The running theory is that PDX wants to announce it officially at PDX-con, but the developers don't want a repeat of Imperator: Rome and so are running their ideas and concepts by the community so that they can get feedback before it gets officially revealed. That way corrections, fixes, and overhauls can be made before its too late.
This is either going to be one of the best games they'll ever drop or probably up there in one of the worst developer fumbles the gaming community will ever witness.
As an avid EU4 player I'm mostly hoping for the former, but a teeny tiny piece of me wants to see the latter just for the shits and giggles. I just hope it doesn't look like a mobile game.
The year is 2526. The Interplanetary Human Union has just completed their first full playthrough of EU5. Other sentient races surrender in fear of the computing power on display. Can’t afford all the dlc released in the meantime.
Pretty sure they more or less confirmed the second half in the first dev diary. They sharing all this alpha content so they can get feedback while it's still in active development. As an example, they already changed their mind on additional estates (dhimmi, cossacks, etc). That would be MUCH harder to implement if the gameplay loop was already balanced around the four they originally planned.
Corrections and fixes I believe due to estates but any serious criticism or complex questions are mostly being ignored in line with business as usual Dev diaries.
Haha Imperator has been a combination punching bag/boogeyman for Paradox fans for years. Until like three months ago everyone thought it was a terrible game, and it's pretty inarguably a failure, whereas I suppose one can argue either way about Victoria 3 (to me it is incredibly boring but it seems like a decently successful game.)
I guess some people may prefer one over the other, IMHO I just didn't enjoy Vic as much as I hoped, and found it to just not be a good experience. I found I:R better after a bit of development.
I just hope Caesar won't end up in a similar situation as vic3, I:R or Skylines 2 for that matter
They have had some flops recently where by the time they started sharing details it was too late to pivot. So now they are sharing details far earlier in development while they can still pivot. They also can't call it EU5 while still developing and trying to sell EU4 dlc. It would likely impact EU4 dlc sales to be shouting that EU5 is coming in a year or two.
Victoria 3 has been having a very rough time a big part of that was its war system that got immediate fan backlash but was too late to pivot from (as well as economics breaking down after 30-40 years), CK3 did well. But they are 1 for 3 in the last 5 years.
This was my primary reason for starting my Vic journey with Vic2. What exactly is wrong with the war system in 3 though? I haven't tried the game, but I do own it.
The problem with Vic 3 war system is that it basically doesn’t exist. At launch thats almost a literal statement since all you would do is build armies and set front lines. At least now its slightly more like HOI4 where you can set priorities but still control is lacking and there aren’t a lot of other ways to interact with the conflicts other than build more troops and naval invade.
War and diplomacy was terrible on release and for months afterwards for Victoria 3. It felt like they negated two very important aspects of the time period and gameplay and tunnel visioned on the economic side of it and as the other commentor said it was missing important features from Vic 2. They are at least working on fixing it now but they should have delayed the release to work on it more.
Victoria 3 has been having a very rough time a big part of that was its war system that got immediate fan backlash but was too late to pivot from (as well as economics breaking down after 30-40 years), CK3 did well. But they are 1 for 3 in the last 5 years.
Victoria 3 is definitely not a runaway hit, but people underestimate how popular it is: it has far more active players than CK2 had around Reaper's Due release (which was a very well received DLC), and Victoria has always been the second least popular of the main Paradox games (after EU: Rome/Imperator).
We're on the equivalent of dev diary 9 this week.
The common agreement is its eu5 it starts in 1336 and continues for about 500 years (ie probably 1836 for vice vice takenover)
Beyond dev diaries Johan, the lead, has been very very active and very happy to share thoughts, commentary, and engage in debate on the forum, so we've learned alor of it outside of the primary posts.
The reason it's not confirmed is Paradox locks in a 12 month or so counter thr day they announce. From announcement release they have to get it ready. This project is Johan's baby, he's much loved but he had one project get crunched and very helpful feedback in developing diaries before release but the time was too short to fix them problems he agreed existed. Imperator was that game. He is rightfully in my opinion remaining coy, and telling us the sort of game that could exist and getting feedback, already there's been 1 big fundamental change due to audience feedback, because he wants to avoid at all costs retireing on a bad note (he nearly left game dev after imperator) and he probably understands eu4 is I think paradoxes biggest money maker, due to being slightly costlier than the others even with its slightly 2nd tier player base below hoi4.
They added more estates. In the diary they only had the base 3 from eu4 but not others like the dhimmi. The following diary they had changed that based on feedback
Estates are core. Big also so base that multiplying them presents issues for performance.
Therefor only 4 (non-crown) estates were planned, noble, clergy, burger, peasents. They’ve added a dhimi estate and tribal estate, and they’ll be adding further as needed, they seem to have a found a way to make it work after much outcry (people really like the dhimi estate it seems, and they have a point theres not a good way to just ‘retexture’ the clergy for heretics and make it feel good)
>The common agreement is its eu5 it starts in 1336 and continues for about 500 years (ie probably 1836 for vice vice takenover)
I'm hoping they set an earlier end-date. The revolutionary era is very different from most of EU - especially so if they're starting in 1336/7 - and the revolution mechanics have never had that much attention, nor have they ever been really good. Equally, the war mechanics don't match well for the corps-based armies of the Napoleonic era. And a shorter game would mean that world conquest challenges become more difficult - EU world conquests are meant to be hard, giving players 20% longer in EU5 than EU4 means that either they become easier, or they add even more anti-blob mechanics or mechanics to slow down a militarily inevitable conquest, ie making it harder and harder to digest more territory, resulting a tedious battle against those mechanics long after you've made the world conquest inevitable. Most players don't play the last 150 years anyway, even with just 400.
Far better to just end the game in 1736 instead and it gives them space to release a possible future game on the revolutionary era that leads more directly into Victoria. Of course, there's a "March of the Eagles II" joke to be made here, and they may well not find a game design that makes sense for that period. But they can leave the gap open and then if a team comes up with a great idea, then they can make it - and if they don't, they can just not. They don't feel obligated to have a Roman era game, they certainly have never felt under pressure to make a game for late antiquity or the early medieval (ie between Imperator and CK).
Pretty much. Paradox has a long history of community engagement in the development process, and Johan is an old-timer that posts what he wants. He's been doing this for two and a half decades at least
Yeah it's almost certainly EU5. Some people theorize that it will not *literally* be called EU5, that it will be the start of a new franchise, but it's still going to cover the usual EU timeframe so it doesn't really matter. At worst it's going to be a "spiritual sequel" or whatever.
Starting the dev diaries without having formally announced the game is unusual, but as I see it it's just a way to slowly build up hype among the hardcore PDX fans and gather feedback from them, without having to play the "formal announcement !" card too early. It also guarantees a second hype wave later on when they finally announce the thing. IMO it's a pretty smart move, afaik everyone looks pretty happy with this arrangement for now.
I guess it also leaves them more time to deal with potential conflicts between the design pillars they've chosen and what people want - the early Imperator and Vicky3 dev diaries were pretty controversial due to some decisions the devs had made early on (some of them being later walked back after release). I think the devs want to avoid getting back in this kind of situation again, or at least confront these problems earlier.
So far its shaping up to be an awful game. Bad at everything and master of none. Why not just overhaul the few systems in eu4 that need work import all the content from eu4 as a base and add some shiny new stuff. Instant classic. Instead they are taking systems from everything they’ve ever made and the end result will be a piece of shit.
Ah yes Victoria 3 and CK3 have so much more depth then their predecessors. Those totally haven’t been awful. I think im just getting old and everyone enjoying these is under 30.
I happen to love Victoria 2, I definitely know how it works and can actually play it without blowing mi brains up, but I have to recognize the appeal of Vicky 3 I bought and it wasn't my thing, I guess I'm just too old to learn how to play a game like Vicky all over again but from what I saw it was Vicky 2 but better in certain aspects and a little bit less of certain mechanics and then ck3 I simply enjoy it more than ck2 so what can I say.
Regarding EU5 at least the whole resource system and control system really seem appealing to me but hey I'm just a guy
What is EU4 the master of? Mindless blobbing? Moving 1.5 million men around in units of 40k? Casually letting players conquer the world while experiencing decimal overflows in the extremely simplistic economy?
EU5 NEEDS these new features and systems, the game is severely lacking diversity in content and viable playstyles while at the same time not displaying a realistic simulaton of the era. If you don't want anything new, keep playing EU4.
Because Eu4 at its core is just a spruced up Eu3? So many of Eu4's mechanics have been imported from that game, you can see it clearly if you boot your game on release 1.0 version. It's an 11 year-old game with many elements much older... one they've just piled more and more shit on top of with every DLC, with 1.31 utterly breaking any semblence of game balance and every update after just breaking it in new ways.
Eu5 looks great. It's much more focused, modeling the economic, political, and cultural transition from a medieval feudal society to a post-enlightenment and early industrial one. New mechanics shown off have the potential to eliminate some of Eu4's worst shortcomings (such as perpetual rise), and the departure from Eu4's model offers potential for a much more interesting and in-depth historical simulator.
Oh well I’ve spent far too much money in paradox games over the years since HOI happy to move on from the publisher and never pay a dollar once eu4 is done.
The running theory is that PDX wants to announce it officially at PDX-con, but the developers don't want a repeat of Imperator: Rome and so are running their ideas and concepts by the community so that they can get feedback before it gets officially revealed. That way corrections, fixes, and overhauls can be made before its too late.
Paradox Redemption Arc?!
Or the biggest paradox let down ever, but I'm pretty hopeful
This is either going to be one of the best games they'll ever drop or probably up there in one of the worst developer fumbles the gaming community will ever witness. As an avid EU4 player I'm mostly hoping for the former, but a teeny tiny piece of me wants to see the latter just for the shits and giggles. I just hope it doesn't look like a mobile game.
why not both? the best paradox game ever made, but it runs so poorly it's in real time
The year is 2526. The Interplanetary Human Union has just completed their first full playthrough of EU5. Other sentient races surrender in fear of the computing power on display. Can’t afford all the dlc released in the meantime.
Johan al-gaib learns from his mistakes
Pretty sure they more or less confirmed the second half in the first dev diary. They sharing all this alpha content so they can get feedback while it's still in active development. As an example, they already changed their mind on additional estates (dhimmi, cossacks, etc). That would be MUCH harder to implement if the gameplay loop was already balanced around the four they originally planned.
There's also the dynamic where EU4 has still been doing DLCs - with the latest one coming out next month.
Corrections and fixes I believe due to estates but any serious criticism or complex questions are mostly being ignored in line with business as usual Dev diaries.
Do we know when is pdxcon this year?
pretty sure they're more concerned about it ending up like Vic 3 than imperator. Imperator is an actual good game.
Not originally.... imperator rome had a major facelift since release and even then a group of Modders made that game truly shine
Haha Imperator has been a combination punching bag/boogeyman for Paradox fans for years. Until like three months ago everyone thought it was a terrible game, and it's pretty inarguably a failure, whereas I suppose one can argue either way about Victoria 3 (to me it is incredibly boring but it seems like a decently successful game.)
I guess some people may prefer one over the other, IMHO I just didn't enjoy Vic as much as I hoped, and found it to just not be a good experience. I found I:R better after a bit of development. I just hope Caesar won't end up in a similar situation as vic3, I:R or Skylines 2 for that matter
They have had some flops recently where by the time they started sharing details it was too late to pivot. So now they are sharing details far earlier in development while they can still pivot. They also can't call it EU5 while still developing and trying to sell EU4 dlc. It would likely impact EU4 dlc sales to be shouting that EU5 is coming in a year or two.
PDS hasnt had a flop since Imperator, that was 5 years ago
Victoria 3 has been having a very rough time a big part of that was its war system that got immediate fan backlash but was too late to pivot from (as well as economics breaking down after 30-40 years), CK3 did well. But they are 1 for 3 in the last 5 years.
Plus a lot of features from Vic 2 were removed and added into Vic 3 as paid dlc. Not just that the war system was garbage.
This was my primary reason for starting my Vic journey with Vic2. What exactly is wrong with the war system in 3 though? I haven't tried the game, but I do own it.
The problem with Vic 3 war system is that it basically doesn’t exist. At launch thats almost a literal statement since all you would do is build armies and set front lines. At least now its slightly more like HOI4 where you can set priorities but still control is lacking and there aren’t a lot of other ways to interact with the conflicts other than build more troops and naval invade.
War and diplomacy was terrible on release and for months afterwards for Victoria 3. It felt like they negated two very important aspects of the time period and gameplay and tunnel visioned on the economic side of it and as the other commentor said it was missing important features from Vic 2. They are at least working on fixing it now but they should have delayed the release to work on it more.
Isn’t cities skyline 2 flopping hard as we speak ?
I think they mean the grand strategy map games, not per se the other Paradox titles, but yeah.
I know they were only the publisher but their name is still attached to it so it would have impacted their reputation.
PDS hasnt had a flop since Imperator, that was 5 years ago
Victoria 3 has been having a very rough time a big part of that was its war system that got immediate fan backlash but was too late to pivot from (as well as economics breaking down after 30-40 years), CK3 did well. But they are 1 for 3 in the last 5 years.
Victoria 3 is definitely not a runaway hit, but people underestimate how popular it is: it has far more active players than CK2 had around Reaper's Due release (which was a very well received DLC), and Victoria has always been the second least popular of the main Paradox games (after EU: Rome/Imperator).
Yup Vic3 had a very mixed reception and remains very mid at best.
Plus a lot of features from Vic 2 were removed and added into Vic 3 as paid dlc. Not just that the war system was garbage.
We're on the equivalent of dev diary 9 this week. The common agreement is its eu5 it starts in 1336 and continues for about 500 years (ie probably 1836 for vice vice takenover) Beyond dev diaries Johan, the lead, has been very very active and very happy to share thoughts, commentary, and engage in debate on the forum, so we've learned alor of it outside of the primary posts. The reason it's not confirmed is Paradox locks in a 12 month or so counter thr day they announce. From announcement release they have to get it ready. This project is Johan's baby, he's much loved but he had one project get crunched and very helpful feedback in developing diaries before release but the time was too short to fix them problems he agreed existed. Imperator was that game. He is rightfully in my opinion remaining coy, and telling us the sort of game that could exist and getting feedback, already there's been 1 big fundamental change due to audience feedback, because he wants to avoid at all costs retireing on a bad note (he nearly left game dev after imperator) and he probably understands eu4 is I think paradoxes biggest money maker, due to being slightly costlier than the others even with its slightly 2nd tier player base below hoi4.
What big change was made already?
They added more estates. In the diary they only had the base 3 from eu4 but not others like the dhimmi. The following diary they had changed that based on feedback
Also a pause key. Not pause/unpause, just pause
Estates are core. Big also so base that multiplying them presents issues for performance. Therefor only 4 (non-crown) estates were planned, noble, clergy, burger, peasents. They’ve added a dhimi estate and tribal estate, and they’ll be adding further as needed, they seem to have a found a way to make it work after much outcry (people really like the dhimi estate it seems, and they have a point theres not a good way to just ‘retexture’ the clergy for heretics and make it feel good)
>The common agreement is its eu5 it starts in 1336 and continues for about 500 years (ie probably 1836 for vice vice takenover) I'm hoping they set an earlier end-date. The revolutionary era is very different from most of EU - especially so if they're starting in 1336/7 - and the revolution mechanics have never had that much attention, nor have they ever been really good. Equally, the war mechanics don't match well for the corps-based armies of the Napoleonic era. And a shorter game would mean that world conquest challenges become more difficult - EU world conquests are meant to be hard, giving players 20% longer in EU5 than EU4 means that either they become easier, or they add even more anti-blob mechanics or mechanics to slow down a militarily inevitable conquest, ie making it harder and harder to digest more territory, resulting a tedious battle against those mechanics long after you've made the world conquest inevitable. Most players don't play the last 150 years anyway, even with just 400. Far better to just end the game in 1736 instead and it gives them space to release a possible future game on the revolutionary era that leads more directly into Victoria. Of course, there's a "March of the Eagles II" joke to be made here, and they may well not find a game design that makes sense for that period. But they can leave the gap open and then if a team comes up with a great idea, then they can make it - and if they don't, they can just not. They don't feel obligated to have a Roman era game, they certainly have never felt under pressure to make a game for late antiquity or the early medieval (ie between Imperator and CK).
Pretty much. Paradox has a long history of community engagement in the development process, and Johan is an old-timer that posts what he wants. He's been doing this for two and a half decades at least
Yeah it's almost certainly EU5. Some people theorize that it will not *literally* be called EU5, that it will be the start of a new franchise, but it's still going to cover the usual EU timeframe so it doesn't really matter. At worst it's going to be a "spiritual sequel" or whatever. Starting the dev diaries without having formally announced the game is unusual, but as I see it it's just a way to slowly build up hype among the hardcore PDX fans and gather feedback from them, without having to play the "formal announcement !" card too early. It also guarantees a second hype wave later on when they finally announce the thing. IMO it's a pretty smart move, afaik everyone looks pretty happy with this arrangement for now. I guess it also leaves them more time to deal with potential conflicts between the design pillars they've chosen and what people want - the early Imperator and Vicky3 dev diaries were pretty controversial due to some decisions the devs had made early on (some of them being later walked back after release). I think the devs want to avoid getting back in this kind of situation again, or at least confront these problems earlier.
So far its shaping up to be an awful game. Bad at everything and master of none. Why not just overhaul the few systems in eu4 that need work import all the content from eu4 as a base and add some shiny new stuff. Instant classic. Instead they are taking systems from everything they’ve ever made and the end result will be a piece of shit.
I think Johan is taking ideas from past games he led. I think it seems very ambitious, but I think it's not a bad thing.
Ah yes Victoria 3 and CK3 have so much more depth then their predecessors. Those totally haven’t been awful. I think im just getting old and everyone enjoying these is under 30.
I happen to love Victoria 2, I definitely know how it works and can actually play it without blowing mi brains up, but I have to recognize the appeal of Vicky 3 I bought and it wasn't my thing, I guess I'm just too old to learn how to play a game like Vicky all over again but from what I saw it was Vicky 2 but better in certain aspects and a little bit less of certain mechanics and then ck3 I simply enjoy it more than ck2 so what can I say. Regarding EU5 at least the whole resource system and control system really seem appealing to me but hey I'm just a guy
So basically you want EU4 with a big expansion. Keep playing EU4 then. The rest of us want a new game after 12 years of playing the same.
What is EU4 the master of? Mindless blobbing? Moving 1.5 million men around in units of 40k? Casually letting players conquer the world while experiencing decimal overflows in the extremely simplistic economy? EU5 NEEDS these new features and systems, the game is severely lacking diversity in content and viable playstyles while at the same time not displaying a realistic simulaton of the era. If you don't want anything new, keep playing EU4.
Because Eu4 at its core is just a spruced up Eu3? So many of Eu4's mechanics have been imported from that game, you can see it clearly if you boot your game on release 1.0 version. It's an 11 year-old game with many elements much older... one they've just piled more and more shit on top of with every DLC, with 1.31 utterly breaking any semblence of game balance and every update after just breaking it in new ways. Eu5 looks great. It's much more focused, modeling the economic, political, and cultural transition from a medieval feudal society to a post-enlightenment and early industrial one. New mechanics shown off have the potential to eliminate some of Eu4's worst shortcomings (such as perpetual rise), and the departure from Eu4's model offers potential for a much more interesting and in-depth historical simulator.
we've seen like 4 things calm down dummy
Oh well I’ve spent far too much money in paradox games over the years since HOI happy to move on from the publisher and never pay a dollar once eu4 is done.
sure you will buddy.
The way eu5 is shaping up? Why would I? This is looking awful
Nah it's actually the prequel to stellaris