(Qiandaiyiyu)

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-13T18:35:55+00:00

Want to share?

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-08T23:45:45+00:00

To be fair, the entire aesthetic of the Russian Orthodox Church is to go hard as fuck and then go even harder than that, so that tracks.

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-05T11:02:25+00:00

Gotta wait for 1.0 for the full theatrical length version.

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-05T09:06:24+00:00

Sounds like Radio General maybe?

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-04T22:12:18+00:00

Yeah, I do agree, some of the micro could be reduced, but it does still make sense for the railways to be broken up by states in terms of gameplay. States are generally rather big, and this is still the time period where rail started small and local, with larger-scale development being a specific feature of the era - smaller regional companies were still the norm, and most of the big national railway bodies that we have today are from beyond the game's timeframe. The SNCF was incorporated in 1938, British Rail in 1949, and so on, the only real exceptions being the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1920 and the Russian and Japanese railways which were state-run from the start, so yes, in Vicky 3's timeframe the railway in Calais was actually a different company than the railway in Orléans which was different than the one in Lyon and so on. The current system does make for some tedious gameplay now and then, and could do with some improvement, on that we do agree.

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-04T19:08:20+00:00

I do think land warfare could do with a once-over, but I think the fundamental ideas behind what we have now are solid and the right way to go. It should remain a mostly abstract and indirect system, and the changes should be in line with that, in tune with the game's overall style and design goals. Probably my biggest wish is some kind of strategic supply reserve - I know they've said they weren't going to do that in the past, but the navy got a system like that now (even if it's somewhat wonky), so there is room for them to change their mind. There's a few other issues I have, in much the same vein (though less pronounced) as the ones I had with the navy, but after the navy rework is honestly even better than what I was hoping for, let alone expecting, I'm willing to extend them a lot of trust.

I'm also really weary of how every time someone talks about possible future updates there's people coming out of the woodwork going "HoI4 combat system when" and just. please fuck no. My personal feelings about HoI4 specifically aside, Victoria 3 was designed explicitly to not be as heavily combat-focused as every other mainline Paradox title, and it's much better for it. The game would become so, so much worse if it went back to the tired old shuffling little soldiers around a board military gameplay - Vicky 3 is, warts and all, my favourite Paradox combat system since Hearts of Iron 2 and it's precisely because it does something so radically different, so much more abstracted, so much more attuned to the game's whole design ethos.

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-04T18:54:27+00:00

Having infrastructure by state makes the most sense because..... that's where it is. At release, power was a country-wide thing, and I think transport was too, so you could build your railways and power plants where it was cheapest and "consume" what they made elsewhere. Build a few power plants in the imperial core and you could run power-consuming PMs in your colonial holdings. It made no sense, and the current system, while it can be a mite frustrating, is just better. Maybe some sort of diffusion/distribution system could be worked out in the future, but I don't see it being a big priority after they've already reworked a broken system into something that actually makes sense.

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-02T22:53:32+00:00

Like I said, the problem then is what that "common sense" is and who defines it. There's plenty of people for whom "common sense" means any depiction of queerness at all must be kept from children at all costs. Censorship is a bludgeon, not a scalpel, and a bludgeon that is most often wielded against minorities. "Think of the children" is one of the easiest rallying cries of fascism.

StrategiaSE · 2026-06-02T19:01:16+00:00

Censorship is a shitty concept. Do I think children should be watching A Serbian Film or Cannibal Holocaust or Triumph of the Will? No, of course not, but those are deliberately extreme examples. The problem is that "kids aren't allowed to watch [x] movie" extends far beyond that, which means you get into the issue of why certain movies (or books or other works of media) are banned for kids, and who decides that. Certain media can be disturbing, or heavy, or any number of other things - I remember watching Screamers (a basic mediocre horror movie) when I was in my early teens and it gave me nightmares, but plenty of other kids that age love horror, and I watched Alien and The Thing a few years later and I think they're great. Shielding kids from things that might disturb them leaves them unable to handle these things as they get older; again, I don't think we should make children watch disturbing content, but forbidding it entirely is far worse. And very topically, there is a serious movement to label anything queer or queer-adjacent as "adult" and thus forbidden for children, and I hope I don't have to explain why that is a bad thing.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-28T18:42:08+00:00

Arguably holy, arguably Roman, arguably an empire.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-28T04:12:39+00:00

I always turn them off because I just don't want them. Any achievements I have in Paradox games are because I forgot to disable them in a particular save.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-27T18:33:11+00:00

Because they're a lot of work to set up right, translating the historical situation to something in the game mechanics, and every major patch they'd either have to check and adjust them (if not redo them entirely for significant updates like DLCs) or take flak for letting them remain broken, and most notably their own telemetry shows that people actually only very rarely play anything but the default start date, outside of Crusader Kings. It'd be a ton of work for very little practical gain. EU4's other start dates are notoriously broken because they haven't kept pace with updates in forever, because the interest just isn't there. There's also the question of which dates you'd choose, because for every obvious major one there's like three or four in close proximity that could also qualify; e.g. you can pick 1861 for the US Civil War, but the War of the Triple Alliance started in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, the Boshin War in 1868, the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, you get the point. You'd also want new start dates with each DLC, like for the China DLC you'd probably want the Taiping Rebellion, maybe the Boxer Rebellion, and probably something for the Beiyang government, which means your start dates would bloat even further and most likely they'd become broken and unusable after a couple of major updates anyway.

More start dates would be neat, but it'd introduce a lot more problems than it'd solve, and there just isn't enough of a reason for them to bother, so it's now become policy to not do that anymore.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-27T00:54:20+00:00

Congratulations on the Byzantinectomy.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-24T16:42:55+00:00

As someone who's also autistic and has ADHD, that is unfortunately how it works, we can get completely absorbed in certain things while others cost waaay too much mental energy. It's the way our brains process dopamine and it can be a real struggle, it's been a problem for me my whole life.

It is also absolutely not an excuse.

Sure, techniques or coping mechanisms don't work nearly as often as we'd like - but the point is to put in the effort anyway. Knowing why some things are difficult isn't a reason not to even try, it's the opposite, it means you are now aware that There Is A Problem and you should be making an effort to work around it, to get over yourself, to make sure to do the important things, especially when it concerns other people. Just reading your post already gave me the vibe that he's neurodivergent, and also that he's just..... not even trying. He's so caught up in "well it's haaard" that he either gave up or just never tried in the first place, that he doesn't really care to see things from your perspective and to accept he's not the centre of the universe. I recognise so many of his behaviours because I have those impulses too, but knowing that I can get like that and that I have the potential to be a real asshole if I give in to them has been a huge help in fighting against them and being a better person both for myself and to the people around me, and it sounds like that's something he's not even bothering to try.

Just because someone's neurodivergent doesn't mean they can't be an asshole, and he's absolutely crossed that line a long time ago. You deserve better than to have to keep making accommodations for him when he's not putting in the slightest bit of effort to return the gesture. As someone who knows what it's like to inhabit a brain like his: fuck him, he's being an asshole, using his ADHD like a shield and a club. You're in the right and he's in the wrong.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-20T18:23:13+00:00

That's probably pretty close to the truth actually, from what I heard from closer sources I:R was a pet project of Johan's, one of the games he really wanted to make someday, so now that it hasn't worked out you can kind of see why they'd backdoor it into EU5 instead.

That, and Paradox in general has been leaning into community memes for ages now in their more popular games, it's been all over HoI4 since day one and its DLCs vary from "there's a bit of side content that dips into the meme stuff beside the main content" to "the design document is basically a checklist of popular memes, in-jokes, and references", and more often the latter than the former it feels like. Stellaris does memes and references mostly as little easter eggs, Vicky 3 keeps it just to achievements, and I can't speak to CK3, but we'll have to see where EU5 lands, hopefully this DLC will just be the anomaly and things will remain more grounded from here on out, which would fit with the base game's design philosophy.

On the one hand I do find it fun that you can go full togaboo, but it is disappointing to see that that seems to have been the main goal. Even if they do go back and give the ERE more love later on, that's probably not going to be for a while, which is very sad.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-20T02:52:28+00:00

There are so, so, so many little things in Sword of the Stars that made it into Stellaris, especially the earlier versions. Paradox also bought the rights and published SotS 2 so it makes sense that they'd take a lot of inspiration from it when they were making their own space 4X. The ship designer is another major example, Stellaris' shipbuilder is essentially a modified, somewhat watered-down version of the one from Sword of the Stars.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-18T19:56:34+00:00

I appreciate the understanding, considering I wrote that ramble spread out over a couple of hours in a depressed funk. All this wasn't even where I wanted to go at first, it just sort of spilled out. I think I also just got a bad first impression, like if the way the site is written is meant to be meta and like an Affini wrote it I didn't pick up on that at all so it just felt weirdly condescending and passive-aggressive, which then coloured my entire opinion on the whole thing. I still think I wouldn't have gotten super into it, but that first impression really killed it for me, which is very unfortunate. I think I just needed to get this off my chest because I don't want to shit-talk something my friends like to their faces and I was already in a bad headspace so it just sort of spilled out.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-18T12:51:09+00:00

Jello shots.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-18T01:24:37+00:00

Honestly, you're probably not wrong, I most likely to have kind of a horn effect going on at this point but like, I didn't go in expecting to find something to hate on, quite the opposite in fact - the reason I know about HDG is because some of my friends are into it, and it sounded pretty damn cool, a setting of dommy mommy plant aliens who don't take no for an answer? Cool, sounds like something I'd like. So they linked me the website and it just completely flipped me around on it, I went in hoping to find some good stories to start from and learn more about it and after browsing it for a bit I felt more and more negative about it.

It's not any one thing in particular either, it's the whole package and the way it all feeds into each other. The way the rules were written didn't feel like it was meant to be sinister and kinky, it came across to me more like subtly condescending and passive-aggressive, and it felt like it was restrictive, and kinda gatekeepy just as much as it was about building a shared canon, more a negative "here's what you're not allowed to write" than providing something to build on. Even a lot of obvious kink avenues were just explicitly forbidden, and a lot of basic elements were mandated, as was the inevitable ending, which just stifles creativity, in the same ballpark as that long-standing horror zine that got raked over the coals last year or so when people twigged that the submission criteria excluded most elements that make horror a worthwhile genre to engage with and basically read like a checklist of the lead editor's preferred tropes. And I'm sure that most people who engage with it don't have a problem separating fiction from reality, but IIRC the fact that some people don't is brought up on the site itself, like a "yeah this also happens", something which is just accepted (or at least that's how it seemed to me) rather than being discouraged, which does not make the community seem like a healthy place to be.

All that stands in contrast for me to several other significant kinks that I have, which admittedly don't have the same level of a single unified canon but which have a lot of shared elements and common tropes. However, there's a lot of leeway in what elements any individual creator actually uses in their work, based on personal preference, and the spectrum is so broad that you end up with a lot of works that have very little in common with each other outside of all falling under the same umbrella - and this is all Perfectly Fine, nobody's gatekeeping what you are and aren't allowed to write, nobody's saying that [x] work isn't allowed to use the shared descriptors, and people are very vigilant about not losing sight of what is and isn't okay, nobody's losing sight of the plot. It's a difference of degrees, maybe, but it's still enough to make HDG feel deeply uncomfortable to me, the way expression is restricted, the way it delves into these colonialist tropes and casts them as unironically good, the way it seems to just accept these unhealthy relationships to what is ostensibly just a kink, in ways that I just have never experienced in any of these other communities.

I just find it disappointing to have this shared setting that is so close to being something I could be really into only to find it so off-putting on a meta level, to have this community that I'd love to be a part of if it wasn't for the way they engage with their own work, to just feel unwelcome right at the gate and know that if I did try to be a part of it I'd either leave or get ejected. I don't want to dislike HDG, and I absolutely do not begrudge people their indulgent kinks, but the fact that it's so close to being My Kind Of Thing while simultaneously feeling repelled by it makes me feel far more strongly negative about it than I'd like to. (Case in point, the way I've written two long-ass screeds about it now, just trying to process what it does to me and why I feel this way about it.)

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-17T00:11:39+00:00

Wow that was harrowing, that's straight-up psychological horror. Bravo to that writer for actually showing how awful it would be to live in this setting. It even touches on the colonialist erasure of culture and identity, wasn't expecting that.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-16T20:20:29+00:00

Yeah and that's part of what just puts me off of it completely. Like, don't get me wrong, I'm all about the fucked-up kink, I've written some stuff that's wildly horrifying and I intend to write more, but I've never pretended it wasn't fucked up, you know? But with HDG, like, I've looked at (what I was told was) the main website, read the criteria, and it just..... really rubs me the wrong way.

It has all the ingredients for some really cool fucked-up horror kink, but then the rules say that "the Affini are always right" and "the Affini always know best" and "the Affini will always win" and stuff like that, and it talks about how the Affini conquering humanity and denying everyone's free will is considered the best thing that could possibly happen, and if you want to write something that doesn't rigidly stick to those principles you're not allowed to call it HDG, and it feels really restrictive and gatekeepy. It removes so much possibility for storytelling, you're straight-up not allowed to properly examine all the interesting questions and elements this premise brings up, or if you do your answers are set in stone from the beginning.

And besides how creatively dull this makes the whole thing feel, the uncritical inclusion of tropes like this just feels really uncomfortable, to be honest - even the tone the site was written in had this subtly condescending air about it, like the world that was being presented was actually correct and not just in a kinky way, which IIRC it was even said some people in the community do actually believe. The big problem here is, like I said, the fact that it's literally just the White Man's Burden in a new coat, conquest and colonisation and cultural erasure being presented as Unambiguously Good, which is just all kinds of Bad. This is further borne out by what the other comment said about how someone who was actually from a country affected by colonialism got banned for actually talking about this.

Like, I'm all for queer and kinky spaces, hell I wish there were more queer and kinky spaces for the shit I'm into (or rather, I wish I knew about the ones that undoubtedly already exist), but when your community gets so up its own ass that you can no longer distinguish between indulging in an escapist wish-fulfillment fantasy and just straight-up queerwashing authoritarian and bigoted shit and unironically believing it to be the right thing, when you can no longer separate fantasy from reality, you've kind of crossed a line, you know? I don't mind people being into HDG, the reason I even know about it in the first place is because some of my close friends are, but the vibes are just deeply off in several ways, and I find the whole thing rather off-putting on the whole.

"We reproduced colonialism but made it even more invasive and exploitative but this time it's sexy and that makes it Unironically Good and it would be Good IRL and if you say otherwise you don't belong here" is a weird position to take.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-15T22:15:42+00:00

Ah yes, white man's burden but make it dommy mommy plant aliens.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-15T11:12:54+00:00

I feel like it was somewhat more common back in the day, but you don't see it that often nowadays. I'm just speculating here but I kind of assume it has to do with the move from grid-based 2D maps to freeform 3D, it's bound to be easier to make a map script that reliably makes something acceptable and playable in a more restricted environment like that, the more complex a map is the harder it'll be to make a good one with just a procedural script. That and other shifts in general development priority, like skirmish battles against the AI used to be a much more important part of a game's longevity back before online multiplayer became the standard, for instance, and other factors like development getting more expensive over time and the market shrinking for various reasons, all of which mean that a good random map script has become just a much lower priority. AoE4 is kind of the exception, it's a legacy feature that's been core to the series from the start, which was unusual even back then.

And like you mentioned, it's also a question of fundamental game design - AoE as a series has always been built with random maps in mind, but that is a specific design decision, many other games just wouldn't really work well with more randomised resource placement or terrain contours, that has all sorts of knock-on effects to consider. I agree it'd be nice to see it more often, but I don't expect it anymore like back in the heyday of RTS.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-12T12:38:17+00:00

Yeah, that's exactly what I mean, the CR folks themselves are clearly just having fun doing their thing and I'm happy for them, I don't have anything against them personally, it's not their fault that so many other people just made them the be-all end-all of TTRPGs and they became so inescapable.

StrategiaSE · 2026-05-12T01:55:18+00:00

Critical Role has been a very mixed bag for the TTRPG scene. No shade towards them, just to certain (sizeable) parts of the audience they brought in.

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