I just finished a Venice game over the weekend, where I conquered thru the Middle East and Egypt, and then colonised into the Spice Islands. It was interesting and fun, but I had a few questions...
#1. Around 1760 or so, I noticed my trade income plummeting. To my dismay, after investigating the issue, I saw Naples had around 120 ships patrolling the Venice node, which meant all that trade I was sending its way was being leeched.
Naturally this meant war, so I amalgamated all my Mediterranean fleets, positioned them off Sicily and waited for the Neapolitan fleet to share my sea zone, and declared (after fabricating a claim on Abruzzi). The naval battle was finished almost instantly, because their naval morale was clearly inhibited by them not having their navy funded at 100%, which must mean they don't suffer attrition when doing so, which seems really cheezy. I rather wondered how their 8 province kingdom could afford to build and maintain that many ships - now I know.
Not sure what can be done about this, since I assume the AI doesn't understand attrition and thus doesn't suffer it, but it seems a huge advantage to them - maybe they shouldn't be allowed to keep their naval slider at anything less than 100%, as essentially it gives them a massive money advantage, since I was spending around 80 ducats a month at the time funding my 350 ships.
#2. Also in the naval sphere, there should really be some losses to the winning side in all but the most one-sided battles. Half of my fleet was probably captured ships from the Ottomans and Omanis, because when you win, you never lose a ship and often gain some. It seems odd to complain about a mechanic that so obviously favours the player, but it makes the optimal strategy during war to have one fleet with all your warships roam around and annihilate the smaller fleets of your opponents, after which you will actually be stronger than when you started, and this is both ahistorical and rather boring. I'd much rather have many more smaller engagements.
What I'd like to see is relative numbers not matter as much for damage, and for really large fleets to suffer some kind of movement malus so you can't catch anyone unless they want to be caught (as in - they also have a big enough fleet that they WANT to do battle). Maybe a 5% speed reduction for every 10 ships over 50 in a fleet, bottoming out at 65% or something, and simulating how hard it is to keep such huge numbers of ships together and all going the same direction. Further, one ship shouldn't be able to enforce a blockade or block movement of armies - make it 10-12 ships minimum, and get the AI to cluster up its ships so the naval war isn't a monotonous record of one big fleet wiping out dozens of tiny fleets and never suffering a single ship sunk.
#3. I stayed Catholic, after learning in my last Venice game that converting to Reformed just embroils you in continual wars back home in Europe, and the sheer number of religion flipping events all the way thru the game is extremely annoying. Orthodox, Reformed, Protestant - as long as it wasn't Catholic, my people wanted to try it out. If I hadn't had 3 missionaries (Religious NI, conquered Jerusalem) I would have definitely fallen behind the heretics, and I often had all three working away reconverting back;and this is with conversions taking 12-16 months, so I'd guess I was having these events 1-2 times a year.
Didn't this use to stop happening around the mid-1600s? I swear, if I see "The Pope is outraged!" one more time, I'm going to snap.
#4. What is up with the Papal State? One of the things I did with Naples was take the mission to free Roma and reestablish the pope in his ecclesiastical crib, so I took that as a side benefit of showing them just who was the pre-eminent trade power. A few years later, and I get a pop-up - "The Papal State would like to sell you the province Roma - 100 gold".
WTF? First of all, i have *never* been offered a province for sale before, and while it was certainly a welcome surprise, 100 gold seems like a steep discount, even if I originally gave it away for free. Second, why would the Pope ever do this? Surely he should move his capital there right after reclaiming it, no matter where his current capital was.
#5. Speaking of moving capitals, exactly HOW do you do this? I've always wondered, since it doesn't seem obvious (unless I'm an idiot, which is always a possibility), and I looked seemingly everywhere this game, and came up with nothing. (I wanted to move to Constantinople as a purely RP thing near the end of the game). How, dammit?
#6. How do you get rid of those "National Decline" events? I have dozens of provinces "overseas" (although that's another annoyance, as provinces in the Near East and Africa are classified as overseas despite being right next to provinces in Turkey that aren't, but whatever) and somehow my people are depressed because I'm not participating in these amazing colonial opportunities? I've got colonies in freaking Java, you idiots! Take a ship there if you're bored!
#1. Around 1760 or so, I noticed my trade income plummeting. To my dismay, after investigating the issue, I saw Naples had around 120 ships patrolling the Venice node, which meant all that trade I was sending its way was being leeched.
Naturally this meant war, so I amalgamated all my Mediterranean fleets, positioned them off Sicily and waited for the Neapolitan fleet to share my sea zone, and declared (after fabricating a claim on Abruzzi). The naval battle was finished almost instantly, because their naval morale was clearly inhibited by them not having their navy funded at 100%, which must mean they don't suffer attrition when doing so, which seems really cheezy. I rather wondered how their 8 province kingdom could afford to build and maintain that many ships - now I know.
Not sure what can be done about this, since I assume the AI doesn't understand attrition and thus doesn't suffer it, but it seems a huge advantage to them - maybe they shouldn't be allowed to keep their naval slider at anything less than 100%, as essentially it gives them a massive money advantage, since I was spending around 80 ducats a month at the time funding my 350 ships.
#2. Also in the naval sphere, there should really be some losses to the winning side in all but the most one-sided battles. Half of my fleet was probably captured ships from the Ottomans and Omanis, because when you win, you never lose a ship and often gain some. It seems odd to complain about a mechanic that so obviously favours the player, but it makes the optimal strategy during war to have one fleet with all your warships roam around and annihilate the smaller fleets of your opponents, after which you will actually be stronger than when you started, and this is both ahistorical and rather boring. I'd much rather have many more smaller engagements.
What I'd like to see is relative numbers not matter as much for damage, and for really large fleets to suffer some kind of movement malus so you can't catch anyone unless they want to be caught (as in - they also have a big enough fleet that they WANT to do battle). Maybe a 5% speed reduction for every 10 ships over 50 in a fleet, bottoming out at 65% or something, and simulating how hard it is to keep such huge numbers of ships together and all going the same direction. Further, one ship shouldn't be able to enforce a blockade or block movement of armies - make it 10-12 ships minimum, and get the AI to cluster up its ships so the naval war isn't a monotonous record of one big fleet wiping out dozens of tiny fleets and never suffering a single ship sunk.
#3. I stayed Catholic, after learning in my last Venice game that converting to Reformed just embroils you in continual wars back home in Europe, and the sheer number of religion flipping events all the way thru the game is extremely annoying. Orthodox, Reformed, Protestant - as long as it wasn't Catholic, my people wanted to try it out. If I hadn't had 3 missionaries (Religious NI, conquered Jerusalem) I would have definitely fallen behind the heretics, and I often had all three working away reconverting back;and this is with conversions taking 12-16 months, so I'd guess I was having these events 1-2 times a year.
Didn't this use to stop happening around the mid-1600s? I swear, if I see "The Pope is outraged!" one more time, I'm going to snap.
#4. What is up with the Papal State? One of the things I did with Naples was take the mission to free Roma and reestablish the pope in his ecclesiastical crib, so I took that as a side benefit of showing them just who was the pre-eminent trade power. A few years later, and I get a pop-up - "The Papal State would like to sell you the province Roma - 100 gold".
WTF? First of all, i have *never* been offered a province for sale before, and while it was certainly a welcome surprise, 100 gold seems like a steep discount, even if I originally gave it away for free. Second, why would the Pope ever do this? Surely he should move his capital there right after reclaiming it, no matter where his current capital was.
#5. Speaking of moving capitals, exactly HOW do you do this? I've always wondered, since it doesn't seem obvious (unless I'm an idiot, which is always a possibility), and I looked seemingly everywhere this game, and came up with nothing. (I wanted to move to Constantinople as a purely RP thing near the end of the game). How, dammit?
#6. How do you get rid of those "National Decline" events? I have dozens of provinces "overseas" (although that's another annoyance, as provinces in the Near East and Africa are classified as overseas despite being right next to provinces in Turkey that aren't, but whatever) and somehow my people are depressed because I'm not participating in these amazing colonial opportunities? I've got colonies in freaking Java, you idiots! Take a ship there if you're bored!
