Great game, but needs a Magna Mundi type mod

[mknoke]

Really like the game & changes from EU3, especially the new diplomatic system, the improved AI, the trade system.

I would really like to see a Magna Mundi type mod for the game to make it more challenging and immersive. In particular:

#1 Expansion should be tough
#2 Having a big empire should be a challenge to maintain
#3 It should require serious effort to bridge religious (and other) differences
#4 It should be possible to specialize a nation in admin/military/diplo/etc

Some ideas:

#1 Expansion should be tough
a) Fabricating a claim should have serious diplomatic consequences (aggressive expansion penalty equal to annexing 2-3 provinces) if discovered
b) Starting a war without casus belli should have similar serious consequences
c) Coring should take a generation on average
d) Changing religion should take a generation and require serious resources or serious investment in religious ideas
e) It shouldnt be possible to change a province culture, culture should change very slowly over time, if at all
f) It should not be possible to "buy off" war exhaustion

#2 Having a big empire should be a challenge to maintain
a) Stability should be "built", i.e. it should not be possible to increase stability instantly
b) Stability should be much (at least 2x) more expensive
c) Stability level 3 should be "a golden age" and as such only be reachable if certain conditions are met (e.g. being at level 2 for a long time without high war exhaustion and no ruler changes)
d) Having a big empire without the necessary administrative technologies should have serious penalties (see the administrative efficiency concept from Magna Mundi)

#3 It should require serious effort to bridge religious (and other) differences
a) Increasing opinion via diplomatic action should be slower if the other country is of different religion (heavy penalty), distance (medium penalty, should depend on trade range) and culture (small penalty)
b) The maximum limit for increasing opinion should be lowered likewise
c) Building good relations with a country of different religion or with a country that is an enemy/rival, should create a significant revolt risk for religious/patriotic rebels in your own country

#4 It should be possible to specialize a nation in admin/military/diplo/etc
a) Buying ideas should be considered an investment into this direction and change the "base generation" of monarch points according to the focus. So that long term, a country that focusses on the admin idea groups has more points to spend on admin tech (not less).
b) Such a focus should be a penalty towards the other areas. Portugal/Venice should not be most advanced in military tech (right now this happens since they simply dont have anything to spend those points on).
c) Better discussion here:
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...nstructive)-Criticism-MP-Ideas-and-Technology

These are just ideas from playing the demo one day, for sure more playing time will be needed to pin down exactly how to make the game more challenging & immersive.

What do you guys think?

Mike

 

[Thanik]

#2 Having a big empire should be a challenge to maintain
#4 It should be possible to specialize a nation in admin/military/diplo/etc

Big empires have more stability hits, more revolts and other nasty events (or just lack of good ones)
Also picking certain ideas give higher chance for some events too.

 

[Persiani]

Guys you have played a short amount of time with 4 easy countries in a easy starting year. Its not like you played over a 100 years to get the feel of the game. Stop complaining before the game is out and you are playing it for real.

 

[Velger]

Guys you have played a short amount of time with 4 easy countries in a easy starting year. Its not like you played over a 100 years to get the feel of the game. Stop complaining before the game is out and you are playing it for real.

+1 to this. The game isn't even out yet. It's like complaining that an MMO is too easy because 1 - 10 is a breeze.

 

[unmerged(63836)]

I would also add:

- make religious and cultural conversion waaaaaaaaay harder

and thus:

- make religious tolerance viable strategy, as opposed to nobrainer, quick, Borg-style assimilation we have now

 

[Werther]

+1 to this. The game isn't even out yet. It's like complaining that an MMO is too easy because 1 - 10 is a breeze.

Balance an entire game after playing 4 countries during 28 years is a really bad idea.

 

[Rhomaioi]

+1 to this. The game isn't even out yet. It's like complaining that an MMO is too easy because 1 - 10 is a breeze.

Amen. Let's just wait and see how it goes.

 

[grommile]

Really like the game & changes from EU3, especially the new diplomatic system, the improved AI, the trade system.

I would really like to see a Magna Mundi type mod for the game to make it more challenging and immersive. In particular:

#1 Expansion should be tough
#2 Having a big empire should be a challenge to maintain
#3 It should require serious effort to bridge religious (and other) differences
#4 It should be possible to specialize a nation in admin/military/diplo/etc

Some ideas:

#1 Expansion should be tough
a) Fabricating a claim should have serious diplomatic consequences (aggressive expansion penalty equal to annexing 2-3 provinces) if discovered

That makes discovery so ruinous that the option ceases to be viable.

b) Starting a war without casus belli should have similar serious consequences

A two-point stab hit is actually pretty nasty all by itself.

c) Coring should take a generation on average

Congratulations. You just made even coming close to the performance of several real historical empires (Mughals, Ottomans, Russians) impossible.

d) Changing religion should take a generation and require serious resources or serious investment in religious ideas

Won't argue one way or the other about that one.

e) It shouldnt be possible to change a province culture, culture should change very slowly over time, if at all

De gustibus non est disputandum.

f) It should not be possible to "buy off" war exhaustion

Oops. Having one bad war now consigns you to a death spiral.

#3 It should require serious effort to bridge religious (and other) differences
a) Increasing opinion via diplomatic action should be slower if the other country is of different religion (heavy penalty), distance (medium penalty, should depend on trade range) and culture (small penalty)
b) The maximum limit for increasing opinion should be lowered likewise
c) Building good relations with a country of different religion or with a country that is an enemy/rival, should create a significant revolt risk for religious/patriotic rebels in your own country

Please show me the civil unrest in France or the Ottoman Empire that can be attributed to the Sultan and the King of France engaging in civilized diplomacy with one another.

(You did ask what I think.)

 

[Lord Tywin]

What about the most important feauture in Magna Mundi which are the pirates? I can't imagine playing a EU without spending half my money to stop the pirates from raiding me.

 

[Haresus]

Some ideas:

#1 Expansion should be tough
a) Fabricating a claim should have serious diplomatic consequences (aggressive expansion penalty equal to annexing 2-3 provinces) if discovered
b) Starting a war without casus belli should have similar serious consequences
c) Coring should take a generation on average
d) Changing religion should take a generation and require serious resources or serious investment in religious ideas
e) It shouldnt be possible to change a province culture, culture should change very slowly over time, if at all
f) It should not be possible to "buy off" war exhaustion

I can agree with all these for the base game, to some degree. Starting wars without CBs is already pretty harmful, but the rest I can agree with.

#2, #3 and #4 are eh, meh. Already in to a smaller degree, not really useful or a too large change from the base mechanics. Venice and Portugal should not have the highest military power because they would have no reason to hire high-level MMP advisors or get the most important military ideas.

 

[dharper]

I tend to agree with you.

Some general thoughts on what you posted:

#1 Expansion should be tough
a) Fabricating a claim should have serious diplomatic consequences (aggressive expansion penalty equal to annexing 2-3 provinces) if discovered

More important than that would be to prevent the AI from doing so as much as it is now. In my modding experience, making something very painful stops a human player from doing it carelessly, but does not stop the AI at all.

b) Starting a war without casus belli should have similar serious consequences

This should be easy to mod. EDIT: Nope. I was looking through the defines.lua file, expecting to see a defined amount of stability when you declare war without a casus belli - couldn't find one. Can't find anything in the on_actions.txt file either, so I'm not sure how easy this would be to mod.

c) Coring should take a generation on average

Very easy to change this! In the defines.lua file, you'll find these four lines:

	CORE_TIME_SIZE_MODIFIER = 0.05, -- 5% longer per province owned.
	MONTHS_TO_CORE_IN_COLONY = 0,
	MONTHS_TO_CORE = 36,							-- How many months it will take to core a province.
	MONTHS_TO_CHANGE_CULTURE = 12,

If you change the MONTHS_TO_CORE to, say, 360, it will take 30+ years. Be warned, that 5% longer per province owned will make cores nearly impossible to add for large empires if you do this, though.

d) Changing religion should take a generation and require serious resources or serious investment in religious ideas

Well, the obvious thing to do would be to halve all the missionary bonuses and penalties in the game, then double the local_missionary_strength modifier for provincial tax income, like this:

provincial_tax_income = {
	local_missionary_strength = -0.012	# penalty for each tax-income (DOUBLED)
	supply_limit = 0.2						#20% weight for each tax-income
	local_spy_defence = 0.01				#1% for each tax income.
	regiment_recruit_speed = -0.01			#1% shorter time to build troops for each cash.
	ship_recruit_speed = -0.01		
	trade_goods_size = 0.01
	papal_influence = 0.05

}

However, it's been reported on the forums that this won't have as big an effect as you'd like - the game is apparently hard-coded to give a minimum 0.9% missionary chance per month, which means it can never take more than 101 months to convert a province, which is...well...speedy.

EDIT: Tried this and confirmed - the worst you can get is 0.9% to convert each month, even if your actual chance should be negative. Looks like the only way to actually mod this would be to institute something like the religious minorities that I included in Dei Gratia.

e) It shouldnt be possible to change a province culture, culture should change very slowly over time, if at all

Defines.lua allows you to set the number of months required to convert culture. It doesn't seem to allow you to change the monarch power required to do it, or take away that ability, or change the AI's likelihood of trying. Hm. Might be possible to create more rebels that spawn when this is happening, though, but that would really only hurt the AI.

f) It should not be possible to "buy off" war exhaustion

Not sure if this can be changed.

#2 Having a big empire should be a challenge to maintain
a) Stability should be "built", i.e. it should not be possible to increase stability instantly

I doubt this can be changed short of Paradox doing something to the code. Too bad - it seems like it could work well like how they change province culture (spend the points, then wait)

b) Stability should be much (at least 2x) more expensive

There's a static modifier called stability_cost_modifier that you can modify, but unfortunately you'd really need to go through all the other things that give stability bonuses or maluses and double them at the same time.

c) Stability level 3 should be "a golden age" and as such only be reachable if certain conditions are met (e.g. being at level 2 for a long time without high war exhaustion and no ruler changes)

I like this, but I don't think it's possible to mod it.

d) Having a big empire without the necessary administrative technologies should have serious penalties (see the administrative efficiency concept from Magna Mundi)

You could mod this indirectly, of course, the way MM did it, but I don't think you could take the overextension displays from the game and repurpose them. Pity.

#3 It should require serious effort to bridge religious (and other) differences
a) Increasing opinion via diplomatic action should be slower if the other country is of different religion (heavy penalty), distance (medium penalty, should depend on trade range) and culture (small penalty)

You can mod some of this, I think. Will have to look at the files more.

b) The maximum limit for increasing opinion should be lowered likewise

Please explain what you mean?

c) Building good relations with a country of different religion or with a country that is an enemy/rival, should create a significant revolt risk for religious/patriotic rebels in your own country

I don't think that can be modded in.

#4 It should be possible to specialize a nation in admin/military/diplo/etc
a) Buying ideas should be considered an investment into this direction and change the "base generation" of monarch points according to the focus. So that long term, a country that focusses on the admin idea groups has more points to spend on admin tech (not less).

You could create triggered modifiers/random events/decisions that gave you extra monarch points if you met certain requirements. However, I feel like there's enough advantages to having ideas already.

b) Such a focus should be a penalty towards the other areas. Portugal/Venice should not be most advanced in military tech (right now this happens since they simply dont have anything to spend those points on).

Oh, I see. Well, you could probably create triggered modifiers...you'd need dozens of them or very complex code to do it right, but they would check to see how many ideas you had total (ought to be possible) and then how many ideas you had that were from a particular type (ought to be possible, might require a 'hidden event' that checks every nation and sets variables) and then set your country as 'specialized,' 'average' or 'lacking' in each area.

 

[Zhetone]

We need a magna mundi mod where the mod never gets developed past alpha stage after a year and a half and where good development is promised, but it all turns out to be lies and the project is led by a deluded person.

 

[unmerged(63836)]

Dharper! Do you plan similar religious overhaul, to that of Dei Gratia? (fingers crossed)

We need a magna mundi mod where the mod never gets developed past alpha stage after a year and a half and where good development is promised, but it all turns out to be lies and the project is led by a deluded person.

Mod was finished, complete work.

 

[dharper]

Dharper! Do you plan similar religious overhaul, to that of Dei Gratia? (fingers crossed)

I really don't know. Modding takes up so much time, and these days I don't have a lot of free time. I'd like to see how easy it is to update Dei Gratia to EU4. So far, the modding language looks very similar, and the province numbers and cultures seem to be the same as well, so keeping my fingers crossed...

EDIT: Spent a couple hours looking at Dei Gratia and the EU4 demo. Frustrating.

Things I did:

* Changed localisation files into the new format (easy to do since mine were never translated into anything but English...)

* Updated some common files to add new religions and change a couple of defines/static modifiers (successful).

* Removed event modifiers that weren't in the new game. Still need to balance them and add in new traits, but at least it won't crash the game now.

Things I got stuck on:

* I can't find any way to get the game to recognize that the religion icon file is now much bigger - there doesn't seem to be any interface file that references it. So now my new religious icons show up, but badly.

* Event files - so far, I'm not having much luck with them. I'll have to take a look at how Paradox is writing the new event files and see what I need to change.

I'll try again once the game is released. If I'm lucky, I may be able to convince Paradox to give me a copy of the beta game in addition, so that I can get access to its error logs (assuming it works the same as it did in EU3).