Changing History with the help of Paradox and Creative Assembly

[Material Defender]

Is it a rare trait to be amused by doing things like helping the Aztecs rise against the Spanish as the HRE or trying to fight sexism in Middle ages Europe?

Or am are there others around who Enjoy this kind of historical revision kind of games? I tend to prefer Paradox games for the historical revision and other things, but Creative Assembly can provide amusing moments.

Creative Assembly's Total War series and Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis series Are the main two I'm speaking on, apologies for not linking. Crusader Kings 2 I've also been playing.

[Saturn500]

Link, please?

[Sandafluffoid]

I agree wholeheartedly. One of the things I am particularly fond of about EUIII is the ability to take a historically insignificant country like Albania, and, if you're very good, carve it into a regional or even a great power. Doing that rocks. I also love the Total War series for providing wonderful moments like seeing the Pope and his five remaining guards charging headlong into a sea of moorish spears.

Also for anyone who doesn't know, we're talking about the Creative Assembly's Total War series and Paradox Interactive's Europa Universalis series. Paradox Interactive's Crusader kings and Victoria series might also count.

[Material Defender]

Link, please?

Harg blarg. Apologies. Yeah, links up now. Games, games.

[largeham]

I like both series, but I was turned off TW after the disaster that was Empire. I hope any future TW game could try and introduce some of the strategic options/features available in PI games.

[Material Defender]

Shogun 2 is generally regarded as a return to form and they revamped the AI to be a lot more difficult and critical. Helped by making it tighter, but they proved that they have the chops to handle a looser game like Empire by doing the fall of the samurai expansion and how it was handled. Only probably I have is that shogun, ultimately, is like fighting inside a box. Whoodedoo, I took over Japan! Can I go invade Korea now?

Main reason they fell on their faces with Empire is simple. Biting off too much. They tried to create naval combat, revamp land combat for the Enlightenment era, create a tech system, create colonial systems, and handle a more complex diplomacy system where you could actually tell things. They gave themselves three years and they still felt the entire thing was a major struggle. Doing a revolution on that scale again they feel is loonacy.

I feel like a CK or EU game with TW like tactical combats could be pretty interesting, especially since with CK you could have people who dislike you decide to sit back with their forces! Or other things like that! Just designing something like that would probably make the designers of either game scream at me and run away drooling.

[Cloud3514]

You can also change history in similar ways with the Civilization series. I love making the Vikings a super power in the 21st century.

[Sandafluffoid]

My problem with the Civ games is it feels, especially in the later eras, like all the civilisations are just cut-and-paste without much really to characterise them. WWII vikings should be awesome, but more often than not it ends up more as "generic purple death stack attacks generic modern city". That and the ugliness of a built up map. I've not played Civ V, but it does look like it improves this a bit. Honestly though, I would recommend Rise of Nations as something like Civ, but done better.

Really though, no game has properly hit all my buttons. I love EUIII for the ability to go in depth into my country, and see real meaningful changes in the world outside our borders, but it lacks what I think is TW's greatest strength, the opportunity to really see my armies marching out of the grand cities I've built.

[Meshakhad]

Wow. I entered this forum for the EXACT PURPOSE of posting about my EU3 game.

Anyway, the year is 1460. Scotland has been conquered by England. The Kingdom of France is disintegrating. Burgundy is the major power in France, and the minor ones are Normandy, Tolouse, and the generally reclusive Bretons, who have just colonized Greenland and have their eyes on the New World.

In my Crusader Kings 2 game (on hold until my desktop gets its act together), Navarre has risen to the top tier of Spanish powers, absorbing most of northeast Spain under the rule of the capable (and gender-equitable) Harrington dynasty. To make matters more interesting, the current heir, Faith Harrington, is also the Duchess of Anjou, and I imagine will split off from France and make Anjou Navarran territory. Of course, things WOULD have gone better for me if Duke Robert had actually succeeded with his Aquitaine succession...

[Atheissimo]

My problem with the Civ games is it feels, especially in the later eras, like all the civilisations are just cut-and-paste without much really to characterise them. WWII vikings should be awesome, but more often than not it ends up more as "generic purple death stack attacks generic modern city". That and the ugliness of a built up map. I've not played Civ V, but it does look like it improves this a bit. Honestly though, I would recommend Rise of Nations as something like Civ, but done better.

THIS. With a couple of exceptions, the civs become basically identical after the industrial age. Rise of Nations did this better by having far reaching unique abilities for each nation that changed depending on their age. And don't get me started on Spearman vs Tank. when an ancient era unit somehow defeats a modern tank with their bamboo armour and pointy stick. Worst I had was Galley vs Nuclear Sub. The sub wouldn't even need to attack it, just surface nearby and capsize the wooden bastard. How did it manage to lose?

[Canadian Mojo]

My problem with the Civ games is it feels, especially in the later eras, like all the civilisations are just cut-and-paste without much really to characterise them. WWII vikings should be awesome, but more often than not it ends up more as "generic purple death stack attacks generic modern city". That and the ugliness of a built up map. I've not played Civ V, but it does look like it improves this a bit. Honestly though, I would recommend Rise of Nations as something like Civ, but done better.

THIS. With a couple of exceptions, the civs become basically identical after the industrial age. Rise of Nations did this better by having far reaching unique abilities for each nation that changed depending on their age. And don't get me started on Spearman vs Tank. when an ancient era unit somehow defeats a modern tank with their bamboo armour and pointy stick. Worst I had was Galley vs Nuclear Sub. The sub wouldn't even need to attack it, just surface nearby and capsize the wooden bastard. How did it manage to lose?

I've always likened it to this; a few antiquated planes crippled the Bismark with torpedoes because they were so out of date and slow the fire control systems couldn't track them properly. Maybe the sub hit itself when the torpedo locked on to the nearest metal object. Oops, operator error resulting in an own goal. Or it was just a weapon malfunction, which has happened IRL before and is generally catastrophic in a sub.

As for the spearman, he managed to get the tank when the crew stepped out for a piss or something. 

[Meshakhad]

I've never encountered those "spearman beats tank" incidents. The closest I came was an absolutely epic battle where a massive Aztec army consisting of longbowmen, macemen, musketeers, Jaguar warriors, and catapults fought my smaller American army of modern infantry and one tank. They did take out the tank, but they had overwhelming numeric superiority, and they still lost the battle. I explained that one as their troops literally swarming over my tanks, prying open the hatches, and killing the troops inside.

That game was actually my first ever LP, and it was a good example of how fun alternate history can be. It was using the 18Civs map, which tries to reproduce the real world as closely as possible. A few tidbits:
- The United States of America is by far the largest nation on Earth, including the entirety of North America (having gained the Southwest and Central America in the war with the Aztecs), Cuba, Iceland, New Zealand, and southeast Australia (northern Australia belongs to the Indians).
- The American capital is New York (Washington DC never existed). It does have a familiar landmark - the Statue of Liberty, a grand symbol of American prosperity and openness. Or, if you're from Boston, it's a lame ripoff of the Boston Colossus, which was built a few thousand years earlier.
- Broadway is in Seattle, and Hollywood is in Melbourne, Australia.
- The most popular religion in America is Judaism, founded in Denver.

[Cloud3514]

That game was actually my first ever LP, and it was a good example of how fun alternate history can be. It was using the 18Civs map, which tries to reproduce the real world as closely as possible. A few tidbits:
- The United States of America is by far the largest nation on Earth, including the entirety of North America (having gained the Southwest and Central America in the war with the Aztecs), Cuba, Iceland, New Zealand, and southeast Australia (northern Australia belongs to the Indians).
- The American capital is New York (Washington DC never existed). It does have a familiar landmark - the Statue of Liberty, a grand symbol of American prosperity and openness. Or, if you're from Boston, it's a lame ripoff of the Boston Colossus, which was built a few thousand years earlier.
- Broadway is in Seattle, and Hollywood is in Melbourne, Australia.
- The most popular religion in America is Judaism, founded in Denver.

Because fuck history.

[Meshakhad]

Also, an update on the EU3 game: it is 1495, and Boston has already been founded. By the Bretons. Forget Portugal and Spain - Brittany is the new major power.

[Sandafluffoid]

Brittany always seems to go colonial in my games, I guess because there only thing waiting for them in Europe is vassalisation to either France or England.

I'm not honestly very good at EU, and I tend to suck at anything other than turning major powers into slightly less major powers, so I have a tendency to play games by switching out from one country to another after achieving short-term goals. Honestly I quite like it that way, rather than creating a huge ridiculous Empire covering all of Western Europe, you get to just tip the balance of powers, and then let the AI see what happens when you give Japan control over Korea (collapse slowly leaving East Asia as a mess of hideous borders), or unify Germany (colonise mexico and generally antagonise the British), or incorporate the low countries into France (draw enough Spanish ire to have them invade, muss their shit up, causing their huge colonial empire to fracture into independence), or release Brezhoneg-speaking Senegal as a huge swathe of Brazil (gobbled up in a few years by neighbouring Lithuanian-speaking states), or conquer the Great Lakes and New England as Spanish-speaking Canada (game ended before I completed my goal of unifying the Spanish-speaking parts of North America under my rule). It's all in all a pretty damn great game?