The new HRE infamy penalty kills Burgundy. Every single game I've seen they die because of it :S
New annexation rules -- have you tried them?
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Paradox has already stated that the AI does not take the continuous HRE non-core infamy penalties into account, but it will in the next beta.
Jabarto said:
Let me give a totally different perspective on the "asinine" game mechanic of one-province-annexation. While it's arbitrary (I mean, any single parameter condition for annexation would seem that way), I never really saw this to be strictly a game balancing issue (though it certainly was that too); I always thought this was meant to model the pattern of a succession of wars which went in one direction, ending in eventual annexation. This seemed appropriate because it simulated the decline and defeat of the rival country, rather than its abrupt non-existence. Ideally, the AI would be challenging and cunning enough in its diplomacy to make subsequent wars more than just the same rehashed steamroll five years later; in practice that's rarely true, but I always laid the blame on the AI, not the system. The truce-and-no-annex system, while having plenty of flaws and feeling a little artificial, nevertheless totally supported a more immersive notion of war between countries.
(I must admit that I took all of this for granted before April 15th. Since then though, there's really nothing more boring than as it stands just annexing someone--practically anyone except a handful of countries--you've defeated, and I've come to appreciate what that 5-year-cycling achieved in terms of gameplay, whatever its other flaws.)
In practice, the OPM-only annex rule also was the primary survival mechanism for OPM+ countries. Honestly, these countries should be an important part of the game--they were an important part of history. I realize most people probably just see them as "future provinces not yet cored", but I think that's missing a lot. OPM/OPM+'s are the perfect spoilers: they should (and in history often were) renegade little states that did what they pleased and were ruthlessly efficient in diplomatically protecting themselves. In practice, this led to many layers of coalitions of allies around a tiny insignificant territory; I'd love to see them play this spoiler role in EU3.
Trin Tragula said:
Some people are getting alarmed by annexations of large countries, but I get upset a lot quicker: I don't think you should be able to annex every minor, immediately, with no CB. Game balancing, game flavor, etc. Maybe if annexation with a non-annexation CB gave you HUGE BB penalties, I would withdraw my objection -- but it would have to be pretty big.
On to some other issues...
intertemporalis said:
I think that since there exists a choice, the circumstances under which someone will vassalize have declined by about 90%. The word "useless" while applied a bit liberally follows naturally. Swarming might be fun, but it's not very up there in the pantheon of human strategies, and it's neither rigidly sensible nor income-optimal. It IS fun though, like you said. But where we used to have a reason to vassalize, now the reason is "fun", which I think isn't likely to give very many vassals in practice.
intemporalis said:
On its own, this change doesn't lead to more historical outcomes; it leads to less for the simple reason that all the game balancing (which in part gives more historical outcomes) up till now (read: for 3 years) is geared to the old rules. If a lot of new game balancing goes into it now, it might become more historical, but the same could be said of the old system. I didn't see games under the old rules which have a "million OPM's" by the 18th century--there were "problem spots" (Aragon tended to hang around) to be sure, but I suspect there have been new ones created now.
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Maybe "loaded with asinine mecahnics" was a bit too harsh. What I meant by this was that EU3 has a lot of mechanics that, while failry effective in preserving balance, make no sense. Inflation as it works in-game is a good example, as was the previous annexation ruleset.
I suppose you're right. Again, my main problem is that the rules that Paradox sets to limit blobbing often have little basis in reality.
Honestly, people say this but I don't really understand why it really changes anything except maybe in the case of 2-4 province nations when you're a medium/major power, as 1 province vassals are useless anyways and two wars is sometimes not worth the effort. Vassals still have a use because they wont suffer culture penalties in the long term, will not have to deal with revolt risk/religion issues in the short term (and on top of the culture penalty, the nationalism penalty will pretty much gut tax income). Vassals will net more money on that province than taking it would for quite awhile if you don't already have a core and it's wrong culture. Most of all, it's still 4 infamy to vassal a nation under any circumstance, and with the new extremely tough on bad boy events, it can still make a 4 infamy vassal a far, far more ideal choice than 20+ infamy for a nation if you don't use a good casus (when defender in a war, excom, etc). Lastly, it adds income without adding to research or stability costs.
If I want to take a nation's land, I will simply war, take all provinces, break treaties, sphere of influence, war again in 5 years, annex. That 5 year period was slightly annoying, but I can not recall a single situation where it made the difference between me choosing to eat a nation or make it a vassal. The only other reason would be to diplo-annex at a future date to save on infamy, which has not changed. Infamy and short versus long term goals was always, and is now more than ever the deciding factor for me between making a vassal or annexing land.
I would really like to hear of a situation where previously you would have vassaled someone (instead of reduce to OPM -> sphere -> Annex in 5) but annex them now, other than trying to make a run from Europe to East Asia and feeling too lazy to war every little nation twice.
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This is mostly true, and, like I said earlier, the old system also gives the human the advantage here.
Though really, you have to feel pretty lazy not to finish those countries - I count about a dozen clicks of the mouse for such a war
But one situation where this does make a difference is a situation (mostly possible early in the game) where you only have a temporary casus belli. If you don't have the opportunity to attack the country again, they stay alive in the old system. Therefore you have a real choice of either vassalizing or reducing to OPM with no follow-up in sight. That is now removed.
This is fair enough, though if it's early in the game, -2 stab hits usually don't matter too much, and if you're beyond a minor yourself, you can simply avoid sphering, wait until they guarantee or ally with any nation, and then get a casus with that one (or just fabricate claims). If you have such a weak casus though, eating full infamy is rarely worth it for an expansionist with the current badboy events anyways, so I don't think I'd annex in that case beyond the provinces granted by the temporary.
Even if there are a few cases where this change alters your choice though, they aren't that many in number and certainly saying this change kills the vassal option is kind of silly. I also agree that this system is a little more "fair" to the AI, who was not quite so efficient at eating small nations before.
I love the new rules. It was stupid to see countries wage war on another nation and then take everything except their capital which would often be in an odd or silly place
It's also far more historical. For instance, the Mughals conquered the entire Delhi sultanate in essentially one war in 1526. This was impossible to do with the previous peace rules and now it is. When Frederick of the Palatinate was thrown out of Bohemia and his lands taken by the Hasburgs in the 30 years war, they didn't sign a peace that resulted in him keeping his capital. They removed him from power and took everything.
Also, it should lead to more reasonable borders. Nearly every game I play I see Austria attacking Bavaria and taking everything except Munich. It just looked dumb to see Munich completely surrounded by Austria after a war and yet still independent.
It's also far more historical. For instance, the Mughals conquered the entire Delhi sultanate in essentially one war in 1526. This was impossible to do with the previous peace rules and now it is. When Frederick of the Palatinate was thrown out of Bohemia and his lands taken by the Hasburgs in the 30 years war, they didn't sign a peace that resulted in him keeping his capital. They removed him from power and took everything.
Also, it should lead to more reasonable borders. Nearly every game I play I see Austria attacking Bavaria and taking everything except Munich. It just looked dumb to see Munich completely surrounded by Austria after a war and yet still independent.
Isn't the answer really that it's easy to change back, if you wish?
Here is the line in defines.txt from the original 4.0:
And here is the new version:
So why can't we just change it back?
Here is the line in defines.txt from the original 4.0:
Code:
1 # _DDEF_MAX_ANNEX_SIZE_ (Max number of provinces that can be annexed at once)And here is the new version:
Code:
10000 # _DDEF_MAX_ANNEX_SIZE_ (Max number of provinces that can be annexed at once)So why can't we just change it back?
You mean, it "maybe" changes it in the case (2-4 province nations) where you can possibly annex the other country; i.e. it changes it exactly where it applies.
(Outside of Europe, this can grow to include 6-8 province nations.)Squaldon said:
If those things were all so inhibitory as to preclude annexation, then people wouldn't ever take non-core, non-state-culture/religion territory, right? Of course that's not what you intend, and not true in practice. My point is simply that the tax maluses aren't very relevant after 1600 when tax income is the minority portion of province income.
Squaldon said:
Cool that the BB-limit alterations are having the intended effect on you.
If the intervening 2nd war were a foregone conclusion, then this rule change doesn't alter anything except that it's now easier and faster to achieve what you were going to achieve before. Why should it be easier and faster though?
And, ideally, it wouldn't be a foregone conclusion--the 2nd war should embroil you in a large war with lots of other states which makes the process a headache at the least. In the best case scenario, where the outcome of a 2nd war isn't at all certain, a vassalization would be a prudent trade-off between an unknown future outcome (winning a war, then annexation) versus a known immediate benefit. In the asymmetric case you describe, the purpose of vassalization only mattered before because it was a proxy for annexation. Now there's no need for a proxy unless you're worried about BB (which was true before too, and here's the balancing side of things). I think this means there will be less vassals.
Incidentally, even if in the intermediate stage your enemy is in your Sphere of Influence, you'd still have to fend off the diplomatic advances of other states to keep them in the ultimate vulnerable situation you describe -- a whole other level of gameplay which is potentially rich & interesting and, now, gone. (Actually, this is something I hadn't thought of before, but the Sphere of Influence concept is now somewhat crippled as well.
)Squaldon said:
Besides that it's so cheap to annex with a CB now that there's actually a bonus to doing so (which I assume is going away in the next patch)? This doesn't really affect situations where your intended goal before the war is annihilation of the other country.
I think the Sphere of Influence model that was introduced in Ht³ has the potential to do an excellent job simulating just that.
Unfortunately the AI doesn't understand well how to use it.
How many sentences can we come up with, which that statement would NOT truthfully follow?
I think that if one was only allowed to annex after a full year of occupation (or something like that), OPMs would survive more often and it would be more feasible for major powers to intervene and rescue them. As it is, they're gone before the aggressor's rivals have had time to respond.
That sounds like a good idea, although perhaps it should be expanded to something like four months per province of continuous, total occupation. That would help represent the fact that 'annexing' a country requires that you pacify the population and make yourself recognised as the de facto power in the region.
Western Europe in 1776, using the latest patch. Normal difficulty and aggressiveness, random lucky nations. I dismantled the HRE early on; even then, the only AI nations that has blobbed more than usual are Sweden and the Hansa - even Burgundy, who have a CB on all the French minors, isn't expanding too fast. Sweden mostly expanded at the expense of a bloated Lithuania and Golden horde. Although the AI has certainly used the new annexation rules, they haven't made a big difference in the final outcome. Austria's inroads into the former HRE have been almost entirely at the expense of the Hansa.
Western Europe in 1776, using the latest patch. Normal difficulty and aggressiveness, random lucky nations. I dismantled the HRE early on; even then, the only AI nations that has blobbed more than usual are Sweden and the Hansa - even Burgundy, who have a CB on all the French minors, isn't expanding too fast. Sweden mostly expanded at the expense of a bloated Lithuania and Golden horde. Although the AI has certainly used the new annexation rules, they haven't made a big difference in the final outcome. Austria's inroads into the former HRE have been almost entirely at the expense of the Hansa.
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Precisely, the old system was not good at all. The historical occurances of complete annexations on smaller countries far outweighs the number of times small countries had little pieces pecked away by majors- I can't think of any. This new change is perhaps the single best thing of a long list of awesome changes with this xpac. I have a feeling if these uber players didn't use jenky methods to win as opm's they wouldn't have this overwhelming feeling of the game being too easy.
BonSequitur: That actually looks better than it typically did before. That's only one game and I haven't played that far with this patch even once, but I'd say that's a good sign.
Western Europe in 1776, using the latest patch. Normal difficulty and aggressiveness, random lucky nations. I dismantled the HRE early on; even then, the only AI nations that has blobbed more than usual are Sweden and the Hansa - even Burgundy, who have a CB on all the French minors, isn't expanding too fast. Sweden mostly expanded at the expense of a bloated Lithuania and Golden horde. Although the AI has certainly used the new annexation rules, they haven't made a big difference in the final outcome. Austria's inroads into the former HRE have been almost entirely at the expense of the Hansa.
Well, here's a Europe from around the same time, my latest game. I did NOT help the pope, or Cleves for that matter.
And Portugal used to own the coastline all the way from Cameroon to Antioch, but well you know, that never lasts
Pretty interesting pic, thanks for posting it! I haven't really gotten this result at all. Where did most of the minors come from? Blobs that collapsed? (If not, how did they survive for so long?) And what's the effect in your game on vassals?
We'll probably need a lot more of these anecdotes before we can be sure how things evolve one way or another.
El Dingo Grande said:
If you're talking about a two-province country, OK, I can live with that historical argumentation. But if you're saying that countries of the size of northern Italy or southern France disappeared in single conflicts--no, sorry. Multiple conflicts, of course. But that's what the "not good at all" former annexation rules required you to do...
(Yes, there are many cases in history where huge countries vanished as well: Poland's partition comes to mind. But those circumstances were always quite interesting, and the game doesn't model them in any meaningful sense.)
El Dingo Grande said:
I don't consider myself an uber player at all, and I avoid "jenky" methods like the plague: I never scorch provinces, I never game capital position, never cheat, etc. Anything that is unduly ridiculous I'll just plain avoid. But the game is very easy to win once you've riddled out how to play it, and I don't just mean how to stack the deck in your favor.
Personally, I don't think every country open to the player should be survivable, and I think that's what Paradox intended as well: the Ryukyu, et al., AAR's are all mostly exercises in game mechanics manipulation.
But let me put it back to you: how many times after getting over the learning curve have you lost a game? Or, hell, even lost a war?
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Well, here's a Europe from around the same time, my latest game. I did NOT help the pope, or Cleves for that matter.
And Portugal used to own the coastline all the way from Cameroon to Antioch, but well you know, that never lasts
This is more in agreement with what I've been seeing. I haven't played past 1720 yet though. (Except in a revive of my Rev. France campaign to test what's going to happen to my strategy for 30 year WC
)
Ok, with Junuxx's picture and Lac's experiences, forget about the "good sign" :rofl: