(So very much not interested in arguments from people who don't own common sense. Going tall right now is SO WEAK that you're better off never touching the button in anything other than a last resort. Please take those complaints to threads where they belong.)
BONUS ADDED CONTENT!
A lot of people are missing JUST HOW ABSURD the difference between development and expansion is right now. In a best case scenario (a capital on a grassland with only 10 development) then the very first click of development is already 500% more costly than conquering for that development, and it only gets worse from there on.
And then admin ideas give -25% core cost, while economy only gives -20% development cost. Add to that that there are many nations and ways in game to get core creation reduction, but very few to get development reduction.
Russia with -15%, Ottomans -33%, Imperial reforms with -10%, Mughals -25%, -10% for a claim, -10% for Shiva. And many many many more which I'm sure we all know.
Now lets look at development: -5% for a center of trade (very VERY few are on grasslands, less than 5 I think.) -5% in imperial reforms (comapred to -10% core in the very same imperial reforms.) -1% per 500% natives left. (That means that new world provinces are the best to develop, except those are all for colonies and not for you.) -20% for a university, but I think anyone who has played the development game knows just how useful that is... -10% for trading in tropical wood which is just difficult to get. And lastly a whopping -5% for protestant. That's it. That's IT. But it gets worse:
Admin efficiency (which comes a tech sooner) gives -50% to the ENTIRE cost. Development efficiency gives -50% to ONLY the +5 modifiers. Yeah. It's that bad.
I've spent a looot of time playing CS and I've just come to the conclusion that the +5 modifier per development that you develop needs to go.
I've played through as tall, wide, a mixture of both, and any way you look at it the +5 cost per development just makes it impossible to play tall as anything other than a funny play through (much like how you can play as a Native tribe, or a siberian clan.)
Lets look at what hurts the development game:
1. There is an increasing cost to developing your provinces. +5 per button press. This means to press the button 10 times you pay +0, +5, +10, +15, +20, +25, +30, +35, +40, +45. That's 225 monarch points right there. But wait, there's more!
2. The increasing cost to develop your provinces is then also modified by the develop cost increase. Yes, the developing system double dips. Each point of development increases the cost of further development by 1% (stacking of course) and then another +5 that gets modified by that % for each point you manually increase it by.
3. The modifiers stack additively. This means a 30% development province costs 30% more. If you have -10% development from capital, and -20% from ideas, that means you're still paying 100%. That means developing Roma for example is pretty much a waste of time since you're going to be paying an enormous premium to get it to 40 development and the current buildings won't make it worth it since especially on farm land you get all the good buildings pretty easily.
Just as an example I did a custom nation in the netherlands and combined all the dutch and flemish cultured areas. Gave myself -10% build cost and -10% development cost in my ideas, took some other random territories that looked like good forts. I then just built up till ~1600 and got 330 development. Pretty good right? Exceeeept I did the same thing with the Papal states (who have NO expansion ideas) and just conquered everyone. Ended up around 1000 development in the same time. (and I did it half paying attention while watching a twitch stream, I'm sure people could have gotten to 2000+ easily.)
The best way to play "tall" is pretty much to build up your locations then never build on them again, and instead conquer another decent spot, plop a university on it, click the button a bunch, delete the university for buildings, and move on to another province. That can't be the intended way to play because it goes against common sense (hah) as well as being pretty ahistorical. Prussia didn't just stop building up their home provinces and ditch em, they kept building.
Now lets just look at the base facts. It's 10 admin per development, and 8 diplomatic per development. To BUILD a development it's 50 per development. That's not that out of whack considering the dangers of expansion and the game does take place during the age of expansion and mega-empires. The problem is that when you continue to develop you start having to pay 60, then 80, then you're looking at your button and realizing that adding a single additional development to your province is the same cost as just annexing three provinces to your right. The premium you pay on high development provinces combined with the +5 per developing AND the fact that you quickly run out of buildings that could make it worth it makes it... not worth it.
Here's where the numbers start to completely break down ever trying to go tall: At BEST you can get -20% development and +100% manpower. That's the best military building and the economy finisher. At BEST you're looking at paying 0.8 the normal price for 2x the power. However while an expansion player can just find a random province and click it for maybe 55 or 60 development it would cost me at least over 100 and that's if I went economy. I'm competing against expansion players pretty much evenly at the going tall game and that just doesn't seem fair.
And that's why I believe the premium of 1% per development is enough to stop mega-Roma or 100 development Prague from being a viable way to play. Eventually you're going to start paying +40% at 40 development and it'll stop being worth it. At the VERY least the point cost needs to come down to +2 from +5 if you want to keep it just to stop people from getting to +50 development, however:
Another issue I have is that the +5 development modifier also means you can't set up any "new" cities. I can't take a random farmland in India or Lithuania and make it the new Paris of the world. I mean I can... hypothetically, but the system will make it completely stupid to try. Which is weird considering that we already have events for such things as Saint Petersberg and the Ottomans rebuilding Constantinople to show that cities were built up or remade over the course of the game, but the player himself can't choose to let it happen.
BONUS ADDED CONTENT!
A lot of people are missing JUST HOW ABSURD the difference between development and expansion is right now. In a best case scenario (a capital on a grassland with only 10 development) then the very first click of development is already 500% more costly than conquering for that development, and it only gets worse from there on.
And then admin ideas give -25% core cost, while economy only gives -20% development cost. Add to that that there are many nations and ways in game to get core creation reduction, but very few to get development reduction.
Russia with -15%, Ottomans -33%, Imperial reforms with -10%, Mughals -25%, -10% for a claim, -10% for Shiva. And many many many more which I'm sure we all know.
Now lets look at development: -5% for a center of trade (very VERY few are on grasslands, less than 5 I think.) -5% in imperial reforms (comapred to -10% core in the very same imperial reforms.) -1% per 500% natives left. (That means that new world provinces are the best to develop, except those are all for colonies and not for you.) -20% for a university, but I think anyone who has played the development game knows just how useful that is... -10% for trading in tropical wood which is just difficult to get. And lastly a whopping -5% for protestant. That's it. That's IT. But it gets worse:
Admin efficiency (which comes a tech sooner) gives -50% to the ENTIRE cost. Development efficiency gives -50% to ONLY the +5 modifiers. Yeah. It's that bad.
I've spent a looot of time playing CS and I've just come to the conclusion that the +5 modifier per development that you develop needs to go.
I've played through as tall, wide, a mixture of both, and any way you look at it the +5 cost per development just makes it impossible to play tall as anything other than a funny play through (much like how you can play as a Native tribe, or a siberian clan.)
Lets look at what hurts the development game:
1. There is an increasing cost to developing your provinces. +5 per button press. This means to press the button 10 times you pay +0, +5, +10, +15, +20, +25, +30, +35, +40, +45. That's 225 monarch points right there. But wait, there's more!
2. The increasing cost to develop your provinces is then also modified by the develop cost increase. Yes, the developing system double dips. Each point of development increases the cost of further development by 1% (stacking of course) and then another +5 that gets modified by that % for each point you manually increase it by.
3. The modifiers stack additively. This means a 30% development province costs 30% more. If you have -10% development from capital, and -20% from ideas, that means you're still paying 100%. That means developing Roma for example is pretty much a waste of time since you're going to be paying an enormous premium to get it to 40 development and the current buildings won't make it worth it since especially on farm land you get all the good buildings pretty easily.
Just as an example I did a custom nation in the netherlands and combined all the dutch and flemish cultured areas. Gave myself -10% build cost and -10% development cost in my ideas, took some other random territories that looked like good forts. I then just built up till ~1600 and got 330 development. Pretty good right? Exceeeept I did the same thing with the Papal states (who have NO expansion ideas) and just conquered everyone. Ended up around 1000 development in the same time. (and I did it half paying attention while watching a twitch stream, I'm sure people could have gotten to 2000+ easily.)
The best way to play "tall" is pretty much to build up your locations then never build on them again, and instead conquer another decent spot, plop a university on it, click the button a bunch, delete the university for buildings, and move on to another province. That can't be the intended way to play because it goes against common sense (hah) as well as being pretty ahistorical. Prussia didn't just stop building up their home provinces and ditch em, they kept building.
Now lets just look at the base facts. It's 10 admin per development, and 8 diplomatic per development. To BUILD a development it's 50 per development. That's not that out of whack considering the dangers of expansion and the game does take place during the age of expansion and mega-empires. The problem is that when you continue to develop you start having to pay 60, then 80, then you're looking at your button and realizing that adding a single additional development to your province is the same cost as just annexing three provinces to your right. The premium you pay on high development provinces combined with the +5 per developing AND the fact that you quickly run out of buildings that could make it worth it makes it... not worth it.
Here's where the numbers start to completely break down ever trying to go tall: At BEST you can get -20% development and +100% manpower. That's the best military building and the economy finisher. At BEST you're looking at paying 0.8 the normal price for 2x the power. However while an expansion player can just find a random province and click it for maybe 55 or 60 development it would cost me at least over 100 and that's if I went economy. I'm competing against expansion players pretty much evenly at the going tall game and that just doesn't seem fair.
And that's why I believe the premium of 1% per development is enough to stop mega-Roma or 100 development Prague from being a viable way to play. Eventually you're going to start paying +40% at 40 development and it'll stop being worth it. At the VERY least the point cost needs to come down to +2 from +5 if you want to keep it just to stop people from getting to +50 development, however:
Another issue I have is that the +5 development modifier also means you can't set up any "new" cities. I can't take a random farmland in India or Lithuania and make it the new Paris of the world. I mean I can... hypothetically, but the system will make it completely stupid to try. Which is weird considering that we already have events for such things as Saint Petersberg and the Ottomans rebuilding Constantinople to show that cities were built up or remade over the course of the game, but the player himself can't choose to let it happen.
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