On aggressive expansion: What has changed in patch 1.5

[bleakie]

The changes to aggressive expansion has become a focus recently. To facilitate discussion, I shall state the universal changes (applicable to all countries) that have been made.

1. Effect of prestige and over-extension on BROT (Better Relations Over Time) is reduced by half. (At 100 prestige, BROT is reduced from +100% to +50%)
2. The BROT from the finisher of Religious idea group is reduced from +100% to +50%.
3. The effect of distance on AE is reduced by half.
4. AE is increased by an additive 50% relative to base AE. (e.g. With no CB, taking a province gives an extra 7.5 AE)

By the way, +100% BROT means an extra -2 AE per year.

I hope that this can be a basis of discussion on quantitative terms.

 

[StatikShocker]

so without religious ideas and like 50 prestige, ae from taking full warscore worth of provinces can last upwards of a century, easily. that sounds reasonable

 

[bleakie]

I hope that discussions can be based on hard numbers.
Let me start with a couple of examples.

Taking 5 Catholic Rhinelander provinces, inside the HRE, with 75% AE.
AE generated to Catholic Rhinelander countries in HRE = 15*2*0.75*5 = 112.5
With 50 prestige and no other BROT modifiers, AE reduction is 2.5 per year.
This means 45 years is needed to dissipate all the AE.

Another example:

Taking 5 Orthodox Serbian provinces, with 75% AE.
AE generated to Catholic Hungary = 15*0.5*0.75*5 = 28.1
With 50 prestige and no other BROT modifiers, AE reduction is 2.5 per year.
This means 11.2 years is needed to dissipate all the AE.

Please try to do this kind of calculations to present your ideas, and avoid exaggeration, or the true picture can never be clear to readers.

 

[StatikShocker]

is ae still not dependent on size? I would be meaning for a big ottomans or russia or france.

 

[bleakie]

Country size has no effect on AE in 1.5.

 

[StatikShocker]

Country size has no effect on AE in 1.5.

thank you for that confirmation I think you can see how I saw that as something unreasonable.

 

[bleakie]

I can understand why giving an AE discount to countries with less than 20 provinces is beneficial to the game, but bear in mind that even with the current implementation, the relative rate of expansion for superpowers is already decreasing, and scaling AE with size will make that worse.

 

[grommile]

thank you for that confirmation I think you can see how I saw that as something unreasonable.

Size didn't have any effect in 1.4, either. You just didn't notice because there was hardly any AE to be had at all unless you were turning the HRE upside down and shaking it to see what provinces fell out.

(I mean, seriously. 7.5 AE with Castile for taking Burgos from Castile.)

 

[unmerged(26686)]

Both from a gameplay perspective as well as from a history simulation perspective, you'd want the the AE to be higher for superpowers. Otherwise you snowball power. This is exactly why historically the world has always been more sensitive to the expansion of large powers than to changes of the borders of minor nations.

 

[Stategem161803]

In the formulas, AE = Base AE * (Distance Modifier???) * CB modifier * number of provinces ?

Are these the variables you are using? If so, how do you come up with the distance modifier? Is it an estimate or an exact measure?

I feel like the "join coalition" AE threshold should be discussed. I haven't played the game in about a week due to school. I would like to understand the full breadth of the changes to AE in 1.5.

 

[bleakie]

I ignored distance when doing the calculations.
The link in my signature contains the factors that determine the missing modifier (except distance and continent).
Under most circumstances, there are 3 factors:

1. Culture (Same culture, same culture group or different culture group)
2. Religion (Same religion, same religious group or different religious group)
3. HRE (Whether the province taken and the country receiving the AE are both in HRE)

Check the link in my signature for details.

 

[bleakie]

And to make my explanation complete, now I add a table that shows the AE multiplier in various situation:

Same religion, same culture 1.5
Same religion, same culture group 1.25
Same religion, different culture group 1
Same religious group, same culture 1
Same religious group, same culture group 0.75
Same religious group, different culture group 0.5
Different religious group, same culture 0.5
Different religious group, same culture group 0.25
Different religious group, different culture group 0

HRE +0.5

 

[TheBloke]

Thanks very much bleakie for posting your usual high-quality, dispassionate assessment. Much needed at the moment! And glad to see you're back with us in EU4-land

I feel like the "join coalition" AE threshold should be discussed. I haven't played the game in about a week due to school. I would like to understand the full breadth of the changes to AE in 1.5.

Yes I feel this has changed.

I have been planning to run a comparison of AE incurred, and the resulting coalitions formed, between 1.3.2 and 1.5.

bleakie has showed us the underlying factors and some examples, I hope to expand this into more real-life examples that also show the practical impact on the game in terms of coalitions and resulting wars.

In particular I want to see where we are versus 1.3.2, as there are changes all over the place both increasing and decreasing net AE: There's no nation-size multiple, but also lowered BROT and no AE reduction from releasing vassals. But then there's also no AE from annexing vassals or integrating PUs. Overall AE seems lower than 1.3, but then coalitions seem to have been tweaked such that they form at lower levels of AE.

Anyway as soon as I get some electricity again (on a laptop in the kitchen until the electrician comes!) I will start that analysis. I have some code that lets me pull out the AE for a given nation from a save file, so I can very quickly do before:after comparisons, first in 1.3.2 then in 1.5.0.

 

[unmerged(798670)]

Does annexing vassals still give AE, and if it does have they finally capped it at a sane amount or can it still get to hundreds per vassal?

Edit: hadn't refreshed to see thebloke's answer above, ty.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In the formulas, AE = Base AE * (Distance Modifier???) * CB modifier * number of provinces ?

Are these the variables you are using? If so, how do you come up with the distance modifier? Is it an estimate or an exact measure?

I feel like the "join coalition" AE threshold should be discussed. I haven't played the game in about a week due to school. I would like to understand the full breadth of the changes to AE in 1.5.

That threshold is not consistent. I've had nations in a coalition against me with ~10 AE. I've also had Scotland offer me an alliance in my Knights colonization test in 1.5...after no-CB slaughtering Connaught and finishing the other Irish minors with standard conquest CBs (which put me in a war with Scotland for a bit). Scotland had ~50 AE with me...and switched FRIENDLY and offered an alliance.

There's more to coalition formation than AE for sure, and IMO coalitions are more an issue than AE. Nations *SHOULD* get antsy when you start wrecking things.

That said, I appreciate this thread. It's very enlightening to see the different factors that lead to AE, from a planning perspective. A horde with tribal CB could probably do some silly things to Europe with its different culture/religion and 50% CB .

 

[bleakie]

A horde with tribal CB could probably do some silly things to Europe with its different culture/religion and 50% CB .

The culture and religion that are referring to the province being conquered and the country gaining the AE. I hope that my presentation did not create any misunderstanding.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The culture and religion that are referring to the province being conquered and the country gaining the AE. I hope that my presentation did not create any misunderstanding.

Ah, so only the horde 50% would apply there then, you'd otherwise still be at +1.5 (2 - .5). Shoot. Still useful to know; that means you could kill time waiting for HRE AE to burn off by trashing Sunni nations in different culture groups, which Europe wouldn't care about whatsoever, or at least avoid taking more than 1 HRE province before cycling somewhere with less penalty until you're big enough to start getting diplovassals there.

 

[TheBloke]

Ah, so only the horde 50% would apply there then, you'd otherwise still be at +1.5 (2 - .5). Shoot. Still useful to know; that means you could kill time waiting for HRE AE to burn off by trashing Sunni nations in different culture groups, which Europe wouldn't care about whatsoever, or at least avoid taking more than 1 HRE province before cycling somewhere with less penalty until you're big enough to start getting diplovassals there.

This has always been the correct strategy (well, except for in 1.4 where no strategy was needed): rotate conquests. Europe first, then Asia while Europe AE calms down, then Africa while Asia calms down, then back to Europe, etc. With this rotation you can usually ensure you're nearly constantly at war, without ever getting silly amounts of AE.

At least it worked like that in 1.3.2 and I've not yet seen any indication that it would be much different in 1.5. Even if AE carries further in 1.5 than in 1.3, it's still likely to be less overall for most player nations (because there's no nation size multiple), and in any case still almost certainly won't much affect other continents, which seem to have a specific modifier: i.e. distance X within a continent = more AE than distance X going between two continents; I believe.

 

[bleakie]

This has always been the correct strategy (well, except for in 1.4 where no strategy was needed): rotate conquests. Europe first, then Asia while Europe AE calms down, then Africa while Asia calms down, then back to Europe, etc. With this rotation you can usually ensure you're nearly constantly at war, without ever getting silly amounts of AE.

At least it worked like that in 1.3.2 and I've not yet seen any indication that it would be much different in 1.5. Even if AE carries further in 1.5 than in 1.3, it's still likely to be less overall for most player nations (because there's no nation size multiple), and in any case still almost certainly won't much affect other continents, which seem to have a specific modifier: i.e. distance X within a continent = more AE than distance X going between two continents; I believe.

Rotating between different cultures and religions will work better in 1.5 than in 1.3.2, as AE_ATTACKER_PROVINCE, which constitutes more than half of the AE in 1.3.2, is deactivated since 1.4, which means other factors play a larger role in 1.5.


Some more thoughts:

1. When comparing the effect of AE in 1.3.2 and 1.5, it should be noted that 1.3.2 allows an early window of faster conquests due to the initial small size of the country.

2. I don't think that the AI attitude has been significantly altered from 1.3.2 to 1.5. The reported instances of "inconsistencies" are very similar to pre-1.4 behaviour. I may be subjective in this observation though.

I am looking forward to your comparative study. I am sure it would be interesting, especially if it turns out that AE in 1.5 is even more nasty than 1.3.2 levels.

 

[MadDjinn]

for 'same religion' -- Does that count based upon major religion, or minor?

Ie, Orthodox Bosnia being eaten by the Ottomans does ?? for the Catholic Austrians.

Also, is that HRE modifier applied if the nation getting the AE is in the HRE, or if the province taken is in the HRE? I have a feeling it's the first, which can explain silly coalitions in europe when you take non-HRE provinces near it.