Beta Balance

[unmerged(5161)]

I am starting to get really concerned about game balance in the latest Beta patches. Certain changes that are being made affect some countries more than others, leading to large shifts over time. I have found that they new changes dramatically hinder the following countries; England, Ottomans, and Russia.

England: Usually fairly poor until her colonization gets off the ground. With the new TC rule, she quickly slides far behind France in cash. This was a problem before, now it is worse. This cash problem limits her ability to colonize effectively. It now takes more colonists (i.e. more money/time) to build colonies since the colonist changes in 1.07 (using the Monarch ADM rating, taking away country bonuses). When combined with her money problems, England slips way behind Spain and France in colonizing. Promoting TCs in the colonies (especially pagan ones) takes a long time to pay for themselves. This is a money drain on a faltering English economy. This can lead to the early destruction of England (SP or MP) and unbalance the entire colonial theater. I see this as a major problem.

Ottoman Empire: New stability rules + new rebel rules + new TC rules = bad news for the ottos. Multiple religions makes recovering stability very hard. Combined with RR taking away tax money and the extra cost of promoting TCs, this drains the Ottoman treasury fairly quickly. Large standing army does help either. AI doesnt manually disband (at least to my knowledge), so they have to inflate their economy to maintain their army. The Austrian threat is severe and the Ottomans have trouble competing. I see this as another major problem, especially in MP. Finding money to pay for missionaries is very hard, especially for the AI.

Russia: Same as Ottomans + Snow + Poorer. Snow kills off rebels, so that isnt as big a problem. High RR still is, though they can recover faster. However, most of the Russian core is very poor at the beginning of the game. Much more so than for the Ottoman Empire. Large standing army is still a problem, so is getting the money for tax collectors. Under military threat from Sweden and Poland/Lith, but snow lessens the impact. Money for missionaries is a major problem, even more so than for the Ottos.

I dont think I need to discuss the Timurid/Chinese problems, other people on the board are doing enough in that regard. Does anyone else see this as a problem?

 

[Velociryx]

Agreed...I got a harsh lesson in the realities of 1.07 trying to play the Ottos for the first time ever.

I'll not say unplayable, but it was....much harsher than it should have been. No way could the AI do it justice.

-=Vel=-

 

[artemis667]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Agreed...I got a harsh lesson in the realities of 1.07 trying to play the Ottos for the first time ever.

I'll not say unplayable, but it was....much harsher than it should have been. No way could the AI do it justice.

-=Vel=-

The secret of playing the Ottos is just three steps... 1) Hellas 2) Morea 3) Thrace. Once you have conquered Thrace, it will convert to Sunni (along with Anatolia and Smyrna) and the rest is easy.

The problem for the AI is that it doesn't care about Thrace... it wastes its time with silly wars elsewhere (against Venice for example). I think maybe the Ottos should have a *special* AI file at the start which would focus on conquering the three provinces I mentioned, and once they have Thrace it could switch back to the 'main' AI file.

 

[JohnMK]

All countries are in the same boat. France doesn't start off with tax collectors neither does Spain. France in fact has twice as many provinces as England, so twice as many to promote to get full census taxes.

I really don't see this as a problem at all. If you want tax collectors, quit being a pansy, mint some cash, build them. It's that simple. If you get 2 or 3% inflation in the process, so be it.

 

[unmerged(5161)]

The problem is not that it cant be done John. The problem is that it disrupts the game balance, especially for the AI. Most MP games have a lot of AI players. All SP games are dramatically affected. I am not saying that I cant play as the Ottos, I am saying it makes playing them much harder and disrupts the natural game balance in the region. When the AI Ottos are losing to everyone, I find that to be a problem.

 

[unmerged(8303)]

It is much harder on countries with lower income. Its hard on small countries as well. Not all, but some like Portugal it can be very troublesome indeed.

 

[Velociryx]

John, I agree with you in principle, however, in the case of the Ottomans you've got:

1) A nation that has 3x the troops it can support
2) A nation that NEEDS those troops to keep its enemies at bay and expand
3) A nation made up of REALLY poor provinces

The only way out is war....immediate war, with a lot of luck.

I got really lucky, which is the ONLY reason I succeeded. I saved all my cash, DoW'd Hellas immediately, knocked them out. Found that I could not DoW Byzantium (tho I dearly wanted to), so I went for Venice instead cos they had some juicy, defensible islands nearby, and I needed durable incomes. At that point, I was reduced to setting my maintenance slider for both military and navy to 50% to just keep going.

After three years of fighting, I won two islands from Venice, got some coin, had Hellas under my thumb and was able to appoint TC's everywhere.

The problem though, is that the AI won't be so aggressive in the early game, and prolly won't reduce military maint. sliders to save cash. It'll wind up taking loans and be among the game's first bankrupcies in the end.

Where I agree with you completely is that the TC rule is not a problem for the human player. I knew that with the leader I got early, I could eat the reduction in morale from reducing my military maintenance and let attrition nibble my army down to size while it netted me gains.

The AI doesn't do that stuff tho....

-=Vel=-

 

[TheLoneTaco]

the problem with russia can be solved by slightly weakening sweden. i think its pretty much a concensus on this board that sweden is a tad more powerful than it should be.

the problem with OE can be solved by changing the impact of innovation. a highly innovative country should have smaller penalties for non-culture non-religious provinces. this, too, has been discussed numerous times though its not really at the concensus point yet.

i dont have an easy solution for england, but to my knowledge england didn't get its first permanent colony until jamestown in circa 1600. does england do this? if not, there is a problem. if it performs better than this, maybe there is no problem at all.

-Matt

 

[unmerged(7034)]

About OE: In three different games that I've played with the latest patches (1.07 betas) the OE did just fine, at least in the initial 30-80 years. In all of these three games, they got Thrace well before 1453 - on one occasion in the early fourteen twenties.

 

[boehm]

I have been experimenting with a "fix" for the ottomans....One basic problem with the OE is that the ai has a tendency to get into the wrong wars at the wrong time. I solved this by creating 3 seperate ai files for them:

ai file 1 (from the start):
include Hellas, Teke, Candar, Karaman and Byzantium in the target list.

ai file 2 (switch included in "city of mens desires" - fall of byzantium)
include the addinal nations of Serbia, Bosnia, Ragusa, Wallachia, Moldavia, Albania, Dulkadir(or what their name is), Georgia, Ak Kyounlu.

ai file 3 (switch included in the "naval reform in 1515" and in the "kaliffa conquest event of the mamelukes" incase that should happen first!)
basically the default ai file!

basically this will help the OE ai to not go to war vs. Venice until the OE has a fair navy...and should give the ai a fair chance of having a CRT edge when they go after the mamelukes....I find that what often ruins the performance of the OE is that it gets involved in wars vs majors such as Hungary, Mamelukes and Venice before it has taken out the minors whose conquest considerably boosts the strength of the OE.

 

[Derek Pullem]

Originally posted by Michaelis
About OE: In three different games that I've played with the latest patches (1.07 betas) the OE did just fine, at least in the initial 30-80 years. In all of these three games, they got Thrace well before 1453 - on one occasion in the early fourteen twenties.

Four games - took Thrace once. Never bigger than 10 provinces in all four games. They are crippled IMHO due to no tC

 

[Velociryx]

As I continue playing the beta, I observe more and more frequently that the AI minors are the stars of the show.

I have witnessed a superstar Bohemia (who had a badboy nearly the equal of my French!), Lombardy (3-provs), Sienna (3-provs).....not once, but repeatedly, and all in the same game! (This, after having played for 30 years).

Not saying its a bad thing....just an observation. The new rules seem to favor the minors, and let their accomplishments shine, and they seem to hurt the majors, *especially* majors who start out at war (delay in building TC's til peace can be arranged).

-=Vel=-

 

[DGuller]

I'm playing as Austria now, and it's actually a game of big superpowers. Only Hessen and Luxemburg remains independent out of all Germans, Poland has swallowed Brandenburg, Magdeburg, and Saxony, as well as a couple of provinces in Balkans, and refused Lithuania in 1567. France got all of France plus a boatload of German minors. Bohemia also expanded considerably, it was even 11 province large for some period, though it lost a couple in wars before I annexed it by event. England was raped by France and had to give them Wessex. Papal States has united most of Italy, and Spain holds the Northwestern Italian provinces. Ottomans got Thrace and expanded into Balkans, but like always as of late, left Mameluks alone. Novgorod killed Muscowy and became Russia, and isn't doing too bad, pushing back Lithuanians little by little, and not letting Sweden in, but I can't see how well Siberia is colonized. In fact, the game got boring a little, everyone is big, and one big boy doesn't dare DOW another. Right now, as Austria, I decided to rape Ottomans, taking 11 provinces and giving 2 to Poland in two wars with them. BTW, can you force convert Ottomans as CRC Austria?

 

[Porcius]

Another problem with the Ottomans and Russians is that they can't just mint cash to build TCs. They start at Infrastructure 0 so they need to push their investments there. They can take loans, but until the conquest of Byzantium, they will never pay them off. Add in an AI that chooses to forego the CoT in Thrace and you have a recipe for bankruptcies and chaos.

Anything that takes away the fun from playing as many countries as possible hurts the game. If I want a challenge, I'll play Lenape or Magdeburg. The Ottomans should be fun and full of choices - not a rail-locked chore that forces me to fail if I don't conquer everything in the "right" order.

The no taxation without TC is too much lost revenue for too many states.

 

[Medicine Man]

I'm still very concerned about the AI's performance. I don't care how it's done, be it by AI-fixes or AI-exemptions, but I hope that the AI is given the tools to deal with the latest changes to the game mechanics. I want strong opposition.

And I personally still think that the Ottos need to be given some help economically. They have the potential to be great if handled by a human player, but they really need to be beefed up when under the control of the AI.

 

[JohnMK]

Originally posted by Porcius
Another problem with the Ottomans and Russians is that they can't just mint cash to build TCs.

I honestly wonder where people find this logic. I start off as the Ottomans and build tax collectors just fine, at some negligible inflation expense.

 

[Medicine Man]

That's because all these people are talking about how the AI does as the Ottoman Empire and Russia. You are talking about how well you can play those two nations. Not many people are claiming that a human player cannot deal with the new taxation rules, but the detrimental effects of those rules on the AI nations are well documented.

You should read their posts a little more carefully, John.

 

[JohnMK]

Originally posted by Medicine Man

You should read their posts a little more carefully, John.

Take fog of war off, start up a 1419 game, and see nearly every country immediately spend its wad of cash on tax collectors.

 

[Medicine Man]

Yet there are still several threads about certain nations habitually underperforming -- threads just like this one. If it is not the tax collectors that are hindering some of the historical majors, then what? Do you have any theories about what is wrong with the nations mentioned in Ryoken's post? Or is nothing wrong?

My feeling is that the added complexity introduced in the latest patches has placed more of a burden on the AI nations -- and I know I'm not alone. All I want is a pragmatic appraisal of how the AI is performing and then a series of reasonable changes to improve their fortunes. I don't care if the changes are fixes or AI-loopholes.

A robust and tenacious AI is utterly necessary for SP play. Considering that I play SP 90% of the time, I'm very concerned about how well the AI will handle the latest changes.

 

[unmerged(4444)]

Originally posted by JohnMK
I honestly wonder where people find this logic. I start off as the Ottomans and build tax collectors just fine, at some negligible inflation expense.

But the AI, John, the AI! It just can't handle this stuff. All these changes would be fine if every country were human-controlled, but even in MP (which the recent patches seem to be geared to) this is not the case. As you point out, the beta changes don't really make it difficult for the human player, but the AI just can't adjust its strategy to deal with them like we can, and the result is nuked SP (and damaged MP) gameplay.

Phil