AI Jacking Up Dev Too Much in Mid-Late Game

[annulen]

Everything ends up absurdly strong

Well, if *everything* is strong than there is some balance in it.

supply limit has no way to keep up with the armies getting fielded

FWIW it's a problem of armies and those managing their movement. You might be interested in supporting this suggestion. Also note that supply limit increases with development of provinces, and if you put focus on military development, you have nobody else to blame that supply limit is insufficient to hold your armies.

 

[Less2]

Well, if *everything* is strong than there is some balance in it.

There isn't when you can only take 4 provinces in a war and get 100 AE for it.

Also note that supply limit increases with development of provinces, and if you put focus on military development, you have nobody else to blame that supply limit is insufficient to hold your armies.

Yeah this is bullshit. Raising a province from 3 dev to 6 dev doubles its capacity to support troops but only increases the supply limit by 6%. And its additive with tech and other bonuses which makes it vastly worse in practice. Armies easily reach millions in this game and there's no way to support even a fraction of this.

 

[GrandEurypterid]

On the one hand, I don't mind too much; on the other hand, my current Lake Victoria game did get one of the Madagascar AI nations building a world trade centre due to playing tall until the Age of Absolutism instead of using any of its money or dev. I did find it inherently hilarious, but I can see it becoming a problem given that Madagascar is one of the worse places in the world for development. (Granted, the existence of the up-to-date Kitaran Empire not far away may have skewed things if I was getting them discounts by having high tech and institutions, but it's still amusing in that context.)

 

[YellowPress]

There isn't when you can only take 4 provinces in a war and get 100 AE for it.

100 ae doesnt mean much if its the only south slavic tag

Yeah this is bullshit. Raising a province from 3 dev to 6 dev doubles its capacity to support troops but only increases the supply limit by 6%. And its additive with tech and other bonuses which makes it vastly worse in practice. Armies easily reach millions in this game and there's no way to support even a fraction of this.

Spread your armies out, use frontage, take attrition at its value and have armies drilling back home to make manpower back, take quantity, be russian, lots of solutions

 

[Northernwwater]

I'm upset that the AI is playing better.

 

[I like wars and maps]

People here dont realise that the AI having more dev isnt beneficial for the AI but for the player. THE OPM with 34 dev will not suddenly be a threat to me but rather make me more money once I conquer it. The problem is conquering 50 prvinces with 30 dev each is very annoying to deal with.

 

[Astalanian]

People here dont realise that the AI having more dev isnt beneficial for the AI but for the player. THE OPM with 34 dev will not suddenly be a threat to me but rather make me more money once I conquer it. The problem is conquering 50 prvinces with 30 dev each is very annoying to deal with.

Ho, we do realise that having a 30 dev province is more beneficial in terms of taxe, manpower or production than a 3 development provinces, no argument on that. Your last sentence resume the situation well, it is annoying to deal with. And right now we're talking about an HRE with 40 to 60 dev provinces everywhere in 1700. Wich is insufferable if you want a chill play not spending your time avoiding coalitions, reseting truces, fighting 300k strong alliances et caetera.

 

[YellowPress]

Ho, we do realise that having a 30 dev province is more beneficial in terms of taxe, manpower or production than a 3 development provinces, no argument on that. Your last sentence resume the situation well, it is annoying to deal with. And right now we're talking about an HRE with 40 to 60 dev provinces everywhere in 1700. Wich is insufferable if you want a chill play not spending your time avoiding coalitions, reseting truces, fighting 300k strong alliances et caetera.

If you want a chill game why are you annexing the hre?

 

[Astalanian]

I don't now, i play France, i took my time, it's the 1700 i need to annex Lorraine and it is a 57 and a 51 provinces, so i have to fight the emperor with is indecent 500k alliance set and i can't take the two provinces i need for my mission without a coalition.

 

[cuendillar]

Unless you're map painting and aim for as many provinces as possible, isn't it stronger to have 100 dev in 2 provinces rather than spread over 10+? More effect from buildings, easier to defend and faster institution spread, while still costing the same amount of warscore and AE all sound like a pretty decent deal to me.

I can see the nuisance when trying to fulfil missions though, but try to see it as getting a bigger reward (in terms of strength and land quality) for succeeding with it while using every trick to keep AE relatively managable.

Ho, we do realise that having a 30 dev province is more beneficial in terms of taxe, manpower or production than a 3 development provinces, no argument on that. Your last sentence resume the situation well, it is annoying to deal with. And right now we're talking about an HRE with 40 to 60 dev provinces everywhere in 1700. Wich is insufferable if you want a chill play not spending your time avoiding coalitions, reseting truces, fighting 300k strong alliances et caetera.

I guess you could always try for emperorship and get like 4000 dev for free by passing the reforms.

 

[YellowPress]

I don't now, i play France, i took my time, it's the 1700 i need to annex Lorraine and it is a 57 and a 51 provinces, so i have to fight the emperor with is indecent 500k alliance set and i can't take the two provinces i need for my mission without a coalition.

Oh hey just like Louis XIV did, and you got a massive force against you, just like Louis XIV did

 

[Astalanian]

Unless you're map painting and aim for as many provinces as possible, isn't it stronger to have 100 dev in 2 provinces rather than spread over 10+? More effect from buildings, easier to defend and faster institution spread, while still costing the same amount of warscore and AE all sound like a pretty decent deal to me.

I can see the nuisance when trying to fulfil missions though, but try to see it as getting a bigger reward (in terms of strength and land quality) for succeeding with it while using every trick to keep AE relatively managable.

I guess you could always try for emperorship and get like 4000 dev for free by passing the reforms.

You're absolutely right, in theory, having 2 provinces rather than ten with the same development is far more efficient, for the numerous reasons you talked about. But, and there is some of them, the AI development thing does not affect only the two provinces we're talking about, but the entire world. So those nice two provinces you took, are nice and well developped, but so is all the other one around them, and in the grand scheme of things, you just took two provinces, but two expensive AE provinces. And for a 1700 game, this is absolutely nothing. Going for ten provinces instead of two is a way to weaken your opponent, if your goal is to end the Ottomans threat and you're going five provinces per war, you won't go far.
You can see it as you depict it, like a more i need to use all the tools kind of thing, wich makes you feel more accomplished. But for me, it feels wrong, it sucked the fun out of my games. This change affect all players because it's effective on all difficulties. And i do remember a time where i didn't know how to truce juggle, how to optimize my AE reduction, how to break coalitions. I think a lot of people are struggling because of this, and that's why i'm talking about it.
The game always allowed to play tall, and nothing has changed on this side, but it has hardened by a lot the playing wide way. I'm certain that if tomorrow i go for a Portugal only colonial game, fighting in the new world or some minors in Indonesia, it won't bother me that much. But it makes it tedious if your fun is to conquer Europe has a minor in Africa, or any expansionist playstyle you like.

 

[Astalanian]

Oh hey just like Louis XIV did, and you got a massive force against you, just like Louis XIV did

He also took took Cambrais and other cities in La guerre de Dévolution facing thirty thousand men. How is that for a massive force against him ?

 

[YellowPress]

He also took took Cambrais and other cities in La guerre de Dévolution facing thirty thousand men. How is that for a massive force against him ?

And how large was the french army? Smaller than its starting fl

 

[grommile]

Everyone who is complaining about this, answer this:

• What do you want the AI to do with its monarch power when it is brickwalled?

For bonus points:

• Would you be happy with the solution being "development is no longer feasible for anyone except exploit cheesers"?

 

[Astalanian]

Everyone who is complaining about this, answer this:

• What do you want the AI to do with its monarch power when it is brickwalled?

For bonus points:

• Would you be happy with the solution being "development is no longer feasible for anyone except exploit cheesers"?

I don't know, and i don't care, i never asked this question to myself when i started playing and never asked it before this patch.
What you all seem to forget, is that the state of the game was just fine before this change. And if for you the AI wasn't competitive enough and wanted it buffed with extra troops, you just had to go for a higher difficulty or for a start position more challenging.
Using the mechanic has nothing to do with cheesing, it is here, you're playing has intended. And to be honest, if you play something like an Irish minor or Athens, or a new world nation, or anything small, in the actual state of the game, you need to use it, how would you be able to compete with the Ottomans, GB or a colonizer without it and when stuck with your six development province.
I'm not against a rework of the development mechanic or AI using it if it stays manageable, but not thousand of development points being added everywhere.

 

[grommile]

I don't know, and i don't care, i never aked this question to myself when i started playing and never asked it before this patch.

You say you don't want the AI to spend its monarch power like this.

But it has to spend it on something.

And if it can't expand (because it can't outplay itself, so can't do the things we do in SP to exceed our country's expected performance, because doing those things frequently only works if your opponents are incompetent), there's very little else for it to spend it on.

 

[Astalanian]

You say you don't want the AI to spend its monarch power like this.

But it has to spend it on something.

And if it can't expand (because it can't outplay itself, so can't do the things we do in SP to exceed our country's expected performance, because doing those things frequently only works if your opponents are incompetent), there's very little else for it to spend it on.

Yes i definetely say i don't want it to spend it like this. My point since the beginning.
Yes it has. And i don't know on what it was spending it before this patch, but it was just fine.
Once again, the game was just fine before this change, that's why we were playing it.

 

[grommile]

nd i don't know on what it was spending it before this patch, but it was just fine.

I'd guess that a lot of the small countries weren't spending it at all.

There's a fairly strict limit to how much power you can sensibly spend on buying technology and ideas. (Buying ADM or DIP technologies with even a single year of ahead-of-time penalty really isn't sensible most of the time, and no equivalent concept even exists for ideas.)

Once you've done those things, the remaining major uses are:

• ADM: raising stability (but raising stability above +1 by monarch power spending is only a good choice if you've been stacking stability cost bonuses).
• ADM: buying cores (but only if you have uncored provinces)
• ADM: inflation reduction (but only if you have inflation)
• DIP: annexing subjects (but only if you have subjects)
• DIP: reducing war exhaustion (but only if you have WE)
• MIL: strengthening government (but only if you are below max Legitimacy / Republican Tradition / whatever, which small countries frequently aren't)
• MIL: harsh treatment (but only if you have Unrest, which small countries generally don't)
• All three: development.

And thus the conclusion is reached:

The development system is rotten to the core, and the only reason you noticed it's bad is that the AI has had its handcuffs taken off.

 

[I like wars and maps]

I'd guess that a lot of the small countries weren't spending it at all.

There's a fairly strict limit to how much power you can sensibly spend on buying technology and ideas. (Buying ADM or DIP technologies with even a single year of ahead-of-time penalty really isn't sensible most of the time, and no equivalent concept even exists for ideas.)

Once you've done those things, the remaining major uses are:

• ADM: raising stability (but raising stability above +1 by monarch power spending is only a good choice if you've been stacking stability cost bonuses).
• ADM: buying cores (but only if you have uncored provinces)
• ADM: inflation reduction (but only if you have inflation)
• DIP: annexing subjects (but only if you have subjects)
• DIP: reducing war exhaustion (but only if you have WE)
• MIL: strengthening government (but only if you are below max Legitimacy / Republican Tradition / whatever, which small countries frequently aren't)
• MIL: harsh treatment (but only if you have Unrest, which small countries generally don't)
• All three: development.

And thus the conclusion is reached:

The development system is rotten to the core, and the only reason you noticed it's bad is that the AI has had its handcuffs taken off.

Dont think anybody was saying the development system is good.