Please dont nerf corruption, Add the option to turn it off

[Frogbait]

No, 100% OE is supposed to be that : you are stretched to your limit, you are not supposed to go further. I never tought of going above that number, and I think the fact it is a percentage and has all those nasty modifiers attached to it shows that, even if you are able to temporarily go above that, you shouldn't. It's like FL.

However, and I am not sure if it already does that, OE should scale better with the size of your empire, so that eating a few provinces shouldn't put you at 100% OE as a big empire, but should totally do it if you are a medium power eating a third of a country of your size. To summarize, I think that the effect of corruption on OE is fine, but OE itself should be nerfed so that 100% is close to doubling your size.

That way, you would have a snowballing effect which can be stopped since you would experience a period of vulnerability if you go too far too fast with your expansion.

I would rather not slow down OPM expansion. Slow =\= challenge remember

 

[Korashy]

paradox literally teaching people how to cheat on taxes

Lot's of Paradox financial make no sense. Take loans. You increase inflation by having outside cash infused into the system. However once you remove that cash again 5 years later (including interest) you somehow still have inflation.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

No, 100% OE is supposed to be that : you are stretched to your limit, you are not supposed to go further. I never tought of going above that number, and I think the fact it is a percentage and has all those nasty modifiers attached to it shows that, even if you are able to temporarily go above that, you shouldn't. It's like FL.

However, and I am not sure if it already does that, OE should scale better with the size of your empire, so that eating a few provinces shouldn't put you at 100% OE as a big empire, but should totally do it if you are a medium power eating a third of a country of your size. To summarize, I think that the effect of corruption on OE is fine, but OE itself should be nerfed so that 100% is close to doubling your size.

That way, you would have a snowballing effect which can be stopped since you would experience a period of vulnerability if you go too far too fast with your expansion.

I was not saying that one should always go above 100% OE, I was only saying that it was possible and that it would yield higher corruption. Very different things.

While I do agree that the OE scaling with the size of the nation makes sense from a RL perspective it would trivialize it making the game too easy. With that said nothing is stopping PDS from scaling the OE corruption values with the size of the country but I guess that is exactly the opposite effect that they wanted to achieve with the mechanic (I suppose).

 

[Arizal]

I would rather not slow down OPM expansion. Slow =\= challenge remember

Well, let's say a country would incur 100% OE by doubling its development, whatever its development may be. At 10 development, you would need that to have 100% OE, Then after 3 years, you would need 20 development to have 100% OE. Then 40, then 80, then 160. It would be exponential, instead of fixed.

Currently, if the wiki is to be trusted, 24 development means 24 overextension. That means that once you hit 100 development, you would see the benefits of this change. And assuming you are expanding by 100% OE each time, it would only take around 5 conquest sprees to obtain that. At the same time, it would prevent a OPM to become a monster in a few years.

It would also show more accurately that a big country has more resources to put to integrate new territories. At 200 Development, you would be at 50% OE instead of 100% by eating 100 development, which would reduce the corruption modifier by 0.25/year.

Sure, you would snowball, but I didn't consider the RU modifier, nor the current tech imbalance one. I think PI could look into this dynamic OE direction to try to balance things. It doesn't need to be as clear as "doubling your territory", which may be a little too much, but you see the idea.

 

[bbqftw]

Then you play Manipur, annex any of your richer neighbors and instantly die to a 69k overextension buffed rebel stack.

 

[Korashy]

Well, let's say a country would incur 100% OE by doubling its development, whatever its development may be. At 10 development, you would need that to have 100% OE, Then after 3 years, you would need 20 development to have 100% OE. Then 40, then 80, then 160. It would be exponential, instead of fixed.

Currently, if the wiki is to be trusted, 24 development means 24 overextension. That means that once you hit 100 development, you would see the benefits of this change. And assuming you are expanding by 100% OE each time, it would only take around 5 conquest sprees to obtain that. At the same time, it would prevent a OPM to become a monster in a few years.

It would also show more accurately that a big country has more resources to put to integrate new territories. At 200 Development, you would be at 50% OE instead of 100% by eating 100 development, which would reduce the corruption modifier by 0.25/year.

Sure, you would snowball, but I didn't consider the RU modifier, nor the current tech imbalance one. I think PI could look into this dynamic OE direction to try to balance things. It doesn't need to be as clear as "doubling your territory", which may be a little too much, but you see the idea.

paradox entire philosophy has been stopping the snowball for the last year and a half, because people whine about blobbing being to easy, playing france and console cheating.

 

[Arizal]

I was not saying that one should always go above 100% OE, I was only saying that it was possible and that it would yield higher corruption. Very different things.

While I do agree that the OE scaling with the size of the nation makes sense from a RL perspective it would trivialize it making the game too easy. With that said nothing is stopping PDS from scaling the OE corruption values with the size of the country but I guess that is exactly the opposite effect that they wanted to achieve with the mechanic (I suppose).

True, my suggestion actually helps to blob (passed a certain threshold), but lets look at the mechanic : "over"-extension. Is adding a mere 10th of our country size (at 1000 dev) the same as doubling its size (at 100 dev)? I think at 1000 dev, you might have to worry about religious unity, if you didn't care about the inner working of your country, while it is far easier to have a culturally and religiously uniform country at 100 dev.

To me, OE is meant for small countries. It shouldn't be a one size fits all malus.

 

[Florryworry__]

Lot's of Paradox financial make no sense. Take loans. You increase inflation by having outside cash infused into the system. However once you remove that cash again 5 years later (including interest) you somehow still have inflation.

Thats because you dont lend money from a central bank that prints it. Your lending money from rich people in your state that do nothing with it and then immediatly start using it. Then you pay the money back giving it back to those people. So your not deleting the money out of the system.
But come on this game lost all of its realism with corruption lets not kid ourselves. In what alternate universe does a state ever even consider spending 50% or more of its royal treasury on combating corruption after it annexed land. I mean come on, gameplay wise it might be an extra challenge but any hint of realism just flew out window yesterday.
Can you imagine this happening like: "my liege the income report is here! 525 florins on taxes 327 from tarrifs and 213 from our monopolized industries shall I inform the local garrison they'll be receiving their pay? perhaps the commision of a new vessel?"

"NONSENSE WINSTON we'll be spending all 1060 florins on combating corrupt officials!"

"me.. my.. my lord? all of it?"

"why but ofcourse we recently conquered the crimea which was filled with muslims whilst the vast majority of our land was already orthodox furthermore our nonexistent navy is far out of date especially when compaired to our glorious artillery our state will collapse unless we spend exactly all of our money on battling corruption."

A year passes and great economic growth ensues.

"Winston issue all the money to be spent on corruption again?"

"But my liege we havent expanded how is it we consistently spend more and more money on corruption even though we still have the same amount of officials?"

"more money means more theyll be more likely to be bribed err or something GET TO IT."

 

[vipic]

Look to bring this thread back around to its intended purpose with a new proposition,

We are not going to completely be able to "Fix" corruption. As you can see by this thread there are widely varying ideas with regards to whats wrong with it. Some hate the tech imbalance corruption, some like all the aspects but the religious unity corruption, some hate corruption in all regards, some think corruption is fine but it needs to apply different penalties.

Solution:

Make a tiered approach to the corruption mechanic. On easy corruption is only gained through overextending and has less in the way of penalties. On normal corruption comes about from religious unity and tech imbalance, but to a lesser extent, so you can still be pretty imbalanced on tech and only have minor corruption you're dealing with. On hard corruption remains as is.

As was said in my first post I like corruption. It does not make you expand slowly, it just makes you force more of your expansion into vassals and only taking territories instead of full blown states to cut the cost of coring in half while you recover admin power. You also are forced to fall behind in mil tech a bit if your expanding rapidly so you take on less corruption. It can be dealt with and does not equal slow expansion, it just means you have to be more careful about rapid expansion and fall behind in mil tech for a bit.

 

[vipic]

People seem to have this idea that because you have to be first rate mil tech you cant expand until your admin catches up. This is the whole confusion I think here, if your expanding rapidly you need to let your mil tech fall behind a level or 2, this gives you 4 levels of admin you can potentially work with, now if your willing to sacrifice some of your income on a bit of corruption you can grab another 3 or 4 levels of admin behind. Your looking at about 8 levels of admin behind the times now, thats ALOT. Your not going to need to slow your expansion very much.

Combine that with annexing vassels just as before and your looking at about the same deal as you originally had, just that now you have to balance the corruption out.

As Ive said its tradeoffs. You dont have to do these things, but if you dont your going to have a smaller income with which to work with as your dealing with corruption penalties.

Edit: Keep in mind in addition territory can be effectivly 50% cheaper now too if you dont make it a state, so that also improving your expansion.

 

[bbqftw]

While I do agree it is actually possible to tank military tech if your diplomatic situation allows (I once formed Germany without teching mil, ever), it really is not that viable if you want to actually contribute in wars.

And there's not much to do in this game besides war, to be honest. Well, that and speed 5 which apparently I should get used to.

 

[magicbush]

I don't understand the point of Corruption at all. If you don't keep it down, you lose money due to the penalties. However, keeping it down costs money. Either way, it's just picking your pocket.

This is my opinion as well, and I think I will just keep playing in 1.15 until corruption is disabled or fixed. It's a pointless mechanic and I already have troubles with making money in the game(granted I am a new player on my 4th game or so).

 

[grommile]

People seem to have this idea that because you have to be first rate mil tech you cant expand until your admin catches up. This is the whole confusion I think here, if your expanding rapidly you need to let your mil tech fall behind a level or 2, this gives you 4 levels of admin you can potentially work with,

What am I supposed to do with those MIL points, given that I don't have CS? Throw them on the bonfire spamming generals I don't need?

 

[rodrigovc]

Its never been the projectlead that did the design or overall balance of the game. Thats always been on my shoulders. Wiz did do a fair amount of the design for Cossacks & Mare Nostrum though, after starting with designwork on El Dorado.


For Mare Nostrum

I am responsible for Condottieri, Unconditional Surrender, Map Share/Steal, Automatic Repairs, Slave Raids, Mercantilism Promotion, Sailors, Naval Combat.

Wiz designed Naval Missions, States&Territories.

Espionage Rework was collaborative by me and Wiz.

Trade Leagues, Corruption was based primarily on community and beta suggestions.

Timeline was Chainguns design.

Trin Tragula did the map and content design.


Tweaks and balance are discussed with most of the team, and Wiz still joins us at weekly design meetings.


However, for Europa Univeralis.. at the end of the line, I am the one to be blamed or praised for design decisions, because I have the final say.

Johan I am kind of new to this forum, but I have played this game a lot in the past year. One thing I didn't like about corruption is that rooting it out is tied to your nation income. That encourages people to manage it and your income. For example you could let some corruption goes (something less than 10 or a little a above it) and then scorch all your land and change your merchants to the wrong place so you have less income and set the slider to a 100%. You get all the corruption away from your savings for less total money, you just need to manage your economy and save some money. I imagine this could be done pretty easy if you have access to high value trade nodes. I also thing that rooting it out is too expensive (as is fort maintenance).

I am not sure of better of doing it, but there a number of ways of getting corruption and currently only one way of getting rid of it (paying it). Maybe you could have others ways of dealing with corruption that doesn't involve paying for it.

 

[vipic]

What am I supposed to do with those MIL points, given that I don't have CS? Throw them on the bonfire spamming generals I don't need?

Whatever you want to do with them, you just need to fall behind in tech, just don't spend them if you want, I assume you run into this problem anyway as you almost always have excess mil points later even with maxed mil tech.

 

[romothecus]

What am I supposed to do with those MIL points, given that I don't have CS? Throw them on the bonfire spamming generals I don't need?

I guess you could lower autonomy everywhere and use Harsh Treatment... permanent War Taxes... uhh... yeah, I'm reaching here.

 

[grommile]

Whatever you want to do with them, you just need to fall behind in tech, just don't spend them if you want, I assume you run into this problem anyway as you almost always have excess mil points later even with maxed mil tech.

In 1.1 through 1.15, if I have sufficient excess MIL points, I can buy MIL tech ahead of time without any penalty other than it costing more.

In 1.16, if I do that in RotW, I shaft either my economy or my ability to do anything with ADM or DIP power.

 

[Drusain]

I guess you could lower autonomy everywhere and use Harsh Treatment... permanent War Taxes... uhh... yeah, I'm reaching here.

I think what the intention was was to have people spend monarch points into development rather than war.

Clearly a much more entertaining way to play the game.

 

[grommile]

I think what the intention was was to have people spend monarch points into development rather than war.

Hey, if I had CS, I would be quite happy to do that.

I don't, because CS is the joint least-desirable gameplay DLC alongside MN, and I resent Paradox throwing stumbling-blocks in my way for not buying it.

 

[vipic]

In 1.1 through 1.15, if I have sufficient excess MIL points, I can buy MIL tech ahead of time without any penalty other than it costing more.

In 1.16, if I do that in RotW, I shaft either my economy or my ability to do anything with ADM or DIP power.

Once again its back to the issue of trade-offs. You are going to have to fall back on something, you dont have to burn your military tech, but that will mean a smaller economy while you deal with corruption, or less expansion while you catch up on admin tech, or less diplo annexing, or you burn your mil power, or you dont make territories states. You have alot of options here.

Its not like its one penalty type you pick, but thats the whole point of making things more difficult. The best way to make things more difficult is when you have to make trade-offs like that.