This is unrelated to the situation in 1.13, but in general I don't like maps with only big empires around. It's usually more annoying than challenging. If my empire is huge, rich, I am in a great defensive position and I know I will never get attacked by the AI, I always feel like "no need to start a world war with my rival empire next door, I already have everything I need, it's not worth it". Basically, you have to fight huge wars for (in comparison to your strength) minimal gains. In the early game, you fight smaller wars for more important gains while risking to stay small or even get annexed and this is definitely more entertaining.
1.13 AI creates huge Empires
- Thread starter melkor88
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It sounds like your problem isn't big empires. It's that the game forces you to commit to total war whereas real wars during the era rarely escalated to something on the scale of besieging and capturing London or Paris.
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I saw Austria take all of Bavaria in the first ten years of my current Castile game. I've barely ever seen them eat all of Bavaria before, let alone in the first ten years of the game.
Spain decided that it would be a great idea to take all of the Balkans/Greece (with Constantinople) in my last game.
Is it just me or is Ming the new BBB? I haven't seen Qing or Shu or whatever since the patch.
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Ive noticed a few unlikely blobs, mainly Papal States and OPMs suddenly blobbing out, the current development mechanics seem to help them along too.
In my games the ai blobs then forms those stupid hugboxes that makes expansion too hard because of truces and call for peace (either sit 15years doing nothing or truce break).
This may be a deep, but keep in mind that alot of those provinces in the north are very large. I really haven't done the math, but you could conquer all of Italy and it looks pretty small, but its still bigger than Sweden in development points. I played an ottoman game and got into central Asia and I looked yooooge, but France with a few minutes f its neighbors was still actually bigger.
I made some changes in the defines file to make the AI more aggressive in taking provinces (like players).
In my Tabrestan -> Persia game, it's 1552 and Europe looks like this:
Ottomans have Iraq as march and Tunis as vassal, as well as Fruili and Treviso.
Pope has Crete, Scio and Mantrega, while Austria ate Tuscany. Venice and Genoa have ceased to exist.
I'd be interested to know what you tweaked.
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Interesting observation: thanks! Yep, something definitely changed in this respect in 1.13 (but I'm still struggling to understand what exactly and how to remedy), since my mod (simply ported from 1.12.2 to 1.13) has the peace deal outcomes entirely different, never vassaling even with vassalisation-only CB and wargoal, only annexing and demanding provinces. It's like vassalisation is suddenly immensely expensive or unattractive for AI.
So AI seems more willing to incur AE? But still adhering to "justified demands" in CB's and Wargoal Types? Not demanding provinces and annexing when not "entitled" to or having the "justification" to do?
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Initially I changed these values to 1
PEACE_TERMS_PROVINCE_NOT_ADJACENT_MULT = 0.5, -- AI desire for a province is multiplied by this if it is not adjacent at all (including vassals and other provinces being taken in peace)
PEACE_TERMS_PROVINCE_NO_INTEREST_MULT = 0, -- AI desire for a province is multiplied by this if it is not on their conquest list
But after a few games, I changed them to 0.9 because the AI was taking provinces in the middle of the enemy territory that it couldn't core, and later returning them.
Screenshots from some other games on this thread
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/a-different-way-to-play-the-game.879805/
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My last game is by far the weirdest I've seen, many tiny weird things happened not 1 just 1 huge thing:
Provence conquered all of Britany and is around even in 1650
England still holds all the northen French coast
Guyenne is released
Byzantium existed until 1600, I was the one to kill it not AI, I felt sad doing so
and no I didn't do anything to affect its survival with exception the full annexation in the end
Bohemia messed up everything and was 1 province minor so when the pu came with Austria, bohemia was worthless
Novgorod formed Russia and squeezed Muscovy with the help of Nogai
Burgundy exists in 1650 but has lost half its subjects
France never never bothered to conquer Calais until 1620 (they could get access to Calais) and in that war they lost all the coat, released Guyenne etc
Ottomans expanded into middle east and central Africa
Tarabestan is huge and Persia is a tiny dot
Spain has conquered most of northwest Africa, with morocco going more deep in africa
England until 1600 has taken from Scotland only the tiny islands on the north (sorry don't know name) and then fully annexed them out of nowhere in a war
Bavaria is huge, when I say huge I really mean they are massive ( they lost few power in some wars but still) , they were half the HRE but that didn't mean he was any good as an emperor..... (Commonwealth has northen HRE, I have all Austria and Switzerland, france feeling *blurry* from losing the coast is coming from the west)
The mamluks from 1500-1600 fully occupied Rhodes,Cyprus,Crete and Negroponte
There are only 25 countries in the HRE as of now
also I saw Estonia for the first time (didn't last long 2 years later Sweden ate it ...)
Provence conquered all of Britany and is around even in 1650
England still holds all the northen French coast
Guyenne is released
Byzantium existed until 1600, I was the one to kill it not AI, I felt sad doing so
and no I didn't do anything to affect its survival with exception the full annexation in the endBohemia messed up everything and was 1 province minor so when the pu came with Austria, bohemia was worthless
Novgorod formed Russia and squeezed Muscovy with the help of Nogai
Burgundy exists in 1650 but has lost half its subjects
France never never bothered to conquer Calais until 1620 (they could get access to Calais) and in that war they lost all the coat, released Guyenne etc
Ottomans expanded into middle east and central Africa
Tarabestan is huge and Persia is a tiny dot
Spain has conquered most of northwest Africa, with morocco going more deep in africa
England until 1600 has taken from Scotland only the tiny islands on the north (sorry don't know name) and then fully annexed them out of nowhere in a war
Bavaria is huge, when I say huge I really mean they are massive ( they lost few power in some wars but still) , they were half the HRE but that didn't mean he was any good as an emperor..... (Commonwealth has northen HRE, I have all Austria and Switzerland, france feeling *blurry* from losing the coast is coming from the west)
The mamluks from 1500-1600 fully occupied Rhodes,Cyprus,Crete and Negroponte
There are only 25 countries in the HRE as of now
also I saw Estonia for the first time (didn't last long 2 years later Sweden ate it ...)
Yep.
Played as Tuscany. Become mid-size power (North Italy with some provinces belonging to France and Austria). From there till the Europe was dominated by France and Commonwealth with Austria/SaxonyHRE being a strong block in the middle. To the end Austria became weaker, Commonwealth and Ottomans stronger and my Tuscany became greeat power instead of Austria/Saxony/HRE. Felt right. Felt nice.
Maybe we're not at the delicate balance of historicity/gameplay yet but we're pretty close. I still haven't seen good Revolutionary war in 1444 campaign in EU4. Even though Wars of Religions are OK. Though it doesn't seem to pay to become Protestant. Even with automatic hate from Pope for capturing Rome I felt I'm better off with staying Catholic.
Played as Tuscany. Become mid-size power (North Italy with some provinces belonging to France and Austria). From there till the Europe was dominated by France and Commonwealth with Austria/SaxonyHRE being a strong block in the middle. To the end Austria became weaker, Commonwealth and Ottomans stronger and my Tuscany became greeat power instead of Austria/Saxony/HRE. Felt right. Felt nice.
Maybe we're not at the delicate balance of historicity/gameplay yet but we're pretty close. I still haven't seen good Revolutionary war in 1444 campaign in EU4. Even though Wars of Religions are OK. Though it doesn't seem to pay to become Protestant. Even with automatic hate from Pope for capturing Rome I felt I'm better off with staying Catholic.
I have a game where england got a pu over castile and austria got a pu over hungary and bohemia all before 1500 so.... And yea, standard PLC. I think it is my byz game.
I don't see the problem.
(This is a map of the real world circa 1600.)
Wow the artist has really gone out of his way to pick the worst possible colours for several great powers. Red for Spain and yellow for UK is just super-confusing, not to mention turning the Ottoman Empire into a giant turd.
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I don't see the problem.
(This is a map of the real world circa 1600.)
Can I just say, I love this map? Nice post bro....
Yeah, they are strange color choices, and it's weird that certain countries get colors (Venice) but others (Japan and Persia) don't. I'd probably change every single one except maybe France and the HRE.
Though, Britain might be yellow because it's supposed to represent England in a union under Scotland and not the other way around. You could also argue that China is green because it's supposed to be jade, but considering all the other colors, I doubt that was the intention.
This was my Aztec Invasion campaign. Aragon beat Castille, Novgorod beat Muscovy, the Commonwealth is the biggest I've ever seen and Hormuz was a surprise to see!
I love how the AI expands now!
I love how the AI expands now!
Well, I had my first 1.13 game a few days ago, thinking I would give another try to Norwegian wood and setup the AI as hard with AI bonuses as usual... Then I saw England was rival of Denmark, and England stronk... England supports my independance, Denmark is just allied to some random HRE minor... Alright, let's try to beat the Danes together... A few years later and silly landings later (why is the AI landing in Sweden stacks of 20k men one after the other while they could just land in allied Norwegian terrotory and consolidate there?), we win by a little, so I thought: "let's declare independance and take the Swedish OPed bronze province, that'll nerf them when they will go for independance; if I don't do that they'll field 3 times a bigger army than I do and I'll be dead".
Fast forward 1500, I now roughly own Kalmar Union lands (Stockholm and Aland still Swedish though as they're allied to Poland...); while I thought I wasn't doing bad, the AI is just so much more blobby than usual; the mere 25k men that I can field is nothing compared to Muscovy's 100k FL (in 1500!), Castille has PU over Aragon and Naples (probably the 2nd time I saw that), Switzerland annexed half of Austria, France annexed Brittany and Savoy, Burgundy survived and annexed the lowlands and a dozen French provinces, Crimea annexed GH and the small Orthodox nations so that they now border the Ottomans,... All that in 50 years, although it looks like what used to be a late game map.
The AI blobs everywhere, it feels good and looks like it's about time I turn AI bonuses off because I can't keep up anymore
Fast forward 1500, I now roughly own Kalmar Union lands (Stockholm and Aland still Swedish though as they're allied to Poland...); while I thought I wasn't doing bad, the AI is just so much more blobby than usual; the mere 25k men that I can field is nothing compared to Muscovy's 100k FL (in 1500!), Castille has PU over Aragon and Naples (probably the 2nd time I saw that), Switzerland annexed half of Austria, France annexed Brittany and Savoy, Burgundy survived and annexed the lowlands and a dozen French provinces, Crimea annexed GH and the small Orthodox nations so that they now border the Ottomans,... All that in 50 years, although it looks like what used to be a late game map.
The AI blobs everywhere, it feels good and looks like it's about time I turn AI bonuses off because I can't keep up anymore
Seconded. I'm seeing the AI bite off more than it can chew--I've seen 10 points of unrest due to OE (how does that happen?!?!) and multiple times I've seen the AI take a big bite and pretty soon the lands are back with their original owner due to rebellions.
I'm wondering if it's failing to look at the OE that will result from the bite it's considering taking.