Petition to Paradox: Keep the current percentage-based terrain system

[WeissRaben]

I'm not against the system, as I said. I'm only convinced that such a simplification, without the detail needed, is like drawing circles with squares, and claim that a circle can be drawn with one single square. No, you can't: it's a square, not a circle, and you haven't got enough detail to make it even /look/ like a circle.

 

[Wagonlitz]

As seen in the stream the province of Lombardy is plains and nothing but plains.

 

[josh127]

So if there are problems should we simplify it, maybe lets do it like EU2, or even simpler: mine rol+general *modifier vs. your_roll+general *modifier?

That is completely wrong direction to go. Unless you want chess on map: my_strength*my_modifiers vs. your_strength*your modifiers and now we can perfectly plan campaign - this is absurd

- So you see problem with river crossing, fine - possible solution is simple: make river crossing a random chance - so arriving from different direction, with better general etc. I did not encounter river or was able to cross it before enemy arrived
- Another problem of siege terrain - make siege terrain constant - as you said cities do not move around. But keep province terrain somewhat random, because not all battles are fought axactly the same place - at the gates of main city.

For any problem you can find, I, or somebody else here at forum, can find relatively simple (in terms of mechanics and coding) and plausible solution, which will enhance gameplay or reduce jarring discrepancies/errors. The problem is that Paradox is not really interested in it and does not explain what and why they are doing so got what we have.


PS. and the issue is that general does not know when and where he will meet enemy - both sides are striving and maneuvering to get upper hand even BEFORE battle.

Your previous argument that I responded to was about realism. I do not feel that random terrain is in any way more realistic than one terrain per province. Based on what I'm reading, all the arguments against it you stated could be applied just as easily to a one terrain base. Your current arguments seem to be about adding meaningful complexity to the situation, something I agree with and I hope Paradox plans to build on it. We don't know if they plan to or not, because they haven't said. I would imagine if we had a thread where we discussed possible next steps of adding meaningful modifiers to combat they'd probably pay more attention than they will to a petition.

On rivers - A one pip terrain bonus is actually 4 or 6 pips. It is a fire/shock offensive/defensive pip, and it might be a morale damage pip on each side as well (I do not know). That is a significant difference, and I do not feel that making them random in any way makes the game deeper or more engaging. As a general if I see the other army digging in over a river I should have the choice of whether or not I want to attack or fight another day. With the cost being high enough for a river crossing to cost pips, rivers should also only be taken into account when you're crossing a major river. Attacking across the Rhine is not the same as attacking across some random river elsewhere.

On siege vs province terrain - Generals who are out maneuvering for position are doing just that. I don't find non-siege terrain to need to be all that random, but I do think it could be improved in another phase. Using the earlier Lombardia example. If you defend the province in the Alps, and I attack from the south, the province will fall. Short of having that option right now, with one terrain I can at least see you are hiding in the mountains and make the same decision of if I still want to make a suicide charge or not. That's a more realistic decision than hoping you catch them in the plains.

All your questions are good ones. But the solution isn't too simplify it even further. This causes more good questions such as 'How can defending plains lombardia against a swiss invasion provide absolutely no defensive bonus?'

I'd argue for other modifiers to deal with all these good questions, yes, but this will make it much more complicated than it is at present so surely those here arguing against this petition for reasons that the old one was too hard to understand wont be pleased either.

I mentioned Lombardia above and what I hope will be a next phase for situations like that. However, there is another side that's just about the current situation. If it's setup the way you have it listed in your example, at least now I know that Lombardia is plains, and I can decide that it's not a good place to setup my defensive stand against a superior force.

To take that one step further, I feel that the EU4 macro view of things fits well into this terrain change. Assuming they diversified terrain, you as a general know you can catch the enemy army in a mountain province, and you as a general can decide if you want to run foolishly in or let them escape to fight somewhere else. There's no assuming you'll get the 40% plains and getting surprised in the 30% mountains. Instead you can maneuver around and try to find a more appealing spot to fight. Meanwhile, the defender is probably doing the same. While the scale of this movement is geographically oversized, in my eyes it more accurately depicts the decisions a general will make since you generally don't hide a 60,000 man army from scouts.

Of course, that last point doesn't hold water if the terrain is setup only by province and not diversified to fit the region. To use an earlier example, if England is all plains it will totally ruin that decision making. I would hope it is more accurate and includes some plains, some forests, and some hills. We won't know if that's the case until release though.

 

[Morwys]

-1. I'm sorry, but I can't get behind this petition. As many others have stated, this change brings more strategy, planning and thinking into the game as less randomness - something that EUIV has too much already. This is not dumbing down the game, it's making it smarter.

 

[CPMuskovy]

-1. I'm sorry, but I can't get behind this petition. As many others have stated, this change brings more strategy, planning and thinking into the game as less randomness - something that EUIV has too much already. This is not dumbing down the game, it's making it smarter.

No no no, you don't understand.

Any form of removing features is dumbing the game down, no matter how stupid the feature was in the first place. If someone is camping in the mountains, you don't bait them out by sieging another province elsewhere, you willingly attack into the mountainous province in hopes that RNGesus will shine upon your RNG given 6 maneuver general and give you plains instead! That's the true strategy. How dare you support these casuals ruining the game by supporting such an archaic feature.


I'm sorry did I have my Support Rebels set to Reactionaries again? Better turn that off ASAP.

 

[Xinkc]

No no no, you don't understand.

Any form of removing features is dumbing the game down, no matter how stupid the feature was in the first place. If someone is camping in the mountains, you don't bait them out by sieging another province elsewhere, you willingly attack into the mountainous province in hopes that RNGesus will shine upon your RNG given 6 maneuver general and give you plains instead! That's the true strategy. How dare you support these casuals ruining the game by supporting such an archaic feature.

People honestly took a 6 maneuver general into mountains hoping for better terrain? I thought it was better to take your high fire and shock general to bust them out.

 

[Ralepozozaxe]

One of the new benefits to Maneuver is that if your maneuver is higher than your opponents then you don't suffer a river crossing penalty. Why make such a game breaking change? Why have rivers at all?

 

[zdlugasz]

One of the new benefits to Maneuver is that if your maneuver is higher than your opponents then you don't suffer a river crossing penalty. Why make such a game breaking change? Why have rivers at all?

:rofl: because it is new, which means it is better, it is Paradox

 

[TheMeInTeam]

One of the new benefits to Maneuver is that if your maneuver is higher than your opponents then you don't suffer a river crossing penalty. Why make such a game breaking change? Why have rivers at all?

Why have rivers at all is a valid question. It's not like we have gobs of written records of a majority of decisive battles being fought where a river factored in as a serious disadvantage to one side or the other.

Managing them will remain important, too, because while you might not get the defensive bonus, you can at least avoid the penalty.

 

[Ralepozozaxe]

I was being sarcastic by the way. I like the new one terrain per province system.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I was being sarcastic by the way. I like the new one terrain per province system.

I wasn't sure, but even so rivers are definitely a valid thing to question. People take them for granted now, but they effectively add more pips than you get from a new unit (though they're not as impactful as tactics)...effectively functioning in the same territory as a lucky general for the defender. That doesn't have historical basis, so the "why have rivers" must indeed be answered from a gameplay perspective, and it has, at least up through 1.7.3, been shaky on gameplay grounds.

 

[Morwys]

No no no, you don't understand.

Any form of removing features is dumbing the game down, no matter how stupid the feature was in the first place. If someone is camping in the mountains, you don't bait them out by sieging another province elsewhere, you willingly attack into the mountainous province in hopes that RNGesus will shine upon your RNG given 6 maneuver general and give you plains instead! That's the true strategy. How dare you support these casuals ruining the game by supporting such an archaic feature.


I'm sorry did I have my Support Rebels set to Reactionaries again? Better turn that off ASAP.

This is what I get for refusing to pick those useless Espionage ideas.

 

[Knut Skallagrim]

Watched the AOW stream. PU stay the same way they always stayed, just for christians. So they aren't changing the mechanic, the randomness and hidden factors stay.
They even added another random factor which is the papacy controller election, made out of percentages so the player will never be sure that he will have invested points for a true objective. I'm not against this mechanic at all because as i stated i DO NOT hate randomness, but do you guys see that the motivation behind adjusting the terrain is just false? There's no strict upgrade on randomness, they adding a bit more to suffice the terrain! But y you not raging? MASSES

I also don't really see the meaning of "nobody really understood how it worked", i mean, i always got the terrain i wanted, not the most rare ones (under 20% of chance the predictability starts to crumble), but when i had something like 30% i almost ALWAYS guessed right, having good or bad maneuver compared to the enemy, so i understood it. I cannot calculate it as you but humans don't need to calculate things to understand something (first example that comes to my mind is gravity, i mean there's no true law about it, still no engineer is arguing that is a mechanic that should be removed when they are working on a project, they just approximate it lol).
I think it gave a lot of possibilities than this system gives now, just because in spite of the opposition i think that a province with the % listed by Wiz is an unpredictable province, i.e. it would be hazardous to attack it, but 1. i still can attack it because i still can get a nice terrain given the fact that i've a nice general or just i'm being very lucky (i can imagine thousands of reasons IRL a general got a good terrain just because of being on the right position and timing and you also know some) 2. the same province can have different roles during different playthroughs 3. you can just label that province as not a good one to fight in (there were a ***tload of those IRL) and pass on if you don't want to take the risk (this word reminds me of another famous boardgame that is about war). 4. also keep in mind that realism means that you start a battle where you meet the enemy, not where u desire, and you can still choose the province (so the set and % of terrains derived from the area it covers and your army should cover), and your chances with those modifiers. This system just needed to be clear and not ripped off. I really cannot see why the majority prefers this simplified system to the old one without veils. I would accept the simplified one on my tablet when i'm in bathroom in the pauses i got from EU4 lol.

Also i don't really know how to address the excuse that it's difficult to calculate at speed 2 in MP... if you have those kind of difficultues just look at the terrain, look for the worst one, and play the game with this pessimistic attitude, you'll always get nice battles and never ever feel you're wrong and optimize your brain-cpu a lot and not lag (i.e...pause) during mp sessions.... (ok this was a joke but really? look at the %, if it's kinda predictable youi can take this choice in 1 second, if it's not then it's your risk, still better than a 100% desert mountain province IMO). Also i'm kinda broken with the fact that this game is getting simplified in these kind of things FOR multiplayer. And not even because this is a serious issue, just because people don't wanna pause!

 

[Redron]

Also i don't really know how to address the excuse that it's difficult to calculate at speed 2 in MP... if you have those kind of difficultues just look at the terrain, look for the worst one, and play the game with this pessimistic attitude, you'll always get nice battles and never ever feel you're wrong and optimize your brain-cpu a lot and not lag (i.e...pause) during mp sessions.... (ok this was a joke but really? look at the %, if it's kinda predictable youi can take this choice in 1 second, if it's not then it's your risk, still better than a 100% desert mountain province IMO). Also i'm kinda broken with the fact that this game is getting simplified in these kind of things FOR multiplayer. And not even because this is a serious issue, just because people don't wanna pause!

I like to think this issue isn't from MP. It's absurdly easy to look through your provinces and work out the best defensive ones the same way it is easy to have a look through areas you plan to invade in order to identify possible problem areas. Any MP player worth their salt will station their army in the best defensive province possible in peacetime. If you're fighting somewhere you haven't evaluated properly perhaps you deserve to be ambushed!

 

[Wagonlitz]

I really cannot see why the majority prefers this simplified system to the old one without veils.

We actually don't know if the majority prefers it since firstly only a small part of the players visit this forum and a smaller fraction has posted in this thread. Secondly we also don't know how many of those who posted in this thread oppose and how many are for the change, since the only count that has been made was flawed.

And look forward to Lombardy being nothing but plains whereas Treviso is nothing but mountains; that's right the Alps end just outside Venice and you need to cross them if you walk across the coast from Croatia to Italy.

 

[Knut Skallagrim]

@Wagonlitz
yeah and the sad fact is that this new system could have been modded (or at least experimented) easily into eu4 without having to change the main one; just match the terrain map with provinces shape, people have made overhaul mods since d1 changing this game from A to Z but nobody touched this thing at all, all of a sudden it becomes important and needed and most importantly there's no turn back

 

[MaXimillion]

People honestly took a 6 maneuver general into mountains hoping for better terrain? I thought it was better to take your high fire and shock general to bust them out.

Assuming the province was, say, 60% mountains 40% plains, sure.

 

[Pornek]

Wait for the expansion -> get the one major bug/balance issue -> nobody cares about terrain change.

 

[Freudia]

Assuming the province was, say, 60% mountains 40% plains, sure.

What province is 60% mountains 40% plains? Most provinces with that high of a mountain percentage have the second highest as either woods or hills, and those also confer penalties, to my knowledge.

Desert mountains is probably a different scenario, as those provinces only tend to have shared percentages with deserts.

 

[Baron Baron]

"I do not feel that random terrain is in any way more realistic than one terrain per province."

"As a general if I see the other army digging in over a river I should have the choice of whether or not I want to attack or fight another day."

"you as a general know you can catch the enemy army in a mountain province, and you as a general can decide if you want to run foolishly in or let them escape to fight somewhere else."

"On rivers - A one pip terrain bonus is actually 4 or 6 pips."

Firstly I need to learn to multiquote. But besides that a couple of points. Can everyone please stop saying its random. It isn't. You have likelihoods that in my experience tend to come through. My next point is crucial to explaining my first. Your not a general. In EU4 we are the rulers, if we could take on the more tactical part of the game perhaps that would be good but as Wiz said I think, We should think of the EU4 battles more as a representation for the local campaign and within it is multiple battles (phases). As a ruler you send your best general into the most favourable terrain at the most favourable time and cross your fingers. Coping with it if it all goes wrong is part of the fun/immersion.

Lastly, since only one pip is added to the shock or fire modifiers at a time I don't think you can expand and claim the -1 river crossing is as powerful as 4 or 6 pips. That's not good Maths.