Realistically is this justifiable
- Thread starter Mattzey
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You said the game is mainly about conquering, which is not true. If you play a game mainly about conquering, then that is just your preference. This is a sandbox game.
Balance requires all options to be equally viable. Until this patch, going tall and having a small but well developed nation was far weaker than just conquering, it wasn't viable. Buildings weren't even worth building compared to just conquest.
That was not balance.
What we have NOW is balance, it is (almost) as effective to not conquer a single territory as it is to blob to your hearts content.
And you can still blob if you want, it will just cost you in tech and ideas to do so, a fair tradeoff. I am sure there will be world conquest attempts soon, but don't expect to conquer the entire world and still be ahead of time in tech and ideas any more. No one is stopping you, it is just slower (accurately so in my opinion).
The front post has all of 76 Agrees and 53 Disagrees, so about 130 players have read the front page, that somehow entitles you to speak for the half a million people who play this game? Even if somehow your posts were even the same point at the OP or getting hundreds of "agrees" (which they are not, you have like 1) you would not be able to claim to even 1% of people, let alone "most".
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That's an interesting definition of "almost", given that building a point of development costs 50 monarch power (plus a scaling cost based on the number of points you've already built in that province), while conquering a point of development costs 10 (and the other costs of war do not add up to anything like 40 monarch power per point of development conquered).
We're going to lower the cost of diplo-annexation a bit because the (reasonable) point was raised that it's easier to bring down ADM costs than DIP costs. It'll be 8 per development.
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Im not just talking about Development to be fair, diplo annexing, trade, colonising and Development all make it feasible to actually do. Plus, I find coalitions much more dangerous now because smaller AI powers tend to have larger armies, I had a swarm of small HRE states take down Castile, Aragon, Austria, Hungary, Britain (me) and a large Brittany (allied) in a war when I decided to test the AE level. Combined, I think they make more peaceful gameplay more possible.
Though I do feel a sort of Hybrid mix of conquest and building up works most effectively.
But all of that is only going with speed5 and can be done while conquering, I know Clicker Heroes can be addicting, but I wish EU4 didn't go that route. War feels like the only real content that isn't just clicking a button, but every patch conquering is made less and less desirable.
I'm sorry that you find it offensive, but it also happens to be true. The higher you raise the cost to take land, the less the AI is able to expand to be a threat. For instance say I'm the OE with admin ideas (-58% off the top). If an average province costs 50 adm to core, then I pay 21 to the AI's 50, net I come out 29 points ahead per province. Now let's double the costs - 100 to 48, now I come out 58 points ahead. Each province at higher coring costs then gives me a larger and larger paper lead. This allows you to simply outgrow the AI in the long haul. If you are content to go slow, never front a two front war, and hover down with a low OE, low LA, empire you just outgrow the AI with no threat ever materializing. Worse, given that you are facing multiple AIs, as they have fewer and fewer resources to put into growth you outgrow not just one threat, but all of them.
The truth is, the AI is always less threatening the less risk you face. Sure you make it harder it to paint the map, but when you get to the paint the map state the only risk is if you are expanding rapidly on multiple fronts. Slowing down conquest once you can beat France + HRE doesn't really make the game harder it just makes it tedious. Sure making it cost a fortune to expand makes it hard to get into the big leagues, but once you get there the AIs are weaker and less able to present any sort of danger.
Bullocks, I'm being forced to play with a gimped AI. I don't want an AI Austria unable to efficiently integrate Bohemia and reduce its WE. I want an Austria that doesn't get flattened if it gets burned in a long Ottoman war. I want a Denmark that doesn't spend a century with an outdated navy because it integrates Norway. I want a Russia that will press west and not die to massive stab/OE issues because it has a crap monarch and huge coring costs when the Troubles hit.
High expansion costs nerf the AI. The vast majority of AI costs in the game are not spent against the player, they are spent against other AIs. Raising the cost for Russia to eat Lithuania or for France to expand into Italy makes the AI majors weaker and easier to crush.
I get it, this is good for you. You care more about the AI hitting historical end game borders. The fact that the forces arrayed against you are weaker, well that's not an issue for you. For me though, I want the AI to be challenging - it should be threatening throughout the game. Not something where I can win campaigns by giving away territory with aristo + diplomatic defense (+national ideas maybe).
Oh get off it. I've played every damn style that exists. The problem is that ALL of them become more boring when all I'm doing is waiting for a timer to tick over. If I want to win to be elected HRE as a OPM, been there, done that. Making it more costly for Austria to eat Bohemia makes it fiendishly easier. If I want to convert Rome to Tengri, making the states that would take issue expand more slowly makes it much more likely that the pope will have only small allies and even if he does snag two majors, they will be far easier to beat back because they expand so slowly.
The problem is that expansion now has an incredibly high opportunity cost on multiple fronts, all of which can only be mitigated by waiting now. Does integration cost too much? Wiz seems to think at least diplo-annexation does. Does it take up too much diplomat time? Well Austria looking at 4 decades of dead diplomat to integrate Bohemia really does a number on its ability to retain the HRE.
Is it the AI? Well, duh. How does the AI play? Like a map painter. The most threatening AIs don't sit on their asses and stockpile high development provinces that you can then take for fun and profit. If you nerf "map painting" by FAR the biggest impact will be on the AI. Small AIs are weak AIs (and always will be with the current relation mechanics). Whatever effect raising expenses has on the human, the net effect on all the competing great powers will be two or three times higher (as there are normally 8 or 9 AIs that worry you and maybe 2 you can fully suborn to your "side").
If you want to make the AI more challenging, then you need the game setup to be something where the AI doesn't burn copious amounts of irreplaceable resources for minimal gains. Raising the costs is the wrong direction on this.
And for the record, I've already one-tagged and converted the entire world. I don't need to do that again (though there are other challenges that might be fun). I want the focus to be on challenging the player through national conflict - that results in increased strategic depth. Waiting on a timer just adds tedium at the price of nerfing the collective AIs.
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You're absolutely right, but there's no point even trying to argue logically to the Paradox Defense Squad, who's sole purpose is to flood then forums every patch with zealous support for any change whatsoever and immediately shut down any dissent by calling the dissenters "whiners, bad-blobbers, and dumb map painters" and telling them to "GTFO, go play Total War, go play COD, etc." whilst giving skewed, selective, confirmation-bias-enforcing historical examples as a justification (they'd probably praise the game still even if every 5 minutes it paused and featured Johan and Wiz performing Mick Jagger's "Dancing in the Street" because in real history, rulers had to take time to host/attend musical concerts/theatrical performances)
There's so much straw in that man, he should be careful about running around with this sun - he might catch fire!
I've criticized and I still do criticize Paradox for "horrible choices"; it just happens that, when I did, you were on the other side, telling all was good and I should bugger off.
Disclaimer: "you" is not actually you. But it is undeniable that there are two positions, in these forums; and insulting the other side when they get what they want is childish and immature. You don't like THIS patch? Deal with it. I've dealt with the ten before this one.
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