Questions from Playing the Demo

[Ashantai]

I finished playing the demo as Portugal, did some of the tutorials as well. I had some questions I hope others might be able to answer.

- Why do Republics only seem to get rulers which are 4/1/1 (or 1/4/1 or 1/1/4)? Aren't there any variations any longer with the candidates you elect?

- Why is it so easy to core and convert culture? Since for some reason Morocco counts as distant overseas I was able to conquer, core, convert to catholic and Portuguese culture Fez, Casablanca as well as my starting two provinces. Surely it's got to be harder than that?
-I got into a war with France as England's ally which lasted for over 10 years. The French would not accept any term I gave them even though I had a positive score against them. Finally, the war just ended...and I didn't get told what had happened? (I had unticked the 'allow alliance leader to negotiate for me' box too.)

Thanks

 

[BoleslavLev]

You can only get those combinations you listed. So you get bad ruler every time. The good thing is you never get terrible ruler (but not great too) and you can re-elect your ruler and make him better (also, you´ll get some points). So it is to make management with republican tradition harder.

 

[Cymsdale]

- Why do Republics only seem to get rulers which are 4/1/1 (or 1/4/1 or 1/1/4)? Aren't there any variations any longer with the candidates you elect?

Republic candidates used to have weighted random stats, but somewhere along the way the devs decided that robot republic rulers was more fun.

 

[Ashantai]

But do they improve if reelected?

 

[unperson]

But do they improve if reelected?

Re-election gives +1 to all stats, but will decrease your republic tradition by 20%.

 

[BoleslavLev]

Yes, as I said. They get +1 to everything for every re-election. But once they die, you have to start over.

EDIT: It decrease tradition only by 10%.

 

[unmerged(88716)]

- Why do Republics only seem to get rulers which are 4/1/1 (or 1/4/1 or 1/1/4)? Aren't there any variations any longer with the candidates you elect?

Yes, that's bullshit. One would expect the candidates to be more capable for leading the country. I heard they get more points when reelected, but it reduces republican tradition. Still, 1/1/4 is a poor candidate.

 

[BoleslavLev]

Agreed. I think they made republics good and then decided they are too good, so they nerfed them. And this is why I´ll play as Novgorod, Muhahahahaha!! (Yes, I know I´ve already said that somewhere else, but still - Muahahahaha. )

 

[Hystarea]

It's always possible for the second one that they decreased the time to core and convert cultures for the Demo, so people could play around with it.

 

[Ashantai]

I hope so Mitchmon.

One wonders why Venice has elections every 4 years anyway...they elected their rulers for life. 4 year terms was something that always puzzled me about EU3's republics, as that only became a thing much later on. I don't know about Novgorod and whether they did, but most Republics seemed to be voted in for life.

May have to mod this.

 

[BoleslavLev]

I hope if there is a government in which you vote for the whole life, it has a) random candidates or b) fixed ones, but with better stats (5/2/2 maybe?)

EDIT: Don´t know about Novgorod, but they have a NI which gives you extra 1% of republican tradition every year.

 

[Ashantai]

One other question: How do I get more advisors? I seem stuck with only 3 candidates, and none of them especially useful for their non-monarch point bonuses.

It seems a lot like EU3 before DW where you would randomly get certain advisors to select, but it's even worse this time. Is there any way of moving these people on or do you have to wait for them to die?

 

[Cyphran]

If you click the red boot button in the upper right you can dismiss them. Also, you can add more than four through the ideas system. Both of the Economic and Administrative packages have ideas that add a slot.

 

[wolfing]

actually Republic leaders are probably better for some people. Instead of hoping for a random ruler or heir with good stats, that may or may not be the stats you want, for Republics you decide what you get. Yes, it starts low, but every re-election they get +1/+1/+1, so in theory after 2 re-elections they are 6/3/3 (think 6 is max for each stat?). This also means that Republic systems with faster re-elections are actually better IMHO.

As for the peace with France, two things may have happened. One (what happened to me) is that I didn't notice the 'offer' tab so I was clicking 'concede defeat' meaning I was demanding it, instead of offering it. Once I realized that, I clicked on the other tab and now they accepted it. Another thing that could happen is that, even if your score is positive, maybe they're still in good shape (when you check the war window, it tells you how willing they are to continue fighting, because of war exhaustion or whatever).

As for the war ending, England signed the peace treaty, since they're leader that means it ends for you too. Unchecking that checkbox only means that when they decide to end the war, your provinces are out of the equation (this should be off by default, not sure who would want this on, except maybe in multiplayer games)

 

[spinoza013]

-I got into a war with France as England's ally which lasted for over 10 years. The French would not accept any term I gave them even though I had a positive score against them. Finally, the war just ended...and I didn't get told what had happened? (I had unticked the 'allow alliance leader to negotiate for me' box too.)

Yep I thought this odd too. I just tried to White Peace after 9 years hanging about ( to hell with actually fighting the French) I did blockade them. Surely any sane country would white peace an enemies Ally? France didn't hold any of my territory.

I'm putting everything down to it being a Demo for now. It's a good glimpse of the game but I'm not going to stress too much just now.

 

[Ashantai]

It was very odd, I chose the offer tribute tab, but white peace or concede defeat was always far below what they wanted from me. I get that the French wanted Calais, but why bother with me?

As it turned out they landed a 20,000 man army in Portugal but I was able to defeat them and wipe them out. Even then they refused any peace offer from me.

Hopefully the real thing is a bit better tweaked.

 

[Rubidium]

I hope so Mitchmon.

One wonders why Venice has elections every 4 years anyway...they elected their rulers for life. 4 year terms was something that always puzzled me about EU3's republics, as that only became a thing much later on. I don't know about Novgorod and whether they did, but most Republics seemed to be voted in for life.

May have to mod this.

Republics varied in structure a lot. Florence probably had the strangest system; elections were by lot from all "eligible" citizens for terms that only lasted a few months for all offices. The goal was to prevent elected leaders from building a powerbase and becoming tyrants. In practice it meant that the elected leaders became placeholders who never had time to do anything, and the real power went to families like the de Medicis, who were filthy rich and could work the system (e.g. by screening the list of "eligible" citizens to eliminate any that might be hostile to Medici interests).

They probably just didn't want to have to come up with a zillion different government types for all the Republics. Besides, from a gameplay perspective it works better to be able to choose and then have to debate on reelecting people or not.

 

[Ashantai]

I agree it's necessary to give Republics a base from which to compete with monarchies, but with the Republics in 1444 it doesn't fit as well as later ones.

 

[unperson]

Republics varied in structure a lot. Florence probably had the strangest system;

Not that strange, its actually trying to copy the original Athenian democracy.

Interesting read about the system here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition