Balance of game mechanics in 2.0.1 - what are YOUR concerns?

[Todie]

2.0.1 is nice. Nice enough that many players are discovering or rediscovering the game. There are layers of depth to discover and engage with - or so it appears.

However, I know im not alone as an experienced player, in being able to look through and past many aspects of how the game works now, and disregard many of the gameplay choices presented as more or less “false”... it seems, even some newbies are succeeding with ambitious expansionism in their very first play-throughs.

My question to you all:
In your personal opinion - what is the most pressing concern regarding mechanical game balance in the 2.0.1 patch ? Why?

Proposed thread format: one post = one separate concern. Use agree / disagree / upvote to highlight pressing concerns!
(This is not a suggestion thread - complex suggestions can be neat, but elsewhere?)

Try to keep comments / discussion of others raised concerns separate from posts with your own concerns.

Thank you for your contribution!

 

[moyang]

If we are talking about balance, probably the levy - military experience farming. Stack cohort starting experience bonues, raise levy, disband them several months later. Easy military experience.

 

[Manst]

Characters and families slowly diyng out, reducing in numbers and getting worser stats. Still an issue!

 

[Roy1012]

Characters and families slowly diyng out, reducing in numbers and getting worser stats. Still an issue!

Should definitely be able to marry your nieces/nephews etc. or allow them to auto marry like other families.

 

[TheWorstPro]

Legacy of Alexander and Imperial challenge CBs, while a great idea, tend to produce a lot of bordergore and are still very tedious. This becomes especially apparent when the enemy starts flooding your land with a bunch of small 2-3K stacks that spread out and wander deep into your territory. The fact that fort ZoC seems to be bugged also doesn't help.

 

[IsaacCAT]

It will not come as a surprise that I am concerned about AE. Why my POPs should be affected by the nation conquering spree? I understand war exhaustion but internal problems for AE? It feels more like an artificial stop for a expansionist player. This could be done much better without fustrating the gameplay. On the contrary, enhancing it, making it more exciting for the player.

On top of that, when you have AE your diplomatic options are null. You are forced to keep being a bully if you want to play.

 

[Pro]

Buildings are probably in need of rebalancing. There are many that make no sense at all.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Another thing that bothers me a lot is the lack of export trade routes management. You can create surplus but you cannot manage its commerce. If you do not sell your goods your economy tanks in 2.0. There is no option to put your products on the market or speed up its trade.

 

[Todie]

War exhaustion is not notably punishing - upon closer inspection often perceived “as a buff” Its effect on population happiness is small to an unintuitive extent, even when it reaches 30 - considering it has a notable upside in being a multiplier for ME-gain. War exhaustion is effectively the primary cost for keeping levies raised in non-core regions, so it makes a big difference overall.

 

[Undead Martyr]

It will not come as a surprise that I am concerned about AE. Why my POPs should be affected by the nation conquering spree? I understand war exhaustion but internal problems for AE? It feels more like an artificial stop for a expansionist player. This could be done much better without fustrating the gameplay. On the contrary, enhancing it, making it more exciting for the player.

AE affects stability which in turn affects happiness, which I'm happy with. If anything stability should be made more important (increased corruption and maybe reducing governor loyalty?) and a bit "stickier" than it is right now.

I'd say that government types- especially tribes- is the most important thing to focus on right now. Playing a militaristic republic like Rome should be a very different experience than playing a mercantile Republic like Rhodes or a spawning empire like the Seleucids, and while they've done some already I'd like more. Something like Aristo republics getting legions from the start and the ability to put their ruler in command, while plutocratic states produce trade goods from freemen. Tie the systems together like with culture and levies.

 

[Todie]

Buildings are probably in need of rebalancing. There are many that make no sense at all.

I think it could be helpful if you elaborated on this - what buildings don’t make sense to you and why?

 

[Herennius]

I fear that migrating tribes will be even more out of balance than before. I haven't yet played a game with 2.0 that way...but the neceassary tools are either still there or work even better (including UI saving you the MM to dose settling down to only as many pops as needed). The ability to insta-assimilate pops when unsettling them plus a huge bonus to levy size when maxing out negative centralization will lead to giant levy armies. It is less a problem of immersion (feels not ahistoric), but grabbing all the uncolonized land this way is just too easy for my taste.

 

[Pro]

I think it could be helpful if you elaborated on this - what buildings don’t make sense to you and why?

The ones that give percentage based bonuses (libraries, marketplaces, training fields, tax offices) are very weak. The port seems very weak as well. Granaries seem to only be useful in provinces with a very small population as the food required will grow much faster than your number of building slots.

 

[Decius]

"Currency" income balance:

For me manpower and to some extent money income in the late game are still to high. Early and mid game is fine.

- Money income imo just needs to have several late bonuses removed from the invention trees - replace them with something else (like some of the +10% trade income ones and the tax bonuses). I think these nerfs to the bonuses would do the job, if they get replaced to some extent (not all). I'm just suggesting this, because it would be the easy fix, instead of changing something more complex around money income.

- Manpower in the late game is really too much, I think there is more rebalancing required to solve that - maybe even include navies to manpower (ship crew) alongside other manpower balance changes.

- Political Influence income is mostly fine - I sometimes would like to have more, but that is a good sign, that the balance is right.

- Military Experience gain for military traditions is fine with the exception of the here already mentioned exploit.

So from the four currencies, money income to some extent and especially manpower is in the late game too much and an issue. PI is fine, military experience gain is fine, but please fix the exploits.


Good points from others here in the thread! Imo a really good collection of balance issues, which should get adressed by the devs to make this game perfect

 

[Rabid]

Large AIs being stingy with forts is a problem, I'm not saying that every single province should have a fort but the AI should put some major consideration at the very least into fortifying the provinces which directly border a neighbour especially if those provinces have wealthy cities in.

On a related note I feel that forts are overpriced and now that there's a soft cap on how many forts you can put in a small area I'd suggest that they could be made cheaper both in build cost and maintenance.

 

[Bovrick]

Food is still too abundant, meaning Pop growth differentials can't really present themselves, and the supply system is undermined.

 

[Bovrick]

City Buildings (Library/Marketplace/Training Camp/Tax Office) are scaled far too closely to Population; their usefulness is predicated on having a very large Population and finding a way to overkill one output type, with no real incentive to ever construct more than one/two types of those buildings.

 

[AggaWackTan]

Diplomacy - probably as an EU4 player I’m expecting too much. But I find alliances and influence are non factors in IR.

I recently started up a game as Milan in eu4 and the mix of requiring strong alliances to deter invasion and AE causing local coalitions AS WELL as the HRE mechanics early make for a whirlwind of delicate diplomacy decisions. Mixed with picking areas of interest, local rivals, embargoing, power projection and focusing on the diplomacy/ influence ideas to expand peacefully avoiding AE, it leaves IR very far behind here.

Imperator still relies on that ‘seize your moment’ mindset without giving you the diplomatic tools to help steer towards it and you’re left waiting. As well as leaving too much up to luck

 

[Battlex]

If we are talking about balance, probably the levy - military experience farming. Stack cohort starting experience bonues, raise levy, disband them several months later. Easy military experience.

Why the wait several months later part? Surely you can disband after a month?

 

[Lord Lambert]

Wonders are Incredibly Overpowered when compared to the 7 Wonders of the World.

Now, I thought this might be something that would be universally agreed upon, but I have seen people say they prefer it this way or that it's perfectly fine for it to be this way... but I think it is absolutely ridiculous, and utterly baffling, that the Wonders that you can construct can give bonus' that are so, so, so objectively much more powerful than the 7 wonders of the world.

Take any of the wonders of the world in game right now, you can both copy their bonus' onto some crappy little wooden mausoleum, and add extra bonus' ontop of those, and just through the advent of time, that trashy little wooden hut can give you modifiers that make the pyramids of giza look like a waste of stone (which, if you dont care much for vassal play, they objectively are)

Proposed Solution: buff the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. Let them have a 5th prestige level that the constructable wonders cannot attain, and give them 3 bonus' instead of just 1, just like all the wonders you can create get. Or make our own constructed wonders be limited to only a single selectable bonus.