About the number "6" and its multiples.

[Rotten Venetic]

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 is a reasonable limitation, for colonists, etc. but if stab is made fractionary, do the 7 values turn into 61 or 601? Or even 6001? Though not even I want to see stab differentiated at the .001 limit...

 

[unmerged(60152)]

People in here is missunderstanding terms.
You can have your seven-cognitive-psychology-supported items, as we have now:

1. Money
2. Stab
3. Diplom
4. Missionaires
5. Merchants
6. Colonists
7. Whatever else...

But these 6 or 7 items, can have an unlimited value. You don't want to have only six ducades during the game, do you?
So this debate must center on the values of that limited-for-the-human-mind 7 items, not in the items themselves.

And the value could be limitless, or randomized, or could have a limit, with no damage for our limited-human mind.

 

[Jolt]

I hope Stab limits won't be hardcoded. If someone wants to make a Stab scale of -10/10 (Obviously with less time to improve) I suppose they should be able to.

 

[SonofWinter]

I'm sorry but my vast Emprie Under the Six Suns was unable to send merchants any faster than the bloody Netherlands. I've got nothing against the Netherlands, but their 3 provinces shouldn't produce the same number of merchants and colonists that my Empire does. To me, that is insane. A 3 million man nation shouldn't have the same limits as a 3,000 man nation.

 

[unmerged(60152)]

I'm sorry but my vast Emprie Under the Six Suns was unable to send merchants any faster than the bloody Netherlands. I've got nothing against the Netherlands, but their 3 provinces shouldn't produce the same number of merchants and colonists that my Empire does. To me, that is insane. A 3 million man nation shouldn't have the same limits as a 3,000 man nation.

Logical reaction. Ok, maybe Venecia has a merchantile tradition, or even the Netherlands... but should Bavaria, for example, have the same merchants as China, or Spain? Leave the number 6 as a base, and let the other important countries to have 15 or 20...

The same with the missionaries. Spain and Portugal, have the widest tradition on Missions. Why should Ragusa have the same missionaries?

The samen with colonists... and the same with diplomats!!

 

[AdmiralNelson]

Logical reaction. Ok, maybe Venecia has a merchantile tradition, or even the Netherlands... but should Bavaria, for example, have the same merchants as China, or Spain? Leave the number 6 as a base, and let the other important countries to have 15 or 20...

The same with the missionaries. Spain and Portugal, have the widest tradition on Missions. Why should Ragusa have the same missionaries?

The same with colonists... and the same with diplomats!!

Sounds like a manpower limit for everything, instead of just armies.

 

[unmerged(12921)]

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.

Problem here is the more you get, the more everyone else gets to compete against you with. In the end, you just spend more money to get to the same place. The current limits seem to handle the task adequately.

 

[unmerged(32886)]

Problem here is the more you get, the more everyone else gets to compete against you with. In the end, you just spend more money to get to the same place. The current limits seem to handle the task adequately.

IMO a cap of 6 is too little. Each nation should have a minimum and the rest depends on its sliders, economics, etc... For example, no royal marriages means -2 diplomats, some royal marriages mean +-0 diplomats each year but a lot of royal marriages means +2 diplomats. Same goes for CoT's, colonies/explored territories, etc...

 

[knul]

I think the function of the caps is to prevent saving merchants/diplosmats/wahetever and then sending them all at once. I think it would work nicely if the caps was just set so that you can save up your units for a certain amount of time. So if you get 2 merchants/year and the cap time is two years, you would have a cap of 4 merchants. In this example, you could save your units for a maximum of two years.

In Victoria it works like this with manpower and leadership. I think it's an elegant system.

 

[unmerged(60236)]

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.

I think being modable would suffice!

 

[Rotten Venetic]

Well, adding all these factors (population, royal marriages etc) still allows for my system (the more you get per month the more you can stack) to function. What would be against it is that a highly-tuned nation could for example produce 15 colonists at a time and this would make for a lot of lag colonists, in MP.

*Spammers have been known to die horrible, painful deaths!

Do you have screenies?