The tooltips for institution requirements are misleading aren't they? They imply that it always spawns in a capital but that's not true. Does anyone know the actual rules?
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Institution Spawning Location And Tooltip Information
- Thread starter Yxklyx
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Which institution? Which tooltip? As far as I can see they are all accurate provided you correctly navigate the crucial distinction between between 'if', 'and', and 'or'.
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All the tool-tips for the requirements mention your capital but institutions don't have to spawn there.
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Here is an example. Why does it say "Guatemala is in Maya's capital area"? Guatemala is my capital so of course my capital is in my capital's area - how could it be otherwise? The one for Colonialism requires the capital to be on the coast - I noticed that in my Mali game. There was an X there so I moved my capital to the coast and that became a green check mark - but then how does Spain get Colonialism if the capital is NOT on the coast?
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Also all the tool-tips mention "area" but Colonialism appeared in Sevilla which is not in the same "Area" as Spain/Castille's capital. It IS in the same Region though.
The tool tip is misleading but not technically wrong; "capital area" refers to all provinces with a contiguous land connection to your capital.
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OK, so in the case of Mali, I didn't have to move my capital to the coast even though the tooltip had a big red X?
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Yes, the tooltips are completely misleading, you pointed most of the mistakes.
Area does not mean area but landmasse.
Island does mean one province island, not an actual island.
The requirements are displayed for the capital but every province connected to the capital can spawn it if it meets the criterias.
I think that's it afaik, but this still massively annoying for people who trust the tooltips. Simple rule: check the code if you can or ask the forum. Tooltips are almost always wrong. I have a list of all of the flaws I noticed, I want to see if this will get fixed next patch before creating a dedicated thread. But trust me, there are over 30 situations like that where tooltips are outright wrong or at least inconsistent in what a word means.
Area does not mean area but landmasse.
Island does mean one province island, not an actual island.
The requirements are displayed for the capital but every province connected to the capital can spawn it if it meets the criterias.
I think that's it afaik, but this still massively annoying for people who trust the tooltips. Simple rule: check the code if you can or ask the forum. Tooltips are almost always wrong. I have a list of all of the flaws I noticed, I want to see if this will get fixed next patch before creating a dedicated thread. But trust me, there are over 30 situations like that where tooltips are outright wrong or at least inconsistent in what a word means.
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Institutions can spawn in any province in the world where the triggers shown by the tooltips are true. It currently puts your capital there as someone thought that'd be helpful as an example but I agree it's not ideal (and also quite unclear).
If you have a list like that I want to encourage you to share it. We try to improve on tooltips when we can but I don't see any reason to wait with sharing the ones you have noticed in particular.
If you have a list like that I want to encourage you to share it. We try to improve on tooltips when we can but I don't see any reason to wait with sharing the ones you have noticed in particular.
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I think you are aware of most of them and will likely fix them next patch as more than half the examples concern mechanics introduced/changed in 1.18 or 1.19, but I will copy the list when I get home.
Here is the list @Trin Tragula
It may not be fully correct or updated, and I know you are aware of most of these issues as you or others have answered to bug reports/threads talking about them, but I made a list to post it after 1.20 in a single thread if some things were still broken.
The most recent additions : Post-game stats & Institutions
As you probably know, everything about post-game stats is wrong/unclear or close to everything.
Second line, there is "your longest reigning ruler", and then the average is the "average of player rulers". Is this the average of longest reigning player ruler, or the average of player rulers. First case this is phrased poorly, second case this is irrelevant to compare yourself with others.
It says "yearly" for army losses, soldiers killed, ships sunk and losed. But it is the total that is always displayed, the average for other players is a yearly value however. If it is too big your total becomes negative, this is rather funny.
"Provinces unjustly stolen from us" does include provinces you generously granted to a vassal. This is a bit weird to see that you finish a WC and you have 1000 provinces that were stolen from you while you losed 0 war. However, when you annex a vassal they do not count as conquered on the next line. I don't know if the average of other players take that into account.
I just loaded up as France to check this, in 1444 it says they have had 7 military leaders including Jeanne d'Arc. She is probably somewhere in the code alongside some other ghost generals, but they definitely shouldn't count for stats.
I am curious to have the list of religions, because the total does not seem to make 100%, but I haven't played all of them, I am just surprised by how low most of them are. This is probably my imagination.
"Disasters that rocked your nation" are not disasters you actually faced, just disasters that started ticking. I am surprised by how low the average number is, but maybe people are just really afraid to have a disaster ticking.
Overall these stats are not really useful anyway because the average does not factor the date or the nation, so you don't compare yourself with anything. The average game seems to end up after a few decades, so this quickly become useless. The idea was awesome.
I just said everything I noticed about institutions. They only talk about the capital as an example but this is totally unclear, and sometimes misleading, the "capital area" is actually "land connected with the capital", there is a precise definition of "area" in EU4 and this is not that at all. What the game calls "island" for institutions spawn is only a one province island, but interestingly enough not things like Arguin, that can theoretically block institutions the same way a one province island could.
Trade and income in general
This is a very massive part of the problem, and one of the main reasons why new players are lost and have an extremely low trade income. There are many minor issues like some weird diplomatic expenses or totals not being accurate at all in some cases, but they are more bugs than tooltip issues. Trade however is extremely problematic and the game outright lies to you on something crucial for beginners. Imagine I play as Portugal and I conquer all of Tunis. The game will tell me that I am "transferring 3 ducats to Sevilla". I find this cool, I don't place any merchant because I don't really understand what all the complicated numbers are. Aragon is actually steering from Tunis to Genoa: even if they have 10% share and I have 80% I transfer nothing, they transfer everything because I have no merchant in this contested node. The mechanic is ok, but the tooltip says the opposite of what is true. It should be "we could transfer 3 ducats if we placed a merchant but right now everything is stolen by Aragon". This took me like 400 hours before I noticed it and this multiplied my trade income by two instantly, I guess some players are still unaware of this after 1k hours. And this has been there forever, or at least since 6-7 patches.
Apart from that, when you use light ships for a trade mission, the projection of the money you will make is always wrong. Like totally wrong, I have no idea where it comes from.
The two big boys
There is not a single tooltip in the game about ZoC or shattered retreat and the wiki says nothing relevant about these. There are rules quite simple that work more than 90% of the time, and with the more complex rules you can predict what will happen 99% of the time. What about you create some explanation somewhere so people learn the rules and stop complaining all the time?
Achievements
There is a major inconsistency in the phrasing of achievements which leads to no way of knowing what is possible and what is not unless you can read a code, which not everyone can do. Two achievements can be phrased the exact same way, but one would allow tagswitch and the other wouldn't, like Raja of the Rajput Reich and Lucky Lucca for instance. You never know what is possible and what is not unless you tried it, and this is even more confusing because One Night in Paris specifies what is possible, so tricks new players into thinking there would be a similar remark if there was a similar case for other achievements.
Minor inconsistencies, poor phrasing or not that important erroneous tooltips
Warscore of province and total warscore of a nation factors some modifiers but not all of them in the province screen, this leads to some annoying situation where you have to do the math yourself. This would be easier if there was a list of possible scores if you hover the number, or just the flat out basic number and you would have to take everything into account yourself. Not half the modifiers listed there and the other half you have to calculate yourself, that is even more confusing than no tooltip at all.
When you split an army while the game is paused, and you start moving it while the game is paused, the tooltip will say it will arive on X.01.01, based on the number of days, instead of the actual date. Funnily, this leads to some unexpected "a battle will happen in" situations, but it disappears once you let a day tick.
Recap of naval battles was still wrong very recently, but I think most of the situations have been fixed. I'm not sure when is the last time I had one of these, I wonder if I had one this patch.
I'm not sure if this is a bug or a poor phrasing, but extra cavalry flanking ability is flanking ability right now, it even increases artillery flanking range.
Any idea with "estate loyalty" is actually "estate loyalty increase", which is quite different.
This is written nowhere that admin efficiency is also a diplo efficiency, both for annexation and WS of provinces, that would be a nice addition.
1.18 has introduced a very interesting distinction between neighbouring and adjacent. However, conquest CB and Deus Vult both say you can fabricate on a neighbouring or an adjacent province, I don't remember which one. It should be neighbouring for conquest CB and adjacent for Deus Vult because it is how it works.
I'm not sure all of them are exactly tooltips or not as you wanted them, but I think most of them should be fixed as I feel like there is one thread each day posted because someone has no access to one of these informations.
It may not be fully correct or updated, and I know you are aware of most of these issues as you or others have answered to bug reports/threads talking about them, but I made a list to post it after 1.20 in a single thread if some things were still broken.
The most recent additions : Post-game stats & Institutions
As you probably know, everything about post-game stats is wrong/unclear or close to everything.
Second line, there is "your longest reigning ruler", and then the average is the "average of player rulers". Is this the average of longest reigning player ruler, or the average of player rulers. First case this is phrased poorly, second case this is irrelevant to compare yourself with others.
It says "yearly" for army losses, soldiers killed, ships sunk and losed. But it is the total that is always displayed, the average for other players is a yearly value however. If it is too big your total becomes negative, this is rather funny.
"Provinces unjustly stolen from us" does include provinces you generously granted to a vassal. This is a bit weird to see that you finish a WC and you have 1000 provinces that were stolen from you while you losed 0 war. However, when you annex a vassal they do not count as conquered on the next line. I don't know if the average of other players take that into account.
I just loaded up as France to check this, in 1444 it says they have had 7 military leaders including Jeanne d'Arc. She is probably somewhere in the code alongside some other ghost generals, but they definitely shouldn't count for stats.
I am curious to have the list of religions, because the total does not seem to make 100%, but I haven't played all of them, I am just surprised by how low most of them are. This is probably my imagination.
"Disasters that rocked your nation" are not disasters you actually faced, just disasters that started ticking. I am surprised by how low the average number is, but maybe people are just really afraid to have a disaster ticking.
Overall these stats are not really useful anyway because the average does not factor the date or the nation, so you don't compare yourself with anything. The average game seems to end up after a few decades, so this quickly become useless. The idea was awesome.
I just said everything I noticed about institutions. They only talk about the capital as an example but this is totally unclear, and sometimes misleading, the "capital area" is actually "land connected with the capital", there is a precise definition of "area" in EU4 and this is not that at all. What the game calls "island" for institutions spawn is only a one province island, but interestingly enough not things like Arguin, that can theoretically block institutions the same way a one province island could.
Trade and income in general
This is a very massive part of the problem, and one of the main reasons why new players are lost and have an extremely low trade income. There are many minor issues like some weird diplomatic expenses or totals not being accurate at all in some cases, but they are more bugs than tooltip issues. Trade however is extremely problematic and the game outright lies to you on something crucial for beginners. Imagine I play as Portugal and I conquer all of Tunis. The game will tell me that I am "transferring 3 ducats to Sevilla". I find this cool, I don't place any merchant because I don't really understand what all the complicated numbers are. Aragon is actually steering from Tunis to Genoa: even if they have 10% share and I have 80% I transfer nothing, they transfer everything because I have no merchant in this contested node. The mechanic is ok, but the tooltip says the opposite of what is true. It should be "we could transfer 3 ducats if we placed a merchant but right now everything is stolen by Aragon". This took me like 400 hours before I noticed it and this multiplied my trade income by two instantly, I guess some players are still unaware of this after 1k hours. And this has been there forever, or at least since 6-7 patches.
Apart from that, when you use light ships for a trade mission, the projection of the money you will make is always wrong. Like totally wrong, I have no idea where it comes from.
The two big boys
There is not a single tooltip in the game about ZoC or shattered retreat and the wiki says nothing relevant about these. There are rules quite simple that work more than 90% of the time, and with the more complex rules you can predict what will happen 99% of the time. What about you create some explanation somewhere so people learn the rules and stop complaining all the time?
Achievements
There is a major inconsistency in the phrasing of achievements which leads to no way of knowing what is possible and what is not unless you can read a code, which not everyone can do. Two achievements can be phrased the exact same way, but one would allow tagswitch and the other wouldn't, like Raja of the Rajput Reich and Lucky Lucca for instance. You never know what is possible and what is not unless you tried it, and this is even more confusing because One Night in Paris specifies what is possible, so tricks new players into thinking there would be a similar remark if there was a similar case for other achievements.
Minor inconsistencies, poor phrasing or not that important erroneous tooltips
Warscore of province and total warscore of a nation factors some modifiers but not all of them in the province screen, this leads to some annoying situation where you have to do the math yourself. This would be easier if there was a list of possible scores if you hover the number, or just the flat out basic number and you would have to take everything into account yourself. Not half the modifiers listed there and the other half you have to calculate yourself, that is even more confusing than no tooltip at all.
When you split an army while the game is paused, and you start moving it while the game is paused, the tooltip will say it will arive on X.01.01, based on the number of days, instead of the actual date. Funnily, this leads to some unexpected "a battle will happen in" situations, but it disappears once you let a day tick.
Recap of naval battles was still wrong very recently, but I think most of the situations have been fixed. I'm not sure when is the last time I had one of these, I wonder if I had one this patch.
I'm not sure if this is a bug or a poor phrasing, but extra cavalry flanking ability is flanking ability right now, it even increases artillery flanking range.
Any idea with "estate loyalty" is actually "estate loyalty increase", which is quite different.
This is written nowhere that admin efficiency is also a diplo efficiency, both for annexation and WS of provinces, that would be a nice addition.
1.18 has introduced a very interesting distinction between neighbouring and adjacent. However, conquest CB and Deus Vult both say you can fabricate on a neighbouring or an adjacent province, I don't remember which one. It should be neighbouring for conquest CB and adjacent for Deus Vult because it is how it works.
I'm not sure all of them are exactly tooltips or not as you wanted them, but I think most of them should be fixed as I feel like there is one thread each day posted because someone has no access to one of these informations.
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A lot of good points made here. This could probably be compiled into its own thread in the suggestions forums.
The ZoC article was updated recently, it's great now: http://www.eu4wiki.com/Zone_of_control
Anyway, fantastic post. The whole capital area thing had me scratching my head in my recent game (hadn't played in a good while). Problems with trade tooltips/income projection can make or break a playthrough.
I don't know if you (PDX) saw it because I had no answer in bug section. In the same kind tooltip error, you have: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...atus-bonus-value-for-defenders-desert.994130/Thank you for posting @Sfan I have passed it along to our QA
A capital on an actual one province island would make you not able to get it wouldn't it?
Speaking of small errors how would you then prefer to have typos/spelling errors of event descriptions reported? Just a single thread with all of them in bug reports and you tagged in it?
If you have many at the same time then make a thread for all of them. If you come back with more it's better to open a new one.
I'm guessing showing which file it's in is preferable? (I've just been taking screenshots whenever I encounter an error, but I can find the localisations if that's preferable.