Does La Resistance make this playable ?

[Tisifoni12]

I've put in over 1,000 hours on this game and I'm reluctant to invest more time or money in it, but La Res is on Christmas Sale.
Will it sort out Vichy to the satisfaction of this grumpy old grognard ?

 

[Dryhad]

Well what do you want out of it? With respect to Vichy, La Resistance adds mini focus trees for both Frances, a way to dynamically fight over the colonies between Free and Vichy France, and allows Vichy to stay out of the war (although they can choose to join again later on). If this is what you want, then get La Resistance (Spain is also fun, get La Resistance anyway). If you want something else, what exactly is it?

 

[Iskulya]

1000 hours in game. Verdict? Unplayable. Classic paradox plaza... never change.

But in all seriousness, this is pretty vague. You'd have to be more specific.

In a historical game Vichy now remains neutral and is uninvolved in the war for quite a long time. I've seemed to notice that when the Allies take North Africa they will justify and declare war on Vichy, or if the Allies land successfully in France then Vichy becomes annexed by Free France.

I don't really have many complaints about the way Vichy is implemented now. I just wish they had provided a way for Admiral Darlan to become in charge of Vichy and for Vichy to annex Free France and join the Allies. This very nearly happened IRL. It's a pretty small criticism.

 

[bitmode]

Verdict? Unplayable. Classic paradox plaza... never change.

Not what OP wrote.

 

[Vlad123]

The only thing useful are in addition to the NF, fighting the resistance and the missions to get the compilance (ok, I forget to do them, but this is my problem) also guilty that you get the third spy too late because to do 5 updates + creating the agency takes 30X6 days or 180 days, which becomes something less with the specialist -15% of the time ... but they are always about half a year ... besides the fact that the intelligence networks are slow to do but very quickly to unravel.

 

[Cpt.Cross]

Vichy is much better in LAR, you may even want to play as it. Free France not so much. Resistance Provides a nerf to Germany without actually nerfing Germany.

Although Case Anton has been broken by the La Resistance changes and is no now longer possible. It can be corrected by removing the line of code that says Vichy must be a puppet of Germany.

 

[Eh up me duck]

Espionage is pointless, don't buy it based on that.

Take a look at the French/Spanish focus trees. Do they interest you? If so then yes I would definitely say buy it.

If no then don't.

Personally I found it a bit meh. Spain is interesting for a while except there's absolutely nothing to do after the civil war ends so you may as well finish the game in 1938.

France is a bit more interesting but still consists of fighting against Germany/Italy. They didn't really go anywhere with the royalist/Napoleon path, you just get a few claims and that's it.

 

[Harin]

I've put in over 1,000 hours on this game and I'm reluctant to invest more time or money in it, but La Res is on Christmas Sale.
Will it sort out Vichy to the satisfaction of this grumpy old grognard ?

I cannot answer for Vichy. It feels a little more alive, than Vichy did before the DLC, but it is not going to be historical each game. Things can happen.

I can say that I had a great time with France, Spain, and yes, even Portugal. The spy system I wished I could turn off, but the resistance system, I believe, delivers better historical results when compared to the old system. It is a bother to learn what works and does not in the new resistance rules, but the forums are full of answers.

I think I can understand how after playing 1,000 hours the game can loose the freshness that brought you back enough to run up so many hours. I believe I have done the same. It is why I bought La Resistance when it came out. It was refreshing to me. Right now I just happen to be playing a Democratic France game and just turned the corner to a win. I can honestly say it was a lot of fun.

If you find La Resistance on sale, it is most likely some of the cheaper entertainment a person could purchase.

 

[goodcigar]

Not a fan of La Resistance really. Espionage is undercook and very limited. Resistance is not rational and very boring.

 

[Vlad123]

Not a fan of La Resistance really. Espionage is undercook and very limited. Resistance is not rational and very boring.

Resistance is do bad...espionage have few spy for too work

 

[Tisifoni12]

Hmm, so basically in order to get a Vichy that acts like Vichy I have to buy a bundle of stuff that I either won't use or which maybe isn't so great ?

Tempted to go back to HOI2 or 3 ?

 

[bitmode]

a bundle of stuff that I either won't use or which maybe isn't so great

You hit the nail on the head. I stopped using the few DLCs that I have because they just distract you from one pile of broken (ahem not-quite-optimal) things by adding another. In my opinion it is better to stay with the base game and use mods.

 

[Tisifoni12]

@bitmode Which mods would you recommend ?

 

[safe-keeper]

Not what OP wrote.

OP: "Does La Resistance make this playable ?"
Also OP: "I've put in over 1,000 hours on this game..."

My old sig had a couple quotes to the nature of "Paradox gamers are funny. They take games that take dozens of hours to get into, and then play them for hundreds of hours, and then come back to the forums to decry them as 'unplayable with no replayability value' without a trace of irony". Never change, indeed.

Not a fan of La Resistance really. Espionage is undercook and very limited. Resistance is not rational and very boring.

The deal-breaker for me was that they finally fixed Vichy France insta-joining the war... and then put the fix behind a paywall.
I was already dissatisfied after they did the same thing with Man the Guns, when they finally allowed us to tell convoys to stay out of certain sea zones, and then forced us to buy Man the Guns for this basic, much-needed game feature.

Don't feel like supporting such business practices, thank you.

 

[Vlad123]

OP: "Does La Resistance make this playable ?"
Also OP: "I've put in over 1,000 hours on this game..."

My old sig had a couple quotes to the nature of "Paradox gamers are funny. They take games that take dozens of hours to get into, and then play them for hundreds of hours, and then come back to the forums to decry them as 'unplayable with no replayability value' without a trace of irony". Never change, indeed.

The deal-breaker for me was that they finally fixed Vichy France insta-joining the war... and then put the fix behind a paywall.
I was already dissatisfied after they did the same thing with Man the Guns, when they finally allowed us to tell convoys to stay out of certain sea zones, and then forced us to buy Man the Guns for this basic, much-needed game feature.

Don't feel like supporting such business practices, thank you.

The problem is that they have removed the free "drift ideology" and exchanged it with that of the LaR spies that:
1) is paid
2) is not as effective
3) consume one of the 3 lights
4) is much slower (see point 2)
Virtually paradox has removed a free function to exchange it with a paid function made worse! There is a maxim in computer science: If it works don't fix it!

 

[prymcik]

I don't agree with bashing the espionage system as a whole. It finally accomplished something that was always needed in game, that is Soviets collapsing without having to fight your way through to Mongolia.

 

[bitmode]

@bitmode Which mods would you recommend ?

The ones you have lying around locally to fix the stuff that annoys you most I don't have any insider tips really; Expert AI and Player Led Peace Conferences are obviously pretty great. Hearts of Oak too, if you're playing with historical AI focus on. Maintaining public bug fix mods like Vanilla+ used to is really hard because their tight integration with the vanilla game breaks with every patch. And while there are far too few, it is hard to pass on the bug fixes in a new official patch to stick with bug fixes of an outdated mod.

My old sig had a couple quotes to the nature of "Paradox gamers are funny. They take games that take dozens of hours to get into, and then play them for hundreds of hours, and then come back to the forums to decry them as 'unplayable with no replayability value' without a trace of irony". Never change, indeed.

It's like one of those long-running TV shows you keep watching because you were invested in them even though you don't enjoy them anymore. (Apologies to the people who like the later seasons of Game of Thrones, Big Bang Theory, etc.).

The deal-breaker for me was that they finally fixed Vichy France insta-joining the war

I think this ties into the point you made before about calling the game "unplayable". In @podcat's mind, Vichy France was not "broken" before, hence LaR is not strictly pay walling the "fix". You could play as Vichy before and they were working as designed at the time. The "improvements" made in the DLC just so happen to align more closely with what most players expected to have already payed for in the base game.
The strict use of the words matches Paradox' (business) interests in the same way the lose use of the words matches OP's intent of demanding a better game. The latter could more precisely be worded like this:

this is really disappointing and worse than I thought

 

[Vlad123]

I don't agree with bashing the espionage system as a whole. It finally accomplished something that was always needed in game, that is Soviets collapsing without having to fight your way through to Mongolia.

Too bad that is THE ONLY thing they fixed.
But they got a lot of other things off balance:
1) the spy are too few.
2) the drift ideology I have already talked about
3) the spy network that takes a lifetime to build, but collapses in 2 months if there is no spy.
4) 90% of the missions are useless or too weak. Example fighting the partisans is too weak if the enemy spams the mission "help the partisans" that does not decay ... that is, if a spammes the mission 3-4 times makes those territories UNUSABLE even if there were to place 5-6 spies on a mission with "fight the partisans" ....
I'm sorry, but if I have to choose between:
A) 1 useful feature + 8/9 game-breaking / unbalanced
B) no feature A
I prefer B at least it is more balanced.

 

[Leovigild32]

Perhaps I should be starting a new thread to ask this... But, how fixed is La R? I remember reports that you could steal absurd amounts of tech and other things and was not interested in that. I am interested in the focus trees, but the broken level of espionage was a turnoff. Can I basically ignore it or is it a new thing I need to micromanage or have negative consequences if I buy that DLC?

 

[Áurum]

OP: "Does La Resistance make this playable ?"
Also OP: "I've put in over 1,000 hours on this game..."

My old sig had a couple quotes to the nature of "Paradox gamers are funny. They take games that take dozens of hours to get into, and then play them for hundreds of hours, and then come back to the forums to decry them as 'unplayable with no replayability value' without a trace of irony". Never change, indeed.

Mods exist, you know, and the game changes. I have more than 1000 hours on the game and right now, I think that vanilla is unplayable because of the sheer amount of bugs and errors. That doesn't mean I can't play the game with mods. Most people refer to vanilla when they say "the game".

Perhaps I should be starting a new thread to ask this... But, how fixed is La R? I remember reports that you could steal absurd amounts of tech and other things and was not interested in that. I am interested in the focus trees, but the broken level of espionage was a turnoff. Can I basically ignore it or is it a new thing I need to micromanage or have negative consequences if I buy that DLC?

There are still bugs, for example, states with no cores have no resistance and no compliance, which means no bonuses. So Alaska is basically useless land and so is Koenigsberg after Germany loses, because no country has a core on it. In some mods it's even worse, in Kaiserreich, as cores from Chinese warlords disappear after they get annexed by another warlord, a Chinese unifier can have half of China as useless land until they get cores via decisions, which takes a long time.