While the Rivals mechanic does make the game more interesting, I do believe a couple of tweaks could make it much better:
1. Transparency
In a game where we have menus, spreadsheets, and mouse hovers to tell us the exact modifiers of just about anything we may want to know, the Rivals system lacks this entirely. Instead, we're simply greeted with a list of available countries, with no information to tell us why they are our suitable rivals, while other nations simply are not. Nation X may look like a suitable rival, but why isn't it? Is it just a bit too far away, or maybe just a bit too big or small? And how close are we to losing a rival - if France takes another province or two, will it likely be too big for us, or if we take a province from our rival, are we likely to surpass it and lose it as a rival?
Basically, we simply need such ways as mouse hovers to see this sort of info. Surely it's quantified just like every other bit of information in the game, so can we please have ways of accessing this information to better understand the system?
2. No possible or not enough rivals.
It's happened to all of us, we've been playing the power projection game, and, suddenly, we've become too big and we don't have enough valid countries to rival any more. Or, on other cases, there are nations (like Ming or Kongo) that start out too big or too far from neighbors to allow any rivals. Or, there are countries like Portugal where your choices are limited (Morocco - good, Tunis - good, Castile - no thanks, and... no other choices). Basically, it would definitely be an improvement, in my opinion, to always have at least 4 options available to rival, no matter how big or how isolated you are. If there are not enough valid choices, the next nearest ones should be default to being valid. Or, simply loosen up the requirements a bit so that in most cases there are enough valid rivals to go around.
1. Transparency
In a game where we have menus, spreadsheets, and mouse hovers to tell us the exact modifiers of just about anything we may want to know, the Rivals system lacks this entirely. Instead, we're simply greeted with a list of available countries, with no information to tell us why they are our suitable rivals, while other nations simply are not. Nation X may look like a suitable rival, but why isn't it? Is it just a bit too far away, or maybe just a bit too big or small? And how close are we to losing a rival - if France takes another province or two, will it likely be too big for us, or if we take a province from our rival, are we likely to surpass it and lose it as a rival?
Basically, we simply need such ways as mouse hovers to see this sort of info. Surely it's quantified just like every other bit of information in the game, so can we please have ways of accessing this information to better understand the system?
2. No possible or not enough rivals.
It's happened to all of us, we've been playing the power projection game, and, suddenly, we've become too big and we don't have enough valid countries to rival any more. Or, on other cases, there are nations (like Ming or Kongo) that start out too big or too far from neighbors to allow any rivals. Or, there are countries like Portugal where your choices are limited (Morocco - good, Tunis - good, Castile - no thanks, and... no other choices). Basically, it would definitely be an improvement, in my opinion, to always have at least 4 options available to rival, no matter how big or how isolated you are. If there are not enough valid choices, the next nearest ones should be default to being valid. Or, simply loosen up the requirements a bit so that in most cases there are enough valid rivals to go around.
Upvote
0