Lucky Nations

[Eh up me duck]

Then why was e.g. Burgundy a lucky nation by default, but e.g. Brandenburg wasn't? IIRC, lucky nation status was almost entirely determined by a country's size at game start.

http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/Luck#Eligible_countries
"Historical lucky nations are chosen from a list that changes slightly over time. If none of the countries exists, a random nation will be chosen.".

Lucky nations is a **** concept. It's made by lazy developers.

The need is there no doubt though. We need something that boost minors, that became majors in the end-game. Most important Russia (Moscow), which starts as a minor, ready to be bashed from all sides, and ends up as part of the top five most powerful nations in 1821.

When I hear Paradox talk about country-specific ideas, flavour events, and other "historical" things that guide your country, I believe they intend to use that "concept" to guide, for instance, Moscow to greatness. But with the possibility of the human player using the same "historical" means as the computer, and as Moscow, to achieve greatness. That's great development, if it works.

I do hope Paradox makes EU IV, and not 3,5.

Dude, you know you can turn lucky nations off right?
If you want a game where France, Castille, Austria, Muscovy and England always end up the big dogs in Europe...EU is not for you.

 

[phbbt107]

I hope EU IV lets us customize lucky nations in game. I hated playing with lucky nations on in EU3 because France, Castille, and England don't really need the lucky nation bonus to dominate. On the other hand, no lucky nations meant that Russia pretty much never formed. I hope we can pick the number of lucky nations as well as which nations get picked in case I want to see, for example, an AI Ryukyu WC.

 

[Filip de Norre]

http://www.paradoxian.org/eu3wiki/Luck#Eligible_countries
"Historical lucky nations are chosen from a list that changes slightly over time. If none of the countries exists, a random nation will be chosen.".


Dude, you know you can turn lucky nations off right?
If you want a game where France, Castille, Austria, Muscovy and England always end up the big dogs in Europe...EU is not for you.

!!!!

From your post I take it you neither read nor think.

I know it can be turned off. I play with it off because it's a lousy concept. EU is definetely for me, as I've owned all former editions including CK 1 and 2, Victoria 1 and 2, and Rome + Vae Victis.

I sincerely hope France, Spain (not Castille!), Austria, Russia (not Moscow!) and UK (not England!) always end up the big dogs, including Netherlands, Ottomans, Prussia and Mughals in India. But I don't want it to be determinism. Perhaps Portugal and Castille end up as one, and Aragon has a great mediterrenean empire, perhaps it's Scotland that becomes UK, or major power with vast colonies, and so on. In some games Mughals will be there, in some they won't. And so on!

Lucky nations is a crap concept. The only luck they should need is whatever luck anyone can be lucky to get. Lucky nations is like God looking down on the earth and bestowing advantages to Moscow, for liking the name. The setup, missions, decisions, cultural flavor, regional flavor and random luck, should be enough to make these factions or most of them, or some more, major players in the end-game.

Muscovy ending up as big dog in Europe as it is now? You're sure you're actually playing EUIII?

Next time, think before reply.

 

[Closet Skeleton]

perhaps it's Scotland that becomes UK

Scotland did become the UK in real life, the King of Scotland just chose London as the capital over Edinburgh (which it a heavily Anglicised part of Scotland anyway). Its EU3 that gets it wrong, even if you pick a historical start with a Stuart England.

 

[StephenT]

Lucky nations is a good game balance concept, and something like it should definitely be in the game.

Without it, historical 'fluke' events like backwards Muscovy becoming the largest land empire in the world, or tiny Brandenberg uniting Germany instead of Austria, or the Ottomans conquering half of the map, would almost never happen. The powers that were strong in 1399 would remain strong throughout the game, or else the map would disintegrate into a swirling sea of OPMs that the player could hoover up at leisure. Neither are fun.

Someone argued that instead of lucky nations, the countries that historically rose to greatness from tiny beginnings should be given a whole host of deterministic special events to 'guide them along their historical course'. In other words, Muscovy would always form the Russian empire, because Paradox wrote events to give them bonuses. That's boring and predictable: I'd much rather see the same sort of bonuses given at random to maybe one or none or more than one Russian principality, so you'd never know until it happened whether this time it would be Tver or Pskov instead of Moscow which unites the Russian lands.


And yes, it's a crutch for the AI. But the day a software company writes an AI that can take on a human player head-to-head without any crutches, is the day you start looking around for John Connor to help unite the human resistance to the Machines...

 

[RedRalphWiggum]

I would like to see one nation in a few specific areas randomly given the lucky tag, but it wouldn't have to be the ones that were historically strong. So, one Russian country would get it. One Turkish. One German, etc.

 

[Tornadoli]

Prussia

Why? Brandenburg was lucky to form Prussia. The other nations were more or less set on being majors (eg. Spain), but Prussia? There is no reason why eg. Poland shouldn't be far more dominant than any German power (except Austria maybe).

 

[tapewormlondon]

I like lucky nations, especially on random. In my current game Algiers obviously has it as it owns all of north Africa and is pushing into Eygypt. I hope they keep that sort of random possibility in, in some shape or form.

 

[Captain Frakas]

Scotland did become the UK in real life, the King of Scotland just chose London as the capital over Edinburgh (which it a heavily Anglicised part of Scotland anyway). Its EU3 that gets it wrong, even if you pick a historical start with a Stuart England.

"In real life", England and Scotland became the Great Britain.
Not just Scotland.

James Stuart ≠ Scotland.

 

[SerialCereal]

Lucky nations is just lazy, they can't be mithered with adding more depth to these countries so they just added crap like that.

 

[unmerged(63836)]

Lucky nations is just lazy, they can't be mithered with adding more depth to these countries so they just added crap like that.

Yeah. Improving mechanics and AI so that the game would produce more plausible outcomes depending on context of the gameplay would be obviously harder than granting arbitrary bonuses. I guess that EU4 is going to be better looking, more accessible, fun sandbox game, rather than ambitious, complex, non-deterministic historical simulator that Magna Mundi tried, but failed to be. Shame that most likely there won't be MM mod for EU4.

 

[Captain Frakas]

Improving the AI is always good, but you'll still need to grant arbitrary bonuses to AI so they could compete with human players, because human player cheats: they use their brain and have the ability to reload a game when AI only use behaviour scripts and never reload game when they doesn't like an outcome.

Those who want to "play by the same rules with the AI" (which would mean that they doesn't use their brain and doesn't reload games) could always turn off lucky nations. Those who want to have a tiny bit more historical looking challenge could turn it on historical. Other could play with random lucky nations.

 

[unmerged(63836)]

The fact is that you need to grant arbitrary bonuses to AI so they could compete with human players, because human player cheats: they use their brain when AI only use behaviour scripts.

I didn't mean all AI bonuses, but country specific bonuses. There were specific mechanisms and some random events that made ie. Habsburgs powerful - why give them arbitrary bonus throughout centuries of game-play? Can't any other house in HRE take their place, or are they destinied to become big white blob in late 18th century?

 

[SerialCereal]

Yeah. Improving mechanics and AI so that the game would produce more plausible outcomes depending on context of the gameplay would be obviously harder than granting arbitrary bonuses. I guess that EU4 is going to be better looking, more accessible, fun sandbox game, rather than ambitious, complex, non-deterministic historical simulator that Magna Mundi tried, but failed to be. Shame that most likely there won't be MM mod for EU4.

Yup, exactly what I think. I will end up waiting for a few months before I buy the game, so I can play when mods are out and doing well. In truth, I never play the vanilla games from PDS anymore. Without this huge modding community I would never have more 300 hours of gameplay clocked up between the three main games.

 

[I Killed Kenny]

Lucky nations are there to increase likelihood of historical outcomes, and make sure there are some strong nations for the endgame.

Yes, please keep it, I like that idea

 

[Sleepyhead]

I liked it in EU3, and there it was optional, and you could even set it on random.

 

[jmschaub]

My point was that you can choose to play one of two ways. Historical and non historical. If you want a non historical route lucky nations shouldn't be used... ever. You play for the randomness of the games outcomes. I don't want the same nations dominating every time... or even "random" lucky nations dominating. If you want more of a challenge you already have an option for game difficulty to take care of that.

 

[scholar]

I personally enjoy lucky nations, even enhancing some of its bonuses to make my games more interesting. The fact of the matter is that everything pertaining to lucky nations is modable. The really funny thing is as you increase the difficulty level, some of what makes the lucky nations lucky is simply added to the other countries. You can make the lucky nations despicable monsters stronger than anything in the world, or you can give them minor bonuses that may help them succeed a little bit better, but not noticeably so. I support this system as it allows for flexibility in regards to how the end game comes about, while not being too deterministic. The only thing I would like to do is customize said lucky nations so as to choose my own (as it sometimes doesn't make sense in mods or given circumstance) without editing the save file.

luck = {
	merchant_compete_chance = 0.1
	colonist_placement_chance = 0.1
	missionary_placement_chance = 0.015
	leader_fire = 1
	leader_shock = 1
	land_tech_cost_modifier = -0.02
	trade_tech_cost_modifier = -0.02
	naval_tech_cost_modifier = -0.02
	government_tech_cost_modifier = -0.02
	production_tech_cost_modifier = -0.02
	spy_efficiency = 0.05
	stability_cost_modifier = -0.50
	officials = 0.25
	defensiveness = 0.25
}

very_easy_player = {

	global_manpower_modifier = 0.5
	infantry_cost = -0.5
	cavalry_cost = -0.5
	artillery_cost = -0.5
	bigship_cost = -0.5
	lightship_cost = -0.5
	galley_cost = -0.5
	build_cost = -0.5
	merchant_cost = -0.5
	colonist_cost = -0.5
	inflation_reduction = 0.5
	global_revolt_risk = -3
	badboy_limit = 25
	war_exhaustion = -0.2
	officials = 2.0
	defensiveness = 0.5

}

easy_player = {
	global_manpower_modifier = 0.25
	infantry_cost = -0.25
	cavalry_cost = -0.25
	artillery_cost = -0.25
	bigship_cost = -0.25
	lightship_cost = -0.25
	galley_cost = -0.25
	build_cost = -0.25
	merchant_cost = -0.25
	colonist_cost = -0.25
	inflation_reduction = 0.25
	global_revolt_risk = -1
	badboy_limit = 10
	war_exhaustion = -0.1
	officials = 1.0

}

hard_player = {
	land_morale = -0.1
	naval_morale = -0.1
	badboy_limit = -5
}

very_hard_player = {
	land_morale = -0.25
	naval_morale = -0.25
	badboy_limit = -10
}

very_easy_ai = {
	land_morale = -0.25
	naval_morale = -0.25
	global_manpower_modifier = -0.1
	defensiveness = -0.25
}

easy_ai = {
	land_morale = -0.1
	naval_morale = -0.1
	global_manpower_modifier = -0.05
}

hard_ai = {
	land_morale = 0.25
	naval_morale = 0.25
	global_tax_modifier = 0.25
	max_war_exhaustion = -3
	war_exhaustion = -0.2
	badboy = -0.5
	global_manpower_modifier = 0.25
	missionary_placement_chance = 0.1
	officials = 0.5
	defensiveness = 0.5
}

very_hard_ai = {
	land_morale = 0.5
	naval_morale = 0.5
	global_tax_modifier = 0.5
	max_war_exhaustion = -6
	war_exhaustion = -0.4
	badboy = -1
	global_manpower_modifier = 0.5
	missionary_placement_chance = 0.2
	officials = 1.0
	defensiveness = 1.0
}

 

[Jia Xu]

I think Lucky Nations is a good mechanic. Any mechanic that helps the AI compete with the player is a good mechanic, IMO. It's too easy for the player to steamroll the entire earth, tbqh.

 

[1alexey]

I would enjoy having more choices over the lucky for example:
1. luck to majors (at the start of the game) yes/no. So that you could randomly buff only minors, to make the game more interesting and less bloby.
2. lucky historical minors(e.g. Brandenburg, Nederlands, Muskovy, Denmark, ex).
3. lucky by tech group, so that i could assign most/all of lucky nations to bad tech groups, to make late game colonialism more interesting.

ex, ex.