For the love of god, lower the coring costs.

[WeissRaben]

You do understand that you then have to deal with LA, probably a revolt or too, most likely an unaccepted culture penalty and possibly have to convert the thing? + The fact that you have to win wars to get it, take AE, warexhaustion, and money hits.

Your thought here is way too simplistic.

The cost of war is nonexistent. If it was higher - WAY higher - you would be right. But it isn't.

 

[CrabHelmet]

You do understand that you then have to deal with LA, probably a revolt or too, most likely an unaccepted culture penalty and possibly have to convert the thing? + The fact that you have to win wars to get it, take AE, warexhaustion, and money hits.

Your thought here is way too simplistic.

Okay, assume any province I conquer starts with -75% LA (50% after conquest than +25% increase in LA to get rid of revolt risk). I'm still doing better by taking 5 base tax with a 75% reduction than 1 base tax with no reduction. Even if you throw in -33% unaccepted, and suppose a -0.05 autonomy reduction monthly, I'm losing out on money for only ~40 years, which is very little when the overall result is saving MP which is more valuable than money. You're also missing that conquest is twice as useful as development anyway - development makes you richer, conquest makes you richer and them poorer at the same time! Conversion is rarely a problem, AI can't win wars, AE got nerfed this patch, I can buy down war exhaustion instead of spending DIP on DIP development and still make a "profit", and money is essentially limitless.

As it stands, there is no reason to play tall unless you're role-playing or some such.

 

[Kalderus]

It's just an opinion, but I assume Paradox wanted to prevent players to be able to feed to big chunks of land to their vassals. I mean you could control giant parts and would never have problems with rebels, autonomy or anything, just had to improve relations with your vassal from time to time. And at some point of time you could easily integrate it within a couple of years.

It obviously got harder to build big vassals, but I think that's the point.

Nope

 

[Korashy]

The cost of war is nonexistent. If it was higher - WAY higher - you would be right. But it isn't.

If you are big sure. Play an HRE minor, where a single battle can cost you your 50% of your manpower. Eventually you will reach a point where indeed, war costs you nothing because you have an abundance of resources. That's also the point where you don't really care about the development of any provinces you take besides the coring cost (which is also where the "but you get all this developed land" argument becomes irrelevant for the player going wide).

 

[grommile]

You do understand that you then have to deal with LA, probably a revolt or too, most likely an unaccepted culture penalty and possibly have to convert the thing? + The fact that you have to win wars to get it, take AE, warexhaustion, and money hits.

War is the most fun way to spend my surplus ducats (and manpower only matters at all if I'm getting into fights). AE only becomes meaningful if it stays too high for too long with too many other countries. LA cookoff can be handled by upgrading government, taking Economic ideas, or even (if you've stacked Unrest reduction) hitting the "reduce autonomy" button. WE in wars you win is usually manageable. Unaccepted culture penalty is not large enough to outweigh a factor-of-five monarch power cost difference.

 

[Andy_Dandy]

I've always assumed that none of the devs have ever actually done a world conquest.

If the game had the goal to be designed arround world conquest I'd find it a terrible idea. Good gameplay means hard priorities, and if the goal of the game design was world conquest within the timeframe (for any nation), those hard priorities just would not feel hard enough. I'm happy to be slowed down, the game needs it, and that all other opponent nations are slowed down as well both in SP and MP.

Just wish it was even harder to get super rich arround 1650, I feel I don't have to care about investments and hard priorities of my money anymore arround that point (too early for me to say how much that is changed bastantly, we'll see with more play testing hours). I may like to see a cost in ducates as well as Monarch Points for improving Development Levels of provinces, and perhaps a lowered effect of buildings like temples for instance.

 

[romothecus]

With that said, you are of course free to disagree, but this was an intended change and we knew it would upset some people, so we're not reverting it just because of one angry thread on the forums.

Well, let us know how many angry threads we need to make, then.

 

[WeissRaben]

If you are big sure. Play an HRE minor, where a single battle can cost you your 50% of your manpower. Eventually you will reach a point where indeed, war costs you nothing because you have an abundance of resources. That's also the point where you don't really care about the development of any provinces you take besides the coring cost (which is also where the "but you get all this developed land" argument becomes irrelevant for the player going wide).

I mostly play minors, yes, but this isn't the case for everyone. I had made a long-ish post, some time ago, basically arguing that incomes and armies should be way more similar at game start, regardless of size, simply because smaller nation usually used every resource they had, compared to the waste and corruption of larger nations.

This said, on average and beyond, wars are too cheap by a lot.

 

[Seiska]

Game is in a very good state atm, don't fuck it up Paradox !

 

[wergy]

There should be a balance between tall & wide, and currently I think wide is unreasonably stained. Especially that AI doesn't seem to care about it.

 

[CrabHelmet]

There should be a balance between tall & wide, and currently I think wide is unreasonably stained. Especially that AI doesn't seem to care about it.

Wide is much, *much* better than tall at the moment. About five times better.

 

[FrigidSoul]

If anything, the coring cost is too low. On average, it costs me 55ish ADM to raise the development in a province by one. For 55ish ADM, I can core a province with 5 development and still have 5 ADM spare. The returns to playing wide are *five times* larger than the returns to playing tall. The only development button I'll ever click is the manpower one, the others seem entirely pointless.

The main reason that your best developmental bet lies in manpower is precisely because ADM and DIP points are so scarce. Yet you want to make them more scarce.

No one ever said that tall and wide need be equal. They weren't remotely equal in history, and it would be asinine from a game play perspective to make them so in EU4. War is the point of the game, and that's unlikely to change any time soon.

 

[FleetingRain]

I'd be totally okay with the coring costs if diploannexing cost hasn't been tripled.

 

[CrabHelmet]

The main reason that your best developmental bet lies in manpower is precisely because ADM and DIP points are so scarce. Yet you want to make them more scarce.

No. It has nothing to do with their scarcity. If I had extra ADM points (i.e., they were less scarce) I wouldn't develop as a result, I'd core even more. The opportunity cost of foregoing coring in order to develop is huge.

No one ever said that tall and wide need be equal. They weren't remotely equal in history, and it would be asinine from a game play perspective to make them so in EU4. War is the point of the game, and that's unlikely to change any time soon.

Yes, they weren't equal - tall did better, hence why the first nation to undergo the Industrial Revolution emerged as the winner of the era.

 

[Korashy]

No. It has nothing to do with their scarcity. If I had extra ADM points (i.e., they were less scarce) I wouldn't develop as a result, I'd core even more. The opportunity cost of foregoing coring in order to develop is huge.



Yes, they weren't equal - tall did better, hence why the first nation to undergo the Industrial Revolution emerged as the winner of the era.

Britain didn't go tall, neither did Prussia....

 

[FrigidSoul]

Yes, they weren't equal - tall did better, hence why the first nation to undergo the Industrial Revolution emerged as the winner of the era.

Haha, you think England wasn't a wide nation, in game play terms?

What's funny about arguments on this forum is that so many seem eager to jettison game play in favor of historical accuracy; what's funnier is how often their idea of historical accuracy is either wrong, incomplete, or conveniently selective.

 

[CrabHelmet]

Britain didn't go tall, neither did Prussia....

If Britain didn't "go tall", it's difficult to find an example of a nation that did. Here's the British Empire in 1750:

(exclude the Philippines, taken briefly during the 1760s)

The only part of that empire taken via conquest against anything other than what is, in EU4, primitive nations, is Bengal and Quebec.

 

[FrigidSoul]

If Britain didn't "go tall",

Yep, as the saying goes, "the sun never set on the most-assuredly-not-wide British Empire."

 

[grommile]

Yes, they weren't equal - tall did better, hence why the first nation to undergo the Industrial Revolution emerged as the winner of the era.

Britain went "wide, with a tall heartland" - and even the British Isles were nowhere near uniformly developed. (Heck, parts of Scotland arguably lost development.)

 

[CrabHelmet]

Yep, as the saying goes, "the sun never set on the most-assuredly-not-wide British Empire."

Victoria, not EU4. Nice try, though.