[HN Gopher] Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part III: Cons... ___________________________________________________________________ Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part III: Constructivisting a Kingdom Author : Tomte Score : 47 points Date : 2022-10-07 16:13 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (acoup.blog) (TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog) | inglor_cz wrote: | I like ACOUP blog for its incessant effort to clarify things and | dispel myths. | | People tend to have skewed perceptions of the Medieval era. Prior | to the development of the cannon (which enabled easier conquest | of castles), absolutism wasn't really a thing. The king was the | ruler, yes, but he wasn't able to rule against the wishes of the | nobility or the high clergy; the risk of being deposed or killed | in a rebellion was just too big. At the very least, his vassals | could just abandon him and withdraw into their own castles, and | there wasn't any easy way to force them out. | howmayiannoyyou wrote: | > What is fascinating about CKIII is that one could easily argue | that legitimacy is the central theme of the game, that most of | the player's efforts within a realm are focused on building their | own legitimacy or undermining the legitimacy of others. | | In this respect I would argue CKIII is the most realistic of | political simulations and appears to capture modern day politics | exquisitely. | capableweb wrote: | Skipping through this blogpost and reading a little about it, | Crusader Kings III seems to more or less identical to Europa | Universalis IV. What is the difference between these two games? | Seems it's the same publisher and almost like it's the very same | engine, just somewhat different... Anyone with a grasp of both of | them care to compare them? | diem_perdidi wrote: | I'd recommend starting with the first blogpost of this series | (https://acoup.blog/2022/09/16/collections-teaching- | paradox-c...) - it's a good read! It delves into the | differences with other Paradox games - the second paragraph is | actually a short answer to your question: This | first part is going to focus on the way that Crusader Kings | understands rule and rulers. This in particular is a | fascinating place to start because unlike all of the other | Paradox grand strategy titles, Crusader Kings III doesn't | actually feature any states in the narrow sense of the word; | none of these rulers have a monopoly on the legitimate use of | force. This is an enormous difference between CK3 and its | sibling games and well worth diving into. | ecshafer wrote: | As a big Paradox GSG fan, I can safely say that despite visual | similarities between Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa | Universalis, Imperator and Victoria, the games are entirely | different. | | Crusader Kings deals a lot with individual characters, their | relationship, and has a lot more roleplaying in it. You can | have a character that starts as a count in say Germany, and | because of inheritance and marriage you set up your son to | inherit Poland so when you die you are now playing the king of | poland and your brother is ruling that county in Germany. The | combat, trade, province development, etc is much lighter. | | Europa Universalis is much more focused no war and map | painting, its basically a complicated game of Risk. There is | more focused on trade routes, and developing your nations | provinces. But you just play a country, you can change | dynasties or change to a republic. It doesn't really matter. | You might change the country you are playing, say if you start | as the Duchy of Milan, and you conquer Italy and crown yourself | the Kingdom of Italy. But there's always a direct line. | | Imperator is a Roman era game that is a mix of these two ideas, | more character interactions but more focused on the country. | | Victoria is an 1800s victorian era game that is really focused | a lot more on technologies, ideology, and economics. You play a | country and Its about industrialization and colonization and | trade. The war is usually a bit more simplified, but the | economy is a lot more in depth with resources being consumed to | create new resources for production. | | Hearts of Iron you also play a country but in WWII. But its | also relatively simplified economy and ruling of a country. | Instead you focus on conquering and has the most in depth war | mechanics where you are really managing a lot of minutae of | battle lines. | flohofwoe wrote: | In short, in EU4 you play as a country, and in CK3 you play as | an individual of a dynasty (i.e. everything is much more | "personal" in CK3). But understanding the gameplay mechanics of | one Paradox game is definitely useful to also understand the | others (my "journey" so far was CK3 => EU4 => HOI4). Still, | those three games provide a very different 'gameplay | experience'. | Apocryphon wrote: | What I'd like to know is if CK3 really is getting over CK2, | which has had so many years of expansion content that I'm not | sure how the newer title could promise other than a better | interface, more graphics, and wacky heresies. | InitialLastName wrote: | Paradox games have a bad habit of being overwhelmed by the | cruft of their expansions, and CK2 was no exception. The game | is phenomenal, but there are so many different unrelated | systems (and systems in the vanilla game to support the DLC) | that it can be incomprehensible. | | CK3 so far has taken the best insights of those expansions | (dynasty/bloodline maintenance, personal armies, skill | specialization) and integrated them into the main game. The | DLC has been a coin toss whether it is so well-tied-in (I | think the culture-molding mechanic is less awkward than the | throne room and artifacts or the iberian politics that | somehow everyone on earth is privy to). | lemoncookiechip wrote: | The Crusader Kings series focuses primarily on individuals, | their traits, their dynasty, managing your court and vassals, | rather than focusing on nations. This means that the game is | less of a grand strategy title, and more of a role-playing | game. At it's core, you scheme, you wage war and you play the | diplomacy game by marrying and allying. | | I just had a playthrough in CK2 AGOT (A Song of Ice and Fire | mod), where I role-played as a lunatic obsessed with religion, | burning people, sleeping with other people's wives and having | incest relations to expand my bloodline while keeping it pure. | Vanilla CK2 (and CK3) are all about this moment to moment | character driven gameplay. | | EU doesn't really focus on the individuals as much, and it's | more of a traditional RTS game if you will, with resource | managing as its core, rather than character roleplay. | | EDIT: Should probably mention that the time period is also very | different, but mechanically, they're different games. Same with | Hearts of Iron or Victoria. They all look somewhat similar, but | they all have their own quirks that set them apart from each | other in terms of gameplay. | bobthepanda wrote: | It's also worth noting that these differences are intentional | based on the various ideas of how states were organized at | different points in time | | CK2 - the Middle Age/feudal period | | EU4 - the Renaissance to Napoleonic Wars, where states start | centralizing and developing a true identify of their own, so | more state based | | Vic3 - the Victorian era of industrialization and massive | societal change within countries | | Hoi4 - total war of the WWII era | DaedPsyker wrote: | In short, outside of the time period, CK3 is focused on | characters, rulers of kingdoms, counts etc. Whereas EU4 has | that aspect very much abstracted away (you embody the state not | a person) It makes CK3 a mix of RPG and strategy. | theresistor wrote: | In EU4 you control a country. In CK3 you control a dynasty, one | ruler at a time. | | EU4 plays like a complex but fairly "normal" strategy game in a | pseudo historical setting. CK3 is more focused on managing your | complex web of feudal relationships. Almost dating-sim. | | My best game of CK, I started as a minor a Norwegian noble and | slowly worked my way up to becoming king of Norway, also owning | part of Denmark. But I pissed off too many other nobles along | the way, and they schemed with my brother to depose me in favor | of him. I then went on a 20 year revenge spree to assassinate | all of his heirs and inherit the kingdom back from him! | | I recall the trailer for one of the CK2 expansions had a bullet | point feature that could really only happen in CK: "SEDUCE YOUR | RELATIVES!" | mcv wrote: | I believe the popular summary is that EU4 is about genocide, | whereas CK2 (and presumably CK3) is about fratricide. | Completely different games. | di4na wrote: | The first post in the series does that exact comparison in | details... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-08 23:00 UTC)