Comprehensive community-driven major problems list

[TheSleep3r]

The intention of this post is to create a comprehensive list of most major, maybe even gamebreaking bugs and balance problems, categorized by their importance. I don't want to create a wishlist, but rather a list of things that are broken - and should not be. This list would concern things that the developers have not yet confirmed they are looking at. If anyone is concerned with a major problem with the game that is not yet on the list, please share it in a reply, and I will add them. The point of this thread is to make sure the developers are most hopefully aware of most important issues with the game, that we ultimately like very much. I will not put it in the Suggestions forum because of the changing nature of this post.

This list is mainly concerned with game balance issues, although heavy bugs should jump on it as well.

GAMEBREAKING PROBLEMS

1. Pillage capital and concentrate development resulting in giga dev cities.
2. The American tribes mechanics are still broken, including development issues as well as tribes reforming into monarchies/republics in the 1500s.
3. The AI still does not handle the government capacity correctly, releasing nations here and there. A proper fix is much needed!
4. Colonization is not playing correctly this patch and definitely needs to be looked at. This is because of the problem with American tribes as well, because the tribes reforming and gaining all their tribal land results in a coastline covered in uncolonizable provinces.

MAJOR PROBLEMS

1. The institution system is balanced horribly, and is one of the major problems of the games that last until 1600s and later. It basically results in African tribes being on equal technological foot as European powers. Only the Printing Press institution is spreading at a correct speed; the pace of the rest of them is seriously concerning and due to change. Besides the too fast spread, some are reporting that a part of the problem is because of the AI, that prioritizes the technology over ideas and other monarch power sinks too much.
2. The mercenaries scaling is broken. Lategame mercenary armies are too big; they need to be capped, or balanced in a different way. The mercenary effect on Army Professionalism is also worth to be looked at, as a simple -5% change every mercenary company hired is off-balance when we hire a 5K or 100K company, or when we don't disband them after the end of the war.
3. Favors are unbalanced, despite the 5-year band-aid fix. They allow for way too much diplomatic forced action.
4. The AI.
   1. The AI's usage of mercenaries is broken, including total chaos in the decision making when to get them and when to recruit more regular troops, or getting mercenaries without considering Professionalism, leading to loss of it instead of slackening recruitment standards.
   2. The AI generally fails in regard to buildings (is incompetent economically), and has many bugs related to combat, as seen in post #9 (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ven-major-problems-list.1477366/post-27581985). Since most of the problems are easily moddable out of the existence, they might be not really difficult to be rid of, and thus Paradox notice on this issue is advised!

IMPORTANT BALANCE PROBLEMS

1. The conditional military access allows for seriously ahistorical gameplay. Getting rid of it is not necessary, but limiting it would be much appreciated; for example, it could only work for the same religion, so the Ottomans could not go through entire Europe to siege Paris. In this example, they would have to either ask for the access, or wage war against the HRE to get to France.
2. Burgundian Inheritance often results in France declaring war on Austria with all of her allies. This effectively always destroys France from that moment on. The conditions should be changed, so France can fight toe to toe.
3. Council of Trent is surprisingly working correctly, but the balance is horribly off. The tradeoff between the two sides (conciliatory and harsh) is the difference in price paid from the Curia Coffers; however, at that point of the game, the Coffers are flowing with money, making the choice utterly one-sided.
4. The Middle-East is very much not working correctly. Persia almost never forms, and thus the Ottoman Empire, after dealing with the Mamluks, never have a strong rival on the other side of their territory, leaving the fight to the Habsburgs and usually-declining Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The whole area of Persia seems to be extremely border-gorey, with no nation being able to unite the rest and form Persia. Lack of mission trees in the Middle-East may be related to this issue.
5. Centralization of states mechanic is currently not worth it in any situation as long as the Expand Administration mechanic exists.
6. After the rebalance of navies, galleys are effectively winning over heavy ships not only in interior seas, but in oceans as well. This 'rebalance' requires to be rebalanced again.

MINOR PROBLEMS

1. Many missions are outdated. It is not about the entire mission trees (although the power creep is real), it is about such missions as Spanish cultural conversion of Grenada, which is now broken (ineffective in cost to reward). There are many more examples, including:
   1. Missions on the Indian subcontinent often require high estate loyalty/influence, which was not adjusted to the estates rework.
2. Manchu forms much more rarely than before, and Prussia almost never forms. Mughals never form. Zaporozhie is a not very amusing joke, being nowhere to be seen ever, despite very unique mechanics it possesses.
3. The heir claim increase speed during a regency has been reported to be too high, resulting in new rulers never being lower than 'good claim'. This is not only bad for gameplay reasons, it also breaks things like Burgundian Inheritance.
4. Rivalry is working in a strange way. Why would a nation on the other side of a continent rival you?
5. Many areas of the interface need work on to be accessible to the player, like information how Revolution works, or what is the "Too high influence with the Holy Father" when excommunication is unavailable.
6. One does not gain trust over time with vassals or personal unions. Fixed in 1.31.4

MAJOR BUGS

1. The Aggresive Expansion mechanic has some problems, including the infamous Expand Empire casus belli bug resulting in huge AE. Fixed in 1.31.5

 

[Godd_Howard]

Have they said anything about favours? Will they just leave the 5 year cap and leave it as it is?

 

[gronak]

Would be nice if the AI would build forts in their capital province.

Also AI will invide their rival, take land, unrival then not want any more that way - leaving borders that goes against the Geneva convention. They could either desire more of that culture, or the region they hold provinces in. France eating partly into Iberia is where this problem is most apparent - would be fine if it was neat but is often disgusting looking and immersion breaking how they're just left like that for the rest of the game.

Another one is nations at the other side of the continent, who you have never interacted with, setting you as a rival. Why would Muscovy out of the blue rival Spain? Surely Spain would make for a good ally to fight against the Ottomans if Spain has naples? Rivals should be closer to each other imo. Either competing for trade, land or allied to their other rival.

 

[-Duiker-]

I am not sure if the devs are looking into it (the patchnotes for 1.31.4 do not mention it), but the AI cannot handle government capacity correctly at this stage. The AI accepts tags in peace deals only to return them (meaning the AI has no idea about spare GC capacity when they do peace deals). Burgundy releasing vassals when they chose to fall under a PU is just an example of this.

Edit: grammar

 

[-Duiker-]

Have they said anything about favours? Will they just leave the 5 year cap and leave it as it is?

Favours also accrue way too quickly. My Burgundy games have been completely transformed - I was facing at least one very hard war against France when I was barely able to get one ally to join and now I can call in Austria and Castile very early on as I simply curry favours.

 

[Me_]

I'd add random crashes to the major list.

 

[Vin55]

Ottomans and Ruler events being buged with one one one rulers and a max of 333.

 

[Livigy]

AI releasing vassals when it probably shouldn't be - e.g France releasing Gascony or Muscovy not becoming Russia due to releasing minors or not integrating Novgorod etc
Excommunication is basically unusable due to 'influence' and no its not 'opinion' I got screenshot examples in another thread.
I've noticed several AI rebellions that seem to never migrate so they can have a rebel stack on an isolated province indefinitely.
AI separatist rebels don't seem to give the AI 'separatism' maluses in their provinces when they siege down AI provinces. (not sure if this intentional or not)

 

[Tempscire]

Further AI related problems:

AI and Mercs:
(i) Attachment of mercs leads to AI armies being frozen (as in they do not follow the correct province evaluation algorithm unless there is a province with friend needs help, i.e. a battle is being fought),
(ii) The AI keeping mercenaries at peace time leads to potentially infinite recruit and disband chains of normal troops ( I reported the exact conditions for this after 1.30.1) which results in a loss of manpower and money,
(iii) Since 1.30.1 the AI uses a new system to evaluate the appropriate number of troops which leads to a very low amount of troops during peace time for small nations and some richer nations going over force limit considerably while at war. This sometimes leads to these nations having such high deficits while being at war that they start to disband regular troops while still hiring merc companies,
(iv) The AI does not take into account army professionalism when hiring mercs and will just waste it instead of slackening.

Combat AI:
(i) The AI does not take into account combat width in its strength evaluation algorithm. This leads to the AI overestimating large stacks,
(ii) The terrain evaluation for flat terrain (with an attacker penalty of 0) is bugged and is often 1.4 times lower than it should be, which leads to it not engaging on flat terrain even if it should,
(iii) The AI splitting logic does not put enough weight on combat width,
(iv) Problems with the AI region assignment. It seems to automatically evaluate to zero for AI regions with no active provinces which leads to the AI always trying to siege down even far away enemy provinces instead of preferring its homeland and waiting for an opportunity to attack,
(v) The AI strength evaluation algorithm measures unit distance in number of provinces instead of travel time, (therefore the AI does not take scorched earth into account),
(vi) The AI province evaluation measures distance as distance on the world map, instead it would be preferable if it would account for travel time. (As the travel time between two very close provinces can be very long, for example in the case of a blocked strait, which should dissuade the AI from going there but currently does not).

Diplomatic AI:
(i) The AI only diplovassalizes allies if it does not have allied attitude towards them. But it often switches to ally attitude even if it could diplovassalize the ally, which is suboptimal.
(ii) Vassal AI switches to friendly attitude towards its overlord under certain conditions even when disloyal, which leads to fewer independence wars.
(iii) The AI does not peace out non-cobelligerents with low war enthusiasm even if it would be beneficial. Instead it always desires money and war reps and only peaces out if it has the required 35% WS.

AI and Buildings:
(i) The AI is hardcoded to be less inclined to build manpower buildings if it has a high percentage of manpower. This is problematic as they would help to prepare the AI for coming wars which inevitably loom on the horizon.
(ii) The AI logic for building and upgrading forts depends on how threatened the AI considers certain provinces/forts to be. This is also problematic as while the provinces might not have been threatened in the past they could very well be in the future.
(iii) The AI generally fails to consider the limited availability of building slots.

These are only a small selection of the current AI problems.

 

[TheSleep3r]

Further AI related problems:

AI and Mercs:
(i) Attachment of mercs leads to AI armies being frozen (as in they do not follow the correct province evaluation algorithm unless there is a province with friend needs help, i.e. a battle is being fought),
(ii) The AI keeping mercenaries at peace time leads to potentially infinite recruit and disband chains of normal troops ( I reported the exact conditions for this after 1.30.1) which results in a loss of manpower and money,
(iii) Since 1.30.1 the AI uses a new system to evaluate the appropriate number of troops which leads to a very low amount of troops during peace time for small nations and some richer nations going over force limit considerably while at war. This sometimes leads to these nations having such high deficits while being at war that they start to disband regular troops while still hiring merc companies,
(iv) The AI does not take into account army professionalism when hiring mercs and will just waste it instead of slackening.

Combat AI:
(i) The AI does not take into account combat width in its strength evaluation algorithm. This leads to the AI overestimating large stacks,
(ii) The terrain evaluation for flat terrain (with an attacker penalty of 0) is bugged and is often 1.4 times lower than it should be, which leads to it not engaging on flat terrain even if it should,
(iii) The AI splitting logic does not put enough weight on combat width,
(iv) Problems with the AI region assignment. It seems to automatically evaluate to zero for AI regions with no active provinces which leads to the AI always trying to siege down even far away enemy provinces instead of preferring its homeland and waiting for an opportunity to attack,
(v) The AI strength evaluation algorithm measures unit distance in number of provinces instead of travel time, (therefore the AI does not take scorched earth into account),
(vi) The AI province evaluation measures distance as distance on the world map, instead it would be preferable if it would account for travel time. (As the travel time between two very close provinces can be very long, for example in the case of a blocked strait, which should dissuade the AI from going there but currently does not).

Diplomatic AI:
(i) The AI only diplovassalizes allies if it does not have allied attitude towards them. But it often switches to ally attitude even if it could diplovassalize the ally, which is suboptimal.
(ii) Vassal AI switches to friendly attitude towards its overlord under certain conditions even when disloyal, which leads to fewer independence wars.
(iii) The AI does not peace out non-cobelligerents with low war enthusiasm even if it would be beneficial. Instead it always desires money and war reps and only peaces out if it has the required 35% WS.

AI and Buildings:
(i) The AI is hardcoded to be less inclined to build manpower buildings if it has a high percentage of manpower. This is problematic as they would help to prepare the AI for coming wars which inevitably loom on the horizon.
(ii) The AI logic for building and upgrading forts depends on how threatened the AI considers certain provinces/forts to be. This is also problematic as while the provinces might not have been threatened in the past they could very well be in the future.
(iii) The AI generally fails to consider the limited availability of building slots.

These are only a small selection of the current AI problems.

Amazing input... Maybe I forgot to specify, that the original post's list is concerned with game balance issues. I will try to incorporate some of these though, great accuracy!

 

[-Duiker-]

AI releasing vassals when it probably shouldn't be - e.g France releasing Gascony or Muscovy not becoming Russia due to releasing minors or not integrating Novgorod etc

That's the issue of the AI not being able to handle GC in this patch. It seemed to work in 1.30.x so this change in behaviour is strange and makes you wonder what is causing the change in AI behaviour.

 

[-Duiker-]

Further AI related problems:

AI and Mercs:

(iv) Problems with the AI region assignment. It seems to automatically evaluate to zero for AI regions with no active provinces which leads to the AI always trying to siege down even far away enemy provinces instead of preferring its homeland and waiting for an opportunity to attack,

(iii) The AI does not peace out non-cobelligerents with low war enthusiasm even if it would be beneficial. Instead it always desires money and war reps and only peaces out if it has the required 35% WS.

AI and Buildings:

(ii) The AI logic for building and upgrading forts depends on how threatened the AI considers certain provinces/forts to be. This is also problematic as while the provinces might not have been threatened in the past they could very well be in the future.
(iii) The AI generally fails to consider the limited availability of building slots.

These are only a small selection of the current AI problems.

Just fixing these three would be amazing There is one mod out there that helps massively with fort upgrades (XORME) so fixing this should be possible to do for the devs

 

[Tempscire]

That's the issue of the AI not being able to handle GC in this patch. It seemed to work in 1.30.x so this change in behaviour is strange and makes you wonder what is causing the change in AI behaviour.

The behaviour was introduced on purpose in 1.31.1 for reference see the patch notes:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Patch_1.31.X#1.31.1 .
Why it was introduced exactly was not specified though.

 

[Tempscire]

Just fixing these three would be amazing There is one mod out there that helps massively with fort upgrades (XORME) so fixing this should be possible to do for the devs

All the quoted issues except of the region assignment one can definitely be severely improved with mods. The region assignment is only moddable to a very small extent unfortunately.

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

I don't want to create a wishlist, but rather a list of things that are broken - and should not be. ... The point of this thread is to make sure the developers are most hopefully aware of most important issues with the game, that we ultimately like very much. I will not put it in the Suggestions forum because of the changing nature of this post.

This list is mainly concerned with game balance issues, although heavy bugs should jump on it as well.

GAMEBREAKING PROBLEMS

• Pillage capital and concentrate development resulting in giga dev cities.

MAJOR PROBLEMS

• Favors are unbalanced, despite the 5-year band-aid fix. They allow for way too much diplomatic forced action.

For the rest of the problems, why it's a problem and what the fix should look like are obvious. The two I've quoted above are more controversial in what the solution should look like. They are new, paid features so they can't just be removed. Given this thread isn't to be in the Suggestions forum, this is not the thread to discuss solution ideas. What does need discussion is what the details of the problem are which the solution (whenever devs get to work on it) needs to address.

Without this discussion, it's unclear whether 'giga dev cities' is a problem because it shakes up the years-old meta or because it's too ahistoric in a game that's intended to be about acting out ahistoric fantasies. What sorts of province dev numbers at what game year feel broken? What level of power fantasy do we want to allow?

Likewise, what do we want the favour system to feel like for it to be balanced? What should it be like for a powerful nation to have favours on smaller nations? What about the vice versa?

 

[-Duiker-]

The behaviour was introduced on purpose in 1.31.1 for reference see the patch notes:
https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Patch_1.31.X#1.31.1 .
Why it was introduced exactly was not specified though.

I did not know that, thanks for pointing it out. The problem is that it means both Burgundy and Muscovy do very strange things now. In one game (1.31.3) Muscovy had Novgorod as a vassal yet never managed to form Russia as they never integrated them. Burgundy runs into problems with the inheritance and (I am guessing here) HRE entry as they lose kingdom status and that means lost GC).

 

[TheSleep3r]

For the rest of the problems, why it's a problem and what the fix should look like are obvious. The two I've quoted above are more controversial in what the solution should look like. They are new, paid features so they can't just be removed. Given this thread isn't to be in the Suggestions forum, this is not the thread to discuss solution ideas. What does need discussion is what the details of the problem are which the solution (whenever devs get to work on it) needs to address.

Without this discussion, it's unclear whether 'giga dev cities' is a problem because it shakes up the years-old meta or because it's too ahistoric in a game that's intended to be about acting out ahistoric fantasies. What sorts of province dev numbers at what game year feel broken? What level of power fantasy do we want to allow?

Likewise, what do we want the favour system to feel like for it to be balanced? What should it be like for a powerful nation to have favours on smaller nations? What about the vice versa?

I would argue that when designing/balancing a feature, its range of possibilities should be roughly the same as the most limited/the largest examples in history, with the range slightly increased, to allow for more ahistorical gameplay. It should still be believable though, and believable is the word that is likely to be the best out there.

To answer the question, 'giga dev cities' are a problem because they clearly represent million-inhabitant cities. The development is not a value that is completely abstract and non-relative to each other, when comparing provinces; simply looking at some events and decisions and comparing them to what happened in history is enough to be aware of this. Thus, 70 dev or so at the end of the game period (1821) should be considered a very well-developed province.

The second case is similar in nature. 'Balanced' means 'allowing what happened in real life and maybe a little more' - currently in the game, any small nation can force its stronger allies to fight for them or give them money or soldiers every five years. This did not happen in history (not considering personal unions, which have their own representation).

 

[grotaclas]

CONFIRMED MAJOR BUGS

1. Event rulers (including Ottoman heirs) have broken stats (they are too low).
2. There are reports of problems with separatism, both in player playthrough, and in the hands of the AI.

These two are supposed to be fixed. The event rulers are fixed in the 1.31.4 beta and the separatism was fixed in 1.31.2 according to the patchnotes.

 

[Vin55]

One does not gain trust over time with vasalls or pus, witch makes them less loyal.

 

[Victoria 3 finally]

The second case is similar in nature. 'Balanced' means 'allowing what happened in real life and maybe a little more' - currently in the game, any small nation can force its stronger allies to fight for them or give them money or soldiers every five years. This did not happen in history (not considering personal unions, which have their own representation).

This statement is not only wrong in a gameplay sense since allies can refuse to give things to you but also on a history context. Even states as small as Albania had their allies give them manpower and money while fighting against the Ottomans.