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

[kralex]

In non-Ironman mode, restricting the ledger is pointless, as the console is freely available. Under these tighter rules of Ironman, it would make sense to restrict access to information in the ledger where it gives away implausible details on other nations.

 

[Silmarion]

If you feel the ledger is cheating, then don't use it. If you're playing a mulit-player game, disable it (that option already exists). Don't try to force those of us who are fine with the ledger as is to lose it simply because you lack self control.

 

[kralex]

No, you shouldn't have to play a "mental mod" to make the game interesting. The official game rules should provide an interesting challenge. Game mechanics that trivialize the game are simply bad game design.

 

[zorkman]

The only thing I will say is that the AI knows your military strength, so it is not completely unfair to know theirs. Try losing all your troops & manpower & enemies or even friends, will soon start declaring war on you. They do this with each other, so obviously know what military strength each has. I was at war the other night with a big Tuscany amongst others, & finally destroyed its army, when soon after Milan declared war.

 

[kralex]

Yes, the AI knows everything, but writing a good AI for a grand strategy game is a non-trivial task, even with omniscience of the game environment. It would be that much harder for the AI to play well if its knowledge were restricted the same way as the player's is. Unless a seriously improved AI implementation comes along, granting it this unfair advantage is simply necessary for it to pose any challenge as an opponent at all. TL;DR: it's unfair but it shifts game balance the right way.

 

[The-King]

No, you shouldn't have to play a "mental mod" to make the game interesting. The official game rules should provide an interesting challenge. Game mechanics that trivialize the game are simply bad game design.

Ah yes because its so hard to beat up the AI without the ledger, but very trivial to defeat them with the ledger. /s

 

[zorkman]

Yes, the AI knows everything, but writing a good AI for a grand strategy game is a non-trivial task, even with omniscience of the game environment. It would be that much harder for the AI to play well if its knowledge were restricted the same way as the player's is. Unless a seriously improved AI implementation comes along, granting it this unfair advantage is simply necessary for it to pose any challenge as an opponent at all. TL;DR: it's unfair but it shifts game balance the right way.

That's why I would be happy to leave it as it is, as neither the AI is gaining an advantage. The only time I think something should be changed is when either the AI or particularly the player is gaining an advantage, which is the reason I am so against vassal feeding as the AI never seems to do it.

 

[kralex]

Edit: @The-King

Straw man, unless you care to point out where I said that the AI is hard to beat without the ledger.

If clarification is needed: the AI is even easier to beat with the ledger than without. It shifts game balance the wrong way. It's implausible, too.

 

[Teije]

Interesting discussion. Much of the debate seems to be about seeing the "exact" values of other nation's determinants, like the specific manpower they have available, e.g., 24590. That does seem unrealistic. I would know if France had depleted its manpower substantially, but not exactly how many individual soldiers they can conscript.

It seems reasonable that you would know most, if not all of this information for the nations with whom you are typically interacting. However, you wouldn't know to the degree of exactitude as presented in the ledger. If the ledger presented information more as ranges that would provide players more a sense of immersion, and not so feel much like a looking at a spreadsheet.

 

[kralex]

Suggestion: In Ironman, you see only friend nations (allies/subjects) in Military/Economic pages. Espionage could get an "Infiltrate military" action that, after one year or so without being detected, shows the infiltrated nation's military info, too. That would be a nice buff to Espionage and the usefulness of Spy Offense, and would add a detail to peace-time game-play while preparing for a war.

 

[Enewald]

You play long enough, you don't even need to check ledger to gather data about the state of the game. The ledger just makes it easier to confirm what you already see on the map. Playing long enough you are able to estimate how much different provinces yield tax and manpower, how strong the state; culture, religion, income, trade power, diplomatic ties... Without the ledger people would still be able to make correct estimations about the geopolitical status. Ledger just confirms what you were already assuming, and it provides exact data without you having to run long in-head calculations.
And using the ledger is entire voluntary.

And remember, pre-national states Europe there were no such things as passports, people from different countries were free to travel mostly. Merchants had their own networks. Diplomats had their own networks. European courts intermarried, gossips travelled. You could not just hide some secrets like how large the French army is, or what kind of taxes different provinces yield. There was far less secrecy, less surprises involved.

 

[Ceranai]

I only ever use the ledger to compare the top few nations anyway, for the vast majority of my wars i have a good idea of what size armies each nation can field. You already know when nations are out of income/manpower because they first switch to mercs then stop building troops entirely.

However, despite the fact that removal of the leger would have very little impact on my games i feel that removing any features or obscuring things for the player is the wrong direction to go. It is already the case that a huge amount of information is hidden or hard to find for the player. For example big game changing events like the burgandy inheritance, the iberian wedding, poland forming commonwealth etc etc etc are all things a player has to learn about through trial and error and reading the wiki. War and battles in eu4 are obviously simplified to a large extent. If you remove player knowledge of their opponents you remove a large strategic element in wars. If i dont know how many troops france has do i just cross my fingers and throw all my troops at them then check what happened five years later??

I do however love the idea of buffing espionage in some creative way. For example i would love easier ways to clear the fog of war (eg send diplomat to map foreign territory). I think the issue with espionage is that on an empire wide scale its effects are totally negiligble

 

[Chieron]

This topic again..
The ledger is somewhat of an abstraction for me, as you can imagine that even without espionage, basic information will be available to rulers. The info could be slightly more vague instead of the exact numbers, but that is not done so easily. The accuracy is somewhat immersion-breaking, but it's not too bad for me.
You should just refrain from opening it, if you think it is cheating, really. [I generally check for some stats before attacks but mostly when ending a session, btw]

A real ruler would hear of great battles and costly sieges in their rivals wars and be able to estimate their strength/losses, so why shouldn't we get to do the same to a degree? Of course, IRL things like troop quality were much less standardized, so much more randomness involved.
The ability to see alliances in full (including listing the fact that they are going to be honored or not) instead of the real world secret pacts with months delay until answers is much more jarring and important than having accurate count of forces.

 

[Silmarion]

No, you shouldn't have to play a "mental mod" to make the game interesting. The official game rules should provide an interesting challenge. Game mechanics that trivialize the game are simply bad game design.

And there are plenty of people who find the game an interesting challenge with the ledger, or even find that being able to track the ups and downs of other countries halfway across the world and seeing how things develop is part of the fun. So, we have a situation where if the ledger is in the game, the people who like can use it, and the people who don't like it can just ignore it. Inversely, removing the ledger means that while you can play the way you want (which, again, you already can), others cannot play the way they want.

Unless, or course, you're saying that you are so lacking in self control that you can't just not hit the ledger button. And if that is the case, well the problem isn't with the game.

 

[Steelers1990]

If you take away the ledger then the player will have to take espionage idea group then you have to give them another idea slot. This is suppose to be a wide open game.

My suggestion....add another tab called espionage. Here you can invest in "spies" to get important info from your enemies. I do not know how you would model "spies", maybe using diplomats? When you stop spying on a certain country the info in the ledger slowly degrades to the point of being completely out of date.

Also you can invest say 100 MP (100 each from ADM/DIP/MIL) to increase your ability in spying. Also you could invest in "counter-spying" to block lower your enemies ability to do it you. Each level will give you closer to their actual amounts. So at the lowest level you info like "Has an army size of between 10,000 and 100,000" to the highest level "approx 120,000" so close to but not exact figures.

Add "CB's" for spies being caught, etc.

As to the ledger you can see all your info, your PU's/Vassels info, some info about your allies (so you can plan wars) and the info your spies have gathered from any other countries.

What does the community think of this idea?

Thanks for reading.

edit...Make the espionage idea give bonus's to your spying ability. Say +5% spying/counterspying ability, a "Spy/diplomat", etc

 

[Chieron]

Also you can invest say 100 MP (100 each from ADM/DIP/MIL) to increase your ability in spying. Also you could invest in "counter-spying" to block lower your enemies ability to do it you. Each level will give you closer to their actual amounts. So at the lowest level you info like "Has an army size of between 10,000 and 100,000" to the highest level "approx 120,000" so close to but not exact figures.

Gosh, what a useful lowest level. You likely can guess much better than that, with some play experience. The normal ledger would actually mostly remind you of the war that country lost horribly just beforehand (or that the war went fairly okay).. It's generally not data that (for reasonably close countries, not something like the Ming looking from Europe) would be unaccessible. Especially, as EU4 in general has standing armies, not ad hoc mobilization/levies (which would be harder to assess).

 

[IIWW]

Just out of curiosity i checked how hard is nowadays getting information about armies. Without using wikipedia, due to it's limited reliability. Public information include regiments, their recent missions, quite often where are they deployed (with some exception, but thats "fog of war", mostly for special forces. and even for them not always). Of course, they didn;t had internet, but We're not talking about some random guy checking it out of pure curosity, but about a ruler, that has some spies.
An example: British army has 36 regular infantry baons, and 18 reserve, organised into 18 regiments. 1st Batallion scotts guard is located in Catterick, in north Yorkshire, in mid 2015 it will be relocated to Aldershots.
US 1 armored division is located in Fort Bliss, Texas.
Australian 1st division is located in Brisbane.
The only think that limits me is my knowlegde of languages, so I can't check f.e. Russian army. But thats all, the ledger is actually a good depictation of this basic espionage that every country has (just like You don't have to pick administrative IG to have any administration at all)

 

[lizardo]

The ledger is perfectly fine, it simply lists what is know in a convenient way. In fact the army and naval lists should also list tech level, which is just as important to know as how many units.

If you want to limit what is known, fine, but what is known should be shown. But this needs a fundamental change to the way in which diplomacy is conducted, maybe more like HoI III, in which you pay for a continuous presence that works towards the goals you prioritize.

 

[bbqftw]

Incidentally, in most of the patch versions, Paradox has been moving towards more transparency towards game mechanics, not less.

For example, it previously was a complete crapshoot as to whether your allies would join you in offensive wars - this was changed.

You can maybe argue that the above was mostly bugfixing - well, Paradox added something even more powerful - you can now tell exactly which allies will join in a defensive war, and which will dishonor the call. Arguably more "maphackish" than the ledger itself.

Similarly, the guessing game of warleader change was similarly removed (where previously you had to do estimations of relative country strength)

 

[HerrStarr]

Always played succesfully, never used it. I don't like exploits.