Don’t feel bad; Paradox games are (in)famously impenetrable. I wish I had a suggestion besides “play a lot and lose a lot” 🤷♀️ The only games I can think of with higher learning curves (more like learning cliffs) are EVE and Dwarf Fortress.
Comment on Peace is too much effort. Suffer in silence.
Doxatek@mander.xyz 6 months ago
I really wanted to love the game when I tried it but really felt I didn’t know what was going on or how to do anything even even though I did the tutorial and everything. The theme is so cool and really appeals to me, maybe I should try again someday
lunatic@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
troyunrau@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
The joke is that it’ll take 1444 hours to get through EU4’s tutorial. And it isn’t a bad joke. Stellaris is a little different in that the replayability depends more on randomness than the other Paradox titles. But that randomness suffers from the “bowl of oatmeal” problem.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation
Particularly in the application of procedural generation with video games, which are intended to be highly replayable, there are concerns that procedural systems can generate infinite numbers of worlds to explore, but without sufficient human guidance and rules to guide these. The result has been called “procedural oatmeal”, a term coined by writer Kate Compton, in that while it is possible to mathematically generate thousands of bowls of oatmeal with procedural generation, they will be perceived to be the same by the user, and lack the notion of perceived uniqueness that a procedural system should aim for.
lunatic@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
I’ve encountered that in Angband, one of the earliest (and still-developed!) roguelikes. It’s got 100 required dungeon levels, plus 20 beyond the final boss’s level (basically just for getting cooler loot), and so many of them are procedural oatmeal. Newer versions are better about that, but much worse in other respects 🤷♀️
Doxatek@mander.xyz 6 months ago
Haha I liked dwarf fortress so much though. For some reason I was able to do that one.
EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The same publishing company (but different development studio) recently released a simplified, licensed Star Trek game built on the Stellaris Engine.
It’s a little rough around the edges right now but it’s an official Star Trek title and it’s much easier to get into than Stellaris, and it’s currently on sale for $20