[HN Gopher] Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part III: Cons...
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Teaching Paradox, Crusader Kings III, Part III: Constructivisting a
Kingdom
Author : Tomte
Score : 47 points
Date : 2022-10-07 16:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (acoup.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (acoup.blog)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I like ACOUP blog for its incessant effort to clarify things and
| dispel myths.
|
| People tend to have skewed perceptions of the Medieval era. Prior
| to the development of the cannon (which enabled easier conquest
| of castles), absolutism wasn't really a thing. The king was the
| ruler, yes, but he wasn't able to rule against the wishes of the
| nobility or the high clergy; the risk of being deposed or killed
| in a rebellion was just too big. At the very least, his vassals
| could just abandon him and withdraw into their own castles, and
| there wasn't any easy way to force them out.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| > What is fascinating about CKIII is that one could easily argue
| that legitimacy is the central theme of the game, that most of
| the player's efforts within a realm are focused on building their
| own legitimacy or undermining the legitimacy of others.
|
| In this respect I would argue CKIII is the most realistic of
| political simulations and appears to capture modern day politics
| exquisitely.
| capableweb wrote:
| Skipping through this blogpost and reading a little about it,
| Crusader Kings III seems to more or less identical to Europa
| Universalis IV. What is the difference between these two games?
| Seems it's the same publisher and almost like it's the very same
| engine, just somewhat different... Anyone with a grasp of both of
| them care to compare them?
| diem_perdidi wrote:
| I'd recommend starting with the first blogpost of this series
| (https://acoup.blog/2022/09/16/collections-teaching-
| paradox-c...) - it's a good read! It delves into the
| differences with other Paradox games - the second paragraph is
| actually a short answer to your question: This
| first part is going to focus on the way that Crusader Kings
| understands rule and rulers. This in particular is a
| fascinating place to start because unlike all of the other
| Paradox grand strategy titles, Crusader Kings III doesn't
| actually feature any states in the narrow sense of the word;
| none of these rulers have a monopoly on the legitimate use of
| force. This is an enormous difference between CK3 and its
| sibling games and well worth diving into.
| ecshafer wrote:
| As a big Paradox GSG fan, I can safely say that despite visual
| similarities between Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa
| Universalis, Imperator and Victoria, the games are entirely
| different.
|
| Crusader Kings deals a lot with individual characters, their
| relationship, and has a lot more roleplaying in it. You can
| have a character that starts as a count in say Germany, and
| because of inheritance and marriage you set up your son to
| inherit Poland so when you die you are now playing the king of
| poland and your brother is ruling that county in Germany. The
| combat, trade, province development, etc is much lighter.
|
| Europa Universalis is much more focused no war and map
| painting, its basically a complicated game of Risk. There is
| more focused on trade routes, and developing your nations
| provinces. But you just play a country, you can change
| dynasties or change to a republic. It doesn't really matter.
| You might change the country you are playing, say if you start
| as the Duchy of Milan, and you conquer Italy and crown yourself
| the Kingdom of Italy. But there's always a direct line.
|
| Imperator is a Roman era game that is a mix of these two ideas,
| more character interactions but more focused on the country.
|
| Victoria is an 1800s victorian era game that is really focused
| a lot more on technologies, ideology, and economics. You play a
| country and Its about industrialization and colonization and
| trade. The war is usually a bit more simplified, but the
| economy is a lot more in depth with resources being consumed to
| create new resources for production.
|
| Hearts of Iron you also play a country but in WWII. But its
| also relatively simplified economy and ruling of a country.
| Instead you focus on conquering and has the most in depth war
| mechanics where you are really managing a lot of minutae of
| battle lines.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| In short, in EU4 you play as a country, and in CK3 you play as
| an individual of a dynasty (i.e. everything is much more
| "personal" in CK3). But understanding the gameplay mechanics of
| one Paradox game is definitely useful to also understand the
| others (my "journey" so far was CK3 => EU4 => HOI4). Still,
| those three games provide a very different 'gameplay
| experience'.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| What I'd like to know is if CK3 really is getting over CK2,
| which has had so many years of expansion content that I'm not
| sure how the newer title could promise other than a better
| interface, more graphics, and wacky heresies.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Paradox games have a bad habit of being overwhelmed by the
| cruft of their expansions, and CK2 was no exception. The game
| is phenomenal, but there are so many different unrelated
| systems (and systems in the vanilla game to support the DLC)
| that it can be incomprehensible.
|
| CK3 so far has taken the best insights of those expansions
| (dynasty/bloodline maintenance, personal armies, skill
| specialization) and integrated them into the main game. The
| DLC has been a coin toss whether it is so well-tied-in (I
| think the culture-molding mechanic is less awkward than the
| throne room and artifacts or the iberian politics that
| somehow everyone on earth is privy to).
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| The Crusader Kings series focuses primarily on individuals,
| their traits, their dynasty, managing your court and vassals,
| rather than focusing on nations. This means that the game is
| less of a grand strategy title, and more of a role-playing
| game. At it's core, you scheme, you wage war and you play the
| diplomacy game by marrying and allying.
|
| I just had a playthrough in CK2 AGOT (A Song of Ice and Fire
| mod), where I role-played as a lunatic obsessed with religion,
| burning people, sleeping with other people's wives and having
| incest relations to expand my bloodline while keeping it pure.
| Vanilla CK2 (and CK3) are all about this moment to moment
| character driven gameplay.
|
| EU doesn't really focus on the individuals as much, and it's
| more of a traditional RTS game if you will, with resource
| managing as its core, rather than character roleplay.
|
| EDIT: Should probably mention that the time period is also very
| different, but mechanically, they're different games. Same with
| Hearts of Iron or Victoria. They all look somewhat similar, but
| they all have their own quirks that set them apart from each
| other in terms of gameplay.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| It's also worth noting that these differences are intentional
| based on the various ideas of how states were organized at
| different points in time
|
| CK2 - the Middle Age/feudal period
|
| EU4 - the Renaissance to Napoleonic Wars, where states start
| centralizing and developing a true identify of their own, so
| more state based
|
| Vic3 - the Victorian era of industrialization and massive
| societal change within countries
|
| Hoi4 - total war of the WWII era
| DaedPsyker wrote:
| In short, outside of the time period, CK3 is focused on
| characters, rulers of kingdoms, counts etc. Whereas EU4 has
| that aspect very much abstracted away (you embody the state not
| a person) It makes CK3 a mix of RPG and strategy.
| theresistor wrote:
| In EU4 you control a country. In CK3 you control a dynasty, one
| ruler at a time.
|
| EU4 plays like a complex but fairly "normal" strategy game in a
| pseudo historical setting. CK3 is more focused on managing your
| complex web of feudal relationships. Almost dating-sim.
|
| My best game of CK, I started as a minor a Norwegian noble and
| slowly worked my way up to becoming king of Norway, also owning
| part of Denmark. But I pissed off too many other nobles along
| the way, and they schemed with my brother to depose me in favor
| of him. I then went on a 20 year revenge spree to assassinate
| all of his heirs and inherit the kingdom back from him!
|
| I recall the trailer for one of the CK2 expansions had a bullet
| point feature that could really only happen in CK: "SEDUCE YOUR
| RELATIVES!"
| mcv wrote:
| I believe the popular summary is that EU4 is about genocide,
| whereas CK2 (and presumably CK3) is about fratricide.
| Completely different games.
| di4na wrote:
| The first post in the series does that exact comparison in
| details...
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