AE is broken > coalitions are broken > game is broken

[unmerged(780209)]

Take clearness - how exactly is it clear to a player how to manage AE? "Better relations over time" never actually references Aggressive Expansion, but the single biggest "strategy" to deal with AE requires you to make that leap. Well how about preventing coalition formation? Again, there is nothing concrete in the game that shows a player how to pull off a multi-century campaign. Want to flip an outraged or rival state to threatened? Nothing in the game says how to do it. How about managing a buffer zone? Nothing in the game says how to build one, nor how to manage its final state.

In like manner, coalitions are about as monodimensional as they come. Once you have one, you can wait ... or wait some more. Nothing you do can drastically alter the lifespan of a coalition once formed. So that means we pretzel up our strategies solely to avoid forming them (or if they form to let them wither away in five years); of course this also is bereft of strategic choice. You continuously send out diplomats to improve relations, you help allies against rebels and abuse rivals ... but nothing here actually offers a choice. You do the same exact things every game if you want to avoid coalitions. You can't, for instance, leverage your obscene trade empire to bribe away coalitions. You cannot deal with coalitions the historical way - bash them in war and then be lenient at the peace table. You cannot convince a neighbor of sincere friendship nor commit yourself in any meaningful way (e.g. as was historically done with fortification reductions). Nope, it is all about minimizing AE gain by a few simple rote mechanisms.

As far as fun, what in heck is fun about fighting coalitions or avoiding them? If I fight, I get no reward and the enemy is not weakened unless I intentionally drain their manpower and leave them a bloody, rebel infested wreck. Wars take forever in part because battles are long ... but more because you have to siege idiotic amounts of territory to get even the paltry peace that is possible. The AI isn't challenging and if it somehow catches you off guard - you aren't set back more than 5 years. I'm all for strong coalitions, but make it when they lose that things change. I should hate coalitions because they might beat me ... not because I siege 150 provinces to take 4. Certainly, the rebels and OExt implementation don't add excitement to the game ... they are just mindless repetitive tasks to undertake.

Sure, maybe I end up doing a quick WC, but if I'm already able to military defeat everyone else in the world ... why bother making the end long and tedious?

In short, no the problem isn't poor play, the mechanisms are arbitrary, ahistorical, and most importantly unfun with a bunch of elitist rot that requires you to read through obscure files to figure out how core mechanisms work. You should be able to have fun romp to at least the peak historical Spanish (let alone OE) borders without having to pretzel your entire strategy around one game mechanic.

This is such a good post by Jomini that it's worth repeating and analyzing.

#1 Problem. Right now coalition warfare is simply OPAQUE and BORING!

It isn't that world-spanning coalitions are impossible to beat and it wouldn't help if they were. It's that they just can sap all the fun out of the game entirely like a giant black hole.

a. You get ridiculous results like the Creek joining a coalition started by Brunei.
b. The mechanics of how to avoid coalitions or break them up are unclear and there's no direct mechanism that can affect them.
c. Wars are no longer and more tedious than ever (especially after the latest patch). What fun is there in fighting the entire world for 25 years in order to seize 2 or 3 provinces?

EXAMPLE: In one recent game as Portugal I started a war against the Bengalis who had formed a coalition against me. The only person in it was Delhi whom I had not even discovered and had zero interactions with and less interest in. I couldn't even check who they were allied with because their country was terra incognita. It turned out they were in turn allied with the Ottomans.

When Delhi joined the coalition war, the called on the Ottomans and they in turn called in all their vassals. I ended up fighting an enormous coalition. After about 5 years I realized that:

a. Although I had captured all the Bengali provinces, I could never get enough war-score to demand them because the Ottomans were leading the war and to end it, I'd have to fight and siege a bunch of their provinces.

b. This would take me probably about 25 years.

c. At the end of all this effort I would be able to take no more than 3 provinces.

This prospect was just so boring that I quit that game and re-loaded a previous save and just skipped the war.

It's not that I couldn't win. I could, eventually because the AI 50,000 Ottoman armies would be trapped in East Africa while I could eventually cause them so much attrition they would lose.

But, the reward-effort ratio is just so low that I have zero interest in bothering.

I am just rapidly losing interest in this game entirely because of crap like this and find myself playing more of AGEOD's Civil War.

It seems to me that the changes to 1.2 have made things less fun rather than more. In trying to stop WC Paradox has made a bunch of changes that neither achieve that goal (not that they should) nor make the game more interesting, and to boot are ahistorical, poorly thought out and difficult to understand or master.

I don't claim to be an expert player either. I've played CKII and EUIII and frankly EUIII was more fun. I think I'm fairly representative of a player who has a fair interest in these games but isn't going to put up with analyzing the game files in order to figure out what's happening and develop a strategy.

I just don't care enough. I'll just quit before I spend the time and effort to master these new changes if this current trend continues in 1.3 as I fully expect it will.

 

[mcmanusaur]

As much fun as it is poking holes in mcmanusaur's logic

If "poking holes" means (1) merely insisting that my reading comprehension is incorrect because X and Y are only partially mutually exclusive, (2) perpetuating a false binary between "viable WC" and "impossible to expand at all", and/or (3) simply calling my viewpoint irrelevant since it doesn't facilitate one extremely specific "design goal" (none of which actually constitute logical "holes"), then yes I hope everyone had fun "poking holes" in my logic.

Does the current system make the game more fun or less fun than reasonable alternatives we might try?

Well, obviously some alternatives would work better and others would work worse. I have yet to see anyone claim that EU4 doesn't have any room for improvement in this regard; it just appears we have some people who think WC phobia is primarily responsible for the issues, and other people (including myself) who believe that has little to do with it.

A large portion of the board thinks the current system makes the game less fun, having watched my wife's EUIV interest plummet, I suspect that less hardcore players also are finding the current mechanisms less fun. Certainly, the current mechanisms are extremely opaque and hard for new players to get into.

Less fun than what? EU3? EU4 1.1? A "significant" (large is somewhat questionable) portion of the board indeed demonizes 1.2, but personally I don't understand it, as many of the things people complain about were issues in 1.1 as well.

For new players this punitive mechanism is basically a "don't go war" message.

Again, we're generalizing a bit here; it's more of a "don't expect to go to war with a conquest CB to gain territory routinely" message.

So what are we left with? Fears that tweaking the coalition system (as opposed to the vassal system or combat system) somehow has a unique and unwarranted risk that WC might become possible for perhaps 1% of players.

I have yet to see anyone arguing that coalitions shouldn't be tweaked at all due to irrational fear that it may specifically make WC viable. I have seen people argue against tweaking coalitions because it would make expansion generally easier. Personally I think coalitions should be tweaked either way, and that has nothing to do with WC.

Now where to balance the options, that is a challenging question. I certainly want the AI to have a good shot at overcoming a large player empire and whacking it for huge territory, but I don't want coalitions to basically end the game for people who can't fight efficiently and I don't want them so easy I can just expand until 1650 and then go roll up the coalitions to WC. But this is a workable problem - something that could prevent easy WC (limiting it to .01% of players even) ... but not nuking historical play by making the first formation of a sustained coalition the end of historical conquest patterns.

There are two primary problems with the coalitions as far as I'm concerned. First, there is little recourse against them, and no way to dismantle them. Second, they last too long (which oddly makes sense since they can't achieve their goal of wrecking a blob in a single decisive war). If there was more at stake in individual wars (something which I find generally desirable for EU4) then a coalition could rise up, quickly defeat the blob, and then disband, but as it is they simply hover over their target as a nuisance. However, there will probably be some players who won't like that aggressive conquest entails such high risk. Removing the Coalition CB would also be nice.

Yeah, I think the phobia of WC is big distraction from core issues

I would argue that in the last couple pages of this thread, the "WC phobia" bashing (for lack of a better term) has been the distraction.

the game should be fun for all levels of skill and as many play styles as possible and if some cheese let's you WC, nobody forces you to use the cheese. But there is a lot of room between "WC is easy" and "coalitions are hated by half the hard core player base, and possibly more of the casuals"

There is also a lot of room between "routinely viable WC" and "expansion is impossible", which is the point that I'm trying to get across (which people seem quite inclined to ignore).

I cannot fathom why they refuse to contribute suggestions to what might achieve their goals as well as people like me

This mentality (of which you are not the only guilty one) seems sort of duplicitous to me. I've seen a lot of people with a range of opinions on WC give suggestions, and if anything it's the people complaining about how WC isn't viable who fail to give specific suggestions more often than not. Personally I can't recall ever seeing anyone refuse to give suggestions.

We've seen this behavior before. A bunch of us noted that trade was insanely more lucrative than buildings could ever be, and that buildings were pretty much useless with trade cash + conquest other people said buildings were great. Rather than have a good discussion about how to better balance buildings vs light ships (along with production & tax vs trade), we had a lot of folks just claim "everything is fine" and that trade wasn't that good of an investment. So we ended up with a less balanced nerf to the trade system than it could have been. Likewise when 1.2 came out we had a bunch of people who loved the new combat mechanics, others thought they were ahistorical in the extreme and unfun (e.g. losing your entire army 4 days into a war when you had defensive terrain, 4 more regiments, and a better leader ... but lost the die rolls 0 to 9 and 1 to 8), again the folks who liked it as it was refused to say why they liked the status quo and what should be considered when making changes. So we got a hotfix that gives us multi-year late game battles.

As cathartic as it may be for you to blame other players and their "failure to give suggestions" for the current status of the game, at the end of the day it amounts to little more than unfair scapegoat mongering. "If you had only talked more, they might have better satisfied my wishes!" Well, that's too bad, but others don't owe you anything for having their own opinions.

I really just don't understand why the status quo defenders won't get into the details of what goals they really want, what possible changes they think might satisfy both sides stated objectives (and no, easy WC is no one's stated objective), and what would make suggestions from the "other side" work better. That would be far more productive and historically is more likely to get you what you want.

Honestly at this point your argument just has to be turned back on you. Why don't you, instead of preaching to the choir by decrying the mythical "WC phobia" or criticizing "status quo defenders", submit your own specific suggestions about what could be changed that could satisfy both sides. It seems to me that many of those dissatisfied with the status quo are too occupied with complaining about the conduct of others to contribute something more constructive themselves; while long posts like these certainly rouse the 1.2-haters, they serve to achieve little more than making scapegoats of some abstract, formless group of players.

And the general sentiment of this thread seems to be that poor Paradox were somehow tricked by some anti-fun demographic of players into making 1.2 focused exclusively on preventing WC, rather than 1.2 simply constituting Paradox fixing a series of unintended exploits and balance issues, which is nothing short of ridiculous.

 

[Vishaing]

I suppose I should note that Vishaing has not always agreed with me about what are problems and I think he wants an EU IV where WC is outright impossible as a design goal ... but he does try to refine my suggestions (for which I am most grateful as they at minimum help me think about alternatives better).

Ya got that right. I think WC should be outright impossible without cheats, and that Large Powers shouldn't be able to get more than, say, One Quarter of the Planet, and tiny powers like Rykukyu shouldn't be able to get more than 5% no matter how skilled the player is.
And I shall maintain that opinion until some country manages to conquer even half the planet in real life.
Still Waitin' by the way.

That said, part of the reason I don't jump on the whole "1.2 is broken and the worst thing ever and us literally worse and more evil than twin clones of Hitler" bandwagon is because*, well... most of the problems I don't actually regard as products of 1.2. They weren't created by 1.2, they were just expanded and magnified, and in some cases exposed.

Take the inability to extract suitable terms from Coalitions. That's not the fault of Coalitions, its the fault of the Warscore system, which has been crap that didn't scale properly since EU3 Vanilla and probably even EU2. Coalitions didn't create that, they just magnify the problem by preventing you from making separate Peaces and thus cutting the Alliance down to size before going in for the kill.

Ironically enough, you know what DID create it?

You.
YES YOU!
Okay maybe not you directly, but the problems we have with war getting sluggish, or coalitions being un-fun are all the culmination of less than sophisticated changes made over the proceeding versions of the EU series meant to make WC somewhat almost possibly maybe a tiny little miniscule bit challenging and slow down the player in their unending quest for Conquest. I think if we didn't have a Player Base that treated WCs like the Diablo 2 community treated the Stone of Jordan, we probably wouldn't be here.

Take the aforementioned poor scaling of War-Score. It has its roots in attempts to prevent the player from gaming wars against large powers by capturing one target worth a lot of war-score and then peacing out for many smaller terms and thus being able to pick apart an enemy they probably shouldn't be able to defeat on paper. It is likely this is also the reason for many of the issues I take with the War-Enthusiasm system, which is obviously meant to help quantify and expand on an AI's Staying Power in the face of a Player Base that's entirely willing and able to wage ahistoric Total Wars.

1.2 Just demonstrated all of this better than any other patch because we had a very clearly visible relation between Person-Using-Exploits-To-Conquer-World to Patch-Removing-Those-Exploits.

I want EUIV to move beyond those less than sophisticated methods, but at this point many of them have their roots tangled into some of the fundamental assumptions of the entire game engine, like the inability to annex large nations in one war. Removing them is going to take time, and they need to be replaced with other things to limit the player and prevent them from carpet-sieging an entire country the size of Russia and annexing them in one war.

Also Jomini you should really choose some different examples of Coalition Targets that keep expanding. The Coalitions you site against the Ottomans for instance, yes the Ottomans beat them and then.... took no new territory, they just broke the coalition and solidified their hold on the territory they already had, and then took new territory after the dust had settled. The League of Cognac as well was Charles V solidifying and forcing other powers to recognize his claims to territory he was already ruling. Napoleon kept taking more territory, but then again the Coalitions against him never permanently disbanded, and the truces didn't last 5 years, and EUIV can't really model the factors of the Revolutionary Wars or the Ending Peace Conference at all so bringing up that the game cannot properly represent Napoleon's Conquests when it cannot properly represent literally anything else about that time period either seems kind of silly to me.

Although I do think we could benefit from an "Acknowledge our Borders" war goal that reduces the AE you have gained from recent conquests, but that would probably require actually keeping track of the AE gain from each individual Conquest, which is likely beyond the scope of the Engine. Perhaps getting a Coalition to Concede Defeat should just reduce your AE by 20 or half whichever is greater and disband the Coalition for the terms of the Truce. I'd be koo wit' dat.

*In addition to the fact that this is obvious hyperbole.

 

[mcmanusaur]

That said, part of the reason I don't jump on the whole "1.2 is broken and the worst thing ever and us literally worse and more evil than twin clones of Hitler" bandwagon is because*, well... most of the problems I don't actually regard as products of 1.2. They weren't created by 1.2, they were just expanded and magnified, and in some cases exposed.

Take the inability to extract suitable terms from Coalitions. That's not the fault of Coalitions, its the fault of the Warscore system, which has been crap that didn't scale properly since EU3 Vanilla and probably even EU2. Coalitions didn't create that, they just magnify the problem by preventing you from making separate Peaces and thus cutting the Alliance down to size before going in for the kill.

This times eleventy thousand. People seem to have a poor understanding of how layered systems work if they think that the relatively minor changes made in 1.2 (even if it was substantial for a patch) created such deficiencies in the game. And I have been saying for a long time that the warscore mechanic (which leads to indecisive outcomes among blobs) is the real culprit here, so I completely agree with that part as well.

 

[Al. I. Cuza]

I don't think half the hard core player base hates anything. As far as I can tell this is the vocal minority...

 

[Jomini]

McManusaur: I really, really couldn't care less about the inferences drawn or misdrawn from a less than clearly worded statement of another poster.

I think we can all agree that in general, preventing WC has impacts on the game beyond preventing WC. Draconian efforts (e.g. eliminate the declare war or integrate vassal buttons) clearly are bad for gameplay in many places. Is the current system draconian? Maybe not, but I think the argument should be over how to limit player expansion and how to maximize fun.

I have yet to see anyone claim that EU4 doesn't have any room for improvement in this regard

Actually this is extremely common. Most of these happened like in the opening pages of this thread. Someone posts an example and says "here is the problem"; sometimes they oversell the point (e.g. "the game is totally broke and unplayable") or aggressively make the point ("the coalition system is broke"). Invariably some one comes along and says, the problem is with the player "learn how to play" (and they may or may not give helpful advice in useful manner). Given the sheer number of posts that end with "go play Total War" or similar, I'd say it is fairly large number of posters who see no room for improvement. In this thread we have folks arguing that it is simply a punishment mechanism and that it should not change.

I mean how am I supposed to take something like:

"Why do people keep saying "I can't expand anymore, whaaaaah theres nothing to do." That huge coalition is about to declare war on you; isn't a big war "something to do"? Or do you guys only consider expansion with no resistance "doing something"? I happen to think wars are fun and interesting, even when I lose them."

I may be blind, but I don't see engagement with thread topic. Similarly I don't see any talk of ways to improve the current system.

Less fun than what? EU3? EU4 1.1? A "significant" (large is somewhat questionable) portion of the board indeed demonizes 1.2, but personally I don't understand it, as many of the things people complain about were issues in 1.1 as well.

I would stand by less fun than 1.1 or the demo and possibly less fun than EU3. The big issue I and others have is that the most unfun aspects of 1.1 were doubled down. Take coalitions, they always were unfun, but 1.2 makes them happen sooner. Likewise the game mechanics always made them toothless at hurting the player, but a completely unrelated change to siege attrition makes AI coalitions even less able to check the player. In short, a lot of the ugly, unfun aspects of 1.1 weren't front and center, 1.2 has made them front and center by removing all the ways that used to hide the ugly, unfun bits on the side.

There are two primary problems with the coalitions as far as I'm concerned. First, there is little recourse against them, and no way to dismantle them. Second, they last too long (which oddly makes sense since they can't achieve their goal of wrecking a blob in a single decisive war). If there was more at stake in individual wars (something which I find generally desirable for EU4) then a coalition could rise up, quickly defeat the blob, and then disband, but as it is they simply hover over their target as a nuisance. However, there will probably be some players who won't like that aggressive conquest entails such high risk. Removing the Coalition CB would also be nice.

In general, I agree. Coalitions currently are status-quo locks. Instead, coalitions should try to roll back conditions to some earlier era, and not be mechanistically prevented from doing that. On the flip side, repetitive triumphs against a coalition should eventually result in major changes to game state. My criticisms have always been that the coalition system is monodimensional and the player lacks agency. I'm open to just about any idea about how to give the player agency and make coalitions fun.

I've seen a lot of people with a range of opinions on WC give suggestions, and if anything it's the people complaining about how WC isn't viable who fail to give specific suggestions more often than not. Personally I can't recall ever seeing anyone refuse to give suggestions.

I may be missing them, but just about everytime I see "play this way instead" it is a refusal to engage with the problem or offer suggestions.

As cathartic as it may be for you to blame other players and their "failure to give suggestions" for the current status of the game, at the end of the day it amounts to little more than unfair scapegoat mongering. "If you had only talked more, they might have better satisfied my wishes!" Well, that's too bad, but others don't owe you anything for having their own opinions.

You mistake me. My position broadly carried both of those, but like a lot of one sided decisions, this results in unintended consequences. I vastly prefer my suggestions get the strongest vetting possible. Do I blame game state on forum discussions? No, there are other issues I know where the forum raised points that Pdox either missed or choose to ignore - that will happen - but if you believe posting on the forum is worth it to help the devs out, then why wouldn't you be as specific as possible for them? "I like short decisive battles" is a lot more useful than "quit whining about losing battles" or even "tips to winning early warfare: outnumber your opponent, only fight when you have a tech advantage, if you are at even numbers - attrition him down first". In this thread, I've had people assume I'm utterly ignorant of game mechanics dozens of times, and lord only knows how many times people have just made accusations of "you just want expansion to be easy".

Why don't you, instead of preaching to the choir by decrying the mythical "WC phobia" or criticizing "status quo defenders", submit your own specific suggestions about what could be changed that could satisfy both sides.

Have you read the thread? Seriously, I have a post where I specifically said how I thought coalitions should work - where I pointed out mechanisms to make them difficult for the player and how to make them actually able to dismantle big states. Vishaing the responded with concerns, to which I gave a direct reply. I specifically talk about how to make separate peaces viable, but make abuse thereof costly to the player. Whenever someone has raised an issue with my ideas, I will directly address it unless I miss it (it happens) or there are too many competing things taking up my time (e.g. I have a lot of dead work time when models are running some days and not enough other days).

In a nutshell my thoughts are basically these:
1. AE/Coalitions become multi-staged. Early stages just stop AI-AI wars (e.g. Vishaing's improved relations for shared AE) - this makes expansion less easy for the player as there will be fewer wars between neighbors as you get bigger. Middle stages will be a bit like we have now. Later stages will just outright give the AI bonuses towards turning back the clock (e.g. increased morale, increased morale, much easier province defection to return cores against a bitter-ender resisting peacing out against a coalition).
2. Separate peaces are possible but come at a penalty (e.g. coalition target takes bonus AE on any concessions taken - which drives remaining AI bonuses higher while the separate peacer takes a relationship hit with their allies).
3. You can "buy" people out of the coalition. E.g. you can spend gold (& maybe DMP) to get someone to quit a coalition; you can forgo gains in your separate peace to white peace with them locked out of coalition mechanics against you for X number of years; you can help them accomplish their goals and commit yourself irrevocably for a time to their defense (takes up a relation slot to limit abuse potential; significant penalties like bonus AE if you fail to protect them).

I mean earlier in the thread I thought you said you liked all these points.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I think we can all agree that in general, preventing WC has impacts on the game beyond preventing WC. Draconian efforts (e.g. eliminate the declare war or integrate vassal buttons) clearly are bad for gameplay in many places. Is the current system draconian? Maybe not, but I think the argument should be over how to limit player expansion and how to maximize fun.

No, I'm pretty sure preventing WC merely entails preventing WC. Anything else depends on how WC is prevented, and I think we can agree there are probably better ways than the current system. I don't see anyone arguing in favor of any "draconian efforts" or against "maximizing fun", so no issue there.

Actually this is extremely common. Most of these happened like in the opening pages of this thread. Someone posts an example and says "here is the problem"; sometimes they oversell the point (e.g. "the game is totally broke and unplayable") or aggressively make the point ("the coalition system is broke"). Invariably some one comes along and says, the problem is with the player "learn how to play" (and they may or may not give helpful advice in useful manner). Given the sheer number of posts that end with "go play Total War" or similar, I'd say it is fairly large number of posters who see no room for improvement. In this thread we have folks arguing that it is simply a punishment mechanism and that it should not change.

A dismissive attitude toward those complaining about the game and the belief that the game has no room for improvement are two very different things. I occasionally prescribe to the former myself, but I certainly don't believe the latter.

I may be blind, but I don't see engagement with thread topic. Similarly I don't see any talk of ways to improve the current system.

Perhaps there isn't talk of improving the current system, but more often such comments are in response to posts that similarly fail to offer constructive suggestions, and instead label the game "broken". So all I'm saying is it goes both ways.

I would stand by less fun than 1.1 or the demo and possibly less fun than EU3. The big issue I and others have is that the most unfun aspects of 1.1 were doubled down. Take coalitions, they always were unfun, but 1.2 makes them happen sooner. Likewise the game mechanics always made them toothless at hurting the player, but a completely unrelated change to siege attrition makes AI coalitions even less able to check the player. In short, a lot of the ugly, unfun aspects of 1.1 weren't front and center, 1.2 has made them front and center by removing all the ways that used to hide the ugly, unfun bits on the side.

Fair enough, but I'm fairly sure such things are sometimes a part of a healthy software development process.

In general, I agree. Coalitions currently are status-quo locks. Instead, coalitions should try to roll back conditions to some earlier era, and not be mechanistically prevented from doing that. On the flip side, repetitive triumphs against a coalition should eventually result in major changes to game state. My criticisms have always been that the coalition system is monodimensional and the player lacks agency. I'm open to just about any idea about how to give the player agency and make coalitions fun.

Great, it seems we agree there then.

I may be missing them, but just about everytime I see "play this way instead" it is a refusal to engage with the problem or offer suggestions.

Part of the problem may be that criticism threads aren't presented properly for this purpose. Blindly calling something "broken" or "impossible" is sort of asking for "suggestions" of how it can be playable or surmountable if you approach it a certain way. Those that do tend to have some great posts, but very few criticism threads begin with the expressed purpose of "how do we improve X system".

You mistake me. My position broadly carried both of those, but like a lot of one sided decisions, this results in unintended consequences. I vastly prefer my suggestions get the strongest vetting possible. Do I blame game state on forum discussions? No, there are other issues I know where the forum raised points that Pdox either missed or choose to ignore - that will happen - but if you believe posting on the forum is worth it to help the devs out, then why wouldn't you be as specific as possible for them? "I like short decisive battles" is a lot more useful than "quit whining about losing battles" or even "tips to winning early warfare: outnumber your opponent, only fight when you have a tech advantage, if you are at even numbers - attrition him down first". In this thread, I've had people assume I'm utterly ignorant of game mechanics dozens of times, and lord only knows how many times people have just made accusations of "you just want expansion to be easy".

Again, most threads where this is an issue don't invite people to say why they or they don't like a specific mechanic in a poll or anything; they simply bash some feature and thus practically invite dismissive responses. But yes, ideally everyone here could give their respective well-formulated opinions. Unfortunately I guess I assume that's not even a realistic possibility given how cluttered these forums are. Personally I've offered a lot of suggestions about these issues, and I've never been told I didn't know how to play the game; they've just been mostly ignored and buried.

Have you read the thread? Seriously, I have a post where I specifically said how I thought coalitions should work - where I pointed out mechanisms to make them difficult for the player and how to make them actually able to dismantle big states. Vishaing the responded with concerns, to which I gave a direct reply. I specifically talk about how to make separate peaces viable, but make abuse thereof costly to the player. Whenever someone has raised an issue with my ideas, I will directly address it unless I miss it (it happens) or there are too many competing things taking up my time (e.g. I have a lot of dead work time when models are running some days and not enough other days).

In a nutshell my thoughts are basically these:
1. AE/Coalitions become multi-staged. Early stages just stop AI-AI wars (e.g. Vishaing's improved relations for shared AE) - this makes expansion less easy for the player as there will be fewer wars between neighbors as you get bigger. Middle stages will be a bit like we have now. Later stages will just outright give the AI bonuses towards turning back the clock (e.g. increased morale, increased morale, much easier province defection to return cores against a bitter-ender resisting peacing out against a coalition).
2. Separate peaces are possible but come at a penalty (e.g. coalition target takes bonus AE on any concessions taken - which drives remaining AI bonuses higher while the separate peacer takes a relationship hit with their allies).
3. You can "buy" people out of the coalition. E.g. you can spend gold (& maybe DMP) to get someone to quit a coalition; you can forgo gains in your separate peace to white peace with them locked out of coalition mechanics against you for X number of years; you can help them accomplish their goals and commit yourself irrevocably for a time to their defense (takes up a relation slot to limit abuse potential; significant penalties like bonus AE if you fail to protect them).

I mean earlier in the thread I thought you said you liked all these points.

Yes, I remember that and I continue to agree with your suggestions. However, I find it strange that you felt the need to make the above post at this point in the thread; your suggestions seemed to be generally positively received, and you didn't seem to be addressing anyone in particular. I just don't see what the above post accomplishes besides engendering more divisive scapegoating, even if it's supposedly in the name of "more discourse", since you're quite clearly pinning the lack of quality discourse on one side.

 

[Jomini]

Take the inability to extract suitable terms from Coalitions. That's not the fault of Coalitions, its the fault of the Warscore system, which has been crap that didn't scale properly since EU3 Vanilla and probably even EU2. Coalitions didn't create that, they just magnify the problem by preventing you from making separate Peaces and thus cutting the Alliance down to size before going in for the kill.

Ironically enough, you know what DID create it?

You.
YES YOU!
Okay maybe not you directly, but the problems we have with war getting sluggish, or coalitions being un-fun are all the culmination of less than sophisticated changes made over the proceeding versions of the EU series meant to make WC somewhat almost possibly maybe a tiny little miniscule bit challenging and slow down the player in their unending quest for Conquest.

Lol, no. Behold the ancient ones:
+2: capital city lost by the loser
-2: capital city conquered by the loser
+1: per province lost by the loser
-1: per province conquered by the loser
-2: per major battle won by the loser
+2: per major battle won by the victor
-1: per battle won by the loser
+1: per battle won by the victor
+1: per military leader of the loser killed or cap-tured
-1: per military leader of the victor killed or cap-tured
+1: per siege won by the victor
-1: per siege won by the loser


This is the original war score system from the board game. I think EU II (might have been EU I, I played that only a very little) we got war score based on province wealth (so sieging Provence meant more than sieging Sinai). In EU III we added in blockades (I think) and took into account province improvements. The bad logic (needing to siege a lot of provinces for high war score, being limited to just a few provinces per war) dates all the back to the table top. While this is highly flawed, it didn't give rise to peaces that were jokes as the rules (section 50.12) always allowed for separate peaces.

The problem is the coalition-mechanic of "cannot declare a separate peace"; this was most likely done to stop WC-like expansion and maybe to protect minors (though I doubt it). Because of this you cannot take a full helping of provinces from each belligerent. This is indeed due to coalition mechanics. An early decision in EUIII made it so you couldn't change politics at will (force vassalizing nations) as the ever popular force vassalize/diploannex strategy was said to make WC too easy.

Take the aforementioned poor scaling of War-Score. It has its roots in attempts to prevent the player from gaming wars against large powers by capturing one target worth a lot of war-score and then peacing out for many smaller terms and thus being able to pick apart an enemy they probably shouldn't be able to defeat on paper. It is likely this is also the reason for many of the issues I take with the War-Enthusiasm system, which is obviously meant to help quantify and expand on an AI's Staying Power in the face of a Player Base that's entirely willing and able to wage ahistoric Total Wars.

Ahistoric total war is a result of the marginal cost of additional gains at the peace table. To whit, taking the first province in peace requires X effort per province and Y effort per war. Taking two provinces then means each province takes X + Y/2 while 3 provinces takes X + Y/3. Players wouldn't go for Clausewitzian total war (army annihilation & carpet siege) if it wasn't the single most effective war option in the peace system. But we keep making it more so (e.g. siege attrition is a siege on big sieges, so we have fewer big sieges, so Y rises, making maximal peaces more efficient) if you want historical war - the first province demanded should be the cheapest at the margin.

Player behavior is determined by game systems, bad decisions about systems tends to push player behavior.

I do agree that 1.2 removed the mask on some things, but largely because it left so little player agency intact. In EUII and EUIII, when something was "nerfed" there were always more ways to work around that. But EUIV has way, way fewer things under your direct control. Your research rate? Determined by random die rolls. Your relations - mostly driven by the limited number of diplos & hard caps due to factors beyond your control (sabbed rep, rival, competition, CB, etc.). Wars (generally poorly implemented in 1.2). Your unit strength? Mostly driven by tech and tech group. Your direct expansion rate? Mostly controlled by OExt. There are just fewer, and fewer ways for players to overcome poor systems decisions.

I mean AE/coalitions are a major sap on player choice. So what is the de jour best expansion technique? Returning cores to your vassals. What are people calling to be nerfed? Returning cores.

Further I highly doubt this has to do with DDRJake. While he showed off a lot of exploits, a number of them he didn't touch (e.g. PU fun). Likewise, somehow my wife who has no experience with WC at all or half of the "exploits" still finds the game unfun when she plays France on the easiest setting and runs into coalitions.

We've had way too many things be "this makes WC too easy - nerf it" and "this makes expansion way to hard - nerf it". What I keep wanting is a well thought out system that isn't one kludge on top of another.

 

[parachute]

I stopped playing the game for this reason. Besides expansion there's nothing to do. But if you expand every game feature (that is left after 100 years) screams: You MUST not expand. This is done by adding tedious and boring mechanics (pointless wars for no gain, anti-blob events (Jackals, Vultures)). I don't know how to fix this. I do know that I stopped playing the game.

 

[Neoptolemos]

The problem is the coalition-mechanic of "cannot declare a separate peace"; this was most likely done to stop WC-like expansion and maybe to protect minors (though I doubt it). Because of this you cannot take a full helping of provinces from each belligerent. This is indeed due to coalition mechanics. An early decision in EUIII made it so you couldn't change politics at will (force vassalizing nations) as the ever popular force vassalize/diploannex strategy was said to make WC too easy.

This part of your post struck me especially. I think a lot of what upsets people about coalitions is that player attention and effort suddenly gets much less return than any system or situation in the game, besides maybe trade for landlocked nations. If you've expanded widely or rapidly enough to get a large coalition arrayed against you, you're respectively big or skilled enough to handle what the AI throws at you nine times out of ten, but you don't get proportionally more out of the war with the coalition. You often get just as much as a one-on-one war with a Great Power, if not less or nothing because you don't want to feed an AE death-spiral.

I agree that the main culprit here is probably the warscore system, which restricts and punishes limited wars by demanding that the player annihilate two whole armies and conquer half of France in order to annex the provinces of Flanders and Artois. In a perfect world, I'd like to see war be more expensive, more risky, and shorter, so that the player is rewarded not for beating the AI bloody but for grabbing whatever they can in as brief a war as possible. More sophisticated battle mechanics, I can't imagine what, and warscore mechanics that don't enforce a one- or two-year minimum on wars with silly maluses like "Length of war" and "Nation holds capital" would be the centerpiece of this improved system. Maybe War Exhaustion and Manpower can have more bite again, instead of being the weirdly annoying yet toothless mechanics that they currently are.

In such a system, coalitions would be incredible risks for both sides, because they would entail long, bloody wars that could end up ruining both sides. As has been said before in this thread, there needs to be an opportunity cost for members of the coalition, as well as their targets, and this could be it. Or not, I'm mostly spitballing here. Aggressive expansion would need to be applied more intuitively, in order to ensure that AI nations only joined coalitions against nations from whose demises they stood to benefit, and diplomatic actions would need to be added as well, to make the formation and dissolution of coalitions a more involved experience. Also said before in the thread, some variation on the mechanics from Crusader Kings II plots would be appropriate, although who knows in practice. The current black-box system of AI attitudes, which too often conflicts with the parallel system of relations, would also probably need to be eliminated or at least exposed. Think if there was a mapmode like diplo, except it showed every province that a given AI secretly desired and that they'd hate if you took! That alone would allow for more strategic thinking on the part of the player, allowing coalitions to arise more often when the player intentionally provoked them.

Europa Universalis IV reinvented a lot of systems for the betterment of the game, but I agree with Jomini that not all of them were reinvented and that some of the ones that weren't are currently causing a lot of issues with an open and interesting game experience. Of course, I can't imagine that an overhaul of warscore and associated systems will happen, even in a DLC, but I can dream, right?

 

[cwg9]

Personally I never had many problems with 1.2, but I do agree that the coalition mechanics and interrelated systems could use some improvement in general. Fighting the same war for extremely marginal gains every five years does get tedious if you go for a rapid expansion strategy.

My suggestion would be some sort of special coalition war demand. For example, if the country fighting off the coalition gets a decisive enough victory (say something upwards of 50% war score) they could demand that the coalition recognizes their recent territorial expansion, which would have the effect of reducing the AE relations penalty of all coalition members by some amount (e.g. by 50%), which would help to break up the coalition and normalize relations. On the other hand, if the coalition is successful enough that it manages to force the coalition target to return or release significant chunks of territory, this should also reduce the AE penalty by some amount and thereby similarly help to normalize relations and break up the coalition.

 

[Brawler]

I stopped playing due to game mechanics seemingly only allowing a certain linear play path of vassal diplo-annexing to avoid the whole world forming a coalition against you. My games typically go like the following:

1. Make friends with my neighbour's neighbour, form alliance etc. Send diplomats out to all other neighbouring countries so they're all chummy with me to reduce the AE that will soon follow.
2. Declare war on my neighbour who's sandwiched between me and my ally on the other side.
3. Conquer and either release cores or annex 1 or 2 cores to reduce their size.
4. Repeat step 3 every 5 years until I can vassalise my neighbour.
5. Annex vassal after 10 years, go back to step 1 and repeat for my previous ally who is now my new neighbour. The AI is none the wiser.
6. Follow above steps till 1700s when cores disappear so you cannot release nations to reduce enemy size so you just capture 1-2 cores every 5 years.
7. Repeat this cycle until you're bored and quit.

If there is any other way to global conquest than the above method please let me know because the general consensus seems to be this is currently the way to play otherwise the whole world is angered forming a coalition against you. In that case the following happens:

1. You spank the worldwide coalition that formed against you, capture cores and sign a truce.
2. 5 years later peace treaty with all coalition factions expire, you spank them again and capture some cores, sign a truce.
3. Repeat step 2 until you are supreme ruler of the world.
4. Alternatively you can break truce earlier for a negative stability penalty and continue spanking the world while dealing with rebellions in your nation.

Other than expanding your borders every 5 years what else is there left to do? Build buildings, build light ships, research technologies, attend some weddings. None of this stuff is involved or immersive in any way. Other than the repetitive game of gimme your cores every 5 years there isn't a whole lot else to do to keep me interested.

 

[unmerged(780209)]

Ya got that right. I think WC should be outright impossible without cheats, and that Large Powers shouldn't be able to get more than, say, One Quarter of the Planet, and tiny powers like Rykukyu shouldn't be able to get more than 5% no matter how skilled the player is.
And I shall maintain that opinion until some country manages to conquer even half the planet in real life.
Still Waitin' by the way.

In real life it's actually WORSE than that. And so what?

In real life it was never remotely possible for any power, however strong to blob up to 1/4 of the world. Even in the 20th century efforts by Hitler and Stalin for WC simply caused competing coalitions to form that were so strong that the conqueror was ultimately unsuccessful. In Stalin's case it took 50 years since he was part of the winning coalition in the previous war.

In the 16th or 17th century the best efforts of Spain couldn't even subdue the Netherlands or unite Italy let alone conquer and "core" all of Europe.

As for minor provinces like Baden or something their chances of WC or even blobbing were essentially zero.

If this game were at all like RL, it would be so insanely boring that nobody would ever bother to play it!

The main reason this is true is that historically people do not abandon their language or culture. (Ex: Stalin's inability to crush Ukrainian nationalism despite endless genocide like the Terror Famine, and mass deportations etc.).

For the sake of realism, you would be permanently stuck with a population (including your own elites) that wasn't remotely interested in WC or willing to undergo sacrifices to achieve it. And institutions like that of of Phillip II's Spain that couldn't remotely sustain such an effort. And any attempt would draw enemies like flies.

Changing a region's culture or converting them from Islam say would be next to impossible.

While you might colonize primitive lands, if you attempted to conquer China or India say you would spark massive rebellions like the Taiping Rebellion, which if it had occurred in the 17th century would have been fatal to the colonizer.

And any attempts to conquer much of Europe would have sparked permanent coalitions like the allied coalition that defeated Napoleon. And the AI be far more effective so that winning such wars would be impossible.

Frankly, imagine the screams you would hear from players:

"I started a game with Baden and after 200 years I couldn't accomplish anything! No matter what I tried at most I could gain 1 or 2 provinces and they just kept revolting and then Blob France just attacked me and my armies never stood a chance. This game SUX!!!! I quit!"

So, arguments from "realism" are just ludicrous. The entire premise of this game is faux-historical, not historical. It's a simulation with some wildly unrealistic, but fun game elements.

That entire line of reasoning has no merit at all. The game should not be more realistic. It should be more fun.

That doesn't mean WC should be easy. It should however be possible if that's what the player wants to do.

Personally, I'm not all that interested. I think the worst problem with this game is that peaceful means of gaining power are so nerfed in 1.2 that it's losing all interest.

For instance there's no mechanism whereby you can buy a trading city or establish a trading base in cooperation with local rulers. Instead you have to conquer a province and that involves fighting a massive war.

Now THAT's ahistorical, since both Indian and Japanese states cooperated with European powers to establish trading bases in order to gain wealth and access to world goods, without the European powers sending massive armies to conquer China in the 17th century say.

 

[unmerged(780209)]

I stopped playing due to game mechanics seemingly only allowing a certain linear play path of vassal diplo-annexing to avoid the whole world forming a coalition against you. My games typically go like the following:

1. Make friends with my neighbour's neighbour, form alliance etc. Send diplomats out to all other neighbouring countries so they're all chummy with me to reduce the AE that will soon follow.
2. Declare war on my neighbour who's sandwiched between me and my ally on the other side.
3. Conquer and either release cores or annex 1 or 2 cores to reduce their size.
4. Repeat step 3 every 5 years until I can vassalise my neighbour.
5. Annex vassal after 10 years, go back to step 1 and repeat for my previous ally who is now my new neighbour. The AI is none the wiser.
6. Follow above steps till 1700s when cores disappear so you cannot release nations to reduce enemy size so you just capture 1-2 cores every 5 years.
7. Repeat this cycle until you're bored and quit.

If there is any other way to global conquest than the above method please let me know because the general consensus seems to be this is currently the way to play otherwise the whole world is angered forming a coalition against you. In that case the following happens:

1. You spank the worldwide coalition that formed against you, capture cores and sign a truce.
2. 5 years later peace treaty with all coalition factions expire, you spank them again and capture some cores, sign a truce.
3. Repeat step 2 until you are supreme ruler of the world.
4. Alternatively you can break truce earlier for a negative stability penalty and continue spanking the world while dealing with rebellions in your nation.

Other than expanding your borders every 5 years what else is there left to do? Build buildings, build light ships, research technologies, attend some weddings. None of this stuff is involved or immersive in any way. Other than the repetitive game of gimme your cores every 5 years there isn't a whole lot else to do to keep me interested.

Pretty much sums it up.

What 1.2 essentially did was nerf diplo-annexing in the same way it had previously nerfed military annexing in the transition from EUIII to EUIV.

The developers wanted to make the game harder and more "realistic." But, it turns out "real life" in the 17th century is pretty boring. And the game was never "realistic" anyway and attempts to make it so, turn out to be artificial and suck whatever fun there is out of the game.

The reason they have a fan base for this game is because of CKIII (where there are vastly more options for personal interaction) and EUIII (which permitted blobbing quite nicely and it wasn't so boring).

So far, despite all the improvements like the trade flow system, this game is ultimately less satisfying than EUIII or CKII for me.

What I'd really like would be a CK expansion that covered the entire EUIV era. That won't be coming unfortunately.

Or possibly a converter from EUIV to CKIII instead of the other way around.

 

[unmerged(780209)]

I should mention that there's 3 basic problems with the world-wide coalitions:

1. Not everybody wants to fight endless wars. That gets boring rather quickly. But, peaceful means of expansion have been nerfed. It's not even possible to gain trading access to provinces without fighting a war to grab them or diplo-annexing them.

2. The AI does this rather badly to begin with so that the intelligent player can almost always win. If not, you just start again in 5 years after losing a couple of provinces.

3. The rewards from fighting such massive wars are so puny that it's not worth the effort to begin with.

If these are design features Paradox intends to keep then I give up.

And I don't think I'm alone either.

 

[unmerged(780209)]

This times eleventy thousand. People seem to have a poor understanding of how layered systems work if they think that the relatively minor changes made in 1.2 (even if it was substantial for a patch) created such deficiencies in the game. And I have been saying for a long time that the warscore mechanic (which leads to indecisive outcomes among blobs) is the real culprit here, so I completely agree with that part as well.

1.2 just made already existing game flaws worse and more glaring. That's really what people are complaining about. Because it nerfed the work-arounds people were using.

 

[Lady_Sinful]

i don't think AE itself is bad its just coalitions are not much of a feature, they should be more complex.
- Coalitions should have a leader people should have to ask the leader to join or the leader can invite them.
- it should be hard for heathens to join the coalition
- when the coalitions loses it should break down depending on who lost inside it.
- if the coalition win something like Congress of Vienna should happen.

something like that would make it more fun then making it a pain to deal with.
Diplomacy is not as good as it should be yet at least how people switch sides.

 

[Tikinaattori]

I could live with the current coalition system if they'd make one change: Let me negotiate separate peace with each and every participants if I so choose. Same with normal wars, let me negotiate with war target and all participants. That's all I need...

 

[TheBloke]

I could live with the current coalition system if they'd make one change: Let me negotiate separate peace with each and every participants if I so choose. Same with normal wars, let me negotiate with war target and all participants. That's all I need...

Possibly I'm being dumb, but how in a normal war do you "negotiate with war target and all participants" ? Do you mean that you can take provinces from any participant, not just war leader? Or is there some way to make separate peace with non-war-leader?

In normal war I only know how to make peace with the War Leader, meaning the whole war ends. Now sometimes I do get sent peace offers from other participants, meaning I can knock them individually out of the war. But those peace terms always suck (always in their favour of course, much lower than my WS with them should give me), and I've often wished there would be a "negotiate" button on those separate peace offers.

So is there some way to send a peace deal to a country I'm at war with who is not the war leader, making a separate peace with them while continuing to fight the war leader + other nations? I would love that!

EDIT: OHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I just found it! Click on any other nation I'm at war with, and use the Sue For Peace button. OMG how did I not see that before. (And OMG, how is that not explained anywhere in the interface like, I dunno, on the main war screen - I had already tried clicking on the flag of the war leader in the hope it would give an option to select other countries, but it just takes you to that nation's diplomacy. The War screen should really show a little flag for every nation in the war, allowing quick clicking on any of them for separate peace.)

Anyway, I'm well pleased, this changes war completely for me

Edit 2: Ok so I am at least partially dumb/bind, I see it now on the Wiki: "To do so a diplomat has to be sent to either a hostile nation to negotiate a separate peace," Up until now I thought the war icon I get bottom right - which opens interface with War Leader - was really the only interface for doing peace treaties.

 

[Tikinaattori]

Yep, in normal wars you can negotiate with everybody else except war target, unless it's also the war leader. Like if I'm playing Brandenburg, and I attack Saxony, which is allied with Great Britain, I can't demand anything from Saxony if Great Britain becomes war leader. But I can demand whatever I want from other participants, for example I can happily annex Hansa if they were at war against me.

In my opinion, if I conquest Saxony, I should be able to annex it, and it should be GB's job to protect Saxony from me, not my job to execute operation Sealion and conquer British isles. Either the war should end when I annex Saxony, or it should be reversed that now I'm defender, and GB is attacker that tries to release Saxony. It's just silly that I have to wait with ticking war score if GB has no interest to make a landing and try to defend it's allies. To be honest, I'm a tad disappointed that PD didn't copy Victoria II style of war mechanism into EU IV, since it works really great with adding new war goals and stuff like that.