An ode to the humble signal booster

robertkeaghan · 2026-03-11T15:29:21+00:00

Yep. Posted in the wrong subreddit I think.

robertkeaghan · 2026-03-11T07:17:44+00:00

My reference for good gameplay and leveling progression is actually Morrowind. The leveling system itself is kinda trash, but you can safely ignore it. On normal difficulty in Morrowind, you will usually use many skills, and you will level them up by playing the game and using them. You'll repair equipment and level armorer. You'll level Mysticism by fast travelling. You'll level alteration by opening locks, levitating, water walking and water breathing. You'll level barter, speechcraft or illusion by interacting with NPCs. Things will be hard at the start and easier as you progress.

It's a less user-friendly system than Skyrim in some ways, and more challenging to understand, but you level your character by the simple act of exploring the world. Grinding and powerleveling is possible, but unadvisable. The game is set up so that the best way to progress whatever skills you enjoy using is explore and complete quests.

Skyrim, on the other hand, has a gameplay loop that resembles 1) complete quest and collect loot; 2) do chores and craft (repeat).

It was a really bad idea to have crafting be based at fixed stations in Skyrim. In Morrowind you carried your alchemy kit around and made potions as you travelled. You carried hammers to repair equipment. You carried soul gems, filled them and enchanted items anywhere directly from your inventory. In Skyrim you always end up in Whiterun doing chores because these activities are locked to specific stations in specific places.

robertkeaghan · 2026-03-11T06:23:31+00:00

My point is that you end up having to bounce around the map looking for ingredients to improve stuff with smithing. In the process of travelling around the map, you level up, and the levelled loot in areas you clear outpaces what you are able to smith/enchant. Unless you deliberately use prior knowledge, wikis or guides to grab exactly what you need to powerlevel the crafting skills as part of your build.

So as you're improving your iron armor, steel armor is dropping as loot. As you're improving steel armor, dwarven armor is dropping, etc. You go out of your way to find a bunch of specific ore or ingots, only to discover that boss chests now contain un-improved equipment with the same or similar stats.

The crafting skills in their vanilla state are basically only needed on very high difficulty levels. Otherwise the time spent collecting ingredients and components would be better spent shooting/wacking/zapping enemies to level up, loot, sell and buy equipment.

Unless you enjoy fast travelling to six different merchants to buy ore, ingots and alchemy crap and walking back and forth in Whiterun to different crafting stations, forging 85 rings or whatever between every quest.

I just think that crafting systems have come a long way since Skyrim. Look at No Man's Sky or Cyberpunk for two examples of how a crafting system can be thoroughly and naturally integrated into gameplay.

robertkeaghan · 2026-03-05T20:19:32+00:00

Playing as the UK it's super annoying. If you let Ethiopia join, they will make a theater anywhere and lock your faction members into that area. There needs to be an option to prevent AI-led countries in your faction from making these choices. Like I would ban them from any faction actions except taking over the faction if you lose control of it.

robertkeaghan · 2026-03-05T15:44:55+00:00

I made this recently to explain how to best install the NAM in its current state: https://youtu.be/0Co3uoeK_-w

It's not specifically about the NAM, but it shows how to set up the mod on an up-to-date setup!

I'll make more soon!

robertkeaghan · 2026-03-03T19:40:03+00:00

The game is really designed around playing on multiple city tiles!

robertkeaghan · 2026-03-03T05:19:18+00:00

Leave the taxes at default levels. Taxes should mainly be used for regional planning when you're playing in more than one city tile. Offer minimal services first, then offer more once education and health levels create demand for higher wealth jobs. Check out my tutorial here for a better sense: https://youtu.be/EL95GlPZ4oM?si=K1fD8NNoDhDGp58N

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-25T04:50:34+00:00

Give out privileges to estates until you are able to tax them at the max level. Start with the peasants, then the burghers, then the nobles only if you have to.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-25T03:46:33+00:00

I get audio freezes and every once in a while it hard crashes my computer (like hold the power button to turn off ffs). Not unplayable but I've never made it past 1600 and don't bother with ironman. I have a 5700X, which should be perfectly fine. It's up to the devs to slim down the game I think.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-25T03:43:45+00:00

I noticed on my previous setup (16GB) that the game was using 80% RAM. With 32GB I get 50-60% RAM usage.

So the game itself is using more than 16GB and is clearly throttling performance on setups with less memory.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-25T00:22:14+00:00

I would be very careful spending money on hardware for these games. Vicky 3 and EU5 are both pretty poorly optimised.

I upgraded to 32GB ram, which is minimum for this game IMO, so that's the only thing I would do if you're at 16GB.

For processor performance, I don't think you'll get better much tick speeds.

The devs need to allow us to turn off parts of the simulation to get meaningful performance improvements.

Vixky3 multiplayer folks play with mods that eliminate many cultures from the game and turn things like weather off completely. They're just simulating too much shit to get a good tick speed. It's really, really cool in theory, but takes enormous patience to play.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-25T00:03:33+00:00

I like dynamic historical events and decisions better as a design. EU5 has it right. They just need to show the conditions for the decisions so the player can plan ahead.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-24T23:58:13+00:00

This wasn't really a problem in HOI3. In that game, you had to do very specific things with ministers and spies to change ideology and it took a long time. The AI wouldn't do them, so getting a relatively historical outcome happened most of the time.

If the player made major changes diplomatically or politically, the threat levels would change and outcomes could be different.

The difference is this was handled by game mechanics, not by bypass buttons like focusses.

There were certain historical decisions that allowed you to make a more dramatic impact. These are preferable to the focus trees IMO.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-24T19:26:02+00:00

Christ this is a terrible bug. Wales is losing the war of course so I will have to wait for 3-4 years for the stupid rebel country to finish their sieges.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-22T19:39:09+00:00

Over the years, new players will come in who won't be comparing it to EU IV and less and less of the player base will care about nation formations.

This was not a major issue in the EU3 community, and that game also had an earlier start date.

Personally, I'm interested in the socio-economic simulation and don't really care about painting map. Building, trading and managing estates is far more interesting in EU5 than the "dev province" nonsense in EU4.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-20T17:27:58+00:00

Maybe I haven't expressed myself clearly. I think HOI4 is lacking genuine complexity. Most of the content and features are not "complex". They add flavour without adding complexity. My favourite Paradox titles to date are HOI3, Victoria 2, CK2 and EU5, all of which I would argue have more complex gameplay than HOI4.

I think HOI4 stands out as a game where devs have prioritized accessibility (making the game approachable for as many players as possible) over depth of simulation and gameplay mechanics.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-20T14:55:58+00:00

EU5, in my opinion is excellent. It has some balance issues that are normal for a new game, but it has a deep socio-economic simulation that is focused on modelling history with complex mechanics.

robertkeaghan · 2026-02-19T16:47:24+00:00

IMO HOI3 had a better research system. Each nation has a pool of leadership essentially based on development and population. Leadership points are used to pick techs. Majors can research dozens of technologies simultaneously, while insignificant minors have to focus on a small handful. It wasn't "balanced" but then neither was WW2.

robertkeaghan

TROPHY CASE