15 year truces seem a bit long

[Elin]

Do we have an idea about the purcentage number of games played in MP?

I mean i can't see this game as a good MP game because the games are too long to be played regularly.

 

[Fishman786]

Do we have an idea about the purcentage number of games played in MP?

I mean i can't see this game as a good MP game because the games are too long to be played regularly.

IIRC Johan said that 80% of players have played MP or something like that? It was a non-negligible number at any rate. Though I'm not sure how much time is spent on MP games vs SP games.

 

[Elin]

IIRC Johan said that 80% of players have played MP or something like that? It was a non-negligible number at any rate. Though I'm not sure how much time is spent on MP games vs SP games.

Well i already played MP but 95% of my time IG was in SP :/

 

[Squirrelloid]

IIRC Johan said that 80% of players have played MP or something like that? It was a non-negligible number at any rate. Though I'm not sure how much time is spent on MP games vs SP games.

I think you have that backwards. I'm pretty sure it's 80% of players have *never* played MP.

 

[Tavior]

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.

The problem is NOT that my machines take forever to go through truce timers. However my gameplay of waiting for a decent moment to back stab someone means I have to wait for one of my targets to declare war on someone else then wait until their manpower is low etc... Or risk missing a good chance to grab one or two province by going at 5x speed.

After long enough it could reach a point where an ugly coalitions form which slow down my gameplay even more which has nothing to do with "CPU" crunch time. I think going from 5 years - 15 years to 5 years - 10 years truce timer would be better from a gameplay perspective all around. It would keep truce timer from getting too excessive especially if they get called into defensive CtA or forming a super-bloc coalition. Or even just help those small nations that do NOT have many target in the first place like Mongolia, Ireland OPM, and other etc...

 

[Fishman786]

I think you have that backwards. I'm pretty sure it's 80% of players have *never* played MP.

It was some high number that surprised me. I thought relatively few people played MP, but apparently that isn't the case. Although as mentioned before we don't know how much time is put into each one. In EUIII I would be classed as a 'person who has played Multiplayer' even though my only game was a two-player LAN thing with my friend that lasted a couple of hours. Whereas EUIII SP was for a while pretty much the only strategy game I played.

 

[WeissRaben]

IIRC Johan said that 80% of players have played MP or something like that? It was a non-negligible number at any rate. Though I'm not sure how much time is spent on MP games vs SP games.

Other way around. 85% of the players never played MP.

 

[hitchens]

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.

Why? MP does not work very well from what I've heard, and the times I've tried to play MP I've experienced all sorts of bugs and technical issues that has been reported on the bug report forums.

I've never played MP myself.

I think there are many who dont play MP, and considering how the empty the MP lobby seems it appears hardly anyone play MP.

 

[Lindorn]

If you only have one country to beat up on, you're probably doing something wrong.

Why? I generally avoid participating in these arguments nowadays. I've modded the game so I can enjoy it now (best thing I ever did post-changes in the last couple of patches). But I have to take a moment here, because I don't understand it at all when people make statements like this.

Forget about the fact that it's bursting with pretention (I'm doing something "wrong"?). Why am I doing something wrong? Please explain why a "rotation" of wars against various nations is not only "better", but in your mind a requirement to be playing the game properly. Please don't mistake me - I do this in most of my games. But I am sick of people telling other people how they should and should not play the game. I've never seen a community more rife with armchair gamers telling each other they're doing it "wrong".

I'd really like an explanation as to why 15 year truces are a good thing. To me it seems like a hamfisted way to nerf expansion (again). In general I feel like the arguments about game mechanics are really poor on this forum. Paradox could solve this (and they have been doing phenomenally with AOW) but until they explain what their motivations are with the trend against expansion (ie truces, AE, coalitions, etc) I will have to assume it's because they don't "like" a certain approach to the game.

Similarly, until folks like you actually start explaining your ideas, instead of just accusing people of playing the game wrong, I will have to assume you just like to tell other people what they should do with their 50 dollars.

 

[Lindorn]

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.

I can respect this, but I still feel like we're having the wrong conversation. Even if we agree there is plenty to do during 15 year truces, what was the problem with 5 year truces to begin with? That's the discussion I feel would enlighten everyone, from the naysayers to the guys who's only argument currently is we're playing the game "wrong"

 

[hitchens]

The problem is NOT that my machines take forever to go through truce timers. However my gameplay of waiting for a decent moment to back stab someone means I have to wait for one of my targets to declare war on someone else then wait until their manpower is low etc... Or risk missing a good chance to grab one or two province by going at 5x speed.

Well put, and I would like to add that the problem is that EU has a time limit. So if you have a long term goal, 3 wars will mean 45 years of peace time on top of the years the war itself lasts. So if you are fighting to destroy France, Ottomans or Mamlukes, you can spend 100 years doing something the Ottomans did to the Mamlukes in 7 years.

 

[jakt]

years of truce in peace should enable you to go over what was the original 100% warscore, and it should be optional in the peace deal.

for example, you go to war with a country and win, you can offer them +2 extra years of truce and it gives you just enough to be able to take that next province or enforce the trade deal

this of course would be predicated on the idea that the winner of the war could give some concessions in order to get greater concessions out of the loser, but i think it would make for more interesting decisions and would help in staggering wars

i also do not think "run game at speed 5" is an appropriate response to criticism of the extended truces. there's already lots of mechanics to stop players from expanding too quickly, and this newer layer adds a complication that ends up in creating a boring and frustrating game in many situation

 

[Thrake]

5 years truces from 100% WS was definately not enough to recover and meant that you could do it again and again upon full annexation easily (esp. in the case of "isolated" nations as Muscovy where AE hardly affects anybody). It also led to another change in my planning, which is that I don't value gold in peace deals that much now. Unless the ennemy is filfy rich (in which case 1% WS for 100 gold can be quite appealing), claiming gold or breaking alliances just lead to longer truces with limited benefits (inflation for me, or alliance created again right when the truce ends, or waste of DIP if releasing nations that'll be annexed when the truce is over,...), so wars often end up in claiming lands and ignoring often times any other situation.

 

[highsis]

As much as I dislike 15 years, I would rather have 15 years truce than any of these abominations:

1. faster recovering manpower
2. faster decreasing WE

Johan, if you decide to change 15 year truce, don't go back to EU3. Simply scale it to 12 years or something.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

As much as I dislike 15 years, I would rather have 15 years truce than any of these abominations:

1. faster recovering manpower
2. faster decreasing WE

Johan, if you decide to change 15 year truce, don't go back to EU3. Simply scale it to 12 years or something.

The logical conclusion would be to remove the arbitrary timer limitation of the truces and make both manpower and money *more* pressing (definitely don't INCREASE manpower recovery, consider decreasing it). Another useful thing would be to make the marginal utility of an additional province past a certain size start becoming a lot less obvious of a choice against other investments. Both of these things would serve to curb easy runaways and would make wars a lot harder and effective management of wars more meaningful.

 

[DarkyErinyes]

As much as I dislike 15 years, I would rather have 15 years truce than any of these abominations:

1. faster recovering manpower
2. faster decreasing WE

Johan, if you decide to change 15 year truce, don't go back to EU3. Simply scale it to 12 years or something.

I believe point 1) and 2) should indeed not be changed. As it currently stands it recovers quick enough to be of use after a couple of years ( not counting nations that inherintly gain bonuses anyway ).

Possibly a few things that could work if one wants to look at truce timers could be:

- introduce an idea that removes a defined number of years from the maximum of the truce in the peace deal just as nationalism works right now ( basically one could take 12 years as per your example here )
- introduce an idea that reduces the scaling of the truce timer ( 15 years maximum still ) but with - further - reduced truce time values below a defined threshold ( for example a peace warscore of let's say 66% - after that scaling will increase to until 100% with 15 years is reached )

This way, players who'd like to go to war often, can take that specific idea and furthermore nothing will change for those that rather play economy or trade focused.

Obviously that just some ideas I've been throwing around in my head for a while. I've played a couple of games with 15 years and it didn't really influence my playstyle at all - mind you with big nations though. I rarely play smaller nations unless it's for a specific challenge , i.e. an achievement.

Generally, to answer Johan's original questions:

1) Yes, since I normally take large swathes of land as a large nation. This is my main way to expand, thus larger truce timers exist most of the time.
2) around 40 seconds per year

 

[DirtyRoberto]

Why is a truce timer even fixed? I think that must've been negotiatable in history...

 

[hitchens]

Johan, if you decide to change 15 year truce, don't go back to EU3. Simply scale it to 12 years or something.

EU3 was wonderful. New York Matinee called it "a playful but mysterious little dish"

 

[eirecount]

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.

Years take thirty seconds when you have 5 year autosaves and are on speed 5. However, in MP and ironman mode, you will be significantly slower. In ironman, autosaving takes up more time than playing does. In MP, you are almost always at speed 2 or 3 because of desynch issues. Maybe in the office LAN you guys can play speed 5 MP, but an MP made up of people around the world with widely varying connection quality and speeds is very different.

 

[lordelenath]

Why is a truce timer even fixed? I think that must've been negotiatable in history...

As far as I know there was no 'timer' to begin with (which is the main difference between a truce and a cease fire, right?). You would agree upon terms and that's it. If you declared war sixth months later nothing stops you, apart from the pretty obvious fact that in reality a constantly warring nation would find itself in serious trouble for completely different reasons.