Would you buy Europa Universalis if it was on the Ipad?

[yabba]

One of my computer's cores must be really really tired now.

[Will Lucky]

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Why not EU3?

U NO ADD SUPPORT TO MULTIPLE CORES IN PATCH?

well, still it wouldn't help, because my main problem is that f-ing intel HD integrated (or rather embeded) graphic card...
So I am doomed. I am so happy for that graphical downgrade mod I downloaded...

Sengoku and CK2 were both designed with Multi-Core as the Clauswitz engine had come that far by that point. HOI3 and Victoria 2 had the feature added with expansion packs. Rome I believe doesn't have Multi-Core either. I don't know if a mere patch is enough to add it to EU3 or if its worth it at this point.

[Ojf]

I disagree with all these PC snobs. Even though I don't own a tablet, my brother has that new one and I think it would work fine. EU3 isn't really a difficult or complex game, or something that requires lots of reading or micro and as such I think it would play well on them. There are more complex games like the Football Manager series that have been great on portable devices, especially on the new one. What's the problem? I haven't seen any arguments for no as of yet.

[wwb]

Personally, I would really love to see a great strategy title with the depth of EU on a tablet. There is way, way too much breadth and very, very few games with any sort of depth on that platform. Perhaps the most fun I've had playing a game on the I pad was Pirates! not angry birds.

Some people here don't answer to the point. The question is: "Regardless if you own or wish to own some sort of ~10 inch tablet, do you find it suitable for grand-strategy games such as EU and similar?

My answer is yes.

The reasons:

1. Screen size isn't the issue. Pointing and selecting a small isle or fleet is possible by zooming in deep enough. It is also too small on my computer screen, but zooming in resolves the issue.
2. Furthermore, the menus can be easily redesigned to behave in a more iPad-ish way via drag-and-pull, much like the notification center. Meaning, it would stay hidden until you pull it out into the screen out of the upper edge or something. This is just like most of the data that can be also hidden/shown in the computer version - with a small change of behavior.
3. Tablets allow multi-finger gestures which can also help redesign the menus and make them less complex and with less clutter - Long lists can be scrolled smoothly, splitting armies can be done with physically splitting with two fingers (or even three for a three-army split, just for the heck of it). Multiple destinations (checkpoint) can also be easily done with finger-dragging. Closing messages by "throwing" them out of the screen. Opening a province's / nation's menu can be done by making an open gesture with the fingers instead of clicking it. You can practically almost eliminate (almost) all buttons.
4. Selecting armies and fleets and moving them around can be achieved just like in other tablet RTS games (C&C/Red Alert) - Just drag them across the screen. Multiple selection? Draw a circle and drag on screen in the same fashion.
5. I agree that the tablets are seen as a platform for casual games, but this is not the case with 100% of games coming out - C&C, Red Alert, Baldur's Gate, Battle for Wesnoth, and other "hardcore" games are already out or in development. The tablet can host many a generes. It just depends on how the customers perceive its use. I believe couch-commanders (or whatever the sort is called) would benefit and enjoy a great deal playing from the tablet instead of having to sit in front of a computer.
6. Regarding technical capabilities of the iPad - I don't know the requirements necessary for EU3, but I believe it'll require a great deal of work to port the graphics engine to the iPad. However, seeing other 3D-heavy games being played fluidly - I believe it's do-able.

To sum it all up - I own an iPad and would definitely re-purchase EU3 and all in-app purchases (DLCs and expansions) that would be released. I also believe it is a good investment for PE, from my humble point of view.

This is a great post and it highlights alot of the things you'd have to think through to port something like EU to the tablet. Lots of UI re-think but at the end of the day it is a solvable problem.

Baller option: Play EU III on your MS surface.

[RedRalphWiggum]

No, wouldn't be interested.

[anubisfike]

I haven't seen any arguments for no as of yet.

Because you haven't read the entire thread.

[Nostalgium]

I do not own any sort of tablet, nor do I intend to purchase one in the foreseeable future. However, I find the concept of a Grand Strategy game on a tablet very intriguing. Of course, the interface would have to be fine-tuned to fit the new format, but other than that, it would be brilliant! At its simplest, any Grand Strategy game is a glorified game of Risk (this is NOT a Bad Thing), and the controls could easily be adapted for a tablet.

Would I buy EU3 for a tablet? Probably not.
Would I buy a game similar to EU3, but made for a tablet, on a tablet? By all the gods, yes!

[Buladelu]

I'd buy some historical game like Civilization or Total War. Sadly there isn't much choice. It's also strange cause I think mobile platforms are perfect for TBS.

Of course, as everybody has pointed out, EU wouldn't be possible, even if it is simplifed to the level of EU2.

[AlphaNarwhal]

I would certainly get it, but ONLY if they controls worked perfectly (Which is doubtful) and if no features were taken out in the port, even for a low price. Although, I don't think it would be good for Paradox business-wise, because Ipad just doesn't seem like a market where it would sell well.

[7thhorseman]

I would by it (of course), but rarely or never play it on my tablet.

I think it would have to be a whole new game, because EU3 isnt on ARM, it isnt multithreaded (more like 1.3 thread), the database in the game is to large and the input has to be dumbed down too. It would be like a bad console-port for the pc, the other way around.

[rujikin]

I wouldn't want an Ipad and even if i got one free i wouldn't want this game on it. They would have to dumb it down and load times would be an hour long

[Emperor Hans]

My computer never lags when playing EU3. This game isn't hardware intensive. Compare it to Assassin's Creed (one of the later ones, obviously) or another high-end game (Dragon Age 2, Mass Effect 3, The Witcher 2, etc.) when talking about hardware requirements. I'd have trouble seeing those work on tablets, even excluding having to rework the control scheme. But this really isn't a hard game to run.

Sure, not all tablets could run it well. But some do have pretty good processors, and they should be able to run it well. And tablets (like computers) are only getting faster, more advanced, and better.

Then how come I can run Skyrim on all high lagg free and other games such as Mass Effect as well, but DW laggs ?

[The Zealot]

[OT comments deleted]
Yea, tablet CPU's and GPU's have come a long way since back then. Current Tegra 3 tech provides tablets with a 4 core CPU which clocks in at around 1,4 Ghz. And if I must remind you, Europa Universalis 3 has a recomended system specs of 1,6 Ghz Dual core. Tegra 3 nearly doubles that. Tegra 3 also supports OpenGL 2.0 which is needed to run Europa Universalis 3.

How exactly can they not run it? The only problem with the conversion of platforms in my eyes is that they need to port the engine it runs on onto the Ipad and Android.

That's the most technically stupid thing I've read on the Internet in a long time. You clearly know all the marketing from Nvidia, but nothing technical about Tegra 3.
First Tegra 3 is not a 4-plus-1 CPU, it's a 1-plus-4 processor. That means that it's a single core CPU with 4 smaller cores optimised for threadable workload, that only get used when the main core gets enough of a workload to realise that it's better to share it with some or all of the idle cores. There's obviously a lag hit with this arquitecture, but aparently it's well engineered that current applications don't appear to suffer from it.
Second, there's something called MIPS which means Million of Instructions Per Second, and ARM-based processors are no where NEAR the performance in MIPS compared to the x86 Intel Atom and the x64 (ie, already 64-bits) AMD Bobcat processors found in netbooks. In other words, Tegra 4 (four) could run at 10 GHz that I bet it still wouldn't reach the level of MIPS of a modern x64 processor.

The gap is definitly closing between ARM and Intel/AMD, but ARM is still focused on power consumption, which they won't sacrifice for more performance until technology evolves enough to let them put more transistors consuming the same or less power than previous generations of processors.

"Would you buy Europa Universalis if it was on the Ipad?" is the title of the thread, and the OP asked people who wouldn't want it why not.

I personally wouldn't buy it because I waste enough time playing the game as it is. I don't need to take it with me everywhere I go.

Ha, you'd be the first to buy the game and play it whenever you could!

But what if you want to play during your honeymooon!

Exactly! You should have just enough time to annex Granada while she's shaving her legs! Why waste time watching TV in a language you don't understand a thing?

What is this, the 4th time I'm telling you. The Tegra 3 processor is a quad core processor running at 1,4 Ghz. Double the amount you say Europa Universalis 3 needs.

There you go again. What you say means nothing when actually converting into technical terms. AndrewT explains it very well below, but apparently you either didn't read it or didn't understand it or didn't believe it. Your loss.

GHz alone doesn't mean anything. It's not even the same type of processor. It's a RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) processor, not a CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computing) processor as are used in desktops.

Even if the CPU wouldn't be the problem the game would have to be ported in the way that PC games have to be ported to console. And the whole interface would have to be redesigned to be used with touch interface.

It would be like the console versions of Starcraft, years later, with lesser graphics and awkward controls. Who wants that?

Precisely. BUT I would say that something is better than nothing. Starcraft years later and yadda yadda yadda is better than just having Angry Birds and too simple games that just feel like those dumb Flash games that you can play for free on the Internet. I want a real game on my Android smartphone. The resolution is starting to show up, the new smartphones start to be at least 720p in the high-end models, so we're getting there.

As repeatedly stated above, the number of CPU cores and their Ghz are irrelevant. The PROCESSING POWER of the CPU and GPU in a tablet is not up to that in an everyday desktop or laptop, not remotely. EU3 DW requires vertexshader 3.0, pixelshader 3.0 and 128mb of video memory, and on top of that the CPU offloads much on its data processing onto the GPU. Show me any tablet that comes close to those specs.

Precisely. Andrew saves the thread. Thank you.
I would add one more thing: the Microsoft-proprietary DirectX Runtime files. All clausewitz games are - to the best of my knowledge - completely dependent on them and won't work without them. Therefore they have to be licensed for any other operating system other than Windows for x86/x64. I see that being a problem for Android and iOS. I don't think Microsoft allows games to be used on those OSs, I don't even know if they can be made compatible.
It could be that we can only see clausewitz games in a mobile phone/tablet in a mobile Windows 8 for ARM, which I doubt Microsoft would be interested in providing enough backwards compatibility for the ARM version. Time will tell.

Exactly the opposite is true; a mouse is a much finer control device than touch is. Imagine trying to click on the "split army" button with your finger, it's about 3 pixels across. Look at all the screen elements on an EU3 screen. How are you going to make every one of those big enough that a fat finger can unambiguously select it on a 7" screen? You can't.


The only "certainly" about it is that it is certainly not possible, as tablets stand today. I give it 3 years at least, maybe 5.

So, two questions arise. Either we wait several years to have a fairly current PC reduced to a tablet dimension so that we can install EU3 as it is on it, or we wait several years for Paradox to develop a EU3-ish Grand Strategy game for tablets and smartphones in a more near future. As a user who is tired of not having decent games on my Android smartphone, I just can't wait to have a good empire-building Grand Strategy game as soon as possible.

*Hint hint Paradox, hint hint.*

The biggest problem in my eyes is converting the engine to support the iOS and Android OS. The engine is made for windows (please note if it also works for Linux and Mac) and thus many of the coding and other features aren't available on the iOS. But if they could convert the engine. They could easily make games for those platforms, as long as they use the same engine!

No, not easily. That's actually the hardest part. The clausewitz had its first game released in what, 2007? It's 2012 and both Victoria 2 A House Divided and Crusader Kings 2 got released based on the same engine. I'm pretty sure a few more games will be milk... ahem... built from that engine. The point is, you just can't expect a new engine to be built to acommodate the so many limitations present in tablets and smartphones just because the screen resolution is already met. It's one tick on a very long list of pre-requisites.

OT, but this is in fact becoming an issue with large resolutions screens. Why on earth can't the interface scale a little bit? There so much room, so tiny, tiny buttons...

Ahhhh an excelent question! From my understanding, the truth is that the clausewitz engine isn't trully full 3D, which is an immense shame! The text is in 2D, so it doesn't scale with the resolution. Several other elements of the screen also don't scale with resolution, meaning they're also in 2D. EU3 isn't really playable on an Eyefinity setup (like 3 monitors) because it can't handle the screen extension. I suspect it's a DirectX 9 limitation. One can only hope they can spare one or two programmers to brainstorm and investigate what they can do to upgrade clausewitz to deal with issues like this, and hopefully make it DirectX 11 compatible where possible.

Actually not, my problem is the interface filling 3/5 of the screen, not it being too small.

Which I bet it's all the 2D stuff in the game, which is not scalling down. I'm sure a cap would have to be programmed to prevent the text from becoming too small or too large depending on the resolution. This one is not an easy problem to solve, I'm sure.

And you explained every single bit of your answer.


I believe this is what he meant behind the sentence. C'mon, you understand where I was getting into - The question whether going into the tablet business with grand-strategy titles is profitable.

It's not just "EU3 for iPad", it's also HOI, CK, and other non PE games of the same type.

I think the iPad could do a lot better than just Angry Birds.

I absolutely agree with you. I won't buy an iPad, but that doesn't mean that I don't want Paradox's games on my smartphone. Also, with Windows 8 coming all future laptops should have a touchscreen by default, and a laptop without a keyboard becomes a tablet. Simple as that. We'll see quite a few people using a desktop keyboard and mouse connected to their tablets, just as we'll see a lot of people leaving their laptops behind because they're happy to just use their fingers to type and click. With all those screens becoming touch-screens it won't take many years before desktop monitors and even your Plasma TVs to become touch-screens as well.
So, having Paradox developing an operating system-agnostic touch-based Grand Strategy game or four is not a bad idea at all, instead of hoping that either Windows or GOG (Good Old Games) will support their games in the future.

eh?? I beg to disagree.. All games on clausewitz except for EU3 currently runs on multiple cores.

Any chance we could have EU3 taking advantage of the quad core goodness? I'm sure you've tested something by now how much cool (or not) EU3 would be with the AI using 4 cores.

[Ruanek]

Then how come I can run Skyrim on all high lagg free and other games such as Mass Effect as well, but DW laggs ?

I don't really know. I've never had problems with any of those games. But looking at the system requirements EU3 DW should be easier to run.

If you're playing a mod that adds a lot of tags, that can slow down the game a lot.

[lalalance]

Well, i am skeptical with eu3 and the tablet. maybe a tbs game would be more fitting.

i would still not get a tablet though, my smartphone is good enough for me.

[Innocent Beard]

/Random drop-in:

Figured I'd drop this link here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...PC-world-quot&

It's about CK2, but it seems that it allows one to play any PC game really on the Ipad. So maybe someone with an Ipad or an Android tablet can check it out with EU3 specifically; try it and let us know how it works (the good the bad, the ugly the beautiful yada yada)

Enjoy

/Edit it wouldn't be so much about the ipad itself, but whether the technical aspect on playing such a small screen is feasible and fun, with the games we have today (not the small screen optimized ones which may or may not be released later)

[steveh11]

My answer: Absolutely not - simply because I'd never buy an iPad. Overpriced, overmarketed; and overhyped by the fanbois.

[Sandmann]

I would like to add that EU3 is playable without a mouse, played it alot on my laptop but without a pause button hotkey aswell there is no chance. I played a long time without mouse and a working pause button hotkey, you can set all messages to auto pause and units to auto pause when they arrive etc but it's close to the limit to what you can take..

[Jos de trol]

without an ipad I wouldn't buy EU on ipad

[Ruanek]

/Random drop-in:

Figured I'd drop this link here: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/...PC-world-quot&

It's about CK2, but it seems that it allows one to play any PC game really on the Ipad. So maybe someone with an Ipad or an Android tablet can check it out with EU3 specifically; try it and let us know how it works (the good the bad, the ugly the beautiful yada yada)

Enjoy

/Edit it wouldn't be so much about the ipad itself, but whether the technical aspect on playing such a small screen is feasible and fun, with the games we have today (not the small screen optimized ones which may or may not be released later)

If I had to guess I'd say CK2 is probably more demanding than EU3, so it should work. The thing is, from what I can tell at least this is basically connecting to another computer and letting it do the processing. Really, most games, even high-end ones, should be able to do that. But I don't know if it really counts as playing EU3 or CK2 on a tablet.