What's the hardest Paradox game to get into/learn/be good at.

BaneWilliams

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Mar 22, 2011

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #1

I'm a newbie to Paradox strategy games. I've played EUIV for the last two months, and a small smattering of CK2 for the last fortnight. I'm loving what I'm playing and just picked up the HOI3 and Vicky2 bundle.

So my question is, what's the hardest? Or the deepest? The one that makes everyones brain hurt not because it's terribly coded but because it's just downright complex?

Let me know, veterans!

 

the cool guy

Major

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Dec 17, 2013

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #2

Victoria 2 by far.

 

TehJumpingJawa

Field Marshal

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Feb 26, 2011

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #3

the cool guy said:

Victoria 2 by far.

Click to expand...

This.

I've played almost 100h and have watched many let's plays/tutorials yet I still have little to no idea wtf I'm doing.

 

S

sgt.stickybomb

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #4

Hoi 3

 

Darkgamma

Ma Xamewš Xewaham Kered Fer

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #5

Victoria 2 is, from what I've played at friends', the one with the most baroque obvious mechanics and it takes a lot to learn it, but IMHO Crusader Kings 2 really requires you to dedicate silly amounts of time to become good at it and master every single opaque concept and mechanic.

 

loup99

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #6

I recently picked up Sengoku and I find it a lot harder to get into than the other paradox games that I own, Victoria 2, EU4 or CK2, due to a lack of available info in interfaces in others. There is a lack of popups to pause the game, the economy is hard to balance, levies are costly, vassals rebel easily whiler making gifts does not help much, the CK2 interface and tooltip improvements (for example the thing that says that "you" is you)a re not in so it is hard to know who is related to you or even to find your kinsmans can be a bit painful (this might also be due to me being bad at recognizing japanese names ). The IA is also quite impredictible and a bit agressive, being able to declare war on you and hard to ally.

Otherways Victoria 2 due to complex economy, industries and two different political systems to handle (the parliament and the governement being completely unrelated).

 

Last edited: Sep 14, 2014

brifbates

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Mar 4, 2004

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #7

HoI 3 is most likely to make your brain hurt (if you have the advisors turned off) due to dealing with all the minutia. Vic 2 has more counter-intuitive crap you NEED to know to be good at it (stupid stuff like capping education spending actually being bad for your education efforts...)

 

BaronIronmaggot

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Aug 25, 2013

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #8

EU IV could rival Vicky a little if you played as a trader.

You know, if you focus on the request&demand=specific-bonus aspect of game.

 

ciadude2

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• Sep 14, 2014

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• #9

I had no trouble with learning Vic 2 or EUIV after playing EUIII(with EU:R as my first PI game).

Hearts of Iron 3 is the only one I haven't really managed to wrap my head around fully.

 

daniloy

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Jul 19, 2012

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• Sep 15, 2014

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• #10

HOI 3 too.I had to look up a video in Youtube to even know what frontage is supposed to be.

 

justin6477

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• Sep 15, 2014

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• #11

Hardest to get into is Hearts of Iron 3; EU3, EU4, CK2, and V2 can all be hammered away at with varying degrees of success. Hardest to learn is probably a tie between EUIV and HoI3. Hearts of Iron has a lot of issues with documentation and there's a lot going on at once. If you don't automate stuff it becomes difficult to handle it all... as for EUIV, it's superficially simple but the ever changing mechanics, undocumented changes, and poorly documented tool tips (in some areas) make it difficult to completely grasp. For hardest to excel at, I'm going with Victoria 2. The market and pops systems alone are substantially deeper than mechanics found in the other titles.

 

Drewbdu

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Dec 24, 2013

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• Sep 15, 2014

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• #12

If say HOI3. Victoria 2 is not that difficult, while in HOI3 you have to know a ton of information to actually be half decent at the game (unless you let the AI control everything, but then you'd be watching the game not playing it ).

 

keneticpest

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• Sep 15, 2014

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• #13

I've had no trouble cracking EU, Crusader Kings, or even Victoria II. But the one Paradox series that I've never been able to figure out is Hearts of Iron. It always seems like the AI is able to move its troops faster than I can and I have no idea what I'm doing incorrectly.

 

lucaluca

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Dec 7, 2003

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• Sep 16, 2014

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• #14

HoII: tried it for 10 minutes, closed it, deleted it from my computer and never looked at the HoI series again. too bad because Axies & Allies is my favorite boardgame...

 

brifbates

Field Marshal

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• Sep 16, 2014

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• #15

One thing I'd advise those trying to figure out HoI above and beyond doing the tutorials is play a game or two as a peripheral nation like Rumania, Turkey, etc. so you can get a grasp on the stuff other than fighting a massive war (you can fight smaller engagements for some military practice but it's much more doable than a major nation fighting "the BIG ONE"). When I first played I tried my normal PI start (Rostov/Muscovy/Russia) which I could muddle my way through in the other titles and pretty quickly got overwhelmed...

 

BBBD316

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• Sep 16, 2014

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• #16

I guess the issue in HOI is that as a minor it is quite difficult or feels that way as a noob, to just start a local war. So it is hard to try out the actual battle and tactics and how techs affect them.

You can put the AI in charge of the military, but then what is the point of playing.

All the rest you can sort of muddle your way through even if you don't fully understand it.

 

Riotkiller

Typical Centrist

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• Sep 16, 2014

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• #17

HoI3, which is the only one of the big four below 200 hours played for me.

 

Will Steel

Centurion First-File

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• Sep 16, 2014

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• #18

Victoria II. It is more complex than any Paradox game to date, the internal working system is byzantine in nature and sometimes even modders get confused, and it took me over three years to understand the advanced gameplay.

As for HoI, I would rate it to the simpler games, since there isn't anything to do other than to fight the same war in the same damn timeframe.

 

paradox97

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• Sep 16, 2014

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• #19

get into/ learn: Victoria 2
be good at: CKII

 

Tijean

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• Sep 16, 2014

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• #20

HOI can be very complicated it you try to understand how everything work. Optmising everything is very complicated and even the AI do it very poorly. But optimising is no very important. In my last germain game, I was able to take london before Paris.

Vic 2 is also rather easy to play. It is really peacefull and waring is not that important. The economic system is very complex and most of the time I did look at it. Would love some improvement to the economic system in Vic3
Vic 2 also have a lot of flavor to the games. You can see a lot of statistic of your population. That is actually really fun.

Ck2 was a hard game, now it is quite simple.