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L0VE
May 3, 2010
In my game so far I haven't been able to afford to do any drilling, but the AI definitely are. I'm sure its great and all but as soon as QQ got stackwiped in a war against the Mamlukes they merced up close to their forcelimit. Seems silly to drill away for decades and have it all undone in a single war, but maybe that's WAD?

Also echoing the easily exploitable "declare at 1st of month to stackwipe drilling armies" which is a bit silly.

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L0VE
May 3, 2010
Another alert that really should be amended is the one for when a tech gives you innovativeness. There is a grace period of like 3 months after the first nation has teched up, so others can get the +2 innovation as well. Thus I tend to wait for the ai to tech up first - yet there is no distinct alert for when the tech is picked / grace period starts ticking. Fortunately most ai tech up at 1 January every year, but its a hassle I could do without tbh.

Also what is up with innovativeness from ideas? I selected Economic before everyone else and got 7 innovation, which seems fair. But then tech 7 comes along and I see that pretty much any military idea would also give me innovation, which was pretty baffling, until I got to tech 10 and found that apparently not a single nation on earth had selected Innovative, Maritime, Naval or Quality! You can easily get 21 innovation if you're willing to select a rarer third idea group which is crazy. Especially since ideas don't seem to have a grace period, nor seem to be restricted to being first in your tech group which distorts the top innovation score for nations.

If you look around at nations first idea group, its pretty much only Economic and Diplomatic with close to zero military ideas, so you don't even have to get to tech 5 quickly if you can forego those two for 7 innovation.

In my current game I'm sitting at 46 innovation, with Ottomans at 20, Mantua at 12 and Venice 10. To be fair I've had really great rulers, but I could be equal with Ottomans from just picking idea groups with very little effort. Really hoping they revise the system to make it more competitive at the top.

L0VE
May 3, 2010
I think Paradox have finally realized why players are so negative about estates. Since they removed the need for them to control provinces game play is much better and in my opinion, it all comes down to annoyances. Lets be real here, nobody cared about the 25 % autonomy floor THAT much. What they did care about was having to pause the game and cross-reference 3+ map overlays (Estates, States, Development, Trade Goods, Trade...) , clicking each province to find how much Controlled Land, Loyalty and Influence would change. After every other war. This was, above all else, plain annoying.

But the key here is that this wasn't the only thing annoying about estates. If we compare Estates to the Tributary system we can really see the difference.

As a base you get three different estates, each one having three values (Land, Loyalty, Influence) that can all be relevant and at least two of these will change fairly often, either through player interaction or events. Now we can disregard Controlled Land, but this still leaves 6 different values to track. These are not just values where Higher = Better either. Loyalty has cutoff points, so 40.0 is fine, while 39.9 is bad. Influence also has cutoffs where 39.9 means you don't get to use most interactions. But also there are several tiers to Influence, where 75 makes interactions significantly stronger than at 74.9. And of course Loyalty and Influence are not independent. Higher Influence yields stronger effect from Loyalty bonus/malus.

Keeping track of 6 values where decimals matter isn't enough, though. Each estate has between 5 to 7 interactions depending on ideas/religion etc that you might like to use several of, that have a cooldown of either: 10, 15, 20, 25 or 30 years. Thankfully you can set a Message option for when an Estates Modifier expires. Unfortunately this doesn't work on the most important interactions. But even if there were reminders for Demand Power Points or Ask Contribution, there is still the annoyance of having to make sure all the numbers are the Correct Value before you make your demands. Because you're not keeping Loyalty and Influence in your head, you need to check that it is above the best cutoff you can get since 74.9 is NOT acceptable. You end up doing this quite often too, since even though all three Demand Power Points have the same cooldown, they end up out of sync quickly due to events interfering with your numbers.

Speaking of events. Do I need to include a screenshot? The estate events are often multiple choice, with each choice potentially affecting 4 numbers for 2 different estates with 3 variations, in opposite directions (+inf, + loyalty & -inf, - loyalty) together with a wildcard extra effect like +1 production in a random province. It is not possible to keep Influence and Loyalty in your head while playing the game. When you get a complex event, you must pause and potentially go through ALL loyalty and influence AND availability of cooldowns AND duration of any other event modifiers present (and find out if you actually want +1 production in Bhagalpur). These event modifiers are of course also not standard duration and vary quite a bit so you can have multiple active simultaneously and expiring at different points.

Compare this to Tributaries.

You can have an unlimited amount of Tributaries, each with four different values (Opinion, Liberty Desire, Development, Trust). For the most part though, we need only care about Liberty Desire. While the other 3 affect LD, they don't tend to fluctuate massively without interference. So really you're tracking one value for each Tributary. Liberty Desire has two important values, where above 50 means disloyal and 100 means rebellion. There is no massive difference between the intermediate values, in fact any value below 50 is just as good as any other. In practice you can simply sort your Tributaries by LD to get a simple and quick overview to find anyone above 50. That's all you need. You can then deal with lowering LD at your own leisure with very few cooldowns or hard limits.

Tributaries have 7 interactions which stop working if LD is above 50. They do not scale to LD in any other way. In fact, they scale only to development or income, which will only occasionally change, and you can have notifications for if they go to war if you wish to intervene. There are no tiers, although I believe power points get rounded down, meaning you get a cutoff at 33 development for actually demanding power points (since that is the minimum for 1.0 points).

The amount of tribute provided scales in a more linear manner where Higher = Better. There are also no cooldowns on interactions (except the nominal one year for switching tribute type). There are interactions that can lower or increase LD and you are free to use them whenever, however many times you like as long as Tributaries/you have enough resources.

There is no need for reminders since tribute is collected automatically. Forgetting to switch tribute type for a few years is not a direct loss, since you were still receiving some form of tribute (if not the one you wanted).

Tributary related events have small amounts of flavour text and are generally simple choices. The only annoying thing about them is vagueness (the one's giving your tributary an event doesn't explain what their event entails).

Just imagine if every Estate Event was just a simple +-X Influence AND/OR +-X Loyalty, where some events would let you choose which estate the effect would apply to and others wouldn't. poo poo, imagine not having to worry about expiration dates or cooldowns! You want 50 Mil Power? Sure, that's +25 Noble Influence. You want another 50 Mil Power? Sure, but now you're at 50 Noble Influence, you want another 50? Go for it, but that means you're not getting the Advisor or the Leader for +25 without a Noble rebellion. You're gonna have to pay $SOMETHING to lower that influence!

TLDR: The Tributary system is great and every system should be more like it, especially Estates since it's annoying to keep track of all the numbers.

L0VE
May 3, 2010

Senor Dog posted:

Stopped reading at cross referencing maps because who the heck does that. Give your new states estates if u wanna or don’t, whatever.

Groogs please tell me how to get “One king to rule them all” in this patch (or next patch if it’s impossible in this one).

I guess it's not really relevant with the patch changes, but I don't think I'm the only one who tries to optimize at least a little bit. Like not giving Nobles and Burghers provinces with valuable trade goods. Also trying to give Nobles 1 1 3 provinces instead of 5 3 4. It's not major things, but since Estate owned provinces tend to last the entire game I kinda feel compelled to make the best of it. I'll concede that I've only looked at this from a pretty try-hard perspective.

L0VE
May 3, 2010

Sage Grimm posted:

What fiddling are you doing that requires a ton of it? The biggest fiddle I found is getting Burghers up to enough influence so I can use their powers and that's like a once every 100 years sort of thing, depending on big your country has grown. And many of your decisions from estate events boil down to 'is it going to decrease loyalty below a certain number or increase influence above a certain number?'

Lets take an example.

The cooldown for Demanding Military Power is up, you've been checking on it every 2-3 years because you can't remember the precise year, having other things in your head, but now it's ready. You want to get the 150 Military Points if at all possible, after all you only get the chance every 20 years. You only have 40 Influence which would only give you 50 MIL. Not ideal. Fortunately, there are several interactions that can get you higher:
+15 from an Advisor,
+20 from a General
+10 from Call Diet.

You use them all and get your 150 MIL. Cool. You keep playing the game and every X years you get an Advisor/General and every 20 years you get your 150 MIL for the next 400 years. Except it just doesn't work out like that in my games.

Somewhere I get a good event giving Loyalty, so I don't need to use Call Diet. Later I end up using Call Diet because I'm losing a war and need to demand Manpower. Suddenly Call Diet and Demand MIL Power are out of sync, so I have to wait for Call Diet before Demanding, except I get a bad event lowering Loyalty, which I can't afford because I'm at war and Maintenance is killing me, the Nobles own lots of land and I have 5 War Exhaustion already pushing revolt risk high. I need to use Call Diet now, except I have 2 modifiers increasing Noble Influence by 10 each for another 10 and 2 years, respectively and Call Diet would guarantee a Noble Disaster. If I wait another 2 years I can use Call Diet then though. Of course then I won't have it for Demand MIL Power and...

Now add another two estates with similar situations and suddenly you're having to pay attention to a lot of numbers fairly often. It's much less of a problem now that Disasters don't start ticking at 80. Having to do the math for if you could afford to sit at 80/85 Influence until the +Modifier ran out was pretty bad.

If you're willing to settle for good enough, this is probably not an issue, but I can't help but feel exasperated whenever I see a multi-choice Estate Event because I know I'm gonna have to look over all Estate Loyalty/Influence and their current Modifiers and Cooldowns before I can make a choice.

E: Maybe an Event will make things clearer?



This isn't the most complex event, but it's not great. We have the potential to
A) Lose Loyalty
B) Gain Loyalty & Lose Influence
C) Lose Loyalty & Lose Influence

Can I afford to lose Loyalty? (and if not, can you afford to use Call Diet to offset this?)
Do I need to gain Loyalty? Follow up: Can I afford the 100 ducats needed?
Can I afford to lose Influence? (If I drop below 40 Influence I lose the ability to use ALL interactions but demands)
Do I need to Lose Influence (Is it too close for comfort or preventing interactions)
I also need to ensure I don't have any Modifiers currently lowering my influence so I don't get a surprise Disaster a few years later when it runs out and I hit 100 Influence.

L0VE fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Sep 20, 2018

L0VE
May 3, 2010

Firebatgyro posted:

How is that any more complicated than figuring out coalitions in Europe?

You have to calculate your truces and when each runs out, relations with everyone with 50+ AE and how those relations will change with the new land you are taking (border friction, claims, etc), possibility of getting excommunicated, unlawful HRE land, and a million other things

I don't particularly enjoy calculating truces and keeping track of all the people close to joining coalitions either to be honest. I don't know of a way to fix it, but I do think Estates could be made less annoying since Tributaries avoid almost all problems estates have.

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L0VE
May 3, 2010
For anyone who enjoys playing in the Americas, but dislikes waiting for Euros before fun is allowed, there is an exploit in this patch to get rid of the Primitive tag. Just start as any nation in South or Central America, when one of the Totemist or Animist tribes migrate into vision, No CB them, siege them down and offer Force Religion to them. As soon as you turn Totemist/Animist you lose the Primitive tag and can now embrace institutions, get full ducats from gold etc. Unfortunately does not seem to work the reverse way. I even tried Totemist->Nauhatl->Totemist but no dice.

Can be done (almost) guaranteed by 1445 if you play in South America but only in theory for Central America (might take a lot of restarts) since the closest native doesn't want to migrate south on their first jump. Others are 3-4 jumps away which is 15-20 years and a large amount of luck. If you want to, you can seed and embrace feudalism and renaissance, then form Inca/take the Lima province which turns you back to Inti. You keep the institutions, but can now reform your religion. If you force convert an OPM you can even reform off of them! I didn't do this because I prefer the money from gold, though.

I thought this was gonna be super OP but having to seed two full institutions in mountains took a massive amount of points so I'm unlikely to be equal to Euros anyway. I'm rich as hell, though!

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