AI Debt spiral

[Jesus was a communist]

If you start playing in 1.25, maybe you're not already enough experienced

I've been playing since art of war and have nearly 5k hours

in 1.30, the debt are coming by itself, and the IA self destruct. It was not the case in 1.26, I agree.
However, in 1.26, you can force bankruptcy with the new peace deal option.

You just proved my point. in 1.26 you could target ai and make them bankrupt, people aren't complaining about that though. that is a targeted decision by a player to weaken a certain ai, and even then some of them still manage to survive. in my last game, I was Nepal and was taking full cash about every 5 years from ming for about 40 years by attaching his tributaries and he still didn't bankrupt, nor did the ottomans in my persia run despite me and most of eastern Europe dabbing on him constantly after 1550.
What people are complaining about is multiple ai majors going into massive debt and some of them never recovering without human intervention. EVERY SINGLE GAME; this only happened after 1.30.

 

[enigma74]

Quite a few sweeping statements about Paradox and "a huge number of people". Stellaris and Imperator Rome are just small examples of how much work they continue to put into their games without any promise of money flowing in (I haven't paid a single cent for Stellaris after getting it on sale for $10 years ago, and it has infinitely more features now). If we also consider the sheer drastic volume of features the EU4 devs have added into the game over the last three years with only releasing one DLC to earn money from, then it really seems hard to say that all that Paradox cares about is money and nothing else (especially considering how many free features Emperor provided to players). The only pressure to pay money is your own, they provide us free features and if we want all the other cool features they add in we can pay (you can even play with all the DLC without paying a cent by joining MP games).

Though by now I am silly to think that any post on this thread that seems remotely sympathetic to Paradox or its developers will do anything other than being downvoted.

I don't know exactly when it happened, but Paradox lost the culture of a small indie game studio awhile ago. There's a je ne sais quoi that no longer seems to exist. IMO, it's like the beginning of the decline of a once-great empire, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact cause but you feel it with certainty. In another 10 years, Paradox is going the way of EA/Activision Blizzard, and we will see in-game microtransactions or whatever the new meta is for milking whales.

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

I don't know exactly when it happened, but Paradox lost the culture of a small indie game studio awhile ago. There's a je ne sais quoi that no longer seems to exist. IMO, it's like the beginning of the decline of a once-great empire, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact cause but you feel it with certainty. In another 10 years, Paradox is going the way of EA/Activision Blizzard, and we will see in-game microtransactions or whatever the new meta is for milking whales.

Long post that I am putting in a spoiler so that it won't take up half a page

Spoiler: Long post

That feeling that cannot be described with respect to the culture of the game studio is likely directly proportional to the ever-increasing number of fans of Paradox's various IP's. More customers (in the scales of millions) and more games being requested by those customers (Paradox supports something close to twenty plus high quality games with constant development) will generally mean that the indie feel of a game development company will fade. Other than this nostalgia and this feeling of what once was however, there seems nothing to me that has particularly changed about their model that implies an intent to milk their customers or express disdain to their fans. Sure they release a whole lot of extra DLC now, and adding them all up without a Steam sale costs a pretty penny, but with these DLC's they are able to constantly develop games for years and years and provide numerous free features to people that wouldn't normally buy DLC.

If we take Victoria 2 for example, as something more representative of how Paradox use to be give or take, they only maintained the game and provided new features and content for about three years before no more patches (except for a couple of bug fixes since) were ever released again. During those three years they provided just two DLC and the only things that were really added to the game (that most players used) were new start dates and a slightly adjusted colonialism system. Now I loved and still love Victoria 2 with all my heart (and pray for Victoria 3 every day), but there is no way on this Earth that we would be able to get games anywhere within the realm of quality of EU4/HOI4/Stellaris/CK3 with their old model.

We express shock about how horrible Paradox is for letting an AI debt bug remain in the game for nearly a year or so now, but Victoria 2/HOI2/EU2 are still going around with crazy glaring bugs to this day (some of which make them unplayable from time to time). Going back to Victoria 2, there are many games where it is 1900 and the world is still entirely reliant on clippers, and I am not able to colonise provinces right next to other colonies because of colonial range bugs. They didn't leave these bugs in these old games because they hated their fans, but because an indie studio creating some of the most complex simulations imaginable do not have the resources to fix these.

I really just do want to stress how absolutely lucky and fortunate we are to be receiving games (some of the only games in this genre) that are still being developed and improved eight years after release (with no end in sight), and you don't even have to pay money for a great number of these improvements. Just pay $5 on sale for EU4 and then sit back and relax as the game gets new features every year. I myself cannot see the comparison to a company that sells us half-completed games for $80 based off lies from trailers and then dissolves the development team one week after release. What other game development studio are you aware of that takes a game and completely redevelops it into a whole new game without asking for any money in return just for the sake of the fans (and not just once, but twice)?

 

[Travis_Bickle]

I have to vent.

I was having an Aragon > Sardinia Piedmont eventually Italy/Roman Empire run which I was in love with. I basically ignored the whole afternoon/evening just to play.

I end up in a situation where I can't expand anywhere without facing a 200k+ alliance network in 1546 which is impossible to break, and I mean it, it was an impossible to break alliance network with people attacking in multiple directions regardless of who my target was.

This itself is very frustrating (and playing in Europe is extremely unpleasant now anyway), but what's more frustrating is in this 100 year period, my allies, which have been my allies since 1444 haven't been willing to join a war of mine once because they are always in debt. If France or Austria were at all interested in helping me once this wouldn't be half an issue.

Basically wrecked my campaign unless I sat staring at my screen 100 years more waiting for something to happen.

 

[cary__]

I don't know exactly when it happened, but Paradox lost the culture of a small indie game studio awhile ago. There's a je ne sais quoi that no longer seems to exist. IMO, it's like the beginning of the decline of a once-great empire, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact cause but you feel it with certainty. In another 10 years, Paradox is going the way of EA/Activision Blizzard, and we will see in-game microtransactions or whatever the new meta is for milking whales.

Thats better than other devs/publishers who will relentlessly get defended from any criticism like theyre some sort of small indie dev. Nintendo and Mojang come to mind, so it probably has something to do with childhood nostalgia. Honestly I find it better when people criticize paradox than if they get treated as some sort of sacred cow.

 

[PyroMegaManZ]

Thats better than other devs/publishers who will relentlessly get defended from any criticism like theyre some sort of small indie dev. Nintendo and Mojang come to mind, so it probably has something to do with childhood nostalgia. Honestly I find it better when people criticize paradox than if they get treated as some sort of sacred cow.

Treating anything as sacred or beyond criticism is certainly undesirable as you say. But I find myself that "Paradox is a soul-less corporation that takes all your money, cackling as they give you half-completed games" or "the devs don't care about those that play their games and are horrible at their job for not getting a bug out of the game" to go quite far beyond the realms of simple criticism. Within the hours of this thread initially being published last year, several people were already suggesting that Paradox devs should skip out on their holidays to work on the game... this mind you was after devs had nearly a year of criticism from the same people demanding that Emperor get released sooner rather than later.

 

[PedroLuiz]

It seems the AI is very keen on staying afloat with crippling debt instead of either bankrupting[if the debt wont be repaid in 50 years] or completely wiping armies, forts and repaying the debt in relatively short period of time like at max 10 years.

that is the most realistic thing the AI has ever done tbh

 

[Vulkandrache]

The Ai isnt there to be realistic.
Its there to offer a challenge for the player.

 

[CthulhuTactical]

1.30.6 and AI is even more and utter trash at managing economy. Allies are completely useless and indebted. It's worse than 1.30.4 -they dont move armies, they defend their territories, making them useless. It's tied to debt, since when i give them money, they magically start moving.... And the whole dev talk should be moved to another topic -i dont give a crap about paradox company developing "culture".

 

[FrogCrusher]

1.30.6 and AI is even more and utter trash at managing economy. Allies are completely useless and indebted. It's worse than 1.30.4 -they dont move armies, they defend their territories, making them useless. It's tied to debt, since when i give them money, they magically start moving.... And the whole dev talk should be moved to another topic -i dont give a crap about paradox company developing "culture".

I did not notice something very different between .4 and .6. In .4 the variance was already huge. As an example I saw a game where Moscovy became quickly a great power and formed Russia and another where they were wrecked by Ottos taking orthodox DotF. Both on 1.30.4. Army not moving is also well there in .4.
Nothing indicates in the patch note that something was touched related to this topic. At least a stealth change were done, I think you just see variance in one particular game.
And it doesn't change the fact there is a global problem with AI eco and military tactics

 

[Pandrea]

In my game Russia has gone from 9000 to 1000 debts by itself... maybe just give them some time?

 

[enigma74]

I'm just gonna necromance this thread - for those who doubt Paradox's fall from grace, look no further than the latest Leviathan DLC. A DLC with overwhelmingly negative reviews, so buggy that you have to revert to an old patch to get a working copy of EUIV.

 

[algame]

I'm just gonna necromance this thread - for those who doubt Paradox's fall from grace, look no further than the latest Leviathan DLC. A DLC with overwhelmingly negative reviews, so buggy that you have to revert to an old patch to get a working copy of EUIV.

Haha.

Debt spiral is going to be a permanent "feature", considering the current state of the game ie. barely functional, fixing complex AI behaviour is a pipe dream.

 

[Orioniys]

From what I saw in 1.31.1 so far debt spiral was actually fixed.

 

[Atomcreator]

I've not seen any debt Spiral lately. Quite the opposite, the AI has been paying down debts very well. Not sure why this was bought back up again.