Video Game Thread.

[stevep]

May 7, 2024 7:53:48 GMT simon darkshade said:

I’ve started playing a quite good game called Suzerain, a story/decision based political sim. Ultra impressive world building, a good cast of characters and very decent depth. You take the role of new President Anton Rayne of Sordland, a medium sized country in the depths of a recession and emerging from dictatorial rule.

They have made a DLC which offers a chance to play a different country. Highly recommended.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzerain_(video_game)

  Looks interesting.  Hope you manage to steer your country through the dangers both external and internal.

[simon darkshade]

There is a limited range of both, at this time, but there is some decent scope for success and failure. Broadly speaking, it seems you can take a Democratic/Reformist approach, an Autocratic one or a Dictatorship.

The largest issue with it for me, and this is in the spirit of constructive criticism, is that it goes a bit down the path of Paradox Studios style abstraction - you get a vague line shape for economic performance and abstract figures for Government Budget and Personal Finances. The strength of the military (not a real in game factor per se) is measured in numbers (“400.000 men”) and ‘armies’. I’d prefer GDP and actual budgets in the national currency; and divisions/squadrons/actual ship types respectively. It isn’t a major factor or distractor thus far, as gameplay is more in the style of a Choose Your Own Adventure scenario/gamebook, but in my view, wouldn’t take that much to implement, nor necessarily detract from the game style or nature. They do bandy stats about the place, such as reference to unemployment rates, infant mortality, literacy rates and the like, but miss the opportunity to incorporate them *within* the game. Overall, though, this is more of a missed opportunity than a problem.

(My liking for such is informed by previous experiences with forum based nation playing sims, where my mates and I really pushed the envelope in terms of rigour, statistical backing, realism and depth; they later developed into semi and fully automated systems, and the ‘chief programmer’ is working on it as a game engine in its own right. I’d love to see that type of approach married with the creativity and writing of Suzerain.)

[simon darkshade]

After one full playthrough, my overall opinion is: good, for the reasons above, but not great, also for the reasons above.

There are some nicely difficult challenges of getting reforms through Congress and the Supreme Court, with the other major challenge of the second half of the game being avoiding war with a much larger and more powerful neighbouring country. However, the latter is fairly easy if the player elects to join the analogues of NATO or the Warsaw Pact; that prevents war unless the player starts one, which causes a global thermonuclear war. Furthermore, the challenges of the second half of the game occur on the ‘downward slope’ of tension; quite a lot seems to be relatively anti-climactic. The process of being re-elected for a second term isn’t as hard as it could be, but that might just be a consequence of the fairly sensible path I took.

There was some use of stats through the whole game, and in the ending screen, but they never really had much meaning or weight to them, nor did they seems to be connected. Getting this element out in ‘front of house’ would make for a richer game in my view. Whilst there are many endings, there didn’t seem to be a score system outside of Steam achievements.

The politics of 1953-1957 Sordland, in a different world, seemed to tack too much towards 2020s America - among other examples, we had women’s rights and feminism using the language of ‘patriarchy’ rather than first wave feminism; one policy described ‘environmental sustainability’ being a substantive issue; creationism vs evolution showed up as a major issue of educational policy; and there was opposition to vaccination against polio. This broke some of the immersion created by the excellent world building of the completely original alternate world setting. However, it didn’t do so to an egregious extent.

Suzerain is worth a look, and the ongoing release of DLCs is in its favour; with a tad more rigour and a few changes of how it used stats, it could be great.

[Otto Kretschmer]

Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 has recently been wnnounced.

Hurray!

[Otto Kretschmer]

It seems that Europa Universalis 5 is in the making.

...who is happy except me?

[simon darkshade]

Not I; Paradox seems to have perfected selling games where the player is best advised to set it to maximum speed and wait for something to happen, rather than actually being in the driver’s seat.

CK2 is the best of a bad bunch, with the attraction of developing characters and, with the aid of copious mods and DLCs, forging some sort of interesting experience. The economy is next to nonexistent, but the worst aspect for me was the thorough immorality at its core (not amorality as some might purport). CK3 is a graphical advance and a development of some systems, but Paradox’s business model means that it won’t be ‘whole’ for many a year.

EU lies in betwixt and between eras, allowing for expansion and exploration, but not with the colonisation mechanics of Victoria. It has functional land war systems and nominal sea systems, but the latter show that “Navy Stuff” has always been decidedly Second Place Priority for Paradox, speaking perhaps to their Continental/Swedish perspective. The economy is a little deeper than modded CK, but not a vital feature. There is some leader personality, but not as much as CK.

Victoria 1 and 2 had the best economy and some interesting new mechanics, but is increasingly ‘driven by the metas’, has the feel of a random map game with a European Great Power skinsuit and has a lot of just skipping turns without anything to do. This would be less of an issue with actual cities and national factors; characters a la CK; national spirits and goals a la EU; and use of personalities as in HoI. Victoria 3 made the choice to remove manual control and player input to the military, which many have criticised and some have fanatically supported.

HoI4 is a war game that makes the actual war boring and uninvolved for the player. Just build your 7/2 divisions like a good meta follower, draw your battle lines, click play and then post a picture of your encirclements. It deprioritises war at sea, air warfare and above all, any real sense of economy. More than other games, with the exception of Vicky 3, it prioritises its own abstractions over any connection with history or reality. I did like the HoI3 Arsenal of Democracy CORE mod a fair bit, but the hard coded choices at the heart of the systems make it an uphill struggle.

I like Stellaris, but my potato of a computer can’t load it or run it within any reasonable timeframe.

One feature across many games is the lack of choice or meaning in events, with many having a response equivalent to “Oh dear. That’s terrible.” with utterly no consequence. It doesn’t look like they are changing that, or see it as a problem.

[simon darkshade]

www.filfre.net/2017/03/opening-the-gold-box-part-5-all-that-glitters-is-not-gold/

A very interesting history of the SSI Gold Box series of CRPGs from 1988-1992.

[simon darkshade]

What features would you like to see in an idealised political/historical simulation game?

I’d certainly like to see something that allowed the period of 1756-2000 to be done fulsomely and in depth, rather than the very superficial treatment provided by Paradox games. Incorporating building and other elements from 4X games would be nice, along with a strong RP element that employs some of the better features from CK. A very decent ‘tech tree’ is a must, as are decent, detailed events with real choices - Stellaris type at a minimum.

There is a CK3 mod that allows a player to fight out battles in Mount and Blade, which is an interesting and innovative way of switching things up. Doing something similar for air and sea battles could be interesting; having different views for battles was something that was used as far back as the old DOS game Centurion: Defender of Rome.

I’m also a fan of having a good economics system to add depth and realism, and have a positive view of the ‘narrative style’ of Suzerain, described a few posts back.

I’d be interested in other ideas and points of view.

[lordroel]

Going to buy Civ 7, but still not sure about the switching in game of civilization, always loved to play as one nation from beginning to end.