Constructive criticism of the Monarch points mechanic

[marmot01]

Hi guys. I'll try to keep this as short and readable as would still make it possible to understand.

First declaration - I'm mostly concerned with the (pseudo-)historical accuracy of events which are probable to happen in an EUIV campaign. I believe this is the main difference between my starting point and the starting point for the Paradox team at the time the monarch points mechanic was conceived. If I could travel in time and space back to the studio's office at the moment when the idea was announced I would have probably protested and rolled on the floor. But I would have probably just caused a great surprise and shock with my teleportation and would have eventually been thrown out.

- My first argument against the current Monarch points mechanic I stated back when this mechanic was announced, in a comment in the EU facebook page. In a dev diary it is claimed that Monarch points represent the great amount of influence the monarch's personality had on a state's strength in that period of history.

We do feel that the person of the monarch was in many aspects the key to the period for Europa Universalis IV, such as Fredrick the Great, Queen Elizabeth of England or Louis XIV of France.

In fact there is little truth in this statement. It is rather true only for the latter centuries of the game, and only for some states, while in others the trend was the opposite. Some were more centralized and absolutist, some less so, and this varied with the times. Also, let's not forget that not all states were monarchies.

The resolution of this part of the mess I could offer - attach monarch points bonuses to government types. This would reflect how institutions were what really determined a state apparatus' effectiveness, not the "personality" of someone who usually believed he was endowed by God with the right to do as he pleases with all others. The currently offered mechanic implies pseudohistorical (in the bad sense) conclusions and suggests pseudohistorical modes of action to the player.​

- Second Argument. If monarchs are so important, why on earth should they be randomly generated without the player having the option to switch to historical monarchs who ascend and leave the throne at preset dates? This mechanic completely contradicts the stated importance of monarchs. The usual argument I meet is that it's more random and more fun this way, usually accompanied (explicitly or implicitly) by the classification that I'm one of those square history buffs who should shut up because they "don't understand the game". First, it's not me, but Johan, as you can see up there, who is making the case for Monarch points with a "key to the period" argument. Not the argument I would have used in that case, as I already said. Second, as much as some people would prefer to skip the history, EU is a game about history. The map is of our world, not of Middle Earth, the states are the real states, the province names are mostly correct, they are not the Game of Thrones polities. So as long as this is apparently not a fantasy game, I will expect it to be historically accurate. For me at least, and I am sure for many more as well, a great part of the enjoyment of that game comes from the aspects in which it is historically accurate. Because when we are state A and kick our neighbor's ass, it brings us a different kind of satisfaction than kicking Sauron's or some other fantasy entity's ass. If I wanted to be a fantasy monarch who wages war on other fantasy states with fantasy borders, I would be playing the GoT mod for CKII for example

- Third argument. Monarch points are overly abstracted as a resource in the game. In the EU series' progression we've seen some mechanics become less abstracted (trade, diplomacy) and some become more abstracted (monarch abilities, the wrapping together of spies and diplomats). I claim that monarch points are currently so abstracted that they lead to absurd situations, not only from the point of historical accuracy (which I believe is itself an oxymoron, and I'm ready to argue about that separately), but from the point of common sense. Example: why would concluding many royal marriages slow down my shipbuilders coming up with new ship designs? Anyone? Because that's what we have right now. Dear Paradox, it's not the monarch or his close friends at the court who designed the new ships, much less the Sultan or the Chinese emperor. No. You've got it wrong - it was in fact the people at the shipyards who were building the things, and the people sailing in them!

- Fourth argument. Monarch points mess with technology. Probably the least historically accurate step taken by Paradox with evolving the game mechanics was linking technological progress to "the person of the monarch". In fact the relationship between monarchs and technological innovation was much more accurately represented in EU3 and EU2. That was exactly how it used to work: the crown gave money and legal authorization, the entrepreneurs returned with some result - "Hey we discovered these new islands with the expedition that you paid for" or "We found out if you point the cannon upwards and put this amount of gunpowder it hits things at this distance. - Wow, great job, now I'll show those Ottomans what's what!". The time monarchs began to really get involved with technology was when they made the link between technological progress and political power. That's why the Royal Society was founded in 1662, chartered by Charles II and there are many more such examples across Europe. To my mind technological progress should work without direct player involvement, in the same way that army and navy tradition is accumulated - the more you use a muscle, the stronger it gets. So the more soldiers you build and the more wars you wage, the faster you should progress. But most importantly - you do not know in advance what you are about to discover! It's not a discovery if you know in advance, is it? This is where I would totally agree to having more randomness - in the properties of what's about to be discovered next. But in my opinion the most absurd aspect of Monarch points being used for technology is that, contrary to how it worked in previous games, you accumulate the points first, and only spend them post-factum. So you already know what you will discover, only you have to make the gameplay choice to discover it now. Remember, the points are already there, you have "discovered" it! But wait! You decide to pacify a rebellious province and - suddenly! - you have "forgotten" the last details of the next artillery model blueprint! Hilarious, isn't it.

Please, Paradox, reconsider this mechanic, if possible even as soon as with a patch to EUIV. The more I think about it the more painful it gets.

I reinstate that this is a constructive criticism thread, and constructive criticism means considering and arranging your thoughts first, and then writing. I ask in advance the moderators to delete all flaming and ranting posts in this thread.

One of my favourite tracks when playing England, seemed somewhat related to the game's name:
[video=youtube;I8n2yPYLWDQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8n2yPYLWDQ[/video]

 

[justin6477]

I think the term "monarch point" is ill-conceived and doesn't really convey the actual meaning at hand. It's more "administration points", but since admin is a stat we can't really call it that, now can we? It's why we can accumulate them, they represent infrastructure and bureaucracy of a nation that is developed over time; and when you spend them, it's the allocation of that bureaucracy to a specific focus. So it's not just your king, but his court minus the chief advisers.

So far, I do enjoy MP for tech, ideas, and cores. The core elements of it I find to be sound. It's the petty applications that leave me irritated. Instead of bleeding Diplo points because I've got too many diplomatic agreements, why not just give me a ceiling? Same with Mil points and leaders. The two worst offenders are diplo points for agreements (I'm already going to pay in coring costs, and possibly major OE for a landslide deal, why do I need to bleed more?), and admin points as the exclusive way of boosting stability outside of random events. Leaders and buildings costing MP are also wildly bothersome. I mean, if I have the administrative sophistication to build an armory, why do I need to invest more than I already invest in the tech to physically build the building or hire the guy?

Republics though.... that's a whole other can of worms.

 

[marmot01]

I think the term "monarch point" is ill-conceived and doesn't really convey the actual meaning at hand. It's more "administration points", but since admin is a stat we can't really call it that, now can we? It's why we can accumulate them, they represent infrastructure and bureaucracy of a nation that is developed over time; and when you spend them, it's the allocation of that bureaucracy to a specific focus. So it's not just your king, but his court minus the chief advisers.

So far, I do enjoy MP for tech, ideas, and cores. The core elements of it I find to be sound. It's the petty applications that leave me irritated. Instead of bleeding Diplo points because I've got too many diplomatic agreements, why not just give me a ceiling? Same with Mil points and leaders. The two worst offenders are diplo points for agreements (I'm already going to pay in coring costs, and possibly major OE for a landslide deal, why do I need to bleed more?), and admin points as the exclusive way of boosting stability outside of random events. Leaders and buildings costing MP are also wildly bothersome. I mean, if I have the administrative sophistication to build an armory, why do I need to invest more than I already invest in the tech to physically build the building or hire the guy?

Republics though.... that's a whole other can of worms.

Whether they represent "infrastructure and bureaucracy" or "the personality of the monarch", because it can't be both at the same time, the issues we list with them remain. Remember, no new ships this year - you have too many royal marriages

On second thought if it's infrastructure and bureaucracy that they represent, they should be very low at the start, still at the border of the Late middle ages, and possibly improve over time. But no, it can't be that, because we get a new set of monarch points with each next randomly generated monarch.

The fact that we are having difficulties figuring out what they represent only shows how overly abstracted they are. Personally, I'm not sure they represent anything. Just random numbers between 0 and 5 assigned at a random number of game years. That's what I'm certain they are. Apart from that they could represent anything, or nothing. And that's the main problem maybe.

 

[grommile]

So far, I do enjoy MP for tech, ideas, and cores. The core elements of it I find to be sound. It's the petty applications that leave me irritated. Instead of bleeding Diplo points because I've got too many diplomatic agreements, why not just give me a ceiling?

Because in this particular case a soft ceiling with a cost for exceeding it makes for more interesting choices than a hard ceiling.

Same with Mil points and leaders. The two worst offenders are diplo points for agreements (I'm already going to pay in coring costs, and possibly major OE for a landslide deal, why do I need to bleed more?),

So that there's a real immediate cost to that huge land-grab even if the first thing you do is release a vassal on half of it.

and admin points as the exclusive way of boosting stability outside of random events.

I don't see why that's a problem, but fair enough.

Leaders and buildings costing MP are also wildly bothersome. I mean, if I have the administrative sophistication to build an armory, why do I need to invest more than I already invest in the tech to physically build the building or hire the guy?

Have you seen how much gold you can get in the late game? Even fantastically wealthy blobs were not uniformly developed. Heck, even today fantastically wealthy blobs are not uniformly developed. (Compare the Dakotas to, say, New York.)

 

[lordboy54]

You know that EU4 isn't supposed to stimulate this time, but perform a semi-emulation at best. This is a videogame first, historical lesson second. The game mechanics aren't supposed to directly, in themselves, stimulate how it was in the real world. But instead try to make it so that the resultant effect on gameplay by these mechanics, make the world behave in a semi-accurate way. This, with the monarch points, actually works quite well. For an example you could take Russia. Russia historically managed to expand very far and have a vast empire towards the more recent history, however it did not manage to administrate and centralize their vast state, and technology-wise were often far behind and handicapped. In EU3 this was not really as big as a factor, as you could just spend money to fix this, both administrative, gov, military, and stability of the state. In EU4 where you have to spend points to both core, prevent revolts, improve stability, etc, which means, if you are a rapidly expanding empire like Russia, you will have less points to spend on research and other development of the realm. Which makes it more likely that the russian state will follow the historical path of being a bit behind, yet quite vast and powerful. Luckily with the monarch system these things aren't exclusive to each other, but it does make it harder to sustain both.


If you read history, you'd see that over and over again, many glorious and great empires have faltered due to incompetence of their rulers. This cannot be directly stimulated in the game, since then you'd more or less have to force the player to make moronic decisions, and it is really incompatible with the game itself. The monarch points provide a decent substitute to the failings of your ruler, as it can, will, does give you both possibly huge benefits, or huge penalties(0,0,0, sucks lol).


You need to realize the game aspect of it, and how the game is set up is just to do a fun and as good as it is practical, emulation, of the resultant effects of different factors in these times. And whilst it's not perfect, it does work very well, and manages to emulate the resultant politics of the time with decent(if relatively speaking, then quite incredible, compared to other games in historical periods) accuracy.

 

[Hubris]

My biggest issue with the MP system is the tying of monarch points to infrastructure development. As things stand if I develop my infrastructure my technology advancement collapses. This is totally counterintuitive; infrastructure is supposed to ADVANCE technological development not the other way around. There should be some bonus to tech from infrastructure to encourage and reward the investment.

 

[marmot01]

You know that EU4 isn't supposed to stimulate this time, but perform a semi-emulation at best. This is a videogame first, historical lesson second. The game mechanics aren't supposed to directly, in themselves, stimulate how it was in the real world. But instead try to make it so that the resultant effect on gameplay by these mechanics, make the world behave in a semi-accurate way. This, with the monarch points, actually works quite well. For an example you could take Russia. Russia historically managed to expand very far and have a vast empire towards the more recent history, however it did not manage to administrate and centralize their vast state, and technology-wise were often far behind and handicapped. In EU3 this was not really as big as a factor, as you could just spend money to fix this, both administrative, gov, military, and stability of the state. In EU4 where you have to spend points to both core, prevent revolts, improve stability, etc, which means, if you are a rapidly expanding empire like Russia, you will have less points to spend on research and other development of the realm. Which makes it more likely that the russian state will follow the historical path of being a bit behind, yet quite vast and powerful. Luckily with the monarch system these things aren't exclusive to each other, but it does make it harder to sustain both.

I'm sure you mean "simulate" I'm far from the thought history can be simulated, mostly but not exclusively because people are a self-educating system - they don't repeat mistakes they've already made (which always leads them to discovering new mistakes) so history is never 100% repeated. The best I am hoping for with EUIV is a good simulation of the mechanisms that people used to preform their mistakes so to speak.

If you read history, you'd see that over and over again, many glorious and great empires have faltered due to incompetence of their rulers. This cannot be directly stimulated in the game, since then you'd more or less have to force the player to make moronic decisions, and it is really incompatible with the game itself. The monarch points provide a decent substitute to the failings of your ruler, as it can, will, does give you both possibly huge benefits, or huge penalties(0,0,0, sucks lol).

Since I do read history (mildly put ), I can assure you it's impossible to attribute a historical event to just one cause, like empires faltering due to incompetence of their rulers. And this principle applies for all history - wether it be the history of states, a person, or a bond market. Today's situation (the state of a system at a given moment) can never be explained with only one factor (unless the system is extremely simple - like if we were following the history of the life of a one-cell organism, and even there it would be more complicated), especially if the system is as complex as miniature state. If we take a middle sized state - the possible explanations of an event become an astronomical number, and for an empire, they are incalculable.

That's the exact reason history isn't a science - events can't be simulated in perfect conditions, in the way they can be simulated in sciences But I'm not arguing that EUIV should attempt to do this, I know it's impossible. My argument is different.

You need to realize the game aspect of it, and how the game is set up is just to do a fun and as good as it is practical, emulation, of the resultant effects of different factors in these times. And whilst it's not perfect, it does work very well, and manages to emulate the resultant politics of the time with decent(if relatively speaking, then quite incredible, compared to other games in historical periods) accuracy.

I realize the game aspect of it, but as I stated - the best I am hoping for is a good simulation of the mechanisms that people used to preform their mistakes. There's a nice name for a game genre - "a simulation of the mechanisms that people used to preform their mistakes".

My biggest issue with the MP system is the tying of monarch points to infrastructure development. As things stand if I develop my infrastructure my technology advancement collapses. This is totally counterintuitive; infrastructure is supposed to ADVANCE technological development not the other way around. There should be some bonus to tech from infrastructure to encourage and reward the investment.

I agree with your point. I hadn't thought about that particular aspect of MP lack of realism.

 

[justin6477]

Because in this particular case a soft ceiling with a cost for exceeding it makes for more interesting choices than a hard ceiling.

I agree, and would be fine with it if it weren't for the other MP drains. Besides the stab issue, none of these on their own is all that bad. It's all of them together I object to.

So that there's a real immediate cost to that huge land-grab even if the first thing you do is release a vassal on half of it.

Does releasing a vassal get rid of Aggressive Expansion? Because if not, it doesn't really solve your long term issues. Also vassalization/integration is pretty broken and needs some rebalancing. The old rules about only gaining cores on your culture should probably still apply.

I don't see why that's a problem, but fair enough.

Because one doesn't always have admin points? Or rather, one doesn't always regain admin points at anywhere near an acceptable level. What I'd like is something simple, like every 10 years you get +1. Or 15, I don't really care. Just something to know that if you sit back and focus on other internal issues (OE for example), that the problem will probably go away in X many months/years/whatever. I have the same issue with inflation reduction; as Poland I got hit with the -1 stab or 3% inflation event twice. Took the inflation the first time, took the stab hit the 2nd time because you get an adviser out of it. Problem is my income was below 1g a month, and my savings was maybe 40 ducats. Not asking for anything crazy, just that the country improve itself little by little (barring other unfortunate decisions or events) over time.

Have you seen how much gold you can get in the late game? Even fantastically wealthy blobs were not uniformly developed. Heck, even today fantastically wealthy blobs are not uniformly developed. (Compare the Dakotas to, say, New York.)

Actually, no. I haven't gotten to late-game yet. Around the late 1600s things get less interesting for me, although I suppose I should try a later starting date. That said, this sounds like it could be better balanced with increased costs.

 

[unmerged(2833)]

- Fourth argument. Monarch points mess with technology. Probably the least historically accurate step taken by Paradox with evolving the game mechanics was linking technological progress to "the person of the monarch".

The funny thing is that it is something that was there in the past - in the orginal EU boardgame, monarchs (historical, of course, as the boardgame was much less freeform than EU series) were very important to technological progress.

I wonder if there was some connection there in PDS.

 

[Fjoelsvider]

you make excellent points, and i mostly agree with all of them and have nothing original to add to them


but i gotta ask one thing, to anyone who it might affect:

did you really ever "run out of points" and had something go horribly wrong for that reason?


because even though i get shitty monarchs just as much s everyone else, i might fall behind a tech level or two on occasion, but almost everytime its because of my own failure to plan ahead, and its is by no means permanent.

yes sometimes i would like to build thousands worth of ducats and lakc the corresponding points, that might be annoying, but its not a "problem" per se is it?

 

[Red_warning]

It would perhaps make more sense to hire ministers instead of advisers that contribute the majority of the points (2/3?) and make it so that the head of state contribute a smaller portion.

 

[marmot01]

you make excellent points, and i mostly agree with all of them and have nothing original to add to them


but i gotta ask one thing, to anyone who it might affect:

did you really ever "run out of points" and had something go horribly wrong for that reason?


because even though i get shitty monarchs just as much s everyone else, i might fall behind a tech level or two on occasion, but almost everytime its because of my own failure to plan ahead, and its is by no means permanent.

yes sometimes i would like to build thousands worth of ducats and lakc the corresponding points, that might be annoying, but its not a "problem" per se is it?

Thanks! To your question -- a -1 stability random event is poised to strike just when you're near discovering the next tech, or worse - you have just discovered it. This, combined with your overextension + some other modifiers leads to mass revolts in your country, and to add to that, you are at the same time at war. How about this scenario

It would perhaps make more sense to hire ministers instead of advisers that contribute the majority of the points (2/3?) and make it so that the head of state contribute a smaller portion.

Yeah, I'm seriously planning to mod the government types to give you the majority of points (since we don't have ministers mechanic), along with other things I plan to mod.

 

[Fjoelsvider]

Thanks! To your question -- a -1 stability random event is poised to strike just when you're near discovering the next tech, or worse - you have just discovered it. This, combined with your overextension + some other modifiers leads to mass revolts in your country, and to add to that, you are at the same time at war. How about this scenario

i had that happen to me too. i admit its frustrating. and as i said i do agree it doesnt make much sense, no argument there.

i just mean to point out its not really a balance issue, because even in that situation you can quite easily blame yourself for not having any troops held back for emergency rebel whacking. for going to war in a situation where you _know_ you couldnt deal with an unfortunate series of events.

those were clearly decisions the player made, that i made. and to be perfectly fair: its not that hard to deal with anyway. rebels even occupying a province or two is no big deal. hell i even got save by a 24k rebel stack once that spanned in a hostile siege province and wiped out a 10k stack.


what i freely admit though is that the randomness of these things over emphasizes cautious play. however it also allows for high risk high reward(do i jump on this opportunity and risk negative things i might not be able to handle, or do i play for keeps and maybe miss the opportunity)...



anyway as i said i just tried to point out, i dont think issues with the monarch point system are balance issues. that doesnt mean those issues arent valid, on the contrary, i think they could use some ... lets call it polishing.
but it is essentially flavour, and maybe if everybody agreed on that the discussion would be more productive, maybe... (this thread so far is, so thats good, all previous attempts have not been unfortunately)

 

[marmot01]

i had that happen to me too. i admit its frustrating. and as i said i do agree it doesnt make much sense, no argument there.

Sure, I understand we are of the same opinion, just offered some "real"-world example

i just mean to point out its not really a balance issue, because even in that situation you can quite easily blame yourself for not having any troops held back for emergency rebel whacking. for going to war in a situation where you _know_ you couldnt deal with an unfortunate series of events.

Oh, that's known as the "Narrative fallacy" - when history goes bad, a multitude of explanations always emerges on how it could have been avoided. It's a nice aspect of EUIV that the player comes to such thoughts in the game, just as people do in real life I tend to battle such unfortunate chains of events by for example keeping a reserve of about 200 gold (I refuse to call them "ducats" even if "gold" is also inaccurate once government bonds raise in importance. Really, Paradox, "War taxes"?! but that's a different rant). But while I can come to a situation where I can afford to accumulate gold to have for a rainy day, the rate at which I accumulate administrative points is much slower with no chance to improve throughout the whole game.

what i freely admit though is that the randomness of these things over emphasizes cautious play. however it also allows for high risk high reward(do i jump on this opportunity and risk negative things i might not be able to handle, or do i play for keeps and maybe miss the opportunity)...

From my observation (and I think from devdiaries) I've seen that Paradox has been moving through an arc from "much scripting, little pure randomness" to "less scripted events, improved AI, more "controlled randomness" in their games. While this is a good direction to be moving in, I still feel that EUIV features too much randomness, and couldn't go without some more scripting, at least until the AI improves even further. That's not to say anything against the AI right now - the diplomacy is the best I've seen in a computer game, without doubt.

anyway as i said i just tried to point out, i dont think issues with the monarch point system are balance issues. that doesnt mean those issues arent valid, on the contrary, i think they could use some ... lets call it polishing.
but it is essentially flavour, and maybe if everybody agreed on that the discussion would be more productive, maybe... (this thread so far is, so thats good, all previous attempts have not been unfortunately)

It's difficult to define what would be a balance issue, so I'm not calling them a balance issue, just that they are a too important element currently to be so random. In fact, from game rules perspective - these are three random numbers between 0 and 5 assigned and reassigned at random times. That's just too much randomness for my taste.

 

[Moltke]

I just honestly don't like the concept of monarch points. For one, as said not all playable countries are monarchies. And for another (also said) it's just not an accurate representation of the period.

It removes something special from the EU series when you are basically meta gaming, trying to save up these magic points instead of actively and constantly improving your country. I don't feel like I'm playing a renaissance country in the slightlest, which is tragic because I always thought immersion was the key to my enjoyment of the Europa Universalis series of games.

 

[marmot01]

I just honestly don't like the concept of monarch points. For one, as said not all playable countries are monarchies. And for another (also said) it's just not an accurate representation of the period.

It takes something special from the EU games when you are basically meta gaming, trying to save up these magic points instead of actively and constantly improving your country. I don't feel like I'm playing a renaissance country in the slightlest, which is tragic because I always thought immersion was the key to my enjoyment of the Europa Universalis series of games.

I couldn't agree more, especially with the final sentence I can't resist the temptation for another counter-example from real life history - from around the 17th century onwards, the Ottoman sultans almost completely ceased to meddle in state affairs. Most if not all the work was getting done by the vezier. How does this reconcile with monarch points?! There are many other period-specific things that could have been put into the game (like government issued bonds used to finance wars, the very reason bonds were invented in Italy in the 15th century, instead of the outdated war taxes that use revolt risk as a stick against the player)

 

[lordboy54]

Since I do read history (mildly put ), I can assure you it's impossible to attribute a historical event to just one cause, like empires faltering due to incompetence of their rulers. And this principle applies for all history - wether it be the history of states, a person, or a bond market. Today's situation (the state of a system at a given moment) can never be explained with only one factor (unless the system is extremely simple - like if we were following the history of the life of a one-cell organism, and even there it would be more complicated), especially if the system is as complex as miniature state. If we take a middle sized state - the possible explanations of an event become an astronomical number, and for an empire, they are incalculable.

No need to be so pedantic. Of course there's more than one cause, however an incompetent leader for a country under duress and instability, is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention the 'completely'(not literally, just enough to be incapable of any real management) mentally disabled, are in a pretty bad position assuming that he/she wouldn't have a loyal and good regent that manages to make up for the ruler's disabilities.

 

[nOxr]

My biggest issue with the MP system is the tying of monarch points to infrastructure development. As things stand if I develop my infrastructure my technology advancement collapses. This is totally counterintuitive; infrastructure is supposed to ADVANCE technological development not the other way around. There should be some bonus to tech from infrastructure to encourage and reward the investment.

Infrastructure that improves your economy enables you to hire better advisors, so unless you have maxed out your advisors infrastructure do give you monarch points, albeit indirectly. Infrastructure that gives you military power is an alternative to tech or ideas, so they need to cost monarch points. Either you build 40 armories or you get a military idea, or you wait for the next mil tech.

Regarding the OP, the only thing I agree with is that I would like to have more surprises! Surprise tech or a surprise idea, that would be awesome!

 

[grommile]

Does releasing a vassal get rid of Aggressive Expansion? Because if not, it doesn't really solve your long term issues.

I can live with one of my neighbours having a 200-point AE opinion modifier towards me much more easily than I can live with 104% OE.

Also vassalization/integration is pretty broken and needs some rebalancing. The old rules about only gaining cores on your culture should probably still apply.

Why do you hate Poland?

Because one doesn't always have admin points? Or rather, one doesn't always regain admin points at anywhere near an acceptable level.

When that happens, you have to make decisions about your priorities. (Being at -1 stab is not a problem unless you're mismanaging your country. Even -2 is tolerable if you have high RU and no OE or WE.)

Actually, no. I haven't gotten to late-game yet. Around the late 1600s things get less interesting for me, although I suppose I should try a later starting date. That said, this sounds like it could be better balanced with increased costs.

Buildings have to be affordable for small countries.

 

[marmot01]

No need to be so pedantic. Of course there's more than one cause, however an incompetent leader for a country under duress and instability, is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention the 'completely'(not literally, just enough to be incapable of any real management) mentally disabled, are in a pretty bad position assuming that he/she wouldn't have a loyal and good regent that manages to make up for the ruler's disabilities.

I agree on this. Sorry if I seemed too pedantic, there are all kinds of people on the Internet, including such that believe in the primary school concept of "good kings" and "bad kings", so I wasn't sure what's the case with you. I think a more close-to-historical-reality description would be that monarchs decide things in the short run but institutions decide them in the long run. The Ottomans won lots of victories and expanded far into Europe, weren't defeated in war up until the 17th century but in the end lost the race with Europe's more advanced forms of government.

Regarding the OP, the only thing I agree with is that I would like to have more surprises! Surprise tech or a surprise idea, that would be awesome!

Well, for you it's an abstracted game and you, and players like you, find enough fun in that. I find most of the fun in loosely "repeating" or rather - "redoing in my way" the things I've read about.