The Ledger is too powerful and weakens the whole point of Espionage

[CaptainChiatrol]

This.
Next thread "don't allow human to micro with armies, because it is OP"

basically. One of the nice things about this game is, in most areas, you have enough information to be the cause of your own failures instead of having so many elements hidden from you that it becomes incalculable and random.

 

[yerm]

The ledger is too good. There's really no way around it. Is is absurd that you can instantly check the manpower reserves of a nation you don't even border before going to war with their ally. The ideal is far closer to the demographics type of statistic that civ gives. A literal spreadsheet with the exact military report on your enemy is far too much of an advantage. Anything more than a ballpark figure of the information that cannot be seen elsewhere (such as standing armies) needs to be restricted. Knowing the reserve strength of a nation's manpower but not their revolt risk is absurd.

Don't get me wrong, the ledger is needed in a general sense, and many specifics that it gives (such as standing army or economic numbers) are completely fine. I'm talking about some of the things that have no business not being hidden, and manpower always stood out to me the most as a glaring problem. I should not know that France has FINALLY run out of draftable levies so I can now attack Hungary in relative safety.

Also, if you killed the invisible counts that are shown on the ledger, you can and would see people grab espionage solely to get access to them.

 

[-Malovane-]

Agree that the ledger shouldn't list foreign assets. It shouldn't do so for the AI either, of course.

Perhaps a simple 90 day covert mission should be implemented for everyone that gives a brief assessment of the military strength of the target. Same stuff you might find in the ledger - a (rough) estimate in number of troops by unit type and manpower reserves. Maybe even throw in army tradition, discipline, and morale statistics to boot.

Also, a case could be made to have two additional idea groups implemented that are based on espionage. In addition to having one in the diplomatic stream, groups in military and administrative could also be considered.

Military espionage could possibly do the following:

1. Enhanced Intelligence: Gather even more details about enemy troops, including their movements (persistent with diplomat on mission)
2. Disinformation: Upon enemy spy discovery, allow the player or AI to alter the disclosed information if desired (static ability)
3. Diversion: Create ghost units from existing units in friendly territory, which turns existing units invisible until "ghost" is attacked or existing enters enemy territory/attacks (triggered 10MP ability)
4. Propaganda: Increase enemy War Exhaustion (persistent and increase over time with diplomat on mission)
5. Sabotage: Destroys 1 level of fortification in a selected province (1 year mission)
6. Targeting: 25% increased chance of killing an enemy leader during battle (Passive ability)
7. Tactical Advantage: Remove 1 level of tactics from opposing army (Persistent with diplomat on mission)

*shrug* lots of stuff that can be added. Perhaps they're waiting for a DLC

 

[CommunistCookie]

Yeah, ledger should be either tied to Espionage or at least locked in Ironman.

 

[Freudia]

Yeah, ledger should be either tied to Espionage or at least locked in Ironman.

Honestly, the only part people really have beef with is the military part. Therefore, a proposed compromise:

Locking the ledger only locks the military section of the ledger (perhaps all parts of the ledger that involve other nations, if there're other parts that are glaring). The parts that deal with your own country are fine. Then, lock the 'military' ledger in Ironman.

People still won't pick espionage to get access to the military information; the only information that matters that espionage would give is the exact location of enemy forces; everything else can be inferred from watching the enemy's warscore go up and down, and other such hints such as viewing modifiers on the 'declare war' screen of your enemy nation's allies.

 

[oblio-]

The ledger is too good. There's really no way around it. Is is absurd that you can instantly check the manpower reserves of a nation you don't even border before going to war with their ally. The ideal is far closer to the demographics type of statistic that civ gives. A literal spreadsheet with the exact military report on your enemy is far too much of an advantage. Anything more than a ballpark figure of the information that cannot be seen elsewhere (such as standing armies) needs to be restricted. Knowing the reserve strength of a nation's manpower but not their revolt risk is absurd.

Don't get me wrong, the ledger is needed in a general sense, and many specifics that it gives (such as standing army or economic numbers) are completely fine. I'm talking about some of the things that have no business not being hidden, and manpower always stood out to me the most as a glaring problem. I should not know that France has FINALLY run out of draftable levies so I can now attack Hungary in relative safety.

Also, if you killed the invisible counts that are shown on the ledger, you can and would see people grab espionage solely to get access to them.

A good compromise would be a revamped ledger with a "simple mode", available by default in Ironman, and a full ledger, not available on Ironman.
Or tie the levels to difficulty levels.

 

[CaptainChiatrol]

A good compromise would be a revamped ledger with a "simple mode", available by default in Ironman, and a full ledger, not available on Ironman.
Or tie the levels to difficulty levels.

why is a compromise needed? leave it as it is. I'm pretty sure the devs will do this anyway.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

hello everyone!

After a few hours of eu4, i have come to the conclusion that the ledger is too powerful. With that tool the player knows pretty much anything about anyone but more particularly the player knows exactly the army size of its enemies before going to war. I have almost developed a pavlovian reflex by checking pages 24 and 25 before going to war. Does not make much sense in term of gameplay nor it makes a lot of sense in the historic period.

At the same time we have an espionage idea group that feels quite underwhelming to a few people. I believe there is an opportunity there by making the espionage group a bit more powerful in term of intelligence gathering and review the ledger.

I suggest something of the sort :
- remove ledger pages 24-25 in ironman mode.
- instead give a sense of the other nations army strengths and manpower reserve. Possibly, a red/amber/green enemy manpower indicator if they are at 80%, 40 to 80 or below 40.
- rework infiltrate administration to after a period of time, one year for instance, you get more detailed information of another country armies.

no.

 

[yerm]

A good compromise would be a revamped ledger with a "simple mode", available by default in Ironman, and a full ledger, not available on Ironman.
Or tie the levels to difficulty levels.

This isn't something to change because it makes the game harder and is therefore just for ironman (achievements). If anything, if you're going to leave it as optional, it should be in ironman - people playing ironman are doing achievements, too weak willed to not reload, or streamlining their game saving. This doesn't seem to fit. This really isn't in the same category as something like difficulty, lucky nations, or reloading, which ironman addresses. This is far more in line with something like undiscovered regions and the need for exploration. I cannot see the entire world until I explore it, and I cannot see what is going on in non-allied non-border regions, and this is good. I want this exact same concept applied to strategic information in the ledger - I don't know France's manpower, as Friesland, just like I don't know what's going on in India.

 

[IIWW]

This isn't something to change because it makes the game harder and is therefore just for ironman (achievements). If anything, if you're going to leave it as optional, it should be in ironman - people playing ironman are doing achievements, too weak willed to not reload, or streamlining their game saving. This doesn't seem to fit. This really isn't in the same category as something like difficulty, lucky nations, or reloading, which ironman addresses. This is far more in line with something like undiscovered regions and the need for exploration. I cannot see the entire world until I explore it, and I cannot see what is going on in non-allied non-border regions, and this is good. I want this exact same concept applied to strategic information in the ledger - I don't know France's manpower, as Friesland, just like I don't know what's going on in India.

You don't know French manpower only because noone would want to add these little numers up. You can see manpower from most of their provinces, with the exception of undiscovered, mostly oversees, provinces, who doesn't matter much. You can see their ideas. So the ledger is just doing calculations for You, nothing more. The same applies to forcelimit. Only informaction that can only be acqured from the Ledger is their actual strenght.

 

[yerm]

You don't know French manpower only because noone would want to add these little numers up. You can see manpower from most of their provinces, with the exception of undiscovered, mostly oversees, provinces, who doesn't matter much. You can see their ideas. So the ledger is just doing calculations for You, nothing more. The same applies to forcelimit. Only informaction that can only be acqured from the Ledger is their actual strenght.

I'll concede you're right with the limits. Those, therefore, may as well stay.

My glaring problem is knowing if/when a country has run out of manpower. I should not know a nation is at 257/88k manpower and not 15k/88k

 

[Van Tuber]

How secret was all this anyway? If a nation's generation was lost to war, would no one know?

 

[AureliusBob]

although I think having any kind of international intelligence gathering mechanic in a game that takes place between 1444-1821 is ridiculous, I support some kind of buff to the espionage idea group, simply because its fun.

 

[Freudia]

My glaring problem is knowing if/when a country has run out of manpower. I should not know a nation is at 257/88k manpower and not 15k/88k

You underestimate the AI's ability to spawn mercenary units. Manpower does not tell the whole story.

Besides, you can infer when a nation is at low manpower in other places of the game, not just by looking at it through the ledger.

 

[The-King]

Espionage needs some sort of 'super OP' mechanic added to it to make it good. However, I'm not a fan of disabling parts of the ledger.

 

[Azikiel]

IMO it is similar to the demand to introduce Ironman mode. I think that people have right to ask for it.
Anyway I agree with most of points:
- ledger is overpowered, limits might be OK, but current values could/should be obscured
- espionage should be more meaningful

I agree with the first part here, its like people wanting ironman with mods, and I too am okay with that.

However, how can you say "ledger is overpowered" when it's a cheat. That's like saying "console commands are overpowered."

Wat?

 

[Red John]

Through enough work and effort, you can judge manpower and whatnot with simply checking provinces.

Leave it as it is.

 

[sckallst]

Decision-making with perfect information is trivial compared to decision-making under uncertainty. The latter is a heck of a lot more entertaining for many people than the former. Not only is the ledger very powerful, so is much of the info that is freely gathered on most screens.

Why should you have an exact census of opposing militaries? Why indeed should you have an exact census of every attribute of foreign provinces? Why should their tech levels be freely known? Or their missions? Can you know all these things? Sure you can. Should it be 100% free? No, it shouldn't. Almost every decision in this game is about weighing costs. Information may be among the most important resources players have and it's 100% free.

IMO, the quality and quantity information available to players about everything not in their own nation should be a function of how much interaction that player has with the rest of the world. It's not just about the Espionage idea group. It's about the entire structure of the game and it could be made much richer in this regard.

IMO, players should have a baseline intel value that is modified by a host of factors that may be global or specific to a given target nation. The baseline itself can grow some over time with Diplo tech level, but real growth comes with investment in Diplo Idea groups

How many diplomats do you have? Where are they located? What are their missions? Have you built the embassy building? Do you have allies?

How many merchants do you have? Where are they trading? Who else has merchants trading in those nodes? What provinces send their goods to those nodes? Do you have ports? Do you have light ships?

Are you at war? Are your troops at home or abroad? Are you supporting foreign rebels?

What ideas have you embraced and what investments have you made that assist you in engaging with the outside world (as opposed to focusing on internal administration and military development)? What decisions have you made to engage with the outside world? Or to shun the outside world and be insular?

With respect to the idea of Fog of War as it exists currently in the game, you can also make the distinction between strategic intelligence and more immediate operational military intel. The stuff in the ledger and the stuff that shows up when you click on a province falls under the rubric of strategic intel and would be dealt with as above. The war-fighting on the the map stuff is the latter. Enemy forces in you own friendly territory (with distinction between your cores and placed that are only occupied) would be better known to you, based some baseline intel value modified by things like fort level/defensiveness, military tech levels and the like. Enemy forces not in your territory would be less well known to you, if known at all. If you wanted to get fancy, you could even work this into the combat model, making it important to have a some cavalry with each force, especially if you're deep in unfriendly territory.

It would take a DLC to do this all really right, but I think it would be tremendous if well done.

ANd no, I don't care that the AI would "cheat" by having perfect info while the player doesn't. We're smart. The AI isn't.

 

[IIWW]

Why indeed should you have an exact census of every attribute of foreign provinces?

You want to introduce constant alt-tabing, or delete eu4wiki? Apart from buildings (which arent' that important knowledge) every other info is there.

 

[solidprice]

Well, in SP you have the ability to not use it yourself. In MP it can be disabled. This honestly sounds more like an issue with people lacking self-restraint, honestly.

Anyways, if espionage had some sort of assassinate mechanic tied to it, it'd be a lot more useful.

getting rid of leaders would be awesome.
"oh that god general/king/doge/bishop? sorry i killed him!" =P
.....but then the ai would kill off all your leaders lol