How complex can we expect CK to be?

[boromir]

Victoria isn't complex, complex is a negative word just meant to break something down so you don't have to worry about it,

Victoria is more of a challenge compared to the boring EU2, not complex. Victoria is well manageable,

Victoria isn't about world conquest, it's about getting first place either by means of prestige, military or industrial rating,

the impact the gamer has - in Victoria - on these ratings is much directer, so after starting with EU1 I really fail to see why you guys are always looking back on EU2 as the "best" game,

the truth is that the game scope of both games is totally different and I like them both,

You are right, Victoria is not a complex game. As all Paradox games though, it does need a little time to invest. What has gone wrong in Victoria is the focus of the game - pop micromanagement & dubious economics. There is nothing complex in having to click through dozens of provinces just for the sake of clicking. Its also a matter of taste of course, but I, as some of my friends who are also Paradox fans, would prefer to focus on grand strategy and diplomacy, not on 100 farmers in Alabama. POPs should have been abstracted - you decide on a set of policies, and the POPs respond. Still, when 1.03 comes out, I'll give Vicky a shot again.

Just because a game has more features does not make it more fun to play. Some things need to remain abstracted or the gameplay suffers. At the moment, EU2 is more fun to play, though it is a simple game in comparison. I hope CK doesn't get lost the same way Victoria has.

To me HOI is the best Paradox game, not EU2 or Victoria, even though it was released in a pretty bad state, and even though it still has serious bugs, and unit management is a bit unwieldy. Its a wargame, so its different, but in that it has managed to achieve the best balance in terms of issues to focus on. It has by far the most rewarding MP experience.

b.

 

[NimaFoulaam]

I hope CK doesn't get lost the same way Victoria has.

I hope the economy in CK is a bit a mixture between the one market-resource modell in Vic and the CoT modell in EU. Heck, Stockfish had once been a box-office hit!

 

[unmerged(1104)]

Guys, sometimes you should refresh your knowledge of FAQ and confront your expectations with it.

Marty - is the FAQ still correct? I'm a newbie CKer type, currently engrossed in VIC - don't expect that to change any time soon. However the game looks interesting, I'll buy it (the pic of that crowd in the throne room screenie scares me ) and wondering if the FAQ answers are upto date with Paradox dev?

 

[unmerged(25385)]

Well.......

I like complexity.....HOI wasn't complex to me. I bought the game and never read the manual...

I did end up reading the Vic manual, but I did that after several days of gameplay and realizing I wasn't getting my country to the fullest potential.

Vic is my favorite game, then HOI. EU2 seems more like one of many other computer game clones out there and I hardly ever play it.

 

[grumbold]

Imo Vickys' biggest problem is the scenario starting positions. Most if not all countries are operating at vast deficits. Many of them will run at a loss even if you drop all spending to the floor. Without a really good introduction or a way of watching the AI handle it before you have to this leaves the new player bewildered and frightened.

EU1/2 and HoI were much more accessible because although it was normally optimum to begin significant reforms on day one, your country would not actually implode if you failed to make the perfect moves. In Vicky you actually have to tour your whole country, find out all the stupid things going on and put in immediate plans to fix them and be prepared to assume massive debts in the process. That just doesn't happen until you have played and realised how much debt can be managed before it becomes disastrous. Patches like 1.1 which actually broke countries that had been set up with all clerks and no craftsmen so their factories stopped working completely didn't help to improve things either.

The complexity level of Vicky is absolutely fine for most strategy gamers once you've familiarised yourself. Its really not that much above a bestselling game like Civ III. After the initial shock phase its just micromanagement. Civ III learned fast and patched in automation for workers and stacked movement. Vicky could use some too.

 

[Spruce]

grumbold,

it's true Victoria comes with a deficit start - but that's offset by the cash reserve you have in the beginning,

if you would have started at a break even situation with no cash reserve - that's even worse,

now you have the option to invest that money somewhere and cut your overspending immediately to break even,

I don't see a problem there, the same situation with EU

 

[unmerged(12680)]

grumbold, I don't see a problem there, the same situation with EU

Wrong. Unless you are a country with a huge army pre-whatever patch were they increase army maintanence costs by a lot, all countries could earn money at game start with zero investment or fiddling.

 

[owenstarkiller]

Both Solinvictus and InnocentIII make good points. I don't like Vicky, not because its complex, but because it forces me to make non-critical decisions. I mean, I *obviosly* want the best clerk/manufacturer mix in a given factory but it makes it *really* difficult to manage that. And, with the way pops work, I can't say I want a 30/70 split amongst two factiories. That's frustrating; not fun.

I do like that there is more to do in Vicky in peactime. I'm hoping that the same is true in Crusader Kings via the marriages. I *don't* want an overly fiddly economics system and endless clicking like vicky though.

 

[unmerged(2456)]

i just hope they make it easy to mod...EU1/2 had an easy learning curve for modding simple events while more complex event structures take time and effort (and a lot of debugging)...still neither Johan nor others ever put in all the stuff we'd like to see...such a peace command, saving each RR as seperate in the savegame so it doesn't get weird results and for me personally a command to tell if a province is a capital of a nation...

However if its easy to mod, and it doesn't REQUIRE micromanagment and exact placement of stuff, then its all good.

 

[unmerged(10894)]

As many have already said, games can be complex and fun, but one mustn't be overwhelmed at any one point of playing. If one can be familiar with the setup, then they can enjoy themselves even if they don't know exactly how everything works. This is why EU2 is good for most people. There was a main window and menu, and everything of relevance was directly off that, and mostly everything else was viewing information, not requiring making any actions with them.

OTOH is Victoria. While being a great game, it is severely hampered by a major case of scared newbies. Not only is there a main window with about 6 options and go into sub-menus and web out to every part of the game, there are side menus for military, provinces etc. And then once you go into the main map, you have information and options in regions, and then provinces.... You can easily see how someone not familiar with it can get so overwhelmed.

Complexity is good (essential for me personally), but only if all the needed things can be found out easily. I know in Victoria I didn't figure out all things war until about my 30th hour of playing, and I had no idea what mobilisation was either. Better documentation would do wonders, and having the complex features of the game not essential to know right from the start, but rather as a side-feature that can be embarked upon at will. Easier said than done, but IMO one of the most essential parts of a strategy game.

From what little I've seen of CK, it seems to be very good. Just hope that the learning curve is easy and the mastering of it is hard/impossible and that it will be open to whichever strategy you may use, and that there are certain extra things you can do so that you don't have to be bored in peace. Then it'll be great. Either way, with such a fanbase as Paradox has, I think most criticism can be taken as a complement from satisfied customers in attempt of making its products even better.

 

[unmerged(15764)]

The problem with Vicky is not its complexity, at least not for me.

 

[unmerged(12303)]

The problem with Vicky is not its complexity, at least not for me.

exactly my feeling too.

F

 

[unmerged(24449)]

Chris1959

EUII is complex so is Vicky, the interface is a little more demanding, both are brilliant and I replay them ad infinitum.

The real complexity is the way a myriad of dynamics military, economics, politics intereact and no two games are remotely similar.

However, if it was not for having a fairly good grasp of history and the priceless help from the forums I would have really failed to get so much enjoyment from EU and Vicky.

Keep the micro-managment simple make the dynamic interaction of nations and leaders as complex as possible.

I think that is Johan's Holy Grail.

 

[unmerged(824)]

Given the recent thread in the Victoria forum, where Johan expresses his desire to not make games as complex as Victoria any longer (which is highly lamentable, given that Victoria is Paradox's best game to date IMO), what can we expect in terms of complexity from Crusader Kings?

Most players would rank the Paradox games, in order of least complex to most complex as follows:
EU
HOI
VIC

About where on the scale should we expect CK to be?

Hoping that now that the game is gold, one of the Mods/Developers will answer the initial question posted in this thread. Thanks

 

[Sikker]

I hope that CK will be even more complex than Vic.

Actually, so do I ... Paradox can only succeed in my book, if they up complexity of their games!

 

[unmerged(6777)]

Hoping that now that the game is gold, one of the Mods/Developers will answer the initial question posted in this thread. Thanks

This is a very difficult question to answer, really. In some repsects it's an incredibly complex game but the majority of that complexity is under the surface (i.e. coded rather than in game handling of minutae). The impact of this may be a bit baffling at first since it isn't always readily apparent as to why something is happening or how to counter (or enhance) it.

As with previous Paradox games, I would expect that an utter newbie would find it a trifle intimidating at first since you aren't "eased" into your tasks as the game progresses. It's not like many other games where your scenarios gradually build upon one another in difficulty and complexity so you are coached into a familiarity of the controls. If you start a game as the king of France, for instance, you will be required to undertake the same variety of things at the beginning of the scenario as you will have to maintain throughout the entire game. With are rather numerous series of options available to you, this might present a beginner with a the odd moment of frustration until they begin to get a handle on the game.

To an experienced strategy gamer or someone who has played one of Paradox's games before, I doubt there will be more than a half-game's acclimatisation to get used to it. Then will come the long and enjoyable process of figuring out how to master the game - and it is a game that will have nearly infinite replayability due to its overall design and the range of things that are partially or wholy randomized.

It is also something of a departure, design-wise, from the EU2/HoI/Vicky game mechanic that makes it hard to "peg" in the complexity scale. I suppose pinning it somewhere in the HoI range (plus or minus a bit) would be about right.

 

[InnocentIII]

It is also something of a departure, design-wise, from the EU2/HoI/Vicky game mechanic that makes it hard to "peg" in the complexity scale. I suppose pinning it somewhere in the HoI range (plus or minus a bit) would be about right.

And where would you put HoI? It seemed to me to be more complex than EU2 but less so than Vicky, but I'm not sure that's correct...

 

[Olaf the Unsure]

And where would you put HoI? It seemed to me to be more complex than EU2 but less so than Vicky, but I'm not sure that's correct...

That's how I would rank them, from less to more complex: EU2, HOI, Victoria.

 

[unmerged(163)]

complexity

I'd rate it at more complex than EU2, but signficantly LESS complex than either HoI or Vicky.

Then again, I've got 8 pages of rough draft for my pre/review (will come out as soon as I can get the editor to move!), so maybe that's a little more complex than I think. :rofl:

Do you guys have any idea how hard it is to STOP playing, just to write something about the game, and the whole while you're writing you're (obviously) thinking about the game you're not playing?

Grrr....

 

[unmerged(24840)]

I'd rate it at more complex than EU2, but signficantly LESS complex than either HoI or Vicky.

Then again, I've got 8 pages of rough draft for my pre/review (will come out as soon as I can get the editor to move!), so maybe that's a little more complex than I think. :rofl:

Do you guys have any idea how hard it is to STOP playing, just to write something about the game, and the whole while you're writing you're (obviously) thinking about the game you're not playing?

Grrr....

Nice, finally, a review on the way... Don't suppose you could publish all 8 pages here first? I promise not you tell your editor...