I feel like actual things happening in the game (like France getting a PU over Hungary or Poland PUing Austria, or Aragon invading Italy or very rarely Ottomans pushing into Europe) adds more variety in my games than monarch points do, but that's just my opinion. I will say that the part about having enough control to get through rough spots doesn't hold much water for areas outside of Europe though, as the tech speed differential can make or break you if you roll into bad military rulers, especially in multiplayer games.
The future of EU4 and Paradox games, a schism?
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I feel like actual things happening in the game (like France getting a PU over Hungary or Poland PUing Austria, or Aragon invading Italy or very rarely Ottomans pushing into Europe) adds more variety in my games than monarch points do, but that's just my opinion. I will say that the part about having enough control to get through rough spots doesn't hold much water for areas outside of Europe though, as the tech speed differential can make or break you if you roll into bad military rulers, especially in multiplayer games.
The range is from 0 to 6 though. I've had strings of 4-5-5 serveral times in a row and other times 0-2-1s. Just example . When i am lucky with my monarchs it feels like i am cheating
Your argument is a standard cookie-cutter one with the standard flaw. Noise factors against skill don't make the influence of skill greater, they reduce it. Take a theoretical situation of two players playing 100% identical ability with equal starts. One gets a 5/5/6, other a 2/1/0, early in the game. It's extremely unlikely that the latter will ever catch the former, despite equal play ability.
If skill is relatively equal, bad luck in this regard can overpower it and result in one side winning not because of his ability, but rather because he got lucky even though his opponent outplayed him. Ruler stats are the perfect example of bad RNG design: you get a large (potentially game-altering) impact from a relatively small number of rolls, such that extreme cases can decide the outcome.
Early game rushes in civ IV shared this problem. As the game wore on, skill between players would allow expansion and tech rate to differentiate, and collateral plus larger armies mitigated the importance of any single dice roll to the point where you'd have a better chance of being hit by a meteor while playing than to lose enough consecutive 99.9% odds for it to make a difference. However, early in the game, 3 losses at 70% odds is more plausible to happen, and could cause you to lose outright. As a result, a markedly inferior player could opt to just rush in hopes of an improbable (but given the skill gap, still favorable-odds) outcome and a game that carried heavy strategic depth could be reduced to a series of 8-15 dice outcomes. To claim that someone who got lucky on an attack and won at unfavorable odds (IE made a stupid attack and got lucky) outplayed the other or that the other should have overcome his luck with skill in such a scenario is patently absurd and frankly insults the one who lost.
Monarch points from rulers aren't as extreme as an early civ IV rush, but they're cut from the same cloth. Unlike quite a few things in the game that are also random (even stuff like combat dice), they lack significant player influence/choice, but have a large impact on a low #checks. Just as importantly, had the game been shipped with monarch stats having less variance and more being dumped into base gain for all nations, I sincerely doubt anybody would have flinched as a player, considering it was a new model regardless.
Power projection (though wonky right now that pirate bay > conquering rivals by a wide margin), ROTW changes, and national focus have helped to improve player agency here, it's still a sore point in the game albeit less than before.
The most vexing thing about republics is the combination of low variety of starts that have them (and all but 1 are in Europe, unless you count tribal governments which don't share the control aspect) and reliance on luck to get into a government type that isn't dependent as much on luck
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Rulers are actually 2d4-2 rather than d7-1, but you're also ignoring the +3 base, advisors, and if you have the appropriate DLC, National Focus and Power Projection. One can argue about what exact degree of randomness is appropriate, but saying that it's currently 100% random is quite misleading.
I'm not really complaining too much about it though, i have no problem enjoing the system as is, but sometimes it seems like cheating when lucky and the game being naughty and bad when i am unlucky.
The random is already 50% (less actually when you include power projection). Too little randomness makes things boring. A prime example of this, in my mind at least, was many of the sliders in EU 3. Every game you did the exact same thing with them, the only thing that changed was how many decades it took to get them where you wanted them.
Keep in mind Advisors are also random. I've been stuck in situations before where I can afford and want 3* advisors and have a pool of 1*s to pick from. Technically, 8 points are therefore 'random' to a degree. National focus on the other hand was a fantastic change.
I still can't stand the points system and almost always end up playing republics for this very reason, and I still don't see why the tech system shares this resource instead of having its own.
1) U have a base of 3 Points in each category, that's not random
2) The chances of getting 0 in a category is alot less then getting 3. So it's not totally random if it's 0 or 3.
3) You do not have the same Monarch during the whole game, and it's very unlikely all Your Monarchs will get the same stats.
4) Getting behind in tech because of a bad Monarch just means you will end up paying less for your tech. In the end the "loss" of points from a bad monarch will not hinder you as much some thinks to believe.
But it will of course slow you down in certain areas (for a Limited time) and force you to take harder decissions.
With a system where all got 3-3-3 Monarchs all the time no mather what, the game would be better of scrapping the whole mechanism. Then it would not serve any purpose whatsoever. Not to mention how terribly boring such a "perfect" balance would be.
Maybe all the praises and good reviews got to Paradox s heads.Indeed,the comparation with CA and SEGA is accuarate,as the Total War series started a rapid decay,because of their multiplayer orientated and holywood type action path.
Sadly Paradox is taking the same steps,dumbing their games with every new release,making it more apeassable to "the vulg",instead of continuing to make the game for their fans who made it possible for Paradox to get this far aka the history geeks,who love strategy games not RPG Turn Based multiplayer games.
Also their decision to NOT make a ROME based game,and rather make some rollercoaster bull... game,or worse some RPG Magical nonsence games,will only drive their real fanbase further.
Pity...
Sadly Paradox is taking the same steps,dumbing their games with every new release,making it more apeassable to "the vulg",instead of continuing to make the game for their fans who made it possible for Paradox to get this far aka the history geeks,who love strategy games not RPG Turn Based multiplayer games.
Also their decision to NOT make a ROME based game,and rather make some rollercoaster bull... game,or worse some RPG Magical nonsence games,will only drive their real fanbase further.
Pity...
Advisors are actually weighted towards trying to give you a spread of skills (and not give level 3 advisors to opms), but that could probably stand to be even less random to be honest. I don't think anyone enjoys having only 3-stars to choose from when you make 20 ducats a month.
Just put me on ignore so you wont have to read what Im writing and I wont have to bother answering you. Helps us both.
Far, far worse is the reverse situation: you can afford +1s, but there are only +3s available.
Which has been complained about repeatedly and at length, and at this point I have given up doing so and decided to declare it a deliberate misdesign.
We're making a rollercoaster simulator? I love Rollercoaster Tycoon, why hasn't anyone informed me about this?!
(I think you're confusing PDS developed games with PI published games)
If you want to do random, it's still better to let player choices influence it in an intuitive way, and to increase the #rolls to decrease the impact of any single extreme roll. Even some kind of heir grooming/competition minigame would have been a large improvement. IMO the reason poor monarchs are decried more often than combat dice (which are decried more often than other random factors) is the different degrees of agency the player has on each outcome combined with the large difference one roll makes.
Combat is actually a good example by comparison. Yes, you have random dice rolls, but you also have big factors like choosing terrain, forcing terrain by camping important points, blockades, siege rate, numbers and other aspects that influence against the random factors. While the first couple rolls in combat are a bit over-important, only in very rare early-game cases can a combat outcome on single dice rolls be particularly decisive. Would you prefer your 10 stack defending against an AI 8 stack and getting a terrain advantage with equal generals have a 10% chance of being wiped out without being able to retreat?
No, you probably wouldn't prefer that in the game. That's more random though. Why isn't it "more fun variety", and then why are monarch point distributions better where they are now rather than at another point?
If you can afford only Level 1 advisors there is no crisis if there is none to choose from. In most cases you're then better of not having advisors at all. This is hardly a game breaker as long as having the Advisor also means upkeep/saleries that now is saved and made availble for other benefitial usage.
On another side, this is also making ideas giving u +1 advisor to choose from meaningful and usefull. I don't mind how it works now at all.
Again; total "imagined balance" here would make also this mechanism more boring, charmless and useless in my view.
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First: I generally find that the phase of the game where I can only afford level 1 advisors is also the phase of the game where I most want advisors for their bonuses rather than just as a source of monarch points.
Second: Obtaining Effectively Exploitable Base Tax has a direct cost in monarch points. The phase of the game in which I can only afford level 1 advisors is also the phase of the game where I am most in need of increases to my total EEBT.
lol? They're working on (at least) three grand strategy games at the moment (CK2, EU4 and HOI4) and that's not enough for you? If they want to make a fantasy RPG then so be it.
I think you two are using different senses of the word "base" there.
I agree on the wish for a Rome2, and that it would have turned out awesome, but allow me to comment that the announcements of other new games you hint at there are not Paradox developed, but made by other teams under the Paradox umbrella. That's something completely different.
NB! I'm still hopefull for a Rome2 after seeing that infamous t-shirt on the press conference.....
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