Doesn't Development end... very unrealistic?

[artemis667]

The point remains though, whether we attach the term unrealistic, implausible, or immersion-breaking - it is none the less immersion breaking that minor one or two province nations can grow to development levels matching, and far exceeding, those capitals of the great empires of history. Simply because the mechanics allow the continuous dumping on monarch points with no soft cap matched to that province's context.

It's a problem and for many of us, it will remain a problem, to the point where we're unable to enjoy the game. It would be like playing a Lord of the Rings game, and suddenly Merry, Pippin, or some random orcs, became as powerful as a Maiar overnight (edit: or even grows to that power over the course of the game story, with no real in-game context other than the application of an abstract mechanic). Some designer might do it because they correctly note that it allows a different playstyle, and some people might even enjoy it, but that wouldn't make it a good change.

 

[LikeNothing]

You are confusing realism with immersion/flavor.

Immersion/flavor is playing a WW2 shooter and using a mosin-nagant instead of a laser gun - this is important.

Realism is playing a WW2 shooter and having to spend 2 months in hospital everytime you get shot - stupid and detrimental to gameplay. Nobody actually wants a realistic game, which is why realism arguments are so selectively used.

I can't say for other players, but Ryukyu being more Developed than London, Paris, Beijing, and Constantinople in 1700 AD breaks immersion for me. If immersion was ever broken in the history of immersion-breaking, this breaks immersion.

It is also quite unrealistic, of course.

 

[Wizzington]

The point remains though, whether we attach the term unrealistic, implausible, or immersion-breaking - it is none the less immersion breaking that minor one or two province nations can grow to development levels matching, and far exceeding, those capitals of the great empires of history. Simply because the mechanics allow the continuous dumping on monarch points with no soft cap matched to that province's context.

For you personally perhaps, but I've seen nothing to indicate this is the case for any significant number of players since the last tweaks (and from what I've seen AI empires develop their capitals a great deal, so maybe it's just you that are neglecting yours?)

 

[Hiiri]

Realism is playing a WW2 shooter and having to spend 2 months in hospital everytime you get shot - stupid and detrimental to gameplay. Nobody actually wants a realistic game, which is why realism arguments are so selectively used.

Not to mention it'd be harmful to DLC sales when Hearts of Iron players are forced to commit suicide after losing.

 

[Wizzington]

I can't say for other players, but Ryukyu being more Developed than London, Paris, Beijing, and Constantinople in 1700 AD breaks immersion for me. If immersion was ever broken in the history of immersion-breaking, this breaks immersion.

It is also quite unrealistic, of course.

Show me screenshots of this in a game started in latest beta, because this sounds completely made up.

 

[artemis667]

Wiz, you're correct that AI empires develop their capitals a great deal. In fact, I can practically guarantee that you're going to see the capital of a small and historically irrelevant one-province minor almost anywhere in the world develop it's capital to an absolutely fantastic level. Amazingly, unbelievably, fantastic. I'll shut up now.

 

[LikeNothing]

Show me screenshots of this in a game started in latest beta, because this sounds completely made up.

I'm rolling an Observer game from 1444 right now for this purpose. Just one game, because the effect in discussion is ubiquitous and universal, all it requires is a sufficiently large number of months to pass in the game.

The change in Development from 1.12 to 1.13 did nothing to alter the comparative cost of Development between small and large nations. So why should the end result of their comparative levels of Development be any different?

Will post screenshots when my Observer game goes past 1600.

 

[LemonMonk]

Is there anything in the ledger about province development? It would things easier to get to the end of an observer mode game, then sort the development (administration, diplomatic, military and an overall) by high-low.

 

[oblio-]

Can someone post some actual facts from 1.13? You know, screenshots of these supposedly "horrendous provinces"?
Preferably in direct comparison to metropolises of successful empires in their game? I say "successful empires" because Ile de France is not a benchmark when France was reduced to an OPM in your game, for example.

 

[Bavarian Steve]

Maybe they should take development away from being an active thing that you do, and make it happen naturally overtime as you play your game. Examples... You go to war a lot? Have your manpower adjust upwards as the game progresses. You like playing a peaceful game? Increase your provincial trade power as time progresses. You play a game with high stability and religious unity? Increase your base tax score over time.

 

[IFWanderer]

Maybe they should take development away from being an active thing that you do, and make it happen naturally overtime as you play your game. Examples... You go to war a lot? Have your manpower adjust upwards as the game progresses. You like playing a peaceful game? Increase your provincial trade power as time progresses. You play a game with high stability and religious unity? Increase your base tax score over time.

And, outside of war, how do you measure the other options?

 

[WeissRaben]

I'm rolling an Observer game from 1444 right now for this purpose. Just one game, because the effect in discussion is ubiquitous and universal, all it requires is a sufficiently large number of months to pass in the game.

The change in Development from 1.12 to 1.13 did nothing to alter the comparative cost of Development between small and large nations. So why should the end result of their comparative levels of Development be any different?

Will post screenshots when my Observer game goes past 1600.

There's no real reason for big countries to have bigger cities than small countries. There can be an argument in favour of income influencing the cost of development, but size? Nah.

 

[Bavarian Steve]

And, outside of war, how do you measure the other options?

In the example I've given, time at peace would be easy to measure, because it would be the opposite of time at war. Time with high stability is also easily measured. Those were just examples of things that could be used. My main point was not those mechanics, but the idea that maybe development should be a passive thing that occurs naturally over based on how you are playing. But this whole idea could be moot if the point of development, in the devs eyes, was implemented as a way to spend monarch points that accumulate, rather than as a development system for developments sake.

 

[BurnT]

While I see how this is immersion-breaking to some (I for one don't care so far), for gameplay it's not too bad - that is, if the purpose of development is supposed to make going tall an alternative to going wide. Considering that going wide is still superior to going tall (annexing X dev is cheaper in MP than developing X dev), I would consider anything that widens this gap (a.k.a. nerfing development) a step in the wrong direction.

1. Make dev cost gold (additionally): while it sounds reasonable (immersion/realism) it would favor going wide - in all my games I always got richer the bigger I got, that's also true for nations that start out rich -> going wide = easier to develop provinces
2. dev over time: If it's fast enough that it can keep up with aquiring dev through wars - OK. That would probably mean it should only take a couple of months, 2 or 3 years at the most - in the end it probably wouldn't make much of a difference. Also I wouldn't want to wait for decades/centuries to get the next building-slot
3. agent-based dev: then coring and culture-changing should probably be agent-based as well, if you want wide vs. tall to be fair Not to mention it'll probably take longer to implement than the the above two ideas
4. passive dev: NO! I payed for CS mostly so I could develop - I'd be really pissed

There's one option that I'd consider fair: cap the max development of a province based on certain factors (terrain, capital, CoT, ...), going beyond that cap should become very expensive. Also the cap should be high enough, that a wide player can't easily hit it in more than one province ...

 

[Zehir]

There's no real reason for big countries to have bigger cities than small countries. There can be an argument in favour of income influencing the cost of development, but size? Nah.

Well, there is. London or Rome is an example. Capital of a big empire is it's heart, where all the riches from all over the country flows. If you control various lands, like tundra, jungle or deserts, then all of the goods will go to the capital, where they will be sold and used.

 

[Bavarian Steve]

So a system where you arbitrarily press a button for more manpower is worth money, but a system that responds to the actions you take is not?

 

[Axe99]

Still on vacation. Just popped in to remind you guys that realism still isn't a meaningful argument. Development is meant to occur more in countries that do not expand. It was too extreme when every opm ended at 60+ dev but it's fine as it is now.

The Baden example was just to illustrate how selectively and arbitrarily people give a damn about realism (the end result of almost every country played by a competent player will be deeply unrealistic)... which is why it's not a meaningful argument. As I keep saying.

Hope you're having a good one . On the whole realism thing, realism in-and-of-itself isn't an argument, but having some care to realism helps use history as a natural 'balancer' - the further broad-brush outcomes of game mechanic vary from realistic (noting that what actually happened during this period in many areas, military, economic and social is still contested - so we don't always know what 'realistic' is), the more other mechanics need to be put in place to get results that are realistic enough to be immersive. For example, at the moment, the westernisation path is deeply un-immersive for me personally - it may make for a better balanced MP game, but you can't have a great, balanced MP game and a plausibly historical grand strategy game at the same time, as history was deeply, deeply unbalanced.

On this particular issue, I think the biggest problem is the way that there's little relationship in terms of available monarch points in the game and historic nations capacity to govern at particular points in history (particularly in the later game, as the development of the institutions of Government meant that the capacity of Government was far less limited by the capacities of a particular monarch or president - and even early in the period, relatively incapable rulers were often compensated for by advisors that did a lot of the actual ruling).

Say, for example, a small (two province) duchy gets a kick-arse ruler (say 5-5-5), and Hungary (a small Kingdom, say seven provinces) gets a 1-1-1 ruler, and that Hungary, because of its income, can support a couple of 1-point advisors. So you have 24 MPs a month for the duchy split over two provinces (12 MPs/province/month), and 14 for Hungary split over 7 (2 MP/province/month) - so lucky small duchy has around six times the development potential (holding tech and ideas constant, as the cost doesn't change by nation size) as unlucky Hungary. Even if Hungary was just as lucky with its ruler, it would still only have around 3.4 MP/province in terms of development, so still less than a third the development potential.

While I'd agree that a Monarch/President's capacity had diminishing margine returns the larger a realm grew, I'd argue that the returns, as they're modelled by MPs in EU4, drop for too fast, and that this relationship is at the core of the difficulties in balancing EU4's various mechanics. The reason for this is that MPs are designed to do two jobs - look after 'realm-sized' issues like tech and ideas, but also 'sub-realm' issues like buildings (pre-1.12) and development (1.12 and up), as well as rebellions, that scale with the size of the realm - so balancing between different sized nations will never be perfect because the model is trying to reconcile two functions that can't be married together - so on one end you get one-province nations having a very high MP/province/sub-realm issue ratio, and huge nations having very low ratios.

Argh - crook at the moment - I think the above makes sense, but if it doesn't, I apologise to whoever read it for the trouble. Also, fixing the issue with the MPs trying to do two things that don't work in harmony with each other won't sort the tall vs wide issue. That's probably better addressed by properly modelling how expensive wars actually were, either by MP maintenance costs for maintaining large armies or perhaps have a 'home' for regiments, and if the regiment is away from home, give them an extra supply cost? If you scaled the supply cost for distance from home, it'd even provide a rough'n'ready logistics-alike - that's very rough, would need refining, and thoughts may be rubbish, just trying to help . EU4 is already a tonne of fun, and my second-most played game ever - thanks to you, Johan and the team for all the work you've done on it so far .

You are confusing realism with immersion/flavor.

Immersion/flavor is playing a WW2 shooter and using a mosin-nagant instead of a laser gun - this is important.

Realism is playing a WW2 shooter and having to spend 2 months in hospital everytime you get shot - stupid and detrimental to gameplay. Nobody actually wants a realistic game, which is why realism arguments are so selectively used.

Even that result for a WW2 shooter is a tad on the 'easy' side if you're looking at proper, realistic results . Imagine a 'realistic' CK2?!

 

[LikeNothing]

Show me screenshots of this in a game started in latest beta, because this sounds completely made up.

I only ran my game till 1582, which is not even half way through the game, and before any Development Efficiency modifiers came up.

Moskva, 25 Development. Compared to 1444, the province has been developed 1 times.

London, 26 Development. Compared to 1444, the provinc has been developed 4 times.

Oldenburg, 32 Development. Compared to 1444, the province has been developed 25 times.

Oldenburg has never been a Free City or even a Republic throughout this Observer game.

Augsburg, 35 Development. Compared to 1444, the province has been developed 20 times.

Augsburg has never been a Free City or even a Republic throughout this Observer game.

Gelre, 32 Development. Compared to 1444, the province has been developed 17 times.

Gelre has never been a Free City or even a Republic throughout this Observer game, and for most of its existence was as a 2PM instead of a 1PM. Most Dutch minors are at similar levels of Development. Notice also the Woods Terrain in Gelre.

Ava, 30 Development. Compared to 1444, the province has been developed 14 times.

Ava has never been a Free City or even a Republic throughout this Observer game. It started as a 4PM in 1444, but since it lost its other 3 Provinces it has nowhere else to put its Monarch Points. Notice also the Tropical province modifier in Ava.

^These examples are just from a casual perusing of the map, looking for the usual suspects. I chose to avoid the Free Cities since obviously they will have high Development (WAD?). Unfortunately Ryukyu got annexed really fast by Japan via that mission so I'm afraid I cannot provide a Ryukyu example at this time.

I'll leave it to the other players to run more Observer games or to run them till 1821, but I think this will be sufficient for you to decide if this problem is "completely made up".

 

[LikeNothing]

There's no real reason for big countries to have bigger cities than small countries. There can be an argument in favour of income influencing the cost of development, but size? Nah.

Size influences Income.

Anyway my suggestion to Paradox has always been that Development depends (mostly) on Income (ducats). Size indeed should have no direct effect on Development.

But, if they continue to refuse to make such a change (which modders cannot), I will unfortunately have to mod some direct effect on Development Cost due to Size (a Triggered Modifier based on Number of Provinces) so that I can continue to enjoy EU4 with a reasonable level of immersion.

 

[Thrac]

So whers Wallachia at 100 development each?