I heard some people call stellaris future fantasy, you know, cause all the warp magic and space worms and such

@Titan_TM

2 жыл бұрын

I've heard it described in the same vein as Star wars, sci-fantasy.

@catmonarchist8920

2 жыл бұрын

Are you saying humans WON'T be psychic in the future ?

My favorite game of Stellaris was with a custom race of dragons from a paradise planet. The story i had was that the planet was a garden made by an ancient civilization but they disappeared into the skies. Some lizards of this planet eventually gained consciousness and evolved into the player race. They were curious, deeply spiritual, and lived extremely long lives, but were slow to reproduce and unadaptable to other environments. They worshipped the ancient civilization as gods after they found some of the old civ's technology and thought it was divine. They wondered why their gods left the planet, and wanted to go to the skies to rediscover them. It was fun playing them, they were very "tall" as opposed to wide,they couldn't colonize most planets until late into the game. It was mostly playing nice with others and trading, while furthering their divine search. Eventually they evolved again gaining psychic abilities, which they used to deep further into the spiritual realm and their leader becoming immortal. It was fun because i couldn't do this in any other game

@Rosencreutzzz

Жыл бұрын

I’ve done a remarkably similar build but I split it into one that’s religious and expansive and the other thats xenophilic and feudal with the goal of uplifting others into their HRE style feudal patchwork and letting them colonize outward.

@stalwartteakettlepotato9879

5 ай бұрын

I played a similar build and it is really fun. A simple solution to not being able to colonise other planets is to simply have a large pool of slave alein pops that aren't restricted by that planetary preference and ship a few of your pops to serve as rulers.

In regards to your conclusion and the separation between "Narrative GSG" and "Skill GSG", what do you think of say the alt-history paths of HoI4, or some of the new-ish country missions or government reforms of EU4, which, to me, push these games more towards the narrative side of the spectrum?

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

I do think that Paradox is introducing narrative to more of their games generally and that they still have a soft spot for narrative when it comes to those other games. Paradox is alt-history by design. There's hardly even ways to play it where you end up with a "historically accurate" endgame. The alt paths add a lot of narrative potential, but I think for HoI4 it's dampened by the fact that we don't really get to understand the social and civilian makeup of our countries, there's no feedback to the mission tree in that way, on top of the fact that the actual transitions to new ideologies and stuff are rather passive. There's also the way that someone watching over your shoulder could just read all the mission things and be like 'ah, that's the narrative." There's less room for imagination. I can work out though: one of my most interesting to imagine games was where I was able to restore Byz as Greece in HoI4 but end up democratic. I actually had a version of the outline for this video where I went a bit into AAR culture, which is absolutely interested in narrative (though I would argue in a more emergent sense, and often scraping for ideas and filling in lots more blanks, even going so far as to characterize leaders who in EU4 are just pips with a name). EU4 and HoI adding mission trees does guide the narratives more, and especially in the case of HoI, allow for hard deviations from history. That said, they are still fairly rigid paths, and Eu4, as far as it's concerned with alt history is less about the narrative of a country and it's people and more just altering the narrative of who owns what land and when. I suppose, in the end, the possible spectrum is affected by things like customization, as Stellaris shows, but also stuff like social modeling and pop representation. I can't, however, really wager on how narrative-driven Victoria will feel, though I do imagine that now that revolutions threaten a game over, the game will have a better narrative flow via that constraint. Similar to CK3 where civil wars matter, and also indirectly similar to how Stress informs gameplay. But that's a tangent and a half...

@saltshaker1961

2 жыл бұрын

The Narrative GSG stuff really comes into play with mods. The New Order does things with the engine that I didn't even know were possible in HOI4, and it feels more like a novel than a strategy game sometimes.

@efulmer8675

Жыл бұрын

@@Rosencreutzzz 18:45 I'm interested to hear your opinion on whether you think Victoria 2 is a Narrative or "Skill" GSG to its benefit or detriment, whether Victoria 3 is a Narrative or "Skill" GSG to its benefit or detriment, and whether embracing that nature or shifting more towards the other one will help Victoria 3 more. My opinion on these is that both Victoria 2 and Victoria 3 are strongly Narrative but Victoria 2 was Narrative to its detriment given the way its mechanics and systems are set up while Victoria 3 is Narrative to its benefit because of the way its fundamentals are set up. Although I personally liked using Laissez-faire in Victoria 2, a lot of the times I would mention this would lead to angry hissing because the Capitalist AI in Victoria 2 was barely an AI at all and most people hated it for that reason. At the moment (1.2 beta and 1.2 release) Laissez-faire in Victoria 3 is almost meta simply because it allows for much more growth and the autonomous investment AI is actually smart enough to not immediately bankrupt itself.

The moment where inspiration struck when you shuffled through the icons in the EU4 costum country setup to find the red star....

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

Lol part of it was I was planning to just write Belgium but there’s soooooo many emblems and as I was recording I was like man I need to get to the absence of an emblem soon or this clip is gonna really drag…And then I got to the star and I was like, “Orrrr….”

the genre term for sci fi that incorporates fantasy, is Science Fantasy. Star Wars and Dune are Science Fantasy. Science Fantasy is generally a mix of low fantasy tropes and soft sci fi tropes rather then high fantasy mixed with hard sci fi

I'm very glad that they overhauled ascension paths between the time this video was published and now. I was right there with you on sometimes only going halfway down the mechanical ascension path because cybernetics made more sense than just becoming robots.

Stellaris is definitely a game I have really come to enjoy out of most paradox games I have so far played. I probably put almost 800 hour into this game. The second highest game I have put hours on in my Steam library as of now. Far more then other Paradox strategy games like Victoria 2 and Crusader Kings 3. Hell, I have put more hours in it then Civilization 5 one of my oldest and favorite games. And I think it definitely has to do with the fact it’s a more customizable narrative driven game compared to the others. I mean stuff like Masters of Orion is piss compared to the customization capabilities this game has. I spend so much time just making list upon list of empires and alien races in the customization. From Necro-Death cults, to fanatic war-like befrienders that force people to be friends, to religious barbarians clans, to imperial cults, to a post apocalyptic Earth technocracy. A lot of times I just like playing the Human empires and pretend I was like the Federation in Star Trek or the UNSC in Halo. Along with the fact that most DLC is definitely a lot more manageable in the sense that you don’t feel like you have to get it to have the whole experience and fun in the sense that it just adds more toys in the toy box to build your stories and that’s about it compared to other paradox games. Like you don’t really need to have Leviathans to enjoy the game in the sense you need like Northern Lords or Royal court in Crusader Kings 3, but it’s definitely cool to run into a giant space orb orbiting a black hole or a giant sun eating tick that comes after your empire. It’s definitely made a whole lot more fun in my opinion that there is modding capabilities to this game. Allowing for even more narrative creativity then what is allowed in the base game and it’s expansions. Ever since I downloaded The Planetary Diversity mod, I have been unable to play without it since.

I've been LOVING your channel after I have seen your Vicky 3 video

stellaris is my fav paradox game, mostly because player freedom and roleplay potential that other games don't have also the gameplay itself is feels more fun to me than the other games

I found this video and punched the inscription button right away. I'm into anything that packs up narrative AND games together. Plus I really appreciated your angle speaking of this truly amazing game. You might find Rimworld is somehow in the same family of games (after all you mentioned Dwarf Fortress), hence very interesting and addictive (if you don't already know it, that is). I think games like Stellaris or Rimworld are at the end of a very long spectrum that has names like The Last of Us at the other end. TLOU is all about a powerful narrative imposed from above upon the player, exactly like movies do, to the extent that players can feel intimidated by the story, or even emotionally manipulated. You grab the controller, but all you can do is follow the director/storyteller and grind the game in order to ever get better at just one thing: fighting. I had wonderful moments playing TLOU, but all in all it was a kind of experience I already knew (and loved): the cinema experience. This is where most triple A games are heading how, an awesome overhaul of the cinematic experience, with hypertrophic realism and pavlovian-style emotional elicitations. Stellaris, Rimworld and other games based on emergent gameplays and narratives, on the other hand, speak of another possible future, one in which you don't undergo a storyline, instead you are one. And many.

i'm really quite bad at video games, but for some reason i got quite excited about stellaris, even though i managed to just die in that as well. This video really helped explain my feelings about it. I always knew i liked open world, but i hadn't realized it was because of the possibility of creating my own stories. It rings true though. Even when playing skyrim, i ended up googling for workarounds for things i wanted to do but were not allowed by the game's mechanics.

@Rosencreutzzz

Жыл бұрын

who among us hasn't used a console command or gotten a mod just to smooth over a narrative "flaw" the game can't accommodate? I even edit my skyrim characters sometimes to ad scars and age and change hair styles as events unfold.

@Desimere

Жыл бұрын

​@@Rosencreutzzz you sound delightful. But i'm the kind of person who usually skips the dialogue and doesn't bother with the aesthetics of things. I'd really never expect this of myself, i wouldn't think of myself as someone who cares about the stories in games.

A very informative video to watch. One thing I was wondering from your history game series is I you have hear of a game called Field of Glory Empires. It has a functional nation decay system and a large focus on building structures. I think you would enjoy it.

Omg the teaser at the end. Spore vid coming? 0.o

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

You know, I'm tempted to say "absolutely not" but then playing it again for the first time since like 2010, it really struck me how well made that game is, even if it's pretty clunky at times. More than anything, I lament that Maxis never got to make other games than the Sims before being consumed by EA. For now it'll just be a source of dumb gags, probably, not a video unto itself.

Chads use the empire creator in stellaris to create interesting factions for your human civilisation to encounter.

Ive enjoyed your videos... Idk if you'd ever do a video on like... Dwarf fortress, or space station 13, or some RPG. Either way, I'm excited to see what you'll do next! :0

@protahgonist

Жыл бұрын

Or Distant Worlds 2?

"The Netherlands: Arid world" I'm dead

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

*poldering intensifies*

@michaeledmunds7056

2 жыл бұрын

The Dutch: *confused screaming*

I love the big catapult orgin

I think you'd be really interested in looking at Cole Wehrle's board games, especially Oath (and now Arcs!) He has a good variety of very thoughtful and well argued historical games that are examinations of imperialism and also some more broader audience general themes of history and particularly empire. I think you'd also really enjoy the Pax series and Phil Eklund's work in general, they play a lot with limited scopes (i.e. playing as corrupt hacendados in Pax Porifiriana or as arctic tribes trying to survive the extremely harsh environment in Greenland), or with extremely broad scopes that make for very interesting arguments for some particular perception of the world (how finance and banking shaped the rise of the west in Pax Renaissance or on the development of human society in Bios: Origins.) Historical board games in general are seriously underexamined by the historical video game scene when I think they really have a lot to teach video games about examining history rigorously and being cognizant of the point you're making. (as well as being able to have much more mechanical depth of politics and economics, video games are seriously lacking in this department until only recently there were the beginnings of some shift towards the non-war aspects of history)

Great video! Have you thought about contrasting this game with Master of orion 2? I think that would make for interesting content

I'd love to see you take a look at the two Endless Space games.

@Rosencreutzzz

Жыл бұрын

I've thought about it and I'm fairly familiar with Endless Legends, but I also like the conceit of that one far more. Space is neat but it's less grounded (ha ha) and harder for me to like pull ideas from in terms of approaches to history. I could probably write a small thread about my thoughts on Endless games, but not like a full blown video as it stands.

Doing a game now, max primitives but only 8 starting AI empires, and man the map was so much more interesting than when you spawn with 12-20 AI Empires, every AI seems important now, even the newcomers that invent spaceflight are quickly brought into existing coalitions.

@GojiraTX

Жыл бұрын

that sounds complicated and hard to expand in unless you're a warlike or exterminator empire

This is the 15th time I watched this video please if you have the time make another Stellaris video

Awesome work, keep it up! Would love to see a Bannerloard / Feudalism video!

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

I've considered making a video on the game, but I don't have an angle I really want to talk about yet. Honestly, if anything, it might be more like this one, a video about game design things rather than history. That said, I do think my favorite thing about that game is that they have the imperial factions in a civil war. It's truly the best way to represent fantasy Rome. We'll see if something comes up.

@elilawrence7166

2 жыл бұрын

@@Rosencreutzzz That's a good point about the Empire factions

HOI4 mods are incredibly story dense and often play out like visual novels more than skill games (particularly The New Order)

11:36 oh yeah, that game existed. I keep forgetting that

Have you ever played a Mega-Campaign, perchance? There's lots of narrative constructive to do there.

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

I've only ever done the converted from CK2 to EU4 and it was something I was really excited for when I got it but barely touch because I don't tend to finish CK games much anymore and I was a little...I dunno, dismayed, I suppose by the cumulative effects of the changes. It felt less like I was continuing history and more like I'd made up an ungrounded world with a thousand custom nations just Europe, North Africa, and the Mid East (this was before RoI) and just...I dunno. It felt hollow in a way. There are a few saves where I do make it to end dates, just not a ton of them end up intriguing enough as an alt world to want to build from it. (If the conditions of EU4 and CK were reversed, however, I might find it a lot more appealing--in that making a huge empire for one game and then playing within it and watching it disintegrate CK style in the other would be far far more compelling)

Was showing this game to a friend that loves scifi but never plays strategy games and it's insane how deep the gameplay is now, every encounter is it's own thing, even the galactic community voting to give universal galactic worker rights increase political power of workers which can be detrimental to stratified societies, Stellaris has become very deep.

11:35 Alpha Centauri when?

man of culture over here using the mission impossible game soundtrack

Small note on custom nation. That might be what you, and I for that matter, feel about custom nations in EUIV but they are consistently among the most popular nation to play as.

With your separation of Narrative GSG and Skill GSG, what do you think of mods for hoi4 like TNO or even Kaiserriech which puts much more emphasis on the political story than gameplay of hoi4?

Oooh a Stellaris vid

6 months late but I've just got to say, I've probably spent as much time, or more on the empire creation screen of stellaris as I have actually playing the game proper. Like I will make like 6-15 brand new interconnected empires with deep lore behind them and then end up playing with them for like 50-75 in game years before starting the process over.

An animalcrossing video would be neat

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

It was only a half joke. Someday. Problem is I’ve got no capture card so I’d have to just find some ungodly way to record

It is nice having some good criticism of these games as the discussion is usually dominated by the alt-right. There is a lot more to talk about but I'm excited to see your other content as well. Especially spore (although it is not too different). Used to be one of my favourite games in my youth and all anyone can talk about it is how it didn't live up to the hype people had at the time. ^^

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

Honestly, that's the first thing I thought of when I reinstalled it. It was, quite literally, the first game I think I ever bought that really disappointed me (but I ended up really liking it anyway) and it's only because my friends who explained it to me (I hadn't seen a single thing about it online beforehand) were like "yeah it's like 5 games in one and there's an entire civilization strategy phase" and my child brain was like "woah you mean that there's an entire segment of the game as long and as in depth as Civ??" and so I was set up with really...odd expectations. Going back to it, I was actually really impressed with the game and can only lament Maxis didn't get to make many other things before EA bought them and sent them to the Sims DLC mines for eternity.

I don't understamd why anyone would get upset at Dune being called scifi.

@stalwartteakettlepotato9879

5 ай бұрын

Because Sci fi is often associated with philosophy, moral framing and general esthetic that is accepted today and dune rejects most of it outright. A example of what I mean by this is that most Sci fi views history as a linear progression either towards a technological utopia , a technological dystopia or just our current day world with more tech and at a larger scale. Dune on the other hand pulls various threads from our past and combines them with strange extrapolations of sci fi possibilities to create a cohesive whole. The people in the story believe in noble houses ,prophacy and holy war the same way our ancient ancestors have despite all of the things mentioned also being explained through and incorporating science. This duality is not understandable to the modern mind.

Stellaris is really good. It's the only paradox game I have spent money on

Good channel, should check his twitter dms though xd

@Rosencreutzzz

2 жыл бұрын

Haha, just saw it.

Sorry but I had to point it out. The Byzantines are Rome

Custom nations are necessary to create Belgium (revolutionary Burgundy doesn't count). Also people who want to play post-colonial nations.

tl:dr stellaris is a roleplaying game

I'm sorry, but I gotta drag you for your species portrait choices. In a game where you have choices like floating fungus people and giant crab people, you play as vulcans and anthropomorphic foxes? Very boring.

Are you a leftist?

@exaggeratedswaggerofablackteen

2 жыл бұрын

Is the sky blue ?

@nonical1429

2 жыл бұрын

@@exaggeratedswaggerofablackteen so he is?

@Zen-rw2fz

2 жыл бұрын

look up his Q&A, he acts like a centrist but he does seem left leaning tho

@durianjaykin3576

2 жыл бұрын

What does the words social history makes you think of?

@michaeledmunds7056

2 жыл бұрын

@@exaggeratedswaggerofablackteen No, this is Stellaris... it's black.