Bigger nations must have more problems!

[StefanFan]

Removal of skill variance is not skill, and claiming that removal of skill variance "adds challenge" is nonsense.

I can WC. bbqftw can WC. Marco can WC. There are clear jumps in game performance between us (I'm the least skillful). A game mechanic that makes me succeed where Marco fails by random chance is nonsense.

I agree to disagree. The most skillful of the skillful should many times fail in the right circumstances. And in a game, where is the challenge to a math path where the right choice always reaches the goal? The challenge comes from the unforeseeable events that can make or break, not from following step 1, then step 2, then step 99 until you reach your goal, if you don't forget about some important steps.

Is there fun in routine? And pardon me, it doesn't mean you are skilled if you know to follow a path. The skilled people are the people that know to deal with the unforeseeable challenges AND know when to accept defeat, not the ones that do the right thing when the roads are laid.

 

[bbqftw]

That's only if you pissed off everyone.

It made a certain intuitive sense that people who are outraged or threatened would rent condotierri even if they can't formally coalition you.

Incidentally it was a lot harder to WC on hell condotierri patch. I didn't mind it.

Sure, it is still a game and many thing are unhistorical (well, the canons aren't in a ratio of 1 man for one canon. It was more 4-5 men per canon so it isn't as bad as it looks). So no, saying that ''other thing do not make senses make it stupid to want it more realisitic''. Especially that ''big empire'' have a way bigger impact on the game than the number of artillery or the decision mechanics.

But even from a game play perspective: big Empire are boring to play. At that point, the only challenge is ''how much land can I grab before the end of the game'', since your neighbour shouldn't be a menace anymore and you do not have any stability problem from the inside.

there's a big difference between leisurely chunking a rival every 15 years over half a century and calculating whether its fine to trucebreak them down in 5 years while managing coalition on the other side of the world.

Of course the former has no challenge if you are strongest gp but the latter you will see big outcome divergences between players.

 

[Jules Brunet]

there's a big difference between leisurely chunking a rival every 15 years over half a century and calculating whether its fine to trucebreak them down in 5 years while managing coalition on the other side of the world.

Of course the former has no challenge if you are strongest gp but the latter you will see big outcome divergences between players.

Well, that is a challenge that you put yourself in. I could also grab Albania and declare on the Ottoman from day one for the ''challenge''. It doesn't change the fact that big Empire have it too easy, be it from a gaming view or from a realistic view.

 

[bbqftw]

I agree to disagree. The most skillful of the skillful should many times fail in the right circumstances. And in a game, where is the challenge to a math path where the right choice always reaches the goal? The challenge comes from the unforeseeable events that can make or break, not from following step 1, then step 2, then step 99 until you reach your goal, if you don't forget about some important steps.

Is there fun in routine? And pardon me, it doesn't mean you are skilled if you know to follow a path. The skilled people are the people that know to deal with the unforeseeable challenges AND know when to accept defeat, not the ones that do the right thing when the roads are laid.

this is why informally the people I know rate WCs based on how much time they could have saved with better play. Or by the limitations imposed.

But I suspect you are the type that cannot distinguish path from patch of dirt, or else you would know this

 

[StefanFan]

this is why informally the people I know rate WCs based on how much time they could have saved with better play. Or by the limitations imposed.

But I suspect you are the type that cannot distinguish path from patch of dirt, or else you would know this

Beside the fact that I should maybe apologize because it seems I can't distinguish paths from patches, I am very very very sorry, I am pretty sure you know it all so at least the world is a better place to live in, your answer doesn't challenge what I said.

If you artificially build yourself limits, it's you, it's not the game, that's your business, I don't really mind or care. I was speaking about the game and game mechanics, I apologize if it was hard to understand.

EDIT: If we are at what do people do to limit their choices to make the game more challenging, well, I sometimes try to play with my eyes closed. Or with my hands tied, and I have to use the mouse and keyboard with my nose.

 

[Mr. G]

The end game is a bit too easy in SP, even at very hard.

 

[bbqftw]

Well, that is a challenge that you put yourself in. I could also grab Albania and declare on the Ottoman from day one for the ''challenge''. It doesn't change the fact that big Empire have it too easy, be it from a gaming view or from a realistic view.

1) all difficulty is self imposed in a single player game. Is picking VH artificial? What about not picking very easy?
2) it is not unusual that a game requires highest difficulty settings + additional handicaps to be challenging in SP. Total war franchise almost requires starting on VH/VH without mods, and even the notorious Xcom2 is beaten in few tries from a complete newcomer to the genre at anything less than the highest difficulty.

It's actually a testament to eu4 AI that people play on normal for thousands of hours.

 

[Jules Brunet]

1) all difficulty is self imposed in a single player game. Is picking VH artificial? What about not picking very easy?
2) it is not unusual that a game requires highest difficulty settings + additional handicaps to be challenging in SP. Total war franchise almost requires starting on VH/VH without mods, and even the notorious Xcom2 is beaten in few tries from a complete newcomer to the genre at anything less than the highest difficulty.

It's actually a testament to eu4 AI that people play on normal for thousands of hours.

Again, you miss the point. The problem shouldn't be from the outside but from the inside with big Empire. Sure, VH make the start and, by some point, the mid game harder. But once you are the First World power, it is more or less a question of ''do I eat this one now or later?''. Meanwhile, the real challenge of a big Empire should be from the inside, not from the outside. It should be something that we have at least an echo of in the game, be it like a proposed a Stability cost link to the number of province, an autonomy floor based on the distance from the capital or a global unrest scaling with the number of dev... Or even random event that could scrap the game of people that do not care about the stability of their country and only want to conquer as fast as possible.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Sure, it is still a game and many thing are unhistorical (well, the canons aren't in a ratio of 1 man for one canon. It was more 4-5 men per canon so it isn't as bad as it looks). So no, saying that ''other thing do not make senses make it stupid to want it more realisitic''. Especially that ''big empire'' have a way bigger impact on the game than the number of artillery or the decision mechanics.

But even from a game play perspective: big Empire are boring to play. At that point, the only challenge is ''how much land can I grab before the end of the game'', since your neighbour shouldn't be a menace anymore and you do not have any stability problem from the inside.

Actually no, there really needs to be justification for why one ahistorical thing needs to be fixed and not another ahistorical thing, especially if we're clearly accepting "some ahistorical things are fine". If you say that, you *must* have reasoning for what makes it "not fine", or the position is not coherent.

Completing pre-1600 WC is out of reach for most players, yet it has been done. Not a matter of "how much land can I get", but "how much and how quickly". There is real skill in that, even if it is "boring" by your subjective view. To this point, your only justification for wanting the change is still "I prefer to play something else", not actual coherent reasoning why the large nation mechanics in EU 4 need to be changed as opposed to other mechanics.

 

[bbqftw]

Have you played an OPM on VH to a WC capable position?

I say WC capable, since you often need to take ideas that will make it non trivial to trash your opponents as opposed to casual "let's just conquer Europe or Asia" play through. In fact the econ quality defensive nation will have much more hitting power than the adm influence exploration equivalent for a large portion of the game, and maybe all of it.

It is a very different game in pacing especially playing non rcc / non rev tags.

Playing mil stack then bemoaning your ability to freely win wars is like complaining that you cannot dive in the kids section of the pool..

 

[Xinkc]

Or witness the rage when Aggressive Expansion is increased in any way. There is a knee-jerk reaction whenever the game is made harder, even if it's a needed or rational change. For example, CK2's Conclave DLC was an excellent addition to that game, but it got hate because people didn't understand why their Council wouldn't rubber stamp themselves out of existence. Or in EU4 the sorely needed introduction of the 'Corruption' mechanic, no more player empires with 30/4/32 Tech

I've been floating around this community since a couple months after release and I'm confused. Most of the complaints about AE I've seen stem from Paradox historically flailing around between it being too low and ridiculously high. This was particularly bad when they flailed one way or another from one patch to the next.

As for corruption (that was a fight I was in), the major complaint was that it punishes you for receiving a punishment more so than it actually punishing tech tanking. Then there were comments on how it could have been the internal stability/conflict feature. Instead it's the boring number you should kind of deal with on the top bar.

As for Conclave and councils, have you seen the CK2 forums since it was introduced? It's frequently derided as making the game too easy since it neuters vassals. It took all of a week or so for that community to figure it out (both to applause and complaints).

Sure, it is still a game and many thing are unhistorical (well, the canons aren't in a ratio of 1 man for one canon. It was more 4-5 men per canon so it isn't as bad as it looks). So no, saying that ''other thing do not make senses make it stupid to want it more realisitic''. Especially that ''big empire'' have a way bigger impact on the game than the number of artillery or the decision mechanics.

But even from a game play perspective: big Empire are boring to play. At that point, the only challenge is ''how much land can I grab before the end of the game'', since your neighbour shouldn't be a menace anymore and you do not have any stability problem from the inside.

Boring is an inherently subjective concept. This applies to both sides of the argument. However, I do see the WC players and other hardcore blobbing players ask for challenges that can be countered if skilled or prescient enough. It's generally something they tend to ask for, if not in those words. Those that don't... often suggest changes that don't.

 

[Jules Brunet]

Actually no, there really needs to be justification for why one ahistorical thing needs to be fixed and not another ahistorical thing, especially if we're clearly accepting "some ahistorical things are fine". If you say that, you *must* have reasoning for what makes it "not fine", or the position is not coherent.

Completing pre-1600 WC is out of reach for most players, yet it has been done. Not a matter of "how much land can I get", but "how much and how quickly". There is real skill in that, even if it is "boring" by your subjective view. To this point, your only justification for wanting the change is still "I prefer to play something else", not actual coherent reasoning why the large nation mechanics in EU 4 need to be changed as opposed to other mechanics.

It demands skill, sure. But, well, I do not care about it. I want to see the game have mechanics that try to make it logical. Sure, as you did, there is ''small point'' that do not make senses (like, number of troops, artillery, casualty...) but those are small detail that do not change the game ''big picture'', while having big country just as stable than any OPM is plainly illogical. Be it in term of game play (where Bob Ross strategy gives more rewards than playing tall form all perspective) or in term of realism (where big Empire were their own worst enemy).

Have you played an OPM on VH to a WC capable position?

I say WC capable, since you often need to take ideas that will make it non trivial to trash your opponents as opposed to casual "let's just conquer Europe or Asia" play through.

It is a very different game in pacing especially playing non rcc / non rev tags.

Playing mil stack then bemoaning your ability to freely win wars is like complaining that you cannot dive in the kids section of the pool..

Well, no. I prefer a ''world'' that makes senses when I play and having Ulm WC isn't something that interest me. If you like that, good for you. But it isn't a world that is ''logical'' in a Grand strategy game based on history.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

I wish so much that people would talk more civilly on these threads. Let's not have the mods come in.

That aside, @WeissRaben is making a good argument and one which turns up frequently, though I think a lack of historical knowledge tends to make it come through badly. Huge empires in the timescale did not, by and large, collapse castastrophically due to rebels (which isn't to say that rebels weren't a problem - and there were some very successful ones, such as the Dutch). The Catalans rebelled over and over again, and never achieved independence, and after the Ming-Quing transition the borders of China were much as they were before. But there are struggles which were of tremendous importance in history which are not represented: for example, almost all states in the game's timespan had difficulty collecting a stable revenue for periods of time, and this contributed in a big way to the downfall of enormous empires - the Ming and the Spanish Empire being the most obvious. If you couldn't raise revenue, you risked your army turning on you, and your enemies coming for your blood. In EUIV your economy just grows and grows steadily as you expand. I'm not sure how you'd implement interesting tax reform mechanics, but we have interesting army professionalisation mechanics, so I'm guessing there's a way to do it. That's the kind of feature I'd like to see.

Also, for the record, I agree with @bbqftw that a lot of complainers-about-blobbing seem to spend a lot of time denigrating a skillset that's completely legitimate and has it's own deep interest. I'm very much against a 'git gud' mentality where it conflicts with 'enjoy the game in whatever way you like', but that has to go both ways.

I remember somewhere someone mentioning that inflation should increase the bigger amount of provinces you have. Which, I guess, it could make some kind of sense to a certain point.

Right now, it is possible, but only by a bad combination of increased corruption and taking too many loans for a country to get in a position where it becomes impossible to generate a positive revenue unless you disband big chunks of your army and fortresses (which I understand from the point of view of most exprienced players, you don't need any fortress at all). Then again, if that point is reached, most players might decide to terminate the campaign and do over than try to fix the messed up situation they got into.

 

[Ixal]

Well, no. I prefer a ''world'' that makes senses when I play and having Ulm WC isn't something that interest me. If you like that, good for you. But it isn't a world that is ''logical'' in a Grand strategy game based on history.

Especially as once you reach a critical mass a Ulm WC poses no challenge any more like any other WC game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The most skillful of the skillful should many times fail in the right circumstances.

Why?

And in a game, where is the challenge to a math path where the right choice always reaches the goal? The challenge comes from the unforeseeable events that can make or break, not from following step 1, then step 2, then step 99 until you reach your goal, if you don't forget about some important steps.

The challenge comes from properly identifying the variables in the situation (including planning for contingencies for what opposition might do) and executing properly. Chalking up bad things happening as "unforeseeable" is why bad players struggle to win on normal at games like FTL, while the best players have ~90% win rates on hard. That game has a ton of RNG, but very little of it comes w/o counterplay. The argument presented in this thread is that making the correct choices should just screw you over at random because reasons.

Not only is that not challenge, it is intellectually rude to assert that anti-skill is skill. The "know the right path" IS the skill-based aspect of the game. Basically nobody executes an optimal known path. Even the tip-top finish times made mistakes during their runs, and those were not from "unforeseeable events", but actual mistakes made that contributed to outcome variance, just less so than other players' more massive mistakes.

If you artificially build yourself limits, it's you, it's not the game, that's your business, I don't really mind or care. I was speaking about the game and game mechanics, I apologize if it was hard to understand.

Considering most people are falling well short of theoretical possible 1-tag times, I don't think it's appropriate to start point fingers about other players "building artificial limits" .

I want to see the game have mechanics that try to make it logical.

If so, the argument you make must itself be logical. Self-consistency is a requirement for logic.

Sure, as you did, there is ''small point'' that do not make senses (like, number of troops, artillery, casualty...) but those are small detail that do not change the game ''big picture'', while having big country just as stable than any OPM is plainly illogical.

Case in point. There's no coherent basis for calling the game's CORE PREMISE (one decision entity for 377 years) a "small point" while simultaneously claiming that one mechanic is somehow more "big picture". Lack of causality is also "plainly illogical", in fact more so than stable large empires. There are conditions, however implausible, that could in principle afford large empires to be stable long term. There are no known plausible explanations for breaking causality...physics doesn't work like that, at least to the best evidence we have.

So again: what is your criteria where some things that did not and could not have happened in history according to causality as we understand it are okay, but not other things you perceive as implausible? If you do not have this criteria, your position is *not* self-consistent and it *can not* be logical.

 

[Jules Brunet]

Case in point. There's no coherent basis for calling the game's CORE PREMISE (one decision entity for 377 years) a "small point" while simultaneously claiming that one mechanic is somehow more "big picture". Lack of causality is also "plainly illogical", in fact more so than stable large empires. There are conditions, however implausible, that could in principle afford large empires to be stable long term. There are no known plausible explanations for breaking causality...physics doesn't work like that, at least to the best evidence we have.

So again: what is your criteria where some things that did not and could not have happened in history according to causality as we understand it are okay, but not other things you perceive as implausible? If you do not have this criteria, your position is *not* self-consistent and it *can not* be logical.

What is my criteria? Decision are there more for flavor in much case, and even so it doesn't dictate the global strategy. They may help from one side or the other, but it doesn't push you into one way. So yes, it isn't as big of a point than having large blobbing empire that do not have any stability challenge. And even so, those point are for the majority there in the back, you may find them if you look for the detail but in regular time you do not see them, comparing to thousand dev Empire. Even if, let's say, an Empire could be stable in the long run, it would need some ''inside politics'' to be so. Not some ''loan festival to grab the neighbour as fast as possible'', or not some ''-2 stability for a century, with rebels everywhere that fails to win their war''.

Hell, I do not ask for the moon here. I simply want a link between the size and the stability. Be it 1% stability cost per province. Just to ''feel'' that it makes sense.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You didn't actually answer my question ^_^.

 

[Jules Brunet]

.

Well, sorry English isn't my first language and your question isn't that clear at first glances.

So, the answer is simple: the ''other things'' did happened. There was Big Empire in that time frame, be it Ming, Qing, Russia or Ottoman. And they did face problem that smaller country didn't have to face. Even before that: the Roman Empire didn't failed because of their neighbour, but because of intern problem. It was always the case and even today we have a proof for that with the US. But EU4 failed to have any mechanics to show it. Things like Global Unrest, Stability cost, Inflation, Autonomy that could be link to the size of the empire aren't affected by it.

 

[inreadible]

Ah, we are having this discussion again.

What's the point in making big empires crumble by adding arbitrary unrest that scales with development. It seems to me that people that don't want to conquer huge parts (or all) of the world want to prevent other players from doing so. I just don't see how changes like these would actually change your playthroughs. You'd conquer the same stuff that you would've conquered without the changes, only difference is that you would have smaller AI nations against you because the Ottomans and Ming died for having too much development-tied unrest.

 

[Viktor Vaughn]

This game was created and has since been balanced around the things like WC/O-F/TTM being possible. That is never going to change, the WC is a core feature of the game. If you don't like that, that is fine. There are some great mods out there, or maybe you can even mod the game yourself.

Some of these ideas aren't too bad in all honesty. I nearly always play a tallish game as I find blobbing to be tedious, so many of them would suit me just fine.

Some of these ideas belong in the modding forum where they stand some small chance of actually being worthwhile. You're simply spinning your wheels here, and from the look of it being intentionally antagonistic toward the core fan-base.

I've probably posted > 100 times on this already, but making such an argument without requesting a total game overhaul top to bottom is *necessarily* incoherent. It's self-inconsistent and therefore irrational.

These are both completely true. The game is designed around constant conquest and as such it rewards constant (but smart) conquest much more than it does playing tall. That's just a fact of the game. I'm not particularly keen on it, as I'd prefer more internal management that would trend players and AI both toward more realistic outcomes, but that's just not the way the game was designed, and it would require an overhaul that would need to be EU5 and not just a DLC in order to make it change meaningfully.

There are several mechanics that have multiple purposes, often leading to a juxtaposed presentation on what the game intends. AE is a way to stop people from doing too much conquest. Thus it is a blob-inhibitor. On the other hand, it provides another level of challenge that requires more skill and finesse to manage. Thus it makes blob play more interesting. States and territories penalise having too many provinces by reducing the possible output of provinces in territories, thus it is a blob-inhibitor. On the other hand it gives players more opportunities and strategies into which of their 100+ provinces they want to develop and have stated (and thus maximise their profits), rather than be limited in tall play by having only twenty provinces be stated and thus there is no strategy. So it makes blob play more interesting. I might be reading too much into the mechanics and creating arguments that don't exist, but either way I think the game has a problem of presenting itself one way and performing in another.