Dammit

[Arryn]

Boron said:
did you play all paradox games with the newest patches ?

Yes, I have.

Boron said:
in eu 1.08 you earn much less money and inflation is harder to combat . diplo sliders are much better too .
so it becomes a bit more challenging .

Those are peripheral issues to other things that are fundamentally wrong with the game, the worst being the AI.

Boron said:
hoi in 1.06 the greatly improved the ai .

I play HoI with 1.06c and CORE 0.84. CORE makes the game much more realistic and challenging, yet it still falls far short of being truly challenging in SP. Unlike Dom 2.

Boron said:
finally curious about vicky :
with 1.03b the latest patch i played it it was quite good most bugs were gone .

My BF disagrees, and he still plays the game (unlike me).

Boron said:
what i hate with all paradox games that they only force you indirect to not grow too big too soon .
not the ai stops you but in eu 2 revolutions from different religions + really huge stability costs .
in vicky the same but more severe .

There are some really ugly and ridiculously unrealistic/ahistorical things that happen in Vicky after the turn of the century if you're deemed by the AI(s) as a "threat".

IMO, Paradox is very good at conceptualizing / designing games, but not very good at implementing them. Their biggest shortcoming is a marked lack of usability testing, which would quickly reveal the numerous UI flaws in their games. They also desperately need someone with experience in AI (preferably neural-net AI). Of course, people with experience in AI are in severely short supply in the entire gaming industry. It's just that the games that most need good AI (ie: strategy games) are often the ones with the worst AIs. Probably has something to do with the genre's popularity and typical budgets.

Boron said:
the only game which comes close here to dominions 2 is master of orion 2 (perhaps space empires is similiar i haven't played it though because iirc it is realtime and i prefer turn based )

SE4 is TB. So is GalCiv. You should try both.

The Last RT grand strategy game I played (prior to EU/EU2/HoI/Vicky) was Star Wars Rebellion. A game that should have been TB. RT brought nothing good to the game. Especially since the morons who made the game didn't allow for orders while the game was paused.