It's all pretty great...
...except this.
Not for me haha, this is awesome.
It's all pretty great...
...except this.
QFT. Diplo-annexation was the one area of expansion that had costs that weren't measured only in MPs. Apparently Paradox is so confident that the MP system is a great idea that they decided it has to touch all areas of the game.
Don't forget about the Timurids. They also have -coring from the start and an instant reform button (also changing unit groups, which I imagine will effectively give them two unit peak periods).
Balancing isn't done. At first I thought ROTW got a buff in this patch, but they had their money pulled out from under them and their rate of catch-up post westernization neutered, all with a weaker end-game should they actually do so.
Like almost every other patch, ROTW got nerfed down yet again...even more so now with the AdE effect being primarily available in Europe.
Even with the 25% neighbor bonus when behind enough, it's still less as you close the gap, so natives + sub-Saharans both have weaker late game units and take longer to catch up than before. I would not consider them serious candidates given that. Ottomans and Ming are the non-horde winners in terms of viability, but given that ROTW just got production nerfed to high hell it's dubious how they'll perform in practice aside from Ottos. Hordes aside from European ones had trash goods to start with though so it'll be less noticeable.
Define 'viable.'
You could go up against an aggressive Ottoman/Muscovite player and win.
o sweetWesternize will no longer get Western units, retaining their old technology group's units instead
What people seem to be missing by the point of monarch points is that it was never supposed to be a RNG factor to balance skill or whatever. What it's supposed to be is you taking a good or bad situation and making the most of it. Taking the game away from the direction of always constantly conquering, and making you re-evaluate whether you should slow down or keep expanding and risk the loss of all those extra points because of shitty monarch. It makes the game MORE strategic than constant conquest, because you're now evaluating the risks. It turns it more into a country simulation, then a straight up map painter that ends with super unrealistic WC borders every game (EU3).
If you're looking at it as a constant conquest, then yeah the RNG monarchs would seem like a skill hamper. But what its meant for is simulation and strategic choice reasons. Which honestly is much nicer then every single grand strategy being about total conquest, while still being heavy on war and conquest, it at least is trying to give consequence where there wouldn't really be any. So it isn't meant to balance skills, it's meant to use other skills than just war. It's dealing with the limitations you've been given, or using the advantages you've gotten appropriately. So you cant paint the map? Big deal this isn't total war series. Make strategic gains when you can, don't take everything everywhere just because.
That is one of the things I really like about having vassals. They fight the wars I don't want/care to fight, like the Teutonic Order going all the way to Japan to fight. They always seem to be able to find ways to occupy anything...I just don't want the devs to railroad everyone into playing a certain way. Honestly, vassal cheesing is a pretty user friendly hands off way of expanding. I'm guessing I'm not alone with the pride in fighting wars with large powerful vassals. You can just kick back as your vassal's attrition machine rolls occupies your enemy's homeland and your breast will swell with pride as some vassal like Hamburg sends her finest men to occupy their deadly foes; Dutch Guyanne.
My only worry is that older saves are going to become unplayable when the expansion hits.
Are you silly? MP = monarch point. 3MP a month = 1 in each category. you can get 39MP a month because 13 in each category maximum.From my understanding, you get +1 per month in each category. I'm going to assume some of your other numbers you meant to say were yearly values, because no nation I know of can attain 30+ monarch points/month.
At a given moment, you have guaranteed 3 base monarch points in a stat. You can get a 4th from power projection AFAIK, and up to 7 with top-tier advisors. Only if you can afford +3 advisor is it even possible to match a lucky monarch draw. At BEST, still just under 50% of your most crucial resource is completely chance based. Most cases, it's more like 75%
But you're still off base here, because unless you're playing against the feeble, they're going to get power projection and advisors also, making the main difference in your incomes chance-based. A +3 advantage in military stat over 10 years will give someone more than a war's worth of time to hit you with a tech lead...or you to hit them. With the gimped neighbor bonus, this advantage is only further exacerbated. Gimping the neighbor bonus was a trash move.
"You should expand slower as it should be" in a grand strategy game with expansion as the primary goal is mentally bankrupt. Make an actual argument please.
Damn right. If you read that paragraph carefully, they're essentially saying that a luck-based outcome is going to have a snowball effect, by design.
Of course, players who need to rely on luck are going to like that a lot; it makes their games more comparable to those that otherwise make more sound decisions. From the perspective of a strategy game emphasizing decisions, however, such a luck-based dependency is trash and I'm not afraid to call them out for it. Bad luck isn't altering the strategic depth at all here; it's literally only generating noise. If ruler stats reasonably depending on tough choices, the game would have more depth and rely more on skill rather than progressively less.
Enjoy it while you can.Don't forget about the Timurids. They also have -coring from the start and an instant reform button (also changing unit groups, which I imagine will effectively give them two unit peak periods).
Simply dropping an artificial up to 15 diplo point cost to annexing them is crippling to an expansion game, which is what I guess you wanted to do in the first place. Cripple the expansion game.