I like ACOUP blog for its incessant effort to clarify things and dispel myths.
People tend to have skewed perceptions of the Medieval era. Prior to the development of the cannon (which enabled easier conquest of castles), absolutism wasn't really a thing. The king was the ruler, yes, but he wasn't able to rule against the wishes of the nobility or the high clergy; the risk of being deposed or killed in a rebellion was just too big. At the very least, his vassals could just abandon him and withdraw into their own castles, and there wasn't any easy way to force them out.
> The king was the ruler, yes, but he wasn't able to rule against the wishes of the nobility or the high clergy; the risk of being deposed or killed in a rebellion was just too big. At the very least, his vassals could just abandon him and withdraw into their own castles, and there wasn't any easy way to force them out.
The French solved this problem, partially, simply by having a sizable domaine royal (“demesne” in CK terms) in Île-de-France and Orléanais. While they were still subject to Godly edict, they certainly had a more tug-of-war relationship than Kingdoms more subject to their vassal’s whims.
> What is fascinating about CKIII is that one could easily argue that legitimacy is the central theme of the game, that most of the player’s efforts within a realm are focused on building their own legitimacy or undermining the legitimacy of others.
In this respect I would argue CKIII is the most realistic of political simulations and appears to capture modern day politics exquisitely.
> appears to capture modern day politics exquisitely.
I agree, and it captures an essential element of human nature as well.
I believe crusader kings made me better engineer. Learning that even monarchs and lord's had to influence their vassels and peers gave me a new perspective on leadership. Any leader should consider if their interests align with their allies, subordinates, and colleagues. If they do not, those groups might not obey orders, even if the command is 'legal' and from an authority.
The most effective actions for a group come not from commands by authority but mutual interest and shared values.
I'm reminded of George RR Martin's quote (spoken by Varys) that "Power resides where men believe it resides." Over time technology makes it easier for small numbers of people to control larger numbers, and eventually I expect AI to bring that principle to its logical conclusion, but for now, Varys's observation remains the foundation of modern society in most places.
So then, why did Stannis fail? He was too worried appearing powerful, preferring either Seaworth or Missandei to speak for him?
A Song of Ice and Fire is based upon simple observations about politics, yet I doubt ever increasing centralization or technology will lead to control over belief. I think the future will be powered by disagreements.
Skipping through this blogpost and reading a little about it, Crusader Kings III seems to more or less identical to Europa Universalis IV. What is the difference between these two games? Seems it's the same publisher and almost like it's the very same engine, just somewhat different... Anyone with a grasp of both of them care to compare them?
As a big Paradox GSG fan, I can safely say that despite visual similarities between Hearts of Iron, Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis, Imperator and Victoria, the games are entirely different.
Crusader Kings deals a lot with individual characters, their relationship, and has a lot more roleplaying in it. You can have a character that starts as a count in say Germany, and because of inheritance and marriage you set up your son to inherit Poland so when you die you are now playing the king of poland and your brother is ruling that county in Germany. The combat, trade, province development, etc is much lighter.
Europa Universalis is much more focused no war and map painting, its basically a complicated game of Risk. There is more focused on trade routes, and developing your nations provinces. But you just play a country, you can change dynasties or change to a republic. It doesn't really matter. You might change the country you are playing, say if you start as the Duchy of Milan, and you conquer Italy and crown yourself the Kingdom of Italy. But there's always a direct line.
Imperator is a Roman era game that is a mix of these two ideas, more character interactions but more focused on the country.
Victoria is an 1800s victorian era game that is really focused a lot more on technologies, ideology, and economics. You play a country and Its about industrialization and colonization and trade. The war is usually a bit more simplified, but the economy is a lot more in depth with resources being consumed to create new resources for production.
Hearts of Iron you also play a country but in WWII. But its also relatively simplified economy and ruling of a country. Instead you focus on conquering and has the most in depth war mechanics where you are really managing a lot of minutae of battle lines.
Seriously though thanks for this. I picked up EUIII a little while ago and also Crusader Kings, but couldn't work out how either of them worked really. Stellaris took me a little while, but I got there. I think you might have convinced me to pick up Victoria.
Victoria II is my favorite personally, and Victoria III is coming soon. Victoria is the only strategy game that has made just internal economic development interesting.
I like Stellaris, but its more of a standard 4x game so I didn't feel the need to include it. If you've played Galactic Civilization, Civilization, Sins of A Solar Empire, Sword of the Stars, Endless Space, etc. You pretty much understand stellaris I think.
Would you recommend picking up Vic II as largely a finished (and probably heavily discounted) game with all the DLC, or should I pick up Vic III when it comes out?
Victoria 2 is a very good game, and you can get it fairly cheaply (5€ when I bought it on steam), so it is well worth the money.
That said it is a very old game, and it shows in terms of functionality and game play.
If you’re just getting started when it comes to paradox games, and you're looking to victoria, then I'd recommend waiting until the 25th of this month when victoria 3 comes out, and get that instead.
It will have issues, but will be much more familiar to a "modern gamer" than the 10+ year old victoria 2.
If you enjoy Stellaris, the mechanics are similar on a base level. Ultimately, almost anyone is fairly novice at Paradox (and, grand strategy in general) games for the first few runs. Mastering the mechanics is part of what fans enjoy, so it might be worth it to just play and learn. All of the games have deep wikis to help you along with understanding the mechanics (religion, influence, wars, relations, etc).
I'd recommend starting with the first blogpost of this series (https://acoup.blog/2022/09/16/collections-teaching-paradox-c...) - it's a good read! It delves into the differences with other Paradox games - the second paragraph is actually a short answer to your question:
This first part is going to focus on the way that Crusader Kings understands rule and rulers. This in particular is a fascinating place to start because unlike all of the other Paradox grand strategy titles, Crusader Kings III doesn’t actually feature any states in the narrow sense of the word; none of these rulers have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. This is an enormous difference between CK3 and its sibling games and well worth diving into.
The Crusader Kings series focuses primarily on individuals, their traits, their dynasty, managing your court and vassals, rather than focusing on nations. This means that the game is less of a grand strategy title, and more of a role-playing game. At it's core, you scheme, you wage war and you play the diplomacy game by marrying and allying.
I just had a playthrough in CK2 AGOT (A Song of Ice and Fire mod), where I role-played as a lunatic obsessed with religion, burning people, sleeping with other people's wives and having incest relations to expand my bloodline while keeping it pure. Vanilla CK2 (and CK3) are all about this moment to moment character driven gameplay.
EU doesn't really focus on the individuals as much, and it's more of a traditional RTS game if you will, with resource managing as its core, rather than character roleplay.
EDIT: Should probably mention that the time period is also very different, but mechanically, they're different games. Same with Hearts of Iron or Victoria. They all look somewhat similar, but they all have their own quirks that set them apart from each other in terms of gameplay.
In EU4 you control a country. In CK3 you control a dynasty, one ruler at a time.
EU4 plays like a complex but fairly “normal” strategy game in a pseudo historical setting. CK3 is more focused on managing your complex web of feudal relationships. Almost dating-sim.
My best game of CK, I started as a minor a Norwegian noble and slowly worked my way up to becoming king of Norway, also owning part of Denmark. But I pissed off too many other nobles along the way, and they schemed with my brother to depose me in favor of him. I then went on a 20 year revenge spree to assassinate all of his heirs and inherit the kingdom back from him!
I recall the trailer for one of the CK2 expansions had a bullet point feature that could really only happen in CK: “SEDUCE YOUR RELATIVES!”
In short, in EU4 you play as a country, and in CK3 you play as an individual of a dynasty (i.e. everything is much more "personal" in CK3). But understanding the gameplay mechanics of one Paradox game is definitely useful to also understand the others (my "journey" so far was CK3 => EU4 => HOI4). Still, those three games provide a very different 'gameplay experience'.
What I'd like to know is if CK3 really is getting over CK2, which has had so many years of expansion content that I'm not sure how the newer title could promise other than a better interface, more graphics, and wacky heresies.
Paradox games have a bad habit of being overwhelmed by the cruft of their expansions, and CK2 was no exception. The game is phenomenal, but there are so many different unrelated systems (and systems in the vanilla game to support the DLC) that it can be incomprehensible.
CK3 so far has taken the best insights of those expansions (dynasty/bloodline maintenance, personal armies, skill specialization) and integrated them into the main game. The DLC has been a coin toss whether it is so well-tied-in (I think the culture-molding mechanic is less awkward than the throne room and artifacts or the iberian politics that somehow everyone on earth is privy to).
CK2 was really starting to strain under the weight of those expansions. The idea of just re-implementing the thing but with the knowledge of the ending scope seems quite promising (haven't had a chance to check it out, though).
In short, outside of the time period, CK3 is focused on characters, rulers of kingdoms, counts etc. Whereas EU4 has that aspect very much abstracted away (you embody the state not a person)
It makes CK3 a mix of RPG and strategy.
People tend to have skewed perceptions of the Medieval era. Prior to the development of the cannon (which enabled easier conquest of castles), absolutism wasn't really a thing. The king was the ruler, yes, but he wasn't able to rule against the wishes of the nobility or the high clergy; the risk of being deposed or killed in a rebellion was just too big. At the very least, his vassals could just abandon him and withdraw into their own castles, and there wasn't any easy way to force them out.