Hey, i rarely do this, but right now i think its a good occasion for one of these threads.
Im a dedicated EU3 modder, which means i spend a lot of time toying around with EU3 mechanics, and i have to say, there are quite a few issues and problems with current state of EU3.
Basically some months ago, before CK2 (if i remember correctly) we had a month or so (i call it a honey moon) when Johan (and other guys i suppose, sry i remember him posting) made something like 5 patches in a month or so. It was awesome, as game got some badly needed love, and we even got couple of new (bonus?) stuff like rebel hunting (<3) etc.
Now, all these months later, without a single new patch, im kind of starting to get annoyed with well known bugs that really need to be fixed.
I understand that this is a money making business, dont get me wrong, i appreciate the value of your time, BUT since it looks like AHD's development is over (its released) and CK2 is nearly out (like a week or so more?), i would like to point out that there are still quite a few of us playing EU3 almost every day. And on top of that there are (to my knowledge) quite a few reported bugs that need some attention.
Anyway, if you agree with the general idea of this topic, drop a reply saying so, and lets try to generate some Paradox attention (yes i know how this sounds, but it is what it is, i only have best intentions at heart).
If you sat down and played EU3 for couple of days, im sure youd fix/rebalanced lots of stuff on your own without my input, but for the sake of this thread ill post the following *warning* wall of text (sry in advance):
-Vassal AI upon losing a war (devastating max or near max WE kind of war) and being vassalised proceed to recruit and disband armies as soon as they are built (easily reproduced AI behavior). Combined with other AI problems, this leads to many declarations of war, as having 0 divisions is treated as weakness (most likely) by other AI, so regardless of vassal status DoWs come all the time, dragging overlord etc etc etc.
-AI's over all eagerness to declare war, simply because they seem to perceive target country as "weak". This can REALLY be annoying, specially when AI's attack someone on first day for -2 stability. For example, TO attacking Pommerania (-2 stab + HRE member) on day one with only a fraction of its land force limit available (even at 100% lfl its a bad idea).
-AI's over all HORRIBLE management of infamy. Probably tied to poor choice of CBs. Example would be Ottomans, who very often completely ignore targets human would attack on day one - cored provinces that you can get essentially for 0 infamy - but no, the AI declares war on some religious enemy, or even worse goes on to invade Sweden in 1420s... Just bad...
-AI's over all eagerness to invade stuff, above i mentioned Ottomans, examples are many. I very much preferred the old (before one of the patches) times when AI didnt land 16 units stack X 5 across 2000 km sea route in early 15th century.
-AI's treatment of Defender of Faith mechanic - this just causes so much weirdness, as DoF country gets dragged into senseless wars that just end up ruining it in the long term.
-AI's eagerness to mint (one of the biggest problems).
-AI's inability to scale the desired army size to available land force limit, if census tax is enough to support it, and then use the remaining money to build up economy - no, AI will go 130% of land force limit (thus increasing units maintenance exponentially), wasting every single coin, minting and failing to improve its economy, coupled by increased cost of everything + tech cost + all other stuff leading to inevitable AI failure by 1600s in most of my games. Id be sitting there large, stable, 10 techs ahead, looking at western European powers with 15+ inflation (at best) underdeveloped ready to be steam rolled by human.
-Snake borders - just go through post DW empire thread in this very forum and see how many people dislike AI's tendency to create snake shape borders that make no sense what so ever.
-Rebel-hunting mechanic needs some improvements when it comes to stack-to-stack coordination. Lets say i have 2 stacks at different ends of my realm - left and right. If i take control of left stack and move it (thus leave left side empty) and then a rebel stack pops up there, the right stack will immediately start moving to kill it - which is ok. Unless 5 days later another rebel stack spawns on the right stack, in which case it will most likely finish siege by the time right side rebel hunting stack kills left rebels and marches back to its area... This is specially bad in REALLY big in land countries. Either add additional checks to prioritize distance over time (i would prefer if the right stack stopped its marching order, moved back, killed the left rebels, and then proceeded back on its way), or give us option of setting up rebel hunting within region only (the rh stack would only move within selected region which would be the easy way of fixing the above mentioned problem).
-Nationalist rebels weirdness. Well, it seems like game engine cannot handle 2 groups of nationalist rebels at the same time. This is a HUGE issue in large areas of uniform culture, such as Russia. Heres an example: lets say Golden Horde (or someone else NOT of Russian culture) manages to conquer Moscovy, and then annex Novgorod. Without cores in just annexed NOV provinces theres a very good chance youll get nationalist rebels, which is perfectly fine - Novgorod area, right culture, probably right core etc, working as intended. Well, if a SINGLE NAT rebel stack belonging to NOV spawns, and then a few days later GH gets an event that spawns nationalist rebels in ANY other Russian culture province, in the other end of Russia, say Ryazan, the event-spawned NAT stack will also belong to Novgorod! Now thats just silly, as, if Novgorod doesnt have cores in this province, it should not be awarded with free core giving rebel stack, which is exactly what the nationalist rebels will do - win sieges and spawn cores where they should not. This needs to be fixed IMO, so that Nationalist rebels can have multiple factions at the same time (wanting to liberate more than one country).
-Rebel AI movement weirdness. Rebel AI (for all types but Japanese rebels, i havent played there) seems to only move between 1.) province it originated from and 2.) one other (usually random) province of its movement scope. This is VERY bad, as when both provinces are besieged and controlled, even when their garissons are at 100% the rebel stack will keep moving back and forth between these and completely ignore any number of other scope-available provinces. This causes MANY problems, such as countries rebelling with only 2-3 provinces, when they could have rebelled with 10 if rebel stack would have moved the way it should.
-Rebellious AI never ending wars. It seems like when a nation is created through rebellion, it gets locked into a never-ending war (they seem to last for decades until some hard codded mechanic kicks in and while peaces out all belligerants) with their former over lord, where one or both sides refuse to peace out regardless of context (say, overlord is at war with 10 other nations, it seems logical to offer whatever to newly formed nation if it cannot afford to fight them as well, finish the current wars and then take vengeance, thats what i would do), instead they fight for YEARS until one side manages to completely annex the other or before mentioned guessed mechanic white peaces everyone. Well this is a problem. Take Lithuania for example. Polotsk rebels during some war, and manages to occupy 20 size Lithuania, yes under current rules Polotsk gets to annex THE WHOLE LITHUANIA regardless of infamy and war score cost!!!!!!! Even worse, if another nation rebels same time as Polotsk, and it manages to occupy even one LIT province, Polotsk then cannot annex Lithuania, and AI wont end war, so this abomination will drag on for DECADES. Another example is England. Having even 1 overseas province can cause so much rebel weirdness its not even funny.
(theres lots more but thats it for now)
etc.
This i would suggest:
Additional diplomatic options:
-between vassal and overlord - vassal can ask for permission to conquer something.
-vassal can under some circumstances fight wars without overlord (either event driven or something else) - my understanding is that thats how Lithuania fought GH in 1399. war, without Poland (and Mazovia and Moldavia).
-additional options for vassal relations with overlord if one is of different religion. I could REALLY use this one for my mod (and so can vanilla). The whole Serbia and Bosnia as Ottoman vassal status which can never change is just meh... Moscovy being independent (or tributary) to GH without some inbetween status (direct vassal, sphere of influence) is just very rigid IMO. A system where Moscovy would need GH's permission (if GH is strong) to do stuff (like annex Murom and Nizhny Novgorod) is much more in accordance with reality (a similar system would also help Lithuania).
Im a dedicated EU3 modder, which means i spend a lot of time toying around with EU3 mechanics, and i have to say, there are quite a few issues and problems with current state of EU3.
Basically some months ago, before CK2 (if i remember correctly) we had a month or so (i call it a honey moon) when Johan (and other guys i suppose, sry i remember him posting) made something like 5 patches in a month or so. It was awesome, as game got some badly needed love, and we even got couple of new (bonus?) stuff like rebel hunting (<3) etc.
Now, all these months later, without a single new patch, im kind of starting to get annoyed with well known bugs that really need to be fixed.
I understand that this is a money making business, dont get me wrong, i appreciate the value of your time, BUT since it looks like AHD's development is over (its released) and CK2 is nearly out (like a week or so more?), i would like to point out that there are still quite a few of us playing EU3 almost every day. And on top of that there are (to my knowledge) quite a few reported bugs that need some attention.
Anyway, if you agree with the general idea of this topic, drop a reply saying so, and lets try to generate some Paradox attention (yes i know how this sounds, but it is what it is, i only have best intentions at heart).
If you sat down and played EU3 for couple of days, im sure youd fix/rebalanced lots of stuff on your own without my input, but for the sake of this thread ill post the following *warning* wall of text (sry in advance):
-Vassal AI upon losing a war (devastating max or near max WE kind of war) and being vassalised proceed to recruit and disband armies as soon as they are built (easily reproduced AI behavior). Combined with other AI problems, this leads to many declarations of war, as having 0 divisions is treated as weakness (most likely) by other AI, so regardless of vassal status DoWs come all the time, dragging overlord etc etc etc.
-AI's over all eagerness to declare war, simply because they seem to perceive target country as "weak". This can REALLY be annoying, specially when AI's attack someone on first day for -2 stability. For example, TO attacking Pommerania (-2 stab + HRE member) on day one with only a fraction of its land force limit available (even at 100% lfl its a bad idea).
-AI's over all HORRIBLE management of infamy. Probably tied to poor choice of CBs. Example would be Ottomans, who very often completely ignore targets human would attack on day one - cored provinces that you can get essentially for 0 infamy - but no, the AI declares war on some religious enemy, or even worse goes on to invade Sweden in 1420s... Just bad...
-AI's over all eagerness to invade stuff, above i mentioned Ottomans, examples are many. I very much preferred the old (before one of the patches) times when AI didnt land 16 units stack X 5 across 2000 km sea route in early 15th century.
-AI's treatment of Defender of Faith mechanic - this just causes so much weirdness, as DoF country gets dragged into senseless wars that just end up ruining it in the long term.
-AI's eagerness to mint (one of the biggest problems).
-AI's inability to scale the desired army size to available land force limit, if census tax is enough to support it, and then use the remaining money to build up economy - no, AI will go 130% of land force limit (thus increasing units maintenance exponentially), wasting every single coin, minting and failing to improve its economy, coupled by increased cost of everything + tech cost + all other stuff leading to inevitable AI failure by 1600s in most of my games. Id be sitting there large, stable, 10 techs ahead, looking at western European powers with 15+ inflation (at best) underdeveloped ready to be steam rolled by human.
-Snake borders - just go through post DW empire thread in this very forum and see how many people dislike AI's tendency to create snake shape borders that make no sense what so ever.
-Rebel-hunting mechanic needs some improvements when it comes to stack-to-stack coordination. Lets say i have 2 stacks at different ends of my realm - left and right. If i take control of left stack and move it (thus leave left side empty) and then a rebel stack pops up there, the right stack will immediately start moving to kill it - which is ok. Unless 5 days later another rebel stack spawns on the right stack, in which case it will most likely finish siege by the time right side rebel hunting stack kills left rebels and marches back to its area... This is specially bad in REALLY big in land countries. Either add additional checks to prioritize distance over time (i would prefer if the right stack stopped its marching order, moved back, killed the left rebels, and then proceeded back on its way), or give us option of setting up rebel hunting within region only (the rh stack would only move within selected region which would be the easy way of fixing the above mentioned problem).
-Nationalist rebels weirdness. Well, it seems like game engine cannot handle 2 groups of nationalist rebels at the same time. This is a HUGE issue in large areas of uniform culture, such as Russia. Heres an example: lets say Golden Horde (or someone else NOT of Russian culture) manages to conquer Moscovy, and then annex Novgorod. Without cores in just annexed NOV provinces theres a very good chance youll get nationalist rebels, which is perfectly fine - Novgorod area, right culture, probably right core etc, working as intended. Well, if a SINGLE NAT rebel stack belonging to NOV spawns, and then a few days later GH gets an event that spawns nationalist rebels in ANY other Russian culture province, in the other end of Russia, say Ryazan, the event-spawned NAT stack will also belong to Novgorod! Now thats just silly, as, if Novgorod doesnt have cores in this province, it should not be awarded with free core giving rebel stack, which is exactly what the nationalist rebels will do - win sieges and spawn cores where they should not. This needs to be fixed IMO, so that Nationalist rebels can have multiple factions at the same time (wanting to liberate more than one country).
-Rebel AI movement weirdness. Rebel AI (for all types but Japanese rebels, i havent played there) seems to only move between 1.) province it originated from and 2.) one other (usually random) province of its movement scope. This is VERY bad, as when both provinces are besieged and controlled, even when their garissons are at 100% the rebel stack will keep moving back and forth between these and completely ignore any number of other scope-available provinces. This causes MANY problems, such as countries rebelling with only 2-3 provinces, when they could have rebelled with 10 if rebel stack would have moved the way it should.
-Rebellious AI never ending wars. It seems like when a nation is created through rebellion, it gets locked into a never-ending war (they seem to last for decades until some hard codded mechanic kicks in and while peaces out all belligerants) with their former over lord, where one or both sides refuse to peace out regardless of context (say, overlord is at war with 10 other nations, it seems logical to offer whatever to newly formed nation if it cannot afford to fight them as well, finish the current wars and then take vengeance, thats what i would do), instead they fight for YEARS until one side manages to completely annex the other or before mentioned guessed mechanic white peaces everyone. Well this is a problem. Take Lithuania for example. Polotsk rebels during some war, and manages to occupy 20 size Lithuania, yes under current rules Polotsk gets to annex THE WHOLE LITHUANIA regardless of infamy and war score cost!!!!!!! Even worse, if another nation rebels same time as Polotsk, and it manages to occupy even one LIT province, Polotsk then cannot annex Lithuania, and AI wont end war, so this abomination will drag on for DECADES. Another example is England. Having even 1 overseas province can cause so much rebel weirdness its not even funny.
(theres lots more but thats it for now)
etc.
This i would suggest:
Additional diplomatic options:
-between vassal and overlord - vassal can ask for permission to conquer something.
-vassal can under some circumstances fight wars without overlord (either event driven or something else) - my understanding is that thats how Lithuania fought GH in 1399. war, without Poland (and Mazovia and Moldavia).
-additional options for vassal relations with overlord if one is of different religion. I could REALLY use this one for my mod (and so can vanilla). The whole Serbia and Bosnia as Ottoman vassal status which can never change is just meh... Moscovy being independent (or tributary) to GH without some inbetween status (direct vassal, sphere of influence) is just very rigid IMO. A system where Moscovy would need GH's permission (if GH is strong) to do stuff (like annex Murom and Nizhny Novgorod) is much more in accordance with reality (a similar system would also help Lithuania).
