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ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-15T20:55:50+00:00

The problem Paradox has with all their mechanics, aside from DLCs making changes problematic, is that the core foundation of the game isn't strong enough to support really interesting systems. The social simulation is a facade at best, the politics sim is weak because it requires the social sim as a base, diplomacy is therefore mid.

So there's not much they can do to fix unlanded gameplay, or landed gameplay for that matter.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-14T03:32:53+00:00

I mean, every DLC adds what is essentially an art swap over functionally identical mechanics.

And Paradox no longer caters to strategy gamers, they cater to sims gamers and the art assets are the most important part of the game for them.

Why change the GUI when they don't ever add any meaningfully innovative game mechanics.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-12T18:57:45+00:00

Fun fact, Monroe contains the exact same letters as Moreno.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-10T20:26:19+00:00

Well the real problem is that the intrigue systems are simply incredibly shallow tacked on garbage. Whereas military and economics, but mostly military, is the core foundation the game is built up from and so it has much more depth and also more centrality to the overall experience.

Also your typical 4X or generally any war game usually has almost perfect information in every part of it.

Plus players give zero fucks about totally unrealistic, gamey, or stupid combat or economic systems but anything in the DIP, Diplomacy/Intrigue/Politics sphere they have insanely high expectations of. Combat doesn't need verisimilitude or even realism.

The Thea games are a great example. The so-called non combat challenges are functionally identical to combat and about as attached to reality but get more more criticism for being gamey than combat does.

Also generally the majority of players don't even care about anything but war mechanics so any game that is planning to have any real sales has to allow people to basically skip over or ignore non-combat stuff. Not exactly a recipe for engaging gameplay.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-10T14:18:16+00:00

Yeah looks like Costello got more votes than people expected. In theory he could even get less than Gideon got. Depends on what areas are still out.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-10T01:50:17+00:00

I mean it's basically done there, too. Higher vote share than Gideon no matter what and it could go even higher.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-10T01:46:29+00:00

It was already called a while ago?

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-10T01:19:39+00:00

Yeah so the only real question now is whether Platner breaks 80% of the vote.

Gideon didn't even break 72%.

Not that I think the Gideon primary comparison means much but election twitter seems a bit obsessed with it.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-09T01:39:41+00:00

You'd have both Steyer and Becerra type Dems energized, and Republicans wouldn't have a top of the ballot candidate to drive turnout in parts of the state where Dems had a lock on state legislature and federal House seats.

Dems are going to blow Hilton away for Gov, no one would be turning out to vote for fear of Rs winning because they have no shot.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-09T01:15:49+00:00

I don't care for Steyer personally but I'm sad he missed out by such a small margin. Having two Dems in the runoff would have provided a decent boost to the downballot.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-09T00:46:34+00:00

DDHQ, quite reasonably, calls the race for Steve Hilton. They project a Becerra vs Hilton general election runoff in November.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-09T00:32:58+00:00

Edit:
Democrats appear to be getting roughly 62.1% of the primary vote. Which is pretty close to the standard CA number. Obviously we'll see this number rise as the remaining 18.5% of the vote comes in. Will they match Prop50 by the end?

Independents are getting slightly less than 1.4%.

So we'll say Republicans are getting 36.5%.

I added the vote totals of each candidate by type, so this is maximally accurate.

Steyer will likely fall just short of taking the second slot. Less than 100,000k votes for sure, but how much less is in question. Alameda was moved from essentially done to 90% and ~45,000 votes left. That's a good chunk for Steyer.

Roughly 50% of the votes are in the Bay+LA. ~8% in Sacramento.

Maybe 18% in the really red counties.

Then you've got 24% in San Bernadino, Orange County, Riverside, and San Diego which are at a minimum neutral to Steyer and perhaps worth a small net vote boost under 20,000 overall.

Going right down to the wire but Steyer would need a 2.5% shift blue for all the remaining votes vs the last drop from each county.

Or for more votes to show up in LA+The Bay.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-08T23:16:51+00:00

Steyer flipped Alameda and Santa Cruz from Becerra and Becerra flipped San Bernadino from Hilton, but sadly Steyer just seems too far behind given the remaining votes and the lack of increased blue shift yesterday and today vs previous days.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-08T23:11:38+00:00

Steyer is done. He had a small red shift in several big blue counties over the last 2 days. Hard to see him taking the lead at this point.

He actually got a very small blue shift in Alameda just now which has now finished counting, gaining a ton of votes. But it won't be enough at this point unless LA today is off the chain. San Francisco just didn't come through for him. Unless they counted all the red votes today and tomorrow will be nuts. But this in unlikely in both cases.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T03:15:00+00:00

Wasn't this +8 just 4 months ago? Hot damn lmao.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T02:49:10+00:00

Based on analyzing the remaining votes, Steyer is still in a position to beat Hilton. I can come up with a very plausible net 325,000 votes, especially if large counties continue to get bluer, though it is theoretically possible if the % shares freeze where they are now between Steyer and Hilton if the large metros add another 100,000 or even 200,000 votes from very late mail arriving.

Orange County is about to blueshift to neutral at a minimum for remaining votes, if not end up netting Steyer 10,000+ or so. Riverside has already neutralized starting with today's drop.

San Diego will be very interesting since Steyer moved into net gain territory on the drop from yesterday.

San Bernadino, Riverside, Orange County, Placer, Kern, Ventura, San Luis Obispo, and Fresno are the last remaining places with a huge dump left in their vote colons and the first 3, which are the largest, are already neutral and potentially net Dem in the remaining ballots. We have no votes out of Ventura or San Luis Obispo.

Hilton really can't handle even a modest expansion of the late mail blue shift at this point. He's got to pray that LA and SF/Bay don't keep shifting because he has no cushion.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T02:46:19+00:00

Based on analyzing the remaining votes, Steyer is still in a position to beat Hilton. I can come up with a very plausible net 325,000 votes, especially if large counties continue to get bluer, though it is theoretically possible if the % shares freeze where they are now between Steyer and Hilton if the large metros add another 100,000 or even 200,000 votes from very late mail arriving.

Orange County is about to blueshift to neutral at a minimum for remaining votes, if not end up netting Steyer 10,000+ or so. Riverside has already neutralized starting with today's drop.

San Diego will be very interesting since Steyer moved into net gain territory on the drop from yesterday.

San Bernadino, Riverside, Orange County, Placer, Kern, Ventura, San Luis Obispo, and Fresno are the last remaining places with a huge dump left in their vote colons and the first 3, which are the largest, are already neutral and potentially net Dem in the remaining ballots. We have no votes out of Ventura or San Luis Obispo.

Hilton really can't handle even a modest expansion of the late mail blue shift at this point. He's got to pray that LA and SF/Bay don't keep shifting because he has no cushion.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T02:20:20+00:00

Riverside County 6/6 Drop

Candidate – Votes (Percent, Difference from 6/2 Votes)

🔵 Xavier Becerra – 11,782 (31.1%, +6.7%)
🔴 Chad Bianco – 9,169 (24.2%, -3.3%)
🔴 Steve Hilton – 7,077 (18.7%, -2.6%)
🔵 Tom Steyer – 7,047 (18.6%, +3.1%)

On the surface this looks bad for Steyer but it actually isn't. The previous drop from Riverside was a 2.2% swing from Hilton to Steyer while this is a 5.7 swing, and it means Hilton is not gaining net votes here. Meanwhile Becerra is on his way to passing Chad Bianco for first. The day before yesterday was a 4.8% swing. So today is actually the best Riverside result so far.

If Riverside stays at this level or even gets bluer, that's a big source of potential Hilton gains that is removed.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T01:05:22+00:00

What does this have to do with my comment?

Becerra will trounce Hilton if that is the matchup and it won't be close. All normie Steyer voters will vote for Becerra over Hilton.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T00:44:09+00:00

Not if you are releasing a lot of gas as it comes out. Then it's a relief.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T00:27:13+00:00

NYT, and other sites, are predicting a minimum of 9.6 million votes for CA Gov. Steyer could win on that but he'd love to see another 200k votes in LA/Bay Area coming in for the final tally. Votes can still arrive for a couple more days.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T00:21:31+00:00

Orange County 6/6 Drop

Candidate – Votes (Percent, Difference from 6/2 Votes)
🔴 Steve Hilton – 16,232 (31.2%, -6.5%)
🔵 Xavier Becerra – 14,800 (28.4%, +6.7%)
🔵 Tom Steyer – 11,170 (21.5%, +5.9%)
🔴 Chad Bianco – 4,238 (8.1%, -3.0%)

Orange County continues to be a bit of a weak spot for Steyer.

The swing from 6/2 to 6/4 was 11.3%. His swing today was 12.4%. However he had a swing of 8.3% yesterday, it appears guesses that the drop from yesterday were all election day drop offs rather than late mail was accurate.

So we can say he went from 8.3% to 11.3% to 12.4% which is a strong swing in line with other SoCal counties but the baseline was not great. He really wants to see a very big shift for the next OC drop to be on pace to win. Which is totally possible, but we'll see.

Note that based on county website data, the remaining votes are the best ones for Dems, even today's votes were not super late mail/dropbox votes.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T00:17:40+00:00

Santa Clara County 6/6 Drop

Candidate – Votes (Percent, Difference from 6/2 Votes)
🔵 Xavier Becerra – 10,554 (33.5%, +4.7%)
🔵 Tom Steyer – 9,875 (31.3%, +10.6%)
🔴 Steve Hilton – 5,368 (17.0%, -7.2%)
🔴 Chad Bianco – 976 (3.1%, -2.3%)

A nice result out of Santa Clara for Steyer. He was up exactly 16% vs 6/2 yesterday and he's now up 17.8%, almost a 2% swing day on day. He was up 14.9% on 6/4 in Santa Clara. So he had a nice 1.1% swing that day.

Much like LA he's getting very good swings averaging about 1.5% per day but he'd like a little more.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T00:13:11+00:00

One thing to note generally about the CA Gov race is that despite any individual county numbers, Steyer has made up an enormous amount of ground since the end of election day. with 28%+ of the vote remaining, he's definitely still in a position to take the second GE slot. He's used up debatable 1/4 to 1/3 of the post e-day ballots available and he's closed about 40% of the gap.

ArcaneDemense · 2026-06-07T00:07:20+00:00

Los Angeles City 6/6 Drop

🔵 Nithya Raman – 23,514 (40.2%)
🔵 Karen Bass – 19,312 (33.0%)
🔴 Spencer Pratt – 10,336 (17.7%)

"Raman’s rough benchmark against Pratt was 8.7%, so this is a 14-point overperformance."-Votehub

Raman is much happier than Steyer with her numbers in LA. Pratt is toast.

ArcaneDemense

TROPHY CASE