Harsh treatment cost scaling is double jeopardy

[matk]

Maybe rather than blathering tl;dr, you should actually read. It's a useful skill in life and it would allow your response, should you bother to make one, a bit more chance to be on topic and actually address what was said.

You're correct, 'tl;dr' wasn't the appropriate opener there. My apologies, it was a lazy comment to say I didn't read it.

I did read the topic and stand by my point that a quadratic function for mil points for harsh treatment makes sense; both from a gameplay perspective & a historical perspective. Historically, the dangerous revolts were not many and small, they were unified and large. In game terms, this creates meaningful choices: do I risk a massive revolt by maintaining or lowering autonomy, or do I give up some income/manpower/etc. by raising autonomy to grant this group some measure of self-control? Further: if I decide against giving in to their demands, do I dump increasing amounts of resources (mil points) into subjugating this group, or do I risk their uprising and face them on the battlefield?

Historical basis and meaningful game choice.

An example: as a slightly-expanded Ottomans, you have to deal with various cultural/religious groups that resist your control. Facing a small Albania revolt, a small Catholic revolt in Cyprus, and a small small Syrian revolt in Aleppo -> these should be easy to deal with. However, the Ottoman empire should face significant hurdles (worse than the combined problems of the other revolts of similar aggregate size) when dealing with a unified, large-scale Greek revolt. It creates a realistic simulation of how empires struggled to control large groups of foreign populations or religions within their borders: they would often have to grant them some quasi-independence to relieve the pressure (autonomy). Many people often complain that empires in the game are too stable: creating a flat rate or linear scaling by revolt size give an even playing field for large & small nations (kind of, large nations will still be able to marshal larger armies to crush the revolts). However, the quadratic scaling makes large scale revolts a significant threat because they can force you to give autonomy to large groups.

In addition, it makes gameplay and historical sense that large revolts ALSO have the effect of boiling over more quickly (as the OP said, double jeopardy). OP is correct in saying that a flat rate (to pay for harsh treatment) still means that larger revolts are more dangerous (troop concentration, density of revolts, impact on larger area, etc.). You would be paying the same flat rate as other revolts, but more often. Having more locations/people with unrest naturally means the rate of incidents of conflicts is elevated compared to small uprisings. You can imagine that unrest on a large scale is akin to a positive feedback loop: where events that occur provide the motivation for further events. A small increase in the rate of occurrence of conflict in a positive feedback loop can escalate the conflict in a way that is better modeled by a quadratic function.

The French monarchy could have killed every single citizen in its borders without a sweat if it happened one at a time or in small groups. But yet, the Bastille was stormed & overturned one of the most powerful states in its time. Revolts have good reason to be non-linear in their impact. Historical basis and gameplay balance.

[Edit: I should add that there are even further options at your disposal. If you are set against investing the points long-term to harsh treat, don't want to fight the revolts constantly & don't want to grant more autonomy: consider converting the culture and/or religion (a small term pain for long term gain). Maybe now the dip point investment to convert cultures has more value when compared to the cost of harsh treatment (mil points), revolts (manpower/cash), or autonomy (again, manpower/cash). Even if you only convert a province or 2 to decrease the unrest faction size.]

 

[Squirrelloid]

The French monarchy could have killed every single citizen in its borders without a sweat if it happened one at a time or in small groups. But yet, the Bastille was stormed & overturned one of the most powerful states in its time. Revolts have good reason to be non-linear in their impact. Historical basis and gameplay balance.

Sigh. The French Revolution is not a good example of an historical revolt in the EU4 context. On the one hand, these are all french citizens (same culture, same religion) - the causes of the French Revolution are *not* modeled in game as RR, and if there's anything that simulates it at all, it's Aspirations of Liberty, which is an *event*.

On the other hand, this wasn't some random nationalists or anything of the sort. They had *government support* from a large part of the Third Estate (which is the only reason they were able to prevail militarily). It's more of a coup against the monarchy and nobles than a rebellion. It doesn't start taking on the characteristics of a general rebellion until the government supporters decided they shouldn't serve a second term, and step down. (A wonderful liberal ideology that would work in a stable state, but really doesn't work in a transitional revolutionary state where you're the only people left with any experience running a government).

In short, the French Revolution is *not* an example of an EU4 revolt. It's not even close.

For anyone who has seen or read Les Miserables, the revolt depicted therein, which occurs before the French Revolution, and is based on actual unrest in Paris in Victor Hugo's lifetime, is typical of the rebel experience. A small group of poorly armed and trained ideologues hoping for (and failing to gain) mass popular support that collapses within a day of an encounter with a regular army.

Peasant revolts are different in that they tend to be large and snowball, but still collapse at the first sign of trained military personnel. The Jacquerie paralyzed northern France with fear ~100 years before game start, and despite pressing noblemen with military experience into their service as leaders, the first battle against a real military force abjectly defeated them, at which point they were hunted down and exterminated. And that was before the existence of national armies and regular troops. The situation for rebel factions during the course of EU4 only gets worse, as the effect of the training gap and armament gap widens considerably. (Rebels did not have access to cavalry horses or cannons, for example).

Rebels were only successful when the nation is unable to respond militarily, or when they receive support from a government.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You're correct, 'tl;dr' wasn't the appropriate opener there. My apologies, it was a lazy comment to say I didn't read it.

I did read the topic and stand by my point that a quadratic function for mil points for harsh treatment makes sense; both from a gameplay perspective & a historical perspective. Historically, the dangerous revolts were not many and small, they were unified and large. In game terms, this creates meaningful choices: do I risk a massive revolt by maintaining or lowering autonomy, or do I give up some income/manpower/etc. by raising autonomy to grant this group some measure of self-control? Further: if I decide against giving in to their demands, do I dump increasing amounts of resources (mil points) into subjugating this group, or do I risk their uprising and face them on the battlefield?

Historical basis and meaningful game choice.

An example: as a slightly-expanded Ottomans, you have to deal with various cultural/religious groups that resist your control. Facing a small Albania revolt, a small Catholic revolt in Cyprus, and a small small Syrian revolt in Aleppo -> these should be easy to deal with. However, the Ottoman empire should face significant hurdles (worse than the combined problems of the other revolts of similar aggregate size) when dealing with a unified, large-scale Greek revolt. It creates a realistic simulation of how empires struggled to control large groups of foreign populations or religions within their borders: they would often have to grant them some quasi-independence to relieve the pressure (autonomy). Many people often complain that empires in the game are too stable: creating a flat rate or linear scaling by revolt size give an even playing field for large & small nations (kind of, large nations will still be able to marshal larger armies to crush the revolts). However, the quadratic scaling makes large scale revolts a significant threat because they can force you to give autonomy to large groups.

In addition, it makes gameplay and historical sense that large revolts ALSO have the effect of boiling over more quickly (as the OP said, double jeopardy). OP is correct in saying that a flat rate (to pay for harsh treatment) still means that larger revolts are more dangerous (troop concentration, density of revolts, impact on larger area, etc.). You would be paying the same flat rate as other revolts, but more often. Having more locations/people with unrest naturally means the rate of incidents of conflicts is elevated compared to small uprisings. You can imagine that unrest on a large scale is akin to a positive feedback loop: where events that occur provide the motivation for further events. A small increase in the rate of occurrence of conflict in a positive feedback loop can escalate the conflict in a way that is better modeled by a quadratic function.

The French monarchy could have killed every single citizen in its borders without a sweat if it happened one at a time or in small groups. But yet, the Bastille was stormed & overturned one of the most powerful states in its time. Revolts have good reason to be non-linear in their impact. Historical basis and gameplay balance.

[Edit: I should add that there are even further options at your disposal. If you are set against investing the points long-term to harsh treat, don't want to fight the revolts constantly & don't want to grant more autonomy: consider converting the culture and/or religion (a small term pain for long term gain). Maybe now the dip point investment to convert cultures has more value when compared to the cost of harsh treatment (mil points), revolts (manpower/cash), or autonomy (again, manpower/cash). Even if you only convert a province or 2 to decrease the unrest faction size.]

Now that you put it that way I feel bad . My apologies, there's way too much or the "l2p" type answers here so it's easy to get carried away.

I have reservations about the system's balance (I feel fight now it's too skewed towards avoiding rebels entirely and only very rarely using HT, where the choice would be better if it was a hard one to make more frequently), but I don't necessarily have a problem with the concept. The system is a pretty heavy divergence from realism and it has to be, so for me it's not a matter of whether it can be rationalized effectively, but rather which option forces the player to think about the position rather than a simple "if I see x, always do y". The new system is an upgrade over the old, but IMO could be better still.

Right now, I find it rather trivial to lather LA on junk provinces, tank some unrest in others unless desperate, and pre-park stacks on the smaller guys. It's not an unacceptable mechanic though IMO, it plays decently enough and I like it much better than rr.

 

[Hakuromatsu]

Of course they do. Large rebellions are supposed to be a much bigger threat, however you try to deal with them. That said, the rebel AI is such that if a revolt breaks out over lots of provinces, you can often defeat the rebel army in detail rather than having to win one big battle.

Which is still a large number of battles concentrated in a small amount of time, which is already militarily more threatening for the reasons in the OP.

Not if you're facing lots of small rebellions scattered across your empire. Billeting troops in all affected provinces is an advantage you have if the *total* unrest in your country is low and/or confined to a small area.

You actually can stagger small rebellions using HT to completely avoid this, though. Which I really like! HT is such an interesting proposition in 1.8, which is the big reason why I want it to be viable for larger rebellions (read: not a total waste of MP in any circumstance that's not an MP-capped Tuscany game).

As for the small countries versus large countries thing: Harsh Treatment is actually quite cost-effective if you are a small country, because your monarch point income doesn't scale much with size. The times when HT is ineffective are when *you* are at least moderately large and the potential rebellion covers a largish area. The only time a small country gets in real trouble is if it eats deep into a culturally unified blob. But then it's supposed to be hard to go from some random minor to de facto King of France.

Excellent points for Europe, but most of ROTW needs to meter its MP usage very carefully. (Though that's really part of a larger issue...that the ROTW is worse at non-technology-related things that it shouldn't be worse at, all because so many actions draw from the same one resource that tech heavily draws on.)

This is why you do all the other things mentioned above (put troops there, -3 unrest advisor, increase autonomy, etc.) before you harsh treat. Drop the %chance, then reduce the progress for cheap.

True that.

Somehow I find the quadratically-increasing cost creates quite interesting gameplay. It makes the marginal benefit of decreasing unrest linear though, so it's still a linear function when you look at it from a different angle.

Excellent point.

Also, I feel non-linearity is generally no problem. Probably there are also people who prefers the old exponential damage calculation than the current linear one. Oh, and the advisor cost is always quadratic and looks quite fine.

Apples and oranges, I think. Linear advisors would favor +3 advisors way too heavily.

You're correct, 'tl;dr' wasn't the appropriate opener there. My apologies, it was a lazy comment to say I didn't read it.

Hey, it wouldn't be the internet without a fair helping of snark

I can't really complain when someone's putting thought into a topic.

(I feel fight now it's too skewed towards avoiding rebels entirely and only very rarely using HT, where the choice would be better if it was a hard one to make more frequently)

I mean, this is probably my biggest problem. HT right now is something that shouldn't be done *in any circumstance* above a certain threshold (~150 MIL), except in cases like the one above where you literally need to find ways to spend your 999/999/999 MP. HT in 1.8 is so much more engaging than the old HT, which was pretty much "Do you want a revolt in this province? Y/N"

Overall, I think that this is all just a personal preference/pet peeve. And there are certainly more important tweaks that need to be made, some in the next patch.

 

[PeterCorless]

Everyone who says the new rebel system is a "good" mechanic -- I simply disagree. Early game is a disastrous combination of outlandishly huge rebellions combined with incredibly see-saw battles. One side loses 873. Other loses 7842. That kind of thing. Suddenly, a decade of manpower's gone. Oh! Now look. 30K rebels! Huzzah!

Most games I've started simply fall over in the early game. If I expand, I have to pay 1000+ Mil MPs to just keep revolts at bay, thus, never tech up, or tinker with autonomy and crash my economy or, you know what? Just don't expand. Don't do anything. That's what the game wants. Stasis.

I used to "get" EUIV. I loved to play. Now, I don't. I don't get it. And I don't like it. I don't even want someone to try to convince me I am supposed to be having a good time.

Just tired of all the crazy, each-and-every-patch completely relearn the system mechanics and rethink your entire strategy.

So, now, I get about 30-40 years into the game, and wait for the house of cards to collapse. Start again. House of cards. Boom.

I'm just venting. As a consumer, after investing so much time into the game, and hoping that the *next* patch would finally be the good one, I'm disappointed.

 

[Illianor123]

Everyone who says the new rebel system is a "good" mechanic -- I simply disagree. Early game is a disastrous combination of outlandishly huge rebellions combined with incredibly see-saw battles. One side loses 873. Other loses 7842. That kind of thing. Suddenly, a decade of manpower's gone. Oh! Now look. 30K rebels! Huzzah!

Most games I've started simply fall over in the early game. If I expand, I have to pay 1000+ Mil MPs to just keep revolts at bay, thus, never tech up, or tinker with autonomy and crash my economy or, you know what? Just don't expand. Don't do anything. That's what the game wants. Stasis.

I used to "get" EUIV. I loved to play. Now, I don't. I don't get it. And I don't like it. I don't even want someone to try to convince me I am supposed to be having a good time.

Just tired of all the crazy, each-and-every-patch completely relearn the system mechanics and rethink your entire strategy.

So, now, I get about 30-40 years into the game, and wait for the house of cards to collapse. Start again. House of cards. Boom.

I'm just venting. As a consumer, after investing so much time into the game, and hoping that the *next* patch would finally be the good one, I'm disappointed.

Expansion is slower to pay off. That is the difference. You conquer new territory, you give so local autonomy. They pay less tax, provide less manpower etc, but you still get more than if you didn't have the province. Over time the autonomy goes down and the province provides even more value.

There is no economy tanking. There is no forced stasis. There is no need to waste MP.
Expansion just pays off more slowly but it still is always a gain.

If the provinces are right religion, right culture and you have some other revolt risk modifier (theologian, humanism, true faith tolerance etc) you don't even need to give them autonomy and just eat the 3-4% revolt risk.

 

[Emmanuel_M]

my only gripe with it is that the base tax doesn't really matter on % increase for rebel faction. A 1 base tax province with same culture/religion is just as likely to increase the rebel progress by same amount of 5% just as a 12 base tax province.
This means local autonomy and culture conversion low base tax provinces is very much worth it.

Which is perfectly reasonnable and historical : rural areas could do whatever the fuck they wanted, and provided fewer men for the military than urban ones. So htey could do most of what they wanted as long as they weren't rebelling, while big cities were more closely monitored (and taxed)

 

[Hakuromatsu]

Peter, I think you're wrongly attributing rebel balance issues to the unrest system itself. The balance issues can be fixed without overhauling the new system.

 

[Mztr44]

Everyone who says the new rebel system is a "good" mechanic -- I simply disagree. Early game is a disastrous combination of outlandishly huge rebellions combined with incredibly see-saw battles. One side loses 873. Other loses 7842. That kind of thing. Suddenly, a decade of manpower's gone. Oh! Now look. 30K rebels! Huzzah!

Most games I've started simply fall over in the early game. If I expand, I have to pay 1000+ Mil MPs to just keep revolts at bay, thus, never tech up, or tinker with autonomy and crash my economy or, you know what? Just don't expand. Don't do anything. That's what the game wants. Stasis.

I used to "get" EUIV. I loved to play. Now, I don't. I don't get it. And I don't like it. I don't even want someone to try to convince me I am supposed to be having a good time.

Just tired of all the crazy, each-and-every-patch completely relearn the system mechanics and rethink your entire strategy.

So, now, I get about 30-40 years into the game, and wait for the house of cards to collapse. Start again. House of cards. Boom.

I'm just venting. As a consumer, after investing so much time into the game, and hoping that the *next* patch would finally be the good one, I'm disappointed.

Like Illianor123 said, expansion is slower to pay off. Pre 1.8, expansion essentially gave you a huge spike in income and force limits, instantly making you stronger. In 1.8 it is more of a slope dependent on the rate at which you lower autonomy, changing your government type at Admin 12 can steepen that slope, and even lets your autonomy continue to decrease while at war, at least as a monarchy, i'm not sure what the base autonomy decrease is as a republic as I haven't played on yet. As a small nation it's important to try and restrict expansion into areas you have a cultural union with or same religion, preferably both. Most of the time you can get away with a little bit of harsh treatment in those areas once the rebellion chance reaches 95%, since it will cost almost nothing in Mil points to do so. If you're going after non-cultural union/religious areas, it's best to raise autonomy in them if you aren't strong enough to squash the rebellions. It's also important to pay attention to where you are taking provinces from. If you are constantly whittling down the same nations through multiple wars, you are going to be building up a large rebellion chance unless you've taken steps to fully assimilate previously conquered areas by culture converting and such. Even a province you've been holding onto for 50 years could still be harboring a small amount of rebel sentiment which will add to the monthly rebellion chance when you take more provinces that add to that sentiment.

The new mechanics give you multiple choices to make in preventing or reducing rebels. You can sacrifice income and force limits by raising the autonomy in a province. You can sacrifice military points by using harsh treatment. You can sacrifice ducats and manpower by defeating the rebels in combat. I don't think its really intended to solely rely on one method to control rebels, it's best to mix and match dependent on the situation.

I think its a good thing that new mechanics are introduced/overhauled etc with new expansions. Otherwise the game becomes static and once you know how to "win", you can do so every time, and then there becomes no point in playing because you just keep repeating the same old steps to victory.

 

[bussoloni]

Tl;dr: large revolts are harder to deal with than many small ones.

Yes, and? Welcome to reality. The system is great the way it is: it is a good gameplay mechanic that forces you to make choices between facing large-scale revolts or losing some power (via raising autonomy, using monarch points, accepting demands sometimes, needing specific advisors to helps, etc.) AND it is reflective of history. There is a reason the expression 'divide & conquer' exists -> a united force is MUCH more difficult to deal with than a divided force of the same size.

Try accepting the demands of a large nationalist rebellion and watch as half your nation is gone in a heartbeat.

 

[bussoloni]

An example: as a slightly-expanded Ottomans, you have to deal with various cultural/religious groups that resist your control. Facing a small Albania revolt, a small Catholic revolt in Cyprus, and a small small Syrian revolt in Aleppo -> these should be easy to deal with. However, the Ottoman empire should face significant hurdles (worse than the combined problems of the other revolts of similar aggregate size) when dealing with a unified, large-scale Greek revolt. It creates a realistic simulation of how empires struggled to control large groups of foreign populations or religions within their borders: they would often have to grant them some quasi-independence to relieve the pressure (autonomy). Many people often complain that empires in the game are too stable: creating a flat rate or linear scaling by revolt size give an even playing field for large & small nations (kind of, large nations will still be able to marshal larger armies to crush the revolts). However, the quadratic scaling makes large scale revolts a significant threat because they can force you to give autonomy to large groups.




[Edit: I should add that there are even further options at your disposal. If you are set against investing the points long-term to harsh treat, don't want to fight the revolts constantly & don't want to grant more autonomy: consider converting the culture and/or religion (a small term pain for long term gain). Maybe now the dip point investment to convert cultures has more value when compared to the cost of harsh treatment (mil points), revolts (manpower/cash), or autonomy (again, manpower/cash). Even if you only convert a province or 2 to decrease the unrest faction size.]

My empire woes in more than a nutshell