By the end of the game, the borders are really unrealistic. The world is made up of like, 10 superblobs and a few one province nations in places like africa. I wish the AI expanded more historically, if only by a little bit.
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Does the AI expand too much?
- Thread starter witcher1701
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The problem is that the game models very few of the things that prevented such empires from coming together. Rebels are largely ineffective. Armies march across the whole of Europe without incurring supply cost or casualties. Losing a hundred thousand men in a war doesn't leave your nation depopulated and destitute. Trade is poorly modeled. Economy is very shallow. Governments are monolithic entities that don't ever tear themselves apart over human greed. Storms don't sink ships, and droughts don't bring famine.
Essentially Eu4 is a game about conquest. I'd love it if it could model more realism,but most anti-conquest penalties are just that, penalties. And I think the game already includes too much railroading as it is.
Essentially Eu4 is a game about conquest. I'd love it if it could model more realism,but most anti-conquest penalties are just that, penalties. And I think the game already includes too much railroading as it is.
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This may sound cliche, EU was maybe more historical in past editions, but truly is a pure sandobx today, the historical events don't really shape the borders and don't have much affect beside the PU ones. It's what it is. If you want historical game you have to focus on minor area of world map, what AGEod and the likes do.
And hey, by 1820 there were around 10 superblobs in Europe anyway
And hey, by 1820 there were around 10 superblobs in Europe anyway
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The game's design is centered on conquest, with only minimal gameplay outside it. The AI should play accordingly, unless that changes. However, changing that would be on the order of creating a new game.
I will over time try to make AI more competent at defending minors it has an interest in defending (hopefully also receiving the diplomatic toolbox to do so, because right now it's really not that easy to keep minors alive even for a player due to 1 dip slot cost/alliance and even guarantee.)
Like previous posters already noted the game simply doesn't model internal entities that could cause large empires to fall apart to any great extent, and your EU4 country is for most purposes a well coordinated monolithic entity.
Like previous posters already noted the game simply doesn't model internal entities that could cause large empires to fall apart to any great extent, and your EU4 country is for most purposes a well coordinated monolithic entity.
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The AI expands roughly twice as fast as the historical comparison, by my estimation. Sometimes it expands more slowly than history (see: Ottomans), sometimes much more quickly (see: Austria), but in general I find Europe has blobbed to about 8 major powers by ~1630 instead of ~1820.
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The problem is that there's really no difficulty for the human player to match that, and if the AI doesn't do it will inevitably be easy mode. This by the way makes me think I could probably seriously reduce blobbing on lower game difficulties (Easy for a start) without this constraint in mind.
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Yeah, this is pretty true. I do think that you've done a pretty good job on the AI, it's more competent than Civ's or Total War's. I can't think of too many strategy games that have much better (Rise of Nations, maybe?). There's a few things that I think could be improved - the length of war modifier is absolutely ridiculous and hurts the AI more than it blocks the player, because AI-AI wars go on forever when a TAG would do better just by conceding before they go utterly bankrupt and have their manpower drained even further - but really not much.
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Peace logic is definitely a big problem for the AI. You have to replace length of war with something else in order to scratch it though, so that the AI makes any progress whatsoever in practice. Relative alliance strength (already factored, weight more on nations that have fought in past few years) could be made to matter more. War goal itself is something that could become a weight other than just for war score. Manpower/resource pool should be effecting enthusiasm much faster so the AI doesn't run into 0 manpower + debt spiral, setting itself up for dogpiles. I would like to see its willingness to give concessions scale non-linearly; IE the gains from total war are similar to now and take similar length of time, but it can dip out much faster for smaller gains/losses, which the winning side is more likely to take if its resources aren't near max capacity still. Being in another war should be an enormous factor towards ending previous one.
There are more factors you can add and you'd have to play with the weights, but a big overhaul is in order there.
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They are quite aggressive and expand really too much in too few years , italy and hre are slaughtering grounds and almost all minors in the world disappear in matter of decades. I think also alliances play a big part , I always see blobs allied with blobs and minors with minors , so it's trivial for the formers to conquer everything. Iirc some lucky nations get less ae so they just expand indefinitely. In 1.13 if i'm not wrong lots of minors had some kind of major defender and blobs wouldn't ally so often and things were just a bit better. Now also interreligious alliances are too easy ti make so you will see for example ottomans allied with a catholic blob a lot more than previous versions. Something like aggressive expansion that doesnt wear off could make minors more willing to defend themselves against these expanders but would be difficult and unbalanced. I too would really like minors to matter more and not just be food for blobs , but an intricate web of relations.
I really hope and trust this will be addressed in time , it would be a so much more fun and engaging experience overall
Sorry for the wall of text , these were my thoughts.
How do you plan on doing it? Any ideas?
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I'd say that if Europe were to develop historically there would be no way you'd ever blob for a longer period of time yourself. An entire continent would mercilessly join a coalition against you if you ever managed to annex Vienna and Amsterdam as France.
For gameplay reasons I find it very nice the AI offers a challenge. No strong AI means easy end game content.
For gameplay reasons I find it very nice the AI offers a challenge. No strong AI means easy end game content.
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EU IV is ultimately a map-painting game--Risk on crack. It was designed as such and any attempt to change that now is bound to have poor results. Perhaps EU V will strive for a less mass conquest approach, but it seems unlikely--part of the reason the EU franchise is so popular (by Paradox' games standards) is that they offer plenty of conquest in what is--for a GSG--a fairly simple game.
If the AI is to offer any form of challenge at all it needs to blob, and blob hard. If anything it ought to blob harder and better. You can take most OPMs in the game and comfortably become a kingdom within 50 years; 50 more and you're pushing empire status. A kingdom requires 300 development, and to put this in perspective, even juggernauts like France, Lithuania, the Ottomans, Austria and Castile only have 341, 346, 293, 165 and 243 respectively in 1444. In other words, within 50 years of the game's start you're on par with, or have eclipsed, the most powerful tags in the game. While much of that development won't be very valuable due to autonomy, it doesn't take long until you've completely left them in the dust. Ming is an outlier with their enourmous development, but they have special mechanics to compensate. Basically, if the AI doesn't blob, it'll quickly find itself completely eclipsed.
If the AI is to offer any form of challenge at all it needs to blob, and blob hard. If anything it ought to blob harder and better. You can take most OPMs in the game and comfortably become a kingdom within 50 years; 50 more and you're pushing empire status. A kingdom requires 300 development, and to put this in perspective, even juggernauts like France, Lithuania, the Ottomans, Austria and Castile only have 341, 346, 293, 165 and 243 respectively in 1444. In other words, within 50 years of the game's start you're on par with, or have eclipsed, the most powerful tags in the game. While much of that development won't be very valuable due to autonomy, it doesn't take long until you've completely left them in the dust. Ming is an outlier with their enourmous development, but they have special mechanics to compensate. Basically, if the AI doesn't blob, it'll quickly find itself completely eclipsed.
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Can you make it easier for players to do this as well? In multiplayer all the AI get wiped out pretty much immediately, and nobody bothers to guarantee/warn/etc. If guarantees called you in as a co-belligerant and didn't use a diplo slot there might be an actual reason to try to keep AI alive (as well as modeling the diplomacy that kept powers like Bavaria alive.)
It'd also be nice if the AI understood being made an effective vassal better. If France allies/guarantees Bavaria but says they won't help Bavaria, the Bavaria AI will throw a hissy fit despite the ONLY REASON THEY ARE EVEN ALIVE being France.
It'd also be nice if the AI didn't have idiotic idea/policy choices so they were relevant past 2 idea groups. Typically AI will get defensive early, which makes them powerful, but then they go like diplomatic innovative maritime and their armies get murdered.
Look at the map at the last start date. Europe was basically split between five or six blobs in real life.
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People forget that history has trended towards large powerful realms.
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But all kept each other in balance. If one became stronger than all/most of them, it would only be a matter of time before said blob would coalitioned by the others.
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I mean compare EU 4 to Victoria II. Victoria II models things such as population, and rebels in that game are hugely effective. Replacing hollowed-out regiments can be a nightmare, and raising armies in general is tedious, as it requires you to raise them in the province where there is population for them. You can only take a small amount of land, generally, before the AI decides you're a menace and unites to destroy your empire. As a game about truly managing a country, I think Victoria II is a far superior game to EU 4.
But god damn is it much more fun becoming a world power as an OPM in EU4. The actual management aspects of the game are largely streamlined, but as a game, I feel like it honestly works better. EU 4 is definitely flawed, don't get me wrong, and while its AI is still fairly dumb compared to a human player, it really is smarter than most other games. Diplomacy with the AI in EU4 is actually fun (by diplomacy I mean overly aggressive foreign policy, of course).
As for the original topic, I have to argue that if the AI had more brakes than it already does, I don't think nations would expand much past their initial borders in 1444. Besides, there's nothing more satisfying than removing Kebab or Francey-pants as a nation in Africa. And I do mean nothing.
But god damn is it much more fun becoming a world power as an OPM in EU4. The actual management aspects of the game are largely streamlined, but as a game, I feel like it honestly works better. EU 4 is definitely flawed, don't get me wrong, and while its AI is still fairly dumb compared to a human player, it really is smarter than most other games. Diplomacy with the AI in EU4 is actually fun (by diplomacy I mean overly aggressive foreign policy, of course).
As for the original topic, I have to argue that if the AI had more brakes than it already does, I don't think nations would expand much past their initial borders in 1444. Besides, there's nothing more satisfying than removing Kebab or Francey-pants as a nation in Africa. And I do mean nothing.
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I would like to remind you one of my suggestions, which I'm absolutely sure you have already seen: Make vassals use up only 0.5 diplo relation slots.
I wish the AI was spreading MORE, FASTER, HARDER. Meanwhile there needs to be some incentive to keep minors alive.
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So argue for a game mechanic that whenever you're winning all the other great powers come down and beat the shit out of you.
I think the reason the developers have steered clear of that is that eventually the player would reach a point where they COULD get more powerful, but then they'd just be beat down to likely worse off than they were before anyway.
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Actually, I'd just wanted to point out that above everything this is a game and not a history simulator. Gameplay choices should prevail over historical arguments, but I keep seeing people here and the steam boards (mostly the steam boards) bringing up history to remove or add features. I personally think the game is balanced and fun as it is now, except for some minor details. I'd be perfectly happy to keep the AI expansion drift and coalition mechanics as it is.
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