Corruption system be fixed or is it going to stay forever?

[Kapitalisti]

And do keep in mind that a real life 700+ development Byzantium DID buckle under constant corruption... As large empires tend to do.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Here are some points nobody ever accounted wrt corruption:

1. It penalizes a lack of monarch points with fewer monarch points. This kind of spiral goes against trend changes to other mechanics.
2. In the relative sense, it buffs the strongest nations and nerfs the weakest nations.
3. It offers minimal, if any, non-trivial decision-making.
4. It doubles down on making the same areas more valuable than ever. They were already extremely valuable.

In hundreds of posts in previous threads, these points were dodged when players supporting the mechanic mentioned reasons why people don't like corruption as a mechanic. They will likely be dodged again, with players giving anecdotes of "just make fewer monarch points and you're still fine for the achievements". It's true, you can still get even the hardest achievements with corruption, but it misses the point of why it's a terrible mechanic.

My unfortunate estimation based on past experience is that these points will be handwaved or ignored again, blocking any real hope for meaningful discussion. Perhaps I will be surprised.

 

[YuriiH]

I've never had any issue with corruption, I don't think it has ever went over 2, let alone got me into bankruptcy.

Exactly this!
Pay early when you are small, save later when you are bigger.

 

[Squirrelloid]

ITT: Nobody but TMIT plays RotW, much less places like Timurids or Qara Qonlyu (or however you spell that), totally ignores the problems because they only play in Europe.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Timurids and Qara Qoyunlu can both screw with unity by accepting heretic demands to buy time and/or have enough money to swap provinces with inquisitor.

Lots of people play ROTW, but not everyone stops to look at the tradeoff between expansion, advisors, and corruption to notice that corruption in essence brings back the -1/month penalty for a chunk of the game. Johan even stated the intention was to leave non-western nations further behind at the end! Is it really hard to accept the "fewer monarch points" conclusion? That conclusion should be obvious, with the discussion steering towards whether it's a good thing for the game and what executes the advantages better.

The next tech group model will probably change these interactions substantially. Likely, being not-western will get less corruption screw job for the important early game next patch. The resulting padding in monarch points will make it annoying but less of an unevenly-impacting screw job by my estimation. That still leaves 3 and 4 as question marks, suggesting the mechanic could be implemented better in a vacuum. It's not like people needed more incentive to prioritize good nodes or pick administrative.

 

[AndrewT]

If you can't post without disrespecting other forum members, don't post at all.

This is not directed at any one individual, the tone in this thread is poor and it's on its last warning.

Posts from multiple users deleted.

 

[qwertzuiop]

The thing here in EU4 is that being large in itself doesn't make you corrupt, expanding makes you corrupt. It's the opposite of real life, where expanding nations were usually not very corrupt, while nations who stopped expanding and instead started developing their economy and culture did become corrupt, stagnated, and eventually collapsed or were invaded by a foreign power. Like a ton of other mechanics in EU4, corruption works the exact opposite of how it did in real life. As someone above said, it's nothing more than another success tax, and has nothing to do with "corruption".

Yeah, at least the definition of corruption is logically not consistent because the penalty to unbalanced research indicates that "corruption" is defined as something related to stagnation and maybe lack of power, while the penalty to overextension indicates that "corruption" is related to ruthless actions such as taking territory that isn't yours (which is of course something completely ordinary in EU4 because expanding is what the game is about). The word corruption just sounds interesting, but I think it doesn't express what the game mechanic really does.

To me, the biggest problem about corruption is that countries from slower technology groups get punished too much in comparison to European countries that can frequently use the ahead of time bonus to keep corruption low and then enjoy the events about how trustworthy they are. But that's going to change with the incoming rework/replacement of technology groups (at least in the early game, where it arguably matters the most).

 

[alexti]

Here are some points nobody ever accounted wrt corruption:

1. It penalizes a lack of monarch points with fewer monarch points. This kind of spiral goes against trend changes to other mechanics.
2. In the relative sense, it buffs the strongest nations and nerfs the weakest nations.
3. It offers minimal, if any, non-trivial decision-making.
4. It doubles down on making the same areas more valuable than ever. They were already extremely valuable.

I definitely like (2) - it provides wider range of challenges. If the range is too narrow the problem is that because developers have to make strongest nations strong enough so that newcomers can play them, weakest nations become too strong to present a challenge for the more experienced players. I am on the fence regarding (1). It is kind of good in a sense that it makes playing nations in ROTW somewhat more challenging, unfortunately, the bigger problem in ROTW (the ease of conquest) largely negates (1). (4) is definitely a bad property of corruption - it makes the optimal expansion strategies even more superior than they were before. (3) is disappointing, but I suppose it's better than nothing. Overall, I think corruption would work much better if it has addressed (4).

 

[harezmi]

The thing here in EU4 is that being large in itself doesn't make you corrupt, expanding makes you corrupt. It's the opposite of real life, where expanding nations were usually not very corrupt, while nations who stopped expanding and instead started developing their economy and culture did become corrupt, stagnated, and eventually collapsed or were invaded by a foreign power. Like a ton of other mechanics in EU4, corruption works the exact opposite of how it did in real life. As someone above said, it's nothing more than another success tax, and has nothing to do with "corruption".

completely agree!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I definitely like (2) - it provides wider range of challenges. If the range is too narrow the problem is that because developers have to make strongest nations strong enough so that newcomers can play them, weakest nations become too strong to present a challenge for the more experienced players. I am on the fence regarding (1). It is kind of good in a sense that it makes playing nations in ROTW somewhat more challenging, unfortunately, the bigger problem in ROTW (the ease of conquest) largely negates (1). (4) is definitely a bad property of corruption - it makes the optimal expansion strategies even more superior than they were before. (3) is disappointing, but I suppose it's better than nothing. Overall, I think corruption would work much better if it has addressed (4).

I would rather see stronger positions dragged down than weak ones wrt #2. Right now, unless playing on very hard it's still a scenario where you eclipse competition relatively soon. Diminishing value of more size >> penalizing small nations in this fashion, especially if taking a game to 1821. Stopping player eclipsing AI is less practical than making the large size less dominant. In that sense corruption is working in reverse. Spirals are something the development team tries to get away from (see: 15 year truces, revanchism, unconditional surrender, nerfed scorched earth/attrition cap), so #1 is out of place.

 

[alexti]

I would rather see stronger positions dragged down than weak ones wrt #2. Right now, unless playing on very hard it's still a scenario where you eclipse competition relatively soon.

I don't think it's a realistic option. From commercial point of view, Paradox has to keep stronger nations easy enough to play, so that new players can have moderate success with them.

Diminishing value of more size >> penalizing small nations in this fashion, especially if taking a game to 1821. Stopping player eclipsing AI is less practical than making the large size less dominant.

It's not difficult to make large size less dominant - it was already working in EU3. Developers might be avoiding going in that direction because they fear user pushback. Let's say the game has been changed that way and now player determines that any further expansion will be detrimental to his position. Where is the gameplay now? I am not saying that it doesn't exist, but my deep suspicion is that a large percentage of players simply likes to paint map in their color with minimal obstruction.

Spirals are something the development team tries to get away from (see: 15 year truces, revanchism, unconditional surrender, nerfed scorched earth/attrition cap), so #1 is out of place.

I am not sure if this interpretation of their changes is correct. My guess is that they are doing it to preserve somewhat historical map as the game progresses.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't think it's a realistic option. From commercial point of view, Paradox has to keep stronger nations easy enough to play, so that new players can have moderate success with them.

New players don't have the requisite skill to eclipse competition in such a way even now, they're the least likely to notice the difference of diminishing marginal utility of large development values like 2k+. New players can't even trace a path of what getting there looks like.

It's not difficult to make large size less dominant - it was already working in EU3. Developers might be avoiding going in that direction because they fear user pushback.

Yikes! I can't imagine it would be much worse than with forts or this version of corruption. My suggestion is to make additional expansion increasingly less useful, not to make it negative. The idea is to narrow the gap between 1000 and 10000 development, but not have a point at which 10000 is worse than having 1000. That way your diplo decisions matter throughout the game.

Painting the map without obstruction as a late-game runaway is a gruelling process, and not because it's difficult in the traditional sense in-game. It's not THAT which corruption harms, either. It's also not something you're going to see from the new/intermediate players who are asking for tips on how to get master of India with a major. I'd rather leave WC possible, faster, and risky than ask players to grind through 80-150 years of outcome-decided-before-start wars to accomplish the same thing.

I am not sure if this interpretation of their changes is correct. My guess is that they are doing it to preserve somewhat historical map as the game progresses.

They haven't stated "historical map as game progresses" as a goal and I hope that's not one. It would be awful design. The game should be true to its own form of causality, even if ignoring historical causality. Events without causes are nonsense . It would also run afoul of the unparalleled freedom aspect of advertising, not to mention historical events without their causes are ahistorical!

Besides, the logic given for revanchism and unconditional surrender in discussion about those mechanics did *not* evoke history from the development team. They didn't like the idea of someone getting camped to die to rebels or chained out of existence and said as much. I have posted arguments against those statements that were never really answered, but the goal there was still clear at least.

 

[harezmi]

New players don't have the requisite skill to eclipse competition in such a way even now, they're the least likely to notice the difference of diminishing marginal utility of large development values like 2k+. New players can't even trace a path of what getting there looks like.

Can you explain what you're talking about here? My understanding is let's say as Ottomans I first pick Genoa as my rival knowing that they'll not be eligible to be my rival anymore in a few years and I can get free PP by eclipsing them and then move to the next weakest eligible rival? I never had a chance to try this strategy (if it is what you're talking about) because I just began my all time second game and still trying to figure out how to play this game and also survive the massive world-wide coalition.

 

[alexti]

New players don't have the requisite skill to eclipse competition in such a way even now, they're the least likely to notice the difference of diminishing marginal utility of large development values like 2k+. New players can't even trace a path of what getting there looks like.

Many probably can - the simple strategy of annexing everything that dares to border you works fairly well for most major nations

Yikes! I can't imagine it would be much worse than with forts or this version of corruption. My suggestion is to make additional expansion increasingly less useful, not to make it negative. The idea is to narrow the gap between 1000 and 10000 development, but not have a point at which 10000 is worse than having 1000. That way your diplo decisions matter throughout the game.

I don't think there is much pushback against forts besides people questioning their strange ZoC behaviour in some edge cases. Most players probably aren't even noticing it because they conduct the war in a simple manner of advancing the front. I suspect that corruption doesn't significantly affect majority of players either (from the forum posts it appears that few people play above 100%OE and at that level corruption isn't a huge factor - meaning one can play without paying attention to it). In comparison in posts in EU3 forums where people would complain that they have conquered *insert suitable large chunk of land* and now they can't regain stability and their nation is in disarray. I think there is an intuitive perception that the conquered land is a reward for winning a war, so people don't like when this newly acquired land becomes a liability.

Painting the map without obstruction as a late-game runaway is a gruelling process, and not because it's difficult in the traditional sense in-game. It's not THAT which corruption harms, either.

I totally agree with this on a personal level, but if you look at the state of the gaming industry in general, there are many popular games that reward tedious and repetitive gameplay. I suppose "tedious and repetitive" can be subjective...

They haven't stated "historical map as game progresses" as a goal and I hope that's not one. It would be awful design. The game should be true to its own form of causality, even if ignoring historical causality. Events without causes are nonsense . It would also run afoul of the unparalleled freedom aspect of advertising, not to mention historical events without their causes are ahistorical!

Unlike Vic2 EU4 doesn't really have a simulation model that drives the world, so getting results that would match common sense is far from trivial I don't think that there's an issue with restraining freedom - player can still create any kind of weird maps, but every time there's a version where AI has a tendency to create Oirat Western Europe or something like that Paradox takes an action to stop it happening.

Besides, the logic given for revanchism and unconditional surrender in discussion about those mechanics did *not* evoke history from the development team. They didn't like the idea of someone getting camped to die to rebels or chained out of existence and said as much. I have posted arguments against those statements that were never really answered, but the goal there was still clear at least.

In some patches there was a tendency for some nation to get destroyed and then everybody piling up which would often create a strange result because some minor who happened to siege defenceless nation first would unexpectedly grow into a large nation

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Can you explain what you're talking about here? My understanding is let's say as Ottomans I first pick Genoa as my rival knowing that they'll not be eligible to be my rival anymore in a few years and I can get free PP by eclipsing them and then move to the next weakest eligible rival? I never had a chance to try this strategy (if it is what you're talking about) because I just began my all time second game and still trying to figure out how to play this game and also survive the massive world-wide coalition.

I'm talking about being so strong that your only expansion constraints are speed-of-war and monarch points. New players can't even envision that in most cases.

Many probably can - the simple strategy of annexing everything that dares to border you works fairly well for most major nations

You or I can coalition chain using truces. That's not a "normal person" approach, and it's not easy for people with <100 hours to execute typically, unless they're the rare person who's made a concerted effort to improve quickly. Most players who try that die to coalitions in a blaze of 20 year glory.

More players still start in Europe rather than not and don't push limits at all, so corruption is not significant. Even as a minor in Europe it's easy to handle without significant penalties.

I agree that conquered land = liability even when cored/etc is not intuitive. I'm not advocating that, but I am advocating 1000 development giving you less FL, manpower, and merc at 11000 development than 1000. There should be at least some intuitive sense that "punch above your weight" is hard for large empires.

Unlike Vic2 EU4 doesn't really have a simulation model that drives the world, so getting results that would match common sense is far from trivial I don't think that there's an issue with restraining freedom - player can still create any kind of weird maps, but every time there's a version where AI has a tendency to create Oirat Western Europe or something like that Paradox takes an action to stop it happening.

My point is that I don't see why it's necessary, especially because it's not happening even so. Let causality within mechanics rule.

In some patches there was a tendency for some nation to get destroyed and then everybody piling up which would often create a strange result because some minor who happened to siege defenceless nation first would unexpectedly grow into a large nation

Happens now as much as ever because the AI piles more consistently now than year+ ago, abusing the "knows target ally will dishonor" the moment such is available. I use that to my advantage often too. The mechanics I mentioned are blob protectors, not historical-outcome-encouragers.

 

[alexti]

You or I can coalition chain using truces. That's not a "normal person" approach, and it's not easy for people with <100 hours to execute typically, unless they're the rare person who's made a concerted effort to improve quickly. Most players who try that die to coalitions in a blaze of 20 year glory.

I think that new players generally take more time to complete the war and then to recover from it, so they don't encounter coalitions often (unless they play in HRE) because they don't conquer fast enough. But at that point they are not aware that they are not expanding "fast".

I agree that conquered land = liability even when cored/etc is not intuitive. I'm not advocating that, but I am advocating 1000 development giving you less FL, manpower, and merc at 11000 development than 1000. There should be at least some intuitive sense that "punch above your weight" is hard for large empires.

In general, those are not too different and both lead to the problem of where is the gameplay when further expansion becomes impractical. Ideally, it would be some system which would allow to make meaningful additions to the large empire, but made it challenging to create circumstances when such option exists.

My point is that I don't see why it's necessary, especially because it's not happening even so. Let causality within mechanics rule.

Happens now as much as ever because the AI piles more consistently now than year+ ago, abusing the "knows target ally will dishonor" the moment such is available. I use that to my advantage often too. The mechanics I mentioned are blob protectors, not historical-outcome-encouragers.

I don't know if it's necessary, but it probably goes with maintaining the game theme and immersion (which are probably part of the game design goals). They just want strong France, England, Castille, Russia, Ottomans etc to exist in most of the games from the start to the end (unless the player gets involved). I think that 'lucky nation' mechanism is mostly for this purpose. At the start of the game most major nations are already blobs, so "blob protection" is kind of working towards this goal.

 

[deckhand]

This is a game. Games should be fun. Changes should increase fun and add choices.
Changes that are not fun and don't add positively to gaming experience are bad changes.
Too many changes seem targeted at min-maxers fun.

Developers are compelled by their DLC expansion approach to profit to ignore "if it aint broke, don't fix it."
So they keep tweaking.

People complain "there isn't anything to do while not at war" So, devs add buttons to click.

People complain (or everyone observes) that at some point of blobbing you have gobs and gobs of money. First developers add canals (just a button to click, but at least fun).
Then corruption. Unfun.
What's wrong with having gobs of money?

... but my deep suspicion is that a large percentage of players simply likes to paint map in their color with minimal obstruction.

And what is wrong with that?

I think that new players generally take more time to complete the war and then to recover from it, so they don't encounter coalitions often (unless they play in HRE) because they don't conquer fast enough. But at that point they are not aware that they are not expanding "fast".

I don't agree. I think your exception (HRE) is the rule. Many new players start as France and conquer Burgundy, get coalition and decide game is too hard (happened to me).

 

[Mad Indian]

Why do every single post supporting this terrible mechanic assumes that we are talking only about WC? Seriously? That's just a straw man because you guys can't defend the mechanic based on its own merits. I wasn't having a problem because of WC attempt. I just wanted to restore Roman empire and I did. But I wanted to continue to see where it took but it never materialised anywhere because I had to spend 60 years fighting corruption and the loans I had taken before. That's why I asked if the goal of this game is to stare at the screen without doing anything, because that's the kind of gameplay this mechanic results in now.

Btw, if the mechanic was so good, why is the AI allowed to cheat by not having to pay for the thousands of lvl 6 and 8 forts it spams on the borders? Make it work with the current restrictions players have and see how long the AI(every single one of them) lasts before going bankrupt.

Before corruption, the way to play a weak start is to take loans and then fight and expand and use the expansion as the source of income to pay for the loans. But now with corruption, the entire limited income you get from conquest isn't enough to pay back your loans because of the high autonomy and states and it doesn't change even with reduction of autonomy over time.

Corruption as of now will not be problem for states like Spain, France, Austria or even central American natives (I got the first come first serve/ideas guys/for Odin achievements clubbed together just fine with this corruption mechanics - I am a terrible player as some other posters insinuated). Reason is that they start off as equals/superiors in their respective regions. The same will be kind of true for rest of the world too I suspect if the neighbors are all on equal footing. But try playing as a weak start against a powerful neighbor and watch long your game lasts even if you play perfectly .

Seriously guys the corruption mechanics is broken because it adds new expenses( inflatiob put on steroids) in the game without adding any new means of generating income or monarch points to combat it. 'Stop looking for world conquest' is not a proper reply against the complaint that it costs too much money and monarch points to combat this mechanic as of now. As of now, the present mechanic is way too punishing for weak starts for a simulator.

 

[Mad Indian]

Here are some points nobody ever accounted wrt corruption:

1. It penalizes a lack of monarch points with fewer monarch points. This kind of spiral goes against trend changes to other mechanics.
2. In the relative sense, it buffs the strongest nations and nerfs the weakest nations.
3. It offers minimal, if any, non-trivial decision-making.
4. It doubles down on making the same areas more valuable than ever. They were already extremely valuable.

In hundreds of posts in previous threads, these points were dodged when players supporting the mechanic mentioned reasons why people don't like corruption as a mechanic. They will likely be dodged again, with players giving anecdotes of "just make fewer monarch points and you're still fine for the achievements". It's true, you can still get even the hardest achievements with corruption, but it misses the point of why it's a terrible mechanic.

My unfortunate estimation based on past experience is that these points will be handwaved or ignored again, blocking any real hope for meaningful discussion. Perhaps I will be surprised.

Best response in this thread honestly. You explained the problem with this mechanic better than I could have. So we can combat inflation by being ahead of tech in diplo and admin points but to even get there is being hurdles by corruption. This is how it creates a viscious cycle and debt traps. Now I understand why in my game, Lithuania and Moscowy went bankrupt and killed themselves even though they weren't fighting any losing wars

 

[Mad Indian]

Happens now as much as ever because the AI piles more consistently now than year+ ago, abusing the "knows target ally will dishonor" the moment such is available. I use that to my advantage often too. The mechanics I mentioned are blob protectors, not historical-outcome-encouragers.

Exactly what happens now. The AI knows that your opponents are in debt and constantly makes them back stab the player. I had to bail out France and bohemia with 2000 ducats on top of my 8000ducat debt so that they won't back stab me and I get ganged against by the AI rivals. This is despite the fact that neither Bohemia nor France had to pay for the forts and France had the third highest income in the game.

If the AI is made to pay for its forts like the player, then even the majors will have constant bankruptcies and that's how good current corruption mechanic is.