A Compilation of Recent Dev Explanations

[a_sophist]

The problem is those changes *are* arbitrary and arbitrary changes are very unlikely to result in a "better game". In a wide possibility space of changes, most arbitrarily selected ones will be negative (making entire color palette yellow, removing anything faster than speed 1, giving sub-saharan tech 15 units 400 pips, etc). These things result in pretty obviously poor or degenerate outcomes, but so do some of the actually-implemented mechanical changes. They're less drastic in terms of impact on the game, but they have the same level of coherent justification.

I don't disagree. My perhaps clumsily worded point was that arbitrariness is not an argument against a change in itself, and I was thinking about it mostly in the context of end game tags. This might also have something to do with two different ways of solving an issue. One could create a set of mechanics and let the chips fall where they may in game, tweaking as necessary, or one could determine a set of desirable outcomes, and then reverse engineer mechanics to conform to them. I think the current end game tag rule was a bad attempt at the latter, which is why I went on to outline a possible way of limiting the insane tag shifting that Paradox presumably wants to limit.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't disagree. My perhaps clumsily worded point was that arbitrariness is not an argument against a change in itself, and I was thinking about it mostly in the context of end game tags. This might also have something to do with two different ways of solving an issue. One could create a set of mechanics and let the chips fall where they may in game, tweaking as necessary, or one could determine a set of desirable outcomes, and then reverse engineer mechanics to conform to them. I think the current end game tag rule was a bad attempt at the latter, which is why I went on to outline a possible way of limiting the insane tag shifting that Paradox presumably wants to limit.

I see, I agree it was a bad attempt at the latter. The main reason actual nations didn't "tag switch" 30 times is that there was no tangible benefit (debatable how much IRL historical parallels to "tag switch" even have meaning).

The most reasonable solution in-game would be similar: if you don't have degenerate incentives encouraging tag switching, people won't do it other than for the occasional meme, and it won't confer a significant benefit in a competitive MP game.

Rather than deal with degenerate incentives directly, Pdox has a habit of patching actions that act on degenerate incentives while leaving the incentives themselves intact. I have no idea why because doing that doesn't make sense, but it's as an outcome it's far more consistent than their stated rationale vs actual changes patch to patch.

 

[Commonblob]

The most reasonable solution in-game would be similar: if you don't have degenerate incentives encouraging tag switching, people won't do it other than for the occasional meme, and it won't confer a significant benefit in a competitive MP game.

Why have I not seen this point brought up before and/or thought of it myself. That's the ideal solution.

 

[Immutable Mushroom]

What kind of changes to make expansion harder are you suggesting that won't make the achievement I posted harder (i.e. impossible).

I'm not suggesting anything in particular. That's the devs' job! But as many have mentioned in other threads, AE is one of the prime examples of a "good" mechanic to stop expansion. It takes effort and planning to deal with and can be overcome if you want to do achievements like the ones you mentioned.

Don't you artificially constrain yourself every time you pick to play as Tidore instead of France? How do you make the game harder for France without crippling Tidore all while making Ryukyu and Kale possible?

I definitely agree that it's a tough problem to keep majors and minors interesting simultaneously, and I do agree it's important that these minors have interesting gameplay. But there's a difference between playing minors, a very intentional and significant part of the game, and adding arbitrary goals (some of which are represented by achievements).

The game can only go so far by adding harder and harder achievements. I like the timed achievements too, but I'd like to see challenges other than "finish by X date."

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

I also disagree with all 4 points, but number 3 is blatantly ridiculous. Historically, logically, immersion wise, role playing, whatever point of view you choose changing them doesn't make sense at all. The only reason they made were exploit wise.

Paradox claimed they introduced End Game Tags to "prevent weird country formations". Please tell me why forming France as Great Britain (can't do this because GB is an End Game Tag) is weirder than forming France as England, then Prussia, then Shan, then Andalusia, then Romania, .... , and finally Great Britain (which is just as easily doable as before 1.26).

The list doesn't make much sense and mostly fails to do what it was implemented for. And now each patch Paradox will have to discuss which tag should or should not be added to it, like maybe Andalusia in 1.28 with its new mission tree. At least to me it seems that reworking the cultural shift mechanic to prevent easy tag switching would've been a far superior solution.

Then again I've no idea how some people using tag switching breaks immersion for other people in SP as the AI doesn't do it, and in MP the introduction of End Game Tags again failed to tackle the problem that most people rush to form Prussia for fancy Space Marines.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

I
Rather than deal with degenerate incentives directly, Pdox has a habit of patching actions that act on degenerate incentives while leaving the incentives themselves intact. I have no idea why because doing that doesn't make sense, but it's as an outcome it's far more consistent than their stated rationale vs actual changes patch to patch.

That one is easy to explain: they love easy "fixes" because those mean less work no matter the consequences for the game. I´ve been observing for many years now, the pattern is very clear. For example, since time is money, why "waste" X amounts of days, weeks or months "teaching" the AI to play well (therefore increase the challenge the right way) if "5 minutes" of code will prevent the player from outsmarting it? Never mind the fact that the game ends up dumbed down. And they have done it over and over and over again to the point that their games went from near masterpieces to mostly uninteresting and boring from my POV. TBH I never thought I would see that day, especially not WRT EU IV.

Then there is this: the ppl responsible for the game today should learn with what their EU IV colleagues have done in the past which made the game great. Learn with the persons that came up with alternative ways of playing instead of reducing the game replay ability. The person (s) that came up with developing provinces, razing, institutions just to name a few deserve the "fun award" while the ppl responsible for the "mindless" corruption and the absolutism (as is) should forget their pride, take a deep breath and learn in order to stop ruining the game.

 

[Hojsimpson]

Then again I've no idea how some people using tag switching breaks immersion for other people in SP as the AI doesn't do it, and in MP the introduction of End Game Tags again failed to tackle the problem that most people rush to form Prussia for fancy Space Marines.

Because people post it on forums and reddit!

 

[Lor360]

Then again I've no idea how some people using tag switching breaks immersion for other people in SP as the AI doesn't do it, and in MP the introduction of End Game Tags again failed to tackle the problem that most people rush to form Prussia for fancy Space Marines.

Would it break immersion if a nation with 50 inovativeness could produce airplanes? The AI would never do it in SP, and in MP it wouldnt be worth the investment of monarch points.

 

[Hojsimpson]

Would it break immersion if a nation with 50 inovativeness could produce airplanes? The AI would never do it in SP, and in MP it wouldnt be worth the investment of monarch points.

Would someone playing against space invaders break inversion for you???
Because guess what, there are

 

[Reman]

Some others to add to the pile

On republics:

That said it's clear to see that since Absolutism arrived on the scene, they [republics] have been left feeling a little lackluster, not to mention they have always been that bit too inflexible.

As someone who loves republics I was very excited for the government reform changes, but then they made switching to a republic nuke all your reforms, and made republics have 10 reform levels (with increasing costs for each one) so switching to a republic would never let you get the absolutism from the final reform by the end of the game. One patch later, they gave a whopping -50 base absolutism penalty on republics, with the reasoning that the final reform was "overpowered". When I responded to the dev by indicating the final reform was impossible for 99% of nations, I didn't get a reply.

Truce change:
Truces used to be 5 years long, then got their +10 year scaling in a patch. The dev's reasoning for this change was "to discourage total war". This is mathematically wrong, as taking 50% warscore will give a 10 year truce, or 5% warscore per truce year, while taking 100% warscore will give a 15 year truce, or 6.66% warscore per truce year. When someone on the forum pointed this out, they didn't receive a response.

Tariff income:
It's well known that colonies are weak compared to trade companies. This has been true for a long time, and yet in the latest patch the devs decided to slash tarrif income in half. This was so poorly communicated that it wasn't even indicated in the patch notes. Many members of the community thought it was a bug until a dev came along and said otherwise. There has still been no response on why the devs thought colonies needed a nerf, especially with how trade companies are currently.

 

[Lor360]

Would someone playing against space invaders break inversion for you???
Because guess what, there are

You mean that thing where you enter a cheat code and it spawns space men? Great, you are free to use cheats to switch tags as much as you want =)

 

[bly08]

Updated the OP. I'll try to find the explanation for the tariff change. IIRC Groogy gave one in the bug report thread.

 

[Hojsimpson]

You mean that thing where you enter a cheat code and it spawns space men? Great, you are free to use cheats to switch tags as much as you want =)

You must've been suffering for long.
I will tag switch Austria into France in your nightmares.

 

[Hessian Mercenary]

Tariff income:
It's well known that colonies are weak compared to trade companies. This has been true for a long time, and yet in the latest patch the devs decided to slash tarrif income in half. This was so poorly communicated that it wasn't even indicated in the patch notes. Many members of the community thought it was a bug until a dev came along and said otherwise. There has still been no response on why the devs thought colonies needed a nerf, especially with how trade companies are currently.

It was mentioned in the patchnotes for 1.27: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...hecksum-edf9-not-for-problem-reports.1120422/

You are right though that it was poorly worded and no explanation was given there. Arumba later filed a bug report: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...iv-colony-tariff-income-is-incorrect.1123353/

where Groogy gave the following answer:

The tariffs a Colonial Nation paid was always halved but the overlord counted on it as if it was the full amount being paid. The change is that the overlord now actually cashes in the money that the Colonial Nation sends (which is 50% less than the full amount to avoid bankruptcy and the endless loop of reduced liberty desire from exploiting that, though much good that did them since it was still possible because of the tariff on tax) instead of conjuring up magical money from the ether.


The math I did when I played, even with this nerf, when playing optimally at 100% tariff efficiency the ROI of your investments I believe was 16 years which is still better than building at home. This works out because your 100% tariff efficiency is a multiplication on top of the colonial nations bonuses to income on production, trade, and so on.

 

[rimworld inbox]

It's well known that colonies are weak compared to trade companies

to be fair this is only the case in SP, TC use in multiplayer seems much more an edge-case use.

Though I will critique dev argument here:

The math I did when I played, even with this nerf, when playing optimally at 100% tariff efficiency the ROI of your investments I believe was 16 years which is still better than building at home. This works out because your 100% tariff efficiency is a multiplication on top of the colonial nations bonuses to income on production, trade, and so on.

The "multiplication to the colonial nations bonuses" is pretty shoddy argument - one must realize that when comparing the favorability building at home (say, a manufactory) vs building that same manu in a CN, one must also consider the overlords bonuses PE / trade / GPM. And its not trivial to reach the +100% tariff efficiency threshold where a CN's trade and production income fully contributes to the tariffs received by overlord. IIRC, quad policy and playing a tariff bonused nation is required in order to reach this point. So the idea that this represents "optimal play" is a big questionable.

The change is that the overlord now actually cashes in the money that the Colonial Nation sends (which is 50% less than the full amount to avoid bankruptcy and the endless loop of reduced liberty desire from exploiting that

This is pretty cute as they would go bankrupt anyways. I even had Peru / Mexico CNs accumulate massive debt even when I had a trade node that didn't allow treasure fleets, so CN kept 50% of gold income!

But as far as "groogy's eu4 misunderstandings / misleadings" file goes, this is pretty tame.

 

[Reman]

It was mentioned in the patchnotes for 1.27: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...hecksum-edf9-not-for-problem-reports.1120422/

I stand corrected. It did get in the patch notes. It didn't directly say "we chopped colony income in half", but it alluded to a change.

But that explanation though. Oh boy. The fact that "playing optimally" and "colonial nation" are used in the same statement is ridiculous.

 

[rimworld inbox]

I don't think CNs are bad, as a method of income that doesn't directly increase your corruption root cost, it has some interesting benefits.

Even in SP, on VH its a nice way to dodge having to fight tough wars against the normal TC regions. Back in the days before gold depletion nerf you could keep your trade node somewhere stupid that you didn't get treasure fleets, develop CN gold mines for 170% the normal gold income (and he might go plutocratic while you would not, so you can add another ~10% to the relative calc) that you would get for developing your own gold mines, all inflation-free.

And before the tariff nerf you could easily reach a point where building manufactories in your CN was stronger play than building said manus in your home land (even ignoring potential benefit of longer trade steering chains). I think this was the point Groogy was attempting to make, unfortunate it was not as well-argued as it could have been.

 

[Reman]

I don't think CNs are bad, as a method of income that doesn't directly increase your corruption root cost, it has some interesting benefits.

Even in SP, on VH its a nice way to dodge having to fight tough wars against the normal TC regions. Back in the days before gold depletion nerf you could keep your trade node somewhere stupid that you didn't get treasure fleets, develop CN gold mines for 170% the normal gold income (and he might go plutocratic while you would not, so you can add another ~10% to the relative calc) that you would get for developing your own gold mines, all inflation-free.

And before the tariff nerf you could easily reach a point where building manufactories in your CN was stronger play than building said manus in your home land (even ignoring potential benefit of longer trade steering chains). I think this was the point Groogy was attempting to make, unfortunate it was not as well-argued as it could have been.

Setting up a gold laundering scheme by moving your trade capital to Rwanda to bypass the Mexican inflation police was, indeed, pretty fun. But it was clearly an exploit, which the game should never premise its balance around (see early GalCiv3 for the problems this could bring).

Even including it, CNs were still vastly inferior to TCs. CN's give you almost no military resources. They give no manpower and only a paltry amount of forcelimit. They spawn subjects that try to kill you if you don't bribe them with monarch points every so often, and try to kill themselves for decades after their inception. Their trade nodes are always a mess and cannot be used to appreciably start a trade value cascade like TCs can, especially with the new buildings. Conquering natives in Mexico and Peru is easy from a military perspective (their troops are made of whipped cream) but annoying from a diplomatic perspective with ubiquitious vassals causing frequent trucelocks where you can't attack anyone. Conquering places like Kilwa are faster, while conquering places like Indonesia are easier, both because of their diplomatic situations. You also need to keep your military around significantly longer so you can fight the natives another 3 or 4 times as rebels after you've ended their independence.

Taking parts of Central America is vastly superior to taking places like Mongolia, but vastly inferior to taking places like Zanzibar. The CN's got massively nerfed when they should have been buffed.

 

[Ruian]

I'm not suggesting anything in particular. That's the devs' job! But as many have mentioned in other threads, AE is one of the prime examples of a "good" mechanic to stop expansion. It takes effort and planning to deal with and can be overcome if you want to do achievements like the ones you mentioned.



I definitely agree that it's a tough problem to keep majors and minors interesting simultaneously, and I do agree it's important that these minors have interesting gameplay. But there's a difference between playing minors, a very intentional and significant part of the game, and adding arbitrary goals (some of which are represented by achievements).

The game can only go so far by adding harder and harder achievements. I like the timed achievements too, but I'd like to see challenges other than "finish by X date."

I do actually like managing AE and truces.

Games are balanced from the top down to prevent overpowered strategies usually and make sure the hardest goals are still within the realm of possibility- as I mentioned in my initial post. We are at the cusp of things already being impossible. I have yet to see anyone complete the Kale achievement on VH without arguably exploits, like preventing the age or play/release.

Incoming dislikes with no apparent explanation

 

[a_sophist]

We are at the cusp of things already being impossible. I have yet to see anyone complete the Kale achievement on VH without arguably exploits, like preventing the age or play/release.

As long as achievements don't have difficulty requirements (aside from needing to be on ironman), if it's possible on normal I don't see the problem. There's nothing stopping people from making their own community based challenges like the Civ forum has done if they want something to supplement steam achievements.