In the second half you are simply too strong for rebels to matter, plus you most likely have Humanist ideas
A simple way to fix absurd blobbing and make large empires more challenging
- Thread starter Shinkuro Yukinari
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In the second half you are simply too strong for rebels to matter, plus you most likely have Humanist ideas
You raise autonomy late game because of the sentiment pop ups. But you are right, thats about it 
Edit: @TheMeInTeam
Edit: @TheMeInTeam
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I am not going to lie I too dislike many of the EU IV abstractions like armies being allowed to cross straits unscathed despite the presence of a gigantic hostile fleet in those waters; devs justify it with "fleets back then were not that strong and would be shred to pieces by the coastal artillery". Despite this justification those very same boats are however allowed to unscathedly devastate ungodly amounts of lands that will take decades to recover from (without the magical healing abilities of fortifications) in just a few months; this is especially true for the Berber nations boats that give us >10 years’ worth of devastation simply by saying hello. I could go on and on stating how almost all the mechanics in EU IV are so heavily abstracted, so devoid of a real life justification that they require heaps of imagination for the immersion to be kept. With that said, even though I don´t like many of those "abstractions" , all of them come together in a way that creates a very fun and massively repayable game for hundreds of thousands of players.
Anyway you´ve completely lost me when you propose making rebels even more OP than they already are; they are already so implausibly OP that I call them Zombies to try to justify their presence despite having killed literally everyone in those provinces a few years earlier. Rebels are NOT fun in any way shape or form. What you propose in a WC context is so tedious, but so tedious that if I was crazy enough to keep playing I would probably hurt myself out of despair (aka break something). Although I understand your reasons for wanting more realism I am not sure you understand the real meaning in gameplay terms of what you are asking. People usually play games for amusement not for intensive labor or being mentally tortured.
I mostly agree with what @bbqftw said wrt to making the game more challenging by playing at VH. Why? Because a much stronger AI makes the game more challenging and therefore more engaging, entertaining and fun. I said stronger (due to the massive cheats) because that is the next best thing after what I would really like but can´t have which is an AI that could mimic or surpass a high IQ Human player. Such an AI would increase the believability of the EU IV world and make a WC nigh-on impossible to achieve but for the right reasons.
TLDR the game needs better AI to make blobbing harder instead of more tedium/punishment in the form of even more OP rebels. I could not agree more with this statement:
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The use of “simple” in the thread title reminds me of something I learned in my first week of university. Don’t use the words “clearly” or “obviously” as adjectives, as what you have said is almost certainly neither clear or obvious. Same logic applies here.
I'm glad that sliders are gone and don't want to see them back, but there is a worthwhile point here.
EU4 already has lots of supposedly 'anti-blobbing' mechanics: overextension, AE, truce timers, revanchism and so on. However, as many players have noted, these are only obstacles to expansion and don't penalize blobs specifically. In practice, in the longer term they become blob protection mechanisms: a country that's worth several hundred % warscore is pretty much guaranteed to get several chances even when you totally dominate them, and every time you beat them, they get revanchism and you get a bunch of obstacles to deal with including 15-year truces. This is the case even if you are strictly in blob dismantling 'good guy' mode, forcing them to release countries or return cores rather than taking lots of land for yourself. (The game also makes life harder for blob dismantlers by giving very few CBs that justify releasing/returning.) By contrast, a sub-100% country only gets one chance to win, and even if they do somehow win against a much bigger country, they have to be careful: if they take a lot of land, the coalition danger is much greater than it would be for a large country (due to relative strength of alliances factoring into coalitions).
So the way things are now, as an existing blob you're pretty safe from external threats, much more so than as a small country. The only thing that can break you up quickly is a massive rebel wave, but you're not really at risk of that either unless you go over 100% overextension and so on. It would make sense if there was some sort of fragility modifier for countries with lots of unaccepted cultures or high average autonomy (due to e.g. having masses of territories and few states), and accepting cultures was a bit more difficult than it currently is. It doesn't have to be just rebels all the time. For instance you could also have increased stab costs, slower legitimacy growth, harder to gain absolutism, and so on; things that don't actively destroy you, but make it harder to get back on track if you mess up. Another thing I'd like to see is that your own fragility (however it's measured) translates to a multiplicative reduction in the warscore value of your land, and also a reduction in revanchism effectiveness, so it's easier for an enemy to take you apart if they win a decisive victory. This way, a Bahmanis that has blobbed all over India or whatever can be dismantled without unreasonable amounts of truces. Ongoing disasters, bankruptcy and other serious problems like that would increase your fragility, so there are good rewards available if you can jump on a big country at its moment of weakness (which is often how major conquests happened historically - the invader typically had some sort of inside backing).
On the subject of rebels using your military bonuses, that is indeed BS. Here's one way to make it more interesting:
- Most rebel types at the baseline don't get any special bonuses to morale, discipline, leader pips etc, but if they are sponsored, they get the best military bonuses out of their sponsors. Separatists are always considered to be sponsored by the tag they fight in the name of (even if it's dead), and also roll generals according to the army tradition of their tag.
This would make military-focused countries dangerous even in defeat, whereas a fat complacent blob with no military focus leads to correspondingly soft rebels.
EU4 already has lots of supposedly 'anti-blobbing' mechanics: overextension, AE, truce timers, revanchism and so on. However, as many players have noted, these are only obstacles to expansion and don't penalize blobs specifically. In practice, in the longer term they become blob protection mechanisms: a country that's worth several hundred % warscore is pretty much guaranteed to get several chances even when you totally dominate them, and every time you beat them, they get revanchism and you get a bunch of obstacles to deal with including 15-year truces. This is the case even if you are strictly in blob dismantling 'good guy' mode, forcing them to release countries or return cores rather than taking lots of land for yourself. (The game also makes life harder for blob dismantlers by giving very few CBs that justify releasing/returning.) By contrast, a sub-100% country only gets one chance to win, and even if they do somehow win against a much bigger country, they have to be careful: if they take a lot of land, the coalition danger is much greater than it would be for a large country (due to relative strength of alliances factoring into coalitions).
So the way things are now, as an existing blob you're pretty safe from external threats, much more so than as a small country. The only thing that can break you up quickly is a massive rebel wave, but you're not really at risk of that either unless you go over 100% overextension and so on. It would make sense if there was some sort of fragility modifier for countries with lots of unaccepted cultures or high average autonomy (due to e.g. having masses of territories and few states), and accepting cultures was a bit more difficult than it currently is. It doesn't have to be just rebels all the time. For instance you could also have increased stab costs, slower legitimacy growth, harder to gain absolutism, and so on; things that don't actively destroy you, but make it harder to get back on track if you mess up. Another thing I'd like to see is that your own fragility (however it's measured) translates to a multiplicative reduction in the warscore value of your land, and also a reduction in revanchism effectiveness, so it's easier for an enemy to take you apart if they win a decisive victory. This way, a Bahmanis that has blobbed all over India or whatever can be dismantled without unreasonable amounts of truces. Ongoing disasters, bankruptcy and other serious problems like that would increase your fragility, so there are good rewards available if you can jump on a big country at its moment of weakness (which is often how major conquests happened historically - the invader typically had some sort of inside backing).
On the subject of rebels using your military bonuses, that is indeed BS. Here's one way to make it more interesting:
- Most rebel types at the baseline don't get any special bonuses to morale, discipline, leader pips etc, but if they are sponsored, they get the best military bonuses out of their sponsors. Separatists are always considered to be sponsored by the tag they fight in the name of (even if it's dead), and also roll generals according to the army tradition of their tag.
This would make military-focused countries dangerous even in defeat, whereas a fat complacent blob with no military focus leads to correspondingly soft rebels.
I think us fans of historical realism have to accept that Paradox isn't really making the game for us. And that's okay. To their credit, they did try and produce a game like that, but the Magna Mundi team messed it up. I suggest you all go play mods.
To people who don't understand why others seemingly 'get mad at the way other people play', the reason is because any game where it is possible to conquer the world isn't close to what we want (frankly any game where it's possible to conquer and hold all of Western Europe isn't one I really want). It's too easy, and not historically accurate. It doesn't model diplomacy, corruption, inefficiency, religion, or rebellion well enough in our opinions. But the game is, by and large, made for people like you, so in the end people like me just need to accept that.
To people who don't understand why others seemingly 'get mad at the way other people play', the reason is because any game where it is possible to conquer the world isn't close to what we want (frankly any game where it's possible to conquer and hold all of Western Europe isn't one I really want). It's too easy, and not historically accurate. It doesn't model diplomacy, corruption, inefficiency, religion, or rebellion well enough in our opinions. But the game is, by and large, made for people like you, so in the end people like me just need to accept that.
Im pretty lazy and the normal routine when conquering a province is to raise autonomy while coring it. The introduction of Absolutism has put a halt to that methodology though, atleast in that era.
hmm, I don't know if I'd deprive all rebels of bonuses. maybe allow noble rebels and perhaps pretenders to have them to be elite rebels. ultra-disciplined peasant rebels though is ridiculous.
of course, on a related note about sharing military bonuses, it's also kind of crazy that mercs for some reason are allowed to have all the military bonuses of the country recruiting them, which is absurd. the only military bonus mercs should experience that a country's regulars experience should be what the commanding general provides.
By 'most' rebels I was thinking of rabble like peasants, zealots, particularists and heretics.
Pretenders should use your national stats, as they're an alternative version of the current government (after all in EU4 you play a country, not a ruler); pips obviously rolled as they would be for a monarch general. Rebels associated to a military estate/faction represent your professional warrior class, so they should also use your national stats. Revolutionaries shouldn't use your country's stats (they are not professional soldiers) but be able to retreat and get some special bonuses in the Age of Revolutions, as they represent more organized guerilla forces who ought to be capable of toppling governments in the late game.
Yes, post-absolutism is exactly why. You could make a legit case for spamming raising it in the name of sanity in provinces you'd never state earlier. It just didn't matter enough. But now it does, because it's hard-disincentivized.
Actually you really don't want to raise it early on unless you have to either. In that sense it's a meaningful choice, because sometimes the resources you lose in doing so are less than if you left it or lowered it.
Absolutism makes me pick humanist out of pure convenience and sanity, it's also why I keep defensive/quantity and complete one tags later than necessary. When I did 1 faith as Ottomans while still getting used to absolutism mechanics, I took religious rather than humanist. I could mow down the rebels no problem and Sunni's conversion wasn't trashed yet, but the rebels caused hundreds of extra clicks and needing to convert was in the 1000's. I can skip all this by just walking morale gouged, low attrition armies onto forts and save so much time doing that + never converting. To me it's worth.
Seperatist rebels use their tag's tech level and discipline, if that tag is still alive:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1238090261
Rebels that spawn off your tech level and discipline don't inherit your troop type or stats like combat ability and morale:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1238091074
[URL]http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1238091265[/URL]
I doubt that. Even if it was so easy to integrate something still present in the code which was not touched by the actual devs of the game, you'll surely encounter huge problems while doing it.
And apart from that, where is any evidence of those sliders?
Except HOI III I don't think any of the Clausewitz Engine games has used the concept of sliders or am I wrong here?
Blobbing's too easy; but I won't take these idea groups because otherwise my empire bursts into flames!
You still get loads of rebels in the late stages of a WC, Humanist or not. They aren't a serious threat, but then nothing is at that point. They're just one more thing that has to be dealt with.
I'm kind of curious how much WC experience you have.
I'm just not remotely seeing how introducing sliders again would make running a huge empire and conquering the world a more interesting experience.
I'm starting to realize how amazingly smart the territories and state mechanic was. Not only because it stopped the idiotic overseas mechanic, but also because it implemented diminishing marginal utility of size. Such a shame they ruined it a bit by implementing trade companies in the current way.
Yeah, it's a mechanic that excited me a lot when it came out, and it still ranks among the list of good stuff they added to the game.
Another problem is you need a goal. Currently the goal is mostly blobbing, and blobbing is justified because blobbing always increases your ability to blob in the long run, but costs resources and might cause trouble in the short term.
If you "fix" blobbing, then blobbing beyond a certain threshold becomes meaningless. And because of it, the stuff that increases your ability to blob becomes meaningless as well. You can build buildings or develop provinces or colonize, but they are not as sophisticated as the war system. And colonization blobs too, which also gets useless beyond the sane threshold.
So you need a whole new bunch of interesting stuff to do, like beating your rivals to humiliate them, trade wars and the like. That comes with two problems too:
1) they are far less dynamic as blobbing. If you don't expand, you are basically fighting the same enemies for the whole game.
2) this basically changes the game into completely something else. Paradox may as well make another game based on that theme. The game would be closer to cities: skylines than to EU4 because you mostly focus on working on your internal stuff. Why don't make it a new series of games? It might be awesome.
If you "fix" blobbing, then blobbing beyond a certain threshold becomes meaningless. And because of it, the stuff that increases your ability to blob becomes meaningless as well. You can build buildings or develop provinces or colonize, but they are not as sophisticated as the war system. And colonization blobs too, which also gets useless beyond the sane threshold.
So you need a whole new bunch of interesting stuff to do, like beating your rivals to humiliate them, trade wars and the like. That comes with two problems too:
1) they are far less dynamic as blobbing. If you don't expand, you are basically fighting the same enemies for the whole game.
2) this basically changes the game into completely something else. Paradox may as well make another game based on that theme. The game would be closer to cities: skylines than to EU4 because you mostly focus on working on your internal stuff. Why don't make it a new series of games? It might be awesome.
To add another comment for this. I am not saying that WC are too easy(for those recommending me to turn up the difficulty) My issue is more along the lines of the difficulty and time curve. Depending on the nation you play, you can reach the point of being unbeatable in a relatively short amount of time compared to the rest of the time where you simply end up doing tedious sieging, taking care of occasional rebels and annexing. Keyword being time, as in real-life time. Next time you do a WC, try measuring how much time you spend in each of the Ages, to see my point.
But I did find out something interesting about the game and its players. It would appear that EU4 players *really* love blobbing, and the game is obviously suited for such a playstyle. I wasn't fully aware of that when I made this post. Still, it would be interesting for Paradox to check out some of the ideas we came up in this post and perhaps implement them
But I did find out something interesting about the game and its players. It would appear that EU4 players *really* love blobbing, and the game is obviously suited for such a playstyle. I wasn't fully aware of that when I made this post. Still, it would be interesting for Paradox to check out some of the ideas we came up in this post and perhaps implement them
To add another comment for this. I am not saying that WC are too easy(for those recommending me to turn up the difficulty) My issue is more along the lines of the difficulty curve. Depending on the nation you play, you can reach the point of being unbeatable in a relatively short amount of time compared to the rest of the time where you simply end up doing tedious sieging, taking care of occasional rebels and annexing. Keyword being time, as in real-life time. Next time you do a WC, try measuring how much time you spend in each of the Ages, to see my point.
But I did find out something interesting about the game and its players. It would appear that EU4 players *really* love blobbing, and the game is obviously suited for such a playstyle. I wasn't fully aware of that when I made this post. Still, it would be interesting for Paradox to check out some of the ideas we came up in this post and perhaps implement them
You're welcome to make a poll to see how many hours it takes for players to reach 10k development during a WC compared to finishing up the last 10k. For me the first phase takes about twice as long with Sunni Ottomans in a straightforward run. Sometimes the first 50 years of a difficult start takes as long to play out as the next 150.
You never answered @Badesumofu's question about your experience. This might be relevant to bring up when making assumptions about blobbing.