ADM points need to be revisited

[penco]

In my experience with EUIV so far, ADM points are just spread way too thin. Let's have a look at the things controlled by admin points:

• Cores
• Stability
• ADM tech
• ADM ideas
• ADM buildings

The problem is that so many of these things are absolutely essential. You can't decide not to core provinces--your empire will collapse. The same with stability--you pretty much have to keep it at 0 or above or else you are going to be in for a rough ride.

Added to that is the fact that ADM points are double-important for Ideas. ADM tech is required to unlock idea slots, and then it is required again for the ADM idea trees. As a result, players seem to almost universally ignore all the ADM idea groups with the exception of Religious. If you take an ADM idea group, you are pretty much screwed because then you will be decades behind in the number of idea groups you have unlocked, due to low ADM tech levels.

And ADM buildings? You might as well forget about it.

By contrast, let's look at DIP and MIL points.

MIL:

• MIL tech
• MIL ideas
• Generals
• Harsh treatment

MIL tech and MIL ideas are both important, but the player is usually able to juggle them easily by buying MIL ideas when tech is ahead. The cost of generals is negligible, and Harsh Treatment is very situational. As a result, it is not uncommon for the player to be swimming in MIL points.

DIP:

• DIP tech
• DIP ideas
• War demands
• Culture conversion

DIP tech is not very important--there is little consequence for being behind. It's no problem at all for players to dump points into DIP ideas for a few decades and then play tech catch-up. There always seem to be enough points for war demands even while dumping points into ideas. And culture conversion is very situational, albeit very expensive.

There seems to be a pretty huge imbalance where DIP and MIL points are largely discretional and can be spent however the player sees fit to improve the nation. With ADM points, you have little choice: core everything, keep stability at 1, and hope you have enough points left over to increase your ADM tech. God forbid you have a 0 ADM ruler--your nation is crippled. But a 0 DIP or 0 MIL ruler? Eh no big deal, we just won't get techs and ideas as fast.

Here's a frustrating scenario: you are overextended and get a bad event chain like Peasant Revolt or Religious Revolt. Okay, -5 stability. And by the way, now your stab cost is +100% or more because of overextension, religious disunity, revolt risk, etc. You have to get stability above 0 for the event spiral to stop (many of which include more stability hits, ADM hits, or other types of hits that increase your stab cost). And somehow you also need to core your provinces at the same time--but wait, now you have a core cost penalty due to low stability. How are you supposed to have enough ADM points to deal with that? Especially if you were not blessed by the RNG gods to get a ruler with a decent ADM score? I guess the solution is not getting into that situation in the first place, but once you are in it, the game becomes so tedious it might as well be Game Over.

The upshot of my post is this: why do so many essential game functions seem to hang on ADM points? And why do so few depend on DIP and MIL? What are ADM points even supposed to represent? Isn't the whole movement of the EU timeframe the development of centralized administrative bureaucracies? Why should the entire bureaucracy depend upon the ruler and his arbitrary stats? I guess we are supposed to envision our supreme monarch hunched over a stack of paperwork, developing building plans and stabilizing the nation (whatever that entails).

I like the idea of streamlining game functions as opposed to EU3 so that less depends on economy and more depends on the ruler, but right now, there is just too much depending on those points, especially when your ruler is just a dice roll. I know it was bad in EU3 where your economy would snowball with expansion and give you cheap stability, tech, and buildings. But maybe some critical parts of your nation should still be able to be improved with cash? Maybe there could be some system for converting cash to Monarch Points, but the points become increasingly expensive with each purchase/over time/with nation size. Or maybe stability just needs to be completely overhauled so that it doesn't depend exclusively on ADM points.

I don't know what the fix is... I just know that the way it is now kind of sucks. It just isn't fun sitting around and waiting for points to accumulate so that you can get enough stability/cores to continue playing.

 

[zodium]

You won't suffer from either overextension or lack of ADM points if you use the intended vassal feeding mechanic to avoid the need for coring provinces. It's annoying that the interface for feeding vassals is so clunky, but that's currently the intended design. In fact, the more I play, the more I find myself short on DIP points from vassal feeding instead of short on ADM points from coring. I'm frequently swimming in ADM points, really.

 

[penco]

Vassal feeding really does not seem like Working As Designed. Why would the game include a very complex coring mechanic if the player is supposed to ignore coring altogether and let vassals do it? I know vassal feeding works, but it seems like a gamey stopgap solution.

 

[zodium]

Vassal feeding really does not seem like Working As Designed. Why would the game include a very complex coring mechanic if the player is supposed to ignore coring altogether and let vassals do it? I know vassal feeding works, but it seems like a gamey stopgap solution.

Johan confirmed that it's WAD a while ago, and Lord knows why, but that's the way you're supposed to work around that. Or maybe he was drunkposting. Still, I would be happy with vassal feeding if there was a direct and user-friendly interface for it, I think. It's not what the mechanic does, it's how it does it.

 

[grisamentum]

Ironically when I saw thread title I assumed it was going to be about how ADMs are useless.

If I were capped on MIL and ahead of time on tech, I could at least recruit more generals and just have more, or even cycle them. But let's face it - I'm never capped on MIL and waiting for new tech, especially with Ideas being so important.

DIP I never have enough of because I am always ahead of relations cap and buying ideas. Even if I had more DIP I would just be able to catch up in tech a little bit. I never touch culture conversion.

Unlike DIP and MIL, there is no ADM sink. Buying stability past +1 just makes it go away faster. ADM Ideas are mostly bad or duplicative - I'll take every military idea group before I take both Admin AND Econ. Espionage is a total joke. Religious is mandatory and Innovative is great but once I have those, what am I doing with Admin points? Nothing.

Reduce Inflation requires 2.00 inflation which is nigh impossible to hit without serious gold mines, and there's plenty of other ways to reduce inflation anyway - the unique Tax Assessor building, the Master of Mint advisor, the Gold Standard decision (which comes way, way too early, btw), and either Econ or Admin group. Reduce Inflation is just not a serious use of Admin points.

Admin points get used by a lot of events I guess, but ultimately there's just nothing to do with them. Just another function of a poorly implemented monarch point system where managing internal politics is basically nonexistent.

 

[grisamentum]

Still, I would be happy with vassal feeding if there was a direct and user-friendly interface for it

When has anything in a Paradox game had a user-friendly interface?

Between setting up a new army in HoI3, plotting in CK2, raising and rallying levies in CK2, the cardinal game in EU4, and vassal feeding in EU4... I'm pretty sure Paradox is secretly dedicated to maximizing carpal tunnel in the human population.

 

[Contiguous]

DIP is also used for reducing War Exhaustion, at 75 points a pop. I think ADM is also used to reduce inflation.

You can tweak most of this - actually, I think all - in the defines.lua. You can certainly change the coring and building cost. I mean, you can't play Ironman or multiplayer if you've tampered with it.

 

[penco]

Ironically when I saw thread title I assumed it was going to be about how ADMs are useless.

I agree ADM ideas are mostly useless. And I guess ADM points for coring are a non-issue if you vassal feed.

However, in that case, it seems like ADM points are useless because of two problems: vassal feeding being a required tactic, and bad ADM idea groups. If there were good ADM ideas and players actually used their own ADM points to core, then ADM would be extremely scarce. Right now the solution is to find workarounds so that ADM points are not required, and in that case, yes, they are mostly useless--just increasing tech and occasionally bumping stability.

Vassal feeding is stupidly immersion-breaking, and it frustrates me that I have to use it to avoid drowning in overextension.

 

[penco]

The more I think about it, I wish we could have EU3's coring and overextension mechanics back.

 

[grisamentum]

Vassal feeding is stupidly immersion-breaking, and it frustrates me that I have to use it to avoid drowning in overextension.

I don't think it's that immersion-breaking, it's just that people's sense of expansion and conquest doesn't really fit the game's expectations.

In CK2 the problem was searching the world for random courtiers who had claims you could press on their behalf and thus expand your kingdom; in EU4 it's looking at the whole maps as a series of overlapping cores. Vassal states and their feeding is realistic through much of the period but the gameplay it promotes isn't.

 

[zodium]

The more I think about it, I wish we could have EU3's coring and overextension mechanics back.

I would much rather that the vassalization system was developed more robustly. I had an absolutely fantastic game as Poland -> PLC where I used the free HRE vassal mechanic to create 120 vassals, and painting the map with many different colors is just way better than painting everything the same. If I could choose between annexing my vassals and making them free vassals, I would choose the latter every time. No new or reworked mechanics required, just a direct copy of the annexation process that ends with making the regular vassal a privileged vassal instead.

 

[penco]

I don't think it's that immersion-breaking, it's just that people's sense of expansion and conquest doesn't really fit the game's expectations.

In CK2 the problem was searching the world for random courtiers who had claims you could press on their behalf and thus expand your kingdom; in EU4 it's looking at the whole maps as a series of overlapping cores. Vassal states and their feeding is realistic through much of the period but the gameplay it promotes isn't.

Pressing a courtier's claims made sense and was plausible. What does not seem plausible to me is Austria resurrecting the Kingdom of Croatia, blobbing it through Hungary for a few decades, and then annexing it. It's not as though Croatia was a vassal with claims to be pressed. The whole thing is completely fabricated.

And then there's the issue of feeding vassals provinces they don't even have a claim on. That part is just total nonsense. "Hey Croatia, I don't want to deal with integrating this province, so here ya go, do it for me. Thanks bro I'll annex you in a couple years."

 

[billclintonmask]

I think that you should be able to core one provence for free (just taking time) and any additional cores you want add a -1 ADM/month malus ala over being over diplo relations/mil leaders. That way you have to decide between having mid-high OE or losing admin points.

But yes, anyone who says vassal feeding is gamey doesn't realize the amount of DIP points you lose, especially if you are consistently running over diplo relations like I am from having all those vassals.

 

[penco]

I think that you should be able to core one provence for free (just taking time) and any additional cores you want add a -1 ADM/month malus ala over being over diplo relations/mil leaders. That way you have to decide between having mid-high OE or losing admin points.

But yes, anyone who says vassal feeding is gamey doesn't realize the amount of DIP points you lose, especially if you are consistently running over diplo relations like I am from having all those vassals.

I really like the -1ADM/month coring idea.

But no I don't think vassal feeding is really that expensive for DIP. It generally doesn't cost any more to return a bunch of cores than it does just to conquer them yourself. And I never have a problem keeping under the relations limit. 8 relations from Diplomatic and Expansion ideas. That allows me a handful of vassals with room for a few alliances with other powers.

 

[grisamentum]

Pressing a courtier's claims made sense and was plausible.

Oh I agree with that. What I think some people objected to (debatable in my opinion) is searching through every court in the world, trying to find a random claimant of some place you wanted to conquer, then inviting him, matri-marrying him to a daughter, and then invading the target.

What does not seem plausible to me is Austria resurrecting the Kingdom of Croatia, blobbing it through Hungary for a few decades, and then annexing it. It's not as though Croatia was a vassal with claims to be pressed. The whole thing is completely fabricated.

Meh, it's what Napoleon did in Poland. Poland had basically been divided up by Austria, Prussia, and Russia. Napoleon basically invented the Duchy of Warsaw and fed it to someone he had previously force-vassalized (Saxony, though technically he made Warsaw a PU under Saxony, slightly more complicated than what we can do in game) and then he continued to feed Poland its cores back by taking them from Prussia and Austria.

The Ottomans similarly were going to feed Hungary to their vassal Duke of Transylvania.

Whether vassal feeding should work somewhere else like Persia or Africa is another story.

And there's also the problem of things that never existed, like, say, Russia creating Ukraine and "reclaiming" its cores from PLC.

And then there's the issue of feeding vassals provinces they don't even have a claim on. That part is just total nonsense. "Hey Croatia, I don't want to deal with integrating this province, so here ya go, do it for me. Thanks bro I'll annex you in a couple years."

Well yeah that's a little more debatable but given the way expansion works in this game, especially with insane places like Berbers and Hungary, there's not much choice. Have to re-do entire coring process.

In my opinion the better solution is not make coring cost ADM up-front, but make coring cost -1 adm per base tax per month until coring is complete, or maybe just -1 adm/mo (since coring a 10 would be insane at 10/mo). Makes it more like diplomacy and military then. Adjust coring times more based on war exhaustion, culture, religion, etc.

 

[penco]

Good points.

But another game-breaking feature of the vassal feeding mechanic is that it costs 0 AE to return cores to your vassals. So you can essentially blob through the entire world without anyone batting an eye other than the extremely small AE penalty for annexing vassals.

Sweden is a great example. Say Denmark has integrated Sweden. You could conquer the Swedish territories, which would take decades for coring and AE cooldown. Or you could take a single Swedish province, create a vassal, then feed the entire Swedish nation to your new vassal in 2-3 wars over the course of 1-2 decades with 0 ADM cost and only the AE incurred from the conquest of the one initial province. Play your cards right and you could reduce the AE cost to 0.

How is that not totally game-breaking? You are circumventing both the game's expansion checks with zero penalty whatsoever.

 

[blaidd]

Ironically when I saw thread title I assumed it was going to be about how ADMs are useless.

I wouldn't say useless, but yeah, in my last couple games I've found that if I have a decent admin ruler I've usually got more than I know what to do with. I like that, though, because it allows me to strike a nice balance between vassal feeding and personal conquests. There are plenty of provinces out there that it makes sense to core yourself if you have tons of extra admin points.

If I'm going on a conquest spree these days I do find myself hurting for diplo points more than admin points. Luckily it doesn't hurt most countries that bad to get behind on diplo tech.

 

[grisamentum]

Good points.

But another game-breaking feature of the vassal feeding mechanic is that it costs 0 AE to return cores to your vassals. So you can essentially blob through the entire world without anyone batting an eye other than the extremely small AE penalty for annexing vassals.

Sweden is a great example. Say Denmark has integrated Sweden. You could conquer the Swedish territories, which would take decades for coring and AE cooldown. Or you could take a single Swedish province, create a vassal, then feed the entire Swedish nation to your new vassal in 2-3 wars over the course of 1-2 decades with 0 ADM cost and only the AE incurred from the conquest of the one initial province. Play your cards right and you could reduce the AE cost to 0.

How is that not totally game-breaking? You are circumventing both the game's expansion checks with zero penalty whatsoever.

That's 100% the intended method of playing the game. You're not supposed to "deal" with AE much, you're mostly supposed to avoid it.

 

[penco]

That's 100% the intended method of playing the game. You're not supposed to "deal" with AE much, you're mostly supposed to avoid it.

I thought AE and overextension were supposed to limit blobbing empires, not to encourage you to create blobbing empires through one specific channel.

What's the point of even having AE and overextension if you can deal with it in such an easy way? It's like those mechanics are just there as a slap on the wrist to new players who don't know better.

 

[blaidd]

I thought AE and overextension were supposed to limit blobbing empires, not to encourage you to create blobbing empires through one specific channel.
What's the point of even having AE and overextension if you can deal with it in such an easy way? It's like those mechanics are just there as a slap on the wrist to new players who don't know better.

Well, there are (at least) two ways to play this game. You can play it as a historical nation simulator or you can play it as a map painting conquest game.

Both play styles are equally valid and the devs have to cater to them to keep the player base happy.

Vassal feeding is the mechanism by which the expansionist players can play the game the way they want to.

AE/OE is the mechanism by which the rest of us can have our expansion limited to somewhat reasonable levels.

This allows the player to choose what sort of game they want. Most of the time I play for historical borders or colonial conquests and I rarely come up against the AE wall so I don't need to vassal feed. When I play that way I also don't consider overextension or coalitions to be a problem.

However, my current game as the Ottomans is kind of a world conquest practice run where I'm taking advantage of every trick in the book to expand at a ridiculous pace. It's good that the option to do so is there for people who like this kind of play.