Exploits, acceptable or cheats, where to draw the line (keep the discussion civil)

[Sfan]

Edit: Whole discussion has been taken off from another thread by a mod who also named the thread. It is therefore without context, which is super annoying.



Some people keep saying that Wide Players don't want challenge. While people were typing that, Florry casually finished his True One Tag, Jewish One Faith and Gothic One Culture in the same Very Hard Campaign. No challenge, got it.

To clarify, wide players don't want an arbitrary, automatic and artificial challenge harming them just because they do difficult things, that can't be countered by a clever plan. They enjoy playing a strategy game where the smallest mistake is punished so that they can have the awesome relief of seeing that you completed your hard and convoluted goal. That's why they start small, and move to Very Hard, and then keep adding more and more goals up to the point I mentioned.

A strategy game, where you are punished when you do mistakes. Not a "I get 10k dev, I have revolts and it suddenly becomes hard to play". A "it's hard to get 10k dev but I can do it if I'm smart". If that was just the joy of map painting, it would not be done as random OPMs in Very Hard, it would be done with console. Or on a canvas.

 

[WeissRaben]

Some people keep saying that Wide Players don't want challenge. While people were typing that, Florry casually finished his True One Tag, Jewish One Faith and Gothic One Culture in the same Very Hard Campaign. No challenge, got it.

To clarify, wide players don't want an arbitrary, automatic and artificial challenge harming them just because they do difficult things, that can't be countered by a clever plan. They enjoy playing a strategy game where the smallest mistake is punished so that they can have the awesome relief of seeing that you completed your hard and convoluted goal. That's why they start small, and move to Very Hard, and then keep adding more and more goals up to the point I mentioned.

A strategy game, where you are punished when you do mistakes. Not a "I get 10k dev, I have revolts and it suddenly becomes hard to play". A "it's hard to get 10k dev but I can do it if I'm smart". If that was just the joy of map painting, it would not be done as random OPMs in Very Hard, it would be done with console. Or on a canvas.

As I said, the point is that "arbitrary". It's arbitrary for you; but the idea of the administrative structure of the empire starting buckling at a certain point, when its dimension and population start outpacing the technology needed to keep a centralized apparatum into place, isn't arbitrary for me.

 

[Dominion]

Some people keep saying that Wide Players don't want challenge. While people were typing that, Florry casually finished his True One Tag, Jewish One Faith and Gothic One Culture in the same Very Hard Campaign. No challenge, got it.

I'm sorry, but you couldn't have picked a worse example.

Florry's run was neither difficult nor legit.

We all know he's an amazing entertainer, so let him entertain the masses, but avoid using his runs as an argument for anything because if I'm allowed to savescum several dozen times and use at least a dozen exploits and get called legit I'll just post my pre-1500 one faith and crown myself a god.

EDIT: To give you an example, here's my first exploit run after a mere 150 hours of game experience.

Non-horde western tech custom nation. Doesn't mean I was a god.
150 hours into the game I had barely acquired basic knowledge of how to play a game and yet I was on pace to break the world record.

It just means I used exploits.

 

[Sfan]

Arbitrary if that's a hard block you can't counter by playing well. Not arbitrary if that's a well thought-out malus which brings flavour. No one wants a wall, unless there's a ladder. The point of a strategy game is to find the ladders, or to build them. If there's no ladder that's not a game. My entire point is that it has to be hard and unrealistic to achieve some things. But not impossible. If a change would make mathematically impossible to One Culture, for instance, I would be against it. If it would make it even harder, why not, so long as it brings something of interest with it.


@Dominion Well prove it. He does exploit and savescum, granted, but he also does things noone else does. He removes some challenges only to add others, he basically plays his own game and I have no judgment on it. It's obvious that atwix is the best legit no-exploit player of the English community, but that does not remove the fact that barely anyone could one culture as Gothic and one faith as Jewish in the same run, even with the house rules of Florry. Well, I know I wouldn't come close to it, even with all the exploits of the world (well, I guess, I did not watch any of the run so I don't know how far he went in the exploits). But if you prefer, let's say a VH Haida WC, or a VH Mughal One Tag, or a pre 1600 WC, to have exploit-free achievements. I mostly mentioned Florry because he was literally doing it at the same moment, and he's well known.

 

[Dominion]

@Dominion Well prove it. He does exploit and savescum, granted, but he also does things noone else does. He removes some challenges only to add others. It's obvious that atwix is the best legit no-exploit player of the English community, but that does not remove the fact that barely anyone could one culture as Gothic and one faith as Jewish in the same run, even with the house rules of Florry. But if you prefer, let's say a VH Haida WC, or a VH Mughal One Tag, or a pre 1600 WC, to have exploit-free achievements. I mostly mentioned Florry because he was literally doing it at the same moment.

I edited this screenshot in.

Can check if I find some more later, but I'm pretty sure I stopped playing after realizing I could break the world record with less experience than the average player on this board.
Not because I was a better player back then, but because I found some stuff. Same goes for Florry.

He streams to entertain. Never heard him claiming he's the best at the game. He has fun and people like watching him.
It's okay, it's entertainment. I'm not going to jump his channel and tell everyone to stop enjoying themselves.

But that doesn't mean we should call his runs legit.

As for the challenges he removes and adds, watch the run you used as an example here.
Because his opener is the doublepeace exploit, allowing him to take force 200% warscore out of Ottomans.
I've seen him crash the game because his 6/5/5 ruler died "too young" at the age of 52.

If you remove any early game challenge you're basically playing the Ottomans on steroids.

Can I claim my Hamburg pre-1500 fast revoke is more impressive than your Austria fast-revoke? Probably not, because I used one of the two available infinite IA exploits.
Can I claim my pre-1470 Basileus is more impressive than you restoring those borders as Ottomans? Probably not, because I used the nation switch exploit.
Can I claim my OT OF OC is impressive compared to someone else's Ottoman WC? No, I absolutely can not because I used every exploit in my book.

Starting positions do not matter when you are cheating yourself into a position that's better than what any legit player could ever get despite picking a nation that's 20 times stronger than yours.

The only reason the whole run was difficult for him is because he doesn't have my exploits and if he knew about them he'd use them.

Florry is a strong player who likes to entertain people.
That doesn't make his runs legit.

 

[Sfan]

Double peacedeal is STILL in? It's there since 4 patches, are they ever going to remove it?
Well, that removes a lot of what I said then. Let's talk about legit runs then.

 

[WeissRaben]

Arbitrary if that's a hard block you can't counter by playing well. Not arbitrary if that's a well thought-out malus which brings flavour. No one wants a wall, unless there's a ladder. The point of a strategy game is to find the ladders, or to build them. If there's no ladder that's not a game. My entire point is that it has to be hard and unrealistic to achieve some things. But not impossible. If a change would make mathematically impossible to One Culture, for instance, I would be against it. If it would make it even harder, why not, so long as it brings something of interest with it.

And at the same time, I wouldn't be against it, as long as it's not a single number with little reason beyond it. The truth of the matter is that the infrastructure needed for even just a continental (not to say global) centralized government wasn't there, and wouldn't be until the late 19th century at the very best, with railways and telegraphs. When I watch a one-culture, one-religion, world conquest, I don't think "whoa that's cool" - even though it's an obvious proof of skill. I think "you shouldn't be able to hold that much land, let alone convert it, let alone assimilating it". I'm a historian by trade: obvious lack of sense in a game that does try to be historical (compared to the random-map, everyone-starts-in-4000BC of Civilization) rubs me horridly.

 

[cristofolmc]

Some people keep saying that Wide Players don't want challenge. While people were typing that, Florry casually finished his True One Tag, Jewish One Faith and Gothic One Culture in the same Very Hard Campaign. No challenge, got it.

To clarify, wide players don't want an arbitrary, automatic and artificial challenge harming them just because they do difficult things, that can't be countered by a clever plan. They enjoy playing a strategy game where the smallest mistake is punished so that they can have the awesome relief of seeing that you completed your hard and convoluted goal. That's why they start small, and move to Very Hard, and then keep adding more and more goals up to the point I mentioned.

A strategy game, where you are punished when you do mistakes. Not a "I get 10k dev, I have revolts and it suddenly becomes hard to play". A "it's hard to get 10k dev but I can do it if I'm smart". If that was just the joy of map painting, it would not be done as random OPMs in Very Hard, it would be done with console. Or on a canvas.

Nobody said achievments were easy. Only that a Grand Strategy shouldn't be built around those. You're not playing against game mechanics (which you seem to despise as you find them arbitrary, and I can agree to a certain extend that they are arbitrary and there should be more dynamic ones, but still they are needed although they are an abstraction). You're playing against the clock, and that the only thing that makes the achievments hard. Not the game mechancis, not what made historically managing an empire hard. Just the clock. So yes, it's playing an arcade game and not a grand strategy.

Arbitrary if that's a hard block you can't counter by playing well. Not arbitrary if that's a well thought-out malus which brings flavour. No one wants a wall, unless there's a ladder. The point of a strategy game is to find the ladders, or to build them. If there's no ladder that's not a game. My entire point is that it has to be hard and unrealistic to achieve some things. But not impossible. If a change would make mathematically impossible to One Culture, for instance, I would be against it. If it would make it even harder, why not, so long as it brings something of interest with it.

What is arbitrary for you? In real life, if you take a whole country at once, you're gonna get revolts. Many. Revolts that take you to the edge of destruction in many cases. Stability crisis that take you to the brink of destruction. Economic crisies that bring you to the brink of destruction. You call that arbitraty? I call that real life. Due to EU4 poor design, they cannot be represented in a more organica and dynamic way an only through abstractions, but thats what it is.

You want to play an arcade game to beat the AI against the clock for achievments? Fine. But I think its only fair to have also an option available to play a game that reflects reality. Which is whats being asked here. No buttons for bonuses.

 

[Sfan]

I think you completely misunderstood what I said. I think the current state of the game regarding wide play is overall fine, and it could be slightly nerfed because absolutism buffed it too hard imo, this is clear in all my posts on this same topic so I did not think I would still need to mention it. That's not the current limits that I find arbitrary, it's some suggestion like "you should spawn rebels when you hit 10k dev". I'm all for "you should spawn rebels unless you did something clever and hard". That's a major difference.
As for playing against the clock, I don't know what you refer to. One Tag or One Faith, maybe? But usually, achievements, especially done in VH, require you to play against the game a lot more than you play against the clocks. That's exactly the misunderstanding there seems to be. The majority of the people seem to think that so called blobbers only play against the clock, when it's just an additional challenge (unless it's a speedrun). When you play as Hisn Kayfa in Very Hard, the main obstacle is not the clock, believe me. And these "blobbers", of which I'm not part of, are clearly starting a lot smaller than the average player, and playing in VH a lot more. Believe it or not, what they want is challenge, not free buttons.

I don't know why I'm even trying, it seems to be so deeply rooted in the mind of people that good players are doing WCs because they enjoy easy games, painting the map and beating on AIs. No. They want challenge. And they happen to be so good at the game that only starting small in VH and aiming for WC gives them challenge. As I said in my previous post, if what they wanted was not challenge, they would not put themselves in the worst possible starting position and aim for the most complex end results. It's entirely possible to disagree with the opinion of that minority, but stop rejecting their point of view as if it was entirely based on "I want to be able to do crazy stuff". It is all about "I want to have fun, and it happens that I have fun when I set myself a very difficult task, spend a lot of time thinking about it, know I'm on a knife's edge, and still succeed in the end, even if it took me many retries and a lot of effort". If there is a portion of players who want an easy and unchallenging game, it's clearly the other part of the community. I'm fine with that, as I stated many times I'm more inclined towards being part of the second community, or at least I would be if there were more mechanics to make tall play interesting and rewarding.

Literally everyone agrees on the fact tall play needs more mechanics and a buff, except the occasional troll.

 

[bly08]

I'm sorry, but you couldn't have picked a worse example.

Florry's run was neither difficult nor legit.

We all know he's an amazing entertainer, so let him entertain the masses, but avoid using his runs as an argument for anything because if I'm allowed to savescum several dozen times and use at least a dozen exploits and get called legit I'll just post my pre-1500 one faith and crown myself a god.

EDIT: To give you an example, here's my first exploit run after a mere 150 hours of game experience.

Non-horde western tech custom nation. Doesn't mean I was a god.
150 hours into the game I had barely acquired basic knowledge of how to play a game and yet I was on pace to break the world record.

It just means I used exploits.

Savescumming and doublepeace don't make a one tag/faith/culture easy. No one uses custom nation exploits for speed runs. If you think you've discovered something that allows you to beat the world record or do a one tag/faith/culture then do it. These screenshots from 1.1whatever don't mean shit.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-wc-before-1600-1-24-1-with-exploits.1066975/

Someone tried to do a pre 1600 WC with 20% admin efficiency in 1444 using custom nation exploit and replacing save files to switch tags in Ironman. Yes CN exploit still works in 1.24. You're welcome to do the same and beat the world record with it and see how many people think it's on the same level as the other runs. My guess is you'll get laughed at.

 

[Sfan]

I've been lazy, I should have quoted. To make myself clearer, here is what I meant.

What I call an arbitraty limit without any way of bypassing it. It's basically grow big, eat penalties unless you want to stop growing:

1. Wide Play - just a little nerf - Add some sort of little penalty for growing too big add a particular idea group that will ward off those penalties. To start with add more cultures to the game.
a. Add a penalty system where ratio between states & territories will add some disadvantage. Like an overextension remained for longer period can give disasters, corruption, tech penalty, general unrest etc.
b. Suppose a kingdom level tag at tech 8 has 10+3 allowed states, but it I reality it has grown to 20 territories which means, 13 estates and 7 territories so almost 35% of non-estates beside giving 50% autonomy should also give corruption, some tech penalty, more unrest and separation tendencies, etc worse if unaccepted culture - something on these lines.
c. This penalty should be made scalable, say, 20% no penalty, 40% - 10% penalty, 60% - 15% penalty, 80% - 25% penalty. etc.
d. There should be one particular idea group that should ward off these penalties to a great extent, (a new Expansion Idea Group) so that to enable wide play in all its fun. It may add additional allowed numbers of states (like one in current admin. idea finisher) reduce unrest, more accepted etc. So this idea group would be a must take.
e. Overall a little nerf to wide play but still fun with some exclusive idea group. (you may say even now some policies are a must take for this.)

And what I call the opinion that's deeply rooted in the mind of many people, which is that wide players don't want challenge. The two posts I answered too, even if I should have quoted them to make it clearer:

And this shows well that that people who are against realism dont want a good game but an easy one as it makes them feel superior when they continue to play and conquer while everyone else quit out of boredom and started a new game.

Just spot on. I wonder if this cisma could ever be solved with maybe with two gamestyles ingame. The base game, with that realism, and then an arcade mod, disabling most maluses and internal politics mechanics for those who want to hunt achievements or conquer as fast and efficiently as possible, beating the AI with tiny countries or whatever.

Just like CK2, that lets you disable a lot of stuff.

I think there's a difference between rejecting corruption, unrest and a 25% tech penalty out of nowhere, and wanting an arcade mode. What I call a non-arbitrary and well-designed challenge for minmaxrs already exists in the game, that's what I'm saying. It's called starting as an OPM in ROTW, possibly in VH, and still try to blob heavily. This requires minmaxing monarch points to an insane extent and squeezing every ducat, or else you'll fail. As I said, this possibility exists, and it works relatively fine even if everything can be improved. The issue is with the other playstyles, they're lackluster and ineffective.

 

[Dominion]

Savescumming and doublepeace don't make a one tag/faith/culture easy.

If savescumming and exploits don't make these runs easy then why do people keep savescumming and using the same exploits over and over again instead of playing legit

And I'm not willing to invest 20-30 hours of tedious micro into a non-valid run every sub-1000 hour player can get done.

 

[Sfan]

Because it makes them less hard, which is not to say it's easy. I think you're perfectly capable of understanding the difference, even if you have a tendency to consider that everything you can do is easy.

 

[bly08]

If savescumming and exploits don't make these runs easy then why do people keep savescumming and using the same exploits over and over again instead of playing legit

And I'm not willing to invest 20-30 hours of tedious micro into a non-valid run every sub-1000 hour player can get done.

Easier is not the same as easy. I've no idea how you can think that double peacing suddenly makes 3/1s easy.

 

[Dominion]

Because it makes them less hard, which is not to say it's easy. I think you're perfectly capable of understanding the difference, even if you have a tendency to consider that everything you can do is easy.

Easier is not the same as easy. I've no idea how you can think that double peacing suddenly makes 3/1s easy.

Okay, it isn't easy then.

Still doesn't mean it's legit.

 

[bly08]

Okay, it isn't easy then.

Still doesn't mean it's legit.

What does legit mean? Which exploits are allowed or disallowed?

 

[Dominion]

What does legit mean? Which exploits are allowed and disallowed?

None.

I can accept that it's not as easy as a Brandenburg > Prussia run, but it does lower the difficulty level of a run by a ton.
People keep telling themselves it's not a lot. That's a lie.

These things accumulate over time and in the end it's not a question of "how much did I get from it?" anymore because you will lose track of just how much you've been gifting yourself.

If savescumming is okay I'll savescum every single siege tick so all my enemies have nothing but disease outbreaks and I only get wall breaches. Turns out I can end my runs 50 years faster than you with less experience when I do it like that.
Is that skill or did I just savescum more often than you?

Hint: It's the latter

 

[bbqftw]

Eye of the beholder and all that

It is not really useful arguing with someone who drew the exploit / nonlegit line different than you did

I agree that savescumming does give tons of incremental advantage and allows you to play differently because you spotted yourself a mental handicap.

which is why I think its partially dishonest to not explicitly say your bird criteria with challenge runs but it is what it is

 

[bly08]

None.

I can accept that it's not as easy as a Brandenburg > Prussia run, but it does lower the difficulty level of a run.
People keep telling themselves it's not a lot. That's a lie.

These things accumulate over time and in the end it's not a question of "how much did I get from it?" anymore because you will lose track of just how much you've been gifting yourself.

If savescumming is okay I'll savescum every single siege tick so all my enemies have nothing but disease outbreaks and I only get wall breaches.
Is that skill or did I just savescum more often than you?

Hint: It's the latter

Is state flashing an exploit? What about using up all manpower on regiments before clicking a manpower loss event. What about stating/unstating to manage estates to increase/decrease loyalty hit? Running edicts on fake states before slacking standards. Sacrificing 1k regiment to lower enemy morale before engaging. Assaulting a lv2 fort in 20 days with 2k loss. Which of these are considered exploits and where can I find the rulebook?

If you have the patience to savescum every siege tick then I'll be the first one to congratulate your determination and perseverance. You'll then hopefully realize that AE is hardcapped and switching out one bottleneck for another doesn't do much in the long run.

 

[Dominion]

Eye of the beholder and all that

It is not really useful arguing with someone who drew the exploit / nonlegit line different than you did

Eye of the beholder, eh?

No one uses custom nation exploits for speed runs. These screenshots from 1.1whatever don't mean shit.

Glad we're back to the point I've reached with marco and several others before: There's a group of high-level players who have all agreed which exploits are fine and which aren't.
Those who don't agree can go suck it.

Hence the name of my custom nation.