15 year truces seem a bit long

[Johan]

I just wanted to know if it was tied to people playing on slower pcs, and yes that is part of the factor..

When I play on my home pc, it takes about 30 seconds to run a year, and I never really had "15 years of waiting". In my current game of Russia, the only peaceful decade I had was when I westernised. Peace lasts for 3-4 years, when MP recovers, I build up some cash reserves, and build another dozen buildings.. Armies position to the next front takes a year, and during all this time I improve relation with everyone thats not my next target, and i fabricate as much claims as possible.

 

[AurochsAway]

I just wanted to know if it was tied to people playing on slower pcs, and yes that is part of the factor..

When I play on my home pc, it takes about 30 seconds to run a year, and I never really had "15 years of waiting". In my current game of Russia, the only peaceful decade I had was when I westernised. Peace lasts for 3-4 years, when MP recovers, I build up some cash reserves, and build another dozen buildings.. Armies position to the next front takes a year, and during all this time I improve relation with everyone thats not my next target, and i fabricate as much claims as possible.

Russia's better than most at avoiding forced peace-time due to both its large front of possible targets and its easy access to a wide variety of both different cultural groups and different religions, limiting both alliance likelihood and coalition spread.

 

[wingzero890]

The problem is that the claims you get for missions or nation forming decision were not adjusted when the 15 year truces were implemented. So you get one, maybe two uses out of them before they expire. Examples include the Mughals claim on India when you form them, Russia 'subjugate novgorod', Ottomans conquer the levant, Qing claim on China, etc.

 

[Elin]

I think that the 15 years truce is a problem for some countries.

For example, Ottos are blobbing less much than before because he has to ait 15years to DOW directly Mamluks. Other countries don't care just because they have multiple targets.
I understand why you changed the rule but i think the solution was not the best, maybe for example raising the manpower /month when it is very low after a lost war could solve the problem.

 

[Squirrelloid]

I just wanted to know if it was tied to people playing on slower pcs, and yes that is part of the factor..

When I play on my home pc, it takes about 30 seconds to run a year, and I never really had "15 years of waiting". In my current game of Russia, the only peaceful decade I had was when I westernised. Peace lasts for 3-4 years, when MP recovers, I build up some cash reserves, and build another dozen buildings.. Armies position to the next front takes a year, and during all this time I improve relation with everyone thats not my next target, and i fabricate as much claims as possible.

Your computer might be fast, but your play style is slow. That or you never play past ~1650. Move armies to the front? In my current Poland game I've got armies sitting around waiting at every front for truces to end. My FL is over 1000, and I need no more than a couple hundred in any theatre. Improve relations? Pointless, the entire world is either my ally or in a coalition against me. (And I can't avoid the coalitions - I was to the point where applying *any* AE caused them to join a coalition, even getting caught fabricating).

At this point I'm almost tempted to just let it run for the last 18 years so I can get my Poland Can Into Space already, because I could probably get a WC, but the aggravation involved in achieving it isn't worthwhile.

 

[Nereid]

Just a question? For those that complain about it..

- do you have different nations you rotate between fighting?
- how quickly does the game do 1 year for you at max speed?

Sometimes you have only one enemy. And 15 years is a bit to much in my opinion, too. The general idea of a variable truce is a nice one, but 5-15 is a bit to much. I would suggest 3 years (white peace, optional 5 years if more diplo-points are used) to 10 years (peace treaty of 100% warscore).

It's not a big deal most of the time, because there are some other things todo in peace. But it's a bit annoying to wait 15 years.

 

[grommile]

15 years is already so long it strains belief. The average life expectancy during much of the game period in Europe is ~30-35 years. If a man goes to war against Russia at 15, he expects to be *dead* before the next war. That's ridiculous. 25 years would involve absolutely no memory of the last war!

Utter claptrap.

The statistical at-birth life expectancy during much of the game period in Europe was that low, but that's because it was dragged down by horrifying (from a modern perspective) levels of childhood mortality. A man who saw his 21st birthday could reasonably expect to see his 60th.

 

[beckermt]

I like that longer truces for me to seek other enemies to attack. I can't just wait every 5 years and eat France (or whomever) bit by bit. I need to find something else to do or find more effective ways to remove my enemies, get around peace timers, etc.

The only time this becomes an issue is after a bout of expansion where two separate areas (say, Mamlukes/Persia and France/Castille) all join a coalition. This means that my two fronts are now connected, making it harder to rotate targets. Probably my own fault for being too aggressive, but dangit, Funj was just asking to be annexed in one go!

 

[Chamboozer]

15 year truces are far too long. My computer is fast so it's not so much a time issue for me as an immersion and gameplay one. On the one hand the truce limitation is fundamentally artificial and reminds me I'm in a game rather than in history. I'm the Ottomans trying to keep pace with Mehmed II's historical conquests. Opening move after Albania is to attack Byzantium, they call in Serbia and Wallachia. Annex Byzantium, vassalize Wallachia, grab a few provinces from the Serbs if they didn't get put as the war leader (which would require me to spend the WS on Byzantium instead). Great so far, except that now I've got a truce until ~1460 at best, by which point historically Serbia was gone and the Ottomans had moved on to greener pastures. And that's with a 9-year lead over the historical 'starting date' of 1453. And what prevents me from following the historical path? Well, because I have a truce I didn't negotiate the length of, which if broken will magically annihilate the social order of my country.

As far as gameplay goes, long truces break the flow of the game. I find myself not wanting to waste any time before attacking the countries around me, since I know I'll be waiting plenty enough as it is. When there are constantly truces with every neighboring country there player has no ability to respond to sudden opportunities. Powerful neighbor involved in a two-front war? Can't join in, you have a truce. It reduces the strategic planning to: Attack, wait out truce. Attack, wait out truce.

That's not to say that 5-year truces don't involve simply attacking, waiting, and attacking again. That is indeed the core problem here in my opinion. There's nothing stopping one country from just continually taking out chunks of another until they've annexed the whole thing, be it an AI country or an opponent in multiplayer. 15-year truces, however, only prolong the death of the country in question, they don't address the fundamental issue. That's why it's a bad solution.

As for what would be a good solution? I can't say I know. This sort of thing will always be an issue when EU's military system is set up as it is now: an all-out brawl with the resources of one country set up against the resources of another. One will always win, and if that win involves decreasing the strength of the loser then it only gets easier to win the next time. Maybe make it easier for countries who have recently lost a war to find allies. After all, their rivals should see them as less of a threat.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I just wanted to know if it was tied to people playing on slower pcs, and yes that is part of the factor..

When I play on my home pc, it takes about 30 seconds to run a year, and I never really had "15 years of waiting". In my current game of Russia, the only peaceful decade I had was when I westernised. Peace lasts for 3-4 years, when MP recovers, I build up some cash reserves, and build another dozen buildings.. Armies position to the next front takes a year, and during all this time I improve relation with everyone thats not my next target, and i fabricate as much claims as possible.

When you're playing one of the game's easier SP expanders, are able to rotate conquests into multiple religious and culture groups, and can use a top-tier CB to boost that further (and reduce the cost --> truce time), then yes the game will play faster.

Truce time annoyances come in more with nations like Songhai that just beat Mali, Mongolia that just beat Ming, Irish minor just beating England, or when many nations become one for truce purposes via mid-late game coalitions (when you can't find a way to trivialize the length by bypassing the truce that is, but the necessity in doing so is questionable).

 

[Tibi088]

And what if the length of truce would be negotiable? With a min of 5 years at least. I think that would be interesting.

 

[Osman Pasha]

And I hate how everyone joins a coalition against you and you have to wait for 15 years to fight everyone again and take a few provinces... I think coaltions shouldn't be intercontinental or inter-religious...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And I hate how everyone joins a coalition against you and you have to wait for 15 years to fight everyone again and take a few provinces... I think coaltions shouldn't be intercontinental or inter-religious...

The only thing worse than a poorly implemented mechanic is when two of them interact . The worst part is how much they stymie their expansion even without any units at all. If you want to talk about shattered immersion, few things are as implausible as a coalition of no regiments being a serious barrier to the expansion of a superpower :/.

 

[Osman Pasha]

I just wanted to know if it was tied to people playing on slower pcs, and yes that is part of the factor..

When I play on my home pc, it takes about 30 seconds to run a year, and I never really had "15 years of waiting". In my current game of Russia, the only peaceful decade I had was when I westernised. Peace lasts for 3-4 years, when MP recovers, I build up some cash reserves, and build another dozen buildings.. Armies position to the next front takes a year, and during all this time I improve relation with everyone thats not my next target, and i fabricate as much claims as possible.

1 year in 30 seconds, wow, that indeed is fast...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1 year in 30 seconds, wow, that indeed is fast...

I've not seen anybody else post such a speed. That's putting each month around 2.5 seconds...most people with good machines I've seen talk about it on the forum are 3+ seconds. Still, computer speed is a red herring in relation to truce times, unless this game is explicitly designed to be run speed 5 most times on computers far beyond minimum or even recommended specs (but that would make those specs misleading). Especially given that in MP speed 5 is completely impossible AFAIK (I've never seen or heard of it working well, but maybe if the host was the slowest computer?), speed 4 is probably your best metric and LOTS of machines run that.

PC speed does not change the design element of the truce length or how the current scaling of truce length functions however.

 

[Fishman786]

All the arguments against the truce timer and against excessive AE are good, IMO. The Developers place a large amount of emphasis on Multiplayer balancing, to the detriment of the singleplayer game. However, I would like to have a little gripe with how this community seems to behave about that...


EUIII was balanced for multiplayer as well, the singleplayer got quite ridiculous at times, and people had lots of different ideas on what the right balance should be. The solution was to play mods. There were lots of rebalance mods available which would change many of the small things that annoyed people (building destruction on conquest, hordes etc), and if you couldn't find one you could learn how to put one together yourself, a few little tweaks.
The same should be the case in EUIV. This truce timer issue? Solved in a single line of code. The specific amounts of AE and OE? Easy. Core times, culture conversion rules? Done. Monarch points and westernisation? A bit more complicated, but still possible to sort. However, two things have thrown this whole approach into the bin: Ironman and Steam achievements. The addition of achievements has created a kind of 'win state' for the game, a way to score points and show your skill. But you can't earn achievements without Ironman, and if you're playing Ironman you can't use mods. This has greatly discouraged people from playing mods in general. And this, in turn, has affected the kind of mods that are available. The popular EUIV mods are mostly big total conversion projects and massive revamps of the whole game, or things that add new nations and other content. Simple Vanilla rebalance mods and mini-mods are lacking. There are other reasons for this as well, the frequency of game-changing patches is one, there's little reason to invest time in fixing a mechanic yourself if there's a good chance that the developers will change it completely in a few months.

So, I advise the people here who are complaining and stressed over the state of SP: it most likely won't be fixed, and even if it is it probably isn't going to be to your personal preferences. Learn how to make simple mods, fix the multiplayer-based oversights yourselves. Forget achievements, they don't really mean anything, the big point of EU is to enjoy changing history and seeing how your nation develops, not grinding to try and win points (the amount of chance present in this game makes those 'points' kind of meaningless from a skill perspective anyway). I've played hundreds of hours of EUIII and there were zero achievements for that game, and I've also played hundreds of hours on the CK2 GamersGate edition, which also had no achievements. And I managed to have great fun.
Also, Ironman. There's such thing as self-discipline. I've never used Ironman, and I've never used the console either. I have reloaded quite a bit, but I've realised it's not very fun to do that and I've stopped. You don't have to have Ironman to not cheat.

If you want to earn achievements then use Ironman and vanilla, fine. But don't expect the game to be perfectly balanced to your tastes. I definitely don't think it is, I generally dislike EUIV, but I'll give AoW a go. If you do want the perfect SP experience, then mod the game to suit your tastes, and upload and share it here. When AoW is out I'll try to get back into the game, and I'll probably find something I want to change and I'll upload the tweaks in the modding section for you.

 

[hitchens]

All the arguments against the truce timer and against excessive AE are good, IMO. The Developers place a large amount of emphasis on Multiplayer balancing, to the detriment of the singleplayer game.

Then the solution should be to balance the game for SP not MP. I wish Paradox would come clean and say if EU is a MP game with SP features or a SP game with MP features. IS creating the strategy equivalent of Battlefield 1942 their goal, or to make good SP games?

Maybe a middleground could be to balance Ironman for SP, because the need for mods in order to play a good SP campaign does not put PI in a good light.

I love what PI is giving us, but I'd wish they balance for SP not MP. Most people play SP so why this choice?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

All the arguments against the truce timer and against excessive AE are good, IMO. The Developers place a large amount of emphasis on Multiplayer balancing, to the detriment of the singleplayer game. However, I would like to have a little gripe with how this community seems to behave about that...

The MP community doesn't necessarily agree with the changes either, from what I've seen the opinions on it seem to mirror those of SP players (IE a split of some kind, not tallied in any objective voting basis to see just how popular or not the truces are). Part of the reason for that is the issue I called into question immediately on learning of the change: the long truces protects large nations disproportionately to small ones. The game was already (and arguably logically) skewed towards big nations just because big nations are more powerful, but longer truces just stagnate the game further once you start getting blocs...though a lot of MP games on the forum house-rule themselves to death anyway.

I don't have much to say about the rest of your post; it seems like reasonable advice to me, though I'll still advocate change in unmodded EU IV, maybe it'll require less mod work to play well .

 

[Brent15]

I agree with Johan, truces are fine as is. There is plenty to do between wars and I often find myself tired of warfare - I don't want to be dragged into the same war every five years.

 

[Fishman786]

Then the solution should be to balance the game for SP not MP. I wish Paradox would come clean and say if EU is a MP game with SP features or a SP game with MP features. IS creating the strategy equivalent of Battlefield 1942 their goal, or to make good SP games?

Maybe a middleground could be to balance Ironman for SP, because the need for mods in order to play a good SP campaign does not put PI in a good light.

I love what PI is giving us, but I'd wish they balance for SP not MP. Most people play SP so why this choice?

IMO the reason Paradox focuses on MP balance (beyond Johan's personal opinion and the 'MP is like sex' spiel) is because it is more important to balance MP than SP. Creating a level and fun playing field for all players is crucial for MP to flourish. In an SP game, individual players can easily set up their own house rules and find workarounds for problems. Or, as I argued, use mods. You can't have MP dependant upon house rules or mods, the community will either fracture or not grow very large in the first place.


I've never played MP myself. I enjoyed EUIII because I could RP and imagine the events in the country I ruled, and could take all the time in the world. MP breaks the immersion of this. Also, as a game of skill EU is lacking, there are too many chance-based elements in there. I suppose in MP this is mitigated somewhat because you have to bluff, outwit and engage in clever diplomacy with other players (something I'm terrible at), but in SP I find it's much better to think of EU more as a 'sit back and enjoy the ride' game. Definitely I see little point in achievements, as you aren't winning them by pointing a crosshair or pushing the brake in the right part of the turn or racking up a high score, the RNG is doing most of the work for you.