Probability in EU4

[sepoquro]

It always seemed quite odd to me how the probabilities in this game are calculated. It seems like if you go at slower speeds things are more likely to happen than at full speed. Also, when you load up a save many things are recalculated and much more likely to happen. For example, after loading, wars that have gone on for decades often end within the month, monarchs die, rivals are switched, etc.

I am just curious what people think about this and how the probabilities are implemented in the game code.

 

[Anonomoosle]

I don't have a clue how it works, but i definatly agree with rivals switching in a reload

 

[grommile]

The AI always executes a full diplomatic checkup shortly after a reload. This is why reloading causes wars to end, treaties to get made and dissolved, unlawful territory demands to get sent, and rivalries to change.

 

[Chaingun]

From how code works; game speed does not matter to game logic (it can however interface weirdly with rendering). There's no game logic code that runs less frequently at high speed, because having code like that opens a can of worms w.r.t. to reproducibility. As an example, it would be a bad idea to have QA's overnight handsoff test games behave differently from their games played live.

Reloading will by necessity cause a lot of things to re-initialize based on other things, rather than load from the save file since save would be too large otherwise. However, this is also preferable many times as sometimes allows players to e.g. force wake up AI if it's stuck in something. It's also pretty complicated with the kind of engine/tech built on to ensure 100% equivalent serialization in the first place, so if e.g. a programmer forgot to serialize a game state variable (there are hundreds of thousands of them) it will be default initialized on reload, assuming initialization wasn't forgotten as well.

 

[zeredek]

(it can however do interface weirdly with rendering).

Any chance the movement progress arrow will ever be changed to how it is in CK2? The interpolation animation always messes up on higher speeds, so you can't really tell your progress sometimes