I agree, if no envoys are tied, it should just take, what, 100 years or so?
Great demo. Too bad culture is a joke
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I agree, if no envoys are tied, it should just take, what, 100 years or so?
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the era or not. Let me try to enlighten you. Portugal doesn't start the game in a negotiation to peacefully form a federation of equal partners with Morocco. I was gaining provinces because when the game started, I effortlessly curb stomped the Maghreb in a war. I didn't see much of any use for Administrative points in the demo other than to buy cores. Yes, there are some nice ideas to buy, but they're not critically important like say the Quantity ones that give you giant boosts to manpower. Government types don't really matter anymore and administrative efficiency has been removed the game. There was one nice building toward the end that gave a 20% boost to production, if I recall correctly. You'd be long out of the game before you ever get to that though.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the era or not. Let me try to enlighten you. Portugal doesn't start the game in a negotiation to peacefully form a federation of equal partners with Morocco. I was gaining provinces because when the game started, I effortlessly curb stomped the Maghreb in a war. I didn't see much of any use for Administrative points in the demo other than to buy cores. Yes, there are some nice ideas to buy, but they're not critically important like say the Quantity ones that give you giant boosts to manpower. Government types don't really matter anymore and administrative efficiency has been removed the game. There was one nice building toward the end that gave a 20% boost to production, if I recall correctly. You'd be long out of the game before you ever get to that though.
Isn't the Administrative Technology a prerequisite to have more Idea Groups, though?
i agree that is low but it still slows down everything else. If you are spending your points on cultures that have less of an effect on the province, someone with higher tech/ideas will crush you in war. But i wouldn't mind if it went alittle higher.
All this is sad. Looks like major modding effort will be required to make the game worthwhile. I hope I'm wrong, but...
I'm not sure if you're familiar with the era or not. Let me try to enlighten you. Portugal doesn't start the game in a negotiation to peacefully form a federation of equal partners with Morocco. I was gaining provinces because when the game started, I effortlessly curb stomped the Maghreb in a war. I didn't see much of any use for Administrative points in the demo other than to buy cores. Yes, there are some nice ideas to buy, but they're not critically important like say the Quantity ones that give you giant boosts to manpower. Government types don't really matter anymore and administrative efficiency has been removed the game. There was one nice building toward the end that gave a 20% boost to production, if I recall correctly. You'd be long out of the game before you ever get to that though.
Why wouldn't the guy not culturally converting not be conquering those same provinces? Cultural conversion and expansion aren't linked.
Let's wait for the full version. For all we know, this demo is a slightly outdated version, and they've redone the balance again.
It is. You get these new groups like what, once every 50 years. In that amount of time, I would have build a gigantic empire at the pace I was going at. This is a valid point, it's just that it doesn't seem like a fair trade upon closer inspection.
The extra forcelimits from holding a cored North African coast will go quite some ways toward compensating for someone who goes for Grand Navy, which itself will come at the cost of, say, the Diplomatic idea tree and its core creation discount, extra diplomat, fabricate claims discount, and its free CB. I mean I don't play MP so correct me if I'm wrong, but those look far more useful than Grand Navy, which isn't really allowing you to have more ships, it just makes them less expensive if you're over the force limits.
And it's not as if you're making a permanent tradeoff - you're just doing things in a different order. You're not trading off tech permanently, just for a few years. Years in which you're have more tax and fewer revolts because you integrated your land. And because of the bonus from being behind in tech, you don't even get hit with the entire opportunity cost.
Agree entirely with the OP and others who've said that culture/conversion/cores are far too cheap. I'll still probably enjoy the base game for a while as they're not game-breaking problems, but I'll wait for a mod to get a more immersive experience. IMO what really needs to happen is a revamped tolerance system to make convert/not convert a choice in itself, as opposed to something that just ties up an envoy for a while and uses a negligible amount of MP.
In any case, once we start playing the main game, anything that costs diplomacy or military will be irrelevant, since administration seems to be the big limiting factor anyway. Heck, even in the demo I was running out of things to do with dip/mil so I bought a bunch of naval tech that I didn't really need (why do Ottomans start with Naval ideas anyway?) while I waited to unlock another idea slot with admin points that I really needed for coring.
And it's not as if you're making a permanent tradeoff - you're just doing things in a different order. You're not trading off tech permanently, just for a few years. Years in which you're have more tax and fewer revolts because you integrated your land. And because of the bonus from being behind in tech, you don't even get hit with the entire opportunity cost.
Agree entirely with the OP and others who've said that culture/conversion/cores are far too cheap. I'll still probably enjoy the base game for a while as they're not game-breaking problems, but I'll wait for a mod to get a more immersive experience. IMO what really needs to happen is a revamped tolerance system to make convert/not convert a choice in itself, as opposed to something that just ties up an envoy for a while and uses a negligible amount of MP.
In any case, once we start playing the main game, anything that costs diplomacy or military will be irrelevant, since administration seems to be the big limiting factor anyway. Heck, even in the demo I was running out of things to do with dip/mil so I bought a bunch of naval tech that I didn't really need (why do Ottomans start with Naval ideas anyway?) while I waited to unlock another idea slot with admin points that I really needed for coring.
I would be 100% fine with Hungry not being able to culturally convert Russian provinces. Cultural conversion should only be possible in the rarest of circumstances.
Okay, let us get the right numbers on the table, at least, if this is to become some sort of sensible decision.
In the demo, culture conversion costs 25 DMP per taxvalue. There is only one cultural conversion cost reduction in the game, the -80% cost reduction for being overseas. These numbers are all in the demo, available for anybody who cares to test.
Examining the benefits of cultural conversion, one quickly realizes that while apparently significant, in most cases conversion has little impact on your realm as a whole unless converted areas make up the majority of your realm.
What you eliminate by cultural conversion of a non-accepted culture is:
This leads me to the following conclusions:
Cultural conversion is an optional extra, and its value greatly depends on whether you are converting overseas or not. Pretending that EU4 culture as a whole is a joke or meaningless on the grounds of experiments with overseas conversion only is missing this critical point.
Now, I would urge people arguing that this is too expensive/too cheap to keep the mathematics of culture conversion in mind even if you disagree with my conclusions as to when it is appropriate or sensible for a player to use it in-game.
For a fun thought experiment, converting the entire Iberian peninsula, which has roughly 200 base tax when temples are built, would cost 5000 DMP. Now, I am sure that some of you will argue that "that is much too cheap and easy based on this or that historical argument, because it should be impossible/insanely difficult/whatever", and I am not saying that you are wrong, but the flip side to this is, which human player would actually do this?.
The price of any gameplay action needs to be measured against the income of the currency in question and the gameplay effects, and to which degree the results help or hinders the game design, not against abstract "what should be possible", as the former is what determines how it will be used by players while playing, not the latter.
(And no, I am not suggesting that converting the entire Iberian peninsula is the be-all-and-end-all example for discussion - how about converting all of France, all of central Germany, all of... you know, all of various other regions that frequently change hands in EU games. I chose the Iberian peninsula for the example because it was the easiest region for me to quickly tally the taxvalues of and everybody has a good idea of how large - and how small - a part of Europe it really is, which makes it easy to put the 5000 DMP cost in perspective.)
In the demo, culture conversion costs 25 DMP per taxvalue. There is only one cultural conversion cost reduction in the game, the -80% cost reduction for being overseas. These numbers are all in the demo, available for anybody who cares to test.
Examining the benefits of cultural conversion, one quickly realizes that while apparently significant, in most cases conversion has little impact on your realm as a whole unless converted areas make up the majority of your realm.
What you eliminate by cultural conversion of a non-accepted culture is:
- The -2 RR modifier. This may or may not be important to you depending on your realm's overall stability and how scared you are of rebels.
- The -33% local tax modifier. It is important to remember that this stacks additively with all other local tax modifiers, not multiplicatively.
- -33% local manpower modifier. It is important to remember that this stacks additively with all other local tax modifiers, not multiplicatively.
- -2% local missionary strength. Since you cannot culture convert a province until you have converted it to your religion, eliminating this effect is utterly irrelevant to you, unless you intend to first culture convert it, then change your country's religion, and then change the province's religion. Which is a really special case that is unlikely to occur except for Catholic countries that do not intend to stay so after the Reformation.
This leads me to the following conclusions:
- It is cheap to convert overseas and almost always worth it if you expect to hang on to the territory in the long run. Especially for the colonial real estate, which mostly takes place in really low-level provinces, this is a steal. . The effects of the cultural conversion are minor, but at 5 DMP per taxvalue it is worth it in the long run in SP and, for MP, in most cases where no reversal of fortune is expected in the short run.
- It is damn expensive to convert non-overseas and rarely worth it unless you have nothing else to spend your DMP on and/or desperately need the extra manpower. How frequently this occurs depends to a large degree on techgroup and luck with monarchs. My personal opinion is that cultural conversion of non-overseas is pretty much the last thing a player should want to spend DMP on unless he is deliberately retarding his diplomatic tech growth in order to westernize.
Cultural conversion is an optional extra, and its value greatly depends on whether you are converting overseas or not. Pretending that EU4 culture as a whole is a joke or meaningless on the grounds of experiments with overseas conversion only is missing this critical point.
Now, I would urge people arguing that this is too expensive/too cheap to keep the mathematics of culture conversion in mind even if you disagree with my conclusions as to when it is appropriate or sensible for a player to use it in-game.
For a fun thought experiment, converting the entire Iberian peninsula, which has roughly 200 base tax when temples are built, would cost 5000 DMP. Now, I am sure that some of you will argue that "that is much too cheap and easy based on this or that historical argument, because it should be impossible/insanely difficult/whatever", and I am not saying that you are wrong, but the flip side to this is, which human player would actually do this?.
The price of any gameplay action needs to be measured against the income of the currency in question and the gameplay effects, and to which degree the results help or hinders the game design, not against abstract "what should be possible", as the former is what determines how it will be used by players while playing, not the latter.
(And no, I am not suggesting that converting the entire Iberian peninsula is the be-all-and-end-all example for discussion - how about converting all of France, all of central Germany, all of... you know, all of various other regions that frequently change hands in EU games. I chose the Iberian peninsula for the example because it was the easiest region for me to quickly tally the taxvalues of and everybody has a good idea of how large - and how small - a part of Europe it really is, which makes it easy to put the 5000 DMP cost in perspective.)
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I think it works just fine, actually.
To be honest, it seems like most people in this thread are looking at the "Culture conversion" thing all wrong. When you convert, let´s say...Småland to danish Culture, you´re not forcing every peasant who lives there to speak danish and think about things in a danish way. What you´re doing is convincing the nobility and people of some importance to embrace the danish Culture.
Nobody cares what language the peasants speak. It has very Little importance in this era. Only when the 19th Century rolls in does peasants having a diffrent Culture really start to become a problem.
Think about it. You´re using DIPLOMATIC Points. As in, sending diplomats to convince everyone who matters to use danish/Maghreb/Basque whatever.
That´s my take on it, anyway.
To be honest, it seems like most people in this thread are looking at the "Culture conversion" thing all wrong. When you convert, let´s say...Småland to danish Culture, you´re not forcing every peasant who lives there to speak danish and think about things in a danish way. What you´re doing is convincing the nobility and people of some importance to embrace the danish Culture.
Nobody cares what language the peasants speak. It has very Little importance in this era. Only when the 19th Century rolls in does peasants having a diffrent Culture really start to become a problem.
Think about it. You´re using DIPLOMATIC Points. As in, sending diplomats to convince everyone who matters to use danish/Maghreb/Basque whatever.
That´s my take on it, anyway.
I like the reasoning.
Aside from the obviously nonsensical example used, which completely ruins the rest of the point you were trying to make.
Danes in Småland? Really. The utter nerve.
I like the reasoning.
Aside from the obviously nonsensical example used, which completely ruins the rest of the point you were trying to make.
Danes in Småland? Really. The utter nerve.
I know, a terrible example indeed. Just thinking about it is sending shivers down my spine.
Damn it, the games needs to come out so I can Cultureconvert all of Scandinavia to Swedish! Only then can we be calm!
Culture conversion can be worthwhile, but its a much worse investment of Power and time than buildings, coring and converting provinces. Its psychologically odd to be able to change cultures, but anything that costs power has a real cost. Meanwhile, the penalties of wrong-culture provinces aren't so huge. So when Power is stretched thin, converting cultures will always be at the rock bottom of the list.
Its WAD.
We're talking about game play balance. You're talking about something completely different and irrelevant...
A curious thought....I do not know if any of this is possible, or not...but:
If you should manage to move your capital offshore...or start playing a country (say in Africa) that is offshore from Europe....
Does that mean you can convert Europe easily to your culture?
If you should manage to move your capital offshore...or start playing a country (say in Africa) that is offshore from Europe....
Does that mean you can convert Europe easily to your culture?
Quite a lot of people brought up the fact that it´s unrealistic to wipe out a culture so easily. That´s what I tried to give perspective on, mate.
On gameplay balance - Peter Ebbeson calculated quite well the cost of converting the entire Iberian peninsula. If you intend to blob AND keep up with Tech, there´s simply no way you can cultureconvert everything. Doing so would cripple your Tech and leave you at the mercy of your smaller, ever so slightly less stable but unimaginably more teched neighbours that tear your outdated army and navy to pieces.
Still, I think it should not be technically possible to convert a provinces culture within a few months. Thats just ridiculously unrealistic. It should take at least a generation, so lets say 30 - 40 years, same with cores.