EU4 - Development Diary - 22nd of November 2016

[Dakka]

Do cheaters ever really admit that they cheat?
In fact the AI never says anything at all....

The AI is a computer player and should therefore never be trusted.

 

[shoki]

What I'm hoping will happend:

What will you call it? "The two mountains"?

 

[Steph]

Information about the price pf next DLC: +10 € compare to previous one to pay the trip of the whole company to Malta.
Next time, go have a picnic to Lidingö or something if you want to go to an island!

 

[Oahkoah]

I'd quite like to see Offensive have better siege bonus and I'd get rid of spending MIL points to attempt an assault. I'd try and make Aristocracy useful and give it a forlorn hope idea (+to fort assaults), having soldiers attempting to be the first through the breech for promotion, as that was one of the only ways a common solider could rise in ranks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forlorn_hope

 

[Cymsdale]

That was the whole reason for the change. The problems with the existing rules were around the confusion of tracking what province you came in from and the confusion of many people unable to understand that you can only leave the way you came in. If they got rid of the double area requirement all you did was take the worst of both worlds and make ZOC even more complicated than before and would introduce even more bugs. The 1.18 system make a lot of sense except when something goes wrong and the AI ignores ZOC or you split your stack etc and it loses track of where you came in. All of those problems would be back in your system. The area rules were set up to make it extremely easy to determine where you can and cannot move based on forts without having to know where you came from. The problem was that it didn't make logical sense that a fort was useless for ZOC if there wasn't one in the area next to it.

Don't buy it in the slightest. You can easily have an area based system that doesn't need to 'track' where they come from, and makes a lot more sense than the current one. The flaw was that they treated an enemy area as 'neutral' if it had no forts in it, when it should have been hostile.

 

[Shimohi]

"Development" Diary

 

[randerson1893]

NOOO! Why the hell would you go back to the opaque system we had before the area based one seemed great. I don't care how bad it was it can't be worse than the 1.8 ZoC system! Removing fort altogether is better than the old ZoC system.


Well how nice for you, but the old ZoC system is a nightmare there is no way to know what's what and it makes no sense whatsoever.

2 cases.
1. ZoC in isolation : so a fort gives a ZoC to all neighbouring provinces owned by that nation(or there allies in a war as the AI check for only two allegiances, both sides in the war) and once you enter the Zoc you can either retreat or go for the fort (like spokes on a wheel). Also enemy Zoc doesn't affect your movements in your own territory .

2. Overlapping enemy ZoC
these are a harder to get but you can just hover over a province with units selected and it will tell you which fort that province is being protected by (in my experience it's mostly defended by the fort furthest away but don't have any code to back that up

What specifically is the issues you find with ZoC in your games ?

 

[Samuel The Conqueror]

What I'm hoping will happend:

 

[TheDungen]

In this case, we wanted to get feedback on a new area-based fort system.

For reference, we are fairly happy with how the 1.18 fort system works. It blocks movement, forces some sieges without requiring carpet sieging and, especially with the terrain bonuses, adds a good amount of strategic mid-long term planning for your nation. However there were some undeniable issues with the system in lack of clarity and overlapping Zones of Control. We wanted to try a new system out and hear what you had to think

It didn't take long for the feedback to mount up. The new system was unclear, forts blocked nothing on their own, small and mid sized nations struggled to offer much movement blocking, Military access rules became messy. The following week we decided as a team to revert to the 1.18 fort system.

Of course, there were some who liked and even loved the beta version's area-based fort system, and reverting was a disappointment to them. You're never going to make everyone happy, no matter what you change but I would like to thank everyone who played and continues to play with the 1.19 beta, as your contributions help make it a better update.

NOOO! Why the hell would you go back to the opaque system we had before the area based one seemed great. I don't care how bad it was it can't be worse than the 1.8 ZoC system! Removing fort altogether is better than the old ZoC system.

I actually think the 1.18 fort system works really well and maybe I've been lucky but I've never had issues of the AI seaming to ignore ZoC

Well how nice for you, but the old ZoC system is a nightmare there is no way to know what's what and it makes no sense whatsoever.

 

[Douglas Uppity]

That was the whole reason for the change. The problems with the existing rules were around the confusion of tracking what province you came in from and the confusion of many people unable to understand that you can only leave the way you came in. If they got rid of the double area requirement all you did was take the worst of both worlds and make ZOC even more complicated than before and would introduce even more bugs. The 1.18 system make a lot of sense except when something goes wrong and the AI ignores ZOC or you split your stack etc and it loses track of where you came in. All of those problems would be back in your system. The area rules were set up to make it extremely easy to determine where you can and cannot move based on forts without having to know where you came from. The problem was that it didn't make logical sense that a fort was useless for ZOC if there wasn't one in the area next to it.

The most important thing about the 1.19 forts for me was that the AI finally stopped cheating when it came to fort maintenance. I hope they didn't remove that, but if it's reverted to 1.18, then i fear they did, which is a sad day for all.

 

[Kapitalisti]

Oh now I was looking forward to the fort changes :/ Will we see the changes in a future patch, when it is more worked out?

They were obviously in Malta to study its fortifications.

 

[Verenti]

Well how nice for you, but the old ZoC system is a nightmare there is no way to know what's what and it makes no sense whatsoever.

This is often repeated "It makes no sense." You can't move through a province if a fort is adjacent. If you leave a fort uncaptured, the adjacent provinces will flip back.

It's not hard to understand.

 

[Douglas Uppity]

The problem with actual ZoC system is that your army is sieging a fort the way used to arrive there is not recorded, so someone who does not remember or does not know this way can not predict where the sieging army can move.

There is an easy way to record the way to reach a fort across the ZoC that is capturing the province, and only after capturing the adjacent province you can reach the fort. This simple rule can improve the actual ZoC system without big changes.

I suggested an alternative system in the suggestions forums, but only 30 people read it:

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/fort-zoc-alternative-system.983332/

I'm pretty sure there's an icon on the province you came from that shows you can always return here. (i believe it's a fort icon with a green arrow)
True, the icon should be made a little more obvious, but it IS there.

 

[grommile]

Unless the system is bugged, you cannot have fewer movement options to and from what is now your fort. You might have no more options than you did before - that will depend on the configuration of surrounding provinces - but you won't have fewer. Can you give an example of where this is happening? The only case I can see where you might get "stuck" is if you did a naval invasion to get to the first fort and the only land exit is a shared ZoC province - but you could still go out by sea.

As of 1.18:

Consider a chain of three adjacent forts owned by the same country (in the real situation I dealt with, the country was Ferrara and the provinces were Brescia (or was it Cremona? can't remember the map detail and don't feel like checking right this second), Mantua, Ferrara). Your convenient point of entry into their ZoCs is adjacent to all three of them (in this case, Verona).

You march an army from Treviso (which is not adjacent to any of Ferrara's forts, and through which you have military access whether explicit or conditional) into Mantua (through Verona) to occupy its fort. This is permitted by the rule that says "if you are in a province covered by a hostile fort's ZoC, you can (approximately?) always move into that fort's province", and as long as the fort in Mantua remains under Ferrara's control, you can march further troops from Treviso to Mantua to support your siege stack.

Once the siege completes, you can still march your army back from Mantua to Treviso under the "if you are in a hostile fort's ZoC, you can always march to the province you entered its ZoC from" rule... but, having left Mantua, you can't return.

Thus, your armies have fewer movement options after you occupied Mantua than they did before you occupied Mantua.

I haven't tested this in 1.19, because I haven't had the time and enthusiasm to set it up.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Unless the system is bugged, you cannot have fewer movement options to and from what is now your fort.

I can't move onto a captured fort, because I captured a fort. Not even retracing the route used to reach Toledo. This is in addition to grommile's example, and they aren't the only two.

The army in Cuenca is *literally* trapped inside enemy borders, despite occupying a line of forts to get there...and it's not because a new fort was made or one was retaken. The army got trapped as a direct result of capturing forts.

I know the esoteric rules that led to this situation, and they're a bad implementation. That outcome is not intuitive or reasonable.

 

[JorgeP]

That was the whole reason for the change. The problems with the existing rules were around the confusion of tracking what province you came in from and the confusion of many people unable to understand that you can only leave the way you came in. If they got rid of the double area requirement all you did was take the worst of both worlds and make ZOC even more complicated than before and would introduce even more bugs. The 1.18 system make a lot of sense except when something goes wrong and the AI ignores ZOC or you split your stack etc and it loses track of where you came in. All of those problems would be back in your system. The area rules were set up to make it extremely easy to determine where you can and cannot move based on forts without having to know where you came from. The problem was that it didn't make logical sense that a fort was useless for ZOC if there wasn't one in the area next to it.

I think that there could be an "easy" fix for the problems with tracking what province you came from. A few days ago I tried hearts of iron 4 and realized that when you attack you remain in the original province until you conquer the next one. The same principle could be used for forts in eu4 so when you enter in a zone of control you can attack the fort or leave the zone of control. I haven't thought a lot about it but maybe something like that could improve the fort system.

 

[TheDungen]

I do and yes if you are a minor nation in the HRE forts aren't nearly as useful as say denmark or northern italy. Still i think once you figure out how neutral territory plays into it you should be fine.

Except it keeps changing when people lose and/or gain access.
And you ignore the other argument the system makes no sense whatsoever. Just because there's a fort somewhere does not mean that an army will take a detour around half of Germany when trying to avoid an enemy army.

I have played a lot with the system I know it fairly well but it does not mean I like it, it's unrealistic, it's stupid, and it's yet another barrier which makes this game harder for new players to get into because it's but complex and counter intuitive the two things no mechanic must ever be.

I'm sorry is there any good argument for actually leaving the system in there? Except that keeping track of access is the one thing the AI actually does better than a human.

 

[IndraSunrise]

Also on ZOC, a neighboring country's fort should have NO BEARING on whether I can pass since that fort would have no control over another country's land. This would be true whether they were allies or not.

The land is "another countries land" because of colors on a map.
A fort is a castle filled with soldiers, who issue out to cut supply trains, raid the countryside and cause difficulties, retreating inside to safety when threatened. What's more, forts have cannons.
A fort should control all areas around it, regardless of which nation thinks they own the land. Actual military force in secure stronghold>map.

What are you going to do, send the castle a strongly worded letter about how their commanding view of the surroundings interferes with your piece of paper proclaiming this valley to be yours? They'll chop off your head and eat your horse.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1.18 version is opaque (especially wrt military access exceptions and prior province rules) and bugged . I still don't think a system whereby taking a fort restricts your movement is viable. The area based system wasn't ready but it had potential. Wasn't that scrapped a little fast?

 

[TheDungen]

But was whole new system really needed to fix those issues? It just seems like pointless change for change's sake, which a bad thing for a game.

Change for changes sake is not a bad thing for a game, unless you keep changing and keep trying new stuff you'll never do better. "The most dangerous phrase in the language is 'We've always done it this way'".