Please don't tune down Condi renting for VH in 1.19

[Vishaing]

Wait a minute. Are you telling me that the AI's willingness to hire out Condottieri to counter their rivals is being lessened because it made wars "Too Unpredictable"? Like sure, make them follow the same force-limit rules. Personally I upped my Condottieri limits to ~60K instead of 20 because 20 is worthless against anyone larger than a fruit fly. But to hear that this makes wars "Too Unpredictable"...

Isn't that what we WANT? Y'know, for Wars to be Dramatic things, with back and forth, with reversals of fortunes and dramatic upsets where we can Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory? With Excitement and Tension? With Risks and Rewards, some of them unforeseen to keep us constantly on our toes?

With, Dare I say it.... FUN?

 

[Frogbait]

I partially agree. What I'd be interested to see is how much renting out condotierri hurts the AI.

Think of it this way: how frequently do you, as the player, rent out condotierri, and when you do so what is the reason? Compare that to AI frequency and the utility it gets when it does it.

Rather than wanting more condotierri, if it's challenge you want you might instead prefer alternative behaviors from the AI on VH that improve its position more than renting condotierri.

You could instead make every AI no-CB the player inside a month on VH and refuse to ally the player. You'd lose every time. That's "hard", but it's not optimal behavior for most TAGs on the map if they're trying to each maximize own position by 1821. Most general arguments for condotierri risk making the AI do something that harms it compared to alternative options.

In most cases it should probably be using those troops to expand. Situations where you can immediately declare on a condotierri nation you wiped are an excellent example. If they're going to risk their entire army, they should be looking to pull clay for themselves and to do it on another 100% war score potential.



I don't think this is a fair comparison. Aside from the bug introduced where AI can break the size rules, condotierri hasn't been in a broken-by-design beta state for > year :/. You don't lose your army to nothing like the move lock = fort bug, and in contrast to forts the rules governing condotierri are pretty clear. Whether or not one likes the concept, there are *objective* problems with forts as implemented. That isn't true for condotierri.

The renting out the full army imo is where the issue lies for the fringe cases. To my knowledge, the AI usually doesn't rent them out for free unless it's against a rival. And really you wiping their condi army out and war deccing for occupation isn't the most common thing in the world. It also makes sense from an AI perspective to rent the condi out rather than war dec. They get money/PP/other benefits while essentially using an indirect coalition against a common enemy without risking war itself.

@Chaingun made a good explaination about their new budgeting and army levels compared to forcelimit. As for condottieri on VH, it was not my decision but rather a genuine design decision, based of what I understand on wars being too hard and (especially) unpredictable.

Thank you for the feedback Gnivom. @DDRJake VH is called VH for a reason! Condi renting makes things more difficult and adds to the challenge. Bbq made a nice list for why the AI rents condi and you yourself even know the reasons why the condi were rented out. My assumption is Jake's call on this rather than Johan due to Jake's streamed annoyance with VH condi from time to time.

(Unlike the fort cheat) I for one think it is silly to see "regular" armies being rented out as condotieri (in History they were mercenaries) but being rented out for 0 ducats makes it even worse since that is plain fantasy and EU IV is already full of fantasy. With that said I would not care one bit if the AI could rent the entire world´s armies as long as it pays for them (...)
If you want to make the AI more competitive at higher difficulty levels give it even higher force limit, manpower, more money, etc. etc. since IMHO that is the lesser of two evils wrt plausibility.

VH AI bonuses (thanks @atwix for the screenshot)

AI gets the increased military benefits you listed and as far as more money, they get that indirectly from the other benefits. As mentioned above, to my knowledge the AI just rents out free condi if it's against a rival. That's more for a power play than it is for money and it's reflected since I believe they get PP for renting out condi against a rival. If the AI is renting them out free of charge to whoever, then yeah, that needs to be addressed.

To resolve fringe cases of AI renting out entire army resulting in their immediate destruction by you or their neighbors, I'm split between putting a hard limit on the AI renting out condi or not since from an economical perspective it's beneficial so long as they charge for it.

 

[lecobra92]

@Gnivom It's not too hard. So long as condotierri stack sizes are fixed and renting their army out doesn't leave the AI exposed when it should know better (surrounded by aggressive ruler personality ai rivals who haven't gone to war in a while without a powerful diplomatic network of their own for example) nothing else should be changed.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

The renting out the full army imo is where the issue lies for the fringe cases. To my knowledge, the AI usually doesn't rent them out for free unless it's against a rival. And really you wiping their condi army out and war deccing for occupation isn't the most common thing in the world. It also makes sense from an AI perspective to rent the condi out rather than war dec. They get money/PP/other benefits while essentially using an indirect coalition against a common enemy without risking war itself.

Thank you for the feedback Gnivom. @DDRJake VH is called VH for a reason! Condi renting makes things more difficult and adds to the challenge. Bbq made a nice list for why the AI rents condi and you yourself even know the reasons why the condi were rented out. My assumption is Jake's call on this rather than Johan due to Jake's streamed annoyance with VH condi from time to time.


VH AI bonuses (thanks @atwix for the screenshot)

AI gets the increased military benefits you listed and as far as more money, they get that indirectly from the other benefits. As mentioned above, to my knowledge the AI just rents out free condi if it's against a rival. That's more for a power play than it is for money and it's reflected since I believe they get PP for renting out condi against a rival. If the AI is renting them out free of charge to whoever, then yeah, that needs to be addressed.

To resolve fringe cases of AI renting out entire army resulting in their immediate destruction by you or their neighbors, I'm split between putting a hard limit on the AI renting out condi or not since from an economical perspective it's beneficial so long as they charge for it.

Thanks for the screenshot but I know what are the AI benefits on VH, what I am saying is give it even more but whatever you do stop the 0 ducats condotiery silliness. Like I´ve said above give the AI even more of everything; for example at VH in HOI III the AI has up to 100% more of everything while the player receives nerfs of up to 50% in many things (including a 40% penalty to combat efficiency).

 

[Frogbait]

Thanks for the screenshot but I know what are the AI benefits on VH, what I am saying is give it even more but whatever you do stop the 0 ducats condotiery silliness. Like I´ve said above give the AI even more of everything; for example at VH in HOI III the AI has up to 100% more of everything while the player receives nerfs of up to 50% in many things (including a 40% penalty to combat efficiency).

Ah, that makes sense. I thought you were saying to give it those bonuses rather than add more to them and I was a bit surprised considering I assumed you knew the VH bonuses.

Thanks for the clarification Marco!

 

[alexti]

I partially agree. What I'd be interested to see is how much renting out condotierri hurts the AI.

Think of it this way: how frequently do you, as the player, rent out condotierri, and when you do so what is the reason? Compare that to AI frequency and the utility it gets when it does it.

It's hard to make meaningful comparison here. You are not allowed to rent out condottieri while at war and how often the player is not at war? So players don't rent out condottieri for a rather artificial reason.

@Chaingun made a good explaination about their new budgeting and army levels compared to forcelimit. As for condottieri on VH, it was not my decision but rather a genuine design decision, based of what I understand on wars being too hard and (especially) unpredictable.

I would think that wars being hard on VH is a good thing. I disagree with them being unpredictable - usually it's fairly clear who is going to rent condottieri to your enemy and an occasional surprise make things interesting

(Unlike the fort cheat) I for one think it is silly to see "regular" armies being rented out as condotieri (in History they were mercenaries) but being rented out for 0 ducats makes it even worse since that is plain fantasy and EU IV is already full of fantasy. With that said I would not care one bit if the AI could rent the entire world´s armies as long as it pays for them (...)
If you want to make the AI more competitive at higher difficulty levels give it even higher force limit, manpower, more money, etc. etc. since IMHO that is the lesser of two evils wrt plausibility.

I don't think plausibility is a good argument here. Giving more bonuses to AI will make the game more of a grind, while condottieri system creates more interesting game play with additional strategic options and decisions. I think they just need to improve AI co-ordination, so that condotierri co-operate with the allied forces better. In the current state they are underwhelming largely because each group of condotierri operates independently.

 

[Fanstar1]

As long as france doesn't give their whole army for free, then I'm fine with it

 

[alexti]

As long as france doesn't give their whole army for free, then I'm fine with it

I am not sure if it's any better than France intervening on the opposite side

 

[Fanstar1]

especially on the side of the ottoblob

I am not sure if it's any better than France intervening on the opposite side

 

[bbqftw]

Here is a nice situation, taken from a 1.18 VH Theodoro campaign, about why condotierri are cool things.

Pretty standard war here - Ottomans declare on QQ allied to Genoa, and call in their ally France. In a world with normal condotierri rules, nothing special happens here - France smashes Genoa in short order, annul treaties is forced, and that is that.

Genoa with its full coffers sends out the bat signal - the Serbians are bribed to open up an additional front against the hated Turk, and Provence and Castile seize upon this opportunity to undermine the French position. Now France, having answered a rather simple call to arms to smash a puny Italian state finds itself entangled in a far more difficult situation.

Does this increase or decrease the difficulty of my position? Hard to say - but what it does do is make the game feel more alive, and that's one of the neat things about the condotierri mechanic.

 

[alexti]

Does this increase or decrease the difficulty of my position? Hard to say - but what it does do is make the game feel more alive, and that's one of the neat things about the condotierri mechanic.

I would say decrease. After they've sufficiently bludgeoned each other and peaced out there will be more volunteers to answer your vassalization calls and land demands. I like this dynamics though and would prefer to see difficulty raised by other means

 

[Golradaer]

Just adding another +1 toward keeping the system as it is. "Unpredictability"? That is exactly what allows for true difficulty. If you're playing on Very Hard you should understand all of the games systems by now, so anything that shakes things up is most welcome.

If it's not broken, don't fix it.

 

[net.split]

Here is a nice situation, taken from a 1.18 VH Theodoro campaign, about why condotierri are cool things.

This is indeed a cool thing. But doesn't it actually make the game easier? Because the AI doesn't just work to block player blobs, it's also working (as in this case) to block other AI blobs. Which means that once the player does break away, the player breaks farther away.

I don't have MN, so I don't know if this is true or not from any actual experience. It's just the first thing I wondered upon seeing this story.

 

[Frogbait]

This is indeed a cool thing. But doesn't it actually make the game easier? Because the AI doesn't just work to block player blobs, it's also working (as in this case) to block other AI blobs. Which means that once the player does break away, the player breaks farther away.

I don't have MN, so I don't know if this is true or not from any actual experience. It's just the first thing I wondered upon seeing this story.

The AI blobs pretty hard on VH. Blobbing on VH is more for the purposes of outblobbing the AI for survival. There are cases where to makes it easier for the player, but those same systems work against the player so they end up facing more difficulty as a result most of the time. Like if you're managing your AE by expanding towards different fronts so you have a lot of people who dislike you across the world then you'll have a world that will send condi if the nation you're attacking is rich enough. Venice, Genoa, and Luebeck due to their money are able to pack a punch well above their size as a result.

VH condi makes the game more difficult for the most part but more importantly, it makes the game more fun. Initially it was a reason why I was reluctant to play on VH (as well as thinking it was increased player AE since previous hard difficult did have it in) but after trying it out it's one of the most fun features of VH imo.

 

[alexti]

Just adding another +1 toward keeping the system as it is. "Unpredictability"? That is exactly what allows for true difficulty. If you're playing on Very Hard you should understand all of the games systems by now, so anything that shakes things up is most welcome.

If it's not broken, don't fix it.

I don't think there is an agreement whether it makes it harder or easier. It is quite difficult to evaluate. I wouldn't be against the change if it would make things more challenging, but I suspect that the currently proposed change might actually make it easier

 

[bbqftw]

I don't think there is an agreement whether it makes it harder or easier. It is quite difficult to evaluate. I wouldn't be against the change if it would make things more challenging, but I suspect that the currently proposed change might actually make it easier

Changing the condotierri rules almost certainly makes any start in the Ottoman neighborhood harder - Venice in particular is quite apt to rent the Hungarian, Austrian, and Italian minor armies with its fat stacks of cash once it comes under attack, and Austria will almost always contribute a stack in support of Hungary (in, for example Serbia + Hungary guarantee war). So it does tend to slow down big AI blobs which happen to be hated or feared by a lot of people (like Ottomans). And since Ottomans happen to be the centralizing enemy in practically all of Eastern Europe, that does tend to make things easier for the player.

On the other hand, it sounds like something that could plausibly happen in ~actual history~ so I don't mind it too much.

 

[highsis]

@Chaingun made a good explaination about their new budgeting and army levels compared to forcelimit. As for condottieri on VH, it was not my decision but rather a genuine design decision, based of what I understand on wars being too hard and (especially) unpredictable.

And why is that even remotely a bad thing?

Wars are supposed to be hard and unpredictable in hard and very hard, and in real life as well.

Who did even complain about wars being too hard or unpredictable? Those people shouldn't be playing on hard or very hard.

Look around screenshot posts and an any noob who plays EU4 for the first time often ends up with a gigantic empire spanning multiple continents if they didn't post 'help me' thread due to not grasping the mechanics of the game. The game is already insanely easy on normal difficulty, and some of us play hard or very hard to avoid that. I'm tired of fighting wars that I started with 100% chance to win. The game's hard/very hard difficulty shouldn't be catered to people who want an easier difficulty.

Unpredictable and hard; that's exactly what fighting human opponents in MP entails; if an AI gives a player (who seeks the challenge) similar challenges, that's a good thing.

Please revert this change!


ps. In my recent game this 1.18 condottieri allowed AI Albania to deflect AI Ottoman's invasion. Albania called Hungary in, and Austria lent 20 regiments to Hungary, and Albania survived in the end. This makes the game so much more fun and unpredictable for both AIs and human. That's really a good thing!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The renting out the full army imo is where the issue lies for the fringe cases. To my knowledge, the AI usually doesn't rent them out for free unless it's against a rival. And really you wiping their condi army out and war deccing for occupation isn't the most common thing in the world. It also makes sense from an AI perspective to rent the condi out rather than war dec. They get money/PP/other benefits while essentially using an indirect coalition against a common enemy without risking war itself.

Little ventured, far less gained.

How often do you rent out condotierri for free right now, and in what circumstances do you do so? This is an important question and I'm not going to let it go so easily .

If you are not willing to rent out condotierri for free, presumably you have better alternative uses for those units, and petitioning for the AI to do something you know is suboptimal intentionally is probably not the best course.

It's hard to make meaningful comparison here. You are not allowed to rent out condottieri while at war and how often the player is not at war? So players don't rent out condottieri for a rather artificial reason.

Playing the game is an artificial reason ?

Maybe the AI could do more wars if it doesn't hand its units to other nations for free? Surely you're not suggesting that this case of perma-war is just players role playing and that it's actually optimal to rent condotierri ?

 

[Frogbait]

Little ventured, far less gained.

How often do you rent out condotierri for free right now, and in what circumstances do you do so? This is an important question and I'm not going to let it go so easily .

If you are not willing to rent out condotierri for free, presumably you have better alternative uses for those units, and petitioning for the AI to do something you know is suboptimal intentionally is probably not the best course.



Playing the game is an artificial reason ?

Maybe the AI could do more wars if it doesn't hand its units to other nations for free? Surely you're not suggesting that this case of perma-war is just players role playing and that it's actually optimal to rent condotierri ?

Condi renting doesn't need to be the optimal decision for the AI. I already said I don't think it should rent its armies out for free. I'm ok with it keeping the free to fight against rivals since in a lot of cases it's the AI using its troops to prevent its rivals from eating a smaller nation and gaining an edge over them. Rivals don't necessarily share borders. An example of this would be Austria lending a free 20k stack to the Albanians to curb Ottoman expansion. Austrian AI would have no way to CB the Ottomans so it instead sends troops to Albania to stop the Ottoman expansion. Is it the most optimal thing to do? No.

Condi renting making the game harder is debatable. You can make cases for both sides. What it adds is a lot of flavor and fun to VH and arguably makes it more difficult. I think in most cases, it makes the standard way of expansion more difficult causing you to adapt to new strategies since Condi renting does pose an actual threat to your expansion plans and on VH even OPMs can afford and have a ~10k stack let alone major powers where an extra 20k is more or less a drop in the bucket for them. VH games have shown time and again that the AI still blobs pretty hard while still renting condi out.

Do I think the Condi AI is perfect? No. Is that the topic of this thread? No. The topic of this thread is that VH should not have condi rules tuned down to Normal level. There is a huge difference between tweaking the VH condi AI so that the cases where it ends up making certain situations easier on VH and trashing the VH condi AI to go to normal difficulty levels.

For the first time in a long time PDX has actually given us a feature that adds a lot of fun to the game while arguably adding more challenge. From a big picture perspective think of it this way - this is essentially the opposite of corruption design wise. This is literally a mechanic that as it stands you can opt into/out of via not playing on VH or disabling MN. It doesn't attempt to force you to play a certain way due to bad-wrong fun. It adds complexity to the game while also being a very dynamic feature. This kind of design direction should be encouraged.

Tangent (somewhat):
I could also just be bitter about how this game keeps getting easier and easier. Since I perceive this as making a difficulty designed to be more challenging getting tuned down to be easier it's a reason why I want to defend keeping it in place. I'm bitter about how much of a joke WC and especially TTM are to complete on normal difficult due to making the early game relatively meaningless and the late game constantly being buffed to try to encourage people to play till the end rather than making the game more interesting / meaningful in the early and mid game phases. To me, VH is basically a bone thrown to the people who want a challenge to the game and not just face roll one-tag anything. In my opinion, Condi renting is a great way of making the game more dynamic, fun, and interesting the way it is on VH. I mean, granted the fact that Gnivom literally said that from the design perspective this is getting tuned down due to making VH more difficult really rubbed me the wrong way. I'm not usually someone who does the whole "back in my day" approach. Just to me it seems that they're making eu4 more marketable by essentially dumbing it down and VH is the safe haven for those who don't want it dumbed down.

 

[bbqftw]

Little ventured, far less gained.

How often do you rent out condotierri for free right now, and in what circumstances do you do so? This is an important question and I'm not going to let it go so easily .

If you are not willing to rent out condotierri for free, presumably you have better alternative uses for those units, and petitioning for the AI to do something you know is suboptimal intentionally is probably not the best course.



Playing the game is an artificial reason ?

Maybe the AI could do more wars if it doesn't hand its units to other nations for free? Surely you're not suggesting that this case of perma-war is just players role playing and that it's actually optimal to rent condotierri ?

Well, there's primarily two reasons for player condotierri use (in my opinion):

1) screwing up a nation so they won't accept a call to arms from a country I intend on attacking (capital sieging is absolutely brutal for CTA acceptance)
2) making a quick buck (where you either rent to countries you think are going to peace out quickly, or you roleplay the AI and siege some useless fort in the middle of nowhere while being paid handsomely for it)

For 1 I'd consider doing it for free if I absolutely needed to break a certain alliance chain. Though generally you'd get paid at least something (even below maintenance cost) for your efforts.