Not great but this is more acceptable than EU4 mana. Having your ruler have ways of meaningfully or passively greasing the wheels of your country's political system based partly on his abilities and his advisor's with clear limits seems less like mana and more something like CK2's prestige or V2's suppression points.
On the topic of CK2, I never understood the nicknaming scheme. My ruler could beat the shit out of the HRE, form an empire, and triple the realm's income all in one life, and the nickname he gets is "The Good" or "The Holy" meanwhile some literal-who AI duke who forms a kingdom is suddenly called "The Great" no questions asked. Bitch, what do I have to do to be called the great?
They will not consider offers from infidels: ----------
I forgot I started in 867, made my Islamic conversion way easier, not to mention Tibet being fractured and much easier to conquer.
Ngl I'm digging the idea of campaign focused on conquering westward whilst remaining a Han Taoist vassal of the Protectorate, to min/max in to earning Grace. The Emperor's number 1 guy (whilst also kowtowing to the protector general of course). It's the lack of CBs that really suck for that idea.
No Muslim!!!
Games these days are huge and Paradox specifically has a shitload of DLCs. I might have room for one or two, unless they have tiny file sizes(I dunno how large map painter games are these days). This is why I said I will start with EU2 and CK2 since these should take up minimal amounts of space, but I want an opinion on the more modern Paradox games before I download any of them.
I assume you mean EU4 and not EU2, but if you did mean 2 I'd recommend you play For the Glory instead, it's just EU2 but better.
I actually got a EU2 disc here somewhere so I do mean that. If I like that, I will give FTG a go. Problem with Paradox games is that there are so many of them I can't realistically give them all a go, so I'm only looking for a couple others before I give them my time. EU2 I already own and CK2 is an easy win for me, CK3 I might give a go regardless but I don't really know anything about other games, hence why I am asking. I do know I will probably have to begrudgingly play HOI4 at one point to give that Fallout mod a go, but aside from that my backlog is currently open.
Paradox games aren't that big. According to my file manager EUIV + HoI 4 are both ~10GB each. EUV is ~17ish. Mods are potentially another couple of GB for some of the bigger total overhauls.
That's good to know, but there is still the time issue. I know these games can be massive time sinks, so unfortunately I can only try out a few of them at best. It's the "kid in the candy store" scenario where I just have to choose something and hope I like it.
Well what do you want to do in a strategy game?
I'm more used to traditional RTS games where you fight battles rather than city build or map paint. That's why I am asking for good games for beginners, like in the video I linked, so I can get a gist of what a "Paradox Game" is and if I am going to like it, vs if I start with a more hardcore entry without knowing and get filtered out.
There is a possibility you might enjoy CK2 more then EU2, the latter is from the early days of Paradox before they nailed their strategy game formula.
CK2, 1066, Irish Count, Simple As
Seconded CK2, it's the easiest to get a grasp of mechanically and get a feel for how you're going to gel. Put a few hours into, if you don't like one start just go back to main menu and try another as something different (different religion, different rank, different culture, different gov, different character, etc.), as the difficulties and challenges faced can be very variable both in terms of starting position, your character's rank, culture and religion, your government type and just pure rng of what is going on around you.
