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

[bbqftw]

Funnily enough diplo tanking is still pretty much the best way to play due to how valuable administrative points are - bar a few privileged tags, manual coring is still *extremely* inefficient way of getting state cores.

Come at me bro, nerf diplo tanking again.

 

[brifbates]

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.

Probably for the same reason many of the posters bashing corruption say those who don't have corruption problems only play European powerhouses and thus don't have to actually deal with it which is also a strawman.

 

[Bibor]

Is this your idea of fun engaging gameplay guys? Seriously who came up with this brilliant mechanic to punish expansion in a game where the only way to play is via expansion?
Did you even play test it for hard starts outside Europe?
Is it atleast going to be fixed anytime soon?

First, I can't remember when I had corruption over 2, even as Rome or super-blob Russia/Ottoman. You're most definitely doing something wrong.

Second, Europe offers no benefits or disadvantages over other continents when it comes to corruption.

Third, what needs fixing? Having tech disbalance is your own fault. With your income, you should be able to afford level 3 advisors (especially from estates). Technology gap is 13 years. Level 3 advisors will net you 312 - 624 extra ADM points during that time period. If you're conquering and not converting high income into ADM points, again, it's your own fault. Mil. tech advantage is also optional. Blobbing is about big numbers, not mil. tech advantage, especially against neighbors of same tech group.

 

[Nagassh]

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.

I posted the 9 last games I played as, 2 Western, 2 Eastern, 2 African, 1 Muslim and 1 Chinese run. If you want me to go and play as the Aztecs or something I can, but I'm not sure how much of the rest of the world there is to touch.

I dislike taking sides against TMIT since he's one of the players that I know undoubtedly falls into the small category that can see and feel corruption at it's most punishing since he's a strong, WC tier player. He'll be able to see mechanical throttles and punishments far better than me or most of the other players arguing against him can since he's played at that extreme where every monarch point, ducat and unit of time count.

That said, talk about hand waving, the people claiming anyone who says corruption isn't bad only plays europe / strong nations is asinine. It's not (or at least, shouldn't) be an issue for the majority of the playerbase that can afford to play around it and aren't used to playing like they're painting the planet so hard that they feel the loss from having to keep techs remotely balanced.

I'm not saying corruption is perfect or even good by far, but the situations OP describes are absurd unless you're trying to play without even acknowledging the mechanic until you're up a certain creek, in which case no bloody wonder.

 

[Mad Indian]

Probably for the same reason many of the posters bashing corruption say those who don't have corruption problems only play European powerhouses and thus don't have to actually deal with it which is also a strawman.

That's not a straw man. Most of the posts defending the corruption mechanic defend it as -"I played Otto/fra /blob" the other day and I did fine .

 

[Mad Indian]

I posted the 9 last games I played as, 2 Western, 2 Eastern, 2 African, 1 Muslim and 1 Chinese run. If you want me to go and play as the Aztecs or something I can, but I'm not sure how much of the rest of the world there is to touch.

I dislike taking sides against TMIT since he's one of the players that I know undoubtedly falls into the small category that can see and feel corruption at it's most punishing since he's a strong, WC tier player. He'll be able to see mechanical throttles and punishments far better than me or most of the other players arguing against him can since he's played at that extreme where every monarch point, ducat and unit of time count.

That said, talk about hand waving, the people claiming anyone who says corruption isn't bad only plays europe / strong nations is asinine. It's not (or at least, shouldn't) be an issue for the majority of the playerbase that can afford to play around it and aren't used to playing like they're painting the planet so hard that they feel the loss from having to keep techs remotely balanced.

I'm not saying corruption is perfect or even good by far, but the situations OP describes are absurd unless you're trying to play without even acknowledging the mechanic until you're up a certain creek, in which case no bloody wonder.

I dont think this problem is acute just because of Rotw starting point. Who your neighbor is affects it much more.

That said, the problem is when the rest of the world tries to keep up with the European powers at least militarily before westernization that corruptions start to eat your economy alive if you even try to conquered something. Do You think rest of the world is not punished enough with tech groups and need this as well? Europeans have the glorious ahead of tech bonus reduction to corruption. Rest of the world is affected by tech costs for different groups as well being affected by the same corruption. So not only do the rest of the world not have the same means to reduced corruption as European tech group, the very corruption also affects their future corruption level as well. Talk about vicious cycle. No other mechanic in the game has the potential for spiral like this bloody corruption mechanic.

Seriously, if this mechanic is not broken, why is the AI being allowed to cheat with fort maintenance? On top it all, for a mechanic supposedly preventing players from abusing alliances, the present alliance system punishes players for no fault of their own. The AI allies of the player is always fights wars and is in constant dept and always dishonors the defensive call to arms of the player due to massive debt, despite them not having to find their forts. The player has no clue that their allies with back stab them, even though the AI is aware of the backstabbing the player will receive and starts planning against player a year before that happens. Tell me that's a fine system on top of the player handicaps.


Seriously Paradox just needs to look at the player stats of rest of the world vs Europe before and after the patch was released. That should tell how fun and engaging the present idea is for the rest of the world.


Also, I still don't understand why is everyone insists on punishing expansion in an expansion oriented game. Even civilisation isn't stupid against expansion, eve though it at offers a different play style to conquest. At this rate to punish expansions so much, we can make EU4 a button clickinator to develop provinces to avoid expansions all together in the coming patches.

 

[brifbates]

That's not a straw man. Most of the posts defending the corruption mechanic defend it as -"I played Otto/fra /blob" the other day and I did fine .

a) It's just as much of a straw man as "Why do every single post supporting this terrible mechanic assumes that we are talking only about WC?"
b) Odd, I don't see any mention of those nations in this thread by the "pro-corruption" crowd so there's a disturbing lack of evidence for your assertion

Seriously, if this mechanic is not broken, why is the AI being allowed to cheat with fort maintenance?

The ai cheats on border fort maintenance because the ai can't look into the future to know when to turn on/off maintenance for a coming war (or when there is no such threat). It also isn't good at determining when to destroy forts. It has nothing at all to do with corruption.

 

[Mad Indian]

a) It's just as much of a straw man as "Why do every single post supporting this terrible mechanic assumes that we are talking only about WC?"
b) Odd, I don't see any mention of those nations in this thread by the "pro-corruption" crowd so there's a disturbing lack of evidence for your assertion

Lol. most of the replies I had gotten for opening post is that the WC crowd is crying about corruption despite the fact that I dint say anything about WC in the OP. So yes, it was a straw man argument.

Regarding the second part, not in this thread but most of the discussions on the matter in all forums -reddit, steam etc defended this stupid mechanic with the same excuse. That said, none of the posters here actually have a good reason for this useless mechanic to exist either. Also, It is a fact that corruption works against the rest of the world much harsher than Europe.

 

[Mad Indian]

The ai cheats on border fort maintenance because the ai can't look into the future to know when to turn on/off maintenance for a coming war (or when there is no such threat). It also isn't good at determining when to destroy forts. It has nothing at all to do with corruption.

What a pathetic excuse. Player can't know when they will be DOWed by the AI/Player either. So give the player a free fort maintenance as well by the same logic

Two, it isn't about corruption but how pathetic the game income level is. A player can't afford a 2 lvl fort in his border while the Ai happily maintains 3-4 lvl 6/8 forts for free. That's essentially 12-16 free ducats for the AI. Make AI pay for these forts and let's see how long AI lasts before being sprawled into ever expanding debt trap and we will know how balanced the present corruption mechanic is or how many constant wars AI forces on the player in this patch.

Also, since AI can't know when the player will declare war, it should also remove any maintainance for its armies as well using your same logic

 

[brifbates]

Also, It is a fact that corruption works against the rest of the world much harsher than Europe.

No, actually, it isn't, the only real benefit Europeans have is they can more easily get the bonus for being ahead of time in admin or dip tech (which really only applies to western nations, absent god-kings). Otherwise, the penalties and causes are exactly the same for RotW nations as they are for Europe (and some RotW nations have advantageous trade positions that make corruption easier for them than nations like Russia). It is only really true if you are trying to keep up with Europe by purely focusing on mil tech and dumpstering admin and dip in the process. That is a player choice and if you make that choice you'll pay for it. You can easily avoid incurring excessive corruption as a RotW nation if you care to.

 

[Mad Indian]

No, actually, it isn't, the only real benefit Europeans have is they can more easily get the bonus for being ahead of time in admin or dip tech (which really only applies to western nations, absent god-kings). Otherwise, the penalties and causes are exactly the same for RotW nations as they are for Europe (and some RotW nations have advantageous trade positions that make corruption easier for them than nations like Russia). It is only really true if you are trying to keep up with Europe by purely focusing on mil tech and dumpstering admin and dip in the process. That is a player choice and if you make that choice you'll pay for it. You can easily avoid incurring excessive corruption as a RotW nation if you care to.

Wow. You managed to contradict yourself in the very first statement in the very first line. Congrats.

Europeans don't pay the tech point penalty for their tech advancements and hence they can have a bonus 0.10 reduction in corruption with ahead of time dip and admin techs. The same is near impossible for rest of world to achieve and hence corruption affects the rest of the world harsher. It's that simple a logic. what's worse, Corruption further affects the tech development of the Rotw making way for further corruption spiral. There is no other mechanic with this brilliant death spiral in the game. The genius behind it deserves an award for such a well thought out system designed to do other mechanics which are there like AE /OE etc are there to prevent- massive blobbing without any check. It adds so much more layer and depth to the game that I don't know where to begin describing

 

[brifbates]

What a pathetic excuse. Player can't know when they will be DOWed by the AI/Player either. So give the player a free fort maintenance as well by the same logic

Two, it isn't about corruption but how pathetic the game income level is. A player can't afford a 2 lvl fort in his border while the Ai happily maintains 3-4 lvl 6/8 forts for free. That's essentially 12-16 free ducats for the AI. Make AI pay for these forts and let's see how long AI lasts before being sprawled into ever expanding debt trap and we will know how balanced the present corruption mechanic is or how many constant wars AI forces on the player in this patch.

Also, since AI can't know when the player will declare war, it should also remove any maintainance for its armies as well using your same logic

That was a quote from the developers, not my speculation. It was added after seeing exactly how various attempts at the ai handled the cost vs the ease of conquest due to those forts being mothballed affected game balance.

Also, if you, as a player, can't figure out that an ai DoW on you is coming soon you're either not paying attention or are extremely new to the game. The ai is pretty predictable when it comes to starting wars with the possible exception of succession wars (solely due to not knowing when the ruler will die).

 

[Mad Indian]

That was a quote from the developers, not my speculation. It was added after seeing exactly how various attempts at the ai handled the cost vs the ease of conquest due to those forts being mothballed affected game balance.

Also, if you, as a player, can't figure out that an ai DoW on you is coming soon you're either not paying attention or are extremely new to the game. The ai is pretty predictable when it comes to starting wars with the possible exception of succession wars (solely due to not knowing when the ruler will die).

1)Does not change the fact that AI gets free money in this balance to stay afloat against the player and the fact that the present economics is stacked against the player, chief of which is corruption.
2).Not really. There is no alert on the screen now to show that your allies would back atha you in the wars. And they WILL because thanks to the game balance now, AI is constantly under debt despite the free money it gets from fort maintainances. But your enemies know it in advance,while there is no alert for the player regarding the same

I had to keep checking my alliances again and again to see that they are not in stupid debt from their stupid wars so that they don't back stab me, and I had to bail them out with 2000 ducats despite my own debt of 8000 ducats, after I was bitterly backstabbed by them twice due to their bad debts. Seriously I don't know how anybody is ok with this "balance"

The only way I see it not being a problem is to eliminate every threat in the area so that you don't have to field an army at all. Else the present game mechanics and ecobomics is terribly balances

 

[brifbates]

Wow. You managed to contradict yourself in the very first statement in the very first line. Congrats.

Europeans don't pay the tech point penalty for their tech advancements and hence they can have a bonus 0.10 reduction in corruption with ahead of time dip and admin techs. The same is near impossible for rest of world to achieve and hence corruption affects the rest of the world harsher. It's that simple a logic. what's worse, Corruption further affects the tech development of the Rotw making way for further corruption spiral. There is no other mechanic with this brilliant death spiral in the game. The genius behind it deserves an award for such a well thought out system designed to do other mechanics which are there like AE /OE etc are there to prevent- massive blobbing without any check. It adds so much more later and depth to the game that I don't know where to begin describing

a) not all Europeans are western tech group
b) even with western tech it is easily possible to not get the ahead of time bonuses (eg: play as England and get an heir before WotR removes your loser king)

So your "Also, It is a fact that corruption works against the rest of the world much harsher than Europe." is factually incorrect. Ming, with the ability to afford some +3 advisors is easier to keep ahead of time than most Eastern European nations (960/13=73+ so they only need a 1 from the ruler to get a slight gain and a 3/3/3 type puts them ~1/3 tech ahead while a typical +1 advisor eastern tech nation needs a 2/2/2 just to keep up and that same 3/3/3 only puts them ~15% ahead, the Ottomans, etc. have it even worse).

 

[Mad Indian]

a) not all Europeans are western tech group
b) even with western tech it is easily possible to not get the ahead of time bonuses (eg: play as England and get an heir before WotR removes your loser king)

So your "Also, It is a fact that corruption works against the rest of the world much harsher than Europe." is factually incorrect. Ming, with the ability to afford some +3 advisors is easier to keep ahead of time than most Eastern European nations (960/13=73+ so they only need a 1 from the ruler to get a slight gain and a 3/3/3 type puts them ~1/3 tech ahead while a typical +1 advisor eastern tech nation needs a 2/2/2 just to keep up and that same 3/3/3 only puts them ~15% ahead, the Ottomans, etc. have it even worse).

A) useless semantics when u and I both know we were discussing western tech groups in Europe . I simply don't have time to engage in meaningless arguments for the sake of it.

B) yeah right , poor kings are not a thing for rest of the world and it affects only England which is a lucky nation or the other European nations. No. Rest of world always has 6/6/6 kings. Another argument which completely refutes my point that Europe is advantaged in fighting corruption. It's not that non Europeans have to bear pathetic kings as well on top of the tech penalty. No, they all have programmed into them God kings . Why argue based on points when you can infuriate others with specific misdirections.

Yeah, only the rest of the world like Ming can field level 3 advisers while the Europeans are forbidden from using level 3 adivisers. Thats another advantage rest of the world has over Europe which completely demolishes my point that Europe with its tech advantage has a massive advantage to combating corruption. Man you are on a roll.

I will stop replying to you now unless you start making actual points

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Second, Europe offers no benefits or disadvantages over other continents when it comes to corruption.

Inexpensive tech groups have a massive advantage in corruption. Tech imbalance from ruler stats is marginalized and you have a ton of padding with which you can expand while keeping up in tech. It also possesses 3 end nodes and Constantinople. Huge province value, best trade potential, and heaps more monarch points are objectively more resistant to the impact of corruption!

And yes, this also means a Zanzibar nation is better against corruption than starting as Air or Buryatia.

Third, what needs fixing? Having tech disbalance is your own fault.

The problem is that you spend points on tech first over ideas inefficiently (lost monarch points) or have less money for advisors (lose monarch points), but only if you're in a disadvantaged position already (lose monarch points). The result is not more strategy.

That said, talk about hand waving, the people claiming anyone who says corruption isn't bad only plays europe / strong nations is asinine.

I know people make that claim when hating on corruption, but I'm not going to do it. You can push pace basically anywhere to feel the effects, but you have to push *much* harder in Europe so it's harder to see corruption's negative impact as Scotland than as Kochin. That's not the fundamental issue with it though, there are lots of mechanics intended to slow conquest or make ROTW harder. What corruption does is done in an uninteresting, uneven manner. It essentially restores the -1 point/month penalty to ROTW. Was the game unplayable when that penalty existed? Of course not, people got WC with -1/month tags even back then. Was it a good/fun/well designed constraint? No, and it was removed for that reason.

I agree that struggling with it as BYZ is kind of strange. They have one of the better nodes in the game, pretty rich provinces, and a solid tech group. They'll feel it more than France but bankrupting as BYZ (or anyone really) suggests problems with more than corruption.

That's not a straw man. Most of the posts defending the corruption mechanic defend it as -"I played Otto/fra /blob" the other day and I did fine .

To be fair, it's not constructive when either side does this. "I played as a superpower and didn't struggle" tells us nothing, and neither does "well obviously people who don't play as Jaisalmer suck and don't understand why they're wrong". Corruption's negative impact is quantifiable, and the "playstyle adjustments" to deal with it amount to less efficient usage of monarch points no matter which "adjustment" you pick. Of course you can just pay to win with Cossacks and farm 150 points/20 years/category and cheap advisors and then it seems less bad :/. Or you can buy mare nostrum and westernize as basically anybody in the old world by 1500-1520 via purchasing maps.

Forts are a different problem entirely, I think it's fair to call them a red herring for this thread because it's easy to demonstrate their cost, utility, and function are broken completely independently from corruption. The AI was given cheats for them because the devs wanted to shoehorn their existence specifically despite the cost:utility design being way off.

b) even with western tech it is easily possible to not get the ahead of time bonuses (eg: play as England and get an heir before WotR removes your loser king)

Lancaster is like having a 2/2/2 ruler in India, from a tech perspective. Having something like a 1 0 3 in India and teching while expanding is going to get you unbalanced research corruption, even if you don't focus military. Even if you focus something else from the start and expand slowly. You can overcome the corruption, but it doesn't do much for the game strategy in that situation.

1.18's tech group rework is going to interact with a ton of things though, so we'll see what happens. I won't miss westernization --> catch up while corruption costs spike though. TBH I don't think many people will miss westernization in general.

 

[Mad Indian]

Inexpensive tech groups have a massive advantage in corruption. Tech imbalance from ruler stats is marginalized and you have a ton of padding with which you can expand while keeping up in tech. It also possesses 3 end nodes and Constantinople. Huge province value, best trade potential, and heaps more monarch points are objectively more resistant to the impact of corruption!

And yes, this also means a Zanzibar nation is better against corruption than starting as Air or Buryatia.



The problem is that you spend points on tech first over ideas inefficiently (lost monarch points) or have less money for advisors (lose monarch points), but only if you're in a disadvantaged position already (lose monarch points). The result is not more strategy.



I know people make that claim when hating on corruption, but I'm not going to do it. You can push pace basically anywhere to feel the effects, but you have to push *much* harder in Europe so it's harder to see corruption's negative impact as Scotland than as Kochin. That's not the fundamental issue with it though, there are lots of mechanics intended to slow conquest or make ROTW harder. What corruption does is done in an uninteresting, uneven manner. It essentially restores the -1 point/month penalty to ROTW. Was the game unplayable when that penalty existed? Of course not, people got WC with -1/month tags even back then. Was it a good/fun/well designed constraint? No, and it was removed for that reason.

I agree that struggling with it as BYZ is kind of strange. They have one of the better nodes in the game, pretty rich provinces, and a solid tech group. They'll feel it more than France but bankrupting as BYZ (or anyone really) suggests problems with more than corruption.



To be fair, it's not constructive when either side does this. "I played as a superpower and didn't struggle" tells us nothing, and neither does "well obviously people who don't play as Jaisalmer suck and don't understand why they're wrong". Corruption's negative impact is quantifiable, and the "playstyle adjustments" to deal with it amount to less efficient usage of monarch points no matter which "adjustment" you pick. Of course you can just pay to win with Cossacks and farm 150 points/20 years/category and cheap advisors and then it seems less bad :/. Or you can buy mare nostrum and westernize as basically anybody in the old world by 1500-1520 via purchasing maps.

Forts are a different problem entirely, I think it's fair to call them a red herring for this thread because it's easy to demonstrate their cost, utility, and function are broken completely independently from corruption. The AI was given cheats for them because the devs wanted to shoehorn their existence specifically despite the cost:utility design being way off.



Lancaster is like having a 2/2/2 ruler in India, from a tech perspective. Having something like a 1 0 3 in India and teching while expanding is going to get you unbalanced research corruption, even if you don't focus military. Even if you focus something else from the start and expand slowly. You can overcome the corruption, but it doesn't do much for the game strategy in that situation.

1.18's tech group rework is going to interact with a ton of things though, so we'll see what happens. I won't miss westernization --> catch up while corruption costs spike though. TBH I don't think many people will miss westernization in general.

The reason I brought up forts and its maintainance is to point out the game imbalance right now in economics. The dev team is adding more and more expenses without actually boosting any of the income levels. They have actually reduced the income levels by nerfing the production and trade efficiency compared to before.

Since corruption takes a huge chunck of the money earned to combat it, it is only fair to point out that AI has essentially free money to combat the corruption mechanic and that without such free money, AI would be broke as well. If they claim that corruption mechanic on its own is well balanced right now, then AI should be able to play by the same rules as the player and come out on top right?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I agree the AI should manage to play the same game, but corruption barely touches it because it doesn't know how to expand. Forts cause the AI to flounder, but the worst thing for AI is moving troops and its game-throwing. It game throws by resisting peace (length of war is a cancer to everyone, even the AI), and it game throws by taking loans to merc out 1 stacks and siege provinces where it can be 10:1 wiped repeatedly. Even with revanchism, it's easy to put it in debt spirals because it pisses money away.

In my mind, that's a real problem but a different one from corruption. They're worth bringing up as examples of other poor tuning, but not so great for showing why corruption specifically is a poor mechanic.

 

[atwix]

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

I tend to do the exact opposite.

Funnily enough diplo tanking is still pretty much the best way to play due to how valuable administrative points are - bar a few privileged tags, manual coring is still *extremely* inefficient way of getting state cores.

Come at me bro, nerf diplo tanking again.

This. Keeping dip tech 3 and letting corruption go high can be better then teching up like a good boy and paying down corruption from 1444.

Anyways, my two cents:

1. Corruption got fixed in 1.17, rest will stay.
2. You can circumvent the bad sides of corruption and still blob like before, using dip tech 3 forever and integrating non stop. Get religious+xxxx that enables religious unity policy, and start paying off corruption once you filled all state slots with juicy 30+ development states. Keep admin and military up to par.

But I do agree corruption is a simple 'block' like so many others..

Eu4 is evolving from straightforward epxansionist war game (up to 1.4 or so) into complex historical realism simulator, including estates, corruption, autonomy, development and MORE choices to micromanage, just like empires had to suffer/do in real history.

Eu4 is also slowly evolving into a game that has layers upon layers of rules, to 'solve'/slow/hamper badwrongfun problems/issues the dev see.

Some will like that, some won't. The latter being the most vocal on this forum usually.

 

[Bibor]

@TMIT

Your logic doesn't compute.

corruption kicks in at 2+ difference in research, right? So for a very backwards nation of say "1000 monarch points per tech" that's a 2000 point buffer zone.
For a western power if a tech costs 450 points, the buffer zone is 900 points.

Yes, Euro nations can fight corruption by being ahead in tech.
However, other nations have more MPs to spend on other things and still catch up in tech.

For example, Aragon cores 900 admin worth of land. Aragon is now 900 behind and corruption kicks in. Yes, with say 450 points it can close the gap, but it won't put Aragon "ahead in tech", just stop the current corruption bleed.

Now lets say Kuba cores 900 admin worth of land. Techs cost say 1200 mps, so Kuba isn't even in the corruption zone yet. Provided mil and diplo techs remain at even rate, it can actually core 1200+ more admin worth of land before corruption kicks in.