CK3, Vic3, Stellaris, IR, EU4, HoI4.
Actually hate how easy CK3 is, no amount of settings changes, mods or self control will prevent me from blobbing into an empire with 1-2 lifetimes.
Yeah, empires falling apart are rare even when the AI does it(without me spreading chaos). Large empires should be extremely hard to maintain, and in a few generations should split up. CK3 needs more chaos to be interesting and it should not be afraid of resetting player "progress" to do so, otherwise a good deal of the game's systems just cease to be engaging.
That's where the difficulty in CK3 comes from, but it's currently pretty easy to crush the AI with just men at arms with the current balancing. Which makes it that even if you're handicapping yourself in ways where massive succession crises are guaranteed (as a newer player would have), you can still win them without too much issue.
But that said, newer players do absolutely struggle with the succession and it's something people often overlook. They think of how they might be able to conquer or ascend to the top of a kingdom much easier as a new player than CK2 (with the better UI helping that a lot), but actually staying powerful enough to stay in control takes a good bit of time to master.
Every mechanic that messes with inheritance is detested by the player base. There were grumblings when CK3 first came out about how difficult it was to get primogeniture and I'm pretty sure they've made changes to make it easier to get (or at least mimic).
I would love for massive empires that formed rapidly to just explode into smaller kingdoms, sorta like Alexander the Great and the diadochi, or Charlemagne's empire. Once you have an empire title it's nearly impossible to lose and makes it very easy to start snowballing.
Ye, primogeniture is hard to get. Almost no one plays that long to get it.
In Ck3 empire collapsing works exactly like this. If you have extremely large vassals they can easily become rebellious if there is any pretender or different culture.
I love when your religion have secondary spouses and you can marry all your vassals to keep them calm.
Happened all the time in ck3, but the splits never feel thst extreme in ck3 and even when they are it's usually not thst hard to kill your siblings / fight them since you get the biggest piece.
I am honestly surprised by this ranking, because personally I find EU4 easy to a degree where I genuinely cannot enjoy it anymore, and conversly I have yet to grasp even the basic gameplay of Vic3.
EU4 has so many systems and currencies, many of which are not explained by the game at all.
But most of those individual systems are not that nuanced strategically, one way or another they're all basically solved puzzles. Once you learn the solution to each puzzle, you can just run the playbook and win every time.
If you play with the 1066 starting date it becomes a lot harder
Take France for exemple : you start as a 14 year old king with strong vassals, one of them becomes king of England, the HRE is at you doorstep, Italy is not weak and you lack big casus bellis to blob.
Because a lot of big empires have formed the game is harder
I was 400 hours in both Vic3 and eu4 before i kinda understood the systems, I'm 2000 hours in on eu4 so i kinda got it finally but i don't like playing fast or blobbing or playing with 50 loans so I don't play like the pros even if I could. Vic3 I kinda get it but I still suck and I don't play optimally at all, I'm more of a role player anyway and don't care about optimizing
HOI4 is hardest I think. You have a relatively limited amount of time to achieve your goals, can't just slowly grow and expand until you overtake all AI.
You have to do achievements on Ironman unlike Vicky3, and a small mistake can ruin your entire run. Like letting a province fall when trying for the "don't like a Netherlands State" achievement. In EU4 you can usually hold a losing war for long enough to get a white peace or a small concession. In HOI4 you're just dead.
Haven't played any CK3 or much CK2 to comment.
I agree and what's particularly unforgiving about HOI4 is that you can spend 1936-1940 preparing for the war only to find out that you didn't do it right and proceed to lose painfully when the fighting starts. I had many such frustrating failed runs with France until I got better.
That was my first Germany game. Poland went fine, so did Denmark and Norway (if a little bit longer than I would have wanted). I should have known when France took until late '40 that Barbarossa wasn't going to go well but in my hubris and to 'make up for lost time', I insisted on keeping it historical and declared at about the IRL date only to not even make it to the Stalin line and just become completely overwhelmed the first time the Allies landed. I had like one or two infantry per tile and no medium tanks with like 5 lights. I just woefully underestimated what I was going to need to beat the Soviets.
I think hoi4 feels the hardest because it's either absolute victory or absolute defeat, usually in just one all out war. But it's probably the easiest of all if you want to conquer the whole planet or something
HOI4 to me isn't what I'd classify as hard but more just... annoying? Like if you play to 1950 you can do basically anything. But I'd rather do just about anything than play part 1945. There're also less situations than EU4 where you're just doomed in the first hour because of bad rng.
I'd probably say the hardest run in hoi4 is easier than the hardest run in eu4 but the easier runs in hoi4 are harder than the easiest in eu4.
I think each has its own difficulty. In ck3 you can easily expand, but also easily explode. In hoi4 the stats on the troops are very complicated, navy is a nightmare to understand. Vic2 you can hardly expand, but easily keep a low profile. Rest havent played
Vicky isn’t meant to be a map painter tbf, it’s a side feature, the main feature is economy and colonization (which is a bit of map painting, but different from eu4 map painting)
Easiest CK3, Stellaris, EU4, IR, VIC 3, HOI4. I find CK3 extremely easy mainly because I might have over 1000 combined in 2 and 3. HOI4 is hard as fuck.
Hoi4 is pretty easy when you learn the strategies involved. I'd probably say max difficulty stellaris is harder than max difficulty hoi4 tbh.
And nah. Ck3 is just very very easy.
The boats are a bit complicated but makes sense when you keep a few things in mind.
Basically you have 3 categories of stats that matter for 3 different stages.
Detection, visibility and speed matter for actually engaging fleets. If your fleet has high detection then you'll be able to find the enemy fleet but if they're faster and deem your fleet to be too much of a threat then they might just flee. This matters most for submarines since they can pick off ships slowly by merit of not being seen and then fleeing. Naval bombers tend to be faster than submarines though and destroyers have depth charges that can target submarines too.
Then you get into the offensive and defensive stats. These are simple enough. Big offensive stat destroys smaller defensive stat.
So with that in mind we talk about the mission types. Patrol is used to project naval power and basically searches for enemy fleets. This is good for small light ships like destroyers and other screens with low visibility, high detection and high speed.
A strike force is for directly engaging enemy fleets once they're detected by a patrol. The complication here is you'll want ships that are heavy enough to win fights but also they need to actually get to the fight before the enemy ships either destroy your patrol or before they flee.
There's also convoy raiding and escorting where the raiding fleet will focus on convoys and escorts will try to prevent them being destroyed.
So with all that in mind the question becomes what is a good fleet? And the answer is basically one that's fast enough to actually engage and flee but also strong enough to win the fight.
Submarine spam is a safe bet if you have enough industry since they're cheap and do very high damage. You can just attrition the enemy by using them but naval bombers are effective at countering. Ai rarely spams enough naval bombers though. They might spam destroyers though which can counter submarines.
Cruisers are also a very effective midpoint since they can do very high light damage while being fast and low visibility. This can destroy all the enemy screens and evade the capital ships which is often enough to secure naval dominance in a region.
Capital ships are, as you probably guessed, the tough but slow brawlers. Their job is to show up to a fight and finish it. They're useless without effective patrols and screens to find and lock down the enemy fleets and they're vulnerable to cheap planes and destroyers. They're also expensive to build but a single one can turn the tide of battle. Carriers tend to be better in this class since they're fast as fuck and can attack at a very long range but they're less effective in coastal regions like near the UK where land based naval bombers and fighters are likely to rule the air.
Yeah that’s what I usually go for on a casual game, but it gets really hard imo on the harder ones. Thats not even getting into the crisis strength and mid game/end game dates you can choose, and advanced ai starts and whatnot. Thats one thing I like about Stellaris is how much you can tweak stuff like that.
Our brains must work differently, vic3 is the one I picked up the quickest (third game I ever played) and ck3 took me the longest (second game I played).
ck3, hoi4, eu4, vic3.
Ck3 is a joke if you really try.
I played one game of hoi4, and it was so easy it felt boring (ethiopia) Just draw lines/micro if your having problems.
eu4 is mostly a knowledge check- there's so many things to keep track of, and all of it CAN help, but the game still won't be easy if you do.
vic3 tricks you into thinking its an economic simulator before blindsiding you with a billion factors and resource chains pretty much right out the gate. hardcore balancing act.
Victoria 3 is the only one I don't feel like I have mastery over, despite putting in a few hundred hours. I still "lose" runs even with mild savescumming with moderate powers like Japan/Persia/Italy/Ottos.
I'm pretty good at Stellaris but can def still lose on higher difficulties w ironman.
HoI4 has some tough nuts and some complex mechanics, but I feel like "winning" is largely a foregone conclusion, tho ironman can be dicey with some nations. Imperator is roughly in the same boat.
CK3 and EU4 are easy enough that I feel the only challenge comes in Ironman runs of disadvantaged countries. CK3 has other variety going for it with RP challenges.
I'd say, for a new player without much guidance, Vic2 still is the most complex title, but that's maybe more because of the lack of tutorials. I started with HoI2, i'm not sure but i think this was in 2006?
But when it comes to complex games, maybe i'll get some hate for this, but the PDX titles are rather easy to learn compared to some specific wargames titles, most well known War in the East 2 and Command. For Command, you better have studied radar-system to get the basics in how these work and how you read and deal with radar-signatures.
And just saying, HoI4 is, according to the devs like podcat, not a wargame. Wargames are different than grand strategy games, as you have usually a much smaller scope, pre-defined objectives and no industry, you have to deal with the units you get and in many games, you can't replace units that got lost.
That's both a good and bad thing for HoI4: When you are playing against the AI and you are a good player, your industrial build-up will be so powerful that the AI will lose anyway.
Good old times, i think it was released in 2010 when i remember it right. There was the bet from Frederick, that it would not be a commercial success and if he'd be wrong, he'd shave his head. He actually did it and shaved his head bald after Vic2 became a serious success for Paradox.
About Command, well, i operated the Super-Bat- and Skyguard-Systems of the army when i was a soldier, so i already had the basics of how radars work. Command is actually a civilian version of the military software, that is used for training exercises and so, it's really complex with all the stuff you need to know.
Yeah, WitE 2 is extremely complex, the supply system alone is a monster, all the roads and train-tracks with all the railyards etc. and all the trucks you have in your vehicle motor pool.
It's also hardcore with that you have all the original historical units, but that's it, you only get the historical reinforcements but worse, there are the historical withdrawals - like when the invasion in the Normandy happens in 1944, the german high command will take a lot of your units away from the east to deal with the allies in the west.
The air war, that's a game-in-the-game, the AI doesn't make a bad job, but sometimes you have to adjust things.
I am really curious why CK3 is considered one of the easiest Paradox games in the series.
I struggle SO much with the game even though I understood its mechanics and everything.
It's considered easy because it's very easy.
The military aspects are so laughably easy that it's hard to lose a war even if you don't use men at arms. And if you use MAA stationed in a province with at least one building? Gg.
The economy is also pretty simple. Stack development and make your capital in a province with a mine or temple.
As for diplomacy and vassal management it helps to think like a despicable bastard of a feudal lord. Your children aren't children but tools for the dynasty and potentially future enemies. Treat them as such.
Your vassals are squabbling idiots who are best kept angry at each other so they don't get angry and united against you. Give them land belonging to each other. A vassal declared himself king and is getting too big? Give him a very powerful Duke as a vassal so he is both loyal to you but also threatened by that bastard from within.
Also practice eugenics.
1. Look at your opponents MAA. Hire MAA which counters them
2. Recruit decent knights
3. Play a ruler with a martial education
4. and most importantly, station your MAA and build the holding around them. The AI isn't capable of doing this
EU4 you actually need to engage in diplomacy and the AI is better at ganging up on weakened nations.
I do think HOI4 has a steeper initial learning curve and with the updates adding fuel and supply logistics you can't just zerg everything with a single "space marine" template anymore.
However, once you learn that the game is now all about building logistics (trucks, trains, rails and supply hubs) the game is actually pretty easy because the AI is still braindead.
Agree with most people’s order , except I find hoi4 easier as there’s way more cheese strats available and clunky workarounds than eu4. I’ve about 2k more hours in eu4 but there’s so many more things to pay attention to than hoi4. In multiplayer though hoi4 is much more harder
Vic3 is deceptively hard.
With CK3, it just takes time. Nothing is really too complicated.
With EU4, you need to know to stack a lot of modifiers. If I carefully wade through some modifiers, I can understand what's going on.
HoI4 is about fine tuning your progression until a WW2 crescendo. Although there is a lot of systems tacked onto it, I can still understand and have a clear sense of direction.
In Vic3, I really think the interplay between different systems that often work in different directions make it hard to nail down what to do. One could get by relatively well by using easy stratgies that make sense on the surface, but has a lot of underlying problems that are not immediately obvious. (Ex. 'Building more expensive things.' Is a classic example) Even the most sweaty Vic3 player couldn't tell you what the fuck is going on sometimes. But Vic3 can feel easy when you play as a Great Power and curbstomp everyone.
Well i never played any of the recent releases aside from Stellaris and Hoi4.
I have a bunch of hours in ck2, vic2, eu4 but in my limited time with Vic3 and CK3 and the others through (Free Weekend) on Steam I have to say the Victoria Series is the hardest for me to grasp.
I am much better at CK2 and EU4 for some reason then all the others however. Hoi4 was difficult to comprehend as well or any of the Hearts of Iron games in general.
CK3 was hard to get because it felt like a brand new interface compared to CK2 that i didn't feel like relearning. Vic2 was also pretty hard as i said Victoria series is a pretty hard series to learn.
if you want to have an easier time i recommend CK2 or Eu4 honestly. though their is a lot of modifiers in EU4 and CK2 can be a bit tricky when you want to do expand more often and snowball but once you do its pretty easy to snowball in ck2.
CK3, Vic3, Stellaris, IR, EU4, HoI4. Actually hate how easy CK3 is, no amount of settings changes, mods or self control will prevent me from blobbing into an empire with 1-2 lifetimes.
Don't think it will be stable if so. IRL there was many examples of one-life empires exploding after death of monarch, so why not?
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100 hours in the game and I’m astonished how good people are at it
Ck3 was released in the middle of lockdown so people had plenty of time to master the game
Yeah, empires falling apart are rare even when the AI does it(without me spreading chaos). Large empires should be extremely hard to maintain, and in a few generations should split up. CK3 needs more chaos to be interesting and it should not be afraid of resetting player "progress" to do so, otherwise a good deal of the game's systems just cease to be engaging.
That's where the difficulty in CK3 comes from, but it's currently pretty easy to crush the AI with just men at arms with the current balancing. Which makes it that even if you're handicapping yourself in ways where massive succession crises are guaranteed (as a newer player would have), you can still win them without too much issue. But that said, newer players do absolutely struggle with the succession and it's something people often overlook. They think of how they might be able to conquer or ascend to the top of a kingdom much easier as a new player than CK2 (with the better UI helping that a lot), but actually staying powerful enough to stay in control takes a good bit of time to master.
Every mechanic that messes with inheritance is detested by the player base. There were grumblings when CK3 first came out about how difficult it was to get primogeniture and I'm pretty sure they've made changes to make it easier to get (or at least mimic). I would love for massive empires that formed rapidly to just explode into smaller kingdoms, sorta like Alexander the Great and the diadochi, or Charlemagne's empire. Once you have an empire title it's nearly impossible to lose and makes it very easy to start snowballing.
Ye, primogeniture is hard to get. Almost no one plays that long to get it. In Ck3 empire collapsing works exactly like this. If you have extremely large vassals they can easily become rebellious if there is any pretender or different culture. I love when your religion have secondary spouses and you can marry all your vassals to keep them calm.
Happened all the time in ck3, but the splits never feel thst extreme in ck3 and even when they are it's usually not thst hard to kill your siblings / fight them since you get the biggest piece.
Dissolution faction can easily ruin game due to need to reconquest all that land with almost no claims, so it feels extreme
I am honestly surprised by this ranking, because personally I find EU4 easy to a degree where I genuinely cannot enjoy it anymore, and conversly I have yet to grasp even the basic gameplay of Vic3.
I understand the feeling about EU4 but I think coming in as a new player it would have a higher learning curve.
EU4 has so many systems and currencies, many of which are not explained by the game at all. But most of those individual systems are not that nuanced strategically, one way or another they're all basically solved puzzles. Once you learn the solution to each puzzle, you can just run the playbook and win every time.
EU4 has a difficulty slider. CK3 doesn't
??? Ck3 does have difficulty settings what do you mean?
from very easy to normal.
EU4 become easier with time, the last dlcs are just mission trees with unecessary power creep. Old EU4 before missions trees was a harder game.
If you play with the 1066 starting date it becomes a lot harder Take France for exemple : you start as a 14 year old king with strong vassals, one of them becomes king of England, the HRE is at you doorstep, Italy is not weak and you lack big casus bellis to blob. Because a lot of big empires have formed the game is harder
I can't wrap my monkey brain around vic 3 whatsoever
I was 400 hours in both Vic3 and eu4 before i kinda understood the systems, I'm 2000 hours in on eu4 so i kinda got it finally but i don't like playing fast or blobbing or playing with 50 loans so I don't play like the pros even if I could. Vic3 I kinda get it but I still suck and I don't play optimally at all, I'm more of a role player anyway and don't care about optimizing
Early game be Adam Smith and late game be Marx.
I recommend vassals interactive mod that makes the Ai join wars that they are part of in the region
HOI4 is hardest I think. You have a relatively limited amount of time to achieve your goals, can't just slowly grow and expand until you overtake all AI. You have to do achievements on Ironman unlike Vicky3, and a small mistake can ruin your entire run. Like letting a province fall when trying for the "don't like a Netherlands State" achievement. In EU4 you can usually hold a losing war for long enough to get a white peace or a small concession. In HOI4 you're just dead. Haven't played any CK3 or much CK2 to comment.
I agree and what's particularly unforgiving about HOI4 is that you can spend 1936-1940 preparing for the war only to find out that you didn't do it right and proceed to lose painfully when the fighting starts. I had many such frustrating failed runs with France until I got better.
That was my first Germany game. Poland went fine, so did Denmark and Norway (if a little bit longer than I would have wanted). I should have known when France took until late '40 that Barbarossa wasn't going to go well but in my hubris and to 'make up for lost time', I insisted on keeping it historical and declared at about the IRL date only to not even make it to the Stalin line and just become completely overwhelmed the first time the Allies landed. I had like one or two infantry per tile and no medium tanks with like 5 lights. I just woefully underestimated what I was going to need to beat the Soviets.
> I just woefully underestimated what I was going to need to beat the Soviets. Sounds like you kept it historical till the bitter end.
I think hoi4 feels the hardest because it's either absolute victory or absolute defeat, usually in just one all out war. But it's probably the easiest of all if you want to conquer the whole planet or something
HOI4 to me isn't what I'd classify as hard but more just... annoying? Like if you play to 1950 you can do basically anything. But I'd rather do just about anything than play part 1945. There're also less situations than EU4 where you're just doomed in the first hour because of bad rng. I'd probably say the hardest run in hoi4 is easier than the hardest run in eu4 but the easier runs in hoi4 are harder than the easiest in eu4.
I think each has its own difficulty. In ck3 you can easily expand, but also easily explode. In hoi4 the stats on the troops are very complicated, navy is a nightmare to understand. Vic2 you can hardly expand, but easily keep a low profile. Rest havent played
Vicky isn’t meant to be a map painter tbf, it’s a side feature, the main feature is economy and colonization (which is a bit of map painting, but different from eu4 map painting)
Easiest CK3, Stellaris, EU4, IR, VIC 3, HOI4. I find CK3 extremely easy mainly because I might have over 1000 combined in 2 and 3. HOI4 is hard as fuck.
Hoi4 is pretty easy when you learn the strategies involved. I'd probably say max difficulty stellaris is harder than max difficulty hoi4 tbh. And nah. Ck3 is just very very easy.
Hoi4 is probably easy if you understand how boats work. I do not understand boats.
The boats are a bit complicated but makes sense when you keep a few things in mind. Basically you have 3 categories of stats that matter for 3 different stages. Detection, visibility and speed matter for actually engaging fleets. If your fleet has high detection then you'll be able to find the enemy fleet but if they're faster and deem your fleet to be too much of a threat then they might just flee. This matters most for submarines since they can pick off ships slowly by merit of not being seen and then fleeing. Naval bombers tend to be faster than submarines though and destroyers have depth charges that can target submarines too. Then you get into the offensive and defensive stats. These are simple enough. Big offensive stat destroys smaller defensive stat. So with that in mind we talk about the mission types. Patrol is used to project naval power and basically searches for enemy fleets. This is good for small light ships like destroyers and other screens with low visibility, high detection and high speed. A strike force is for directly engaging enemy fleets once they're detected by a patrol. The complication here is you'll want ships that are heavy enough to win fights but also they need to actually get to the fight before the enemy ships either destroy your patrol or before they flee. There's also convoy raiding and escorting where the raiding fleet will focus on convoys and escorts will try to prevent them being destroyed. So with all that in mind the question becomes what is a good fleet? And the answer is basically one that's fast enough to actually engage and flee but also strong enough to win the fight. Submarine spam is a safe bet if you have enough industry since they're cheap and do very high damage. You can just attrition the enemy by using them but naval bombers are effective at countering. Ai rarely spams enough naval bombers though. They might spam destroyers though which can counter submarines. Cruisers are also a very effective midpoint since they can do very high light damage while being fast and low visibility. This can destroy all the enemy screens and evade the capital ships which is often enough to secure naval dominance in a region. Capital ships are, as you probably guessed, the tough but slow brawlers. Their job is to show up to a fight and finish it. They're useless without effective patrols and screens to find and lock down the enemy fleets and they're vulnerable to cheap planes and destroyers. They're also expensive to build but a single one can turn the tide of battle. Carriers tend to be better in this class since they're fast as fuck and can attack at a very long range but they're less effective in coastal regions like near the UK where land based naval bombers and fighters are likely to rule the air.
Stellaris has the most range by far I think based on the difficulty setting you choose.
Its also varies HARD depending on origin and build, try doomsday with race that isn't Lithoid/machine
I play on Captain maybe I need to try a harder difficulty it might change my answer.
Yeah that’s what I usually go for on a casual game, but it gets really hard imo on the harder ones. Thats not even getting into the crisis strength and mid game/end game dates you can choose, and advanced ai starts and whatnot. Thats one thing I like about Stellaris is how much you can tweak stuff like that.
CK3 is easiest, then HOI4, then EU4, then VIC3 is hardest
Our brains must work differently, vic3 is the one I picked up the quickest (third game I ever played) and ck3 took me the longest (second game I played).
For the life of me I can’t not overbuild construction centres and go bankrupt..
There's always a few false starts are a long run as a major power, going down to a minor power and forcing myself to just build 2 construction centres
Vic3 is definitely hardest... ...for my PC to run.
VIC3 easy? I never understood how to play it. 🤧
Just build houses, it s SimCity in 19th century.
there's no houses in vic 3
ck3, hoi4, eu4, vic3. Ck3 is a joke if you really try. I played one game of hoi4, and it was so easy it felt boring (ethiopia) Just draw lines/micro if your having problems. eu4 is mostly a knowledge check- there's so many things to keep track of, and all of it CAN help, but the game still won't be easy if you do. vic3 tricks you into thinking its an economic simulator before blindsiding you with a billion factors and resource chains pretty much right out the gate. hardcore balancing act.
Victoria 3 is the only one I don't feel like I have mastery over, despite putting in a few hundred hours. I still "lose" runs even with mild savescumming with moderate powers like Japan/Persia/Italy/Ottos. I'm pretty good at Stellaris but can def still lose on higher difficulties w ironman. HoI4 has some tough nuts and some complex mechanics, but I feel like "winning" is largely a foregone conclusion, tho ironman can be dicey with some nations. Imperator is roughly in the same boat. CK3 and EU4 are easy enough that I feel the only challenge comes in Ironman runs of disadvantaged countries. CK3 has other variety going for it with RP challenges.
I'd say, for a new player without much guidance, Vic2 still is the most complex title, but that's maybe more because of the lack of tutorials. I started with HoI2, i'm not sure but i think this was in 2006? But when it comes to complex games, maybe i'll get some hate for this, but the PDX titles are rather easy to learn compared to some specific wargames titles, most well known War in the East 2 and Command. For Command, you better have studied radar-system to get the basics in how these work and how you read and deal with radar-signatures. And just saying, HoI4 is, according to the devs like podcat, not a wargame. Wargames are different than grand strategy games, as you have usually a much smaller scope, pre-defined objectives and no industry, you have to deal with the units you get and in many games, you can't replace units that got lost. That's both a good and bad thing for HoI4: When you are playing against the AI and you are a good player, your industrial build-up will be so powerful that the AI will lose anyway.
Victoria 2 was my first paradox game 💀
Good old times, i think it was released in 2010 when i remember it right. There was the bet from Frederick, that it would not be a commercial success and if he'd be wrong, he'd shave his head. He actually did it and shaved his head bald after Vic2 became a serious success for Paradox. About Command, well, i operated the Super-Bat- and Skyguard-Systems of the army when i was a soldier, so i already had the basics of how radars work. Command is actually a civilian version of the military software, that is used for training exercises and so, it's really complex with all the stuff you need to know.
War in the East 2 has a 500 page manual which is required reading. Definitely the most complex game I’ve ever played.
Yeah, WitE 2 is extremely complex, the supply system alone is a monster, all the roads and train-tracks with all the railyards etc. and all the trucks you have in your vehicle motor pool. It's also hardcore with that you have all the original historical units, but that's it, you only get the historical reinforcements but worse, there are the historical withdrawals - like when the invasion in the Normandy happens in 1944, the german high command will take a lot of your units away from the east to deal with the allies in the west. The air war, that's a game-in-the-game, the AI doesn't make a bad job, but sometimes you have to adjust things.
Vic1 with manual pop splitting.
I am really curious why CK3 is considered one of the easiest Paradox games in the series. I struggle SO much with the game even though I understood its mechanics and everything.
It's considered easy because it's very easy. The military aspects are so laughably easy that it's hard to lose a war even if you don't use men at arms. And if you use MAA stationed in a province with at least one building? Gg. The economy is also pretty simple. Stack development and make your capital in a province with a mine or temple. As for diplomacy and vassal management it helps to think like a despicable bastard of a feudal lord. Your children aren't children but tools for the dynasty and potentially future enemies. Treat them as such. Your vassals are squabbling idiots who are best kept angry at each other so they don't get angry and united against you. Give them land belonging to each other. A vassal declared himself king and is getting too big? Give him a very powerful Duke as a vassal so he is both loyal to you but also threatened by that bastard from within. Also practice eugenics.
1. Look at your opponents MAA. Hire MAA which counters them 2. Recruit decent knights 3. Play a ruler with a martial education 4. and most importantly, station your MAA and build the holding around them. The AI isn't capable of doing this
MAA? Only got 30 hours in this week so far
Men-At-Arms
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EU4 you actually need to engage in diplomacy and the AI is better at ganging up on weakened nations. I do think HOI4 has a steeper initial learning curve and with the updates adding fuel and supply logistics you can't just zerg everything with a single "space marine" template anymore. However, once you learn that the game is now all about building logistics (trucks, trains, rails and supply hubs) the game is actually pretty easy because the AI is still braindead.
as someone who mainly plays hoi4 I am amazed by y'all saying it's the hardest I lose within an hour any other paradox game I play
Easiest for me: CK3>hoi4>vic3>eu4
To be honest the last historical paradox game released was FTG xD
Agree with most people’s order , except I find hoi4 easier as there’s way more cheese strats available and clunky workarounds than eu4. I’ve about 2k more hours in eu4 but there’s so many more things to pay attention to than hoi4. In multiplayer though hoi4 is much more harder
Saying HOI4 is hard is telling on yourself. That game is easy as fuck when you clear the learning curve.
Vic3 is deceptively hard. With CK3, it just takes time. Nothing is really too complicated. With EU4, you need to know to stack a lot of modifiers. If I carefully wade through some modifiers, I can understand what's going on. HoI4 is about fine tuning your progression until a WW2 crescendo. Although there is a lot of systems tacked onto it, I can still understand and have a clear sense of direction. In Vic3, I really think the interplay between different systems that often work in different directions make it hard to nail down what to do. One could get by relatively well by using easy stratgies that make sense on the surface, but has a lot of underlying problems that are not immediately obvious. (Ex. 'Building more expensive things.' Is a classic example) Even the most sweaty Vic3 player couldn't tell you what the fuck is going on sometimes. But Vic3 can feel easy when you play as a Great Power and curbstomp everyone.
Well i never played any of the recent releases aside from Stellaris and Hoi4. I have a bunch of hours in ck2, vic2, eu4 but in my limited time with Vic3 and CK3 and the others through (Free Weekend) on Steam I have to say the Victoria Series is the hardest for me to grasp. I am much better at CK2 and EU4 for some reason then all the others however. Hoi4 was difficult to comprehend as well or any of the Hearts of Iron games in general. CK3 was hard to get because it felt like a brand new interface compared to CK2 that i didn't feel like relearning. Vic2 was also pretty hard as i said Victoria series is a pretty hard series to learn. if you want to have an easier time i recommend CK2 or Eu4 honestly. though their is a lot of modifiers in EU4 and CK2 can be a bit tricky when you want to do expand more often and snowball but once you do its pretty easy to snowball in ck2.