One Plus Two Equals Three

by on December 3, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the eighth in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay
Crusader Kings: A Dynastic Adventure
Hearts of Iron II: Return Engagement
Europa Universalis III: A Whole New World
Europa Universalis: Rome: Make a Desert and Call it a Game

Given the number of other projects that Paradox could have done, the four-year gap between Hearts of Iron II (2005) and III (2009) is fairly short (especially when considering that the final expansion to II didn’t come out until 2007). However, in that time Paradox had developed the Clausewitz engine for their empire management games, and with the HoI series being Paradox’s most successful one, it is no surprise that they hurried to get a new WWII-era (1936-48) empire management game out with the new engine.

Unfortunately, ‘hurried’ is all too apt a word. Paradox’s games always had a reputation for being buggy upon release, but would then be patched into a solid game. The release of HoI III was particularly bad in this regard, and after the complaints that caused, Paradox has made an (increasingly successful) effort to release their games in good shape.

After the initial release of HoI III for PC and Mac in late 2009, the first expansion, Semper Fi, was released in June 2010, and a second, For the Motherland, was released in June 2011. These were packaged together as the HoI III Collection, which is all I’ve played, and what this review will be about.

Leadership

Originally, all the resources in the HoI economy were tied together, as they all fed into Industrial Capacity (IC), which was used for everything, including research. In HoI II, research was separated from the IC economy, but still required money to fund, which came from consumer goods (generated by IC), and the number of possible simultaneous projects was controlled by the amount of IC the country had.

HoI III introduces leadership as a second economy that does not generally interact with the resource/IC economy. Leadership is like IC in that it is generated by provinces the nation controls, but is a constant like resources, instead of being upgradeable like IC. Leadership is then split to research, espionage, diplomacy and officers.

Tripartite Threat

HoI II used policy sliders like in EU II to determine government type and which faction a country was close to. HoI III returns to the tripartite political model of the original game of the series, where every country is placed in a triangular diplomatic space with the Allies, Axis and Comintern represented by the points.

As usual, diplomacy has a number of options, including influencing another nation towards your point of view. This is only available if you are already in a faction, or else you are subject to influence from those countries that are (you can align yourself towards one particular point of view). All of these actions cost diplomatic points, generated from leadership. Most actions (negotiating a trade deal, instigating a coup) have a one-time cost, but influence has an ongoing cost for as long as it is kept up.

Most countries also start with a fairly high neutrality rating. This is a new mechanic to represent a country’s resistance to going to war. You can only go to war with a country with a threat rating higher than your neutrality rating. Threat is generated by military build ups, going to war with other countries and the like, and is also reduced by distance. So an aggressive Germany will generate a lot a threat against France, but not so much against America on the other side of the Atlantic.

Practical Engineering

In the first HoI game, research was split into theoretical advances that then allowed practical advance follow-ups. HoI II simplified the model down with nearly every advance having a direct impact, but each was made up a few sub-advances that had different demands, but those did not interact with each other at all.

HoI III introduces the idea of engineering knowledge (or theory), and practical knowledge. Every time you complete research in a field, you get a point in the theory for that field, which will slowly decay over time. Building units, or engaging in combat generates practical knowledge in the relevant field. Knowledge of both types affects the difficulty of research. So, the more you concentrate on one field, the better your theory is, and the easier it is to get more advances. The more experience you get with, say, air combat, the better you know what improvements your aircraft need, and it becomes easier to advance in that field.

In general, each unit type has a number of different advances (often about four) that each improve different unit statistics, and together add up to the next ‘level’ of that unit (Infantry I to Infantry II, etc.). As in HoI II, land and air units can be upgraded in the field when new equipment is available by allocating IC to the job. However, land units can also be upgraded by type, with, say, motorized infantry being converted into mechanized infantry, which places them into the general production queue (removing them from the map), but they will return to their previous unit if it still exists at that time.

The old problem of inappropriate detail returns, with many ship and tank types being given real-world names appropriate to the country. As these are often appended with asterisks to denote one or more differences from the ‘actual’ version, this is cosmetics without meaning. Worse, the ahistorical research sequence of light armor allowing medium armor, which then allows heavy armor returns from the first game.

Espionage

HoI II: Doomsday introduced espionage to the series, and it is still here for this game with spies, counterespionage and the like. Like last time, I’ve generally found it too much effort for the payoff.

However, For the Motherland did introduce a new resistance… mini-game. Countries can try to put together resistance cells in a foreign country. This is the most likely in the occupied territory of the country putting together the resistance. A resistance network is generally invisible to the targeted country, though Police units do have an effect on them. Once it is in place, it can be turned into a normal militia unit, which seizes control of the province it is in.

A long-term problem with the HoI series is that partisans never really worked, despite attempts to include their effects. This much more direct approach actually solves the problem fairly well. Supplies are important in this game, and often get moved up to the front through a handful of province routes, so a few Soviet partisan units can have a dramatic effect. One of the goals of this was to give a human government-in-exile player something (potentially) useful to do for his allies in a multiplayer game, though it would still be a somewhat lackluster experience.

Production

Production works pretty much the same as with HoI II, with the player having to split available industrial capacity between consumer goods, supplies and new production as well as dedicating resources to reinforcements and upgrading existing units (or he can turn it over to the AI). The interface for those settings and the main queue where you prioritize new production has not changed much.

However, it too is affected by the ‘practical knowledge’ rating that affects research. New units have a base time to complete, but the better the related practical knowledge for that item is, the shorter the actual time becomes. Since this will apply to all further units, it encourages setting orders to produce multiples of the same thing in a chain, with each one starting when the previous one finishes, kind of like a… production line.

One small problem with the system is that once you commit an order to the queue, you can’t edit it, say to change the total number to produce. If you change your mind immediately, you can cancel it and start over, but otherwise you’re stuck keeping an eye on it.

Chain of Command

The basic land unit of construction and maneuver in the HoI series has always been the division, with brigade attachments to provide specialized abilities. HoI II expanded on this idea with a more extensive brigade system, that was also used for carriers and air units. In HoI III, the basic unit of maneuver is still the division, but the basic unit of construction is now the brigade.

Divisions are now made up of three or four brigades (or five with the right research), and can be constructed as a unit, or assembled out of component brigades (is possible to have individual brigades running around, but the system doesn’t really support that as a regular thing). Each country has a number of pre-done construction ‘templates’, which can be modified and saved, so a player can easily tailor his production to the structure he desires.

The truly new part is that higher levels of command are now directly represented in the game. Divisions can be grouped together into corps. This does not force the units to stay together (and, sadly, there is no easy way to select every unit in a particular corps at the same time), but does generate a headquarters unit which is an extra brigade. As with previous games, historical leaders are given to each country, and their abilities directly impact the performance of the division they command. A leader assigned to a corps increases the odds of extra divisions reinforcing and taking part in a combat. Corps can be similarly grouped into armies, which add to the organization of child units (which is the unit’s combat effectiveness). Armies can be grouped into army groups, whose leaders decrease supply consumption. And finally, army groups can be grouped into theaters, whose leaders can reduce the combat penalty for having too many divisions in too small a space.

All of these have their own headquarters units, which can take part in combat, but are not especially useful as such. Instead, the main purpose is that each headquarters has a range in which their bonuses apply. Corps have to stay relatively close to their divisions (say, 4-5 provinces), while a theater command in the middle of the Pacific can cover most of that ocean.

But more important than any of the above abilities is the fact that these can be turned over to AI control—at any level. You can let the AI control a particular division. Or corps. Or an entire theater. The AI is, as ever, not the best player, but neither is it truly incompetent. The point is to be able put entire sections of the game under AI control, so that the player can concentrate on those parts that are truly important. Invading Poland as Germany in 1939? Set the western theater to AI control, so it can handle anything Britain and France might do, and then concentrate on Poland.

This is aided by giving the AI directions as well. Once a unit is set to AI control, you can tell it to act offensively or defensively, and can flag particular places as goals. These could be places to defend, and places to attack. Once the UI is set, selecting the appropriate HQ will display a dashed line ‘front’ on the map which gives some idea of what the AI thinks of the situation.

All of this only partially applies to naval and air units. All the headquarters are land units, so while naval and air units can be grouped into smaller units (‘divisions’), they then must be integrated into the land force structure (possibly just at the theater level).

How Wide is my Front?

Combat is largely the same as it was in previous titles, including the ‘movement is combat’ model of HoI II. There are some tweaks and additions, the most important one being that battles are marked on the map with little bubbles that give the current winning/losing percentage. Battles that are going well are in green, ones that are going poorly in red, and the undecided middle ground yellow. Sadly, a big attack by weak units against a well prepared defender will often end in a defensive victory, but the combat rating (and bubble color) are based off the current gross numbers, not who is actually taking damage.

All units have a combat width, and generally each combat has a maximum width that units can fight in (with attacks from multiple provinces increasing the maximum width). Units in excess of the maximum width do not take part until other units are forced out of line (usually from loss of organization) to make room.

Along with the manpower pool needed to reinforce units and create new ones, there is also an officer pool, generated from leadership. When a unit is under heavy strain in combat, it can shatter instead of retreating, which removes it from the map, and forces it to be reformed, either with its parent unit, or somewhere in the home territory of the country. Each unit needs a number of officers, and the ratio of available officers to needed officers adjusts the odds of this happening.

Conclusion

Troy Goodfellow pronounced HoI III a ‘must have’ strategy game on Three Moves Ahead because it solved the ‘virtual viceroy’ problem. I’m less positive than that, as the AI runs into the same problems that SSG’s old Panzer Battles and Great Battles of the American Civil War series ran into: you can tell the AI where you want it to go, but you can’t tell it how you want it to get there.

That said, the hierarchical command system, with the ability to turn control over to the computer at almost any level is, largely, the key to solving the bigger problem of needing to have too many units to control in a real-time game. What is needed now is better communication.

I was surprised to see the armor research model go back to the ahistorical linear model of the first game, but every other place where HoI III goes back to the first game (and there are several), it is for the best. II showed a lot of lessons had been learned from the first game, and this one generally takes the best of the previous two.

The map gets really fine-grained in this title, and that is part of an over-detailed aesthetic that is partially alleviated by all the AI controls. For me, the HoI series remains Paradox’s least engaging effort, largely due to the expectations I bring to a WWII title. HoI III is the best of the series so far, and worth looking into for any grand strategy fan.

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Make a Desert and Call it a Game

by on August 8, 2014 at 10:05 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the seventh in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay
Crusader Kings: A Dynastic Adventure
Hearts of Iron II: Return Engagement
Europa Universalis III: A Whole New World

In mid-2008, Paradox Interactive released their second Clausewitz Engine game for PC and Mac. It was unusual, in that not only did it tackle a far earlier time period than they had before, but it did not have a proper name for itself. Europa Universalis: Rome is an empire-management game of the middle to late Roman Republic, 280 BC–27 BC (the in-game calendar uses Roman ab urbe condita for the years, with modern BC dates on hoverover). It shared about as much of the engine and feel of EU as do all of Paradox’s games, and one would expect a completely separate name for the game, as with Hearts of Iron, Victoria, et al. (one wonders if they were looking at the highly successful 2004 Rome: Total War when developing this title).

An expansion, Vae Victis, was released near the end of 2008, with a Gold combined version following in mid-2009. I have only played EU: Rome Gold, so this review will only be about that.

The graphics got a major overhaul from EU III, and the map lost much of the artificial look. This was the start of a long series of graphical upgrades for the engine. The terrain mode got a very good looking texture map, and the map in general got a bump map that made everything much more natural looking in any mode.

Friends, Romans, Countrymen

As usual with Paradox, you play as a particular country in a pausable real-time format; but this time there is also a large cast of characters who act on their own, occupy positions of government, etc. This is largely the same as the character system in Crusader Kings, but while you technically play as the current head of government, you aren’t actually any one person, so there are no concerns about continuing a dynasty and the like.

Characters are slightly simpler than in CK, with only three major attributes (Martial, Charisma and Finesse), and an extensive trait system with fewer special statuses than CK. Some of the traits have an effect on combat, making certain combat events possible, or more likely to happen, but mostly performance in any activity is based on the three major attributes. They also still have personal wealth and the like, but you often don’t see the direct effects of it in the game, especially while playing in a republic.

One addition to the CK system is that most characters will have an ambition. This could be to become rich, or get married, or it could be to become the governor of a particular province. Not only does this give the character a direction to go in, but if he (or she) achieves that ambition, he gets a bonus related to it. This could be as simple as a bonus to the character’s loyalty to the religious party after getting married, or it could be a one-point boost to Finesse after becoming governor.

The Senate and People of Rome

As in EU III, there are a number of different forms of government, with new ones becoming available as the game goes on. There are three main types of governments: monarchies, republics, and tribal, with there being four variations of tribal governments, and five each of the other two. Each one has its own particular bonus, and has a set of desired national idea slots. National ideas are taken from EU III: In Nomine, and are general bonuses that can give a nation a particular ‘feel’. Tribal governments only get one slot, while dictatorships (one of the four types of monarchy) get four, and everything else gets three.

There are four general types of ideas (military, economic, civic and religious), with two of each type available for use at the beginning of the game, going up to ten each as technology advances. You can use any ideas you want, but the overall government bonus only applies when they match the correct categories of ideas.

A republic will always have a senate, whose seats belong to different factions. These, in turn, will support or oppose many decisions you can make in the game (such as accepting a peace offer). If too much of the senate opposes an action, you cannot take it; if too little supports it, it will cause the current leader to lose popularity, which can cause governors and military commanders to lose loyalty.

The odd part with this is that the seats in the senate aren’t tied to particular characters. The factions have leaders, and their abilities have an influence on which factions have the greatest pull in the senate, but the current leanings of particular people are not reflected in the senate, or vice versa. However, the higher offices (Censor, et al.) do go to particular characters.

Monarchies, in addition to the head of state, depend on a council. These four people provide bonuses based on their abilities, and have a say in the succession when the monarch dies.

Tribal governments are the ‘primitive’ government, and can trade over to the other two types if they gain enough civilization in their capital. They have a chief, and a number of tribal chiefs, the most popular of which will become the new chief of the main government when he passes away.

Governance

There are a number of offices in the government, with each army and navy potentially having its own leader (and a poor one is certainly preferable to no leader at all). A set of five offices (common to all government types, but with different cultural names) control the pace of technological innovation, which follows in part the Victoria model, in that each new technological advancement opens up the possibility of events firing that cause actual bonuses.

The idea of groups of territories returns from Victoria in this game, with all areas grouped into provinces, which generally consist of 3-5 territories. These must all be assigned governors (except the home province, which is automatically governed by the leader of the nation), and his statistics determine things like taxation rates. Armies can be attached directly to a governor, making the province less likely to get in trouble, and providing local defense in a war.

There is a map mode that very clearly shows these provinces, but it only works with provinces that you already have a part of. This is better than the presentation in Victoria, but it could still use some work. (Especially as you have to look for the thin red border lines to see what you do and do not currently hold in a province when those territories are all the exact same color in the province map mode.)

The territories themselves have a new statistic, civilization. This measures how prosperous and settled the area is, and slowly goes up over time from the influence of higher-civilization neighboring areas, and trade routes from higher-civilization areas. Also, it is possible to get events in the capital that offer to improve the city with expensive monuments and public buildings, which will raise the civilization value, which is where civilization comes from in the first place….

Once a border area reaches 50% civilization, it can be used to colonize adjoining empty areas, but the population also needs to have hit 10 people. Population is handled more abstractly than in other Paradox games, being given in ‘units’ rather than solid numbers. These are also broken down into three classes of people: slaves, freemen, and citizens. The amount of each class is subject to adjustment through passing laws, and taking ideas that will shift them over time. However, citizens are needed for research, slaves for taxation, and freemen for the army, so a balance is needed.

Trade

As is the usual method in Paradox’s games, each territory produces a particular good (wine, salt, cloth, iron, etc…). However, each good, in addition to having a market value that earns tax money for the state, has particular in-game effects. A territory has a certain number of trade slots (more are generated through building improvements), and the goods are traded between pairs of particular territories, instead of going to a regional trade center (as in EU) or a world market (as in Victoria or HoI).

Both territories then get the bonuses associated with the goods being traded. This can get strategic in a number of ways, since there are bonuses to such things as population growth (wheat) and revolt risk (wine), and many units require certain commodities available to construct them (heavy infantry requires iron, ships require wood and cloth…). This restricts unit construction in believable ways, and is akin to how I would have preferred the resource model to work in various Civilization games, rather than let every city build the same unit at the same time as soon as you have one node of a resource.

A major problem intrudes here, as the game always starts with all the trade routes (and national ideas) empty for you to work out. With a smaller country, this isn’t too onerous, but if starting as a larger power, you have quite a long session of sorting out internal and external trade ahead of you before you can get going on the game.

Legions

Combat in EU:Rome uses the same procedure as in EU III, but has no separate phases for fire and shock (for obvious reasons). Instead, there are six different types of units to recruit (instead of three) that all have different damage modifiers against the other troop types. As mentioned earlier, the available trade items determine what units can be raised where.

Militia (or light infantry) can be recruited anywhere (which is its only redeeming feature). The other line infantry types are heavy infantry and… war elephants (which are very powerful, but expensive and slow to recruit; also they’re confined to the fringes of the map). Technically, there are two types of cavalry, normal and horse archers, but only the former acts as a front-line unit with mobility to work on the flanks. Archers and horse archers both go into the rear line and act as support for front line troops (as long as they last). All of these types have various cultural names, which might take some time to work out (though there are hover overs that give what the actual type is).

There are five of the military traits that I mentioned earlier, and each one allows that leader to trigger a particular combat event. Most of them add to the offensive ability to parts of the line, one (hold fast) improves defense, and rally increases your own troop’s morale (which may just lead to them hanging around longer to get slaughtered, if the battle is going poorly).

Civil War

One of the continual low-level annoyances to deal with in almost any Paradox game are rebellions; localized bands of people who are unhappy and rise up to take control of the territory. EU III expanded the model a bit by giving rebels various goals. While this still exists here, there are also full-fledged civil wars that pit parts of the country against each other.

A civil war breaks a country into two quasi-separate entities. They each have their own governments and leaders, and separate (but related) colors on the political map, and can separately go to war with other powers. But, the main faction and the rebel faction are automatically at war with each other and territories instantly trade from one to the other with a successful siege.

Various political troubles can lead to a civil war. In a republic, the senate has one faction for each of the major ideologies in the game (military, mercantile, civic, religious) and the Populist faction. This last is generally where characters who feel like they’ve been passed over for high office end up. The country generally gets a bonus depending on which faction is in charge, but for the Populists its a penalty. If the Populists become a dominate force in the senate without getting many offices, they will generally split off and cause a civil war. Similarly, tribal governments can split along tribal lines, and monarchies can have disputes over the succession.

Its a very nice mechanism, but sadly, once a human player is aware of what’s happening, it’s a little too easy to steer the game away from these events, especially the Populist civil war.

Barbarian Hordes

A little-understood feature of the ancient world are the occasional mass-migrations of entire peoples, or collections of peoples, or… well, we just don’t know much about them.

But they terrified the heck out of more settled populations that found them wanting to move in. Rome was sacked by a Gallic tribe about a hundred years before the period of the game, and had trouble fighting off a migration around 105 BC.

Like in the Europa Universalis series, much of the map is ‘unsettled’, empty provinces that are claimed by no government recognized in the game. However, instead of static ‘natives’ in these territories, there is a fourth type of population unit, barbarians. Barbarian power slowly grows in these territories, until it spills over and most of the power turns into a large army that starts wandering around the map, looking for civilized lands to loot, and possibly settle.

Defeating one of these armies generates loot and slaves for the area they were defeated in (at least, once the army is eliminated, they’re likely to retreat the first few times). Some of these armies can be very large and difficult to deal with.

Barbarian power also keeps an area from being colonized, if it’s above about 2 or so. Colonizing a territory that does still have some barbarian power, can lead to some trouble, but as the civilization level of the territory rises, there will be an event that will convert them over to freemen, which gives the area a nice boost.

Conclusion

While in many ways EU:Rome depicts the Roman world well, and has some very interesting game systems, it does not make for a great game. Part of the attraction of any of Paradox’s games is the sheer number of independent actors (countries) makes the world take life. Instead, there are a few bright lights (Rome, Carthage and the Hellenistic world), a few lesser lights, and a large sea of gray territory. The internal actions of the characters is not enough to make up the lack, and EU:Rome feels bland. It is currently Paradox’s oldest title without a sequel, though fans (myself included) hope that it might still be revisited.

I had been away from computer gaming for a while by the time this one came out, and so had not actually played any of the titles after EU II when my dad introduced me to EU:Rome. I was, naturally, surprised by the number of differences in games that shared a title and a large number of stylistic similarities. As I started moving back into computer gaming, Paradox gave out copies of Crusader Kings for free to help promote the upcoming release of CK II. I had been intrigued by what I had heard on the forums when it first came out, and was very happy with the game now that I got to play it. And I quickly realized that the entire character system I had been surprised by effectively came straight from CK. It was while pondering the different threads of ideas weaving their way through Paradox’s games that I thought of doing a series of reviews to trace these threads.

So this, then, has been the starting point of this review series.

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A Whole New World

by on December 2, 2013 at 2:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the sixth in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay
Crusader Kings: A Dynastic Adventure
Hearts of Iron II: Return Engagement

Paradox Interactive returned to their original empire management series at the beginning of 2007, with the release of Europa Universalis III for PC and Mac. It was a completely re-done game, with plenty of new features, but the scope was reduced back to about three centuries (1453 to 1789). Fairly quickly, two planned expansions were released: Napoleon’s Ambition in late 2007 (which extended the timeframe to 1822) and In Nomine in 2008, which moved the starting date to 1399.

Paradox then released a combined edition called EU III Complete in late 2008, little realizing that fan insistence would later prompt the release of two more expansions. This version covers 423 years, which is the largest scope of any Paradox game yet (no, wait, Crusader Kings II with The Old Gods expansion would be longer). I’ve only played Complete, so this review will purely be about it.

Clausewitz

At the time Hearts of Iron came out in 2001, it was obvious that the game had much the same feel as the preceding two Europa Universalis games, but it was mentioned by Paradox that almost no code had carried over, and they weren’t really the same ‘engine’. I haven’t seen anything about the later games, but I can only assume that as time went on, they got better at doing code that could be re-used in each later game.

In the mid-2000s, they began work on an actual game engine that would be written from the ground up to be expandable and to support all further games they did. This project was named Clausewitz, and has formed the basis of every new game from Paradox since 2007.

The centerpiece of all of Paradox’s games is the map, and the Clausewitz engine featured an all new 3D-rendered map. While it would later become fairly spectacular, it was less than stellar on its first outing. The oddest part is that the provincial borders managed to feel very arbitrary, since they consist of a bunch of straight lines (there is actually a grid pattern that the borders are defined by) that occasionally have odd, meaningless detours, and don’t match any easily discernible boundaries (for instance, none of them follow the courses of rivers visible on the map).

The map is easily zoomable with the mouse scroll-wheel, and while it can zoom in to the point where you are only looking at a couple of provinces, you can’t even see all of Europe at the furthest zoom out. At the closest levels, small trees become visible, while at the further levels even the province names become invisible. Color-coded map modes are still the preferred way to easily display information, and this is improved over the previous games with a striping effect for things like showing that someone has captured a province. Also, there are now color-coded tool tips in many places that let you know what effects are bad (red numbers) and which are good (green).

The general structure of the engine is that every game first brings up a launcher window, from which new updates can be detected and downloaded. Typically, there are no intro movies when the game starts, and as the game loads, instead of a single loading image with a progress bar, a number of paintings go by before bringing up the main menu.

One of the most impressive features of the new game, shared by most of the other games on the Clausewitz engine, is the ability to start at any point in the period the game covers. There are still specific scenarios, but these are just ‘bookmarks’ to particular dates; you can change the date and the year, and watch history unfold in the country selection map.

Simulation vs Recreation

In my review of EU II, I mentioned that much of the game, and especially the events, were built around a sense of ‘acting out’ history. This general idea was followed in most of the rest of their games, but came to an end here.

These events helped generate the feeling of actual historical context, and helped with a ‘living world’ experience… when they worked right. The random bits of history that happen because of events and people outside the scope of the game still happen. However, it was too easy for things to go off the rails, and for these events to never happen, or worse, happen when they were entirely inappropriate to what was actually going on in the game.

In EU III, most of these events were taken out of the game entirely. Also, the old system of getting certain monarchs and leaders on a fixed schedule was scrapped, with new monarchs becoming a random event with random abilities. This removed a certain level of historical interest, but made the game more internally consistent.

Decisions, Decisions

Possibly the biggest new feature in EU III was decisions, which only grew in importance from the initial release to In Nomine. Generally, any nation will see a large list of options available to them, that will offer bonuses and penalties. To be able to take any particular decision, you need to achieve certain prerequisites, and all of this is spelled out clearly in tool-tips for each one.

Decisions exist in three different forms, in three different places in the game. National decisions have their own tab/window in the main interface (shared with missions, below), and can affect most everything in the game. Religious decisions are similarly national in scope, and are listed in the religion tab, while provincial decisions naturally exist in the provincial UI (though there is an alert and ledger page that tells you when there are provincial decisions available).

Many decisions are trade-offs, increased stability for decreased revenue and the like, but others are more straightforward, rewards for achieving certain preconditions. They are a good extra system of ‘customizing’ a country to specific needs, that does not require any continuing input by the player.

Finally, there are a number of nations familiar to us in the twenty-first century that had not fully formed in the fifteenth. Traditionally, EU had events that could form Russia, or turn the Iberian kingdoms into Spain, and that was carried through in EU III. But in In Nomine, these events were turned into decisions. As events, they went off randomly after the (not-visible) requirements had been met. As decisions, they are visible to any country that can qualify for them. These events were turned from a random occurance into something that could be planned for, and implemented at the player’s choosing, instead of waiting for it.

Government

While you technically play as a country in a Europa Universalis game, the government itself was not much of a concept in the original, with lists of historical rulers with abilities judged on historical performance who reign during their historical times being about the limit of definition in the original, and the addition of eight policy sliders in EU II allowed some player personalization.

EU III introduced governmental forms, and the random changeover of rulers. Monarchies and despotisms generally have rulers who serve for life, and the age at which the monarch dies is random, as are the abilities of his heir. Republics have an event every few years that elects a new ruler with a choice between candidates which emphasize each of the primary ruler characteristics.

Initially, there were thirteen different forms of government, these could affect policy changes, how often rulers change, and a few specific bonuses. In Nomine increased the main set to fourteen, and added some special groupings that only interact with the main set through decisions.

Three ‘tribal’ government types which represent the last vestiges of pre-Medieval culture in the world of EU have some policy restrictions, and increased costs to develop technologically. This last is on top of the fact that countries with this government type already belong to a culture that has slower technological advancement. On the other end, a late-game country can undergo a revolution to become a Revolutionary Republic, which gets plenty of powerful events to help out, while also forcing wars with much of Europe.

The policy sliders mentioned above from EU II have stayed the same, but most of the time, you can only adjust them at an even slower rate than the once-per-decade of EU II, as only the most flexible governments can manage that rate. And several governments have restrictions on the slider settings. You aren’t prevented from going past the limits, but revolt risk starts rising sharply if they do.

Another feature added ‘people’ to the government with three advisor slots. Advisors have a lifespan just like rulers, and there is a general pool of available advisors, but when a new one appears, he is only available to one country for a year, and then he will join the general pool, if he has not already been hired. There is a large number of different types of advisors, and each one has an effect on a different part of the government (taxes, technology research, stability, missionary conversions, colonization…). They also have ratings from one to six, and the higher the rating, the higher the hiring cost and monthly salary, but the stronger the effect.

Ideas

The big addition to countries didn’t involve people, but did involve personalization. As government technology increases, idea slots are opened. Ideas are considered fundamental policy decisions, that generally give a bonus to one of the multitude of national statistics.

The number of ideas that a country can have goes up throughout the game, as governmental technology slowly unlocks more slots, up to a maximum of twelve. At the same time, the number of available ideas grows, as they are unlocked by advancing the relevant technology. There are forty ideas in the game, spread across five fields of naval, land, exploration, state, and culture.

Military

Combat still has the same sequence as the original games: alternating fire and shock phases, and each military tech level slightly adjusts the effectiveness of troops in those phases, with fire being useless at the beginning of the game, and slowly overtaking shock effectiveness as the decades roll by.

A lot of other things did change. Troops are no longer just lumped into pools of each type that are attritioned away and replaced with fresh men, but are hired in discrete 1000-man units like every game from Hearts of Iron on. These units are more expensive, but reinforcements are sent to them every month if they are understrength at a rate that depends on the unit’s current situation and the military budget.

Each unit also has a type with its own modifiers for damage and morale in shock and fire combat, with better types becoming available as the game goes on. Each cultural or technological group has its own formations available, so for example, Western cavalry is the best in the early game (late medieval), and late game (Napoleonic), but substandard for much of the rest of the game. The actual performance of a unit is dependent on its type as well as the overall modifier from your current tech level.

The large structural change to combat was the introduction of combat width, but while it was graphically represented, it was never clear nor well explained. In general, the idea is to limit the utility of super-stacks. The width is the maximum frontage (units) an army can put on the line. The two forces line up, and attack their counterparts (only) on the other side until destroyed or forced out of line. Cavalry units (with higher mobility) generally go on the flanks, and if unopposed, are allowed to attack a unit on the other side in the flank, causing it to take more damage than if engaged by just its counterpart. There is a second line behind the main line of each side, and artillery will line up there and and its firepower to the unit in front of it as it attacks its counterpart. A larger army should beat a smaller army, as it will have more units to cycle through the line until the smaller army breaks, but smaller army with superior units and/or leadership only has to take on force of about its own size, and can defeat the parts that can get at it in turn.

Sieges work much the same way as the original games, but instead of mountains and other rough terrain giving a bonus to the defense that makes it harder for the siege to get going, it adds to the defensiveness rating. This rating (which can get national modifiers), causes the amount of time between each siege check to go up, lengthening the entire process that way.

Finally, in the earlier games leaders had also followed a set schedule with statistics based on history. EU III acts a bit more like Victoria, and introduces the concept of Army (and Naval) Tradition, which can be gained through fighting battles, exploration, and a few other activities, but then declines over time. Leaders can then be recruited as desired/needed, and their level of ability depend on the current military tradition.

Rebellions

Like in the original games, one of the major internal pressures on a countries are armed rebellions that can spring up depending on a number of factors. This turns into a monthly chance of a rebellion starting in a particular province, which then must be put down.

And that’s about where it ended originally. When a rebellion happens in EU III, the rebels have a type, which defines their goals, should they not be stopped. The most common types are patriots and nationalists, who either want to join a nearby country, or found a new one, as determined by culture types. But there are peasants who want lower taxes and liberties, zealots who want to change the official religion of the state, and a few other variations.

A final rebel type are pretenders. They have a leader that they want to see on the throne instead of the current ruler, and tribal governments tend get a lot of them (in a succession crisis) every time the ruler changes.

Colonization

As with everything else, EU III both maintains much the same colonization system as the earlier games, and brings new features to it. A very important new feature is that uncolonized provinces have no resource at all. Previously, every province’s trade resource was fixed; now, it is only decided when a colony grows to size 3, and it is randomly chosen from a list of resources appropriate to the region.

The trade post system was dropped, leaving only regular colonies in the game, which operated much the same. In Nomine reworked things a bit. The idea of colonial range was added; the distance from the home country that new colonies could be founded, to keep European powers from grabbing all of Asia too early.

Being able to colonize at all was made dependent on a few national ideas, especially Quest for the New World, which allows exploration, and Colonial Ventures grants a colonist each year (state religion can also generate colonists). In addition to sending out explorers, just owning a province adjacent to terra incognita will eventually reveal the adjacent areas, so countries like Russia can expand across Asia without needing to take the idea.

Conclusion

Europa Universalis III is a sequel game that does not entirely replace the former entry to the series. The shift in philosophy causes a few things to be lost, but in all, this is a much improved game. The graphics are lackluster, and lose some artistic charm, but EU II wasn’t that great looking, and graphics are not at all the point of the game.

Releasing a game with two expansions already planed for within the next year raised some ire and accusations of paying for beta-testing. To a certain extent, this is true. But, I have found that some of the best games are those that go through an intense period of revision with guidance from a large audience. EU III got that in it’s first year, and I think the wide audience feedback allowed In Nomine to be an expansion that really made the game much better than it already was.

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Return Engagement

by on August 22, 2013 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fifth in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay
Crusader Kings: A Dynastic Adventure

Having explored four different eras in their games, Paradox Interactive returned to WWII with their first sequel game, Hearts of Iron II in 2005 for PC and Mac. (I’m considering EU II to be more of a ‘second edition’ then a ‘sequel’ here because of how similar those two games were.)

The World War II era of 1936-1947 proved itself a popular subject once again, and sales of HoI II were very strong, prompting a stand-alone expansion, Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday (which expanded the timeframe to 1953) in 2006. Hearts of Iron II: Armageddon was released as an expansion to Doomsday in 2007, which extended the timeframe to 1963, and provided a couple of odd alternate history scenarios.

In general, HoI II is the same warfare/empire-management game as the original, but with a reworked interface, and some new concepts. I have mostly played the original and Doomsday, so this review will generally be about them.

Interface

Much of HoI II is familiar to someone who has played the first game, but there are numerous areas that are obviously different as well. The first obvious one is the interface; instead of trying to rely entirely on Paradox’s usual map-and-sidebar scheme, a couple of new full-screen ‘folders’ were introduced to manage production and technology in, with yet another folder being added in Doomsday for espionage and intelligence.

Production works largely the same as in the original, but giving it the entire screen makes it much easier to work with the queue and select new things to build. When going through a ‘quiet’ part of the game (before war breaks out), it is quite possible to go for quite some time without looking at the map at all, just managing the details of research and production.

The first game had issues with trying to organize all the units, because the vital statistics of those units were not visible in the dialogs to split units into a second organization, or trade between two of them. This is solved here, with a much more informative display. However, there are still issues with selecting the right two organizations to trade between, and a few other related situations.

An interesting touch is that all nations have their own background image that kind of serves as a ‘wallpaper’ while playing that country. It’s generally nicely understated, and lends a good amount of color, compared to the unrelieved grays of the original.

Scenarios

While almost all play of any Paradox game is the Grand Campaign, which starts at the earliest date possible, and then goes through the end date of the game, there are always a few scenarios that start later. WWII is always good for this, as there’s a number of obvious start dates to cover well-known parts of the war.

However, HoI II also has a good number of very small scenarios that just use part of the map, and have fairly tight win-lose conditions. There’s sixteen of these, ranging from classic subjects like the Battle of the Bulge, and Barbarossa, to lesser known situations, such as the Winter War. Also, there’s a few ‘alternate history’ scenarios like the conquest of Czechoslovakia, the invasion of Japan, and the Planitean War—an Axis-aligned Argentina vs Allied Brazil.

I haven’t gone through most of these, but many, like Fall Grün (Czechoslovakia), don’t seem have much for one side to do, since the defense mostly needs to sit tight, and often can’t counterattack effectively.

The first expansion, as well as extending the time frame into the early Cold War, added an alternate history regular scenario: “Doomsday”. The Soviet Union attacks the western Allies on October 2, 1945, while the Soviet Army is at its greatest strength, and before the United States can build too many atomic bombs.

A fairly odd wrinkle is that while all saved games have a flag displayed next to them showing what country you were playing as, not only can you pick another country to play as when you load the game, but the country you were playing is not even selected by default.

Revised Resources & Production

Mostly, HoI II uses the same resource model as the original, but there are some significant differences. It is both simplified and expanded, with rubber being traded out for ‘rare materials’, and money is added as a sixth resource. Coal was generalized into energy, while oil, steel, and supplies remained the same, including the ability to turn some energy into oil.

Overall, there is no way to increase the total production of raw materials, since unlike the first game, improving infrastructure has no effect on the amount of raw materials produced in a province. Supplies and consumer goods must be produced with some of the nation’s industrial capacity (IC) as before, but now, consumer goods not only are used to keep the population content, but they generate money, which is needed for research and diplomacy.

An annoying part of the original was having to send units back into the production queue to be upgraded. Instead, there is now a production slider for upgrades, and when there are units capable of being upgraded, it will tell you how much IC is needed for maximum effort, and when units receive their needed IC investment they get upgraded in the field. Also, there is now a similar production slider for the reinforcements needed across all units, instead of having to select individual ones and spend supplies to reinforce. This spreads things out across all your armed forces, but you can mark particular units to be first in line.

Movement is Combat

Usually, in any area-based game, units move from one area to another, and when they arrive, they engage in combat with any defenders present. Paradox’s games have followed this same pattern.

But in HoI II, this was reversed. Moving into a province with enemy defenders starts a combat immediately (you can still set a particular time, as in the first game), and if the attack succeeds the units start moving in, and the enemy starts retreating out of the province.

This makes coordination of forces easier to accomplish than in the original game, and introduces a number of other wrinkles, most of which are good. For instance, if you have a second province that borders one where an enemy attack is coming from you can attack it from there, causing the enemy forces to take losses from two battles at once, nicely emulating a counter-attack into the flank of the advancing forces.

Also, one of the listings the side bars can be switched to is a list of current battles. This makes it easy to see what’s going on, and how well battles are going at a glance. Any air support against troops you’re attacking is a separate entry, so the list can get cluttered. However, there’s a separate icon for each type of battle that makes that easy to sort out.

However, when an attack succeeds it takes time to move in and take it. Often, there are a few enemy units that were already moving towards the province, and they will end up arriving in the province piecemeal before your troops arrive, who then have to be defeated. It’s not a major problem, but you end up with a bunch of extra battle notices as things get ‘cleaned up’.

Zones

In HoI II, units can be issued any number of orders. These may be ‘move’ or ‘attack’, or even ‘support attack’, but there’s a number of different specialized options as well. Naval units can patrol an area, bombers can be sent on strategic or tactical bombing missions, transports set to transport units (which automatically returns them to their home base after dropping off the transported units).

Many of these missions (like strategic bombing) are not targeted at a specific province, but rather a zone, which is a group of 4-5 provinces. This allows things like air cover and naval patrols to be set up in a general sense, without having to constantly retarget strategic bombing, or try to react to enemy air strikes individually, or go through the process of hand-creating a patrol pattern every time. Generally, you can also set how long the mission will last, and how much damage can be sustained before breaking it off and going home for R&R.

In general, the idea is sound, and it handles naval patrols, air superiority and strategic bombing fairly well. But managing air power in the close attack role can still be quite a chore, and the ‘zoning’ of those missions may mean they never hit the particular target you had in mind.

Government

Instead of a tri-polar space representing government ideology, HoI II borrows the political sliders from EU II. This is more flexible than the system in the first game, but how they interact with the three main alliances (Axis, Allies, Commintern) of the game is not always as obvious. There’s seven sliders, each of which moves between two opposing ideologies, with it being possible to move one slider one step every six month. Like in the first game, it is possible to try and influence another nation’s policies diplomatically, and that takes the form (with a lot of effort) of moving policy sliders for that country.

Two of the sliders determine the main ideology of the government: democratic/authoritarian and political left/right. The minister system from the first game is pretty much entirely intact here, but certain ministers can only be used with appropriate government types, which is again determined by those two sliders.

The next four mostly generate bonus or penalties in production, and things like partisan movements (which are mostly handled abstractly), and unit effectiveness. The last slider is interventionism/isolationism, and determines how hard it is to go to war. In the first game, democratic countries start out unwilling to go to war, and effectively had a timer on them that counted down to war, which could be influenced by how nice or badly the Axis and Commintern powers were behaving. In this game, countries gain beligerency for going to war, or annexing another country. Countries that are isolationist can only declare war on countries that have built up a certain amount of beligerency, and will have a certain amount of internal dissent when they do. The more extreme positions have increased costs for diplomacy, and even the inability to do some diplomatic functions, in exchange for generally improved relations with everyone.

Technology

The technology system is both very similar, and yet completely redone from the original game. There are a large number of advancements, in the same eight fields (plus ‘secret projects’) as before. However, these are almost all concrete things in and of themselves, and do not have the complex interrelationships of HoI.

Instead, each technology is split into five components, which each have a difficulty rating and field of study. You choose a research team, or company, to develop the technology, and they all have specialties in various fields of study (each team will have one to five specialties, and there is a large number of different specialties in the game), and then you pay them to develop it; running short of cash will halt progress.

Originally, technology was researched purely by IC investment, and you could undertake as many projects as you wished to devote capacity to. Now, there is a hard limit of how many teams can be assigned at once, and that limit can be from one to five, depending on the current IC of the country.

Even aside from the rework of research, there’s some further differences of note. Tank development was poorly handled in the first game, moving from light tanks, to mediums, to heavies in a logical, and completely ahistorical, progression. Now, early heavies come first, accompanied by light tanks, and they move on to medium tanks, along with more advanced versions of all three. Better yet, heavy tanks are actually brigades, sub-units that can be attached to the normal divisions. This represents early-war infantry tanks attached to infantry divisions well (something the first game completely failed at), and the fact that late-war heavy tanks also almost never appeared in divisional strength as well.

In fact, the brigade system is taken advantage of to good effect in HoI II. Later light tanks move from being divisions to being brigades, making them replacements for armored cars, and representing their use as recon units. Instead of trying to manage air units being loaded onto an aircraft carrier, there are Carrier Air Group ‘brigades’ that are attached to the carrier directly, and each new carrier technology allows the construction/upgrade of newer CAGs as well as a new class of carrier. In Doomsday, escort fighters go from being separate units to being brigades for attaching to bombers.

Overall, the system is a bit better, and the units that result are a better thought out, however, not seeing the interrelationships between fields is a bit disappointing.

Espionage

HoI II: Doomsday added the all-new mechanic of intelligence gathering and espionage. Generally speaking, you can attempt to place spies in other countries (or defensively in your own), who will then start informing you of the ‘highlights’ of that country’s actions. Most notably, you’ll start getting an idea of what that country is researching, and (with enough spies) how their progress is going. You can also get an assessment of what the country is concentrating on (paying attention to naval power, developing an air force, etc.), which I assume only works right with AI nations (though it might be peeking at the production queue).

With a number of spies available in a country, you can try more active tasks, such as trying to steal the blueprints of a technology you don’t have, assassinating a particular minister (and his bonus), raising dissent, and a number of others.

The typical problems of espionage in strategy games are present here: The odds of success for the simpler tasks are low enough to be frustrating to try and perform, and have a decent chance of alerting the target. Building up to the point where it’s possible to try the more active tasks takes time, and generally has an even lower chance of success. Also, while this is the period where espionage came into its own (with the creation of the OSS, and similar organizations, and of course the Cold War), none of this in is shown in the game. In the end, between the low odds, and the need to manage it all in detail, it ends up feeling easier to ignore than try to gain much real benefit out of.

Conclusion

Hearts of Iron was in many ways the most problematic and most successful of Paradox’s early games, so the desire to revisit it made a lot of sense. HoI II still has the problems of being a game on a period I know well, and a game that can demand attention in a horde of places at once in a real-time format, but many of the problems of the original are improved on here, if not always solved.

Certainly, the changes in interface and production were needed and very welcome. I consider the changes to how technology works to be a mixed bag. Assigning teams to work on a technology project should lead to some interesting tradeoffs, but generally doesn’t. The little sub-projects feel like there should be some in common, so finishing one of them would grant a bonus elsewhere, but don’t.

However, the revised unit line up, with the ‘brigades’ handling more functions (especially in Doomsday) is a big improvement. Armor development and deployment acts more like it should, carriers are much easier to work with, and the integrated escort fighters start simplifying the over-fiddly air system.

For me, this game still isn’t as good as Europa Universalis II, or Victoria, or Crusader Kings, but it is nearly as good as they are, instead of being too clunky to truly enjoy, which was true of the original.

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A Dynastic Adventure

by on August 9, 2013 at 8:53 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the fourth in a series of reviews of Paradox’s empire management games. See the earlier reviews here:
Europa Universalis II: A Tale of Two Europas
Hearts of Iron: Europa of Iron
Victoria: Nineteenth Century Essay

After two successes, and one failure in the market, Paradox Interactive continued to look at doing further empire management games. They got a request from their publisher to produce one on the medieval era, and after some consultation, they came up with a general plan for a new game, which became Crusader Kings in 2004. While not in the league of Europa Universalis II or Hearts of Iron, it apparently sold reasonably well for PC and Mac.

After the success of the Victoria: Revolutions expansion, a final patch that had never left beta was picked up, polished off, and some all-new features added. This was released as the download-only expansion Deus Vult in 2007. This added the alerts that had been introduced in Revolutions, a windowed mode and advanced resolution support was added, so the game could be run on modern LCD screens in their native resolution (1280×1024 had always been the maximum available resolution before). I’ve only played Crusader Kings with the expansion, so this review will be about the final version.

The new game was both very similar, and very different from Paradox’s previous games. While keeping with the normal pauseable real-time format, you do not control a country, but rather a person. This person may be a count, duke or king, he may or may not have a liege-lord, but he will have experiences, age, and eventually die. And then the game will pass you on to his heir. If you have a landed heir of your dynasty, that is. If you do not, it’s Game Over.

So, the goal in the game is to enhance the power and prestige of your dynasty. The exact country you play can change over time as titles are lost or gained. This isn’t a role-playing game, it is still an empire management game, but the emphasis on people does give it more of a role-playing flair, and a very different feel than Paradox’s earlier efforts.

Music

Paradox’s games had typically featured soundtracks full of music from the time period of the game. In fact, EU II would switch track lists in different centuries. This, of course, mostly equated to classical music for the soundtrack. However, medieval music is not generally familiar to modern ears, and Paradox decided to commission an original soundtrack for this game, composed by Inon Zur, and this has now become their usual practice (though with a different composer, Andreas Waldetoft, for most if not all later titles).

Considering it is a long game, it would be nearly impossible for the soundtrack to not eventually get repetitive, but it is a good soundtrack with some nice pieces.

Kings & Things

As mentioned, people are the main focus of CK, and they all have nine primary features: Four prime attributes: Martial, Intrigue, Diplomacy, and Stewardship; two hidden attributes, fertility and health; and then three ‘currencies’: money, prestige, and piety. All characters also have a portrait, a culture, and a religion.

Each character also has a rank. Since this is still an empire management game, the major players are the landed nobility in charge of the actual provinces on the map. CK uses a simplified and rationalized version of feudal structure with kings, dukes and counts, along with a number of variant terms (culturally defined) for those same ranks. There will also be a number of un-landed persons in the courts of these nobles, who are all termed courtiers (even if they are the heir-apparent to a throne). There are five posts to hand out to these courtiers, along with possibly granting landed titles to them. The first four offices each correspond to the the four primary attributes of a character, so that the sum of the courtier’s appropriate ability and the lord’s ability are what determine the realm’s effectiveness in that field.

And there is a trait system. Traits come in about four different types, and can affect all the attributes of a character (including the hidden ones), and give an idea of what the person is like. The most general traits show on the character screen as a green dot with a symbol on it, and may be gained and lost freely through events. Most of them have an ‘antithesis’ trait, that will remove an existing trait if the antithesis is gained. There are a small number of negative statuses with red symbols such as ‘stressed’ and ‘wounded’ that can evolve into worse statuses. For instance ‘stressed’ can go away on it’s own, or it could descend into ‘depressed’, which not only has even worse attribute modifiers, but can cause an event to fire where the character kills himself. There are traits on blue shield symbols that largely represent life choices and the like, such as celibate, and the extremely dangerous realm duress, which represents a contested succession, with a high likelihood of all vassals trying to declare independence.

Most events (using the same engine as earlier Paradox games) affect characters. An unused courtier may decide to move to another court. You may be tempted by a pretty face (a bastard son will have trouble inheriting, but it beats no son at all). You may gain a new rival, or friend, or fall in love with your wife, or gain her as a bitter enemy.

Feudalism

Kings can hold dukes and counts as vassals to himself, and dukes can have counts as vassals. Each province on the map is really a county, with an associated count title and coat of arms. The duchies and kingdoms also have their own coats of arms. There is a map mode that shows the relationships between a lord and his vassals and liege, but isn’t as informative as it could be, since there is (for instance) no one view of all the separate duchies (with their vassal counts) in a kingdom, leaving you to remember who is who’s vassal.

There is a fair amount of possible skulduggery related to titles. You can fabricate a claim to a county (at a cost in Prestige), and then demand control of the county—usually by war. In fact, to go to war with someone, you generally need such a claim. Peace negotiations revolve around acknowledging claims, giving up claims, money, and possibly forcing the other power to become a vassal.

Duke and king titles are associated with certain areas, and if they are not currently in use, you can create the title if you hold the associated area and spend money for the privilege (and a gain in prestige). If someone else holds the title, but you hold the associated area, you can create a claim by virtue of your holdings, and then go to war to force the holder to give up the title.

Finally, a lord can keep direct control of his counties (his demense), but there is a maximum size before the game starts penalizing the lord with reduced taxes and troops (and any vassals the lord does have will become unhappy), encouraging proper division of lands. The amount a lord can directly control depends on his intrigue skill (without counting his spymaster), modified by the time period (later parts of the game allow larger demenses), and the lord’s title (kings can control more than dukes who can control more than counts).

Counties

The county is the basic territorial unit (/province), and has a few things to manage in its own right. Unlike other Paradox games, you do not recruit military units at all. Instead, each county has its own muster. Normally, this stays at home in the county and costs you nothing. However, when you muster the fighting men of the county, they appear on the map as a unit, and you start paying them money.

You can always do what you want with the musters of any county you directly control, but those of your vassals can be another question. If the muster isn’t already serving the lord, you can directly muster it for yourself, if the vassal is loyal enough, and doing so will tend to decrease his loyalty. You can also ask that vassal to muster his troops for you, which will still place them under your control, but it will take a few days to get a response, and he may refuse.

Each county will have a maximum unit size (which will vary), and when the muster isn’t called out, it will gradually replenish to its maximum size. However, this does not happen while it is in the field, so the muster can start out large, but will slowly be reduced by attrition, and can be very quickly reduced by a losing battle, leaving large field armies mere shadows of themselves.

There are four classes that make up the population of a county: peasants, burgers, clergy and nobility. Each one has a certain amount of power in the county, and as the power of the lower two classes increase, more taxes will be collected, and the size of the county’s muster will increase. Increasing the power of the nobility will grant prestige bonuses, and the power of the clergy piety bonuses; increasing them will yield fewer, more effective troops.

Technology

Counties can also have a number of improvements built in them. What can be built will depend on the technology in the county. As the game progresses, and technology builds up, the number of available improvements gets quite large. Some of these will generate extra gold, some will expand the size of the muster, some help the spread of technology; the number of different effects (not all visible to the user) is quite large.

Technology is not so much researched in this game, as it spreads. You can decide to concentrate on certain subjects, which gives a continuing chance at improvement in that field, but that only affects your capital. The normal mechanism is that when a county possesses a technology, it will eventually spread to adjacent counties on its own. There are three main fields of advancements (military, economic, culture) with a number of different fields in each, and then five levels in each field.

Combat and Sieges

The muster of a county consists of seven different types of soldiers: heavy and light infantry and cavalry (well, knights instead of heavy cavalry), pikemen, archers, and horse archers. That last category does not actually appear in normal armies. Only Mongol and Arab armies have the capability of fielding horse archers, leaving the Christian armies to suffer under their mobile firepower. Combat itself loops through four different phases where first the archers attack, then the light units join in, and then all troops get to attack with archery at half effectiveness (for two phases, front and flank).

Beyond the number of troop types, and increase in the number of phases, combat works much like usual in Paradox games. Once the battle is joined, events are out of the player’s hands, and the battle is decided by the troops, the leaders, and the terrain. There is morale that will force an army to retreat, and will take time to recover after a battle, but this is only visible during a battle, so it can be hard to tell if an army is actually effective at this moment, or will just run away shortly after the battle in joined.

Military technologies generally represent the adoption of later equipment and grant bonuses for various troop types. Though, while the bonuses are spelled out in the game, the base figures are not, so it is hard to get a handle on just how much meaning these bonuses have.

Taking control of a county follows much the same model as in Victoria; once a county is invested with enemy troops, there is a constant progress bar of how the siege of the local castle is proceeding. Castle types improve with technology, and start with a cheap and simple hill fort (really a motte-and-bailey castle), expensive and time consuming huge castles. Each level of fortification of course takes more time (and men) to besiege, but they also ‘push back’ the progress on a random basis. A force might get halfway through a siege, but lose so many men to attrition, that the push back starts dominating, and the progress will reverse until reinforcements can be brought to bear.

Finally, it is worth noting that seapower is absent from the game. Instead of building fleets and transports, troops automatically embark ships and set sail any time you tell them to cross water. This costs money, and the travel is quite slow. Unfortunately, the pathing tends to be too eager to send musters on expensive sea voyages, so it can take some management to avoid.

The Crusades

One common complaint against Crusader Kings is that you can only play Christian powers. However, this was an intelligent design decision, since, with one exception (the Kingdom of Nubia), this keeps players away from ‘edge of the world’ problems, as limits of the map are either ocean, or occupied by non-Christian powers.

The game does split between Catholic and Orthodox countries, though Catholicism gets most of the attention. The fifth councilor is the head of your local church, and he determines your relations with the Papacy. When the current pope dies, a new one is selected, and the court closest to the new Pope becomes the ‘Papal controller’, who can try to have enemies excommunicated and the like. Having good relations with the Papacy helps you get this position.

A major preoccupation of the Christian powers in this period were, of course, the Crusades. In-game, the Pope will occasionally call a Crusade (which is a random event, and not controlled by anyone, even the Papal controller), with a particular goal (Jerusalem, Cairo, etc.). As long as the Crusade is active, there is a monthly hit to your piety (which often just counters your normal gain), but any piety rewards for fighting infidels are increased; taking the target of the Crusade can be very lucrative in terms of your piety rating.

There’s some problems with the system, though it apparently was re-worked for the expansion to cut down on the randomness of Crusade targets. However, it still feels arbitrary. And that, of course, is because it is. It a pure AI/random decision, only constrained by what places are currently ruled by Moslems. There’s no sense of the politics or strategic considerations that drove many decisions with the later Crusades, and it it actually feels foreign to the rest of the game because of that.

The Mongols

The Mongols of course, conquered much of the eastern portions of Europe and parts of the Middle East during the 13th century, and in the game they show up about on time, via events that populate the fringes of the map with large armies that have several advantages.

Their military technology is fairly high, giving them most of the combat bonuses. They take over a province as soon as they finish besieging the castle. They have no domain limit to reduce the effectiveness of a large realm.

This means that once established, the two Mongol states (Golden Horde for the eastern Europe armies, and Il-khanate for the Middle Eastern armies) can easily become a potent force, and a big problem for everyone else. However, they are religious enemies for everyone, making declarations of war easy, and eventually they will be forced to adopt gavelkind succession, which splits the realm up between heirs, and the successor states will not have the demense bonus.

History

I’ve long thought about doing a game on warfare in the Middle Ages. You’d spend a lot of time trying to gather money so that you could afford to pay your troops for one season. One of the high points of CK for me is the fact that you do not have standing armies. And indeed, money goes up in peacetime (you hope) and down in wartime.

While the game does shift the focus from countries to dynasties, it’s still a bit empty. There are friends and rivals, but no real feel of factions, and dynastic infighting. The simplified version of feudalism does not allow for the entanglements of a vassal having more than one lord (or the classic case of William the Conquerer being King of England in his own right, but also owing fealty to the King of France for his Norman possessions.

But even if Crusader Kings is not the most historical game possible on the subject, it still gets things right that a lot of other games (especially the technically medieval-based fantasy conquest games) get absolutely wrong about the period. It isn’t the in-depth examination of period society that Victoria is, and it isn’t the close technical examination that Hearts of Iron is, but I think it gets the job done very effectively.

Conclusion

Strategy games journalist Troy Goodfellow once said that Crusader Kings wasn’t Paradox’s best game, but it was his favorite from them (this was in 2011, before CK II came out), and while I’m not sure what my favorite Paradox game would be, I can well understand his sentiment.

Once again, Paradox showed that they could take the same basic game structure, and deliver a very different feel. From the grand sweep of empires across the globe in Europa Universalis, to the very detailed study of society and internal politics of Victoria, this time the game has a very personal feel. It isn’t a role-playing game, and cannot be mistaken for one, as there are no real characters here, and no dialog, no spark of life behind the actors on the stage. But the actors are there, and they are people, and not countries.

The common failure of most grand strategy games is to ignore the centrifugal forces that act against larger structures, while preserving most of their advantages. In CK, keeping a large kingdom together for any length of time can a harder accomplishment than conquering the world in a game like EU. It isn’t a detail-oriented simulation like Victoria, but it is much more successful at delivering the feel of the era.

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