CesareB said:
First off, I'd like to say that I'm loving it so far. Playing the first 100+ years as the Ottomans, it's been quite cool to see France, England, Spain, & Russia all doing swimmingly. I'm sure Portugal is doing well also, but I can't really see her successes.
Glad you are enjoying it. And undoubtedly Portugal is doing well. He's one of the most consistent performers. Rather unusual to have a mod like that eh?
CesareB said:
Anyway, not having played any mod before, I've noticed at least one issue. Maybe it's on purpose, but it seems like it'll end up unbalancing. Techgroups. I notice that I'm muslim rather than orthodox. I suppose I can live with that; I should have a big enough income to overcome that disadvantage.
That's correct. With orthodox tech, the Ottos too easily overtech and drag the tech pace of the other muslims right along with them. It can cause some very unwanted results. And I've played the Ottos myself and by making them muslim all the way through, they do well initially but by mid 16th century, start to lag a bit. And that lag slowly increases. So that by the last 3rd of the game, you should be quite unwilling to fight a major european power. Because they have too much land and naval tech over you.
CesareB said:
But I also notice that Russia is latin. Why? With her enormous income (benifitted by the great AI helper events) she's quickly becoming the tech leader in everything but naval, and even that's close. Once she starts colonizing Siberia, I can't imagine any power being able to stand up to her, especially myself, what with the huge tech lead she'll have. Additionally, without the two largest powers, there's really no justification for the existence of the orthodox tech group. I think the only countries in it and still around are Wallachia and Lithuania. I'm honestly thinking of starting over and editing Russia's tech group, she's that overpowering. Now, I want Russia to be powerful, but latin tech seems a bit too far. I mean, can you imagine the power of a human Russia with latin tech?
aryus86 said:
I already discussed this with IDLF. The problem is that when Russia has orthodox tech, it lags severely behind Sweden esp. when Russia is played by a human.
In the game I was playing, although Russia had latin tech, it didn't impress overall. Sweden still managed to conquer Ingermanland, and OE beat Russia in the south..even managing to conquer volgograd and some nearby provinces.
Though I guess that when Sweden & OE are played by a human, things may be different.
Poland also has orthodox tech if i'm not mistaken.
Aryus is correct Cesare. If Russia isn't latin, than you as a human player lag so badly behind your neighbors, particularly Sweden, that if he DOWs you in the mid game, you lose territory and are helpless to stop it. Literally completely helpless. That, I can assume, you would see as unwanted. No? If the Russian AI is orthodox, he then does slightly less in land tech. The problem is then, what if you are Sweden? Then you can easily over-run him. But with latin tech, you can still beat him mid-game, but at least it isn't as lopsided. He can defend a little better.
Russia isn't as powerful as you think. Russia does not tend to be top 5 in income. They will lag too much in infra and trade to pull that off. It's the land tech you are seeing them high at. And undoubtedly there are some europeans ahead of them still, as that is almost always what happens in my games. They are programmed to tech fairly well early. But they should slow down a little later on. Their naval will always lag and later on they will not keep up in infra and trade either. So don't worry about an over-powered Russia, because it almost never happens. Besides they are supposed to be powerful and not just this Super K-mart behemoth that everybody laughs at.
CesareB said:
I think Poland starts with Latin tech and changes to Orthodox when they inherit Lithuania.
Anyway, I'm sure that a human Russia is a bit of a tech challenge, but that's to be expected. I'd have no problem if Russia were orthodox but got notable tech boosts at certain intervals, or if Russia switched between orthodox and latin on occassion. For example, Muscovy could start with orthodox, get latin when it proclaims the empire of Russia, go back to orthodox sometime in the early 1600's, and then finish in latin with the Peter the Great event in 1700 or so. Or maybe give Russia some events to help her handle a war with Sweden, maybe some northwestern forts to balance out Sweden's insanely fortified Finland. I think, though, that when it comes to historical accuracy having Russia lag behind Sweden is an easier pill to swallow than having her lead the world.
If I'm playing Russia with latin tech, I have the option of not doing any real conquering after proclaiming the empire, going innovative, and ending up the tech leader. I'll still be able to field over 100,000 men, and with General Winter, a tech lead, and Russian leaders on my side, that'd be more than enough to handle all comers. Heck, I could even go naval, hope for a random explorer, and join the colonization race. Should Russia really have that option? That seems just absurd to me.
Well it seems silly to me to not take Russia's historic territories. It's not like your hyper-teching in EP, with any country, can out-do the AIs. That would be pointless, as you'll just wind up with less in the long run and not be able to out-tech them as you suppose. In fact if you are teching very well in EP, that literally means you are at the top with 6-8 other AIs, not you are ahead of the next highest 6-8 AIs by a good margin. They can still keep up with you. In fact since 1.4, I don't believe I've ever been ahead of all the AIs in more than one category at a time. And for economic performance, I'm far from newbie.
So if Russia looks a bit odd, my advice is to just play it out and see if he goes bannanas in tech or if it's just that he techs well early. He does after all need to tech well early to kill off all the historic victims to the east of him and take a chunk out of Lithuania aswell.
Besides Cesare, you should see the posts I got complaining about Russian lagging.
There's plenty of that in older versions. What I really want is for him to not lag till the 17th century, and then to lag only until the 18th century. So when I start playtesting my current work, we'll see what I can get to work there.
