Protestantism spawn too early ; Reform era is too long

[Blust]

Hi, I think there is an issue with how fast the protestantism spawns. In almost every game, the era of discovery ends before the colonialism even starts (in 1500 at best), which make the first era max 60 years long and the reform era often the double. In the end, the first era only benefit Portugal and Ottomans, which are already great at doing what they do best : expanding without a care in the world.

So I do think the speed of the protestantism apparition should be slowed.

 

[AxeBeard]

Ages are intended to give you a carrot to chase in nice 100 year arcade experiences, if you don't want historical events to be bound within these neat arbitrary packages I suggest you mod the game .

 

[lilunxm12]

It's because PDX keeps adding tags and each active catholic tag will receive reform desire events.

 

[Sidolowka]

I've had the Age of Discovery end before Colonialism even fired in 1504(1505?) (Castille was busy getting crushed by France after taking local noble so only Portugal was elligible).

It's starting to get to a ridiculous point. The entire point of the Age of Discovery, at least for Europeans, is to discover things and colonise them. The name of the age doesn't even make sense if it's going to barely last 50 years and end before Colonialism is even a thing.

 

[Josar]

The Protestant reformation started around 1517, two year before the conquest of the Aztec empire. At the time American colonialzation was mainly relegated to the Caribbean islands.

It is very historical that the reformation should start around the same time as early colonialzation. The real issue is why is the printing press institution 50 years after the reformation.

 

[Blust]

Ages are intended to give you a carrot to chase in nice 100 year arcade experiences, if you don't want historical events to be bound within these neat arbitrary packages I suggest you mod the game .

My point is that the first age doesn't last 100 years while the second can last twice as much as the other ages, making "chasing the carrot" for the second age too easy while chasing the ones for the first age too short. As said before, unless you're playing the Papal State and are working to prevent the reformation, protestantism will start before the colonialism institution.

 

[lambda x.x]

The Protestant reformation started around 1517, two year before the conquest of the Aztec empire. At the time American colonialzation was mainly relegated to the Caribbean islands.

It is very historical that the reformation should start around the same time as early colonialzation. The real issue is why is the printing press institution 50 years after the reformation.

Keep in mind by game terms, this means that the age of reformation starts at 1527, which would be pretty reasonable actually. I'll also mention that seeing reformation in 1480s (so AoR in 1490s) is common now -- 40-50 years to play with an age does feel unsatisfying.

 

[Blk82]

The issue is probably more Catholic nations, which means more decisions that increase reform desire. Up until 1.26, this really wasn't a problem, as the AI could counter-convert. Up, since conversions were nerfed, this creates the absurdity of the Reformation firing 30 years early, and nearly all of Catholic Europe except Iberia, the Papal states, and maybe the British Isles and Scandinavia converting to Protestantism.

 

[grommile]

The real issue is why is the printing press institution 50 years after the reformatio

because it's actually the Printing Revolution but Paradox refused to countenance renaming it.

 

[petertju]

I tried to get an fastest colonization game going as England the other day. I only had the range to colonize in America around 1499, this gave me only about 2-3 years of enjoying the age target of bonus dev in colonies and the age objective of discovering America.

On the other hand, The second Age is absurdly easy to get all the benefits over the time period, even if you have only fuflfiled 2 or 3 age objectives. So I agree, it should start later. Maybe after the Protestantism Entrenched event? Or the Council of Trent? I do like that there is a certain and easy to follow date on which the shift happens.

 

[agonistes]

I tried to get an fastest colonization game going as England the other day. I only had the range to colonize in America around 1499, this gave me only about 2-3 years of enjoying the age target of bonus dev in colonies and the age objective of discovering America.

On the other hand, The second Age is absurdly easy to get all the benefits over the time period, even if you have only fuflfiled 2 or 3 age objectives. So I agree, it should start later. Maybe after the Protestantism Entrenched event? Or the Council of Trent? I do like that there is a certain and easy to follow date on which the shift happens.

Well, you didn’t try very hard to colonize. Did you buy a charter from Morocco? Traditionally you take a province from Portugal then Morocco. Now you can even buy a charter from Morocco very early. You can grant independence before 1500.

 

[holyvigil]

I think the problem may be the notion that the ages should last the same amount of time. When they really last around 20 years up or down when the Reformation actually started.

I can see the argument that the age of reformation should start a little later than the first conversions to protestantism.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Age of Discovery has always been the shortest age (having around only 56 years). This has been true since Mandate of Heaven implemented them.

Yes it doesn't make much sense for Reformation to start at 1500+- but it is important that it be one of the bigger Ages because it changes in Europe quite a lot with the spawn of the reformation and there are a bunch of MTTH religion events that can fire either too early or too late depending on when the Reformation starts.

Personally, my main gripe is with how long it takes foe the revolution to fire when the Age of Rev starts.

 

[zbyrne]

The Protestant reformation started around 1517, two year before the conquest of the Aztec empire. At the time American colonialzation was mainly relegated to the Caribbean islands.

It is very historical that the reformation should start around the same time as early colonialzation. The real issue is why is the printing press institution 50 years after the reformation.

True, although I'd point out that picking the conquest of the Aztec Empire feels arbitrary - there had been many significant dates well before that relevant to the Age of Exploration (a few below for example):

1. I won't list them all here, but between the establishment of the first feitoria (trade post) in 1445 on the island of Arguin and the Battle of Guinea in 1478 which solidifeid their control over West Africa (from a trade perspective), the Portuguese were heavily active in West Africa
2. Voyage of Columbus 1492
3. Signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494
4. Vasco da Gama's voyage to India - 1497
5. Spain had established colonies in Cuba by 1493
6. The Portuguese claimed Brazil in 1500
7. Puerto Rico was conquered by Spain in 1508
8. The first settlement on the "mainland" was established in / around Costa Rica in 1510
9. By 1510 the Portuguese had captured Goa
10. By 1511 the Portuguese had sailed to Malacca
11. By 1514 the Portuguese had sailed to China
12. By 1515, the Spanish controlled what is modern day Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and Colombia
13. Magellan's voyage left Spain in 1519 - it would circumnavigate the world for the first time

so a fair bit of exploring and colonising had been done before Martin Luther nailed his thesis to the door. Also, and purely from a gameplay point of view, given the Age of Discovery gives certain bonuses, often related to exploration, and many of the above are not possible due to mechanics of the game within the timeframe (despite happening in real life), Protestantism triggering in 1470 and ending those bonuses is a bit pointless

 

[schaedel]

As important as Age of Reformation is, I have to agree it feels a tad bit long (or, rather Age of Discovery too short). The only 2 realistic ways out of that I see are: 1: A complete rework/re-balancing of Catholic reform-desire, to slow down the actual Event of Reformation, but I don't think that will be possible in the remaining life-cycle of EUIV. So 2) Just put a "fixed" date (of course with some certain variables that make it +-5 years, so 10 years altogether) as the beginning of the Age of Reformation. I'm eyeing the council of Trent. Historically, it started at 1543, compared to Luther's theses in 1517. In the game Reformation hits usually around 1500, so more or less 17 years "too early", which would put the beginning of Trent at 1525 (or, in game-Terms, 1520-1530) sounds quite good for me

 

[Blust]

The easier fix as a way to balance the number of catholic tags would be to tweak a bit the numbers from events. Instead of having events that give +1% or 0.5% reform desire, make it +0.6% and 0.2% (or some better numbers, it's an example). It's probably lot of works to rework the catholic system (which haven't been really done for 1.30) but changing numbers should be fine, and ensure the age of discovery doesn't last a mere 40 years.

 

[Jomini]

The problem with adding new tags and more dev to some region with each expansion is that it appears that a lot of fundamental game values do not get rebalanced in the process. Not only does the Reformation come sooner, but the odds of it coming in some minor HRE state are higher. This makes the game more historical, but comes at the price of interesting variations (e.g. France goes Protestant, the HRE stays Catholic, and Scandinavia goes Reformed). We can do ad hoc rebalancing, but this seems to create all manner of problems where the game becomes unbalanced without certain DLC and it is crapshoot if the devs do the manual updating of the values.

It is likely too late for EUIV, but it would be nice to have some of these finicky balance things have global counters (e.g. Reform desire hits are proportional to the number of countries with access to the mechanics, coring cost/dev is proportional to the total starting dev in the world).

The other thing is that it would be nice is if there was more the player could do to limit Reform Desire other than play as the Pope. Rulers regularly meddled in church affairs in this period and had great sway over religious practice. Sometimes this went all the way out to things like the Prague Compacta or the House of Commons refusing to enforce anti-heresy bills against Wycliffe. Any number of times the actions that diminished the desire of the people to cast off the Catholic church were helpful and popular with the local secular rulers (e.g. opposition to Papal annates resulted in lots of funds staying in country or even going to the secular purse). There should be more events where the quick profit that the AI loves should annoy the Pope and some other Catholic rulers, but slow the Reformation. Frankly most of these events right now are just brain-dead strategic "choices", get a healthy benefit now or bail the ocean with a thimble.

Moreover it would be quite common for rulers to have a say in the religious policies of their vassals and even allies. It would also make sense for the player to be able to force religious concessions on the Pope via warfare or papal control.

 

[kgmi]

I kid you not, when I was doing Marie de Lotharingie achievement, reformation spawned in 1480!!

 

[kgmi]

I've had the Age of Discovery end before Colonialism even fired in 1504(1505?) (Castille was busy getting crushed by France after taking local noble so only Portugal was elligible).

It's starting to get to a ridiculous point. The entire point of the Age of Discovery, at least for Europeans, is to discover things and colonise them. The name of the age doesn't even make sense if it's going to barely last 50 years and end before Colonialism is even a thing.

The worst part is, the Age bonuses for Discovery are so much better than the garbage reformation age one's for most tags

 

[Heaven Canceler]

Honestly, the Reformation as a whole feels fishy. It is not only something that pops up quite a bit early, but also tends to spread like crazy pretty fast and thus in turn leads to a rather early Protestant League war compared to real life history..

The historical 30 years war was from 1618 to 1648, but I generally see it happening it anywhere from 1550 to 1580-ish. Not just that, the counter-Reformation as a whole is kinda pathetic, actually resisting and reversing the reformation is basically something that doesn't happen normally without player intervention. Unless dumb luck/misfortune leads to the reformation centres being in say, the British Isles as a whole.. I generally see most of Europe under Reformation in short order...

For example, I am currently doing a Palatinate run, normal and everything. Allied Austria, gathered land etc.. mostly ignored the entire religious conflict since I thought it wouldn't matter since it's Austria's problem and I would just convert to whatever is most succesful down the line if necessary. Then suddenly I become emperor in around 1560 to 70-ish and check, yeah Austria is under PU with Spain so I am suddenly emperor and have no clue what to do. I have never been emperor before and given I was so late in the game I had no idea what to do or whether I should even try to "fix" the HRE or just abuse my position to get more land safely.... and then like a month later or so the League starts popping up and filling with members...

Only a year or so later later and the league war starts and I suddenly have to fight half of Europe.. fortunately I have Spain and Poland and England on my side, so they help me a good deal etc.... I win the war and get religious Supremacy...

Then a few years later I drop it because I am getting gangbanged on all sides by the damned Centres of Reformation. Two are in one nation, so forcing Religion only got rid of that one. One is allied to blobby Burgundy and I couldn't fight it evenly without help from my allies who are all in debt. One is my PU Ingoldstadt who I cannot make get rid of it.. I try to resist for a while but am unable to do anything as my provinces get converted faster than I can even convert them back.. not to mention as time goes back the remaining provinces have zeal so I cannot touch them... then I get excommunicated due to some random event and say screw it and convert to Protestantism...

You would think that decisively crushing the Protestant League would actually damage the faith's ability to spread all over the damn place. But nope, just a few years after the war the Emperor Palatin, 4th Great power with PU over Ingoldstadt, Landshut and Bohemia drops his crown and the Empire crowns Cyprus as the next Emperor. (They are currently beating up the Mamluks for land.) Wonder how that would be explained in the history books...

Right now, huge chunks of Europe are Reformed or Protestant even though the Reformation experienced a crashing defeat in teh HRE war... image link here.

Moreover it would be quite common for rulers to have a say in the religious policies of their vassals and even allies. It would also make sense for the player to be able to force religious concessions on the Pope via warfare or papal control.

Historically, a lot of nations didn't convert because the population enforced it. If I remember right, Sweden's leadership converted and it got enforced on the people.. I think there should be a influence of alliance and rivalry. The Emperor's allies should have higher resistance to Reformation, or at least a better ability to fight it back than say the allies of the first nations who swap to protestant/reformed...