DP sliders strategies rediscussed?

[knul]

Knul,
In the long run income from trade is larger than income from production, for any nation in this game, and thus naval is better than land. Add to that more colonists which means BB free expansion.

In SP the morale and manpower is only relevant the first 100-150 years (well, maybe an isolated pagan nation like the Incas exempted). After that you are king of the game and can do essentially whatever you want. The only constraint in expansion is BB points and that is why in SP you should always go Aristo. That is if you play for becoming as big and rich as possible. If you play for any other reason you must state so before we discuss.

Thus the fact remains: the only question regarding the naval slider is when to start moving it to the left. The normal answer is: not too early. You cannot get explorers/conquistadors early on anyhow (unless you play POR) and thus extra colonists are not of any use and income from trade is rather low early on in the game.

Mmmh, so Land is still not balanced? TE is too good a deal, I agree. Not only trade income via CoTs, but also a part of province income is determined by TE, while production efficiency only does the latter. Maybe if Naval didn't give a TE bonus it would be balanced, but I agree with you that Naval is way better than Land. I only wondered if in some cases Land might be a bit better, but even for specialized cases it isn't, it seems.

 

[unmerged(34338)]

Mmmh, so Land is still not balanced? TE is too good a deal, I agree. Not only trade income via CoTs, but also a part of province income is determined by TE, while production efficiency only does the latter. Maybe if Naval didn't give a TE bonus it would be balanced, but I agree with you that Naval is way better than Land. I only wondered if in some cases Land might be a bit better, but even for specialized cases it isn't, it seems.

There are cases when it is better, even Daniel will probably agree on that.
In MP some countries are better off going full land.

 

[Jomini]

Mmmh, so Land is still not balanced? TE is too good a deal, I agree. Not only trade income via CoTs, but also a part of province income is determined by TE, while production efficiency only does the latter. Maybe if Naval didn't give a TE bonus it would be balanced, but I agree with you that Naval is way better than Land. I only wondered if in some cases Land might be a bit better, but even for specialized cases it isn't, it seems.

TE is factored into income more times than PE.

Land is useful for the countries from the middle of nowhere who cannot acheive global trade domination and could use the cheaper troops and better offense. When fighting down multiple CRTs you want to use cavalry and you need to survive the fire phases. Not to mention that when fighting superior troops you really want a heavy numerical advantage which makes MP quite important.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

Tom can probably tell people better which nations are really not going to expand into a trading power better (see his Xhosa World Conquest thread for an idea as to how detailed on this stuff he gets!). I do recall than when I was goofing around with the Dakotah, I was in no hurry to go Naval.

However, I can't imagine that any country that isn't buried deeply inland, or won't be seeing Europeans in the near future, would want to eschew the benefits of going naval once they get connected to the world. And frankly the land benefits, other than the mild production bonus, are of little value militarily as far as I am concerned, because I rarely if ever fight battles in SP, and avoid attrition issues like the plague, to conserve resources. Not that you can avoid attrition in Moscow too easily, one has to admit.

Someone asked about the way to go about winning by siege:

Basically, you have two advantages in out-sieging your AI opponent. First, he will only siege one of your provinces at a time, while you can efficiently split up your troops to besiege more than that. Rarely will the AI lift a siege to come home and roust you out, unless you are attacking a capital or CoT province, so you can split your forces pretty thin. Second, once assaults are allowed (LT 5), the AI will be very inefficient at managing them, often assaulting quite early and failing at least once, often twice. If you learn to get a feel for when to assault (early on, wait for the breach; as you get LT advantage, you can assault earlier), you will rarely fail, since the AI isn't really pushing you to complete the siege quickly (MP is MUCH different; you don't get to lollygag in front of the walls unless you like all-cavalry armies coming in and annihilating you ). And you will be much more efficient about using artillery after LT 7 to push the siege along more quickly (presumably you'll use your leaders more effectively, too, if you have any with a siege bonus). And that's not even counting the fact you may well have moved your DP sliders to gain a siege bonus, whereas the AI never moves his DP sliders and almost never has them set by the game to get such a bonus.

And then, there are the tricks. Like the small cavalry force that you keep nearby and time to enter any province the AI is besieging so that the cannon doesn't fire, then retreating the next day, only to rinse and repeat as needed.

 

[binTravkin]

We are talking about early warfare. Down 50% morale, unable to fight well on plains, and having to suffer attrition doesn't seem like a winning combo for the earliest warfare.

What 50%?
Are you aware base morale is not = 1 (which is the only case -.5 would be equal 50%)?

Once you get your first fire phase, I'm still not convinced. You are down two points of fire against a quality player and you still can't fight well on the plains.

2 points down? So what if Im 2-3times the size?

Between assualts and fire I will grant the strategy looks appealing; as it might later on when morale differences are less.

Sure it is, besides your -2 fire points only kick in around LT9-13 around the time they quickly start becoming irrelevant compared to size.
Furthermore if you have a leader to compensate.

Did something go over your head? I specificly stated WE. Between attrition and the inevitable losing of battle - retreat to plains - get massacred by cavalry I somehow think less warmongering is possible early on

Inevitable? WTF? Have you tried it? Try it.

Two months actually.

Incredible! You actually build army only and exclusively when you lose some troops?
I build army all the wartime so I get new regiments like each 3-7 days.

Which allows the enemy to penetrate up to 4 provinces into your land. At the very least while your infantry are rebuilding the enemy should be able to get a very nice strategic deployment going.

You must be thinking if one battle is lost all the war is lost.
Plus I have yet to see an enemy which 'penetrates up to 4 provinces into my land' and at the same time does anything reasonable.
Only cavalry is able to do so routinely and without infantry he can't even take a prov.
Not even talking about the fact taking those provs take time and to take 4 provs in a row you need a really BIG stack which would in turn die out fast because of attrition etc etc.

Why? You are down two points of fire and still hefty morale.

As I said being down 2 points is lesser trouble than being 2 times smaller. Hefty morale is an overestimation.

Let's say that I have 1 morale

It is a mighty deed to have morale of 1, I think - you must have a monarch with 0 Mil points and be at 0 land tech and have no morale boost.

Consider:
1.Im not playing a nation with monarch with 0 Mil
2.Im not having this setup at the gamestart, which implies I have better morale and higher costs early on.
3.
Max Offensive = +0.04 * 5 = +0.2
Max Land = + 0.05 * 5 = +0.25
Max Quantity = - 0.05 * 5 = -0.25
Max Serfdom = - 0.05 * 5 = -0.25
Total: - 0.05
Even considering I have an average starting morale which is around 1.5 and you have your +.45 from your maxed-out morale, I still don't see how it's comparable to 1 versus .5 or 100% versus 50%.
You will have to redo your maths and they will come less and less relevant as game goes on.

First off you aren't getting 10x cheaper infantry, you only get -2 for full quantity and -2 for full serfdom. The -3 from full land is sunk as any early warmonger benifits from land. 3 ducats vs 11 ducats (assuming I did the math right there) means your infantry is just under 4 times cheaper. 1 ducat vs 9 assuming one is playing normal difficult would be 9 times cheaper.

Means you think 3 vs 11 is a negligible difference.
Even with the virtual inflation-immunity?
When you get +5% inflation you will pay 12 as it will be 11 * 1.05 rounded up.
I will only pay 4 when I get past 33% inflation which can be avoided easily.
So in fact it will soon become more like 3 vs 12 which is 4 my troops vs 1 your.
Do you think you can win with such ratio?

I play very little MP. Both because of time constraints and because I do like the pause button.

What keeps you from trying out in SP?

It seems to me you sacrifice huge amounts of potential before LT 5. You can't assualt your way into better supply and you need more troops to make up for poor morale and your infantry emphasis when infantry are horrid. On plains you yourself say you need cavalry, yet by building an early infantry force you handicap yourself heavily.

Darn. This shows you really have little expierence.
Was I pretending I have 3d infantry right away in 1419?
No.
I said that it becomes such over time, at LT5 at earliest and at LT 9-13 at normal. Read whole post please before you answer on the first sentence of it.

If you want to invade France as anyone you will be fighting virtually always somewhere on the plains. The Polish and Russian frontiers are likewise riddled with plains. Italy, the Balkans, Portugal, Africa, and the norther borders of the HRE (both German and Dutch) are all plains.

1.See comment about cavalry early on.

2.At 1500 I have a stack of 50k LT9 infantry manufactured for 50 * 3 = 150k. You have the cheapest available high-morale cavalry which costs 10.
A battle of 50k infantry with firearms versus 15k cavalry. Who will win?
In worst case I have enough money to throw in a few k of cavalry, you haven't to do the same with inf.

I highly doubt that carries over to MP.

See some gamestats pages.

Inno is the easiest slider to reverse in the game bar centra, there are multiple random events that lower inno and either do nothing or give stab. Getting to assualts or fire significantly before your enemies is downright lethal. This lets you define more advantageous borders and hobble your enemies.

Man, there is very little that can be lethal to you if you have 4 times the army and 3 times the manpower of enemy and it's certainly not the little tech advantage someone might have by boosting inno losing on stability (he will still have to play for it an a lot more to have his merchants stay in CoTs and to have his troops fight okay) and colonies on the same time.


Next time you come over to argue, read whole post and think of it.
Ideally even try it.
And don't nitpick, it only gets people angry on you and does not prove anything.
Noone can prove me wrong if he even haven't tried it and ws2_32 already said he's using a not-so-harsh version of it (by 2 DP points less).

 

[unmerged(52850)]

Is it just me or has this thread gone a bit over hand? It should deffinetly be a nother poll so this descussion could be a bit more organized.

You can't really discuss which side of the sliders is the best, it totally depends on a few aspects:

SP/MP, country, date, goals etc.

It would be far more interesting if you could declare which country, for example, you are talking about because otherwise there's no point really...

1 example: If you're Russia or England (both colonist states), you still have to have totally different slider settings. This most people know but if you change one slider - you often need to change a nother. Therefor their settings becomes totaly different. So again: to discuss some "generally best way" is impossible.

A fun discussion though, but a bit broad.

 

[unmerged(15337)]

There has been some interesting discussion here. But I agree with Bumpe's last post that by now it's just too broad to be very meaningful. I know that in the old days they had a series of thread/polls on each of the 8 sliders, one week at a time. I'd like to see that again.

 

[unmerged(3931)]

Yes, we do feel passionately about our DP sliders don't we? It is a good discussion. Of course the sliders depend on SP/MP, country, date, goals etc. There has been so much work to make the sliders "balanced." I think it shows. The only slider left intentionally unbalanced is the Centralization slider.

All that can be said about which sliders are best is that Centralization is best. Other than that we can discuss what DP settings will lead to a winning strategy for the most inclusive number of countries in the most inclusive number of circumstances. For single-player my vote is Aristocracy, Centralization, Narrow-minded, Free-trade, Offensive, Land, Quantity (=2), Serfdom. It's a strategy that works for Xhosa (actually I went to Free-subjects, but it could have been Serfdom), so it should work for any single-player nation. I have no idea about multi-player.

 

[Jomini]

What 50%?
Are you aware base morale is not = 1 (which is the only case -.5 would be equal 50%)?

No I am not, I thought it start off at 1 or close thereto.

2 points down? So what if Im 2-3times the size?

So then I countermarch in front of you till you attrition down. If you opt to assault I march foward and hit when your morale is already flagging and use my morale advantage to if nothing else destroy yours before the fortress falls.

Sure it is, besides your -2 fire points only kick in around LT9-13 around the time they quickly start becoming irrelevant compared to size.

If nothing else I can attack while you are assualting and drain your morale by staying for the fire phase and retreating when you get back to shock.

Inevitable? WTF? Have you tried it? Try it.

Yes it is inevitable you will lose a battle. The battles are decided by dice and it is only a matter of time before you lose a battle, to some degree one can control the direction of enemy retreat.

Incredible! You actually build army only and exclusively when you lose some troops?

Most of the time yes, there is only so far above support limit one can take the army before support costs drain the economy cold. If you are building cheap infantry continiously I'd have a blast during war with that. Talk about easy WS, just slip some mobile cavalry to the rear and bash the new recruits silly. If I'm truly overmatched, I'll just turn over territory and attempt to win it back when I have a tech advantage.

You must be thinking if one battle is lost all the war is lost.
Plus I have yet to see an enemy which 'penetrates up to 4 provinces into my land' and at the same time does anything reasonable.

No merely that losing one battle makes things very dicey when you are relying on cheap infantry early. Waiting to reconstitute your hordes (its been awhile, am I correct in that quantity does not increase build rate?) means I can seize mountains behind rivers and use cavalry to smack around any new recruits making their way to the front.

Not even talking about the fact taking those provs take time and to take 4 provs in a row you need a really BIG stack which would in turn die out fast because of attrition etc etc.

If I can get a decent cavalry army early game over your recruitment sites, I can normally rack up hefty warscore which tends to be enough for a cheap peace

Even considering I have an average starting morale which is around 1.5 and you have your +.45 from your maxed-out morale, I still don't see how it's comparable to 1 versus .5 or 100% versus 50%.
You will have to redo your maths and they will come less and less relevant as game goes on.

Okay let's do the same exercise again:
You start at 1.5, I at 1.95. By some miracle of the dice you and I take the same morale damage of .45 each wave. We each reinforce with an equal wave:
1.5 : 1.95
1.05 : 1.5

1.28 : 1.73
.83: 1.28

1.17:1.65
.72 : 1.2

In reality morale damage varies with relative morale; I having morale will inflict more morale damage with each fresh wave while restoring more morale each iteration. Of course your oversized stack still suffers from attritionary damage should I decline battle.

Before LT 5 I don't see the value in cheap infantry, particularly over offensive and land. Once fire comes into play the 2 fire becomes important. Aside from the window between the two, I don't see why this is so compelling of a strategy early on in the fifteenth century.

Means you think 3 vs 11 is a negligible difference.

That depends. If I get to fire before you because I focused more on tech, certainly. If we are fighting on the plains, sure. If you are pushing into heavy attrition, again yes.

What keeps you from trying out in SP?

Because in SP I can handily defeat the AI irregardless. The vast majority of the time the AI doesn't even follow up routes, let alone countermarch to encourage attrition or push forward when I'm assaulting. I'm positive I could hammer the AI with such settings; however I'm positive I could do so with ANY settings.

Darn. This shows you really have little expierence.
Was I pretending I have 3d infantry right away in 1419?
No.
I said that it becomes such over time, at LT5 at earliest and at LT 9-13 at normal. Read whole post please before you answer on the first sentence of it..

You will note I originally said, "Early warmongering is far better served with free subjects, morale handily outweighs cost issues." You seem to have a problem with saying that early on, as in the 15th century, morale is more important than cheap troops.

1.See comment about cavalry early on.

You say you keep a small force, one which suffers from lower morale due to your need to get cheap infantry. Early one free subjects improves cavalry which will be far more important in battles without fire than even hordes of infantry.

2.At 1500 I have a stack of 50k LT9 infantry manufactured for 50 * 3 = 150k. You have the cheapest available high-morale cavalry which costs 10.

How are you doing this? Even assuming you start at both land and off 7 you still need to use 6 clicks of both to maximize them that leaves 2 each for serfdom and quantity. Given no random events to increase quantity (not to mention losing the drill instructor) I'm failing to see how you get 3 ducat infantry in 1500 if you aren't starting with it. It would seem to me that we'd both have spent the same clicks on land and off; you'd have taken quantity and I quality; which doesn't give you a massive price discount.

Man, there is very little that can be lethal to you if you have 4 times the army and 3 times the manpower of enemy and it's certainly not the little tech advantage someone might have by boosting inno losing on stability (he will still have to play for it an a lot more to have his merchants stay in CoTs and to have his troops fight okay) and colonies on the same time.

Having no fire phase vs a player who has one seems to come fairly close.

Stability costs are not a significant fraction of tech costs early on. Most nations have only Spain, Poland, the Ottos and maybe Russia early on even have all that much incentive to take wrong religion provinces. The cost of stability when you are a compact European state is quite low compared to tech costs. England, France, Sweden, Austria and BB should all have but one religion and hence cheap stab costs.

Next time you come over to argue, read whole post and think of it.

Don't be an arse. Of course I've read the whole thing. You have yet to show a single reason why it is a good idea to go for high serf/quantity early on. Nor why early on morale is important. Virtually every other paragraph you say as the game goes on this gets better; which I have never disputed. Early on though I see no reason to go quantity/high serf.

Noone can prove me wrong if he even haven't tried it and ws2_32 already said he's using a not-so-harsh version of it (by 2 DP points less).

Sure one can. You yourself have admitted that you don't do this until the end of the early game/beginning of the midgame. Before you have a fire phase I simply don't see how this can be all that winning of a strat, infantry need a massive advantage against cavalry simply to make up shock balance, let alone looking at plains bonus.

I am well aware of Tom's use of your strategy. He makes the obvious decision to not go down 2 points of fire and as I recall his Xhosa game he first goes after free trade for colonists, aristo for BB reduction/cheap cav, off, land, centra, and some inno first. Which is exactly my point going for cheap hordes of infantry doesn't make all that much sense early on; once your morale has gone up somewhat it isn't so harsh.

 

[unmerged(20077)]

... land morale bonuses and penalties apply to the entire army equally. Infantry and cavalry have the same maximum morale as each other regardless of the Serfdom slider.

Does it really? I thought only infantry was affected - if this is the case, then always go for Free Peasantry - Serfdom is even more rubbish than I thought!

 

[DSYoungEsq]

1. Civility in discussion helps avoid unhappiness.

2. When using the quote tags, it helps if you identify whom you are quoting, at least for the first quote.

3. I'm starting sub-threads for each slider. Each thread will be introduced one per day. Then, it is my plan to discuss general strategies with well-known countries, based upon the DP setting discussions. Aristocracy v Plutocracy is up; tomorrow will be Narrowminded v. Innovative (I'm skipping Centralization until the end, because there are very few cases where you want to go Decentralized, and goodness knows the damn game wants to constantly push you that way with random events... ).

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Hey ladies and gents. How does MP change the preferred sliders? I have noticed that it isn't tremendously important where my sliders are at any one time against AI so I was wondering if MP brought out differences. Some people have given their opinions and spouted numbers and such, but the consensus seems to be mixed. "You have to go this way for the money." "That's stupid, I could just do this other thing and beat you. Go the other way and you will have a shot." "I could beat someone doing that without batting an eye. *wink* *wink*"

Is MP stuff in sub-fora that I can't find? Never having had the opportunity is making me want to make the jump over. I would assume the house rules would guide slider position as well.

 

[DSYoungEsq]

Hey ladies and gents. How does MP change the preferred sliders? I have noticed that it isn't tremendously important where my sliders are at any one time against AI so I was wondering if MP brought out differences. Some people have given their opinions and spouted numbers and such, but the consensus seems to be mixed. "You have to go this way for the money." "That's stupid, I could just do this other thing and beat you. Go the other way and you will have a shot." "I could beat someone doing that without batting an eye. *wink* *wink*"

Is MP stuff in sub-fora that I can't find? Never having had the opportunity is making me want to make the jump over. I would assume the house rules would guide slider position as well.

Often the house rules dictate the slider position. Most importantly, many games these days are requiring that the Naval/Land slider be left at 5, the mid-point. The attempt is to encourage traditionally naval powers to feel less inhibited in attempting to grab Continental provinces, and for traditionally land powers to gain an interest in colonization, etc.

The main difference I have found in playing MP is that you cannot take the other humans for granted militarily. I've said here all along that in SP, you can blow the AI nations off militarily; just out siege them and take the provs in the peace deal. That doesn't work against a human player (I can just imagine what would happen if I tried that with HolisticGod or Tonio or, God Help Me, Peter Ebbsen).

 

[unmerged(6147)]

Pagans should definitely go toward full Land. Pagans get little benefit from trade.

Lots of good points Tom. But this statement was wrong. It may be for you but it is not for me. I am the leading trader in any game, pagan or whatever. However, with some isolated pagans, it can take some 100-150 years to get the maps of the world. But that is not that bad since trade early on is quite useless anyway.

But you and me play our games quite differently although we aim for the same target.

But if you go for WC with any of the non-best pagans then you may be right that there is no time for investing much in trade (or infra) the first couple of 100 years. However, I have never succeeded making a WC with such a pagan nation (only with Benin). And I doubt I ever will since I am not ready to commit myself to the degree of micromanaging that you are such a master of.

 

[unmerged(18425)]

Does it really? I thought only infantry was affected - if this is the case, then always go for Free Peasantry - Serfdom is even more rubbish than I thought!

In MP you go serfdom with many, many countries, simply because of the reduced stab cost.

 

[unmerged(18425)]

Hey ladies and gents. How does MP change the preferred sliders?

It depends on the house rules (like you said), some games have a locked land slider for example. Others have a rule preventing you to take vassals if you are decentralized (because of the manpower bug), making going centralism even more attractive.
But apart from that,

In MP you most of the time go full land when you are Austria, Russia, Brandenburg, France, the Ottoman Empire, Poland and Sweden.
You go naval with England, Portugal, Venice, Spain. Though I like to go land with Spain myself.
Offensive and quality 9 are for most countries a no-brainer. Same with going serfdom.
Free trade versus mercantilism sometimes mostly depends on if you want extra colonists.
Full aristocracy is interesting for countries who want cheap cavalry and/or plan to have a large badboy. Too many mp-ers still stink that full pluto is teh rox0r for countries like Russia, but I disagree.
Etc, etc.

All in all,

In MP you want to make sure your stab costs are cheap, combined with good morale of your army, all the while you need to be sure you keep up tech wise with other countries and that you still pump out enough settlers to not lose the colonization race.

Not an easy task, certainly, but challenging! I encourage you to make the jump over, as I encourage everyone else here We can use more fresh blood in the mp scene.

 

[Mork]

Yes, we do feel passionately about our DP sliders don't we? It is a good discussion. Of course the sliders depend on SP/MP, country, date, goals etc. There has been so much work to make the sliders "balanced." I think it shows. The only slider left intentionally unbalanced is the Centralization slider.

True.
I remember when the game was young and the sliders where heavily unbalanced.
Innovativeness was particular unbalanced. IIRC we all first went narrow, then some changes where done, and getting free manufacturies was way too easy with innovative, then we of course all went innovative.