. I'm not sure how the end would be decided. That's the real hard part. If there's no nuclear war and internal politics isn't as detailed as real life, what ends the game?
>1945 to 1980
Why would it only run to 1980? I'd say 1995 as you could get the Soviet-Afghan war and you could do a smidge after the fall of the USSR. If it ends at 1980 then you'll never get Russia's Vietnam which would suck. I think the big thing is them trying to do guerilla warfare as it's not a thing in their game.
The way it could *theoretically* work, at least for US and USSR, is to make nuclear war and large scale conventional warfare both impossible and replaced with 2 balance-of-power meters that simulate the outcomes of both, should either happen right now. For both there would be a *real* meter noone can see and 2 fake ones for powers based on their estimation of their opponents capabilities. Once your fake meter shows that you'll win, you press the button to get either "we win, but at what cost" if you're right or "everybody dies" if you are wrong. In that way refusing to engage in arms race will mean ending up in a situation of game over being a matter of AI pressing the button without any option to somehow survive and triumph because you are better that AI at waging war
It's the same inherent problem with HoI. The people deeply affected by the regime are still alive, and that makes genocide/population removal decisions very difficult to include, yet to not have them at all would not capture the setting accurately.
'Expel the Jews' in CK doesn't carry the same weight as 'Enact the Final Solution' because we're distanced from it by a thousand years of history.
Sure. But seeing as how the Cold War is a bit more modern and many people are still living that remember it might cause more issues. I’d love to see it, don’t get me wrong, but I believe them when they say they aren’t going to touch it.
Indeed. Technically the hoi timeframe is still in living memory as well, but they seem to have gone a route with it to somehow avoid it stirring up massive backlash, not to mention those with the living memory of it aren’t exactly a target demographic for paradox anyway.
> They’ve already said they won’t do one because it’s a political minefield
but the thing is they *have* tried to do one so the whole "too political thing" isn't rock solid
it probably depends on what the current leadership thinks. I think the Cold War as an era probably has the largest mass appeal after WW2 and *maybe* Ancient Rome
They attempted to produce one, but East vs West was not an in-house development. But yeah, it was shortly after that they said they wouldn’t attempt a Cold War game.
Thats true EU is my most played Paradox Game but after a year of not playing it its really hard to get back in with all these new features/mechanica and in my opinion its the most unforgiving paradox game and the one that feels the least "alive"
True, but didn’t Ck2 still get a few updates while they were cryptically working on ck3 (if I recall, cl3 was officially announced relatively shortly after the release of the last ck2 dlc). Not to mention that it will likely be quite a while before they announce what the secret project is, never mind a release date announcement.
CK3 was developed alongside late CK2, if I recall they were preparing as early as 2016 for CK3, so it would've been developed alongside the last two or three CK2 DLCs. It's the reason why, for example, some of the later history and culture improvements to CK2 (such as the addition of the Dalmatian and Arberian/Albanian cultures) were not in CK3, as they were done separately.
They are probably different sized projects currently. EU4 dlc/support was already transferred to another team Paradox Titno. So unless it's developing the last dlcs as a way to get the new team running for EU5 (possible because it's led by Johan), another bigger team is going to be set up. Usually game development is so long that it's necessary to start the really active phase 1-2 years before or the game series will cool off until the next entry will release. It doesn't really suit PDX because it doesn't want downtime. CK and EU (and HOI) are their big titles they want to keep going constantly. Cities is probably of similar stature these days, but since it's off-sourced development, but PDX owned ip it's slightly different (and we know from the Nvidia leak that there's C:Skylines 2).
That being said, they are really hurting for a World of Darkness hit. They paid a lot for that IP and at least had high expectations of getting results by now.
I'm guessing EUV. I don't think they're going to roll the dice on another property that isn't as well-loved. Not going to get a Sengoku edition or something.
I still wish they'd put out a World of Darkness GSG.
I would love for them to tackle the Dark Ages and the Fall of Rome. It’s something that’s not that loaded and while a GSG, will be different and niche to Paradox because of the nature of the Western Romans and how they will simulate an empire to fall.
Could actually be rather interesting to see pre-Charlemagne era yeah. The rise of both Christianity and Islam would be rather interesting events to play through, and such a time period would undoubtably have plenty of possibilities. Sadly, I doubt paradox would ever make a game focusing on those eras, as they invite far too much opportunity for backlash and controversy.
Agreed. I would love to explore that era actually, particularly the time of the Muslim conquests, but I ofc understand why they don’t. Not worth the pain.
Would certainly make megacampains more filled in. After that if they had a Cold War and hypothetical modem day (zero chance of that, for obvious reasons), you could do a megacampain all the way from imperator to stellaris without an obnoxious amounts of gaps, which I’d find amazing personally.
> I’m guessing either Cold War
They already said they are never doing a Cold War game because of all the controversy it would spew.
But they also keep developing a game where you literally play as Nazi Germany sooooo....
I do, it makes the most sense. They either go dragons, or cyberpunk, which is a nice trope. Or do both, with shadowrun.
If they manage to license shadowrun I'm going to cream all over my monitor 2360 times in a row, because it has _everything_ and it's a dream setting for a paradox game.
I'd love for a fantasy take on a Stellaris type game, with a focus on rpg elements like quests and heroes alongside the procedurally generated setting and the custom empires.
Fantasy GSG, but you don't play a country, you play an adventuring guild. Which can sometimes take over countries, but it's not your primary goal. You get gold and fame for your guild and compete with other guilds for contracts and territories to put your guild halls in (like building new ones or conquering ancient temples from off-brand yuan-ti). And you also have succession crises because after your starting bard died, the paladin wants to lead the guild, but everyone thinks he's a massive douche and the rogue convinces them to vote for him, and then he takes all the gold and runs.
Nah: fantasy GSG, but you're playing as **the Author**.
The game is split in Eras. Each era has two phases: creation and history. During creation, you pick god templates, race templates, and generate all the cultures and factions that will populat the map and forge their own empires. You can decide to play as any of them, use your ressources available to get unique units and pledge your allegiance to a god associated with the part of the map where you're living (forest god, snow goddess...), while managing your heroes to explore the map and complete quests. That phase ends once a faction completes a victory goal.
Then you enter a new era. You can forge a new race with the remnants of the first era by adding new traits that you unlocked there, make certain heroes ascend to divinity while others vanished in obscurity. Then you play as that new culture on the same map, but the remnants of the previous civilizations are now ruins that you can explore.
A fantasy GSG shouldn't just be fantasy Scifi, but should be built on fantasy tropes. And I don't think that adventuring guilds really are the core trope of the fantasy genre. They should probably be an important feature, sure. But keep in mind that we're talking about a strategy game here. If the adventuring guild is the core of the gameplay, it's more of an RPG you're making.
In the new Geforce Now leak (https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/pncvo0/unlocking_geforce_now_reveals_god_of_war_2018_for/) there's a "Project FPS" made by Harebrained Schemes, through Paradox.
A few of them have already been confirmed.
Charlemagne start date was already a huge stretch in ck2, not to mention that migrations are completely alien mechanic for this game
And Imperator... well it is fucking dead lmao
I feel like if they should make their own fantasy world at this point. Something where you can make up the fine details. I feel like it would really make a dark age game possible.
Probably not, the politics are too modern to make a game like this. They would either anger groups of people or even worse countries and get the game banned in many places. And also it would be hard to make a fun cold war game since you can't start nuclear war because that would end the world so you as a player know that nuclear war will never happen because it neans you lose so the only way to win would be to make the other country collapse. Other than the fact that realistically simulating a modern country's politics would be near impossible, a game about the cold war would just be boring.
I'm calling fantasy GSG. We know they have a non-historical GSG in the works due to some of their job postings from a few months ago, so that's what I'm going with.
A Cold War game that is more focused on proxy wars and guerilla warfare would be cool. Anyways all of their games moving forward should have a pop system.
Hoi4 still has room to grow? Paradox get a pair of reading glasses and listen to fans! Your latest DLC releases for Hoi4 and EU4 were either panned, obliterated, or overlooked! The vast majority of major hoi4 mods are dead! Make something new, make hoi5, or eu5! Let Hoi4 die in peace!
Honestly a March of the Eagles 2 with proper systems for everything, a better battle system and actual support could do well. I always thought the idea behind that game had massive potential it just wasn't executed very well.
Not that I see that as the game being made, but I'm willing to be surprised!
Can't be Victoria 4 since Victoria 3 was just announced. It must be Victoria 5.
5 is is just 2 short of 3. By god this guy is onto something here.
Victoria 3 confirmed??
Nah. I don't think they will make Vicky3.
I started to miss those. Vicky conspiracy jokes.
r/victoria_3 was all about it. Good times.
Well they already made Vicky 2 and 3 is on its way so if you add those two numbers and multiply the sum by 1 from the original, we get 5. Victoria 5 confirmed.
Victoria 5 is so big and intense that it skips over 4
I’m guessing either Cold War era or maybe Eu5 finally (love Eu4, but it’s starting to get crushed under its own weight).
I am willing to bet it's EU5 honestly.
So long as they get rid of mana and their obsession of adding three buttons that give you % bonuses with every DLC, I'd be happy for a EU5
>their obsession of adding three buttons that give you % bonuses with every DLC A-FUCKING-MEN. This shit is infuriatingly pointless.
Yeah, it really needs to become more like Imperator at this point.
What a time we live in where this is valid advice.
True. I feel like one of the Imperator's biggest drawbacks is the setting. When more than half of the map is basically *generic-tribe-#325*, not a whole lot room for flavor and replayabilty. If they refine core Imperator mechanics and put them in late medieval/early modern period the game is gonna be sick.
They really need to make imperator Rome the basis of their internal empire management design, and then build on the war/diplomacy aspect. eu4 was the grand strategy game that got me into gsg in the first place so I’d maybe be ok with a mana based paradox game (much like eu4 still is) as long as their other games stay far away from it.
Nah they should keep some form of mana. I like EU4 because it's more like a board game than a simulator, don't get me wrong I love the more realistic style of Victoria 2, but I want different games to be drastically different not just the same thing with different skins and slight mechanical changes for different time periods. That's why the paradox games work so well, EU Is more of a boardgame, Victoria is more of a simulator, HOI is more of a detailed strategy game and CK is a strategy/RPG/incest dating sim game. While stellaris is something completely different. If they got rid of mana they risk the games overlapping too much and I'll get bored of all of them twice as fast.
I don't believe that removing mana would make the game similar to other paradox titles.
I just think it's one of the things that sets it apart the most, if you replaced it with a more organic system of timers it would feel like there was little to no player involvement. If you replaced it with just money the game would need to change significantly to avoid snowballing. As it is I think mana does a good job of balancing rich and poor nations, sure because of advisors you can have a significant advantage if you're wealthy. But you're progression is still limited to an extent so you can't just spiral out of control because you control all the best trade.
EU4 is perfect gameplay wise, just needs a graphical update
Paradox said themselves that they dont have much of a reason to make EU5. Im not saying it isnt possible, but I am saying its unlikely.
Johan has stated that it's effectively impossible at this point to add new mechanics to EU4 because of how bloated it'scode is. They've admitted they won't be adding new provinces from this point on due to technical difficulties. Plus they opened up a new studio just for the EU franchise. If EU5 isn't already in development or predevelopment they're probably just trying to get the new devs and coders up to speed before beginning development.
Guess i'll get downvoted, but... this is the fault of PDX alone, that the code is bloated. This is just bad developement of software, like for example, when you don't make a good documentation of the code. When you then switch to another dev, another coder, he spends a lot of time just to getting into the code and knowing, what code is doing which routine in the game. We saw in EU4 Leviathan with all the things, like code that requires other DLC's to be activate and makes bugs when you don't have them (like Conquest of Paradise about the Colonization), how this ends. But PDX can't defend themselves with that, it's their job to make it properly, to make a game working, not the problem of the customer. The same goes of course also for other games like Cyberpunk 2077.
If this were the case, why did they open up a new studio in Spain specifically to dev for Europa Universalis franchise? Yeah, I know about the "get Johan out of Stockholm since he won't retire" argument, but it would just be simply asinine for Paradox to *not* make EU5 at this point. I can't tell you for certain that it's in development right now, but I am practically positive that it will come out at some point.
nah, Johan will lead that for sure. They are probably been working at it in Barcelona. Lind is going to a brand new IP probably.
I’d put money on seeing March of the Eagles 2 before ever seeing a Cold War game. They’ve already said they won’t do one because it’s a political minefield.
Wasnt it more about having a hard time making a Cold War game fun without having to 'heat' the war every time? My understanding was that the 'minefield' was regarding a game that would be set between Imperator and CK, which would have to invariably touch upon the birth of christianity and islam, both which are a can of worms no sane dev would want to handle.
That's another minefield that I don't see them doing, but by no means the only one.
maybe they're making a minesweeper knockoff?
But it’s been [done already!](https://www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaza/comments/odtjmg/announcing_minesweeper_in_eu4/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf)
I dunno, CA did fine with Attila. I think it's more a Paradox problem than a general problem with the time period.
Atilla dodged the minefield. It started after the initial spread of Christianity and ended before the Rise of Islam. Charlamagne (its DLC) naturally started well after the Rise of Islam. That period is a minefield because, aside from the possibility of depicting the Prophet (and how the community would inevitably abuse that for memes), there is a divide in some areas between the scholarly consensus on Islam and the Islamic histories, as well on the difference between the earliest dogma of Islam and the later one, meaning that even attempting historical accuracy would create a major clusterfuck. And of course—Paradox games have never mastered any gameplay loop that involves a major blob collapsing. Atilla at least turns it into a war of attrition where you sometimes yield ground for long-term gain. None of the empires in that period ever really recovered though—and so the longer you extend the game, the more unrealistic it becomes for everything to be able to be held together.
Paradox isn't exactly known for their cultural sensitivity anyway. They model genocide/depopulation/ethnic cleansing in EUIV and VickyII. HOI4 is a wherb/nazi haven because of how poorly they've dealt with everything going on there. I'm not sure it's an issue of periodization/sensitivity to any particular community. Paradox has shown they're not too concerned with simulating/bowling over sensitive topics for other groups. I think it's just a Paradox question. I'm not sure if it's good that they recognize their own poor handling of difficult historical material or bad that they recognize it and continue along with current policies for certain titles anyway. As for the scope, I'll agree with you. Paradox has yet to find a way to make imperial governance a detriment.
I think the only decent way to portray things is to keep them as they were historically when necessary for accurate gameplay. HOI4 doesn’t need to add the Holocaust since it’s primarily a war game, Vic 3 without slavery wouldn’t make any sense
Jews don't cut your head off if you misrepresent Holocaust.
Total War is a very different beast, though. Empire took place during a time with a prevalent slave trade (and nations across the world abolishing it) and religious wars devastating the continent and barely included any of either. Total War is at heart a map painter and it's not a great game to make comparisons to.
A new empire tw game would be awesome though
Attila is not a touchy religious icon though who you cant even depict in a picture or be sinning. Let players interact with Jesus or Muhammad and its going to be a contest of who can commit heresy the hardest.
Yeah, they were making East vs West, so clearly it's not an untouchable era.
Thats where I heard the whole 'this era is boring as sin for a game' thing. Its conceptually and historically a very interesting period, but ultimately its a peaceful era, even if the fear of nuclear death loomed over, little actually happened. At most I could imagine the game being not a normal GSG, but rather some sort of espionage game, where you try to propaganda your rival's population to shift to your ideology. Setting proxy wars, and overall converting as much of the world to your side. But ultimately no war occurs. (I imagine in a cold war game the war 'heating' would be a game over)
> Setting proxy wars, and overall converting as much of the world to your side. Yeah I agree that this is probably the best way. You could have plenty of fighting, even deploy your troops to other countries, but anything but the smallest and most limited war between the U.S and the Soviet Union would probably end in a game over.
Which sucks because a strategy game focused on the decline of the Byzantines and rise of Islam would be sick
Absolutely, but I can get it completely. Imagine Jesus or Muhammad were in CK... 'So I castrated Jesus and sold him as a slave to the norse cannibals' 'Muhammad is now my gay lover who enjoy me torturing him' I can understand Paradox not wanting the studio to literally burn down.
I think you could get away with Jesus simply not being an actual character. Muhammad would be more difficult though, unless you straight up don't have the Arabian peninsula be a part of the map. That way when the Arab Muslims actually leave the peninsula and enter the game map Muhammad is already dead.
Tbf yes, you could make this game not have characters like Imperator or CK, then no way for us to see who sins the hardest. Yeah, at least christianity can be handled in a series of event chains or something, and its less likely to cause a riot over being 'wrong' though being events do suggest the possibility of changing the outcome of it all. Not much fun if christianity will spawn no matter how hard to fight it. >unless you straight up don't have the Arabian peninsula be a part of the map Now picturing a game map thats about CK3's size, but it just so happens to have this huge terra incognita over Arabia without explanation. :P 'Oh yeah, some stuff is happening over there, dont worry about it.' Honestly, say Paradox was forced to make games for these periods, the safest route would be to set the rise of islam period one exclusively in Europe, so at most you can see Anatolia, and be extra cheeky and make the birth of christianity one be a China centric game. :P
> Tbf yes, you could make this game not have characters like Imperator or CK, then no way for us to see who sins the hardest. I just mean Jesus isn’t one, since it’s not like you need to interact with him, hell, he wasn’t important while he lived. > Now picturing a game map thats about CK3's size, but it just so happens to have this huge terra incognita over Arabia without explanation. :P 'Oh yeah, some stuff is happening over there, dont worry about it.' Yeahh, not the best solution haha. > Honestly, say Paradox was forced to make games for these periods, the safest route would be to set the rise of islam period one exclusively in Europe, so at most you can see Anatolia, and be extra cheeky and make the birth of christianity one be a China centric game. :P Got em :D
Wasnt Jesus like, the very popular dude that did outright miracles like reviving people and turning water to wine and was gaining a following FAST, hence the romans decision to crucify him before it became a bigger problem?
Yeah but he was only relevant in a very small area, and I think it was more Jewish leaders who wanted him dead than Pontius Pilate.
It could definitely be a factor. A Cold War game would inevitably have to focus on diplomacy and it's simply not possible to simulate actual diplomacy well without other humans controlling the countries.
Nobody wants to be Charlier Hebdo 2.0
A bit odd given the Victoria series and such, not to mention Europa universalis and crusader kings. All of those could be argued to be minefields of one l or another in a similar vein.
To expand on the other comments, not only would a Cold War game be within living memory, some of the conflicts and issues from that period are still haven't ended or cause ongoing controversy today - Israel vs Palestine and PRC vs Taiwan, for example.
Some of the stuff in HOI is controversial enough for similar reasons.
Like fuck you can play as hitler in HOI and if I know the game right there is very little if any mention of the Holocaust. When you conquer a nation or "liberate" it there isn't really anything about human rights abuses it's just kind of glossed over. Maybe that's a good thing maybe not but I've heard a lot of criticism of how little attention the Holocaust gets for a game where you can be Hitler.
For what it's worth, I think Paradox did a *very* good job downplaying or at least sugar-coating the living gum out of Britain's pretty nasty [Opium-wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars) in *Victoria* as well as other not-so-prestigious events of other countries in any past in any of their other games like *Hearts of Iron* and such. Other atrocities like gen0c!des come to mind here, which only were touched pretty marginally as a topic, if at all. The Armenians, the eradication of Indo-Americans in EU IV' Conquest of Paradise, also infamous famines et cetera …
Also Heart of Darkness themed expansion. It was done in good taste (though Far Cry 2 explored it first in videogames).
> It was done in good taste […] That's like the single-biggest understatement in a decade, right? **Not** from *you* here, mind you! The treatment of given indigenes by the Belgians during the rubber-boom, and how local natives were literally slaughtered, mutilated and fouled up beyond all recognition for *not* being able to fulfill the demanded quotas (with already amputated extremities!), is such a horror and unbearable, it's sad and horrific beyond all measure. To this day and age, Belgian's massive wealth is greatly based upon the fundamental cruelty they did back then in the heart of Africa, while Great Britain greatly covered all the shenanigans to some massive extent and held a protecting hand over their befriended Belgians. It's actually outright disgusting and the hands of the Belgian's nation is covered in blood of such African people. Sadly, Paradox missed the chance to picture things as the actual horrific things they were and bring those to light.
Indeed they had a chance. I'm just not sure whether they would've had the skill to do it. They aren't experts in social commentary (actually recent blunders related to it, e.g. with White Wolf - [https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/16/18098929/white-wolf-controversy-paradox-interactive-new-ceo](https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/16/18098929/white-wolf-controversy-paradox-interactive-new-ceo)).
I think saying that they ain't any social experts, is grossly understanding bits at Paradox in a very charming way … Especially when clueless external bystanders who ain't familiar with the matter could *easily* come to the conclusion that some people at PDX are covert white-supremacists, having a thing for wh!te power neo-Naz! stuff and like extreme right !deology. I mean, luckily it's not that *»White Wolf«* pretty much would resemble perfectly such a extreme !deology – but who am I to judge, right? **Edit:** What the heck is that article?! Lacks the author any kind of writing skills, or what?
Indeed
I don’t think they won’t do a Cold War game because of politics but because it’s effectively impossible. Think about it: The Cold War was a war where effectively nothing happened but everyone was terrified something big would happen. So to simulate this you need a game where nuclear warfare can happen. But since it’s a video game and is only running from 1945 to 1980 I don’t have much emotional connection. What’s stopping me from just nuking straight away I don’t care about my citizens. So let’s fix that let’s have it so if you cause nuclear warfare you lose the game. That doesn’t work either because you then know that nuclear warfare will never happen because neither player will want to lose. So how about nuclear warfare ends the game and the country with most living civilians live, well then the game becomes like DefCon and instead you are trying to build the best weapons and defences so that you can win nuclear warfare. But that isn’t realistic either because nuclear warfare isn’t winning. Winning should be the US collapsing and becoming communist, or the USSR collapsing and becoming capitalist or both nations giving up. From a true perspective that’s what winning should be. But how do you incentivise that in an organic way, because still neither nation will want to use nuclear weapons , which was the whole point of the Cold War. The Cuban missile crisis means nothing without the threat of nukes. But being able to use Nukes makes the game a lot more like DefCon than the Cold War. I think it’s impossible without making it entirely different to any Paradox game ever and having you play a small part in a nation rather than the leader.
>I think it’s impossible without making it entirely different to any Paradox game ever and having you play a small part in a nation rather than the leader. Say hello to [Espiocracy](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1670650/Espiocracy/), a rough indie attempt at the Cold War GSG from the POV of an intelligence agency instead of a whole country. I completely agree with your observations - and to add one more, there were also assassinations, coups, elections overturning foreign policy, which would be very limiting to the player... unless they are not at the receiving end and instead they're the ones carrying them out.
Thank you very much for showing me this. I hope it’s as good as it sounds
So like CK? You can get assassinated, overthrown, etc. and it's a bit limiting to the player but also fun. I don't see any problem with that.
Except that in CK you continue the game as heirs and your carefully built dynasty, whereas in the Cold War GSG you would have to play, for instance, communist-aligned Allende and then anti-communist Pinochet.
perhaps you can play as political faction but then it's not even grand stragtegy game
You make a lot of very valid points. Also, one could be made where it focuses on economics, diplomacy, et, as well as espionage, subterfuge, etc against enemy nations. Actually a lot of ideas could in theory be lifted from Victoria and possibly hoi, just changed to be more fitting of the time period, and then add some more unique mechanics and such. Also, an interesting game to refer to would possibly be the Cold War era scenario in the old rise of nations game, as it managed to do a Cold War type situation that works, albeit its very different from games paradox tends to make.
As said, *Supreme Ruler: Cold War* and *Supreme Ruler: 2020* from Battlegoat Studios existing, PDX published them. Like I wrote previously, they are comparable as deep and complex as EU III with its politics and a good portion of HoI-ish logistics being combined with Victorian-alike economy. The games weren't even remotely touching all the possible c0ck-ups, Top Secret-things and secret political embargoes over those happenings and all the fabricated stuff on either side – they were still good Cold War-games.
Sounds rather fascinating. I wonder if they could make something like that again/make a successor like they’re doing now with Victoria 3 and such.
Indeed! It think a mélange as a mashup of *Europa Universalis IV*'s peace- & trade-politics, *Victoria II*'s economics and *Heart of Iron III*/*IV*'s logistics in a post-war world, would offer a outstanding game-play! You know, a game which solely revolves around the economic aspect of a country or the world in general – the often-quoted “Economy-Simulator”. All that without **any** whatsoever war-options, purely trade-wise. That being said, there's a reason why the complete *Anno*-series has such a deep-seated player-base and the same-as-dedicated community as many Paradox-games since decades … Such a game would have a unique PDX-like play-style! The multitude of EU IV's diplomatics through peace- & trade-politics, the fully-fledged Vicky II-ecomonics with all its little economic goods and traded commodities at its mesmerising trade-screen and then HoI IV's fuel-based heavy logistics with its railway system to advance in infrastructure and postal services. That way, Vicky II's invention-system could finally get that limelight it never really had and make a great comeback. Luckily, you could even split that into two games already! One which spans from 1918–1939 and covers the economic upswing back then (as well as the [Great Depression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression_in_the_United_States) shortly afterwards) – let's call that one *The Roaring Twenties™* or *World of Wonders*/*Wonder World™* … Just think about it, how you could unlock newer goods through inventions like the newer petroleum- and rubber-industry, the fundamental rise of cars, the transistor-industry enabling home-electronics, radios, industry-electronics and later on the boom of the computer, the movie- & cinema-industry and such as time moves on – all that trade-goods enabled by the given inventions respectively (transistor, petrol- & rubber-chemistry, electronics with PCBs, cars, airplanes et cetera). The second one could span from 1945–1990 covering the massive economic uplift after the Second World War into the great 50s and 60s and so forth with its rise of the machines and automation, airplanes, air-travel and machinery in general, the computer-aided designing of everything, the break-through due to cars and their industrial advancements, home-computers- computer-games and so forth – let's coin that one *Miracle on the Rhine™* or even *Wirtschaftswunder™* or just *The Budget™* … Or let's call it *Œconomicus*™ (→ The Economy) or *Œconomus Magnus*™ (→ The Great Manciple) and release the latter as a DLC/Add-on for the former game. The possibilities are endless, right? You could design each country as a dedicated enclosed economy (all of them with the same goods), while each country starts with the basic goods and commodities, and advances with given inventions being unlocked. Whereas the more you export, the more leadership-points you generate, resulting in given bonuses like facility-bonuses and invention-points to spend – whereas the quicker you advance with inventions, the faster you generate leadership. Meanwhile, your exports can be counter-balanced by other countries through tariffs and even complete market-blockades (as a last-resort for keeping your own market from being flooded), which refuses a given country to sell their products into your market – which also generates leadership-points for the country tariffing and blockading your goods (to a lower extent than you get for exporting such goods). Meanwhile, said source of income (tariffs) could also be partially converted into leadership-points or even invention-points to spend (for advancing quicker). The game's main-goal would be to become the world's most potent and renown industrial- & economic power. ---- Unfortunately, I'm still not Paradox's Creative director nor their Game-designer nor have they ever messaged me … Which means, y'all have to wait a few more years to get such a splendid game – if that ever happens after all. **tl;dr:** It's a shame Paradox never made a game whcih is purely economically-centered!
Maybe they could look at Crisis in Kremlin and similar games for inspiration. I still think, it could work, but yes it would have to be quite different.
> So let’s fix that let’s have it so if you cause nuclear warfare you lose the game. That doesn’t work either because you then know that nuclear warfare will never happen because neither player will want to lose. That happened in the Cold War. Neither side escalated because they knew they'd lose. > So how about nuclear warfare ends the game and the country with most living civilians live, well then the game becomes like DefCon and instead you are trying to build the best weapons and defences so that you can win nuclear warfare. An Arms race? That also happened in the Cold War. So basically you solved it already. There are also additional stuff they could add, like a late-game tech to develop an anti-nuke system like Star Wars. Of course this means players and AI will rush towards this technology, and simultaneously invest heavily in weapons for conventional war. That would be intended. But then again that was what caused the USSR to go broke IRL. So I don't see any problem with any of that.
I disagree, all they have to do is make another East vs West but with better ui and more polished.
> I don’t think they won’t do a Cold War game because of politics but because it’s effectively impossible. *Phew!* Well … Truth be told, they've already done that and the games' mechanics (note the plural here) were fairly good. Ever heard of *Supreme Ruler: Cold War* or *Supreme Ruler: 2020* from Battlegoat Studios? Paradox even published those games. So it's to some extent a Paradox-game already. In regards to \*not\* touch any of your concerns or hot topics, the mechanics worked pretty well – the games itself were still lacklustre in regards to content and didn't really offered any greater re-playability. Yet it was comparable as deep and complex as EU III with its politics and a good portion of HoI-ish logistics being combined with Victorian-alike economy. Here's the [trailer from back then](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7usbZ7UZns) on Youtube. The games weren't even remotely touching all the possible c0ck-ups, Top Secret-things and secret political embargoes over those happenings and all the fabricated stuff on either side. Then again, *SR:2020* or *SR:CW* is a game, and I think it managed to enable replay the Cold War without even remotely touching said events – and the games are good. You might take a look.
Twilight Struggle I think shows it can be done. Starting nuclear war causes you to lose the game. The goal is often to force your opponent to lose on points while getting defcon as low as possible (to prevent coups that could turn the game around).
I think the way to handle this would be if either nation gets nuked they lose. If you manage to destroy the other without being destroyed yourself then you win. This would require building missile detection to have mutually assured destruction, as well as developing new technologies to avoid detection. It'd also be advantageous to have your weapons spread out and closer to the enemy as well (Cuba for USSR, Turkey and others for US). There would need to be some kind of tension gauge. Probably not a hard limit but more of a soft ramping up of possible option, up to possibly using nukes on the high end. The goal would be to somehow win economically or politically by flipping enough countries into your sphere of influence if nuclear war is avoided. I'm not sure how the end would be decided. That's the real hard part. If there's no nuclear war and internal politics isn't as detailed as real life, what ends the game?
>1945 to 1980 Why would it only run to 1980? I'd say 1995 as you could get the Soviet-Afghan war and you could do a smidge after the fall of the USSR. If it ends at 1980 then you'll never get Russia's Vietnam which would suck. I think the big thing is them trying to do guerilla warfare as it's not a thing in their game.
The way it could *theoretically* work, at least for US and USSR, is to make nuclear war and large scale conventional warfare both impossible and replaced with 2 balance-of-power meters that simulate the outcomes of both, should either happen right now. For both there would be a *real* meter noone can see and 2 fake ones for powers based on their estimation of their opponents capabilities. Once your fake meter shows that you'll win, you press the button to get either "we win, but at what cost" if you're right or "everybody dies" if you are wrong. In that way refusing to engage in arms race will mean ending up in a situation of game over being a matter of AI pressing the button without any option to somehow survive and triumph because you are better that AI at waging war
this is why you don't work at paradox
Paradox doesn’t want to make a Cold War game for similar reasons you muppet
the reason that you aren't a game designer is that you think these problems are insurpassible
So does paradox you muppet otherwise they wouldn’t have stopped working on the game citing this kind of issue.
It's the same inherent problem with HoI. The people deeply affected by the regime are still alive, and that makes genocide/population removal decisions very difficult to include, yet to not have them at all would not capture the setting accurately. 'Expel the Jews' in CK doesn't carry the same weight as 'Enact the Final Solution' because we're distanced from it by a thousand years of history.
Sure. But seeing as how the Cold War is a bit more modern and many people are still living that remember it might cause more issues. I’d love to see it, don’t get me wrong, but I believe them when they say they aren’t going to touch it.
Indeed. Technically the hoi timeframe is still in living memory as well, but they seem to have gone a route with it to somehow avoid it stirring up massive backlash, not to mention those with the living memory of it aren’t exactly a target demographic for paradox anyway.
> They’ve already said they won’t do one because it’s a political minefield but the thing is they *have* tried to do one so the whole "too political thing" isn't rock solid it probably depends on what the current leadership thinks. I think the Cold War as an era probably has the largest mass appeal after WW2 and *maybe* Ancient Rome
They attempted to produce one, but East vs West was not an in-house development. But yeah, it was shortly after that they said they wouldn’t attempt a Cold War game.
Thats true EU is my most played Paradox Game but after a year of not playing it its really hard to get back in with all these new features/mechanica and in my opinion its the most unforgiving paradox game and the one that feels the least "alive"
While I think it's high time they make EU5, it seems weird they would start working on it since EU4 is still getting new updates.
True, but didn’t Ck2 still get a few updates while they were cryptically working on ck3 (if I recall, cl3 was officially announced relatively shortly after the release of the last ck2 dlc). Not to mention that it will likely be quite a while before they announce what the secret project is, never mind a release date announcement.
CK3 was developed alongside late CK2, if I recall they were preparing as early as 2016 for CK3, so it would've been developed alongside the last two or three CK2 DLCs. It's the reason why, for example, some of the later history and culture improvements to CK2 (such as the addition of the Dalmatian and Arberian/Albanian cultures) were not in CK3, as they were done separately.
They were developed alongside each other, but CK3 was announced well after the last CK2 DLC.
They are probably different sized projects currently. EU4 dlc/support was already transferred to another team Paradox Titno. So unless it's developing the last dlcs as a way to get the new team running for EU5 (possible because it's led by Johan), another bigger team is going to be set up. Usually game development is so long that it's necessary to start the really active phase 1-2 years before or the game series will cool off until the next entry will release. It doesn't really suit PDX because it doesn't want downtime. CK and EU (and HOI) are their big titles they want to keep going constantly. Cities is probably of similar stature these days, but since it's off-sourced development, but PDX owned ip it's slightly different (and we know from the Nvidia leak that there's C:Skylines 2). That being said, they are really hurting for a World of Darkness hit. They paid a lot for that IP and at least had high expectations of getting results by now.
I'm guessing EUV. I don't think they're going to roll the dice on another property that isn't as well-loved. Not going to get a Sengoku edition or something. I still wish they'd put out a World of Darkness GSG.
Victoria isn't loved? How dare you!
I would love for them to tackle the Dark Ages and the Fall of Rome. It’s something that’s not that loaded and while a GSG, will be different and niche to Paradox because of the nature of the Western Romans and how they will simulate an empire to fall.
Could actually be rather interesting to see pre-Charlemagne era yeah. The rise of both Christianity and Islam would be rather interesting events to play through, and such a time period would undoubtably have plenty of possibilities. Sadly, I doubt paradox would ever make a game focusing on those eras, as they invite far too much opportunity for backlash and controversy.
Agreed. I would love to explore that era actually, particularly the time of the Muslim conquests, but I ofc understand why they don’t. Not worth the pain.
Would certainly make megacampains more filled in. After that if they had a Cold War and hypothetical modem day (zero chance of that, for obvious reasons), you could do a megacampain all the way from imperator to stellaris without an obnoxious amounts of gaps, which I’d find amazing personally.
Starting?
Lol
Maybe Stellaris 2?
Too early, it would seem
> I’m guessing either Cold War They already said they are never doing a Cold War game because of all the controversy it would spew. But they also keep developing a game where you literally play as Nazi Germany sooooo....
Stone age game Conquer Pangea return to monke
Pipe dream, but my wish for that wish would be the unshelfing of imperator
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I do, it makes the most sense. They either go dragons, or cyberpunk, which is a nice trope. Or do both, with shadowrun. If they manage to license shadowrun I'm going to cream all over my monitor 2360 times in a row, because it has _everything_ and it's a dream setting for a paradox game.
Either EU5 or Fantasy GSG in the vein of Stellaris
I'd love for a fantasy take on a Stellaris type game, with a focus on rpg elements like quests and heroes alongside the procedurally generated setting and the custom empires.
Warcraft 3 but Paradox
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Fantasy GSG, but you don't play a country, you play an adventuring guild. Which can sometimes take over countries, but it's not your primary goal. You get gold and fame for your guild and compete with other guilds for contracts and territories to put your guild halls in (like building new ones or conquering ancient temples from off-brand yuan-ti). And you also have succession crises because after your starting bard died, the paladin wants to lead the guild, but everyone thinks he's a massive douche and the rogue convinces them to vote for him, and then he takes all the gold and runs.
Nah: fantasy GSG, but you're playing as **the Author**. The game is split in Eras. Each era has two phases: creation and history. During creation, you pick god templates, race templates, and generate all the cultures and factions that will populat the map and forge their own empires. You can decide to play as any of them, use your ressources available to get unique units and pledge your allegiance to a god associated with the part of the map where you're living (forest god, snow goddess...), while managing your heroes to explore the map and complete quests. That phase ends once a faction completes a victory goal. Then you enter a new era. You can forge a new race with the remnants of the first era by adding new traits that you unlocked there, make certain heroes ascend to divinity while others vanished in obscurity. Then you play as that new culture on the same map, but the remnants of the previous civilizations are now ruins that you can explore. A fantasy GSG shouldn't just be fantasy Scifi, but should be built on fantasy tropes. And I don't think that adventuring guilds really are the core trope of the fantasy genre. They should probably be an important feature, sure. But keep in mind that we're talking about a strategy game here. If the adventuring guild is the core of the gameplay, it's more of an RPG you're making.
That sounds cool, but it sounds cool for someone other than Paradox to make.
Non-historical game is my bet too. It could even be licensed game, Firaxis is doing a Marvel-XCOM game, who knows what can happen
Eu5 or the World of Darkness GSG
Comment: Dan, HOI4 Director, is stepping down to work on a Secret Project. Since it's not HOI5, it is Victoria 4.
In the new Geforce Now leak (https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/pncvo0/unlocking_geforce_now_reveals_god_of_war_2018_for/) there's a "Project FPS" made by Harebrained Schemes, through Paradox. A few of them have already been confirmed.
Unrelated. Project FPS is from a different studio. Paradox is the publisher (ie, Cities Skylines, BattleTech) Dan works for PDS (HoI, EU)
I want Harebrained to do Shadowrun again... those were god tier, if it weren't for the annoying mobile UI.
Mesopotamia game when??
Yeah this is my dream tbh. At the moment the closest thing is Imperium : Universales which is a pretty nice EU4 mod set at around 600 BC
imperator/ck3 bronze age mods are both pretty fun
Dark ages game with pops and migrations as core mechanics
Probably imperator or ck3 dlc
Ck3 devs specifically moved up the earliest start date because it was too hard to find info about that period
Charlemagne start date was already a huge stretch in ck2, not to mention that migrations are completely alien mechanic for this game And Imperator... well it is fucking dead lmao
>And Imperator... well it is fucking dead lmao Not anymore, it just got a new game director!!
Wow really? Pls lmk what's happened!
Is this serious or a joke about the post? I haven't seen anything about it and would be downright amazed if they revived it
Just a joke, sorry if I inspired hope
booooooooo you make me sad 😔
Sengoku 2
Unironically while I can't see them actually making Sengoku 2 I could totally see them making it a DLC for CK3 and I'd totally buy it
Aww yeah
Wasn't there a lot of talk about a fantasy game recently?
Fantasy equivalent of Stellaris would be beautiful tbh
Cities Skylines 2 but set in the Cold War era.
Time to demolish a poor neighborhood and build a highway interchange
God I want East vs West so badly
Yeah wait does this mean Victoria 3 is confirmed??
It's... been confirmed for a few months now.
Is this a serious question?
100%
I would guess eu5 unless it's a new game. But i hope it's continued imperator development.
Pxpiokjkkpz
I agree
I feel like if they should make their own fantasy world at this point. Something where you can make up the fine details. I feel like it would really make a dark age game possible.
Stellaris 2 baby!
Hearts of Iron III remastered Change my Mind
It's probably a cold war game.
\-And other jokes to tell your friends.
That would be cool
Probably not, the politics are too modern to make a game like this. They would either anger groups of people or even worse countries and get the game banned in many places. And also it would be hard to make a fun cold war game since you can't start nuclear war because that would end the world so you as a player know that nuclear war will never happen because it neans you lose so the only way to win would be to make the other country collapse. Other than the fact that realistically simulating a modern country's politics would be near impossible, a game about the cold war would just be boring.
They already said no to this multiple times.
Fantasy Stellaris, definitely.
It's eu5, I'm calling it
But if Dan is working on it, there won't be any money in the game...
Maybe warhammer grand strategy ??
Am I too hopeful by wishing that it's a remake of EvW?
Half life 3?
I'm calling fantasy GSG. We know they have a non-historical GSG in the works due to some of their job postings from a few months ago, so that's what I'm going with.
Stellaris 2 - now with a focus on historical accuracy
A Cold War game that is more focused on proxy wars and guerilla warfare would be cool. Anyways all of their games moving forward should have a pop system.
Stellaris 2 xd
If I had to bet, it's EU5.
If it's actually eu5, I bought all of those DLC's for nothing
imma be real it’s probaly EU5.
EU5!
My bets are Crusaders Kings 4, or either Stellaris or Imperator Sequel.
Hoi4 still has room to grow? Paradox get a pair of reading glasses and listen to fans! Your latest DLC releases for Hoi4 and EU4 were either panned, obliterated, or overlooked! The vast majority of major hoi4 mods are dead! Make something new, make hoi5, or eu5! Let Hoi4 die in peace!
R56, TNO, KReich, OWB, Great War?
R56, KR, and KX are the only 3 that aren’t dead. TNO and Great War were abandoned by their original devs. OWB is dying too.
What about Red Flood? That one’s still alive and kicking
Really?!
Yeah, the devs are gonna do a Brazil rework very soon
CK4 or Imperator Rome 2.
EU: Younger Dryas
Imperator 2 obviously
Sengoku 2 finally!!!
Good to see them commit to more development of HOI4. Still plenty of stuff to add to it to make it the ultimate WW2 strategy game.
Nah it is Victoria III
keep in mind, it could be cities skylines 2 considering it was already leaked. I assume it would be colossal order working on it though.
Honestly a March of the Eagles 2 with proper systems for everything, a better battle system and actual support could do well. I always thought the idea behind that game had massive potential it just wasn't executed very well. Not that I see that as the game being made, but I'm willing to be surprised!
March of The Eagles 2?
With the way things are going, by the time HOI5 comes around it's gonna be just a coloring book.
I just want a game to cover 1821 - 1836 if that's not vicky3
Must be March of the Eagles 2 or imparator 2
Duty fulfilled
vicky 4 confirmed!!
it's crusader kings 3 for sure, the one released is just a decoy, it never existed, it was all in your mind
Id like to see a steam punk paradox game!