We are back on the rails again with another exciting episode of Cube Engineers!

In this episode, TrainmasterGT invites Nico Heini, Publishing Manager for Urban Games, to discuss the upcoming title Transport Fever 3. This game promises to offer more player agency than practically any other game in the genre and can serve as a tool for teaching game designers how to build higher-agency games. Learn how the new Node-Based Map Generation, Traffic Management, Light Rail, and Cargo Distribution Systems all provide players with a wealth of interesting gameplay decisions without overloading comprehension complexity. Additionally, discover how the Curated Mods Program allows community members to customize to a greater extent than previous titles in the Transport Fever series. 

All Aboard!

Completely new to the game. I'm playing as the king of Leon. I took over the kingdom of Galicia but earlier I was put on the shitlist for free investiture so my vassals hate me for the war, for the pope, and bc I killed one of my siblings for the war. I'm making no money so i'm really trapped even though i have all this land now. i tried to change the tax structure to force the vassals to actually pay me taxes (pretty much all of them were giving me zero i was making like 2 coins a month) but i can't get their opinions up high enough for them to approve it (got 10/25). everyone has titles, land, and i've sent all the gifts i can since i'm broke. am i just stuck and need to start over?

I got EU4, CK3 and HOI4 on sale. I'm coming from the civ series and have played a decent amount of old world. Which game would you recommend I get into first or should I look at EU5?

Assume I'll have access to all DLC

I don't mind learning new mechanics or sucking at first, I want something I can dive into deeply. I have looked at other posts and many yt videos of people playing these games, but cannot decide which ones to play. I tried playing them for a bit, but think it will take up to 80 hours to figure out which one I like most, and I'd rather put all my effort into one game.

I enjoy strategy games and my initial goal will be to take over coastal Europe playing as Spain.

I'm a bit of a econ nerd so EU's trade mechanics seem inticing, but I love the vibe of CK3.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My specs (as EU5 is apparently a beast of a game):

Rtx3090

R9 9950x

32gb DDR5 (might upgrade to 64gb)

M.2 SSD

Hey I am looking for a group or player who wants to play paradox games (ck3, vic 3, eu4,5) with me. The most important thing that you are a Roleplayer at heart and dont play for pure min max.

If you re the type of player who goes into ck3 to make the strongest marriage and than eat your neighbors asap this post is not for you.

If you enjoy roleplaying and relax gameplay in Paradox games shoot me a dm and we can go from there :)

I really wanted to play DH again after many years but it seems like the game refuses to play nice anymore. There's just this terrible frame lag at all times, like 20 fps or lower. I remember the game did not like fullscreen back in the day but even playing in windowed doesnt fix it.

I've done everything I could find after a google search. Enabled directplay, set the game to use my nvidia gpu in nvidia control panel, set 16-bit color mode and compatibility to WinXP but nothing works. I tried a tool called cnc-ddraw which did fix the frame issues in windowed mode, but the problem is the mouse cursor is not accurate, it's like a solid inch under the graphical cursor. It makes clicking on anything a pain. Wined3d also had some performance increases but that introduced sound issues and it wasnt as smooth as cnc-ddraw was.

Has anyone gotten this game working on a modern OS? I have a working copy of HOI2 with no issues and play HOI3 so I am confident this is a DH exclusive problem.

EDIT: After probably a combined 6 hours I've figured it out. The mouse offset problem with cnc-ddraw is caused by having both cnc-ddraw and DH set to windowed. You have to set DH to run in fullscreen and cnc-ddraw needs to be set to windowed. Everything runs like normal now. No more issues.

1. The ability to declare yourself as the United States as a cosmetic tag

2. The ability to design in depth all of the vehicles such as dune buggies , tanks, helicopters and other units

3. Old Government agencies claiming to be the real government, the DOD , the dept of agriculture, remnants of the senate / house all claiming succession and amassing armies.

- for this I would like to see if we could side with one faction or try to influence them

1. Launching the nukes

2. The ability to rebuild major cities to former glory and not just in like a patchwork way but making it back to old glory

3. Realistic fallout. In the real world nuclear fallout would clear quickly and air would become safe to breathe in within maybe a month. Years long radiation would be dumb

What if, EU5 music, but in the background there's an ambient noise track from Stellaris?

I'm doing a mega campaign, and I just switched to EU4, but it feels like all the progress I made in CK3 is just gone. I'm bleeding money despite not even having an army or navy, and I can't do anything.

I'm playing Taiwan btw

I wanna see what happens and experience it, but idk if I can play EU4. What I'm asking is, would it be better to just sit back and watch and maybe intervene a little hand-of-god style or just skip eu4 and go to vic

My friend group is getting burned out of slay the spire and we keep hearing it's not as good but would still jump on it if it was cheap

The Legion won’t fall this time around!

Which GSG, or GSG from PDX was best on release or within the first few months?

I think HOI4 was the one i played the most at release, maybe EU3.

I low PDX games but they need a few years of updates, dlc, and mods before they shine and I end up playing for hundreds of hours.

Ironically I feel like it also takes longer for newer games because I know the amount of content to come in the future. I also have the older games to play with all there years of support.

Edit: Intresting, the majority concensus is CK3. I think im in a minority, I found CK3 to empty and gameplay loop to samey that I did not play it for years.

I had a quick look at player counts for the big games. Most seem stable. Hoi4 and EU4 seem to be the only ones that attracted a higher baseline of players over time.

This isn't just a gripe with paradox but because paradox games are quite pricey, I would like to at least get a taste of the game before commiting. Additionally it would be nice to see how the game runs on my pc, since my pc isn't very powerful

Something I think could be a cool feature for Afterworld is some sort of "Fallen empire" similar to stellaris. There are many groups or places that could survive an apocalypse pretty much unscathed, or could produce enough food to maintain pre apocalypse populations. For example Iowa alone produces enough corn to feed the entire us currently, even accounting for no fertilizer or modern farming practices they could still feed about 58 million people. Having some surviving states and provinces that could be maintaining pre apocalypse tech and populations would be both realistic (who nukes iowa?) And would serve as good challenges for late game players.

In the ideas tree there's an entire slavery grouping of ideas

& since the way you get ideas is through exploration & discovery I'm stuck wondering what gameplay scenarios would lead your tribe to discovering slavey as a concept & also refining that idea.

Source of image (Timestamp 8:21)

Now that "Afterworld" has been announced, what game should we expect next?

hoi5?

Stellaris 2?

Something else?

I ran a challenge to guess the new paradox game (https://www.reddit.com/r/paradoxplaza/s/1dYSFp3Puh) and here are the results!

 1. What do you think the new game will be about?

Closest answers: "Post apocalyptic era survive and thrive. titles will be looser like stellaris" by (anonymous) and "procedurally-generated post-apocalyptic game" by u/Flins12

Funniest answers: "France under extrem heat" by El Chapatissimo and "Post-apocalyptic setting (DO THE COLD WAR COWARDS!)" by MediocreZebra

 2. When do you think the new game will release?

Can't judge since we don't know yet.

 3. What do you think the title of the new game will be?

The title got leaked so I only allowed answers before the leak...

Closest answers: "Ashen or Ashborne or Ash Lords (somesuch)" by MutualBear and "The Struggle for Ashes" by IrishPuzzle

Funniest answers: "Dinopunk" by Ponda and "Hearts of Victoria Universalis 2: March of the Imperator Eagles" by The War Room

 Winners, enjoy your brownie points (and bragging rights?)