Fix AI debt spiral / alliance issues. It's been broken for weeks, and it's gamebreaking.

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i do think the bugfix departament of pdx is in dire need of more staff. I do trully believe the devs are doing their best, i even looked for commentary from people that once worked there to confirm this, but something internally is not really working at paradox and i hope they find a solution there.

Because their reputation is starting to suffer everytimea situation like the UE4 is facing now happen.
its hard to keep a playerbase loyal. The game is old and need to fight new titles and keep reminding people to come back.

This is not just a EU4 situation. Stellaris is also facing some key problems with their game and even some basic game features like Endgame Crisis are close to 1 year without a fix.

We accept the DLC policy basically so we can have not only new features but most of all, a Stable game.
bugs are expected but we also expect at least to not have to worry for bugs that completely break a feature or the game itself.

Right now im yet to play the new EU4 expansion and its been months since i last played stellaris.
and im deeply frustraded because i paid for almost all DLC´s of both games and can´t have fun when there are bugs that break the game.
paradox is the game industry where i spend most of my money but its getting to a point where im more and more just leaving the game getting dust and questioning if its worth to keep buying one more DLC.

While we don´t have yet, they are planning for a "paid by month" service. Its not a horrible idea and could give a more stable income for the games we love as long the price is fair. So im really not against this.

but this does increase even more the demand for the game to work better. With less bugs and also a demand for more features.
There is no point adding new features if we don´t have the ones we current have working.
 
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i do think the bugfix departament of pdx is in dire need of more staff. I do trully believe the devs are doing their best, i even looked for commentary from people that once worked there to confirm this, but something internally is not really working at paradox and i hope they find a solution there.

Because their reputation is starting to suffer everytimea situation like the UE4 is facing now happen.
its hard to keep a playerbase loyal. The game is old and need to fight new titles and keep reminding people to come back.

This is not just a EU4 situation. Stellaris is also facing some key problems with their game and even some basic game features like Endgame Crisis are close to 1 year without a fix.

We accept the DLC policy basically so we can have not only new features but most of all, a Stable game.
bugs are expected but we also expect at least to not have to worry for bugs that completely break a feature or the game itself.

Right now im yet to play the new EU4 expansion and its been months since i last played stellaris.
and im deeply frustraded because i paid for almost all DLC´s of both games and can´t have fun when there are bugs that break the game.
paradox is the game industry where i spend most of my money but its getting to a point where im more and more just leaving the game getting dust and questioning if its worth to keep buying one more DLC.

While we don´t have yet, they are planning for a "paid by month" service. Its not a horrible idea and could give a more stable income for the games we love as long the price is fair. So im really not against this.

but this does increase even more the demand for the game to work better. With less bugs and also a demand for more features.
There is no point adding new features if we don´t have the ones we current have working.

It is worth keeping in mind that PDX fame for bug riddled released goes way back. At least to Vic II, maybe more. So, this is far from being a new problem but it is a problem that they've either never been able to address or never wanted to (hard to say which, honestly).
 
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It is worth keeping in mind that PDX fame for bug riddled released goes way back. At least to Vic II, maybe more. So, this is far from being a new problem but it is a problem that they've either never been able to address or never wanted to (hard to say which, honestly).

its normal to have a critical bug for a few weeks. Its part of the hobby.
its not normal when a critical bug starts to have birthday parties (Case of some stellaris bugs). its a sign something very wrong is happening.
 
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I just realized this thread is a month old. And literally nothing has been done or even talked about by Paradox about one of the most gamebreaking issues I've seen since I started playing. This is disheartening.
 
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From experience after Rule Britannia or Golden Century, I can already imagine devs reactions: "Hello folks, we're back after our long glorious sacred Swedish holidays period! It's been two months after Emperor came out and we are really happy that you have enjoyed playing the game so far. We are aware of debt spiral bug and are really hard working to deliver a fix from our new cool Tinto studio. In the meanwhile, we are preparing 1.31 for what neondt showed you very good exciting stuff. Stay tuned."
Inspiration can be found here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/eu4-development-diary-27th-of-march-2018.1084305/
 
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To be fair, there's still different teams working on those projects.

Still, before buying anything i would wait for reviews and the like. Maybe go to the forums and look at the feedback and bug reports. Do things that can give you an idea how "playable" the game already is, how the devs are reacting to it, etc.

The problem isn't the team. The problem is Paradox's "release first, make it work (much) later" development model. Which, to be fair, is hardly Paradox exclusive, but it does make purchasing a new game (or, indeed, a DLC) more of an investment than something you can expect to pay off immediately.
 
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EU4 would definitely benefit from an "Ultimate AI" mod, but then again, I'm not sure how much can really be modified. It might be possible to fix some debt problems, but the "Holiday in Siberia" issue not so much.
 
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Honestly, I read this entire thread and I don't understand this argument that it isn't the devs fault. There is argument that it isn't their fault or that it is their fault. For all that we know, someone from the team set the deadline and thought they could deliver it in time before realising that his prediction was wrong, or those working in design wasted time/resources which ultimately led to a worse product, or even those working with code and bug fixing didn't do their job well.

We just don't know and won't ever know. I'm if the opinion that everyone is deserving of blame for a bad product. Far too often the blame is passed to the higher ups when the costumers don't know what happened in the development process.

The AI does not jell well with mercs? Maybe the new merc system should have been done with AI in mind or whoever was responsible for AI coding didn't do a good job. The same is true for balancing and Quality Assurance.
I still can't fathom this sort of argument being made.

"Far too often the blame is passed to higher ups" oh I wish I lived in your world, but that is not my experience. Especially in the case of game development, especially in the case of game developers that are as transparent as Paradox. The fact that ordinary devs often interface with the community in streams, dev diaries, forum threads is great overall but it also makes them easier targets of the community, and easier for actual decision makers to hide behind them when things go bad.

Management is never criticised first thing, and it definitely has not been in this particular case. It is always calls for bugs to be fixed (by devs) asap, usually accompanied with friendly or unfriendly requests for them to take the personal hit and cancel their vacations.

So let's assume that whoever was responsible for coding the AI did not do a good job. Why did they not do a good job? Did no one review their code? Was no testing put in place that would bring issues to the fore? Did their feature not go through QA? Did all the people involved in code review, game testing, and QA also not do a good job, purely coincidentally? Or is it more reasonable to assume that we have a structural problem here?

Devs do not control the size of the team they are working in. They do not control the number of person hours allocated for review, testing, QA. Devs have some influence in shaping and brainstorming the features that are part of a patch or DLC but I am certain they do not have the last word on how many must have, marketable "back of the box" features need to make it into it. Devs do not set the release date.

Management, on different levels, sets those parameters. Even if the team was improbably full of incompetent devs (which it really isn't), that would still be the fault of the people responsible for hiring and team development. We have acknowledged that issues like the one we are looking at right now can only have large scale causes (instead of a random dev not knowing what they're doing), and being responsible for large scale decisions and outcome is literally the job description of people in management.

Yet they are still usually not held accountable by the community, forcing devs and PR people to take the hit. Except in this case, PR is silent as well, so devs take the hit on that front too (see neondt). You say you want to assign blame equally but then you again only talk about the single imaginary developer who supposedly is the problem. Doesn't sound very equitable to me.
 
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The workshop can spackle over the cracks and shore up the foundations quite well, but they can't stabilize the subsidence-prone karst formation the house is built on :)
 
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Honestly, all I had to do was crank the AI's desire to build workshops and temples and reduce the desire for the AI to raise additional levies through estates. It's the estates that are the actual problem.

Edit: Also I just added a fix for the fact that the AI doesn't like to siege down fortified provinces and added some additional debt logic.
 
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Okay, I fixed it. It wasn't hard.


Sooo, i subscribed to your mod and tried it. (Could have been the first version, your edit on the 2nd post seems to hint that you added sth afterwards).
And at least for me, it did not fix the problem in its entirety. While i do think that the AI economy looks better, there's still a couple nations in my game (soon 50 years in), that are a couple thousand gold in debt. Most notable are France, who fought a single war with England over maine and hasnt done anything since, and poland, who gobbled up the teutonic order, wallachia and parts of hungary. Especially the latter hard won basically every war they've been a part of, so the debt really baffles me there.

I mean, i also noticed a lot of rebels spawning in poland, probably due to estates being unhappy. But i dont think that should warrant this high a debt.
 
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Yet they are still usually not held accountable by the community, forcing devs and PR people to take the hit. Except in this case, PR is silent as well, so devs take the hit on that front too (see neondt). You say you want to assign blame equally but then you again only talk about the single imaginary developer who supposedly is the problem. Doesn't sound very equitable to me.

I hope the devs are reading this. Sometimes in a younger team, I think devs are not aware of the power they actually have towards Management. They can often ask for more time than they actually need. Based on PDX history, releases are too buggy, so take that extra time to implement features.

A feature does not work as expected? Roll back and remove it, until it is ready. Senior devs step up and can stand in for quality. What's wrong, on a fixed release day, to say something like "Key feature xyz did not make it in time because we are very critical and it did not meet our own standards of quality. We guarantee / promise, it will be released in x weeks as a free patch, including the suggestions gathered by the community in the meantime."

For such a big, long anticipated DLC like "Emperor" with so many nice improvements, tons of quality of life additions and bug fixing, nobody in the world who is expecting a 99th DLC of a seven year old game would complain that the "new Mercenary system" did not make in time to the release, even if announced! Or would you?
 
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For such a big, long anticipated DLC like "Emperor" with so many nice improvements, tons of quality of life additions and bug fixing, nobody in the world who is expecting a 99th DLC of a seven year old game would complain that the "new Mercenary system" did not make in time to the release, even if announced! Or would you?
Remember that there are people who pre-order DLCs on the basis of what is announced to be in them.

I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why, but they do.
 
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I hope the devs are reading this. Sometimes in a younger team, I think devs are not aware of the power they actually have towards Management. They can often ask for more time than they actually need. Based on PDX history, releases are too buggy, so take that extra time to implement features.

A feature does not work as expected? Roll back and remove it, until it is ready. Senior devs step up and can stand in for quality. What's wrong, on a fixed release day, to say something like "Key feature xyz did not make it in time because we are very critical and it did not meet our own standards of quality. We guarantee / promise, it will be released in x weeks as a free patch, including the suggestions gathered by the community in the meantime."

For such a big, long anticipated DLC like "Emperor" with so many nice improvements, tons of quality of life additions and bug fixing, nobody in the world who is expecting a 99th DLC of a seven year old game would complain that the "new Mercenary system" did not make in time to the release, even if announced! Or would you?

In regards to your second paragraph, isn't that more or less what happened with the Byzantine Imperial government in CK 3? I recall reading somewhere that the devs were unhappy with how CK II presented it but weren't able to rework it before launch, so instead of just porting it over from CK 2 they said that it won't be in CK 3 as they wish to implement a better version of it down the line.
 
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