About the number "6" and its multiples.

[unmerged(60236)]

Province-by-province stability might be too complicate to expect it. After all, MrT says the game will probably fit into one (1) CD.

Stability is most likely to stay national.

...ok....but the cd may not b only 700Mb.


it can b larger.......or...even....1 DVD

 

[unmerged(52850)]

Isn't the number 6 left from the original board-game?

Oh, and please, keep the limit of 6...

 

[unmerged(43658)]

Province-by-province stability might be too complicate to expect it. After all, MrT says the game will probably fit into one (1) CD.

Stability is most likely to stay national.

:wacko:
size of game is affected by amount of graphics, sounds and movies not complexity of game mechanism. whole executive code is usually just couple of mega bytes.

 

[KaRei]

Eliminate the limit of 6. I'm for the idea of unlimited amount whith abandoning system. Unused merchant/colonist/etc. over few years = no merchant/colonist/etc.

 

[SonofWinter]

Eliminate the limit of 6. I'm for the idea of unlimited amount whith abandoning system. Unused merchant/colonist/etc. over few years = no merchant/colonist/etc.

We need stability to stay at +/-3, however we need cushion bonus points, that way you don't have. A Saint event then a meteor event and now you are at +2 stab (this assumes a starting position of +3) but if it happened the other way around you would be at +3. Because you can't gain above +3, so your good events don't get you anything while the bad effects keep stacking up for more and more revolts, not to mention the constant bad effects firing when you are at -3 stab.

 

[Rotten Venetic]

The human player has bonus enough: his brainpower. If we give these kinds of bonuses it would be a big mistake to crack down on AI cheating. Let's face it: the human player could manoeuvre to get the cushion bonuses a lot if they were good enough or just juggle between stab +2 and +3 otherwise. Choice is good but not too mcuh of it. At least with juggling there is a chance to get a very nasty event which will undermine your stab heavily and if you fall from +2 to -2 it is at least a bit worse than from +3 to -1.

 

[jonti-h]

We need stability to stay at +/-3, however we need cushion bonus points, that way you don't have. A Saint event then a meteor event and now you are at +2 stab (this assumes a starting position of +3) but if it happened the other way around you would be at +3. Because you can't gain above +3, so your good events don't get you anything while the bad effects keep stacking up for more and more revolts, not to mention the constant bad effects firing when you are at -3 stab.

Perhaps therefore the + stability events should contribute to your stab investment when you are at +3?

To be honest the neg stability random events really annoyed me in EU2 - particularly when stability is expensive. That, though is by the way.

I would welcome a higher cap on the number of merchants, diplomats etc I could store. I wouldn't want it to be unlimited as it would weaken the AI but a limit of 10, or even 12 would be an improvement.

Failing that, have the system of Vicky where sueing for peace doesn't cost a diplomat.

 

[AdmiralNelson]

There should be a limit, but how many colonists/merchants/diplomats/corsars you get per year is a thing that could have no limit, or a bigger limit, like in trade, you get a extra merchant for each monopoly, but the maximum is 12 merchants per year, why not make that limit bigger, or moddable? Like 36 merchants per year, that would give you 3 merchants per month, I think Would made the game better (maybe unbalanced), as with 1 merchant per month I can't keep up with my 8 cot's, where the AI put merchants all the mouth, but I have not merhcants to send! And for colonists you receave per year, the number of colonies should have a effect in the number, representing the colonial dinamism. And the same thing to diplomats and corsars, and more you make diplomacy or piracy, more diplomats and corsars you could have.

If the limit on merchants is raised, the AI is going to be getting just as many merchants as you are. All the trouble you're having now will be exactly the same, just with different numbers of merchants.

 

[unmerged(56576)]

This discussion isn't going anywhere. The limits are great as they were in EU2, or else you could just flood every CoT in the world with merchants getting several instant monopolies and probably drying essential income for all AI nations thus making them weaker and more vulnerable to attack. Or alternatively you could just save enough money and colonists and claim all of America to you. This is totally unrealistic...

But yeah, merchants should disappear after some time to be replaced or something like that, like colonists and missionaries. Don't tell me that Manuel is going to wait 200 years to get to Shanghai, and still be able to reach there alive .

 

[unmerged(60152)]

The limits are great as they were in EU2, or else you could just flood every CoT in the world with merchants getting several instant monopolies and probably drying essential income for all AI nations thus making them weaker and more vulnerable to attack

If you have any friend who has played with cheats (I do have that friend), he will tell you that, despite of writing infinites times F12+dagama and sent merchants everywhere everytime, he hardly can have one (only one) monopoly. It is not so easy.

Or alternatively you could just save enough money and colonists and claim all of America to you.

If you have any friend who has played with cheats (I do have that friend), he will tell you that, despite of writing infinites times F12+pocahontas and send colonists everywhere, everytime, he hardly can claim all America, even in spite of having discovered it. It si not so easy.

So, these are reasons without a clear importance about increasing or not the number 6.

 

[Fawr]

I think the "you can only have 6 of them" idea is outdated. It goes back to needing a system without much maths like a board game.

Obviously there needs to be limits so you can't store up 200 years of merchants and spend them all at once, but having a dynamic limit make more sense.

You could do that by making a limit of 2 years production (or a modable number of years production). So if you get 5 colonists per year then your limit is 10 colonists.

Alternativly you could have the number of colonists/traiders/missionaries you have already as a negitive factor to the amount you get. So each colonist you have stored up may reduce your colonists/year by 0.5 (or some modable factor). That simulates that half your colonists stored stop waiting for a ship and does something else each year.

 

[Rotten Venetic]

It's like I said: how many you get per year determines how many you can have at any 1 time; simple, logical, realistic and balanced.

It doesn't even have to be implemented as a function of them. Just have them go away after some time and the limit is already in place or alternatively you could code the limit (softcode would be nice) and their going away is thus simulated.

 

[unmerged(56576)]

If you have any friend who has played with cheats (I do have that friend), he will tell you that, despite of writing infinites times F12+dagama and sent merchants everywhere everytime, he hardly can have one (only one) monopoly. It is not so easy.



If you have any friend who has played with cheats (I do have that friend), he will tell you that, despite of writing infinites times F12+pocahontas and send colonists everywhere, everytime, he hardly can claim all America, even in spite of having discovered it. It si not so easy.

So, these are reasons without a clear importance about increasing or not the number 6.

It doesn't matter if you can claim all America to you or all the CoT's. Being a human player is enough to decide better where to send colonists and merchants. And you will be able to claim significant parts of America, maybe expand colonies to cities in an instant, if you save up enough money without even a remote mention of cheating. Or you could cover it with trading posts to prevent the AI to colonize, and the AI is slow to do so, so here is the perfect mechanism that will make games easy and boring. 6 is enough, but IMHO, I agree this limit should be softcoded so anyone can change it for fun purposes. But I would play only with six or nothing more than eight in all of my games.

 

[jonti-h]

If you have any friend who has played with cheats (I do have that friend), he will tell you that, despite of writing infinites times F12+dagama and sent merchants everywhere everytime, he hardly can have one (only one) monopoly. It is not so easy.
.

Tetvs is right. I tried it a while back, using Columbus and dagama to see the whole world, and then flood every COT in the world with merchants. In all I sent probably 80 merchants. I got 2 monopolies. I kicked out a few AI merchants but it hardly had any effect really.

Anyway, if the human player has that number of merchants, so does the AI.

All I would like is for the limit to be moddable (which it possibly is?) so that I can increase the number of traders, diplos etc in times when I don't need them and spend them when I do.

I don't want to have the upper hand over the AI by default, but to be so limited is a shame.

 

[AdmiralNelson]

Tetvs is right. I tried it a while back, using Columbus and dagama to see the whole world, and then flood every COT in the world with merchants. In all I sent probably 80 merchants. I got 2 monopolies. I kicked out a few AI merchants but it hardly had any effect really.

Anyway, if the human player has that number of merchants, so does the AI.

All I would like is for the limit to be moddable (which it possibly is?) so that I can increase the number of traders, diplos etc in times when I don't need them and spend them when I do.

I don't want to have the upper hand over the AI by default, but to be so limited is a shame.

Fair enough. I've cheated some in my playing. It gets tedious rather quickly and takes most of the fun out of the game and is exceptionally boring to use a hundred merchants each month just to achieve trade supremacy.

I agree with the moddability factor. I have no problem with someone changing the limit out of personal preference.

 

[jonti-h]

Fair enough. I've cheated some in my playing. It gets tedious rather quickly and takes most of the fun out of the game and is exceptionally boring to use a hundred merchants each month just to achieve trade supremacy.

I agree with the moddability factor. I have no problem with someone changing the limit out of personal preference.

I know it is - I only did it - once - to see what income I would get if I put 6 merchants in every CoT queue.

As this is supposed to be a super-moddable game though, it may be possible to change the total number.

It would be good to at least have the maximum number per year as the stack you could store.

 

[unmerged(60152)]

Anyway, the number 6 is arbitrary.
I think it should be moddable at least (if not chaged to a higher number or even a limitless cipher).

 

[unmerged(6777)]

If I recall correctly there's a theory in game design that suggests that the average person is only able to handle a range of 7 factors comfortably in their head. The mental requirements (capacity for number management and memory) escalate rapidly beyond this point so it is fairly common to limit options or alternatives in design to 7 or fewer to avoid undue psychological "stress" on the player.



(Believe it or not, I'm not kidding...but I can't provide a link at the moment to support that statement because I can't recall exactly where I read it.)

 

[Heinus Horatius]

If I recall correctly there's a theory in game design that suggests that the average person is only able to handle a range of 7 factors comfortably in their head.

Time for some purely psychological guesswork now: maybe the brain does not need to handle things beyond the number 7 properly. Maybe seven means plenty and thus less concern is needed.
For example: If one has only a few resources to use, one needs to think very well how to use them. But if a person has a lot, the way resources are used is a lot less important because there are always more.
In game terms: if you have only a handfull of merchants, you need to think carefully where to send them. If you have lots, it matters less, because if you make a mistake, you always have more of them.

Thought about IRL: does this theory mean that poor people are smarter than rich people, because poor people need to use their brain more, in order to decide what to do with their much smaller pool of resources? (Ergo: does it mean I am very smart, since I am also very poor? ) Nah, probably means I am straying off-topic...

 

[maartos]

If I recall correctly there's a theory in game design that suggests that the average person is only able to handle a range of 7 factors comfortably in their head. The mental requirements (capacity for number management and memory) escalate rapidly beyond this point so it is fairly common to limit options or alternatives in design to 7 or fewer to avoid undue psychological "stress" on the player.



(Believe it or not, I'm not kidding...but I can't provide a link at the moment to support that statement because I can't recall exactly where I read it.)

7 +-2 elements is universally accepted as the capacity of working memory in cognitive psychology.