I personally like some people f these ideas. Wars should be harder to recover from, which brings me to an idea I had yesterday. Catholics are more intolerant than Muslim nations. But if a Muslim nation owns eg Sevilla wouldn't the intolerant population hate being ruled by a Muslim nation? Also taking Sevilla as Portugal really makes the next war much easier, so it's not just the fact that you the player gain land, but you are taking away from the enemy. Eg, if we both have $2 and I take $1 from you, I now have triple your money.
Suggestions for making tall playing the real alternative
- Thread starter Seb19999
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There's just nothing to do when you're not at war/ killing rebels from new conquests/ preparing for war
The only reason you deal with other countries at ALL is to either attack them or use them to attack other countries.
Even personal unions are a form of conquest really
Beyond the advisors, there's nothing going on with government. Sure some governments like parliament have you assign things to provinces or click a button to gain resources, but there's literally no actual system of administration that you work on. You have a government type which is basically a buff of global bonuses/penalties, you have hired buffs in the form of advisors, you move around local province buffs with estates (and gain button click buffs or boosts)
I deeply wish on top of the current tech system there was a form of research tree for the GOVERNMENT to show how your government is changing over time. I also would like how you move down this government tree to be based on how you administer governance to regions and provinces while in peace time and in war, so you gain points towards specific governments and abilities depending on things you are actually doing with your country. I should literally be able to complete French borders then sit and DO some sort of 'governing' for several hundred years and not be bored as I impose significant changes on me and my neighbors with little to no wars.
This game is deeply missing an internal and external pressure system also, replacing opinions. Similar to Commitern/Facist/Allies in that other game.
Well you know the saying, put your wishes in one hand and shit in the other hand. Squeeze both and see which one comes true
The only reason you deal with other countries at ALL is to either attack them or use them to attack other countries.
Even personal unions are a form of conquest really
Beyond the advisors, there's nothing going on with government. Sure some governments like parliament have you assign things to provinces or click a button to gain resources, but there's literally no actual system of administration that you work on. You have a government type which is basically a buff of global bonuses/penalties, you have hired buffs in the form of advisors, you move around local province buffs with estates (and gain button click buffs or boosts)
I deeply wish on top of the current tech system there was a form of research tree for the GOVERNMENT to show how your government is changing over time. I also would like how you move down this government tree to be based on how you administer governance to regions and provinces while in peace time and in war, so you gain points towards specific governments and abilities depending on things you are actually doing with your country. I should literally be able to complete French borders then sit and DO some sort of 'governing' for several hundred years and not be bored as I impose significant changes on me and my neighbors with little to no wars.
This game is deeply missing an internal and external pressure system also, replacing opinions. Similar to Commitern/Facist/Allies in that other game.
Well you know the saying, put your wishes in one hand and shit in the other hand. Squeeze both and see which one comes true
IMHO the solution can't be to punish players for choosing to play "wide". People also have very different views on what playing "tall" actually means. I've seen 2k dev Germanys which were referred to as "tall", at that point most land you add to your blob isn't going to increase your actual power by very much. "Tall" is a super-hazy concept.
The only true solution would be to greatly expand the internal management aspect of the game, but you shouldn't recommend internal management features which would only affect "wide" players. It would have to be something more along the lines of Vicky and I can't really see that happening for EU4 at this point. The estate feature was in many ways a missed chance.
The only true solution would be to greatly expand the internal management aspect of the game, but you shouldn't recommend internal management features which would only affect "wide" players. It would have to be something more along the lines of Vicky and I can't really see that happening for EU4 at this point. The estate feature was in many ways a missed chance.
Those are not mutually exclusive - people who finish world conquest before 1550 are having a very challenging game after 1550
I wouldn't be so sure that you are in minority. It is not that difficult to change the balance of the game to make tall play competitive with the blobbing. The harder problem to solve is the lack of interesting gameplay in the "tall" play. Arguably the best feature of EU4 is its diplomacy, but there's very little result you can get from it without going to war. There is also a fairly large number of players who like the war gameplay itself too. So if you're losing those two in the tall play, something must replace them (or they need to be modified so that there is some advantage for using those mechanics in the tall play). For example, in Vic2 you might have gone to war to ruin enemy's industry or to encourage their population to emigrate (preferably into your nation), so there were incentive for war and diplomacy even if you had no intention to take any land. In EU4 rewards, other than land and subjects, are rather minimal, so it rarely worth fighting a war if you play tall.
As some posters have stated, to achieve your objectives you will need more like 2 different games than 2 different modes.
Most people who complain about playing tall not being viable have spent hundreds of hours playing wide and only tried playing tall for five minutes before dismissing it.
There are quite a few options for playing tall, especially with tributaries being stupidly overpowered.
There are quite a few options for playing tall, especially with tributaries being stupidly overpowered.
I think the problem isn't that it's not viable, but that it is weaker than blobbing, but strong enough to ensure the player is not in any danger. Besides, since it's fairly boring, it's hard to resist temptation of doing something silly (like getting subjects, for example) that defeats the purpose of playing tall.
Play tall is not weaker than blob, but people think play tall is never, or almost never, expand, build things, press dev button and colonize.
Definition of playing tall varies, but it's generally meant to be as opposite to blobbing, so expansion (direct or via subject) is kept to a minimum. Technically, conquering everything and then building is up can also be considered playing "tall", but it is not what players usually mean by "tall"
That is being extremely tall(like a Free City), while a horde WC is to play extremely wide. There is many shades of grey considered tall and wide between than. You seemed like a Libertarian defining the complete abolition of all governments as capitalism and everything else as socialism in different degrees. Or a Socialist calling everything that is not the socialism he likes(Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc) as capitalism/fascism or a misrepresentation of the true socialism.
I don't think 'tall' play is even that weak in this patch, in fact there is very little point expanding to something like OPM -> 3k dev range before 1600 even if you are mechanically able to. Such a nation typically hits around ~250-300 income 300 FL, however at the cost of very high corruption root cost + very high institution embrace costs effectively eating 30%+ of your gross income. You can create competitive countries with similar net income levels and maybe a tad less FL (but stronger military, since OPM -> 3k dev is picking 3 or 4 blobbing idea group) with ~1000-1500 dev probably. Since now you can focus on autonomy control, having spare cash to build buildings, not paying out the ass for overextension-induced corruption, and you can do wars for pure profit instead of blobbing (robbing / war repping the entire HRE is actually profitable compared to taking 100% clays off people in AE-isolated pockets), you can actually build a competently functioning country instead of one that's barely held together with humanist glue and the OP trade company juice $$.
Of course there is so much excess MP in the game that even if all suggestions were implemented there would be no significant mechanical barrier to WC.
Of course there is so much excess MP in the game that even if all suggestions were implemented there would be no significant mechanical barrier to WC.
I can only suggest trying VH + no allies, this really spices up things and if you aren't playing a navally isolated position, any diplomatic mistake is your doom.
The definition of "tall" might be vague in explicit numbers, but the idea behind it is pretty clear: it means that the player is deliberately sacrificing territorial expansion of lands that yield low returns in favor of consolditating its powerbase with conqureing and then upgrading for high returns.
Thus, a country owning twenty 30-dev provinces invading another nation to create a new vassal (that it will never integrate) or taking 1-3 provinces that it plans to develop to 30 development is "playing tall".
In constrast, a player owning two hundred provinces that takes 20 provinces in a peace deal that will sit on 75% autonomy forever (to benefit from trade power and other geopolitical benefit) is a player "going wide".
A good example of a player "going tall" would be France currently within its historical borders expanding into Northern Italy with aims to fully accept (or convert) cultures and make those provinces a permament part of the French Empire that contribute as much to the French empire as, say, southern France.
Thus, a country owning twenty 30-dev provinces invading another nation to create a new vassal (that it will never integrate) or taking 1-3 provinces that it plans to develop to 30 development is "playing tall".
In constrast, a player owning two hundred provinces that takes 20 provinces in a peace deal that will sit on 75% autonomy forever (to benefit from trade power and other geopolitical benefit) is a player "going wide".
A good example of a player "going tall" would be France currently within its historical borders expanding into Northern Italy with aims to fully accept (or convert) cultures and make those provinces a permament part of the French Empire that contribute as much to the French empire as, say, southern France.
Exactly. Going tall doesn't mean avoiding conquest. It means conquering with purpose other than painting the map.
I created an indicator: income per development. Playing tall means that this indicator is high. With 200 dev you get 40 ducats or more in the early game.
How about making playing tall more engaging and fun instead of just punishing playing wide?
What I'm proposing is not punishing. Is merely limiting unreasonable rewarding. There were costs to waging wars and governing vast, multi-religious, multi-ethnic empires and my ideas try to incorporate those costs to the game. That's all.
A player going wide is hardly punished, except perhaps in HRE. Once the coalition dodging mechanics have been widely known, it became fairly easy to avoid most of the penalties of going wide. All it takes is an intelligent selection of idea groups that mitigates the most obvious downsides like unrest and religious differences. The combination of several factors (Florry's iceland conquest being a prime example) can lead to ridiculous expansion capabilities.
Sadly, no such synergies exist for players going tall. There are no loops through which a player can jump to have, say, 97% development cost reduction. The best you can do is to start (or conquer) a territory that consist of farmlands, equipped with luxury goods. Only one such region exists in the world: Northern India. With a honorable mention of France, Netherlands and Silesia.
EDIT: upon further examination, I find my post to be not true.
Florence -10%
Orthodox icon -10%
Loyal Burghers -10%
University -20%
Embraced Renaissance -5%
Trading in Tropical wood -5%
Parliamentary issue "Land reform" -10%
Encourage development state decision -10%
Max. State Prosperity -10%
Full Economic -20%
If these bonuses are cumulative, I'd put it at -100% lol
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So basically you propose punishing measures with existing mechanics instead of proposing new ones ? CU and AU are copy of RU, not new mechanics.
Corruption was exactly what you propose : more cost, more everything if you blob too much. And it was badly received by the community and was tweaked a lot.
I don't get your point. How is it more enjoyable to play tall by punishing the blobbing game ? Yeah for sure, I can also have plenty ideas for killing your country if you blob. It will force me to play tall, not giving me the desire to play tall.
Corruption was exactly what you propose : more cost, more everything if you blob too much. And it was badly received by the community and was tweaked a lot.
I don't get your point. How is it more enjoyable to play tall by punishing the blobbing game ? Yeah for sure, I can also have plenty ideas for killing your country if you blob. It will force me to play tall, not giving me the desire to play tall.
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Again. This is not punishing. It's about making it more challenging. If you like to paint the map but you are not the brilliant player you will not like those ideas and there is no way I can persuade you. So forgive me for not trying to.
Here is a diplomatic idea to limit the power of blobbing and another idea
So I propose the idea of shadow aggressive expansion (SAE). SAE is total AE aggregated in history against one country. It never goes down. It goes up with every conquest.
SAE works as a modifier to AE and relation improvement. My proposition is that 100 SAE makes country to acquire 10% more AE and reduces efficiency of improving relation by 10%. You can cap those at some level. I propose 100% for AE and 50% for relations.
The game works like this now: you aggressively conquer your neighbor. Other neighbors are angry for some time but after 30 years they forget about everything. That's ridiculous. They should always remember that you are conqueror, that you are a threat and be concerned about your future conquest. The more you conquer the more they should be concerned.
And SAE makes this possible.
My second diplomatic idea is not about blobbing. Is to create strong modifier to willingness to sign alliance. Modifier based on threat perception. Did you ever try to ally Novgorod at the beginning of the game?
Novgorod is totally threatened by Muscovy. Muscovy is rival, has CB, claims and three times bigger army (with vassals). It's mortal, immediate threat. But if you offer to ally Novgorod as Riga or Poland they will not accept immediately. That's ridiculous. They should take almost every alliance opportunity.
The modifier, threat perception (TP), should be between 10 and 50 and should be based on asymmetry between size of country army and size of the armies of rivals and countries with claims against this country.
The basic idea is like this: the country with no allies and strong rivals should be dying for alliances. That should improve AI behavior on diplomatic front.
So I propose the idea of shadow aggressive expansion (SAE). SAE is total AE aggregated in history against one country. It never goes down. It goes up with every conquest.
SAE works as a modifier to AE and relation improvement. My proposition is that 100 SAE makes country to acquire 10% more AE and reduces efficiency of improving relation by 10%. You can cap those at some level. I propose 100% for AE and 50% for relations.
The game works like this now: you aggressively conquer your neighbor. Other neighbors are angry for some time but after 30 years they forget about everything. That's ridiculous. They should always remember that you are conqueror, that you are a threat and be concerned about your future conquest. The more you conquer the more they should be concerned.
And SAE makes this possible.
My second diplomatic idea is not about blobbing. Is to create strong modifier to willingness to sign alliance. Modifier based on threat perception. Did you ever try to ally Novgorod at the beginning of the game?
Novgorod is totally threatened by Muscovy. Muscovy is rival, has CB, claims and three times bigger army (with vassals). It's mortal, immediate threat. But if you offer to ally Novgorod as Riga or Poland they will not accept immediately. That's ridiculous. They should take almost every alliance opportunity.
The modifier, threat perception (TP), should be between 10 and 50 and should be based on asymmetry between size of country army and size of the armies of rivals and countries with claims against this country.
The basic idea is like this: the country with no allies and strong rivals should be dying for alliances. That should improve AI behavior on diplomatic front.
So forget the word "punishing". What you are proposing is applying penalties on existing modifiers if you blob to much. This is my point, nothing more, nothing less. And again, that was exactly the purpose of corruption when it was introduced. It was bad and people didn't like it.
I don't say "let me blob", I say "give ideas with good gameplay that is not wide play". As far as I seen, this is not the case.
I don't say "let me blob", I say "give ideas with good gameplay that is not wide play". As far as I seen, this is not the case.