Beta of 5.1 - 10th of May 2011 - Discussion Thread

[DDRJake]

- Modified Braveheart event in /events/MoreRandomEvents.txt to have all forces always spawn in Province 252 Highlands, instead of anywhere in the Highlands region.

Thanks a lot for this! Always did miff me that Scotland's saving grace would be stuck on an island to be mocked by the English fleet

Never the less, I'm rolling back to March30th. I've nothing to say about the yearly event stuff that hasn't already been mentioned in this thread.

 

[DanubianCossak]

Well the new event thingy is not THAT bad, they just need to get it a bit more balanced. If i understand it correctly, if they add more events, it should work better no?

For those who wish to roll back to previous patch, know that you could somewhat deal with the stability hit spammage be decreasing stability costs in provinces - reduce base land province stab cost, religion stab cost and stability wont hurt that much. What i did in my personal mod was to increase ruler stability investments: ADM gives +3 instead of +1, DIP gives +2 and MIL +1, so with an average ruler, youll have about +30ish per month. Combined with slight stab costs changes, you can easily regain stab level in a year or 2 even without additional investments.

CaptainGars, do you think you guys could release whatever events you got so far, as a separate download?

On a sidenote, im willing to volunteer a day or 2 of my time, if you guys could use another hand with writing events. If someone can get all the localizations, and give me event descriptions i can prolly write a couple of dozens per hour (depending on their complexity of course). Add me on MSN jeremijakol@hotmail.com if you wish.

 

[Duskey]

If you have event ideas, just add them to this thread: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...radox-Wants-you!-Suggest-your-new-events-here.

 

[corporateslave]

For anybody complaining about the stability issues, maybe thats not such a bad thing. That could be considered the extra challenge some people look for, and in the beginning the hits will be annoying, but later on, it could actually cause a revolution in your own empire! Empires rarely stood forever.

This beta is more than just challenging - for large empires, the stab hits are now so frequent that you start to fall waaaaaay behind in tech, even with the deck stacked in your favor.

Started a game as Brandenburg. It's 1506, and I'm already five or more tech levels behind Holland in every category. I've been trying to focus solely on government, production and land tech, but the tech gap keeps growing larger in all categories because I'm spending all my income on stab.

This is happening even though: I'm the HRE with a large stab bonus; I have Church Attendance Duty; I have churches in most of my provinces; I have two universities; and I generally only have two wrong religion provinces at any given time.

If I'm having this much trouble as an HRE Brandenburg, imagine how fun this will be for the Ottos, or anyone in the Asian tech group. WC with Ryuku? Umm, yeah...

TLDR: The move to annual events has created a significant new balance problem where one did not exist before.

Prediction: This change will take a long time to bug fix and balance, especially after new events are added.

Plea to Paradox: Postpone annual event changes until the next patch cycle so these changes receive the attention they deserve. Please. Do it for the children!

 

[JiangShaoWei]

I have had good luck with the events so far gained 1000 ducts in 5 years through events.

 

[17blue17]

How about the Paradox team spending less time on events and more time on fixing the map mod problem?

We have asked again and again in every beta thread and posted bug reports and all we hear back officially from Paradox is nothing since February when Birken did a quick look and asked for more feedback. Since that time there is a clear consensus of what the problems are.

A simple "We are working on it" would be nice.

Johan - Please - can you verify that someone internally is working on the problem??

 

[unmerged(288807)]

A question for those who already gave it a try:
Were there any major additions to this patch or only some history/grammar fixes? The only one i noticed is the random event each year. Because if thats that, then i don't know for what we were waiting for, for this long.

 

[Rex303]

I have to say I like the new event system.

it surely needs more events and especially more events that have a lesser impact on sliders or stability.

the events that already are in game are modeled to be rare or at least not yearly.

at the same time they do add a new challenge and make the game less easily controlled. I also have to say that I don't only get bad events, but there are some good ones in there too, and I am mostly able to keep a positive stab, even of +3 for a few years.

 

[Captain Gars]

CaptainGars, do you think you guys could release whatever events you got so far, as a separate download?

I have not been involved in this one or any of the recent patches.

 

[DanubianCossak]

Damn Well i say you should get re-assigned, cuz if i remember correctly you helped get some events and stuff into beta patches didnt you?

Whose in charge of this beta anyway?

 

[Dannevirke]

See the "read this first" sticky in Tech Support, try the stuff listed there under "Black Flags" and report back please.

Thanks for the pointer. I tried it out, deleted the two flagfiles (ddt & txt), but it didn't change anything. The flags are still shadowy but the ripple effect works.
Note: I've installed the latest beta directly on top of the march 30th beta. Not a clean install.

Later edit: I've also tried running the EU3.exe as an administrator and disabling desktop composition. No change, the flags are very hard to make out, unless you zoom in real close.

 

[Captain Gars]

Well i say you should get re-assigned

No way. Samurai Gars is working on being big in Japan at the moment.

 

[Valynor]

Now I tried the new beta and I'm really disappointed.
I don't even know what we are supposed to test, honestly. A game with low stability, maybe?
No bug solved, some useless and more bugged addiction.
I really hope that PI knows things we don't and internally works on serious stuff, because, after playing the patches, downgrading to 5.0 is not what I want.
I was looking forward the moment when I could go for achievements again, but, alas, it seems a long long way to go.
Obviously I'd like to be proven wrong

 

[safferli]

No way. Samurai Gars is working on being big in Japan at the moment.

And don't you dare get distracted from this sacred task! You're the alpha of the town.

 

[DanubianCossak]

I think its time for Paradox to announce a new EU3 expansion, so that we can have all the pros reassigned to that thing, and leave whoever is left to make those other nooby games You all know it, EU3 rulz! *marches down armies on Stockholm*

 

[Blastaz]

For anyone having serious problems with the events just use the save reload trick.

When you get an event don't click it. instead save the game quit and then reload. You now have avoided that pesky stab hit (or succesion crisis if you are a horrible person). You can even let the game run on for 3 months without clicking the event if you want, before save/reloading.

I do think that the events are a bit stab hit heavy at the moment, having rebuilt the system PI need to change the options, say a choice of either stab hit or negative modifier (for a year as you get another event after a year).
Also there should be a few more good events in the mix.
Also they probably need to tone down the slider moves as well.

 

[Zanko Hale]

So far as England I've spent the past 5 of my 10 years in negative stability. Partly due to me forgetting to insult the irish minors before DOW'ing, secondly due to it taking me a year at least to regain 1 stab only to lose it again.
I've did as Blaztaz suggested and added a negative modifer option to most of the stab hitting events, not ideal but I'll take -5% TE or -0.5 merchants(etc) over a stab hit.

 

[The_Pursuader]

AI inflation
In my last 3 MPs in DW I noticed that AI can't handle inflation at all resulting in AI not being a challenge after already the first 100 years of play.
e.g. anno 1578 > inflation France 36%, Ming 32%, Castille 42%,...

It would be great to have an option at the start of the game to set AI inflation off/on.
There's already an option for inflation (normal, from gold, none) so maybe it could be added there. I suppose it would only take a few minutes to add this so I hope my humble request will be considered for a future patch.



AI building behavior
I also noticed that AI can't handle the new building system.
e.g. France anno 1580 > 5 magistrates, +600 ducats: has sufficient tech to build treasuries and roads,... but still the AI doesn't bother improving its infrastructure.

This results in AI being much weaker than any human player after about 100 years of play even if AI has a much larger empire (e.g. human Brabant 20 provs has equal military strength and double eco strength than 50 provs France). I really like the new building system making it possible to be much more powerful than before with a smaller nation but if AI can't handle the new building system it's just another "human exploit"

I suggest to edit the AI so that they:
1) prioritise production buildings (core high tax provs>non-core low tax provs) above all others and that they always build them if they have the needed magistrates and sufficient ducats (i.e. cost of building + 100 (to prevent them taking a loan)).
2) move on to the trade buildings once all the available production buildings are finished in all core provinces. Then army, then navy building line.
3) always build the 4 gov buildings in their capital (for spy defence + tax) if production and trade buildings are already built in its capital.

I know this isn't always the best building strat, but at least it's the most common one and MUCH better than what they AI is doing now..



I think it would greatly improve the gameplay and also help keeping players more interested for a longer period during a campaign (especially in SP). A lot of players don't play past the first 2 centuries because of lack of challenge, improving AI building behaviour and inflation would at least help a little bit in that aspect because the longer a campaign lasts the bigger the gap becomes between eco and military strength of human and AI controlled nations.

A confirmation from a forumnite

Thread = Does no inflation option make the game easier or harder?
For me, it actually makes it harder.
Easier in the beginning, but with inflation, by the time 1700 rolls around and EVERY AI country has 50% inflation, the game becomes totally trivial.
So I turn it off because I want more challenge.

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

In my game the Golden Horde isn't really expanding much but it's not getting beaten either... it takes way too long for its provinces to flip. Muscovy, Hungary, Lithuania and the OE have all held provinces for ages but eventually they lose them.

 

[Trin Tragula]

How about the Paradox team spending less time on events and more time on fixing the map mod problem?

We have asked again and again in every beta thread and posted bug reports and all we hear back officially from Paradox is nothing since February when Birken did a quick look and asked for more feedback. Since that time there is a clear consensus of what the problems are.

A simple "We are working on it" would be nice.

Johan - Please - can you verify that someone internally is working on the problem??

THIS.
It would be very welcome if someone told us this is being worked on. It's a major bug that breaks support for all major mods and has done so since DW shipped.
New features in patches is good and all, and is something paradox is known for doing, but it would also be nice to know that this problem exists and that it is being examined.