Biggest Change in Common Sense you haven't heard about yet!!!

[bbqftw]

really hoping Asians/Africans start at tech 3 now ~~~

 

[chrnno]

really hoping Asians/Africans start at tech 3 now ~~~

Oyo more advanced than all of Europe... Was going to make fun of that but now I want it.

 

[FleetingRain]

Please let China start at tech 4 and anyone else at tech 3.

 

[OldmansHQ]

Figured I would start a thread about this since there doesn't seem to be one.

Yesterday during DDRJake's stream of Common Sense it was shown that the 1st Idea Group has been moved from tech 4 Admin to tech 5 Admin

I'm not sure how big of a deal this really is, Jake off handedly mentioned it being about slowing down early colonization but he didn't sound 100% sure on that. Either way figure we should discuss this rather big change to the early game

Thanks for bringing this up, it's really intriguing. One has to wonder how the following Idea Group slots have been rearranged.

There were some changes to tech in general.

More info tomorrow.

AHA! THANK YOU! I don't know if I like it yet, but I appreciate you taking interest in this mechanic which in my humble opinion is the cause why ROTW isn't as fun as Europe. How will I fall asleep now ? I'm really looking forward to tomorrows DD, patch notes and of course the expansion itself.

 

[Freudia]

I think the ROTW is pretty well balanced, though I think westernizing should give more benefits and be a little harder. But, it's pretty well balanced and should not be easy to fight off the whiteys once they come knocking.

No, it pretty much should be easy to fight off the western Europeans. None of the actual historical reasons for overseas/rest-of-the-world conquests are represented. There's no disease in the Americas, there's no diplomatic conquest in India. Absent those things, it's very plausible that the rest of the world would be able to fight off western invasion.

Flip side of this discussion is that logistics aren't represented either, so you get weird things like western Europe shipping tens of thousands of soldiers overseas to militarily conquer things while leaving their homeland undefended.

 

[bbqftw]

In addition, under current Westernization mechanics, you're still playing catchup until around 1700-1750 even if you colony seized and westernized before 1540s. If you westernized later (around 1600), you'll catch up towards the end of the game, and even later westernizations, you will never catch up.

This is at least my experience with representative ROTW non-major starts like Nagaur. I'm open to the possibility I'm playing out things wrong.

I frankly would rate an HRE OPM as easier than practically any pick in Asia (besides Ming, I guess, since you're sitting on WC material once you westernize). Western techgroup is equivalent to being gifted 5000-6000 monarch points right at the start of the game. More if you factor the enormous snowball advantage you get from first idea group unlock.

 

[chrnno]

I frankly would rate an HRE OPM as easier than practically any pick in Asia (besides Ming, I guess, since you're sitting on WC material once you westernize). Western techgroup is equivalent to being gifted 5000-6000 monarch points right at the start of the game. More if you factor the enormous snowball advantage you get from first idea group unlock.

In what way easier? Up to horde tech group it is perfectly possible for a player to keep up in military tech meaning that for Asian countries after the the very early game you are basically unopposed due to AI not being capable of anywhere the same(Eastern already somehow falls way behind much less worse groups) until you hit Ottomans or Russia(which flops as often- if not more- as not) and since naval AI you are under no threat.

Really the more I play the more I think that besides native americans westernizing is only actually really worth it- as opposed in doing it out of laziness/for the hell of it- if you are going for WC, are Ming or if you want to make use of administrative efficiency. Not ever bothering with the first, second I will be getting around at some point and for the third I only ever play that far into timeline to finish achievement run(even then not guaranteed I won't grow bored and drop) so I figure that after I finish the handful achievements left I will only ever go with westernization with native americans and for them the tech given from reform makes it pretty different.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

No, it pretty much should be easy to fight off the western Europeans. None of the actual historical reasons for overseas/rest-of-the-world conquests are represented. There's no disease in the Americas, there's no diplomatic conquest in India. Absent those things, it's very plausible that the rest of the world would be able to fight off western invasion.

Flip side of this discussion is that logistics aren't represented either, so you get weird things like western Europe shipping tens of thousands of soldiers overseas to militarily conquer things while leaving their homeland undefended.

If nothing else, regional forcelimits would help... making armies take massive attrition and be unable to reinforce if there's too many in a given region, and hardcoding the AI to not even try.

 

[bbqftw]

In what way easier? Up to horde tech group it is perfectly possible for a player to keep up in military tech meaning that for Asian countries after the the very early game you are basically unopposed due to AI not being capable of anywhere the same(Eastern already somehow falls way behind much less worse groups) until you hit Ottomans or Russia(which flops as often- if not more- as not) and since naval AI you are under no threat.

it takes at least 20-30 years at least for the player to get sizable tech leads vs. AI (keep in mind that Indian majors have incredibly good starting kings - Malwa, Bahmanis, Bengal, Mewar all have 4/4/4s or better to my recollection). Longer if you're playing nations that are cursed with double bad rulers (see Nagaur where you really have to kill off your heir early for a good run). Keep in mind that you're sacrificing so much of the other techs with military focus that getting to ADM 4 is a painful slog. I typically initiate a colony seize westernization at 4/3/8 or something like that.

in that timespan, a European player can quickly get to a position do the exact same thing (beating up on people with great tech leads), and they can actually take ideas while doing so, whereas the Asian player is locked into exploration 2 (or fighting to the Goa core) until they can fast westernize. To go to serious extremes, Tuscany exodus strat can kill Mutapa, convert to Islam and eat half of Kilwa by ~1475 without serious tech issues. Agreed, Tuscany is pretty easy if played out conventionally, but its remarkable how much you can hamstring yourself and still get a playable start with potential for seriously gold-fueled explosive growth (10-12 basetax worth of gold and ivory is pretty good production value).

I do mention HRE OPMs for a reason. There are indeed challenging starts in Europe, about 10 of them, give or take a few.

 

[123robot]

No, it pretty much should be easy to fight off the western Europeans. None of the actual historical reasons for overseas/rest-of-the-world conquests are represented. There's no disease in the Americas, there's no diplomatic conquest in India. Absent those things, it's very plausible that the rest of the world would be able to fight off western invasion.

Flip side of this discussion is that logistics aren't represented either, so you get weird things like western Europe shipping tens of thousands of soldiers overseas to militarily conquer things while leaving their homeland undefended.

Since disease is not represented, but could not have been avoided in real life, we should assume the game represents American nations' strengths vs. Europeans post-disease impact. It should be impossible for American nations to survive without quick Westernization, and it should be difficult but certainly not impossible to fight off the Europeans as an African or Asian nation.

I agree with you about logistics, but as you know, this topic has been discussed frequently and PDS has probably already considered other solutions.

 

[Violent AI]

In addition, under current Westernization mechanics, you're still playing catchup until around 1700-1750 even if you colony seized and westernized before 1540s. If you westernized later (around 1600), you'll catch up towards the end of the game, and even later westernizations, you will never catch up.

This is at least my experience with representative ROTW non-major starts like Nagaur. I'm open to the possibility I'm playing out things wrong.

I frankly would rate an HRE OPM as easier than practically any pick in Asia (besides Ming, I guess, since you're sitting on WC material once you westernize). Western techgroup is equivalent to being gifted 5000-6000 monarch points right at the start of the game. More if you factor the enormous snowball advantage you get from first idea group unlock.

If you find catching up late game with westerns difficult, you should take the innovative idea group. After 1650, you get this event http://www.eu4wiki.com/Cultural_events#Libert.C3.A9.2C_Egalit.C3.A9.2C_Fraternit.C3.A9 which gives you 20% cheaper mil tech, 35% cheaper admin and 30% cheaper diplo for 20 years, not to mention the 5% cheaper from the innovative ideas itself. With discounts from fleshing out idea groups, possibly university, and neighbor bonus for being 4 techs behind, I've actually teched up 5 admin levels for 32, 62, 92, 122 and 152 admin points respectively. You can easily tech ahead in time, and take advantage of higher mil tech vs westerns that you may want to take down.

 

[bbqftw]

I've always considered innovative a really weak idea group (especially with the loss of knowledge transfer) but I will take another look.

If only innovative was DIP, so it didn't have to compete against ADM idea groups...