Ask Paradox (almost) Anything Thread

[Svip]

A lot of weird choices. Why does Gustavus look like Erik XIV? And Carolean "specializing in long marches"...?

Because Wikipedia.

Hey! Hold on a moment! I thought this thread was for people to ask Paradox people questions; not the other way around!

[Raph]

i have got to say that the quality of the posters here is surprisingly good, my previous experiences are total war center and the BF3 places, TWC is alright, but BF3 is horrible. For this reason i must applauded your work for this

Now that you mention it, that might be one of the chief reasons I've stayed around here for so long and kept buying the games. Any other gaming-related forum I've visited (and lots of other supposedly civilized ones like ones discussing politics) is a barbarian wasteland compared to this. It's a strong formula: Excellent, unique games + great developer-community interaction + great moderation + intelligent and civil community = very strong brand loyalty.

We have grown a lot. When I joined in 2009 we were 12 people in the development team. Now we are 22 plus interns.
The company as a whole has grown about as much. Still not huge, but not tiny either.

I actually read a newspaper article the other week about the booming gaming industry of Stockholm in general and Södermalm in particular. It was about the shortage of skilled workers and the huge need for recruitment in the gaming companies, and PI was mentioned. Maybe that's why you've had so many hats?

He's going to ask all three the same questions and then randomly pick one answer to each question to publish in the article.

I'd read that!

[RedRooster81]

Why I like this company

That said, I remember the first time that I did a mod. It was for EU2 or maybe it was EU1. I built a huge Spanish empire covering all of Iberia, Italy, and eastern France up to the Netherlands. Then the scripted "Spanish Bankruptcy" event hit. So I went into the game files and deleted three bankruptcy events, felt guilty, then went back and put in new conditions for them to fire. I had something like 20,000gold in the bank and a massive fleet of operations in the Indian Ocean. The Dutch revolt was hardcoded, so I kept 10k men in each of the revolting provinces until the revolt event series ended. Unlike the historical Felipe II I decided to move the tolerance slider for Reformed Christianity to the middle. No Lutherans, but Calvinists are okay. That one save file sold me on the whole company.

So there should be a question there. Well, do you guys ever play the old games? CotN had a lot of good ideas, though strange graphics, so I still pop it in for inspiration in CK2 modding from time to time.

[Fishman786]

Do the EU3 team use special dev tools? Like a drag-and-drop positions editor? Can we have them?

[jdrou]

Do the EU3 team use special dev tools? Like a drag-and-drop positions editor? Can we have them?

Seems unlikely given the bugs (unless there are bugs in the tools themselves).

[MichaelM]

Do the EU3 team use special dev tools? Like a drag-and-drop positions editor? Can we have them?

Considering CK2 1.05 enabled the built-in editor, it's not that far-fetched an idea.

[Psycoamn27]

Have you ever thought of making a game that played similar to EU, but where you could capture land and expand in such a way like in Civ, Empire Earth 2, or Warhammer 40k DOW Dark Crusade? Say you start out early in time and expand from one province (Probably in a different way than in previous games, where you just send settlers and wait for a colony expand), to a sprawling empire, where you then can fight over borders?

If nothing else are you planning on adding in a game type such as this into the existing EU games?

[Ekyman]

Have you ever thought of making a game that played similar to EU, but where you could capture land and expand in such a way like in Civ, Empire Earth 2, or Warhammer 40k DOW Dark Crusade? Say you start out early in time and expand from one province (Probably in a different way than in previous games, where you just send settlers and wait for a colony expand), to a sprawling empire, where you then can fight over borders?

If nothing else are you planning on adding in a game type such as this into the existing EU games?

I believe there's a mod for EU3 where everyone starts with one province and has to expand out form there.

[Psycoamn27]

I believe there's a mod for EU3 where everyone starts with one province and has to expand out form there.

Does it have a modified province capture system, or is it just colonization and lots of waiting?

[Castellon]

That is a conversation for the EU3 Modding forums please follow up there.

[RedRooster81]

Have you ever thought of making a game that played similar to EU, but where you could capture land and expand in such a way like in Civ, Empire Earth 2, or Warhammer 40k DOW Dark Crusade? Say you start out early in time and expand from one province (Probably in a different way than in previous games, where you just send settlers and wait for a colony expand), to a sprawling empire, where you then can fight over borders?

If nothing else are you planning on adding in a game type such as this into the existing EU games?

Crown of the North already has that. It's a big succession crisis in late XIII century Scandinavia and the ancestor of the EU series.

[Rindis]

Now that you mention it, that might be one of the chief reasons I've stayed around here for so long and kept buying the games. Any other gaming-related forum I've visited (and lots of other supposedly civilized ones like ones discussing politics) is a barbarian wasteland compared to this. It's a strong formula: Excellent, unique games + great developer-community interaction + great moderation + intelligent and civil community = very strong brand loyalty.

Jon Shafer recently blogged on "Respect Your Players":

I’ve seen very similar communities go in completely opposite directions following the announcement of bad news, or the release of a game which didn’t meet their expectations – some became very hostile, while others remained loyal and dedicated to the developer. What was the difference? Nothing more than whether or not the developers regularly posted in the forums.

http://jonshaferondesign.com/2012/04...-your-players/

And yes, everything you said certainly makes me happy to keep coming back to Paradox.

[Raph]

Jon Shafer recently blogged on "Respect Your Players":

http://jonshaferondesign.com/2012/04...-your-players/

And yes, everything you said certainly makes me happy to keep coming back to Paradox.

That's a good post about it. Sadly, I don't know of many others like PI in this respect.

[RedRooster81]

That's a good post about it. Sadly, I don't know of many others like PI in this respect.

We've got great people working for a company that understands customer relations. Big companies like EA, Betheseda-Zenimax, and BioWare either never had it or lost it when they got too big.

Based on the interviews that I've read, Fred Wester is a really cool guy, and the developers here actually reply to my most inane suggestions from time to time.

[Anjwalker]

What is the reasoning behind Paradox selling several expansions for games soley via download? This has caused major problems for me, as Australia's slow internet means I can never buy expansions such as A House Divided until Paradox releases a hardcopy version.

[Taiisatai64]

What is the reasoning behind Paradox selling several expansions for games soley via download? This has caused major problems for me, as Australia's slow internet means I can never buy expansions such as A House Divided until Paradox releases a hardcopy version.

What? I download every game I buy, do you live in the middle of Nowheresville or something?

[Anjwalker]

What? I download every game I buy, do you live in the middle of Nowheresville or something?

I live 20 minutes from my states capital and the fastest internet I can get is something like 52 kb/s.

Example: It took me 24 hours to download the free copy of Cities in Motion I got from the survey, and then when it finally finished downloading, I found out it had corrupted mid-download.

[podcat]

We've got great people working for a company that understands customer relations. Big companies like EA, Betheseda-Zenimax, and BioWare either never had it or lost it when they got too big.

I think its probably necessary to scale back on this once you grow big. When so many people get employed that you don't know them all personally it is hard to make sure everyone can and will act responsibly and professionally on forums. Being able to ignore non-constructive criticism is not something everyone can do, and if you catch someone on a bad day it can easily turn into a bit of drama (there are many times I'v written long reply posts and then deleted them before pressing 'post' after thinking better of it).

[Svip]

When are we getting Malmö back? (English subtitles coming soon!)

[Taiisatai64]

I live 20 minutes from my states capital and the fastest internet I can get is something like 52 kb/s.

Example: It took me 24 hours to download the free copy of Cities in Motion I got from the survey, and then when it finally finished downloading, I found out it had corrupted mid-download.

That doesn't sound right, at all. I can get a peak rate of about 1.5 mb/s on a very good day, but typically it's about 500 kb/s, and I live in a medium sized country town (although Wikipedia classes it as a "small city?") about 2 hours out from Melbourne, Victoria. I would suggest that you change plan and/or internet provider.