Cruising along at zero Legitimacy

[CyaN]

That's the last thing this game needs. There are already a lot of situations where you're stuck with low legitimacy for reasons outside your control (i.e. just a heir with Weak claim) and if you don't happen to be a Western European Catholic (the WECs, EU4's upper class and the recipients of every game mechanic), there are exactly 0 ways of raising it. It will go up at a hilariously low pace by itself, and that's all; practically speaking you will get nowhere with that approach so you must just wait for a heir with a Strong claim, something that's outside your control too, to inherit and fix it.

So: considering the game likes to throw you just for the laughs into situations where you don't have legitimacy, harsher effects from not having legitimacy would make a bad experience pretty terrible.

 

[HansBaer]

Introducing ridiculous nonsense that is so heavily based on luck, beyond the luck in the mechanics you already mentioned, is a recipe for bad design.

Why is it ridiculous nonsense? Maybe even stupid ridiculous nonsense? A good portion of the game is based on luck, sometimes it works, often not. And low leg. is based on luck to a much smaller degree than other stuff. If you wan't PUs, prestige AND legitimacy should be your highest priority. If you don't send your kings into battle, keep OE low and have lots of RMs, it is very unlikely to get cursed with a low leg. ruler.

That is not a republic event. Anybody can get it.

I know, but they seem to happen more often with low RT. Anyway, please don't cherrypick faulty statements that don't change anything about the points being made. I hope you know what i mean. I'm just to lazy to look through the event files.

They also don't lose stab on ruler switch and have a 0% chance at regency. Low RT also lets you hike up mercantilism, potentially to ridiculous values otherwise unattainable. Low RT has no impact on diprep (just as high doesn't) so it's arguably easier to work with in this regard.

Also, contrary to what you say, additional time to annex/integrate is not insignificant, and that penalty still exists no matter what you take to mitigate it...it still nerfs down the effects of said ideas.

Well, i can't concur. I never had any problems annexing vassals unless they were overseas. Even in my Jihad run where i annexed up to 5 vassals at once with low leg., it usually didn't take too long. Integrating was mostly finished after the recent wars ended, so it was time to add a bunch of new vassals.
Do you really think low Legitimacy is worse than low RT? Even if it was the case, getting or keeping RT out red or yellow values is indefinitely harder than getting Legitimacy back up to full. All you need is someone dying.
Didn't know about the Mercantilism thing, i don't get the events that often. Maybe because i always revolt to a monarchy once my RT reaches low values anyway. Is it exploitable?

Not unless the entire Legitimacy mechanic gets an overhaul first. As of right now, the player can end up with decades of crap Legitimacy through no fault of his own. (King with weak claim takes the throne.)

The game needs fewer unavoidable random penalties, not more of them. If you wanna argue that the game also needs fewer random and game-changing rewards (PUs of enormous countries, for example), then I'm with you, but that's a different discussion.

Yeah, i don't like random PUs. Thought this could reduce them to a degree and it makes sense, to me at least. Why should a king whose throne is disputed heavily even in his own country get to rule over a foreign country?

And it's not like this would really penalize you that much. You can still do everything as before just without the random lucky PUs. The PU CB should still work as before, no matter what leg. you have, but you should be swarmed by pretender rebels if you choose to fight such a war without a firm grip on your own throne.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why is it ridiculous nonsense?

Because we are playing what purports to a strategy title. Random factors that have huge impacts on the outcome despite player choices made against them/to mitigate them run directly counter to the principle of a player's choices mattering. If a player's choices ultimately don't matter, there is no effective strategy.

The current legitimacy mechanics are already very significant, too. Not only does it directly influence revolt risk, it also influences it a second time via unity, cuts into diplomacy (some alliances are only possible at high legitimacy, even with other bonuses, and those are the ones you would most covet), and has an impact on your income. While you can influence legitimacy to an extent, it's not as strongly as you imply; you can still easily get weak claim heirs despite 6+ royal marriages or have events that kill your heir + not get a new one.

Anyway, please don't cherrypick faulty statements that don't change anything about the points being made.

Come to think of it, what *was* the relevance of that statement in the first place? It would have to be more frequent based on the event defines for it to even be worth typing up.

Well, i can't concur. I never had any problems annexing vassals unless they were overseas

You have no choice. Annexing and integrating will always be markedly slower at 0 legitimacy than 100 legitimacy. The rate variance is a real constraint, because diplomats and relation slots are both indisputably finite and a direct contribution to how quickly one can expand. That it didn't "take too long" is irrelevant here; the point is that you are materially slowed down in conquest on top of the income, diplomatic, and revolt penalties, and that's not something you can argue against because all of those things demonstrably happen. You could argue they're insignificant, perhaps, but in practice you're talking possibly decades added to annex times, which has a massive impact on your income when coupled with what RR does to it, and that's before we factor in any rebel cost issues.

Of course you can play through it. It has a very real impact though.

Do you really think low Legitimacy is worse than low RT?

Yes, much worse. At low RT you can spend a stab to boost it by 20 with a very frequent event, hike your mercantilism, and take 0 diprep penalty. What do you get for low legitimacy? Nothing, and no way to boost it so rapidly. The ADM cost that RT eats just isn't enough to make low RT worse, especially considering the *also frequent* low-RT event that lets you spend RT to increase mercantilism. Yes, the RT thing is quite exploitable...you can get otherwise impossible mercantilism values or if you don't care flatten that to 0 and just suck in a freebie 2 RT over and over if you're already rolling in money with none .

 

[HansBaer]

.....

Maybe you got me wrong, i don't want to dispute the fact that low legitimacy has its drawbacks. Of course it has. All i'm saying is that you shouldn't get random PUs with low Legitimacy because it just doesn't make any sense and they are to frequent anyway, even after the recent changes. IMHO, they should happen very rarely, maybe 3 or 4 times in a full playthrough at average, and when they do there should almost always be a war involved, especially when it is between big powers. Ok, the wars happen since the patch, but i have yet to see the rival contester to win any of those wars, because the AI sadly NEVER manages to just siege the wargoal. Last game, even big France + even bigger Russia lost to a small Austria + Bohemia when Russia contested the Bohemian throne.
So yeah, no PUs for illegitimate Wannabees could help to reduce them to a degree.

About the RT: It is kind of another topic, but when playing a republic i always have the feeling that i get swarmed by rebels and bad events with low RT and it gets much better once i get my 0 Legitimacy Monarch. It maybe a very subjective impression, i will have to take a look at the event files to get some kind of objective basis on this. Sadly, i am at work right now, hence these walls of text

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Maybe you got me wrong, i don't want to dispute the fact that low legitimacy has its drawbacks. Of course it has. All i'm saying is that you shouldn't get random PUs with low Legitimacy because it just doesn't make any sense and they are to frequent anyway, even after the recent changes. IMHO, they should happen very rarely, maybe 3 or 4 times in a full playthrough at average, and when they do there should almost always be a war involved, especially when it is between big powers.

Yeah, I did misunderstand you to a point. I don't like PUs as a mechanic in general, but am not sure what to do that would make them much better so have largely left them alone. It does seem counterintuitive that such a big luck factor can allow otherwise completely impossible swaths of land to be added at once, but I'm not sure making it even more chancy is the right direction. If it's a mechanic that's intended to be in the game, the ability for rivals to contest it was actually a good change. Now, if you wanted to make legitimacy a factor in who defends the succession or something, that could make sense (though it wouldn't be good if it's the only one).

As for RT, I know they messed with MTTH on some of the events, so you might want to try it again. I haven't noticed any serious rebel problems with RT in the 30-50 range, aside from the usual RR from being in that range...seldom an issue unless you have bad unity on top of it. IMO give low RT a serious look with religious ideas...with all the +stab events and reduced cost lying around re-election spam might impress you.