Ironman: a vague sense of disgrace

[Hastu Neon]

It's just me or also other players feel the same? A sort of Murphy's Law surrounds all my Ironman games... whatever may go wrong, generally happens. Few examples:

1) whatever your mission (also the basic ones, like 'improve your prestige') or achievement, events tend to obstacle them,

2) your AI rivalling neighbours outperform their usual games (i.e. the strongest possible Burgundy materialises when playing France... and obvoiusly no BI happens),

3) never seen a lucky PU or inheritance. The moment you claim a throne, the AI country gets a heir with strong claim,

4) exactly when I need those few specific monarch Points to unlock a new idea or tech, an event happens to reduce those points or otherwise suffer other bad consequences (stab hit or loss of money),

... and I could go on with much more examples like these. In general, I feel like the game machine tends to frustrate all my tactical or strategic goals with "unluckness" rather than fighting me.

 

[Chaingun]

I think it may be the case we underestimate the probability of these things happening, given that there are a large number of underlying possibilities and only a few need to happen every game to be remembered by the player as "unusually bad luck", when it's in fact usual. The same applies to real life, we don't expect to become severely ill while young, house prices to go down right after we purchased a home, etc. but that at least one of these improbable events will happen some time in life is not as improbable.

 

[Dominion]

Record one of your own games. Check objectively what went in your favor and what didn't.

It's deceitful during a game. Everything that's even remotely good for any enemy is perceived as bad whileas anything good is perceived as 'going as planned' which leads to a player often attributing RNG to his own skills instead of being happy about his luck.

There are people who complain about getting a general with only 1 siege in 1450 because they had hoped for a siege 2 general.

 

[Ironside121]

All down to probability and chance OP I got one of the rarest things to happen in regards to PU's in my France campaign, which is a claim on Poland's (and Lithuania's throne), you just need to accept that sometimes things don't go your way.

 

[ocelot64]

I hate it when I'm boxed in. Happened right now in a game with Teutonic Order. Poland allied with Brandenburg, Mecklenburg and Brandenburg also allied with Mecklenburg. Currently, seeing no possibility for westward expansion, despite having three shtronk (strong) allies in Austria, Denmark and Hungary. Can't attack Poland either, because Denmark is friendly towards and Hungary was too much in debt, though they are Poland's rivals. (I'm in the HRE,so the emporor is no obstacle) Such are minor moments where I curse about the AI "conspiring" against me... Yeah, or always getting events that drain your stability/admin points. -_-

 

[Dominion]

With allies like that you can just go bankrupt.

http://i.imgur.com/96Krg6j.jpg

BB with no allies vs France, Portugal, Castille/Aragon/Naples
Contested a PU Castille would've gotten over France. The allies you can see were enough for nobody to attack me.

Comes with AI behavior. They don't see you as a player with allies but rather you and every ally willing to join a defensive war as one single entity.
Which is why England can be useful as an ally even if it never fights in wars. Just as a deterrent.

You have Austria, Denmark and Hungary. Any actual enemies around you? Because the truce with Poland and BB would be more than 10 years.

I can't see any other nation besides those two even daring to dream of attacking you.

Loan up, merc like mad, destroy Poland, go bankrupt, enjoy.

Way better than playing the waiting game.

 

[Dakka]

The AI are conspiring against us

 

[Camtheman]

Reroll until you get the start you want. Also, to savescum in ironman

Start ironman game

Save

Navigate to My Documents/Paradox Interactive/EU IV/Saved Games

Copy + paste your save file somewhere else.

Something bad happens, copy over old save. Load old save.

 

[ocelot64]

With allies like that you can just go bankrupt.

http://i.imgur.com/96Krg6j.jpg

BB with no allies vs France, Portugal, Castille/Aragon/Naples
Contested a PU Castille would've gotten over France. The allies you can see were enough for nobody to attack me.

Comes with AI behavior. They don't see you as a player with allies but rather you and every ally willing to join a defensive war as one single entity.
Which is why England can be useful as an ally even if it never fights in wars. Just as a deterrent.

You have Austria, Denmark and Hungary. Any actual enemies around you? Because the truce with Poland and BB would be more than 10 years.

I can't see any other nation besides those two even daring to dream of attacking you.

Loan up, merc like mad, destroy Poland, go bankrupt, enjoy.

Way better than playing the waiting game.

I adapted my strategy: Broke my alliance with Livonian Order. Waited for the truce to end and force-vassalised them. Have LO fabricate claim on Riga, conquered it for LO. Now I'm attacking Novogorod and one of their trading cities as co-belligerents. At the start of the war it was 9 vs. 7 mil tech, now it's 9 vs. 8. I decided to call in Denmark , since they rivalled Novgorod. Muscovy is totally weakened. Poland attacked them twice.

Trust-wise I'm still somewhat suffering from my decision to chicken out when OPM Saxony got attacked by Brandenburg plus their bruisers Poland/Lithuania, Bavaria and Mecklenburg. Fighting a war I can't win? No, thank you.

Coming back to your earlier statement: No, I can't think of any nation that would dare attack me. After all, I've joined the HRE to keep the Polish menace at bay.

I went broke with Prussia too. Was attacking one of the Hanseatic League members for some easy cash. As I was sieging Hamburg with a 30 regiment-strong army the bankrupcy triggered. 10 Hamburgian regiments attacked my, normally, qualitative superior army and trashed them due to the low morale. That was so humiliating. ^_^;; Since then I start with Economic as my first idea group, instead of Innovative for Brandenburg.

 

[ocelot64]

@Dominion There was some funny annecdote when I played as Florence/Italy. I was allied with France, which was in huge debts, > 5000 ducats. I donated them thousands of ducats for them to repay their debts, what does stupid France do? Claim the title of Defender of Faith, duh... But yet it worked. I got their debts down to the point where they were willing again to join an offensive war against our common rival Austria.

 

[ahyangyi]

It's just me or also other players feel the same? A sort of Murphy's Law surrounds all my Ironman games... whatever may go wrong, generally happens. Few examples:

1) whatever your mission (also the basic ones, like 'improve your prestige') or achievement, events tend to obstacle them,

2) your AI rivalling neighbours outperform their usual games (i.e. the strongest possible Burgundy materialises when playing France... and obvoiusly no BI happens),

3) never seen a lucky PU or inheritance. The moment you claim a throne, the AI country gets a heir with strong claim,

4) exactly when I need those few specific monarch Points to unlock a new idea or tech, an event happens to reduce those points or otherwise suffer other bad consequences (stab hit or loss of money),

... and I could go on with much more examples like these. In general, I feel like the game machine tends to frustrate all my tactical or strategic goals with "unluckness" rather than fighting me.

1) Canceling a mission costs you only one year to get another one. It's not like the end of world.

2) You have three rivals. And naturally the probability one of them outperform their usual games is high. This is also sometimes due to the player's reckless expansion and lack of diplomatic efforts. Sometimes triple alliances form because they share their hate against you. And if you do not somehow break such an alliance, you are asking for trouble.

3) ask atwix

4) Generally you just pay the money. You won't be hit too hard.

 

[Indigo Blue]

It's just me or also other players feel the same? A sort of Murphy's Law surrounds all my Ironman games... whatever may go wrong, generally happens. Few examples:

1) whatever your mission (also the basic ones, like 'improve your prestige') or achievement, events tend to obstacle them,

2) your AI rivalling neighbours outperform their usual games (i.e. the strongest possible Burgundy materialises when playing France... and obvoiusly no BI happens),

3) never seen a lucky PU or inheritance. The moment you claim a throne, the AI country gets a heir with strong claim,

4) exactly when I need those few specific monarch Points to unlock a new idea or tech, an event happens to reduce those points or otherwise suffer other bad consequences (stab hit or loss of money),

... and I could go on with much more examples like these. In general, I feel like the game machine tends to frustrate all my tactical or strategic goals with "unluckness" rather than fighting me.

The stuff happens. But I've had a PU over Spain during my English run.

I've had BI during my French runs - more then a few times. But then I've usually forced it by camping on Burgundy for a number of years.

Playing catholic Turkey I've secured an early French PU and later that game a Commonwealth PU.

I've actually avoided the claim throne mechanic...most of the time because its just better to go conquer outside territory then hope for a dynasty + no or weak heir.

For MPs I try to sit midway or near the cap all the time. Its not super efficient but it makes sure that when I absolutely need it I can use it (though sometimes i'll throw a bunch into development after maxing [at the time] my dev reduction cost). Also for stability as early as possible buy up level 3 advisors and make sure you take a diverse number of them. Each unique level 3 advisor provides at least +1 to stability at some point - up to a total of 21 free stability (20 if you don't have exploration 19 if you don't have a colonial nation or exploration)

 

[Hastu Neon]

I will try to explain better my experience, based on some normal games and 20 Ironman (including 6-7 retries with Brandenburg). In general I have noticed normal games to be more balanced in terms of luck, while ironman go more against player (before you ask, I play with normal difficulty and historical lucky nations).

Take my last Muscovy game: generally the hordes remain split and easily eaten by AI Russia once formed (if MUS is not crushed by Poland-Lithuania). In my game AI had Kazan crushing all the others to become a serious contestant for Russia. Once at war with Nogai, I profited to attack Kazan while its troops were too faraway in Asia imaging an easy grab of land. Instead, while I was taking over one after other Kazan provinces a series of pretenders emerged (usual stuff you would say) and all revolters began to fight against me and not against the few remaining Kazan regulars. To cut it short, an easy war became a drain of manpower and finally I got out with 1-2 provinces. With manpower depleted PLC attacked me and thanks god I was allied with Sweden otherwise it could have been a mess.

I know that all of this is WAD, but it happens in all my ironman games. It's like "misfortune" is waiting you behind every street corner to frustrate all your attempts of growth/expansion...

 

[Sfan]

This is just confirmation bias, there is no difference in the code between AI attitude in normal and ironman. This may be because you take ironman more seriously so you are less happy with things that go against you. You might even load previous save when something stupid happens in normal, in Ironman you are forced to watch hopelessly and cry tears of dismay.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I do play ironman for achievements, but I conceptually despise the way it works in practice because it's a 1 sided promise. The game doesn't follow its own rules, so as a player why should I respect anything labeled as "cheating" or exploitative?

1 sided covenants aren't my thing.

 

[ocelot64]

For a change: Here's an anti-Murphy's-law-moment... Poland went bankrupt while I'm still at war with them. Easy peasy war now.

 

[Dominion]

I do play ironman for achievements, but I conceptually despise the way it works in practice because it's a 1 sided promise. The game doesn't follow its own rules, so as a player why should I respect anything labeled as "cheating" or exploitative?

1 sided covenants aren't my thing.

Because cheating in the dirty sense means turning on the console, in the normal sense means I own Europe+Asia in 1490 (can grab the screen if needed) and in the more casual sense means savescumming which defeats the purpose of ironman since you're disabling the only difference between a normal run and an ironman run.

And aside from ZoC, the game does follow its own rules. I don't know what you mean.

 

[dahat]

Attempt at Raja of the Rajput Reich; I force-vassalized Delhi early on, and then defended them against Multan who still had a couple of their cores. Giving those cores back would cause a coalition though, so I start to make friends with Jaunpur. I'm within a couple of ticks of positive opinion territory, and my ally Malwa calls me into a war versus the Bahmanis and friends. So my plan is to end my Multan war with Delhi's cores reconquered, ally Jaunpur immediately, then join Malwa in his war, and hopefully no coalition dares to form.

I wait a tick or two then make peace with Multan. Sure enough, Jaunpur is juuuuuuuuuust barely positive, so I'm just waiting for my diplomat to return home to make the alliance. Just before he gets home, Jaunpur cancels the military access I had given them, which sends him into negative opinion territory. Not only does the coalition form, but Jaunpur actually joins it! And then, while I'm dealing with this, the call to arms from Malwa expires and I auto-decline it. The negative diplomatic reputation from abandoning Malwa sends Delhi into rebellious mode, and within a couple of months the coalition launches its war against me.

On the flip side, my last game as Austria gave me a personal union over Bohemia before 1460, which let me basically sleepwalk to passing the reforms and uniting the HRE.

Luck swings both ways, and it has nothing to do with ironman/non-ironman.

 

[Hastu Neon]

I keep thinking that ironman plays against player.
In my OE game, the event that brings Crimea as vassal 9 out of 10 times (when OE is AI-controlled...) fires with negative outcome. I only get the PU-CB and have to waste my Manpower to vassallise them...

 

[Toni Martoni]

Well in my run I got PU over Castile (with Aragon and Naples), the Commonwealth, Bohemia and Hungary, and the russian king is a Habsburg already. I also had a 5/4/5 ruler who reigned 50 years and died over 70 so things look good even in ironman here