Imperial Challenge is bad

[Ololorium]

So, at the late stage of my Roman campaign I finally got the "Winning land by the spear" invention, taking dozens of useless +10% max relationship improvement ones, excited for a final showdown with a huge Macedon and it was a huge disappointment.
The first, the most pressing issue is that the AE and WE from capturing provinces is way, way too high. I took 3 barely populated provinces in Germania (yes, Macedon blobbed there) and a few cities on the coast and got over 50 AE and about 13 WE (while burning AE constantly by having Jupiter activated). I never got into that much trouble while conquering more valuable lands from Carthage or more provinces from Celtic minors. I didn't do the math, but it looks like it's worse than just taking unclaimed land in a regular CB (and certainly more WE - I almost forgot that WE existed at all because I fought with legions for a long time). Obviously, there should be limits, but I thought of this CB as the way of Alexander-style conquest of Persia, where I could take much more land than warscore costs allow. Well, I guess, technically I can conquer whatever I want, but it's no fun trying to shake 100 AE and 20 WE. The problem here, I think, is that the devs tried to "balance" regular conquest CB and this CB - they both restrict blobbing by hard cap (warscore cost) and soft cap (huge impact on AE and WE), respectively. But I don't think they need to be balanced: conquest CB is the "basic" way to wage war, available to anyone, and Imperial Challenge we can only get in the late game, beelining to the invention, so it should be better. AE and WE should be scaled back significantly.
The second issue is how annoying it is to capture individual cities and whackamole the enemy stacks doing the same with your land. The CB is designed to be used for a conflict between two huge empires, and huge empires have a lot of cities. Automation helps, but it has issues - carpet sieging stacks aren't aware of each other, so if they end up in one province, they will continue to travel together, eventually forming a big ball of small stacks. I think the CB should have somewhat different mechanic: when we conquer a whole province by regular means (sieging its capital and all forts, if exist), the province flips to us, but not earlier. In civil wars going city-by-city makes sense, especially for small countries, but the mechanic scales horribly.

 

[Lord Lambert]

I agree that it is bad but for none of the reasons you say.

It's bad because it is tedious and boring. The AE and WE gain is perfectly reasonable.

I think the CB should have somewhat different mechanic: when we conquer a whole province by regular means (sieging its capital and all forts, if exist), the province flips to us, but not earlier

This, however, is exactly the fix I have been arguing for since before 2.0 came out. Kinda hard to do code wise though apparently.

 

[svalan_i_dalen]

Or just remove the feature and make it a CB that ignores the truce mechanic... Fixed.

 

[Ololorium]

The AE and WE gain is perfectly reasonable

Maybe. I'm pretty sure I'm not playing optimally, I always try to stay below 50 AE, at 0 tyranny, never having rebellions etc. Probably in a more risky playstyle it's OK to accumulate high AE and WE and just clap on rebellions - it's just not enjoyable for me and, I guess, many other players who aren't in it for the challenge and want to have fun in a more relaxed way.

 

[Lord Lambert]

want to have fun in a more relaxed way.

I don't think Imperial Challenge is or should be in the "chill relaxed fun" catagory of wargoals

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I agree with OP regarding having to research useless technologies to unlock the holy grail CB but disagree with AE & WE (which are well balanced). I think there should be an Imperial CB lite on the way to Winning the Land by Spear. Perhaps allow the attacker to annex 150 WS from the enemy warleader. Perhaps another that allows 200 WS. That way we could make even WC campaigns more unique by devoting inventions to other more "fun" technologies.

PS, the Imperial CB is a tedious slog relative to how warring works post Marius.

 

[Ololorium]

I don't think Imperial Challenge is or should be in the "chill relaxed fun" catagory of wargoals

I mean, the challenge should definitely be present, in the form of a huge rival empire I'm fighting. I'm not asking for the war goal to be just a "gimme all that land" button.

 

[dakapes]

I also dislike imperial cb. To much effort and not enough roi.
So much AE per territory is absolutely ridiculous. It was supposed to be a flexible way to dominate to a great enemy. You actually pay much effort on this - useless inventions and the result clearly does not worth it.

It only has meaning on a last enemy ( Maura) when going for wc, as a last resort.

Also is boring , you cannot do war business in such a way per city. It is clearly neither productive , nor fun.

 

[Napoleon1971]

I've been thinking the opposite.

I've been cruising along on a Rome WC having the combo of imperial conquest and radical epicurian (10 stab for sacking temples). I haven't had to pause a bit. My stab stays at 90-100 perpetually (I have a levy in India destroying temples every 9-12 months as required).

It seems overpowered to me, not underpowered.

But, I'll concede this is my first 2.0 game so perhaps its not really all that good when not playing Rome.

Is carpet siegeing semi-boring? I guess. But, WC is tedious in every Paradox game, right? I much prefer this to the things you do late in a EU IV WC run.

 

[Vohen]

Kinda hard to do code wise though apparently.

Hmm, it'd seem like something easy to do even through modding, a simple trigger for when the target's whole province is occupied followed by an effect flipping those territories to the attacker and giving the adequate AE and WE would do the job just fine.
And that's from a modding perspective, I figure devs could do it in an even smoother and efficient way.

 

[Arthrodira]

I've been thinking the opposite.

I've been cruising along on a Rome WC having the combo of imperial conquest and radical epicurian (10 stab for sacking temples). I haven't had to pause a bit. My stab stays at 90-100 perpetually (I have a levy in India destroying temples every 9-12 months as required).

It seems overpowered to me, not underpowered.

But, I'll concede this is my first 2.0 game so perhaps its not really all that good when not playing Rome.

Is carpet siegeing semi-boring? I guess. But, WC is tedious in every Paradox game, right? I much prefer this to the things you do late in a EU IV WC run.

Sounds like the overpowered part of this equation is “militant epicurean,” not the imperial conquest cb. That invention should probably just be killed, it doesn’t make any sense and it’s always going to be tough to balance. Imperial conquest is definitely not over powered though, it may not be severely underpowered as some think, but it’s definitely not overpowered.

 

[olivenkranz]

So, at the late stage of my Roman campaign I finally got the "Winning land by the spear" invention, taking dozens of useless +10% max relationship improvement ones, excited for a final showdown with a huge Macedon and it was a huge disappointment.
The first, the most pressing issue is that the AE and WE from capturing provinces is way, way too high. I took 3 barely populated provinces in Germania (yes, Macedon blobbed there) and a few cities on the coast and got over 50 AE and about 13 WE (while burning AE constantly by having Jupiter activated). I never got into that much trouble while conquering more valuable lands from Carthage or more provinces from Celtic minors. I didn't do the math, but it looks like it's worse than just taking unclaimed land in a regular CB (and certainly more WE - I almost forgot that WE existed at all because I fought with legions for a long time). Obviously, there should be limits, but I thought of this CB as the way of Alexander-style conquest of Persia, where I could take much more land than warscore costs allow. Well, I guess, technically I can conquer whatever I want, but it's no fun trying to shake 100 AE and 20 WE. The problem here, I think, is that the devs tried to "balance" regular conquest CB and this CB - they both restrict blobbing by hard cap (warscore cost) and soft cap (huge impact on AE and WE), respectively. But I don't think they need to be balanced: conquest CB is the "basic" way to wage war, available to anyone, and Imperial Challenge we can only get in the late game, beelining to the invention, so it should be better. AE and WE should be scaled back significantly.
The second issue is how annoying it is to capture individual cities and whackamole the enemy stacks doing the same with your land. The CB is designed to be used for a conflict between two huge empires, and huge empires have a lot of cities. Automation helps, but it has issues - carpet sieging stacks aren't aware of each other, so if they end up in one province, they will continue to travel together, eventually forming a big ball of small stacks. I think the CB should have somewhat different mechanic: when we conquer a whole province by regular means (sieging its capital and all forts, if exist), the province flips to us, but not earlier. In civil wars going city-by-city makes sense, especially for small countries, but the mechanic scales horribly.

If you expand significantly, your WE is going to be at least 10 all the time anyway. Who cares if it goes up to 30; its hard capped. AE at 120+ is much more of an issue, but as @Napoleon1971 said, Militant Epicuranism is a nice and easy fix. Thats the reason why I almost never desecrate before getting that invention. And Imperial CB can be gotten pretty early on if you beeline for it.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Sounds like the overpowered part of this equation is “militant epicurean,” not the imperial conquest cb. That invention should probably just be killed, it doesn’t make any sense and it’s always going to be tough to balance. Imperial conquest is definitely not over powered though, it may not be severely underpowered as some think, but it’s definitely not overpowered.

I'm not sure about removing the tech, the present configuration is OP though. I think I'd still use it regularly if the stability was as low as +4.

 

[Lord Lambert]

Hmm, it'd seem like something easy to do even through modding, a simple trigger for when the target's whole province is occupied followed by an effect flipping those territories to the attacker and giving the adequate AE and WE would do the job just fine.
And that's from a modding perspective, I figure devs could do it in an even smoother and efficient way.

I am code illiterate, so I can't speak to anything other than what I've been told

 

[Rabid]

Suggested fix for militant epicureanism: it should give a non-stacking 5 year buff of +x stability when you desecrate, so that it can't be used to essentially ignore stability (and therefore also AE and WE) as a gameplay mechanic

As for OP I agree that the way that this CB works is unsatisfying and except for finishing off a WC it very much doesn't seem to be worth the effort to pick up.

 

[Vohen]

I am code illiterate, so I can't speak to anything other than what I've been told

I figure you have reliable sources, but do share them if possible.

 

[olivenkranz]

Suggested fix for militant epicureanism: it should give a non-stacking 5 year buff of +x stability when you desecrate, so that it can't be used to essentially ignore stability (and therefore also AE and WE) as a gameplay mechanic

As for OP I agree that the way that this CB works is unsatisfying and except for finishing off a WC it very much doesn't seem to be worth the effort to pick up.

In my campaign as Rome it was Useful for taking out Cartahge (whom I let colonize half of Spain for convenience) and later Egypt. Could've gone for Seleukids too at the end, but didnt want to.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

Suggested fix for militant epicureanism: it should give a non-stacking 5 year buff of +x stability when you desecrate, so that it can't be used to essentially ignore stability (and therefore also AE and WE) as a gameplay mechanic

As for OP I agree that the way that this CB works is unsatisfying and except for finishing off a WC it very much doesn't seem to be worth the effort to pick up.

Perhaps allow stacking similar to Divine Sacrifice? Allow stacking of holy site desecrations but each successive desecration buff is reduced by 50%.

The more I think on the Imperial CB, the less useful it becomes. Why take at least 12 innovations for Winning the Land by Spear when you can take Militant Epicureanism in conjunction with truce breaking? 3 successive truce break wars will trigger a major and all allies. At the end, you'll have say 175 AE. And? Stand down, go appeasing, and let the AE evaporate.

 

[lambda x.x]

Perhaps allow stacking similar to Divine Sacrifice? Allow stacking of holy site desecrations but each successive desecration buff is reduced by 50%.

The more I think on the Imperial CB, the less useful it becomes. Why take at least 12 innovations for Winning the Land by Spear when you can take Militant Epicureanism in conjunction with truce breaking? 3 successive truce break wars will trigger a major and all allies. At the end, you'll have say 175 AE. And? Stand down, go appeasing, and let the AE evaporate.

how many trucebreaks would you need to full annex the stereotypical late game maurya? how long would it take to snag a close to 100% peace deal on that many trucebreaks compared to carpet sieging everything?

I don't know the answer btw, but I imagine imperial challenge is extremely valuable for the big nations

 

[olivenkranz]

how many trucebreaks would you need to full annex the stereotypical late game maurya? how long would it take to snag a close to 100% peace deal on that many trucebreaks compared to carpet sieging everything?

I don't know the answer btw, but I imagine imperial challenge is extremely valuable for the big nations

Also makes it into a few big wars instead of a ton of small ones (less PI used f.ex). I personally (as Rome) let Carthage colonize half of Spain then Imperial CBed them.