France is broken. AI imbalance?

[Beagá]

I still say, bigger sample needed.

If unrest isn´t cripling France as much as it should then it should be reviewed. I´ve seen Time of Troubles and Peasant´s War ravaging countries. Seriously, one of those and the country is gone as a threat for decades. In my Áustria game Castile got Peasant´s war and Lithuania Time of Troubles. Result?

Castille lost all its army and had to see Portugal (yes Portugal) conquering Granada that broke free during the mess. Lithuania? Broke off in ALL formable nations (Smolensk, Polotsk...)

 

[unmerged(482486)]

I don't have any screenshots on me right now but I was playing a Russia game and Spain had actually taken over the southern third of France and Austria had taken most of Burgundy. So yes, they are strong but not just devastatingly powerful.

 

[KGrob]

I haven't played very many games yet but it does seem that in Ironman mode, either France...OR...Spain turns out to be a giant nearly unstoppable blob...one of those two always seems to dominate Western Europe.

I'd occasionally like to see another contender rise...maybe someone on the Italian boot...or maybe something from Central Europe.

How about this: I'm playing a game as Burgundy and I'm doing pretty well in Europe...it's 1525 and I'm thinking about colonial expansion...suddenly, a small fleet appears at my coast. It's the Cherokees and they're looking to expand into Europe!!!

Okay, that last thing never happened. But, IMO, it would be fun to have a "Mega A-Historical Random" option that we could play from time to time where the nations would have even more random starting technology and leadership.

Just sayin'...

 

[kraussda]

I haven't played very many games yet but it does seem that in Ironman mode, either France...OR...Spain turns out to be a giant nearly unstoppable blob...one of those two always seems to dominate Western Europe.

I'd occasionally like to see another contender rise...maybe someone on the Italian boot...or maybe something from Central Europe.

How about this: I'm playing a game as Burgundy and I'm doing pretty well in Europe...it's 1525 and I'm thinking about colonial expansion...suddenly, a small fleet appears at my coast. It's the Cherokees and they're looking to expand into Europe!!!

Okay, that last thing never happened. But, IMO, it would be fun to have a "Mega A-Historical Random" option that we could play from time to time where the nations would have even more random starting technology and leadership.

Just sayin'...

Try playing a few games with random lucky nations and you might be surprised by what you get.

 

[unmerged(65679)]

Behold my Ironman game as Spain. Naples is my PU. Tunisia is a vassal, Burgundy is a RM&Ally and I will PU them when the right moment arises. Austria is a STRONG RM & Ally for a long time now. Guyenne I released and am now at war with to gobble what I released. I'm roughly 50 years away from being in an unbeatable Europe striding position not dissimilar to Charles V. Infact I feel rather invincible at this point.

France is still strong but given my diplomatic genius, PU's and allies I could take her every time now.

 

[Morwys]

I am yet to see France fail. Or Poland, for that matter. And I'm on my 20th odd game.

I've seen France being torn between England, Burgundy and Spain, about half my games (I'm quite annoyed by that, actually). Poland, in ALL my games (7th right now, Muscovy > Russia) vanishes completely.

 

[Black_Shade]

I've seen France being torn between England, Burgundy and Spain, about half my games (I'm quite annoyed by that, actually). Poland, in ALL my games (7th right now, Muscovy > Russia) vanishes completely.

It all comes down to lucky nations. If you have lucky nations on, France is a power house in 99% of the games. Off, and it's pretty random.

Poland seems to be hit or miss regardless of the settings.

 

[PanH]

I got a weird game where austria got dismantled by a coalition of Spain, England, France and a bunch of HRE members, then inherited Burgundy, and single handedly crushed France. Austria is the new France, and own about half of it.

 

[Morwys]

It all comes down to lucky nations. If you have lucky nations on, France is a power house in 99% of the games. Off, and it's pretty random.

Poland seems to be hit or miss regardless of the settings.

All my games had LN turned on. And France is not a powerhouse 99% of the time.

 

[Raen]

In my England game France looked like a total monster prior to 1550 but somehow seemed to lose its way after that -- perhaps from all the coalition wars against it -- until it was shrunk to a small cluster of provinces around its capital. It never really figured in the top scores after that.

But it sure looked scary for a while there.

 

[Pugman]

In my current game France is getting sandwiched between Spain and Austria and is nearly gone. Spain has the lower half of France and Austria the upper half.

 

[KGrob]

Try playing a few games with random lucky nations and you might be surprised by what you get.

So far, with EU4 I've played only "Ironman" and I don't think that option is available in Ironman mode, which was my point. Regardless, I'll consider that in a future game. I think it would be interesting to see how that turns out.

 

[klinkvon13]

I agree, France does seem OP. HOWEVER, I am currently in a game where Spain has taken over 4-5 provinces in southern France, over the course of a few wars. With that said, FRA still has MASSIVE manpower reserves. I'm Austria and have been dominated by their superior numbers and army. Luckily, it only happened once, and they just wanted to reclaim two Savoyard provinces.

It's my experience too. I already posted a message about it, I've seen France getting destroyed several times. However, currently playing a game with it, I must say this is very very easy to maintain enormous armies with this nation. In EU3, playing France, I was always getting destroyed when Spain, Austria and England started to get on me. I can handle easily Austria, England, Spain, Portugal and all Italy fighting against me.
Somehow, it is not historically inaccurate though. France grew to an enormous united blob during Modern Era. Against all odd, and many countries. And with Napoleon failure in Russia, that was the end of it. So I guess EU4 is not wrong with this. You really have to take care of it and work in favor of everything that breaks it's unity to keep it at bay.

 

[LiberiusX]

It all comes down to lucky nations. If you have lucky nations on, France is a power house in 99% of the games. Off, and it's pretty random.

Poland seems to be hit or miss regardless of the settings.

It most certainly does not come down to Lucky Nations. In my Savoy game, England is a disaster. In my England game, France is at the mercy of a Burgundy blob(and I peaced out of the HYW by giving them 3 provinces and haven't fought them since). In my Spain game, England and Austria are a train wreck.

The one conclusion that I've drawn, from my own experience and complaints from others, is that there is a serious problem with the alliance AI. If this falls apart on France, which I've seen happen multiple times in my England game, then it's game over for France. Now there has been a 50 year coalition against Burgundy between Spain, Austria, Portugal, France and several HRE minors. They haven't even made a dent and Burgundy slowly devours more and more.

As for sample size, I've seen enough posts on here to lead me to believe this: There is no/little moderation with France. It will snowball in one direction or another and usually the first 50 years of the game determine this.

Edit: you know, It's not just the alliance AI either. I now recall seeing 3 Austrian armies of 10 regiments each sieging in neighboring provinces. A French Hunter-Killer stack of 23 regiments appeared(composed of 11 French and 12 others from various French vassals). The HK stack gobbled up the Austrian armies one by one. They just stood there doing NOTHING. It was so absurd that I ragequit that game, and I wasn't even affected by it.

 

[FedeLaRenga]

Hi, my experience with France was as follows:

First game, as England. After restarting about 5 or 6 times, trying to win the starting war... some good dice rolls, and close battles, I was able to have them concede defeat... while making them break some deals.
After I´ve dealt with the War of the Roses in my homeland, new Wars with France, with Portugal and Denmark as allies... and I was able to chip away their power, making them release provinces...
Yes, they took them back in a couple of years, but they never got to be a big problem for me...
In my game, Spain, without France keeping it down, managed to become a quite big force.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

In my experience, France wins lot of wars but due to the coalition system and how peace treaty works with it, they don't really blob far beyond their historical border... so it looks like it's working well?

 

[AdmiralB]

I just think that the France AI is superior to the other nations'.

Id rather suspect that the aggressive play-style of the AI works better with France than with any HRE minor

 

[Klod]

Agree with Bradeh on this one. That AI should be made stronger that is, not weaker.

 

[RedHunter]

France is eating England bit by bit in my game. Somehow without any navy they are able to make repeated landings in England.

 

[Katarian]

France seems like a monster in a recent MP game. Loads of manpower and a massive army, though the AI seems to still have a problem with armies in colonial powers. France recently took the three provinces at the southern tip of India, that I was aiming for after taking Ceylon, and then declared war on someone in Burma or Indonesia. They have a problem though as Spain declared a colonial war and a massive coalition joined in, and half of France is occupied, all their African provinces are occupied, only their North American colonies and Indian and Indonesian provinces aren't occupied. The reason they are having such problems? 62k out of 85k troops are sitting in those three provinces in India :wacko:.