Okay, this concludes my testing for a bit. One post and I'm off to play my newly created Kingdom of Hawaii. Can't wait to see if I can conquer those nasty Nipponese!
In any event, I 'solved' both of Persian and Burgundian problems, although I don't think solved is the right word here. What I did was take a very, very big axe to the area and keep chopping until the problems disappeared. The real work would be to slowly add the events back in and run 'hand-off' games until you hit whatever it is that's mucking things up (e.g., Persian death, abnormally huge Mameluke empires, Omani colonization of India, the conquest of Delhi, etc.).
Side note: Making the Indonesian countries non-colonizers allows them to knock each other around without removing all the possible tp sites for Portugal and Holland. In one game, for example, Malacca still conquered most of SE Asia - but hey, who cares? Well, I'm sure somebody does, but that somebody ain't me, so I'm done with that area of the world.
In Persia/Central Asia/India I essentially ended up taking out all of the new minors and just about all of the country-specific events, including the Uzbek ones that I was particularly fond of (sigh). It worked like a charm - expansion is Paradox normal, no more Omani trade empires spanning from Africa to India, etc. What this means is that the effects aren't secondary outside of this region, i.e., it's events, or new nations, within the region that are disrupting the balance so much.
However, because there are *so many* events and three or four new minors, and because I've spent far too much time testing and not enough actually playing for enjoyment, I leave it up to someone else to drudge through all the hands-off games. What you essentially have to do is add back in some events, run a few games, and see if things start to regularly skew. If they don't, then add back in some more and repeat. And repeat. And even with a second very fast computer this can take a long, long time, so some real dedication is required. Keep going until you see one of the signs (e.g., the Omani occupation of India) and then you'll know you've hit the bug.
So all I've 'solved' here is that the bug is region-specific and has nothing to do with changes in Europe, Africa, or Pacific Asia. Not much of a solution. However, some intelligent guesswork would indicate that the Uzbek events, for example, have nothing to do with it and could be added back in without a problem (I just didn't have the patience to run another test game). Others similarly so when it's clear that event is very specific and doesn't change things much, or will only do so if a player is in charge (e.g., options 'b').
Oddly enough, the whacking of the Persian/Central Asian/Indian stuff also put Russia back on track. So it appears that the Russian events are just fine, but that the Russians are being stalled out by developments in this area. Remove the changes and the Russians chug along normally, with or without the Russian EEP events (sans the Moscow COT, which I removed after the first game and never put back). However, this also assumes that you alter the Poland AI as I discussed previously, since the altered Poland AI is what I was using for the later tests.
In Burgundy I tried something different: I gave Orleans to the French (along with an extra 10k army to make up for the lost Orleanaisse forces ) and Picardie to the Burgundians. Lo and behold the guess paid off and this region also stabilized right away, in the first game - and second, and third. Burgundy hung around until it got cut up via event, France still eventually consolidated (though no faster than normal).
I still have no idea why Burgundy falls so quickly in EEP 1.1. I found a way to prevent this but can't put my finger on the problem itself. I believe it's secondary, e.g., a 'ripple effect' from Central Europe but if that's so the cause would be a royal headache to track down.
BTW, as game-altering as the HYW events can be for a player, they've made zero difference when the AI controls England. You can leave in every single one of those events and they alter nothing, unless a player is at the helm. Although I think it makes playing England way too easy, the coders for the English/French events did a damned good job of making sure that they didn't radically change the game when those nations are played by the AI. The English/French events are the biggest and most numerous changes in the lot and they don't do squat to the balance of power in a hands-off game - very impressive. Those folks should think about beta-testing for Paradox if/when EU3 gets into the alpha stage.
One final note: fantasy Byzantium, when played by the AI, tends to hang on longer than the non-fantasy version and about 70% of the time really cripples Ottoman expansion. If you, personally, aren't going to play Byzantium but want the Ottomans to expand normally I'd suggest swapping out the new Byzantium files with the old ones, if you've opted for the fantasy install. When you want to play Byzantium just swap them back in again.
Max
). I read all the threads (moderating duty), and will comment on things I know. In many cases I haven't got enough knowledge on the topic, and will then not comment. In addition to that I host the download.
