Blobfest 2.0

[Blutharsch121]

Has anyone else noticed how since the Cossacks came out, Europe has become a similiar blobfest to some of the earlier patches. Around reformation, there are basically only a couple of large nations left in continental Europe, while all of the smaller ones disappear. Austria has blobbed in every single one of my games, same with PLC if they manage to win against Ottomans, Muscovy if they don't, and France is eaten by England/GB and Burgundy (or Austria if they get the inheritance).

I rather liked the pre-Cossacks era, in which at least in my games Europe was filled with medium nations and there was actually some competition. Now it's just a few blobs and maybe HRE opms.

 

[rizla7]

nope, austria is tiny. HRE is still a collection of independent states... france still hasn't taken britanny/provence/etc... spain is just spain (they annexed naples/aragon). portugal took morocco... and GB is still dealing with minors there. norway took sweden, denmark still reigns... ottos are about to die to my horde (PLC/muscovy already have)... and ming is just ming...

 

[ZivDero]

Yeah, the Austria blob and the HRE blobs are annoying, they totally need to fix that.

 

[rizla7]

nope... austria getting butt handed to them by ottos, who have almost wiped hungary (as well as fighting a dozen other euro states).

btw, my blob is 4 times the size of ottos at this point, twice the size of ming... so... i'm complain about player blobbing...

 

[beckermt]

Yeah, the Austria blob and the HRE blobs are annoying, they totally need to fix that.

I think that the issue here is that the Emperor really needs to focus on keeping lots of princes active in the HRE, but the AI doesn't have a significant enough compulsion to do so, so you end up with expanding states taking the Unlawful Territory penalty and just moving on.

 

[Lord_P]

nope... austria getting butt handed to them by ottos, who have almost wiped hungary (as well as fighting a dozen other euro states).

btw, my blob is 4 times the size of ottos at this point, twice the size of ming... so... i'm complain about player blobbing...

Anecdotal evidence < no evidence at all.

 

[Chaingun]

Going to try to teach minor OPMs to survive longer overall, it's kind of too easy to run over them in 1.14

 

[Cymsdale]

My game had Papal State go on a blobbing rampage and it was glorious! (I was a new world nation so didn't have an affect on Europe.)

Also, when Europe was revealed to me, France was no longer a thing. Somehow Brittany ate it.

 

[aplsin]

Going to try to teach minor OPMs to survive longer overall, it's kind of too easy to run over them in 1.14

Awesome! What do you think about also maybe making the current HREmperor a tiny bit less determined in his quest to reduce the number of princes to zero?

 

[seriousgigi]

CW needs serious nerf

 

[rizla7]

CW needs serious nerf

PLC? i just trashed them as golden horde... ottos were my allies, but they barely even fought a single battle... just ran around in circles, attacked small stacks, but never the large ones before they began to blob...

PLC has always been trash, although they are forming before 1550, which is odd...

let me see, PLC army at 42k? ;o that's pathetically low. i'm at 120k + 60k from vassals... 180k = 4x PLC army size... twice ottos.

they have half the army that ottos does...

and none of them have quantity ideas yet either... or ever... fail nations... ;p

 

[TheChronoMaster]

PLC are kind of a strange bird in that they are really, really threatening to most of their starting neighbors, and can control the pace of Eastern Europe early, but any kind of stiff resistance will probably wreck them.

 

[rizla7]

PLC are kind of a strange bird in that they are really, really threatening to most of their starting neighbors

from a starting position, maybe slightly, but not really...

i agree with the fact they exert 'control' over that region, for several reasons:

- lithuania doesn't fabricate claims early, and when they do, poland doesn't DOW for them, so they just remain there, in 'control', but not expanding.
- nations close to them have no reason to attack PLC early, except hungary. euros have to deal with their own problems, and ottos too, muscovy has to deal with novgorod/hordes; it's the most efficient method of expansion for them.
- if they do DOW someone, it's their northern neighbours, or rarely bohemia/brandenburg if they don't ally them, but that puts them at odds with the HRE.
- they control access to the black sea/crimea region, so can confound fast expansion plans in that direction until you are large enough to defeat them.

overall though, their armies are wet toilet paper when compared to ottos or western neighbours (not sure if its their morale, army tradition, eastern group, ideas, or a combination), but ottos can swat double their stack size on a good day.

i guess it's when they ally sweden + novgorod? just DOW sweden/novgorod then to remove 1 member from that alliance, or wait for timing. i DOWd novgorod, and they broke their alliance mid-war. ;\

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The game has catered to blobs for over a year with stuff like 15 year truces and revanchism. After chain buffs to large nations, how exactly is the result different from anticipated? PI has systematically neutered most plausible methods of bringing down blobs short of ndnhe, which only apply to a couple nations.

 

[Umega]

Yes, I've been noticing this to, 200 years into the game and I see about 3 german powers in holy roman empire. The only regions I would like to see strong blobs would be manchuria and a collapsed china. India also always coalesces into 3 indian powers at the end of the game.

 

[seriousgigi]

PLC? i just trashed them as golden horde... ottos were my allies, but they barely even fought a single battle... just ran around in circles, attacked small stacks, but never the large ones before they began to blob...

PLC has always been trash, although they are forming before 1550, which is odd...

let me see, PLC army at 42k? ;o that's pathetically low. i'm at 120k + 60k from vassals... 180k = 4x PLC army size... twice ottos.

they have half the army that ottos does...

and none of them have quantity ideas yet either... or ever... fail nations... ;p

i meant ai, because ai plc wreck ottomans in my every game. you can fuck france with any nation too if we are talking about players...

 

[Earl Uhtred]

So far, with lucky nations off, there has been more blobbing than I remember beforehand - Lithuania would probably have dominated the whole of eastern Europe if I hadn't stopped them, and the HRE has seen the mass slaughter of independent princes, led by the predatory emperor Austria the electors somehow seem to love.

Not a single nation has freed itself through rebellion or as a result of peace terms in this time. I seem to remember this happening far more often before Cossacks.

 

[chris_dftba]

Yeah I have noticed a lot more blobs nowadays. I'm not altogether indifferent to it, as it's much more interesting fighting strong nations than small ones, and it simply becomes a problem that gets bigger and bigger. However, as Spain me and Burgundy beat up France before they could become a real problem. And after the Netherlands popped all the territory Burgundy captured basically disolved so most of western HRE is still a collection of minor states. Austria is bigger than usual, but they don't seem to want to attack western HRE. And they've got the Commonwealth whose a biiiig blob now. Denmark had taken most of Scandinavia until the Commonwealth beat on them, now they're fractured. The Ottomans were doing well until I beat the hell out of them, then the commonwealth, Persia, and more than a couple hordes beat them into almost nothing.

Basically, as one blob gets beaten the vultures come to pick at the bones until they're gone or burst into minor states.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

Yeah I have noticed a lot more blobs nowadays. I'm not altogether indifferent to it, as it's much more interesting fighting strong nations than small ones, and it simply becomes a problem that gets bigger and bigger.

On the other hand, once you've defeated their armies it's much easier to gut a large country and gain 20 provinces in the peace deal with few negative repercussions, especially with the new fort system. Taking out 20 OPMs is much harder diplomatically.

 

[yerm]

The AI appears to be playing better. The game rewards aggressive play and offensive conquest and the AI now does so regularly. If the AI conquering up a storm and trying to blob is a problem, why is it not a problem when any human can do so? Single player maps are starting to look a little bit closer to multiplayer, and that's great for having a bit of longevity on the difficulty side but obviously troubling if you're into some kind of historical realism roleplay.

They could probably "fix" it by adding a third difficulty option to set AI aggressiveness. Maybe a passive, cautious, normal, and warmonger level. What would be really unfortunate is if they change the AI's aggression without altering any of the underlying motivations that reward it, which would effectively be an AI nerf. If you don't want the AI to be constantly conquering and warmongering, then you either want a game that has harsher drawbacks for it in general or you just want a game with weak AI.