Suggestion: Power Points Exchange

[Dr. Dan]

Many players have an issue with being unable to specialize in both tech and ideas of a certain area (military or diplomacy, especially). A simple solution to this issue would be to have an exchange rate to trade one time of points for another (10%-25% of the points being traded, for example).

Ie, 100 diplo points traded would yield 75 military points at a 25% exchange rate. This rate could be determined by admin. tech level, perhaps.

This would solve the issue of specialization. It could create some really interesting specialized nations - completely backwards in certain respects.

Thoughts?

Edit:

You could not become ridiculously ahead in military tech because of the "ahead" (+10% cost/year) penalty of getting tech before its time. Furthermore, you do need to core your conquests eventually, so dumping all your admin points into military wouldn't be an efficient method of conquest. You're sacrificing other tech/ideas for the cost of another group of ideas/tech, which is what we want by specialization. Good at one thing, not so much at others.

 

[lemonsquid]

if people only focused on military tech, they would just end up steam rolling everyone else who either isint doing the same, or is continuing as is now

gotta keep dat balance

 

[Dr. Dan]

if people only focused on military tech, they would just end up steam rolling everyone else who either isint doing the same, or is continuing as is now

gotta keep dat balance

Except there is an ahead penalty. You couldn't get further than one tech ahead. Ideas would need some balancing with this, however. Perhaps an "ahead" penalty for ideas as well.

 

[Haresus]

I fear that this would create situations when a player in danger would just suddenly convert all his AMP and DMP to get more Military Monarch Points, which he would then use to tech himself up and crush all his invaders.

 

[Dr. Dan]

I fear that this would create situations when a player in danger would just suddenly convert all his AMP and DMP to get more Military Monarch Points, which he would then use to tech himself up and crush all his invaders.

That would take quite the reserve of points. Tell me how this would actually work? If you're doing a balanced nation strat as a western nation, you shouldn't be far behind in military tech (and again, don't forget the +10%/year cost for purchasing tech ahead of time).

 

[maxirage]

I like the suggestion in another to thread, to implement a EU3-style slider. Every 10 years you would get a move and can specialize your nation into one of the three categories, or leave it alone and get an even split.

 

[Haresus]

That would take quite the reserve of points. Tell me how this would actually work? If you're doing a balanced nation strat as a western nation, you shouldn't be far behind in military tech (and again, don't forget the +10%/year cost for purchasing tech ahead of time).

You are playing as Russia, and you decide to play conservative and keep a stash of monarch points (I did this in the demo as the Ottomans, I only spent monarch points when I had a very good modifier or I reached the MP limit), but then suddenly someone declares war upon you. Someone western with great tech. Maybe Napoleon. You tech up your military, convert more points to the military (Let us say you have 1k AMPs/DMPs total, and you get 750 MMPs) and get an extra tech level or two in military.

 

[Dr. Dan]

You are playing as Russia, and you decide to play conservative and keep a stash of monarch points (I did this in the demo as the Ottomans, I only spent monarch points when I had a very good modifier or I reached the MP limit), but then suddenly someone declares war upon you. Someone western with great tech. Maybe Napoleon. You tech up your military, convert more points to the military (Let us say you have 1k AMPs/DMPs total, and you get 750 MMPs) and get an extra tech level or two in military.

Playing as Russia, you ought to be caught up on mil tech. So you're probably losing points on both the exchange and purchasing tech ahead (which you may not even be able to do with 750 pts, depending on how far ahead the level is of its time)! If you're behind on mil tech, you'd only catch up with a great sacrifice, which is appropriate.

Either way, you're not become a God at war instantly; and you're sacrificing much of the other parts of your nation.

 

[Haresus]

Playing as Russia, you ought to be caught up on mil tech. So you're probably losing points on both the exchange and purchasing tech ahead (which you may not even be able to do with 750 pts, depending on how far ahead the level is of its time)! If you're behind on mil tech, you'd only catch up with a great sacrifice, which is appropriate.

Either way, you're not become a God at war instantly; and you're sacrificing much of the other parts of your nation.

It still feels wrong that a nation cursed with a worthless military ruler with great administrative/diplomatic skill would be able to suddenly turn around and use those completely different skill to improve his army, or vice versa. If I want to focus on one thing, I will pay for the advisor and slowly gain more monarch points that way. Directly buffing your military with diplomacy would make gameplay sense for a nation such as Russia, but make for some horrible gameplay. You won't have much of a navy, and trade is not that interesting, so why not spend it all on building an overly strong army that should never have existed normally?

 

[Crymson]

This sounds like the testimony of crazy old Dr. Dan!

 

[Dr. Dan]

It still feels wrong that a nation cursed with a worthless military ruler with great administrative/diplomatic skill would be able to suddenly turn around and use those completely different skill to improve his army, or vice versa. If I want to focus on one thing, I will pay for the advisor and slowly gain more monarch points that way. Directly buffing your military with diplomacy would make gameplay sense for a nation such as Russia, but make for some horrible gameplay. You won't have much of a navy, and trade is not that interesting, so why not spend it all on building an overly strong army that should never have existed normally?

3 things:

1) You are the state, not a leader. If you sacrifice other things you're good at (remember that penalty for exchange rate), then why not turn around your backwards military state? You're still giving up a lot for it.

2) Why is it something that should never have existed? An "is" is not an "ought". Just because it is implemented that way in the game now does not mean it should never be changed. I would argue that having an effective bureaucracy to balance your leader's pathetic military ability is a plus, not a minus.

3) Diplo points with Russia are very useful for the Diplomatic Ideas tree, as well as increasing trade efficiency. While it might not be "fun", it's still worthwhile to gain money and decreased coring costs. You have the complete choice on how you play your country. It gives you just an added degree of specialization at a high cost.

Edit: Crymson, why you old devil...

 

[Belissarius]

Many players have an issue with being unable to specialize in both tech and ideas of a certain area (military or diplomacy, especially). A simple solution to this issue would be to have an exchange rate to trade one time of points for another (10%-25% of the points being traded, for example).

Ie, 100 diplo points traded would yield 75 military points at a 25% exchange rate. This rate could be determined by admin. tech level, perhaps.

This would solve the issue of specialization. It could create some really interesting specialized nations - completely backwards in certain respects.

Thoughts?

Edit:

You could not become ridiculously ahead in military tech because of the "ahead" (+10% cost/year) penalty of getting tech before its time. Furthermore, you do need to core your conquests eventually, so dumping all your admin points into military wouldn't be effective.

Many players simply don't understand that tech alone =/= how troops/ships/trade/the economy perform. They are locked into this mentality because in EU3 tech was king. In EU4 tech + NIs = how troops/ships/trade/the economy perform. When you buy NIs you INITIALLY fall behind in tech but you get a neighbour bonus to make buying tech cheaper so eventually you catch up. Also this creates a gating mechanic to keep players from steam rolling. The point is you are not suppose to be able to buy a crap load of NIs and keep up in tech. Its suppose to slow down your tech forcing you to consolidate your Ideas by focusing on buying tech. But this will take time. In the mean time you are still in better shape than someone with higher tech and no ideas in a field. Once you catch up in tech you are WAY AHEAD ergo specialization is vital and critical but its not instant in its benefits.

 

[Dr. Dan]

Many players simply don't understand that tech alone =/= how troops/ships/trade/the economy perform. They are locked into this mentality because in EU3 tech was king. In EU4 tech + NIs = how troops/ships/trade/the economy perform. When you buy NIs you INITIALLY fall behind in tech but you get a neighbour bonus to make buying tech cheaper so eventually you catch up. Also this creates a gating mechanic to keep players from steam rolling. The point is you are not suppose to be able to buy a crap load of NIs and keep up in tech. Its suppose to slow down your tech forcing you to consolidate your Ideas by focusing on buying tech. But this will take time. In the mean time you are still in better shape than someone with higher tech and no ideas in a field. Once you catch up in tech you are WAY AHEAD ergo specialization is vital and critical but its not instant in its benefits.

You're correctly right in how most people don't understand how the game actually functions. However, getting NIs and keeping up in tech for military tech would only allow you to steamroll a little faster if you went fully military focused, which is why there were definitely have to be some balancing on how quickly you could accumulate military ideas (which is where the real power would be). Part of that might be increasing the cost of peace with diplo points (I see diplo points as more of a hindrance than admin points, which have a significant cost in conquest).

However, I do believe the game should be more intuitive. This game is far more direct in how it approaches things than EU3, in that you have more power to change things at will by pressing a button. If the suggested function were implemented, it would give players a visible sacrifice of one area of interest in their nation for another.

Furthermore, while both diplomat and admin points have use outside of tech/ideas, military points have very little (buildings and occasional leader) use elsewhere. Both admin/diplo idea trees have ideas that will increase military power, but outside of plutocracy, military does not.

This idea, again, gives you more flexibility in specializing in a particular area of interest - at a cost.

 

[chudo]

Its easy, why different points, you don't need conversion rates, just one combined resource called Monarch points with witch you buy everything. And its easy to implement too. Besides you can still have 3 different types of advisors, just the resource they give would be Monarch points. You still couldn't research one tech many levels ahead because of penalties but you would be able to research a tech and a corresponding idea tree at the same time. I say give the game a chance as it is right now but if there are problems this seems the best solution to me.

 

[lemonsquid]

Its easy, why different points, you don't need conversion rates, just one combined resource called Monarch points with witch you buy everything. And its easy to implement too. Besides you can still have 3 different types of advisors, just the resource they give would be Monarch points. You still couldn't research one tech many levels ahead because of penalties but you would be able to research a tech and a corresponding idea tree at the same time. I say give the game a chance as it is right now but if there are problems this seems the best solution to me.

the reason there are 3 different types is because your leaders 3 stats play a direct role in how much of each monarch point you get. I highly doubt they would change it, if they did it would make the game wayy too simple and boring.

 

[chudo]

the reason there are 3 different types is because your leaders 3 stats play a direct role in how much of each monarch point you get. I highly doubt they would change it, if they did it would make the game wayy too simple and boring.

Combining them changes nothing, just sum the stats and that's your monthly Monarch Point gain, you will still have good rulers and bad rulers and they will affect your progress but you can prioritize and choose which research line to take the hit

 

[Rubidium]

Combining them changes nothing, just sum the stats and that's your monthly Monarch Point gain, you will still have good rulers and bad rulers and they will affect your progress but you can prioritize and choose which research line to take the hit

The idea is to make the game have replayability. Maybe I have a string of high diplomacy rulers; I'll focus on diplomatic tech/ideas. Next game my rulers have lower diplomacy but better military scores; I'll become the best military in the world. By causing you to step out of your comfort zone, it makes you shake up your strategies. Besides, the odds of getting a ruler who has bad rolls on 3 different dice rolls are lower than that of one who gets a low roll on 1 die, so even if you end up with a terrible military leader you will likely have diplomacy and/or administration points to spend on things, rather than twiddling your thumbs for a generation until he dies.

 

[pogoman]

Its easy, why different points, you don't need conversion rates, just one combined resource called Monarch points with witch you buy everything. And its easy to implement too. Besides you can still have 3 different types of advisors, just the resource they give would be Monarch points. You still couldn't research one tech many levels ahead because of penalties but you would be able to research a tech and a corresponding idea tree at the same time. I say give the game a chance as it is right now but if there are problems this seems the best solution to me.

I haven't played the demo yet, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe the game currently limits you to one of each type of advisor. Rather than getting rid of the distinction between the different types of points entirely, why not just allow you to have three advisors of the same type? Then people who really want to focus on an area can use an already established system to do so, while still somewhat falling behind in other areas. Hypothetically, a very rich nation could get +9 to a single MP pool just by using advisors, but even at the beginning of the game you could get +3 or +4 to a single pool cheaply instead of needing to pay through the nose to only get a +3.

 

[Danny-Dynamita]

I'm still trying to understand why the people consider the National Ideas inferior to techs or something... They think they acquire those for nothing or what? A governmental reform improving the quality of his troops is as useful as a new tech. For example, Napoleon or Gaius Marius didn't invented a new type of blade/musquet/artillery to their armies, but applied a lot of reforms. Napoleon fought the other European countries with the "same weapons" (yes, everyone used one variant or another, but for the purpose of this example they will be the same because the differences didn't were so important in the final result), but with other tactics, with another military system, with NEW IDEAS.

Yes, you are Tech 12 and your Neighbour is Tech 13-14... And? That can only be critical if he has, for example, artillery and you haven't (but I think any player that knows a little bit about the game mechanics will prioritize these techs over ideas). Over that, he will have 1-2 techs more than you (or maybe not), but you will have POWERFUL ideas. In real life countries within the same cultural/"techonological" group (i.e., Western) didn't have any significant technological advantage beetwen any of the other nations within the group, but what determined the result of the war were the strategies used in it, and the military system used by the country. You can give a peasant a musquet but it will likely not beat a soldier. Was more of a thing of IDEAS than a thing of TECHS.

Also remember that if you focus on MIL, you will pick the best advisors for that and will try to have the best leaders for it. Except a few countries in the mid-late game, no one will have all Tier 3 advisors.

 

[tului]

I haven't played the demo yet, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe the game currently limits you to one of each type of advisor. Rather than getting rid of the distinction between the different types of points entirely, why not just allow you to have three advisors of the same type? Then people who really want to focus on an area can use an already established system to do so, while still somewhat falling behind in other areas. Hypothetically, a very rich nation could get +9 to a single MP pool just by using advisors, but even at the beginning of the game you could get +3 or +4 to a single pool cheaply instead of needing to pay through the nose to only get a +3.

I would much rather a system like this. As it is I feel railroaded into the same thing ad nauseum. Idea up some, tech up some. Basically in whichever area I got a good MP bonus in. I would like sone way to push one area a bit further at the expense of others.