AE distance propagation issue

[lolada]

This has been really bothering me lately. Can something be done about AE propagation on distance? Here nations like Sulu, Perak, Siak and Mallaca will for world coalition because they really hate situation in Egypt. They should not even know or care about the area -_-. I colonized there - Mamluks don't even have Exploration.

 

[Piotrzeci]

Sulu, Perak, Siak and Mallaca all share Memeluks' religion. It's quite reasonable that they mind you overly expanding and conquering their brethren.

 

[akngn]

Aah, Grand sunni coalition.

 

[Kayno]

Especially the distance modifier seems pretty harsh. For example why would malacca in indonesia care if i kill mali in west africa?
It neither makes sense from a gameplay or a historical perspective. Toning down the distance modifier would be appreciated.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Sulu, Perak, Siak and Mallaca all share Memeluks' religion. It's quite reasonable that they mind you overly expanding and conquering their brethren.

The game's treatment of distance calculation is not reasonable. You can be denied royal marriage to a vassal you literally border due to "distance between borders". I'd argue that's bugged in the strict sense due to UI + game state not matching, but that's still how the game handles distance...sometimes. Same goes for making alliances with European nations if you're, say, a free colonial nation or native.

However, other times Ottomans will join a coalition of Indonesians where it can't manage any significant military presence in-game because it has a colony nearby...an unquestionable inconsistency with the above example.

Internal inconsistency is unreasonable. I would argue that it's the Indonesians getting butthurt over Egypt that's off in this scenario wrt consistency. Not only is it implausible from a historical perspective, it's also completely impractical militarily in both history and game terms. IRL Indonesia didn't join a military coalition against the Ottomans; if you or Mamluks have a colony nearby them in EU 4 they will do exactly that for player Ottomans, gumming up a historical conquest with an interaction that doesn't match either history or coherent gameplay standard.

 

[lolada]

Sulu, Perak, Siak and Mallaca all share Memeluks' religion. It's quite reasonable that they mind you overly expanding and conquering their brethren.

Nah so Sulu tribe will join forces with Transoxiana to attack me. Sure. Transoxiana is like 5000 km far away from my nearest province. Its crap distance calculation system for AE purposes. Sulu cant even transport units without dying to Mamluks.

 

[mechanical_Critter]

There is a modifier for different continent… maybe this one should be buffed? Or maybe could be added on top of it a modifier for separate super-region?

It is somewhat bothering (although you certainly can get around it) that AE accumulates extremely fast in Sunni territory. One can and should work around this, but I think localising AE a bit more on continents / super regions would go a long way.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

There is a modifier for different continent… maybe this one should be buffed? Or maybe could be added on top of it a modifier for separate super-region?

It is somewhat bothering (although you certainly can get around it) that AE accumulates extremely fast in Sunni territory. One can and should work around this, but I think localising AE a bit more on continents / super regions would go a long way.

This modifier is being (arbitrarily) ignored in the context of some mechanics and not for other mechanics, when a random colony/territory is nearby.

 

[Durkadur]

Hey I think because you already have +50 AE with these country and likely their status is outraged, you are bound to collect AE on any of your conquest (Or almost) with them.

e.g : You are getting +9 with Venice because they are already at 50. If you would let that tick down or improve relation with them where they would change their status, you would not collect the AE.

 

[milt]

There is/was a bug where the it seems Caliph gets random provinces, maybe related to Jihad event. Sometimes it seems to just give wrong provinces, like a random one in China or Japan. All now near by nations will treat him as a neighbor.

If you tag over to him and see them, then you can also use the console to return the provinces to the nations that make more sense.

 

[Less2]

My understanding is that this happens because the continent modifier is a flat -10 AE applied after all the other modifiers, most notably a -50% for wrong religion and +50% for same religion (further +25% if you are a heathen to them). So if you would normally get 20 AE with a country on the other side of the world, it being the same religion as the target (almost always Sunni because its Sunni countries that span the continents) and you being the wrong religion cranks that up to (20 * 1.75) - 10 = 25 AE, while every other situation would instead do (20 * .5) - 10 = 0 AE.

The effect of this is that if you want to take lots of Sunni land you want to do it in lots of smaller chunks since that will apply the -10 AE modifier to each separate peace deal. Taking 25-50% less land at a time and instead doing more concurrent wars or threatening for land ends up helping avoid AE accruing like this.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My understanding is that this happens because the continent modifier is a flat -10 AE applied after all the other modifiers, most notably a -50% for wrong religion and +50% for same religion (further +25% if you are a heathen to them). So if you would normally get 20 AE with a country on the other side of the world, it being the same religion as the target (almost always Sunni because its Sunni countries that span the continents) and you being the wrong religion cranks that up to (20 * 1.75) - 10 = 25 AE, while every other situation would instead do (20 * .5) - 10 = 0 AE.

The effect of this is that if you want to take lots of Sunni land you want to do it in lots of smaller chunks since that will apply the -10 AE modifier to each separate peace deal. Taking 25-50% less land at a time and instead doing more concurrent wars or threatening for land ends up helping avoid AE accruing like this.

There might be a continent modifier, but there is also a step-function distance modifier. Take Catholic in Iberia as any Catholic and compare AE values between France, Italians outside HRE, Bosnia, Poland, and Sweden. None of these are Iberian culture group, all are same religion. But one will have significantly more AE than the rest, which will have different values between each other.

The presence of colonies/distant territories will sometimes nullify this distance modifier completely, despite that the distance between target and outraged is otherwise huge. But the game does not treat distance this same way for other mechanics, hence the internal inconsistency.

If he didn't have colonies in Indonesia, taking land in Egypt would be meaningless to the Indonesians. But because he does have a random colony there they now care as much as if they were in charge of the holy cities, possibly minus that flat -10. This is not a sensible interaction.

 

[Less2]

There might be a continent modifier, but there is also a step-function distance modifier. Take Catholic in Iberia as any Catholic and compare AE values between France, Italians outside HRE, Bosnia, Poland, and Sweden. None of these are Iberian culture group, all are same religion. But one will have significantly more AE than the rest, which will have different values between each other.

The presence of colonies/distant territories will sometimes nullify this distance modifier completely, despite that the distance between target and outraged is otherwise huge. But the game does not treat distance this same way for other mechanics, hence the internal inconsistency.

If he didn't have colonies in Indonesia, taking land in Egypt would be meaningless to the Indonesians. But because he does have a random colony there they now care as much as if they were in charge of the holy cities, possibly minus that flat -10. This is not a sensible interaction.

Yeah I'm not really clear on how distance works either. It seems to matter some of the time and not others, but I haven't closely taken data points in various scenarios and done the math to see whether distance is genuinely broken. I don't generally play games to the point where I'm blobbing enough that it matters.

It's looks fairly clear in the OP's screenshot that distance works. Ottomans take -97 AE while Sindh/Sulu/Malacca all take -25. It appears that they get at least 4 "distance hops" of x.75 modifier to the AE compared to Ottomans. According to wiki the actual distance should be irrelevant and things only go by region/super region/etc up to continent, which is why Sindh and Malacca get the exact same result. But at the same time it's not really clear what this goes by. The closest province Mamluks has to the target? The closest province the attacker has? The capital of either of them? Perhaps something even more esoteric like the closest non-overseas or non-colonial province?

 

[lolada]

There's that region "hop" (×0.75 Per distance hop Based on area, region, super-region etc.= on wiki:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Relations#Aggressive_expansion
I found this video from Siuking, there are some interesting tips, few things clarified about distance.

So anyway, looks like distance is based on nearest _cores_ between nations and AE decays based on it. But AE also takes somehow ceded province into account. Anyway, so if you spread your colonies you shoot yourself in the foot. You want to be contained and not open new fronts -_-. We kind of knew that but its stupid as hell. It also takes vassals into account so having distant vassals is very bad for your AE - not sure abou subjects in general. I am supposed to play locally and smack africans because if i go and "see" Indonesia Sulu will now suddenly start to get angry. If you happen to colonize island in middle of indian ocean and reduce distance they get way more angry. Basically as we knew terra incognita is your friend.

Real issue is that furthest cutoff point seems to be ~24% AE for distances >400.. meaning any of my conquests anywhere in the world will cause at least 24% AE to other nations - +- percentage modifiers - sunni's get freaked more in this case.

Taking a look at that screenshot - Mamluks are getting 118 AE so you start from there - and for example continent locked Transoxiana is getting a lot -28.. i have no land nowhere near them. Its almost same as nearby Warsangli -31... i have land next to Warsangli, and its just south of area i am taking land. Ana Malacca thats 5000+ km away is getting whooping -25AE because i have a colony nearby. This really is not working well... Mallaca should get like -2 or not know about conquest at all for next 50 years.

That -10 on other continent should help a bit, one conquest more i guess.. but with large scale conquest we get what we have on screenshot. I am not winning a war vs otto and caring for that -10 to stop pissing of Sulu -_-.

Anyway i took land for experiment - they all got freaked of ofc. Then i attacked Ottos and won a war (before Otto joined coalition) and coalition broke immediately. These countries are so spread around and weak that without Ottos coalition doesn't work. Ottos don't even have access to Indian side of the world - they are locked from beginning of the game. Anyway its kill all sunnis now i guess because i can't touch other religions since Sulu would coalition with France that didn't even colonize around.

 

[lolada]

Yeah I'm not really clear on how distance works either. It seems to matter some of the time and not others, but I haven't closely taken data points in various scenarios and done the math to see whether distance is genuinely broken. I don't generally play games to the point where I'm blobbing enough that it matters.

It's looks fairly clear in the OP's screenshot that distance works. Ottomans take -97 AE while Sindh/Sulu/Malacca all take -25. It appears that they get at least 4 "distance hops" of x.75 modifier to the AE compared to Ottomans. According to wiki the actual distance should be irrelevant and things only go by region/super region/etc up to continent, which is why Sindh and Malacca get the exact same result. But at the same time it's not really clear what this goes by. The closest province Mamluks has to the target? The closest province the attacker has? The capital of either of them? Perhaps something even more esoteric like the closest non-overseas or non-colonial province?

Looks like its me and my border distance.. Malacca cares about Egypt because i have land near both of them. You can see extreme example if in terra incognita.. I could have completely annexed Mamluks and Malacca would have zero AE if i haven't discovered them.
Even worse.. due to distance scaling nations that are quite far away, like Transoxiana care quite a lot. Distance is not linear.. there are weird things on map SIu mentions it in that video, distance in steppes is huge.. while for example all HRE is coded inside like 120 distance so AE is huge starting from that + all the modifiers.

Not that this information is new.. but devs changed something it wasn't this bad before.. upgrade to the system would be nice. Or ofcourse we can game the system i guess.

 

[El_Cid_]

Should have Deus Vulted them

 

[Runite Drill]

Think out loud.. this would make sense maybe in the 1700's, but not so much in the 1500's. So perhaps the reduction on AE for distance should start off quite steep and decrease over time (i.e. more AE at a distance later in the game)?

 

[lolada]

Looks like "Border distance" is screwed... Sulu really should not care about Egypt.. they should probably not even know about it - but lets say that they can see Egypt, have it revealed on the map. They should get like +x% AE sunni and then -95% on distance since its faraway galaxy in 1570y, at least for them. They probably thought of Spanish as aliens from another planet at the time.

There couble be Age (discovery, colonialism, absolutism, revolution) factor .. or something connected with time anyway. In 1500s and 1800s "ae distance" is not the same and its all multiplied with admin efficiency to balance it out. Then few more steps and steeper scaling for distance would help, apparently there are only 4? <100, 100-200, 200-300, 400+ the last one making this problem... where you get about 24% of base AE no matter how far nation is.

 

[StefanFan]

Anyway, so if you spread your colonies you shoot yourself in the foot.

When TCing the area I always start with attacking Tondo and the little island states islands first, going into China, which is non muslim and in your situation helps, because China is now soooo crumbled and easy to manage AE.

I learned it the hard way, but since doing this TCing in Asia is a piece of cake, I don't care of AE, I don't care about rebels because I am following a path and unrest is close to my TC army(ies), etc. By the time I am done with it I don't care about anything.

 

[Zander]

Defines.lua actually has a value for AE_DISTANCE_BASE, but it's presently set too low. In my own play I've upped it from 0.75 to 1.2 (while actually increasing the AE at close distances), and found the results a lot better.