Victoria 3 isnt focused in war and it hurts

[grommile]

g

That statement is ridiculous. If You do the same things every day the same way You do them a little better every time. That is synonym for improvement.

Eventually you reach a point where the entire surface has a mirror-bright finish and can't be polished any harder without actually making the object visibly smaller.

Of course, there's never been a Paradox game that reached that point, as far as I know

There is vast space for improvement in PDX games without making radical changes to the mechanics. In the beginning, they could remove bugs and make rules of the game implemented as intended.

I'm willing to bet there are rules in every Paradox GSG title that would actually be worse if they were bug free and working 100% as intended.

If You follow EU4 forum people complain more about bugs and unexpected AI behaviour than actual rules of the game.

You say that, but people complain about ZOC all the time.

Even when it isn't being completely incomprehensible.

 

[Avian Overlord]

If we can win wars “against all odds”, then what is the point?

I think that's kind of the crux of the issue. Having a system where the player can exercise a lot of agency to change the outcome of a war (in either a positive or negative direction) regardless of conditions genuinely conflicts with making those conditions matter. This isn't really resolvable by just putting more effort in, it's a pretty fundamental tradeoff.

 

[Testeria]

As a pianist, practicing the same things daily allows me to do the same things more reliably. Daily scale work makes the scales sparkle without even second thought,

So You agree that you CAN make something better without trying something different?

 

[EUnderhill]

So You agree that you CAN make something better without trying something different?

No, you aren't making it "better", just more effortless and reliable.

 

[Testeria]

I think that's kind of the crux of the issue. Having a system where the player can exercise a lot of agency to change the outcome of a war (in either a positive or negative direction) regardless of conditions genuinely conflicts with making those conditions matter. This isn't really resolvable by just putting more effort in, it's a pretty fundamental tradeoff.

Yes. If a war in Victoria3 would be just a simple event with one popup there would be no problem at all (from my perspective).

 

[wilcoxchar]

So You agree that you CAN make something better without trying something different?

You're not making the scales better by practicing. Because you're not actually changing anything about the scales.

 

[TheWorstPro]

I can respect your opinion, because I mostly don't spend most of my of time exploiting AI either. I only do it when I need it to win in tighter situations. So what is the problem? What is the issue with AI just taking control if we for the most part don't care about the exact troop movements? Why do we need micro then? What fun are we having?

Well, the problem is simply that you lose an element of strategy somewhat. Sure, even if delegating to the AI were to give the same results as playing normally (which it doesn't, but that point is a bit irrelevant to this specific argument), I think people might ask, "what's the point?" But the problem is that you basically lose some fundamental elements of strategy when you do so. "How many troops should I put on this front?" "Should I try to defend on the border or at a choke point?" "How far can I realistically push before I spread myself too thin?" "Should I wait for my allies to outflank or do I keep pushing?" "What should be my primary objectives, and which places should I try to hold at all costs?" When you delegate half these questions to the AI, I think you lose one of the biggest reasons why people play strategy games: to problem-solve. Obviously, there should be some limits to how much the player should reasonably be able to control (for instance, I wouldn't imagine trying to add Total War battles into my CK game), but I do think it is reasonable to ask whether or not the proposed warfare system for Vic3 offers too little for players.

I am sure players with 1000+ hours will know every possible way to play the game optimally. At a certain point you are correct, the only way to challenge yourself is to play weaker and weaker starting nations, but even that will have its limitations.

I don't think you even have to go that far necessarily. For instance, I still like to play majors in Vic2 like Russia, Germany, USA, etc. and try to get a "better" run each time. There's a few challenge runs that exist which I think can be entertaining without requiring the player to use exploits or cheesing the AI: decolonize the entire New World as the US, aquire the Turkish Straits and achieve Pan-Slavic hegemony as Russia, recreate France's greatest territorial extent under Napoleon, etc.

I guess we will have to see when the game is released if your assumption is correct. I can certainly see you getting into closer wars when you are on the defense rather than offence, but that is true in all PDX games thankfully. But as to my original point, these are not going to be necessarily total wars. So the decisions is how much are you willing to expend to win, in treasure and blood, if it does not immediately go your way.

This has pretty much always been the case though, even in Vic2. Nobody is forced to use console commands or cheese the AI. And similarly, there's nothing saying that you have to handicap yourself either. We all create our own rules and guidelines for how we like to play these games, determe which tactics are "fair game" to use, how far we're willing to go, or how much time or resources we're willing to invest into achieving a goal. And that's why I think the argument "the AI can be exploited" is a bit silly, because that statement necessarly implies that it's the player's choice.

Well I think I said, that if we are going to exploit the AI, I would at least like to see it as something new. It is something new to learn, as opposed to the same exploitation I have been doing in PDX games since 2006.


I agree, solving an exploitive system by just taking players ability away to control the system does not make it good. But I find wars currently completely lacking challenge., so maybe the only way to introduce challenge is to introduce randomness. This leaves the player with the a decision... how much risk are they willing to take?

I think these are all fair again here. We'd probably just disagree on how fun the end result might be.

 

[TheWorstPro]

Now, to address this whole "can you make something better without changing something?" argument:

I think this just boils down to a semantic argument. I actually liked the piano metaphor so I'll use that one first. Now, I'm not actually a pianist so I wouldn't know any of the specific terms for things, but I am at the very least an ameteur with a fairly decent ability to play a few songs. And from what I've gathered, practicing piano does actually make things "better" it just depends on what you're looking for. I might suck at playing a song for the first time if I'm learning it, but by replaying it over and over again I can make it sound better, I can control the volume better, the pacing/tempo/whatever is better, and generally my proficiency with that piece becomes better. If you want to be super nit-picky, you could still argue that maybe you are "changing" something: you're changing the timing very slightly, you're changing how much force you put into each note, etc. but I think that that's just being nitpicky. I think what @Testeria is trying to get at here, is that changing the warfare mechanics in Vic3 is like changing the song you're learning. Some people might find that song to be a bit more beautiful, others might think it sounds worse or isn't their style. But you can't really say that the new piece is an "improvement" in the previous one. They're 2 separate songs altogether. Just because you learn a new song doesn't make the old song sound any better (although it might improve your overall proficiency with playing songs on piano in general, but that's something different).

To use a different example now, let's say there's a recipe for mushroom stew. You might think it's alright, but you think maybe it would taste better without mushrooms. Well, is it really the same dish now? How can you say you improved "mushroom stew" if it no longer has any mushrooms? An improvement might be adding more salt, or changing the type of mushroom, or perhaps cooking the mushrooms or other ingredients in a different way. But changing a fundamental component of mushroom stew, by essentially turning it into a separate type of stew altogether, isn't really improving on that recipe. It's just giving you a different meal altogether which might be overall more or less beneficial.

 

[wilcoxchar]

To use a different example now, let's say there's a recipe for mushroom stew. You might think it's alright, but you think maybe it would taste better without mushrooms. Well, is it really the same dish now? How can you say you improved "mushroom stew" if it no longer has any mushrooms? An improvement might be adding more salt, or changing the type of mushroom, or perhaps cooking the mushrooms or other ingredients in a different way. But changing a fundamental component of mushroom stew, by essentially turning it into a separate type of stew altogether, isn't really improving on that recipe. It's just giving you a different meal altogether which might be overall more or less beneficial.

This is not a very good comparison. A better comparison to use the mushroom stew example would be not taking the mushrooms out, but instead using different mushrooms. Say, using a more mild mushroom instead of something with a more intense flavor, because the milder flavor brings out the flavors of the other ingredients or the seasoning and creates a more complex flavor palate of the stew overall.

Or, to be more accurate to a comparison to combat and the Victoria series, using a milder garlic in the seasoning because the current garlic you're using is overpowering the flavor of the mushroom and becoming the dominant flavor in your mushroom stew instead of the mushroom.

 

[TheWorstPro]

This is not a very good comparison. A better comparison to use the mushroom stew example would be not taking the mushrooms out, but instead using different mushrooms. Say, using a more mild mushroom instead of something with a more intense flavor, because the milder flavor brings out the flavors of the other ingredients or the seasoning and creates a more complex flavor palate of the stew overall.

Or, to be more accurate to a comparison to combat and the Victoria series, using a milder garlic in the seasoning because the current garlic you're using is overpowering the flavor of the mushroom and becoming the dominant flavor in your mushroom stew instead of the mushroom.

Ehhh, I don't think so. In the Vic3 system, player influence over the events of the war are very minimal at best. In this sense the thing we're removing is player control of what I'd call the "execution phase" of the war and focusing more on the preparation phase. Since the preparation phase is mechanically independent of the execution phase, these would be 2 separate ingredients in the stew altogether. The way that warfare is going to play out in Vic3 is supposedly fundamentally different than how it has been in the past; I don't think you could really say at this point that it's the same recipe but milder. That would be like saying that this is the same as the Vic2 system but with more automation, which it simply isn't. There's a reason we have a lot of people, even on your side of the argument, making distinctions between the "EU4 system" and Vic3, rather than simply calling it the "less intense EU4 system" or the "improved EU4 system." And I think it's because we can look at these 2 types of warfare systems and generally agree that they are distinct from each other, rather than building on top of previous systems.

 

[Sharkseant]

Except it's not severely limiting the player's ability to influence the events. All it's doing is removing your ability to directly micromanage individual army sprites on the map because that is not fun gameplay for an economics and sociopolitical-focused game. You as the player still have the ability and responsibility to manage the logistics, goods supply to the front, goods supply to home, economic production, keeping people happy, appointing the right generals and admirals and giving them orders, handling the interplay between military and politics, and managing your barracks and what units they produce and keeping them supplied with fresh goods. And that's just during the actual war, not going into what you still have influence over during the diplomatic leadup and peace negotiations before and after the actual conflict. If that is honestly "severely limiting" to you as a player, and having to manage all that makes war "unrewarding" and "frustrating", then people need to do some introspection and reconsider what they're actually looking for in a game. It's okay to admit a game just isn't for you, and it is in fact possible to say a game is not your thing while still admitting it can be a good game and without trashing people who want that kind of game.

You are incorrect while we do influence the war to some extend it’s not nearly satisfying also you seem to forget, like many that there are many things inbetween micro and no strategic kind of stuff at all.

like for an example hoi4 battleplans without the option to control the single divisions (aka micro)

or the system they planned except we get to draw our own frontlines and maybe when saying attack or retreat or something until where they shall retreat.

this already gives some control so it does feel like your defeated your opponent in a game of wits.

 

[Hammrtime]

Well, the problem is simply that you lose an element of strategy somewhat. Sure, even if delegating to the AI were to give the same results as playing normally (which it doesn't, but that point is a bit irrelevant to this specific argument), I think people might ask, "what's the point?" But the problem is that you basically lose some fundamental elements of strategy when you do so. "How many troops should I put on this front?" "Should I try to defend on the border or at a choke point?" "How far can I realistically push before I spread myself too thin?" "Should I wait for my allies to outflank or do I keep pushing?" "What should be my primary objectives, and which places should I try to hold at all costs?" When you delegate half these questions to the AI, I think you lose one of the biggest reasons why people play strategy games: to problem-solve. Obviously, there should be some limits to how much the player should reasonably be able to control (for instance, I wouldn't imagine trying to add Total War battles into my CK game), but I do think it is reasonable to ask whether or not the proposed warfare system for Vic3 offers too little for players.

I understand your problem with the game. You lose tactical and Operational strategy. I would agree that the strategic decisions should go beyond Attack or Defend. You should be able to say what is needed to be generally be defended or attacked outside of wargoals. What would give you victory in all but name is a strategic decision I would like to see the AI work towards.

I agree that people play strategy games to look at a situation and solve it with the tools you have on hand. Tactical tools dont have to be the be all to end all though. To kind of put this to bed, the dev team taking a step back and saying keeping you society and economy afloat while supporting your war are going to be the decisions here. Winning wars isn't just about maneuver. Maybe it is worth making a game where "If I fight a limited, medium, total war, do I have an economy flexible enough to survive those scenarios? How many changes would I have to make? how will this effect the pops?", "Do I need to pull more men from the factories to fight?", "Do I have the Navy to protect my supply or raid the enemies supply?", "Do I put the production methods towards fighting an offensive or defensive war, do I have the economy to support this?".

This has pretty much always been the case though, even in Vic2. Nobody is forced to use console commands or cheese the AI. And similarly, there's nothing saying that you have to handicap yourself either. We all create our own rules and guidelines for how we like to play these games, determe which tactics are "fair game" to use, how far we're willing to go, or how much time or resources we're willing to invest into achieving a goal. And that's why I think the argument "the AI can be exploited" is a bit silly, because that statement necessarly implies that it's the player's choice.

The dev team has decided that one of the design pillars of war is "war is costly". How do you do that? How do you make it so, going to war is a tough economic decision? You remove the players ability to fight cheap wars. If you as a developer are determined to make wars costly, allowing cheap "fair game" tactics would undermine this.

So this is the who crux of the argument between those who want tactical control and those who are ok with not in the game and even happy to see it go. It does not take a tactical genius to out smart the AI in this game. So everyone is avoiding the cost of war and its impact on the economics of the game if you have tactical control. I cannot accept the premise that players are to some degree defeating the AI without them making the same repeated bad decisions.

The whole point of this game is laid out in Dev Diary #0. Nothing you state adds to those central pillars of the game. Too put it frankly, you want this game to be something it is not. How does what you want add to those points? You can tell me all you like that you are not exploiting AI, but the second you dont have the ability to do it, it is total repudiation of the mechanic that removes it.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

There is vast space for improvement in PDX games without making radical changes to the mechanics. In the beginning, they could remove bugs and make rules of the game implemented as intended.

yes, that's called the lifecycle of a PDX game.

we're now onto a new game.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

like for an example hoi4 battleplans without the option to control the single divisions (aka micro)

they have not ruled this out.

 

[prismaticmarcus]

So You agree that you CAN make something better without trying something different?

can you agree that different doesn't mean worse?

 

[TheWorstPro]

So before I start, I think this conversation might have gotten lost on definitions, so I'll try to be as clear as possible here:

When I say "strategy" and "tactics" I'm referring to the common dictionary definitions that people use everyday, not the levels of war you'd find in military theory. So in this sense that'd mean "strategy" is essentially the plan you have to accomplish a goal, while "tactics" refers to the implementation of that plan. I'll try to address your points from both dictionary definitions and military theory usage since they'll tend to give different meaning depending on what you're using, and I can't really tell which one you're arguing from.

I understand your problem with the game. You lose tactical and Operational strategy. I would agree that the strategic decisions should go beyond Attack or Defend. You should be able to say what is needed to be generally be defended or attacked outside of wargoals. What would give you victory in all but name is a strategic decision I would like to see the AI work towards.

I agree that people play strategy games to look at a situation and solve it with the tools you have on hand. Tactical tools dont have to be the be all to end all though. To kind of put this to bed, the dev team taking a step back and saying keeping you society and economy afloat while supporting your war are going to be the decisions here. Winning wars isn't just about maneuver. Maybe it is worth making a game where "If I fight a limited, medium, total war, do I have an economy flexible enough to survive those scenarios? How many changes would I have to make? how will this effect the pops?", "Do I need to pull more men from the factories to fight?", "Do I have the Navy to protect my supply or raid the enemies supply?", "Do I put the production methods towards fighting an offensive or defensive war, do I have the economy to support this?".

The problem here is that a large portion of the player's potential strategizing was cut and not really replaced with anything that couldn't have also been implemented alongside increased player control. Tactical tools (dictionary definition) are absolutely important here though. The lack of tools players have is directly what leads to that missing strategy. If I only have 1 or 2 methods to handle a problem, it's going to be fairly difficult planning anything particularly groundbreaking or interesting from that. We can probably argue on whether those tools were actually useful or not, but I think that is probably just going to loop back around to "console commands and exploits". If you mean "tactical tools" from the military theory usage, then that's just simply not what I'm arguing for (nor are most people who dislike the proposed system). I don't think anybody wants Total War style battle in Victoria 3.

To kind of put this to bed, the dev team taking a step back and saying keeping you society and economy afloat while supporting your war are going to be the decisions here. Winning wars isn't just about maneuver. Maybe it is worth making a game where "If I fight a limited, medium, total war, do I have an economy flexible enough to survive those scenarios? How many changes would I have to make? how will this effect the pops?", "Do I need to pull more men from the factories to fight?", "Do I have the Navy to protect my supply or raid the enemies supply?", "Do I put the production methods towards fighting an offensive or defensive war, do I have the economy to support this?".

None of this is even mutually excusive with player control in war (note: not implying micro per se, simply the ability to control the general direction or objectives of the armed forces), and a lot of it was still somewhat present in Vic2. You need a steady source of war materiel to keep your divisions' org up and to reinforce, you need to know how enemy navies might blockade you (or vice versa) to drive up war exhaustion (which in turn increases the price of goods) and consequently how long it might take, figuring out which provinces you need to hold (especially ones with key input goods like rubber or iron), etc. These are all things that have seemingly been improved upon in Vic3 so again I don't really see the point in deciding to remove a rather large feature which gave the player more options to deal with those issues.

The dev team has decided that one of the design pillars of war is "war is costly". How do you do that? How do you make it so, going to war is a tough economic decision? You remove the players ability to fight cheap wars. If you as a developer are determined to make wars costly, allowing cheap "fair game" tactics would undermine this.

Regarding the first point, war was often costly in Vic2. The increase in good consumption can put strains on your iron or other industries, mobilizing—aside from the effect it has on employment—can stunt your growth if you make too many mistakes or fight too stubbornly and depending on how far you take it can be catastrophic, etc. Simply improving on the interactions between the economy and military (logistics, equipment production, styles of occupation) can go a long way, and even improving on the economy itself can make war more costly.

Regarding your second point about "fair game" tactics, I think you misunderstood what I wrote. In my post, I'm arguing that players are the ones who set the rules for how they can and can't play. A game exploit is, by definition, not something the developers intended. Of course using exploits would undermine a developer's vision, but that doesn't make every "exploit-proof" design choice a necessarily good one. I think we can all agree that a coinflip would be quite exploit-proof but not a particularly good way of deciding whether your army runs out of supplies or not. And again, if you're so concerned with player having the potential to abuse the game's systems, then you better hope that the deeper and 100% manual economy somehow can't be utilized by the player which gives them an overwhelming advantage against the AI. Similarly, we better hope that they remove the console from the game as well because I can only imagine how typing "debug yesmen" into the console is going to interfere with the devs' vision.

So this is the who crux of the argument between those who want tactical control and those who are ok with not in the game and even happy to see it go. It does not take a tactical genius to out smart the AI in this game. So everyone is avoiding the cost of war and its impact on the economics of the game if you have tactical control. I cannot accept the premise that players are to some degree defeating the AI without them making the same repeated bad decisions.

If by "tactical control" you mean "implementing the strategies one has created" then that would be an absolutely horrible thing to get rid of. That's essentially taking away half the game. I should be able to determine how I want to reach certain goals. Choosing a cheaper production method to keep up with goods production, assigning fleets to blockade or patrol specific regions, and even instructing my armies on which objectives they should prioritize are all important ways I should be able to impact the game and steer my nation towards specific goals. Are you saying everything should be left to the AI?

If by "tactical control" you mean the military theory definition, then once again that's absolutely not what I nor most people are arguing for. I don't know how many times I can keep repeating that and stay sane. Apparently I have to add 3 trillion notes and clarifications every time I say "player control" so that people don't somehow assume I'm talking about Vic2-style unit micro.

And on top of that, it doesn't take a genius to kill the AI's economies or gain a monopoly either. Now, with national markets that might change but the point is that the AI is almost always going to be inferior to the player when it comes to managing their economies as well. It's on the player to choose an appropriate level of challenge based on either game difficulty or challenge runs. You can't expect the AI to excel at everything, because eventually the player will find the optimal way to do things and once they do they're going to win most engagements. And it's not even due to the AI making "bad decisions" as you put it. They might actually be quite good decisions based on the circumstances, but the player either has much more foresight (i.e. will know which provinces will produce oil or rubber and starts sniping colonies early) or has simply made a better decision. And again, there is a difference between the AI playing poorly, and being exploited.

The whole point of this game is laid out in Dev Diary #0. Nothing you state adds to those central pillars of the game. Too put it frankly, you want this game to be something it is not. How does what you want add to those points? You can tell me all you like that you are not exploiting AI, but the second you dont have the ability to do it, it is total repudiation of the mechanic that removes it.

This is just petty shit-flinging and a strawman. My entire argument here has been that removing the ability to exploit the AI with a new mechanic does not necessarily make the new mechanic good. It's a direct counter to the argument "mechanic X is good because it no longer allows the AI to be exploited." And the reason why the counter argument works, is because:
1) game exploits are, by definition, not the intended way to play
2) game exploits are optional and up to the discretion of the player
3) game exploits are not necessary to succeed or do well (by extension of the fact that they are unintended)
4) the argument does not actually address whether the game as intended is good, only an extreme version of it

I'm genuinely not sure why you're trying to die on this hill, but if you genuinely think that the potential for AI to be exploited is mutually exclusive with a mechanic being good or fun, then you probably just shouldn't play singleplayer games. There's so much abuse potential to be found in a huge number of games, that trying to use that as your measurement for determining whether something is good or bad will just remove an insane amount of games. For all the other stuff you said, you can just refer to the rest of the post above.

 

[Sharkseant]

they have not ruled this out.

Oh that is good I thought they basically said you get one front per nation you have no control where the front is per front a general and you can tell them attack defend or whatever but more like setting the mode for the general

 

[BotherMe]

I'm genuinely not sure why you're trying to die on this hill, but if you genuinely think that the potential for AI to be exploited is mutually exclusive with a mechanic being good or fun, then you probably just shouldn't play singleplayer games. There's so much abuse potential to be found in a huge number of games, that trying to use that as your measurement for determining whether something is good or bad will just remove an insane amount of games.

They removed microing precisely because they want to force you to face the consequences of warfare. You have to pay the price for your military choices. If you could just cheese the AI, the impact on your economy, politics, etc. would be so limited you could essentially ignore it. They would have to abandon that trade off just to satisfy your desire to micromanage units on the map. That would also completely destroy multiplayer. People will always choose cheesy maneuvers over roleplaying if they have to to defeat a human player.

 

[Sharkseant]

They removed microing precisely because they want to force you to face the consequences of warfare. You have to pay the price for your military choices. If you could just cheese the AI, the impact on your economy, politics, etc. would be so limited you could essentially ignore it. They would have to abandon that trade off just to satisfy your desire to micromanage units on the map. That would also completely destroy multiplayer. People will always choose cheesy maneuvers over roleplaying if they have to to defeat a human player.

Indent thinks your argument makes much sense:
1. consequences of warfare warfare can have consequences with the player controlling the units arguably even more.
so let’s say ww1 starts in a Victorian era game: so due to the war you would need to restructure your economy for the war effort you now start an extended production of war material and try to research better war tech lore urgently to get an advantage this is problematic for your other industries let’s say we are Germany our luxury I Industrie is heavily reduced as this one is the easiest to convert to more War effort relevant industries as you don’t need it to keep your war going but it makes your people unhappy which might revolt, same goes for many other industries, also now you are lacking important import goods such as iron or food. And also 4million young efficient workers are in the field with more to come so your Industrie is again reduced also war costs so you need war bonds etc so you will have to pay these back at some point and if you loose the war you end like in reality with a depleted nation an entire generation of traumatized you adults hardly able to return to normal lives hundert thousands of wounded a industry not fit for civilian live etc. massive unrest is ensured (in war civil unrest is likely reduced due to various factors such as the Burgfrieden (no political contest during the war) and patriotism) and also many died which now aren’t available for the economy as a workforce. But this has little to do with actual strategy making etc. if you were to make the actual decision you would be more able to feel consequences because if you do poorly like loosing half your male population in 1840 your population growth and industry will be quite weakens but if you do good you can reduce this by making smarter decisions etc and alsonstiff like quantity vs quality or holding a more beneficial position for sacrificing some land so your smaller army can defeat a stronger one
2. you don’t get military decisions with the new system except I take general No.5 because he is loyal and has good traits and I tell him that I want to attack
3. yeah cheesing the so isn’t good or intended but it always is possible and in every instance. The player will be able to cheese tech industry and even in war with the new system as we will learn what the best way is and how to abuse the AI because ai is always kind of dumb. This is why the Ai cheats in so many Paradox games. There is no trade of in so cheasability or the player being op af, because while not cheesing in warfar having thrive the amount of factory’s might help but this entire thing was already said in so many other replies.
3. no, in Multiplayer exploits are possible but only real exploits and less exploiting the so, when fighting other players in MP literally nobody roleplaying except if you explicitly stated it will be a roleplaying game but then it’s less pvp and more like a shared server where you interact with the player the same way as the ai. To roleplay in general is also a choice, and you can’t say that if the war isn’t player controlled this somehow influences how we play in terms of munchkin vs roleplaying (also to be a munchkin isn’t horrible in a paradox game because it is not dnd or something like that it’s a strategy game you want to use the most efficient way to win by thinking etc.)

 

[prismaticmarcus]

I think we can all agree that a coinflip would be quite exploit-proof but not a particularly good way of deciding whether your army runs out of supplies or not.

aren't dice rolls at the bottom of just about every PDX mechanic? or some version thereof?