Breaking into the great Paradox abyss

[MetalDog]

Something I thought of earlier today while I was out is the time investment.  As has been mentioned, when you sit down to play, the thought of starting such a time intensive game just wears you out before you even start.  It's happened to me plenty and I love CK2.  I also know that mood plays a large part in what I play.  Sometimes I have to be in the mood to start a big Paradox game.  However, once I get it going, it seems to be all I can think about.  I find it best to have a couple of hours with nothing planned before I sit down to play.  That way, if I get caught up, it's no big deal to find that four or five hours have elapsed.  But I can't see myself firing up one of these games and just playing for an hour or so.  Not that I need immersion, but, it just kind of ruins things if I don't have the time I want to devote to what I am doing.

[Nefaro]

Jarhead:

This is an easy fix.   Just watch some Let's Play series on CK2 or EU4, whichever you want to do most.  I believe there are also numerous tutorial-style videos on YouTube in which the creator explains how things work and their strategy as they go. 

I've found that watching some of these puts me into the mood to play and primes me on many of the little details that I wouldn't have figured out for awhile, or that I had forgotten if returning to the game.  At some point you'll start thinking of what you would do in a certain situation, as opposed to what the creator did, and you'll be ready.

[undercovergeek]

I just played about 2 hours of HOI3. I replaced some ministers, started up some production, began research and played around with diplomacy. I've reduced IC waste, started influencing nations toward my faction and seem to generally be making progress. The main thing I did not even try to touch was my military OOB and organization. I know it is totally disorganized and ineffective as is, but I have no idea what my armies should look like organizationally, what kind of divisions and brigades they should be composed of, how they should be positioned and which HQs they should be attached to. I think this is my biggest hurdle in getting to be a semi-competent player. Most everything else seems generally intuitive.

that all depends on who you are and what year it is

[Jarhead0331]

I just played about 2 hours of HOI3. I replaced some ministers, started up some production, began research and played around with diplomacy. I've reduced IC waste, started influencing nations toward my faction and seem to generally be making progress. The main thing I did not even try to touch was my military OOB and organization. I know it is totally disorganized and ineffective as is, but I have no idea what my armies should look like organizationally, what kind of divisions and brigades they should be composed of, how they should be positioned and which HQs they should be attached to. I think this is my biggest hurdle in getting to be a semi-competent player. Most everything else seems generally intuitive.

that all depends on who you are and what year it is

Germany - March 1936. Once I know how to build, tweak and move units around organizationally, I'll be ok. I just have no idea where to start. If someone knows of a good "Let's play" video dealing with this aspect of the game, do tell.

[Nefaro]

I thought HOI3 was a bit of a mess and not very easy to get into.  Didn't play it much.  You're probably starting with the most difficult & frustrating one.

[Father Ted]

There is an alternative answer to this:  uninstall the game.  In the end it's just entertainment and if it doesn't grab you then move on to something else.  Granted, this isn't a very positive approach, but this is what you do for fun - it shouldn't weigh on your mind.

This attitude keeps me from spending on Steam sales.  I look at something like EUIV and think, "Wow, it's only £xx, I really should have that game".  Then I consider the likelihood that I will actually learn how to play the game and decide that I shouldn't buy.  Like most of us I have a limited time in which to play and so have to be efficient.

BTW this is in no way a criticism of the games under discussion.  In fact I think that my refusal to go down the route of buying them and then failing to play them displays  a kind of respect.

Inspired by Game of Thrones (books), I bought CKII, but could not get to grips with it.  I'm convinced that it is a great game, but in the end I have several other games that I'm in the process of exploring and I can't afford the time to learn this one as well.  So I just uninstalled it.

To my mind this situation is a bit like the evolution of friendships as you get older.  You have friends who move away, get married, have kids.  Some of those people you keep in contact with without  considering the effort.  Others, you keep thinking, " I really must..."  But if it's an effortthen surely the friendship isn't that strong?  There should be no shame in accepting that - and a game isn't bothered either way.

[bob48]

Ted, there is much in what you say that I agree with. On the side of the coin, I am a board wargamer by preference, and have been since the early days of AH and SPI (late 1960') and a figure gamer before that.

PC games have advantages - no setting up and putting away - takes no space as such, but there is something rewarding in pushing counters around a map. However, your point still applies. Buy a game and then find its really not worth the time or effort to learn and play. Fortunately, a lot of publishers now give you the means to download the rules, or even a P&P sample so you can try before you buy. All the games I have purchased in recent years have been chosen by doing that.
I guess its the non electronic version of a PC demo.

Plus, like most of us, funds are limited, and its often a choice between buying a PC game or a board game. In most cases, its the board game that I buy.

Sorry - I do ramble on at times. Its an age thing y'know :)

[endfire79]

I've also recently tried getting used to HOI3.  I'm used to playing HOI2, and then I noticed the big changes with HOI3 - very similar to HOI1.

I've been trying the German Submarine interdiction strategy from user 'blu emu' that I had used on HOI2. 
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?264824-Are-Submarines-Worthless


I couldn't find him playing the same strategy with HOI3, but I did find this post

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?516989-Listening-to-D%F6nitz-a-submarine-oriented-Germany-AAR

Paradox titles got  a lot more complicated and refined after the days of Europa Universalis 2, which is when I got started on them.  They suck up a lot of time.  HOI3 does not run well on my spare laptop that I bring for business trips, so I usually resort to HOI2.

[Ubercat]

JH, I was in the same boat as you regarding HOI3 a few months ago and finally decided to just do it, as they say. I wouldn't call myself an HOI3 expert, but I have spent a good amount of time organizing my OOB in preparation for Case White and then the invasion of the west. I pretty much exclusively play Germany 1936 in all the HOI games. If you want to Skype some time, I'd be happy to load up the game and run you through forming and reforming divisions, corps, armies, setting AI objectives, etc. Heck, I think it's even possible to play the same country cooperatively.

I've also been in the same boat with CK2 and just decided to dive in a couple of weeks ago. I played heavily for a couple of days and got through about 15 years of game time. My relatives keep declaring that I'm not fit to rule and demanding that I abdicate my petty throne in favor of this cousin or that. I stopped playing and one of these days I'll get around to asking on the CK2 forum why this keeps happening!

I'll be out of town starting tomorrow night up until next Saturday, so if we Skype it will have to be after we get back.

[WallysWorld]

After getting Victoria II when it first came out and buying all expansions and DLC's, I'm finally getting around to playing the game after I watched these very helpful "Let's Learn" videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/Multimediaphile/videos

Watching some online videos for these type of games really helps you to get going on playing and understanding the game.

[Bletchley_Geek]

TL;DR version:

They're intimidating and exhausting, very rewarding for a long time, but ultimately flawed in some very interesting and sometimes amusing ways. As a matter of personal taste, I do prefer the Europa Universalis games over the rest.  And my interest with their games has gone down, rather than up, as years and numerals have gone by.

The rant:

Maybe I prefer the EU line of games because their roots being at a quite good strategic board game (by Philippe Thibault, 50% of AGEOD, which kind of explains some of the most shambolic and fiddly aspects of the EU experience), or the setting allowing for a much broader gamut of interactions between the players (here I'm counting the AI-controlled nations, trying EU 4 multiplayer is in my to-do list). My biggest problem with EU IV is how warfare is modeled: it hasn't got much improved after 10 years of EU "iterations", and never has even resembled what I have read about the period.

If you start a 1453 game, you'll get wars like the Seven Year Wars/Revolutionary France Wars/Napoleonic Wars right off  the bat by early 1520's, involving hundreds of thousands of men, massive naval battles that would put Trafalgar to shame and nations (or kingdoms) being toppled like it was the case 300 years later with Napoleon. Most of these mega-wars revolve around France, in one form or another, which I find amusing and not too ahistorical :)

The economic, exploration and diplomatic aspects of the game are very strong, the military just goes out of hand really quickly, especially in wars fought between major European powers.

The HOI games have always been a disappointment for me. They're the best closest thing to a playable computer-based game of WIF - and I do really like the 1936-39 pre-war period of the game, since things aren't so clearly set as the war starts. I remember fondly the diplomacy system in HOI2, and the pre-World War 2 kind of Cold War setting - influencing neutral nations in Europe, propping up China to stand against the Japanese invasion, etc - is a topic which has been hardly covered by games (with the notable exception of WIF's Days of Decision). Building up your military and technology is also quite fun.

But the war itself is all but unmanageable as fronts start to open all over the place. As the Germans I always found close to impossible to put up a good fight against the Allies strategic bombing (which starts right off the bat in 1940 or so, and causes a lot of damage). As the Allies I always found very hard to coordinate allied operations in a manner that suited my liking. And to be honest, managing a multi-theater war spanning half across the globe and involving land, sea and air operations isn't easy (although HOI 3 interface came a long way to help with that). But in any case, the Friendly AI isn't ever close to match a 50% of what one would need.

Not to mention the enemy AI which still makes very questionable strategic choices such as sending a green as grass American army to invade northern Germany in 1942. Destroying 20 American divisions on the beaches is a stretch for my imagination, especially if as Germany you can't really retaliate and invade the US with rocket ships or stuff  :)

CKII is pretty good though. Playing as an underdog Duchy or lackluster Kingdom and carving an empire for your bloodline is very rewarding. I also find its military model to be much more sensible than the one in EU IV: attrition in the 15th, 16th or 17th century wasn't any better managed than it was in the time of the Crusades and keeping together big armies for extended periods of time seriously wrecks things in many interesting and fun ways.

What becomes ultimately a micro-management nightmare to me is administering properly your relations and your court. Seriously, I spend something like  70% of the time dealing with the 'life admin' issues of my retinue than anything else. But it also kind of lacks a bit of structure: once you've become big and powerful, it's very hard to be toppled by the very limited skills of the AI (another thing is the Event Engine which is sometime a quite ham-fisted form of Divine Providence).

[JudgeDredd]

I am EXACTLY the same.

For HoI3, my main issue when I start it up is I have vanilla...and I wonder if it's fixed...and if I should get the expansions...then I quit  :)

[spelk]

As Nefaro said, best way to ignite enthiusiasm for a juicy game are Let's Play videos. You become invested in understanding the game, and following the progress of a playthrough, with hopefully, the decisions and thought processes of the player being spelled out for you. You can probably just watch some of a series and suddenly get the urge to try some things out, now you have a better understanding of where to begin.

Also, I found setting myself up to write an AAR about such a game, would encourage me to delve in and get down to the understanding of it, simply because I'd need to know a few basics to talk about it in the AAR as I played.

Lastly, and I think this is where Grand Strategy often falls short, is they market themselves on complexity, and on providing whole sweeping campaigns of many hours and hours of play - but a lot of gamers haven't got the time to invest in these sort of ways to play. Rather than offering you the world on a stick approach and saying 'go and find your pleasure in the complexity of it all', they should hand hold you a bit, and break the experience down to begin with, into manageable short scenarios, where various systems are introduced and then encouraged, building upon the scenario before it. Lastly ending in the almighty campaigns, for those who have the time, curiosity (and patience) to go there. Smaller chunks of well designed gameplay, to encourage players to dabble and not have to study to get anywhere. It would open the door into these games, and I'd wager much more players would be willing to make the step than currently do.

If the scale of the gameplay is a disuading factor to even the grognards of society, then (I would argue) you need to bite smaller chunks off and feed the game to the players at much more appetising and manageable sessions of gaming.

Paradox do large complex sandboxes and pitch them out of the box at massive often unfathomable campaign level, 'go play my pretties!'. Their systems can often be beautiful to watch play out and interact with, but mostly the price into the Wonderful World of Paradox is too high to even find the enthusiasm for it. It promises much on the Steam store page (or in a box on the shelf) but it requires a lot of serious effort to get any pleasure from it. Make the curve less steep, design in some clever scaled scenarios, and spell out the beauty to many more people.

[sandman2575]

Paradox do large complex sandboxes and pitch them out of the box at massive often unfathomable campaign level, 'go play my pretties!'. Their systems can often be beautiful to watch play out and interact with, but mostly the price into the Wonderful World of Paradox is too high to even find the enthusiasm for it. It promises much on the Steam store page (or in a box on the shelf) but it requires a lot of serious effort to get any pleasure from it. Make the curve less steep, design in some clever scaled scenarios, and spell out the beauty to many more people.

There's a lot to this, certainly, but I think Paradox is coming around to this way of thinking, Spelk, with their latest generation of games.  They've clearly made strides in improving the UI, making relevant information more up front. In CKII and EUIV, most everything is 'clickable,' hyperlinking to screens that give more detailed information, and most everything has informative tooltips. The game-event icons that pop up in the upper right-hand corner -- the stained-glass roundels in CKII and the red/green/gold tabs in EUIV -- do a pretty good job of giving the player a 'heads up' when something important needs to be done or an important opportunity presents itself. Pdox is clearly invested in figuring out ways to present information to the player in ways that are helpful and not irritating, a la the message spam that plauged earlier games in the HOI and EU series.

They're also signaling very clearly that HoI4 will be more streamlined and easier to understand than HoI3, with a less steep learning curve.  I personally love HoI3, but I certainly understand (and share to some extent) the frustrations of players who say "it's too hard to tell what's going on, or what I should do."  I feel pretty confident they will strike a good balance in HoI4 between accessibility and depth.  They are keenly aware, I think, that HoI3 remains their most 'controversial' title, in terms of how it continues to divide their player base. I'm sure they're determined not to repeat the mistakes with HoI4.

[spelk]

Their UI is undergoing an evolution all the time, and we're getting some good informative stuff now - but - I'd still say they need to pull off chunks of the bread and feed it to us in smaller more mouth-size bites. Not just segment history and say have at it, but set up specific scenarios, with known historical quantities and then play out a small section of the history from a guided/followable narrative. I know its like having missions in Elite, but done well it could cleverly explain the thought processes necessary to get to the very large sandbox campaigns, and you'll get an informative thrill ride on the way.