DDRJake at it again - world conquest with the Minghals

[rebelde]

Now here's a decent reply. Iduakil please take notes and learn from this fine gentleman.
Now, to address it: That is all true, of course. With a few notes:
Coring progress is frozen when at war with someone with a core on the provinces you're coring. At the moment in my Commonwealth game coring time is 112 months for me, which is OUCH, but hey. Fair game.
I'm no longer in need of manpower as at this size as even at war with other powers in my european front my manpower barely takes a dent while sieging several provinces at once with stacks of 40+, and battles aren't even much of a thing, but at the beginnings I barely had enough manpower+cash for taking on my enemies, like Muscovy.
Vassalizing/annex: yeah, only pushing the button requires peace, that much is true. Scant little time at peacetime with a few allies though!
Well, if you're going to be conquering a lot, you might as well plan ahead, yes? Set up your fronts so that you can flip between them at will.
Fabricate claims: true, but can also be done during peacetime. With long borders you can fabricate on a lot of targets, and that takes diplomats and time! Always aim for having all the claims you can on possible war targets.
Scouting: yeah, can be, but would be distracting. When I wait for truces to end I look through disputed successions, others' wars, alliances (alliance with Uzbek was Crimea's downfall in my latest game as I could get at them without poking Otto).

There's ways of juggling AE, through region, alliances and improving relations (friendly folk seem to get a lot less AE than neutrals). Truth be told, if not for truces and AE/coalitions, at this point I could just steamroll the whole world, that would make the game quite trivial. I don't really fancy unending war myself, I like that in Pdox games you have these little mechanics limiting it, as opposed to, say, Total War games. Never touched a CA game after trying CK2 for the first time.

I think besides the fact that all those things can also be done during wartime, the real problem is that once you initiate coring/annexing vassals/improving relations/fabricating claims/etc. you're really just pushing a button and then you're done. The mechanics don't need any other player interaction while ongoing but they're just ticking numbers at the end of the month, not very exciting in my opinion.

 

[Chevaresqye]

Take a chill pill and stop whining, it's unbecoming of an adult. You're embarrassing yourself. If you completely lack patience, maybe it's time to go play a different game. It's like complaining Diablo is a simple hack'n'slash with no character development.

What's the point of arguing mechanics? AE's in the game, OE's in the game, coalitions are in the game - and they're not going away. And I like it that way - as do many others. Other fronts you conquer in a different region, religious group and culture group, these things matter, did you know? And all this matter just so much to you why, because you can't manage a World Conquest? Well, maybe you're just not good enough, did the thought occur to you? Suck it up.

Because those mechanics makes the game not fun, and reduce the game's quality. You and some other may like it that way, but many other don't. Those are some unrealistic crap that does not increase challenge or role playing value. Realm divided is a mechanics in Shogun total war, and players see those mechanics as a crap, only create fake challenge.

 

[gothos]

Realm Divided was a terrible, terrible thing, once that fired I turned Shogun 2 off, uninstalled and never looked at it again. Main difference is that while Realm Divided never fires for the AI, AE and coalitions work against the AI as well as the player (Lucky Nations aside, I really don't like that "mechanic").

But. How is it "unrealistic crap"? As far as being threathened by a warmongering monster in games, it's quite effective. What's your counter-proposal?

 

[The Outlaw Torn]

As far as being threathened by a warmongering monster in games, it's quite effective. What's your counter-proposal?

Give the player and AI alike the tools to bleed AE and wreck coalitions from the inside out without firing a shot - at a cost, of course, and possibly not with guaranteed success. Make Espionage more valuable!

 

[gothos]

Give the player and AI alike the tools to bleed AE and wreck coalitions from the inside out without firing a shot - at a cost, of course, and possibly not with guaranteed success. Make Espionage more valuable!

That's... interesting. Now, if relations between the coalition members mattered, if you could work to divide them - if there could be more than one coalition against a single nation, like there are multiple defensive federations - and ways to influence that through Espionage... I like that.

 

[WeissRaben]

Take a chill pill and stop whining, it's unbecoming of an adult. You're embarrassing yourself. If you completely lack patience, maybe it's time to go play a different game. It's like complaining Diablo is a simple hack'n'slash with no character development.

What's the point of arguing mechanics? AE's in the game, OE's in the game, coalitions are in the game - and they're not going away. And I like it that way - as do many others. Other fronts you conquer in a different region, religious group and culture group, these things matter, did you know? And all this matter just so much to you why, because you can't manage a World Conquest? Well, maybe you're just not good enough, did the thought occur to you? Suck it up.

I was sold a Grand Strategy game, I got a wargame with stinted warfare. I think I have a right to say that I want something to do at peace.

 

[Encak]

I was sold a Grand Strategy game, I got a wargame with stinted warfare. I think I have a right to say that I want something to do at peace.

Funny how that works huh? Yet we are still here playing this silly game instead of playing CK2 or Vicky2. Plenty of stuff to do during peace time.

 

[WeissRaben]

Funny how that works huh? Yet we are still here playing this silly game instead of playing CK2 or Vicky2. Plenty of stuff to do during peace time.

YOU are still there playing this silly game. I have played 15 hours in 3 months. Also, pray tell, do what? You are, let's say, Frankfurt. Colonization is out. Trade is a matter of setting up the merchants at game start. A couple alliances to keep safe. Now what?

 

[anubisfike]

Funny how that works huh? Yet we are still here playing this silly game instead of playing CK2 or Vicky2. Plenty of stuff to do during peace time.

What is there to do in peace time? I'm curious.

Colonisation? Not really much to do here other than station a small army on a province and send a colonist. It's much less demanding and more convenient than EU3.
Trade? It's entirely automated in a much better and easier way than EU3. You click about three buttons (one if it's inland) and then you can safely ignore your trade node until you need to send more light ships there.
Conversion? Click a button.
Coring? Click a button.
Diplomacy? Press improve relations, after a while press alliance or royal marriage or whatever other reason you had to improve relations. Maybe you only wanted to improve relations? Cancel it when you get +100 and send him somewhere else with another click after waiting for a while.

What else is there? There's 'waiting'. That's what you're doing.

 

[stevefs]

I actually tried that somehow yesterday: Took most of the loans, then released the vassals. Next month I was again able to take loans (not that many though) and went bankrupt the month after. It might save some clicking and some inflation. Someone needs to try this with almost maxing out the loans before the vassal release. I was a little chicken to fully try it as it was already my 5th run and I didn't want to screw it up.

In my first try I took the loans after selling Beijing. Something like 3000 loans @ 2 ducats available. My finger protested angrily and instantly rage quit.
Then I never got Bengal and or Delhi to take loans. Too much time passed. Quit.
Then I took land from Delhi, wanted to vassalize them 5 yrs later, but they always won some land through conquest and were too big to vassalize. No warnings helped, they just grew. Rage quit.

And so on. I'm now in the 6th run and it goes well, however the coalition against me is huge and includes Japan. It makes for a lot harder game. I might have to try DDR's AE burner for the first time

I noted, late into video 3, Jake said he tried dozens of combinations to get the bankruptcy to be timed just right, but nothing he showed suggests that you can't accumulate the debt before your income is reduced from releasing the Chinese vassals. I haven't had time to try this yet...weekend maybe.

And of course, as you show, a lot can go wrong with the early setup.

 

[stevefs]

I can understand for CK (barely) but Victoria ? Really ? The AI in Victoria is probably the worst of any game I have ever played my entire life, so except if you play MP only I can't see how you can have fun in this game since it's just afk destroy everything even as a small nation cause the AI is too busy being dumb.

I saw a run where Belgium get attacked by Netherlands who has almost no troops ( suicide lol ) then they lose, the guy took one of their colony in asia, then he declares war to china and own them cause for some reason they can't use troops correctly even while being enormous. This game is litteraly a big joke.

This would be a problem for Vicky2 only if Vicky2 reverted to Progress Quest during peace as EUIV does. On the contrary, you can run decades in Vicky2 managing the internal economy and politics, being engaged and having fun, without planning for or thinking about war. And, if you do go to war for conquest, it's usually about gaining population or resources to feed I to that internal economy. Now, if anything in Vicky2 becomes an exercise in watching paint dry, it's province occupation, which manages to be less interesting than EUIV sieges, but that's a war mechanic.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Because those mechanics makes the game not fun, and reduce the game's quality. You and some other may like it that way, but many other don't. Those are some unrealistic crap that does not increase challenge or role playing value. Realm divided is a mechanics in Shogun total war, and players see those mechanics as a crap, only create fake challenge.

You see a lot of the same kinds of arguments from the same kind of player arguing in favor of skill equalization. Since the typical response you get in arguing against that is for them to ignore your arguments and talk about their personal experiences or recite game mechanics, it's not worth your time unless you want to have a little fun with them.

I noted, late into video 3, Jake said he tried dozens of combinations to get the bankruptcy to be timed just right, but nothing he showed suggests that you can't accumulate the debt before your income is reduced from releasing the Chinese vassals. I haven't had time to try this yet...weekend maybe.

And of course, as you show, a lot can go wrong with the early setup.

I'm pretty sure he tried that.

 

[jrk264]

Aye, I just edited it out. My bad.

Front flipping is great in Eurasia and Asia proper, but it doesn't work in Europe - at least not until the Reformation hits, and even then with HRE mechanics it's iffy at best. It'd be nice to have options added by Espionage that allow you to bleed or even divert AE by, for example, forging a claim after the war. "Hey, you guys! You're ganging up on me because you think I'm an aggressor, but I only did what I did because [country] did [thing] to me - and here's proof!" Not very eloquent, but you get the point.

The HRE (AFAICT) is intended to be Hard Mode. A mechanic that otherwise is tough but manageable is amped up to brutal difficulty. Playing any game on the highest difficulty level is going to involve some tedium. Any non-HRE European start is has an easy time setting up two or three distinct "fronts" such that you are almost always expanding but you don't have a coalition after you. If you don't want to face a crazy difficult experience, don't start in the HRE.

Even in the HRE, though, I have found it's rarely the case that there is literally nothing to do but wait for AE to go down. There's usually plenty to do to prepare for the next war: improving relations with shaky members of the coalition to get them out of it, improving relations with other neighbors so they won't join the coalition after your next conquest, teeing up options for your next two or three CBs, shoring up alliances, that kind of thing. Nothing too intensive on the quick twitch side of things, but it does involve some planning and thinking that I find enjoyable. If you wind up in a spot where every neighbor is locked into the coalition for the next twenty years no matter what you do it's usually a sign that you expanded too fast (and remember, getting caught fabricating claims three times is the same as grabbing two provinces with no justification).

 

[CiderMuffin]

I was sold a Grand Strategy game, I got a wargame with stinted warfare. I think I have a right to say that I want something to do at peace.

Espionage, trade, colonize, build your forces, improve relations. Plenty to do outside of war.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The HRE (AFAICT) is intended to be Hard Mode. A mechanic that otherwise is tough but manageable is amped up to brutal difficulty. Playing any game on the highest difficulty level is going to involve some tedium. Any non-HRE European start is has an easy time setting up two or three distinct "fronts" such that you are almost always expanding but you don't have a coalition after you. If you don't want to face a crazy difficult experience, don't start in the HRE.

Even in the HRE, though, I have found it's rarely the case that there is literally nothing to do but wait for AE to go down. There's usually plenty to do to prepare for the next war: improving relations with shaky members of the coalition to get them out of it, improving relations with other neighbors so they won't join the coalition after your next conquest, teeing up options for your next two or three CBs, shoring up alliances, that kind of thing. Nothing too intensive on the quick twitch side of things, but it does involve some planning and thinking that I find enjoyable. If you wind up in a spot where every neighbor is locked into the coalition for the next twenty years no matter what you do it's usually a sign that you expanded too fast (and remember, getting caught fabricating claims three times is the same as grabbing two provinces with no justification).

Playing as a western tech nation that begins the game independent is not hard mode lol.

Espionage, trade, colonize, build your forces, improve relations. Plenty to do outside of war.

Even in the HRE, though, I have found it's rarely the case that there is literally nothing to do but wait for AE to go down. There's usually plenty to do to prepare for the next war: improving relations with shaky members of the coalition to get them out of it, improving relations with other neighbors so they won't join the coalition after your next conquest, teeing up options for your next two or three CBs, shoring up alliances, that kind of thing. Nothing too intensive on the quick twitch side of things, but it does involve some planning and thinking that I find enjoyable. If you wind up in a spot where every neighbor is locked into the coalition for the next twenty years no matter what you do it's usually a sign that you expanded too fast (and remember, getting caught fabricating claims three times is the same as grabbing two provinces with no justification).

Case in point! It fits my post perfectly:

You see a lot of the same kinds of arguments from the same kind of player arguing in favor of skill equalization. Since the typical response you get in arguing against that is for them to ignore your arguments and talk about their personal experiences or recite game mechanics, it's not worth your time unless you want to have a little fun with them.

1. Ignore arguments that point out that literally every single one of these things is doable in war, and thus they are not valid additions as things to do outside of war.
2. Talk about one's own experience/preference.
3. Recite game mechanics in a manner irrelevant to the actual discussion.
4. Pretend an actual argument was made .

Now, why do players like attempts at skill equalization? Make your own conclusions .

 

[anubisfike]

Espionage, trade, colonize, build your forces, improve relations. Plenty to do outside of war.

Are you still going on? How about you post in the other thread instead? Or explain how the things you mention actually let you do anything other than press a button.

 

[jrk264]

Playing as a western tech nation that begins the game independent is not hard mode lol.

Personally I found getting big with Songhai a lot easier than getting big with Frankfurt, but YMMV.

Case in point! It fits my post perfectly:

1. Ignore arguments that point out that literally every single one of these things is doable in war, and thus they are not valid additions as things to do outside of war.
2. Talk about one's own experience/preference.
3. Recite game mechanics in a manner irrelevant to the actual discussion.
4. Pretend an actual argument was made .

Now, why do players like attempts at skill equalization? Make your own conclusions .

The initial claim made was "there is nothing to do but war." The claim you are defending is "there is nothing you can do during peace that you can't do during war." The first claim would be a major problem with the game, but is not true. The second claim has some truth to it, but is not nearly as damning as a critique.

On a separate note, I know what I wrote. When you try to describe me as saying something that I did not say, I am aware that you are mischaracterizing my words. I'm not sure why you think this is a useful debate tactic.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Personally I found getting big with Songhai a lot easier than getting big with Frankfurt, but YMMV.

Yes, but those are rather extreme examples. Songhai has the easiest start in Sub-Saharan Africa aside from maybe Mali...but Mali starts tribal...and ideas at a quality usually only seen in Europe. Frankfurt is one of the more difficult HRE choices you can make, so in a way you're comparing the easiest or 2nd easiest start in a region to one of the harder ones in another. Getting big with Ashanti, Mogadishu, Sukhothai or Jangladesh is much more uphill than Frankfurt for example. Chimu is much easier than it used to be amusingly because Japan pushes them trade) but also arguably harder.

The initial claim made was "there is nothing to do but war." The claim you are defending is "there is nothing you can do during peace that you can't do during war." The first claim would be a major problem with the game, but is not true. The second claim has some truth to it, but is not nearly as damning as a critique.

The claim I cite is the one that is rational and is also commonly made, and isn't being addressed here much. This game doesn't have much depth to it aside from war and preparation for war, and that's where most diplomacy centers also. The problem with the non-war mechanics is that they don't require much to apply them. When someone claims that you can "improve relations" while at peace...while true what they're really saying is that spending 1-2 seconds out of several minutes to send a diplomat and let it sit there is supposed to alleviate a dead period in the game. The problem is, that doesn't even put a dent in the time spent. Planning is something that needs to be done constantly and regardless of war. This game lacks the internal political depth that would make peacetime viably interesting, and it does so by design according to devs.

That leaves us war. However, now we have multiple mechanics that we have that rate-limit us in an undynamic way. None of the counters to AE are particularly engaging, even the cheese method DDRJake taught us is something that you can execute in a mostly braindead fashion. Some of the most interesting methods surrounding this mechanic involve deliberately abusing its limitations instead, because unlike so many rate-limiters in this game, you're not waiting on a timer to tick down w/o direct input past starting the timer.

I'm not sure how much "tell three diplomats to do a task then wait" constitutes "something to do". That the game limits the rate of war without providing anything that adds a comparable amount of engagement outside of war that you have in it (and is unique to peace) is one of the game's most obvious problems...aside from aspects of it that don't work of course.

 

[oblio-]

Personally I found getting big with Songhai a lot easier than getting big with Frankfurt, but YMMV.

Getting big with Songhai or many other lower tech nations is quite easy. That's why some of the empires posted in the "Post your empire topic" are huge. But many of the screenshots are in 1650. For example Hordes, East Asian nations, etc.
The hard part comes later - when the Europeans or Ottomans come for you. Especially if you're in one of the hotspots: India, Spice Islands, Arabia, etc. If you're not big enough, they'll just crush you until you Westernize. And I can tell you that being assaulted every 5 years after 200 years of conquest does not feel good.

As Frankfurt or something similar you just have to get 8-10 provinces, build province improvements (easy as an Westerner) and make sure you have great relations with several big powers, preferably 2 of which will be your allies. The HRE is especially minor friendly.

 

[Brianhjh]

I hear the name DDRJake a lot, is he a wizard? prince of darkness?