Grand Strategy Crusader Kings III

[Preben]

ALSO, god damn you for having disposable sons. I'm in a crisis right now since I'm rolling non-stop daughters. The run's in danger of ending since my current character's got a million daughters and his heir is his brother who is a similarly aged piece of shit with no sons and the only potential heir after that is a grandson that'll be lucky if he can walk by the time these old farts kick the bucket. Even got my dude a mega-giga-ultra slut of a wife, scooped her up at like 25 with lustful, fornicator, seductress, and beautiful and even with all those fertility bonuses I keep getting daughters.

Welcome to the real world. Whole dynasties died out because only daughters were popped out in an entire generation. Multiple daughters.

 

[Fedora Master]

Basically CK3 is now just as much a meme game as HoI4 or EU4.

 

[Preben]

Basically CK3 is now just as much a meme game as HoI4 or EU4.

Oh, come on. In CK2 we had doctors sawing off balls to cure throat problems.

 

[whydoibother]

At $30 dollars the DLC is not merely over-priced, it's plain outrageous. Especially considering how lazy it is, with tribals left out of getting a court for no good reason in terms of history or realism. Is this paradox's new strategy to 'force' people to start using their stupid subscription service?

Are republics in yet? I haven't been following the game, but if tribes and republics are out of this DLC, it covers what, half the nations?

 

[Fedora Master]

Basically CK3 is now just as much a meme game as HoI4 or EU4.

Oh, come on. In CK2 we had doctors sawing off balls to cure throat problems.

CK2 had a lot of fairly normal events. CK3 has mostly funny maymay events, some of them even forced (like the serial killer or incest events).

 

[whydoibother]

Basically CK3 is now just as much a meme game as HoI4 or EU4.

Oh, come on. In CK2 we had doctors sawing off balls to cure throat problems.

CK2 had a lot of fairly normal events. CK3 has mostly funny maymay events, some of them even forced (like the serial killer or incest events).

CK2 made jokes and references about history. CK3 makes jokes and references about CK2. That's the issue.
Its no longer a fun wacky game about history, its the new Crusader Kings game. Its an additional step removed from history.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

And more importantly, it tries to appeal primarily to the GoT and Vikings crowd.

 

[Fedora Master]

I find it interesting that even the PDX forum sycophants have pretty much stopped defending the game, or the DLC. That's unusual for Paradox fans. Paradox also doesn't seem to bother with silencing dissenters anymore, but neither are they going to take the hint and reconsider their approach.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Paradox also doesn't seem to bother with silencing dissenters anymore, but neither are they going to take the hint and reconsider their approach.

They have no reason to since they've pretty much formed - a few low budget janky alternatives aside - a natural monopoly over their niche.

 

[whydoibother]

And more importantly, it tries to appeal primarily to the GoT and Vikings crowd.

Viking memes and the normie culture around vikings is older than the TV show. And I am not sure what GoT influence you mean, all of that stuff was already in CK2 or its popular mods.
Honestly I think its just that CK was on the outside looking in, making its jokes for history nerds, while CK3 is on the inside and makes jokes about itself. It happens to all aged franchises, like the Simpsons, or Warcraft, or a punk band that succeeds enough to do McDonald commercials.

I find it interesting that even the PDX forum sycophants have pretty much stopped defending the game, or the DLC. That's unusual for Paradox fans. Paradox also doesn't seem to bother with silencing dissenters anymore, but neither are they going to take the hint and reconsider their approach.

I don't post on those forms, but I will sometimes get linked fast moving threads when there's a shitstorm. Seems to me like for about 2 years, basically since CK3 released, Paradox has mostly been scoring L's with their fans. CK3 releasing was the last time there was a big positive reaction.

They have no reason to since they've pretty much formed - a few low budget janky alternatives aside - a natural monopoly over their niche.

There was a Steam page being shilled for a Paradox type game, like Vicky, on 4chan. I can't recall its name, but I remember it had pops, and a very sterile looking map. So there's new arrivals trying to get in.
Just like Civilization V opened the 4X market enough by attracting casuals, and making it viable for competitors to swarm in, so has HoI4 and CK3 made this for the map-painter genre.

 

[whydoibother]

Now that I think about it for 2 minutes, it might also be the Marvel movies and the new phase of geek-is-chic culture. The type of humor matches, and we really shouldn't underestimate the commercial value of making those upper middle class 20-40 year olds your customers.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Viking memes and the normie culture around vikings is older than the TV show. And I am not sure what GoT influence you mean, all of that stuff was already in CK2 or its popular mods.

Both Vikings and GoT fit within the same paradigm of pseudohistory on steroids, akin to a bad HBO ripoff trying to be 'gritty' by indulging in narratively retarded amounts of intrigue and the like while portraying the various characters quite unidimensionally in an exaggerated caricatural manner.

And besides the aforementioned, add retarded 'witty' humor stemming from a place of cynicism and you get CK3.


Soulful and going for realism:


Soulless and going for grit (when not going for wit):

 

[whydoibother]

trying to be 'gritty' by indulging in narratively retarded amounts of intrigue and the like while portraying the various characters quite unidimensionally in an exaggerated caricatural manner

Sounds like classical storytelling. As in, from the Classical age.

And besides the aforementioned, add retarded 'witty' humor stemming from a place of cynicism and you get CK3.

But the CK2 trailer shown is more cynical. That's part of the issue, the CK3 trailer is too sincere, its just showing you straight up what it means, instead of showing one thing and meaning another.
The ending of the CK2 trailer straight up says "at least you are closer to god", etc, and means "you fucked up, retard". 101 cynicism.

Re-reading my post, sounds like I prefer the second trailer. I don't, I like the dry wit of the first, and its aesthetics referencing history rather than Die Hard movies.

 

[Average Manatee]

At $30 dollars the DLC is not merely over-priced, it's plain outrageous. Especially considering how lazy it is, with tribals left out of getting a court for no good reason in terms of history or realism. Is this paradox's new strategy to 'force' people to start using their stupid subscription service?

I got a court and I don't see what the point is. It seems to primarily be a way to annoy you with new events that are generally bad but more importantly waste a lot of time (needing to go to a whole other screen with some slight lag in between). It's also a thing that punishes you with debuffs unless you throw piles of money on a bonfire, and gives meaningless buffs in return. Most of the equipment system seems to be about stack grandeur so that you can fund your court less and start making money.

 

[whydoibother]

At $30 dollars the DLC is not merely over-priced, it's plain outrageous. Especially considering how lazy it is, with tribals left out of getting a court for no good reason in terms of history or realism. Is this paradox's new strategy to 'force' people to start using their stupid subscription service?

I got a court and I don't see what the point is. It seems to primarily be a way to annoy you with new events that are generally bad but more importantly waste a lot of time (needing to go to a whole other screen with some slight lag in between). It's also a thing that punishes you with debuffs unless you throw piles of money on a bonfire, and gives meaningless buffs in return. Most of the equipment system seems to be about stack grandeur so that you can fund your court less and start making money.

In Mount&Blade, one of the first things to get modded was making it so you don't need to wait for a loading screen so you can enter a dialogue with a 3D model of some guy, and instead just click a textbox. And now this DLC is doing the opposite.
There absolutely SHOULD be a throne room where you can see your dudes, trophies, splendor, etc, but it shouldn't be tied with frequent gameplay decisions, it should be like the gallery of an RPG Maker game. Somewhere you go to look at your achievements.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

trying to be 'gritty' by indulging in narratively retarded amounts of intrigue and the like while portraying the various characters quite unidimensionally in an exaggerated caricatural manner

Sounds like classical storytelling. As in, from the Classical age.

Lolno, CK3's grittiness is the video game equivalent of those retarded Eastern European new wave films with obligatory long scenes in which people eat borscht and do depressive small talk around the kitchen table in a small dampy apartment. Director thinks it's deep and cool looking (''''aesthetic''''), people find it gratuitous and in bad taste. This sort of cheap hyperrealism fails both in portraying an immersive (i.e. realistic) historical sandbox and in doing classical storytelling.

And on the topic of classical storytelling, the latter aims to portray greater than life characters as embodiments of various traditional archetypes within an idealized world. GoT & co. don't do that, they cynically portray a world of pettiness in which unidimensional characters engage in a perpetual tug of war. If you can't distinguish between these two, all I can say is that you're as blind as the Paradox devs themselves.

the CK3 trailer is too sincere

Lolwut? It's peak gritwank (see above).

Re-reading my post, sounds like I prefer the second trailer. I don't, I like the dry wit of the first, and its aesthetics referencing history rather than Die Hard movies.

 

[Average Manatee]

In Mount&Blade, one of the first things to get modded was making it so you don't need to wait for a loading screen so you can enter a dialogue with a 3D model of some guy, and instead just click a textbox. And now this DLC is doing the opposite.
There absolutely SHOULD be a throne room where you can see your dudes, trophies, splendor, etc, but it shouldn't be tied with frequent gameplay decisions, it should be like the gallery of an RPG Maker game. Somewhere you go to look at your achievements.

If Paradox can't shove the court in our face every 10s how will they justify the $30 price tag?

It's funny, one of the complaints I had with CK2 was that after so much DLC the game just had too many events going on too often that interrupted your game flow. CK3 on release fixed a lot of that, stuff like plots got streamlined and were way less spammy. Then this DLC barges in through the wall unannounced like Kool Aid man to dance on CK3's corpse.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

There's no real incentive to hold court anyway, especially when the events start getting repetitive and the mana gains from them are minute. You just go to the court interface from time to time to equip any new artifacts that you've gotten yourself for their passives and that's that.

 

[whydoibother]

Lolno, CK3's grittiness is the video game equivalent of those retarded Eastern European new wave films with obligatory long scenes in which people eat borscht and do depressive small talk around the kitchen table in a small dampy apartment.

cheap hyperrealism

Bro, the trailer you posted has a guy fighting a bear, someone being thrown out of a window, the pope being bribed in the middle of the dancefloor, a voodoo doll telling us the queen is controlling the bear, a guy sucking tits while the tits-holder is shanking him with a knife, a guy pouring wine while holding poison, and the narrator talking about the grand stage, the greatest game, the complete victory, etc. Nothing like the depressing hyper-realism of eastern wank-cinema. If it was like that, it would be the king counting a small amount of money, the roof leaking on top of him, and the queen having to carry bags of potatoes herself, because the servant ran away.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

If it was like that

It's like that, but in a pseudomedieval setting featuring opulent nobles rather than in a modern one featuring poor plebs.

 

[whydoibother]

If it was like that

It's like that, but in a pseudomedieval setting featuring opulent nobles rather than in a modern one featuring poor plebs.

No, its the complete opposite. Its like the Spartacus TV show, or HBO's Rome series. Its very exaggerated and bombastic, and not at all hyper-realistic. Realism is much more mundane and dull. This is more like Transformers than like serbian domestic violence movies.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

No, its the complete opposite. Its like the Spartacus TV show, or HBO's Rome series. Its very exaggerated and bombastic, and not at all hyper-realistic. Realism is much more mundane and dull. This is more like Transformers than like serbian domestic violence movies.

It's very exaggerated, just like in those EE film scenes. Yes. Going for stereotypes, only that those appear bombastic given that opulence, courtly intrigue and the like are the sort of things that a hyperrealist lens dilutes these particular social settings to. In both cases, it's a matter of overindulgence and caricatural reductionism. Overindulging in a portrayal of opulence or of poverty are two variants of the same trend.

 

[whydoibother]

Overindulging in a portrayal of opulence or poverty are two variants of the same trend.

I see what you mean now. They are opposite, because they point in opposite directions. But they are the same, because of how much the exaggerate each vector.
I definitely don't feel the same way about the trailer, I think you give it too much credit. They are just doing action movie shots, because they want to show off the 3D models and visual assets, its the only thing CK3 has over CK2, presentation is the main selling point.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Overindulging in a portrayal of opulence or poverty are two variants of the same trend.

I see what you mean now. They are opposite, because they point in opposite directions. But they are the same, because of how much the exaggerate each vector.
I definitely don't feel the same way about the trailer, I think you give it too much credit. They are just doing action movie shots, because they want to show off the 3D models and visual assets, its the only thing CK3 has over CK2, presentation is the main selling point.

Fair enough.

And just to be clear, I don't mind non-realism in the classical storytelling vein. But give me proper grimdark or noblebright, not this sort of muddled shit.

 

[Stavrophore]

It gets boring when paradox idea about medieval times is that every character plots intrigue. If everyone plots, then the plotting itself as Honkweinig rightfully pointed out gets mundane, because of reducing everything to this one dimensional domain. There were kings who didn't have to plot, and there were ambitious counts who plotted. Clinging to the concept that every successful medieval ruler plotted himself to the top is to say the least quite over the top.