As you all know, the game is supposed to end on January 1821. Of course we allow you to continue if you wish but there's no more content and it is basically an unsupported use case.
I'm sure some of you may have tried to push a bit forward to see what would happen. But what if we let it run for waaaay to long?
Welcome to Europa 5130!
Every night we let the AI play a couple games and check back the results in the morning. That helps us catch crashes, out-of-sync, and of course weird behaviours of all sorts.
Since July is kind of an off month here in Sweden, we decided to let one of the machine continue playing after 1821. It's a been a full week now...
In 5130, a small set of superpowers have been fighting for domination for millennia now without a clear winner emerging.
The biggest player is Spain, followed by the US, Vijayanagar, [NAME HIDDEN UNTIL NEXT WEEK], Revolutionary Austria, Paraguay, Portugal, Ethiopia and of course Japan, still alive and well all alone on its archipelago.
The first thing we can see is that the AI is seemingly terrible at World Conquest. After all if they couldn't pull it off in 4 millennia, what are the odds they'd be able to do it in 400 years?
Of course another way to look at it would be that our game is sufficiently balanced that, given equivalent player skill (all AIs work the same), no nation manages to take over the entire world.
So what does the AI actually do with all that time and resources? Well obviously, it develops:
The colors do not make it obvious due to the absurd difference in values so let's take another look at the ledger:
Having no technology or ideas to buy for millennia, the AI did spend a bit in development, Spain being the leader with 600 dev. Do not ask me why someone would develop Eirksfjord, a province with +50% dev cost, to 106. It probably makes sense in the future.
Of course that amount of resources allows our superpowers to field mighty armies:
Only Revolutionary Austria seems to still be able to make use of cavalry, the others having apparently forgotten how to ride horses (or bred them to extinction, this is the future after all).
But hey, who needs horses when you can hire hundreds of thousands of mercenaries, right? In the future, everyone is super rich but blows most of his GDP on soldiers of fortune.
Will any of the powers be able to make use of those massive armies to break the status-quo? So far history says no. Looking at the history of Spain for example, it seems like each monarch is able to grab a dozen provinces at best during his reign, to be lost by the next one.
There might be signs of a slow grinding of Revolutionary Austria by allies Spain and [NAME HIDDEN UNTIL NEXT WEEK] but it would take centuries (or worse) at this pace.
Then again no one's in a hurry, that game is still running as I type this article...
One last freebie before leaving: the Emperor of China still exists in the form of Korchin, a Reformed two province junior partner of Vijayanagar.
Taking ideas from the West, they decided to opt for a Parliament reform and are now titled... Parliament of Heaven! Those guys take the concept of "Celestial Bureaucracy" *very* seriously.
Oh and by the way, happy 4th of July!
I'm sure some of you may have tried to push a bit forward to see what would happen. But what if we let it run for waaaay to long?
Welcome to Europa 5130!
Every night we let the AI play a couple games and check back the results in the morning. That helps us catch crashes, out-of-sync, and of course weird behaviours of all sorts.
Since July is kind of an off month here in Sweden, we decided to let one of the machine continue playing after 1821. It's a been a full week now...
In 5130, a small set of superpowers have been fighting for domination for millennia now without a clear winner emerging.
The biggest player is Spain, followed by the US, Vijayanagar, [NAME HIDDEN UNTIL NEXT WEEK], Revolutionary Austria, Paraguay, Portugal, Ethiopia and of course Japan, still alive and well all alone on its archipelago.
The first thing we can see is that the AI is seemingly terrible at World Conquest. After all if they couldn't pull it off in 4 millennia, what are the odds they'd be able to do it in 400 years?
Of course another way to look at it would be that our game is sufficiently balanced that, given equivalent player skill (all AIs work the same), no nation manages to take over the entire world.
So what does the AI actually do with all that time and resources? Well obviously, it develops:
The colors do not make it obvious due to the absurd difference in values so let's take another look at the ledger:
Having no technology or ideas to buy for millennia, the AI did spend a bit in development, Spain being the leader with 600 dev. Do not ask me why someone would develop Eirksfjord, a province with +50% dev cost, to 106. It probably makes sense in the future.
Of course that amount of resources allows our superpowers to field mighty armies:
Only Revolutionary Austria seems to still be able to make use of cavalry, the others having apparently forgotten how to ride horses (or bred them to extinction, this is the future after all).
But hey, who needs horses when you can hire hundreds of thousands of mercenaries, right? In the future, everyone is super rich but blows most of his GDP on soldiers of fortune.
Will any of the powers be able to make use of those massive armies to break the status-quo? So far history says no. Looking at the history of Spain for example, it seems like each monarch is able to grab a dozen provinces at best during his reign, to be lost by the next one.
There might be signs of a slow grinding of Revolutionary Austria by allies Spain and [NAME HIDDEN UNTIL NEXT WEEK] but it would take centuries (or worse) at this pace.
Then again no one's in a hurry, that game is still running as I type this article...
One last freebie before leaving: the Emperor of China still exists in the form of Korchin, a Reformed two province junior partner of Vijayanagar.
Taking ideas from the West, they decided to opt for a Parliament reform and are now titled... Parliament of Heaven! Those guys take the concept of "Celestial Bureaucracy" *very* seriously.
Oh and by the way, happy 4th of July!
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