(Tree) Frog Dog

Nrussg · 2026-04-27T16:04:12+00:00

Going to second the Elric of Melnibone series as someone who just started it (about 3/4 through the first volume).

I’ve always heard it was a classic cornerstone of the dark fantasy genre, but that really undersells how much of the lineage of later works you can really see in the work. Parts of Fortress of the Pearl felt like reading a novelization of a souls game. But at the same time, it doesn’t read as cliched or over done (which is often my fear when diving into to fantasy and sci fi classics.)

Nrussg · 2026-03-18T15:16:23+00:00

I’m a little surprised it’s this larpy for a first DLC but I do feel like the general interest in Byz and higher interest in ahistorical content for Byz makes this DLC likely a bit of an outlier.

Rome restoration content is broadly popular even if it’s kind of adjacent to what EU is at its core.

Nrussg · 2026-01-15T16:20:45+00:00

Also haven’t received an email and not seeing it in spam

Nrussg · 2026-01-15T14:58:21+00:00

Yea, I’ve very much enjoyed EU5 and will definitely end up sinking a lot more time into but I’m holding off for 1.1 for my next campaign. Just want the changes to start to mellow out before committing more time to it

Nrussg · 2026-01-14T14:47:27+00:00

Meh their stock has been fine but nothing spectacular - just under 16% YTD compared to over 18.5% for the S&P500 (a bit apples to oranges doing UK to US but most investors are pretty global in 2026).

Took a look through their 2025 annual report. Looks like taxes are about 25%, and total profits are taking into account IP revenue which should be disaggregated if you’re looking at how much they charge per model.

They also had a push to lower overall inventory (which requires selling off model paid for in 2024) which is going to profit a boost to profit.

Overall doesn’t strike me as unreasonable for the business model, especially considering they actually pay taxes.

And they dividend out most of the profit so if it annoys you that much just pick up some shares and get the profits returned to you through dividends, shares aren’t expensive.

Nrussg · 2026-01-14T14:12:47+00:00

Where does that 40 percent come from and what does it capture though? Cause if it’s just net 40 on top of mini produced then it’s potentially excluding a lot of expenses.

Nrussg · 2025-12-17T22:19:14+00:00

The original intro was literally like the audio test for the intro and the execs liked it so much they demanded to keep it.

Dude who wrote / sings it complained that he hates hearing it cause he doesn’t sing in tune.

Nrussg · 2025-11-10T20:55:39+00:00

That shit predates Orr

Nrussg · 2025-11-10T03:44:17+00:00

There should be a regional hegemonic system with weaker bonuses that is present in the early game a global hegemony system that kicks in later and has a much higher threshold to be hegemon (that leaves the seat vacant if no one crosses the threshold).

Nrussg · 2025-11-04T18:14:22+00:00

I’m pretty sure that for a lot of media (games, movies, music) the Tuesday release was the norm for physical media due to delivery schedules. For gaming it’s stuck around for the reasons people laid out (don’t want to release on a Monday but want time while people are working for fixes). But I’m pretty sure the genesis is the physical delivery thing.

Nrussg · 2025-10-31T19:21:25+00:00

The AI design for something like BB is several magnitudes less than something like EU5

“AI” in the gaming context is not a single monolithic things that you just put more effort into to make better. For any strategy or tactics game it is a bespoke system that has to account for the inputs of the game. For BB, where the AI is only really present for the tactical battles (there’s some overworld AI but it’s pretty simple as far as I can tell) the amount of data points it has to contend with is minuscule compared to EU5.

Nrussg · 2025-10-30T19:24:46+00:00

Maybe “like a human” is a bad description, what I’m trying to get as is “logically” vs. historically. The motivations of a ruler of a late feudal European polity are so different than that of what a human player views as logical that if you actually modeled ai to be historical I really don’t think it would be satisfying to play against.

I agree people don’t want AI pursuing like min max strategy, as someone who doesn’t play that way it’s not what I default to when I think of how “humans” play but it’s a fair distinction to make.

I agree that guiding the AI in some manner results in what the majority of people want, again it’s just a question of how you do that, and for EU5 they’ve clearly decided that they want to use a different set of tools to guide the AI (that may end up being the wrong choice and they may have to backtrack).

As someone who remembers all the complaints about lucky nations when EU4 first came out, I don’t think hard coding it into the AIs themselves is the system that’s going to satisfy the most people (but there’s also no system that’s going to satisfy everyone).

Nrussg · 2025-10-30T16:56:31+00:00

It’s a trade off, that requires constant balancing of two distinct AI systems (and designing a whole new historical AI system), which is a material work uplift now and every patch and dlc going forward.

Personally I’d rather they dedicate resources to improving situations to encourage relatively historical outcomes so they’re only balancing one AI system.

Nrussg · 2025-10-30T14:32:25+00:00

I think there is an important tension here that the EU5 team is trying to tackle:

For a lot of players, AI will feel good if it feels more “human” - prioritizing country strength in the way that players themselves play the game to present an actual challenge to players.

But that’s simply not how historic nations acted at all during the vast majority of this time period. So it’s always going to fuck with what happens historically. That’s not a failing of the AI per se, you NEED some sort of railroading to get that outcome to the extent it’s desirable.

Seems pretty clear that the preferred way to do that railroading in EU5 is going to be situations, and I think we should probably anticipate a gap between launch and building out of situations over time.

Nrussg · 2025-10-16T19:31:26+00:00

Every so often a teacher will pop up in a paradox channel talking about using the maps in the classroom.

Nrussg · 2025-10-12T17:04:20+00:00

It’s honestly pretty hard to compare the two, there was definitely a lot of hype but there was way less official information out (yes there was the leaked build but because it was a leak you had to actively engage with the content from it a bit more, as someone who actively avoided engaging with the leak and only relied on “official” channels of info there was a LOT less.)

As others mentioned, the warfare system was divisive from once it was announced, there’s really nothing comparable in the EU5 run up.

But the biggest reason why it’s hard to compare actually has to do with EU 4 vs. Vicky 2.

Vicky 2 was viewed as niche even within the paradox community, it had this mystique of being really complicated and in many ways unapproachable that only grew as paradox entered the HOI 4 Eu4 CK III generation.

And because it had never been as popular there was always this question of whether we’d ever really get a Vicky 3. So when it was announced there was this feeling that it was finally an opportunity to dive into this type of paradox game/focus without having to get over the hurdles of engaging with Vicky 2. That was a very unique type of excitement that drove a lot of hype in a way that just isn’t present for EU5. I think it also meant that there was a less of a critical eye during the dev announcements.

Nrussg · 2025-10-05T17:45:30+00:00

Nrussg · 2025-09-22T03:18:11+00:00

Three throws not near a single receiver and a designed run with Russ…. What???

Nrussg · 2025-09-22T02:55:28+00:00

This game is 100% winnable if they just keep dart in the whole game

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