Bay 12 Games Forum

Whilst I am glad that the 'red wave' didn't materialise, one thing that does remain wary is the way that neither red nor blue waves have materialised in the last few elections in the USA. Neither side can dent into the other. Instead it's only increasing geographical digging in, the Blue largely gets Bluer and the Red largely gets Redder and it's only some wiggling at the edges that can ever happen.

That degree of geographical polorization is...not exactly good for the prospects of a country not breaking out into Civil War.

I'm going to say something probably controversial, but I don't think warfare gameplay in a Grand Strategy game can not be shit.

Ultimately the player isn't in control at all of battles, they simply have a part in setting up the pieces, the battle is a zero player game, then you deal with the output of that zero-player game. From a gameplay design pov, this is terrible. There's no meaningful decisions or commands to issue during a battle, no control over the battle itself, and players are largely not looking for that in a grand strategy.

What percentage of Stellaris players do you think pay any attention to the ship designer? It's probably a rather small percentage. No amount of UX improvements will fix that either, most players will just throw bigger number at enemy and ignore that element of the game entirely.

So it's a bit of a sticky situation. Players expect some form of military combat, and the settings basically demand it, but players also don't want to actually spend a large amount of their time engaging in managing the military combat. Development time spent on making it more complex is both time wasted on most players, and means adding extra complexity and focus on the military upfront, which is counter to what most players want to focus on most of the time.

And if there's a trend in Paradox's last few games, it's in tying results more strongly to player control. Stellaris requiring you to individually claim systems and CK3 using a point-based tree for growing character stats are two examples. Warfare as currently envisioned in Grand Strategy games is fundementally counter to that notion.

Ultimately, so long as battles are zero-player I don't think there's ever going to be a way to make warfare fun. And to make it not zero-player whilst allowing players to still autoskip it would require making a whole other game mode ala Total War (even if not as dramatic a shift), which doesn't seem to be what players go to this kind of Grand Strategy for in the first place.

My mum works for the NHS so that's just his name in our books.

From what a former (British) military friend of mine was explaining, Russian military structure basically prohibits any initiative on the part of the soldiers in terms of securing objectives (this was over a couple of pints so I may have misunderstood something xD).

As they explained it, in a Western military units request supplies like ammunition and they are then 'pulled' down the chain to the toops. But in the Russian military, they have a lot less support troops compared to the 10:1 ratio the West likes. So supplies are 'pushed' down the chain from the top instead. Which means the troops are eternally juggling and balancing whatever limited supplies they were assigned to accomplish an objective, and so when in a situation where one side has a good pull supply lines setup whilst they are relying on push-based supply lines from what the people at the top think they'll need, they are screwed by a combination of superior logistics and poor intel processing at the top.

Proposing unpopular tax changes that are disproportionate in their effects on the wealthy compared to the poor, approval ratings plummitting, and Labour soaring ahead in the polls, all whilst pigheadedly refusing to change course...

You know, when Liz Truss talked about wanting to emulate Thatcher, I didn't think she meant the *end* of Thatcher's time in office.

Well she ran on a campaign on slashing and burning taxes, and then when she got in she slashed and burned. So, she's doing what she said she would at least.

Am mostly just unsure if the Conservatives surprised by that are surprised she stuck to what she said she would, or are just acting surprised after the terrible ideas she campaigned on became obviously terrible ideas when implemented.

There's definitely a sense that a good chunk of the Conservatives know their way too long run at government is coming to an end so they're just throwing off the mask of pretending to give a shit about anybody but their rich buds and the kickbacks they can receive from them.

It wouldn't be a surprise if forces made up of majority conscription troops quickly or immediately surrender to Ukrainians at first oppurtunity. Conscription always gives you the out of just booking it first chance you get, extermination does not.

Possible translations include:
* We have a deal but don't wanna say it.
* We had a deal, but China said no.
* We were negotiating a deal but it fell through.