The Random Campaign

[Mats_SX]

you forgot to add stability bonus to everybody else exept catholicism
give everybody 600 vs catho 1200 at the very least

Wrong. Check the old version again. I've upped every religion 500, except Catholics which are up 700, and Confucian which are up 200.

also confusion is weak vs the boosted reformed/prot/catholics

Reformed was not boosted, it was nerfed.

But you may be right. Upping the Confucian stab bonus to 500 could help?

there is also no reason why buddism should be left out tbh if we alow confusion ect

One reason: I can't think of any combination of values for it. Come up with some, and we shall use them.

also johns point is that we have to make choises, if you give everybody 5/5 serfdom & aristo then all we will be doing is go centra/offensive/quality for most of the game
if we have maxed aristo & serfdom we have slightly more options and it will create somewhat unique sliders for people even if most wil stil go offensive atstart

No we won't. If starting at 5 Aristo, you will have the added choice of moving +1 Aristo or do any other move. If we start at 9 Aristo, that is already the best possible value for that time period, and there will be no reason to ever touch that slider until you've done the other ones.

Also, I did not suggest we start with 5 on Serfdom. Read up a bit before posting incorrect things.

we will need max aristo at the start badly if you dont edit the ai sliders tbh, they will have fairly insane morale vs us wich will make it quiete a challenge

Aristo slider doesn't affect morale. What is your point?

 

[admiral drake]

Wrong. Check the old version again. I've upped every religion 500, except Catholics which are up 700, and Confucian which are up 200.

i tought it was discussed that every religion gets a nice bonus to stability cost to make them less of a issue ? the only religion that wont have a issue with it is catholicism asfar as i can see
and if i remember right that was a big part of the argiument for your culture setup was that we are suposed to have less stab issue when controlling non-culture provinces

Reformed was not boosted, it was nerfed.

looks boosted to me, in the previous version it got +10 trade efficiency now it has +12%
it does suffer from taxation for it tho but longterm 2% trade will be more then 5% taxes if its a major trader

But you may be right. Upping the Confucian stab bonus to 500 could help?

i reckon everybody should have +300 and confusion +500 & catholicism +1200

No we won't. If starting at 5 Aristo, you will have the added choice of moving +1 Aristo or do any other move. If we start at 9 Aristo, that is already the best possible value for that time period, and there will be no reason to ever touch that slider until you've done the other ones.

aristocrasy is only good early game where plutocrasy will be better late game
any person thinking ahead wont bother using dp clicks to aristo since everybody will be going +offensive at the start just to get rid of the -1shock value
aristo is a low priority slider and with the amount we need to move, i doubt anybody will bother going aristo if we start at 5 just to go plutocrasy later on

Also, I did not suggest we start with 5 on Serfdom. Read up a bit before posting incorrect things.

considering john is suggesting 10serfdom and its very unlikly that we would start at 0serfdom i asume you are bitching to have the slider start at 5

Aristo slider doesn't affect morale. What is your point?

ai armys will have far greater morale then we have so having cheap cavalry and the option to use diplomacy to expand could be very needed
unles ofcourse the ai gets the same sliders we have

 

[King John]

Yeah, the stability bonuses seem a little weak. Even if everyone were at 1200, that makes it 1/2. I've been quoting 1/4 as the value to set for all religions(with no particular one receiving a bonus in this). Is this not how we want it? I fear less than that will not make it feasable to maintain much non-religion territory.

But one can see on the other hand that with four cultures, almost every empire will be consolidating their territory without having to deal with any non-culture territory, making it pretty straightforward to homogonize an empire if they're not expanding very quickly on the continent. And this would make their stab costs very low indeed after a while. This is why having a glut of cultures potentially screws up this entire idea. For that reason, I don't really know what's best to set the stab bonuses at, though I still lean toward making them cheap. Perhaps with that providing an ability to sustain the costs in combination with periods of monarch mediocrity, we'll still see enough deterrent to inquisitions to prevent uber consolidation from happening.

One thing that we should do to stem a tide of quick religious consolidation is set annual missionaries to zero, so that you're only getting whatever you get from your sliders. This would also help to balance the inno-narrow slider.




Here's an idea on how to set up the other aspects of the religious file. How about if we let everyone design their own religions? Granted, a few people wouldn't be able to do this as there will be more players than religions, but maybe some with similar tastes could team up in creating their religions? We could design a points system for the different qualities: 1 point for +1 production. 3 points for +1 trade. 4 for +1 tech, and so on. Those numbers are probably not quite balanced, but we could fine tune it, if we wanted to do such a thing.

 

[Mats_SX]

i tought it was discussed that every religion gets a nice bonus to stability cost to make them less of a issue ? the only religion that wont have a issue with it is catholicism asfar as i can see
and if i remember right that was a big part of the argiument for your culture setup was that we are suposed to have less stab issue when controlling non-culture provinces

In the previous set-up, one religion had 1000 more than the others in stab bonus. Then it was suggested to increase everyone's bonus with some value to make stability issues due due to wrong religion a non-issue. Culture does not affect stability, but religion does.

i reckon everybody should have +300 and confusion +500 & catholicism +1200

In that case, I would rather suggest Catholicism has 1500, otherwise I could agree.

aristocrasy is only good early game where plutocrasy will be better late game
any person thinking ahead wont bother using dp clicks to aristo since everybody will be going +offensive at the start just to get rid of the -1shock value
aristo is a low priority slider and with the amount we need to move, i doubt anybody will bother going aristo if we start at 5 just to go plutocrasy later on

I agree with you statement that Pluto becomes better later on. But I disagree that people won't go Aristo after they've maxed their Offensive slider. Or perhaps even before that, to outrun their enemies in number of cavalry instead. The cavalry bonus is big, especially when your economy is small.

considering john is suggesting 10serfdom and its very unlikly that we would start at 0serfdom i asume you are bitching to have the slider start at 5

That's a very poor assumption then. I was not "bitching" about where the Serfdom slider should start. I was arguing that it should not be regulated with FAAs.

ai armys will have far greater morale then we have so having cheap cavalry and the option to use diplomacy to expand could be very needed
unles ofcourse the ai gets the same sliders we have

Compensating that with our Aristo slider makes little sense. Put AIs at 3 Offensive and 7 Serfdom instead, lowering their morale.

 

[Mats_SX]

Yeah, the stability bonuses seem a little weak. Even if everyone were at 1200, that makes it 1/2. I've been quoting 1/4 as the value to set for all religions(with no particular one receiving a bonus in this). Is this not how we want it? I fear less than that will not make it feasable to maintain much non-religion territory.

But one can see on the other hand that with four cultures, almost every empire will be consolidating their territory without having to deal with any non-culture territory, making it pretty straightforward to homogonize an empire if they're not expanding very quickly on the continent. And this would make their stab costs very low indeed after a while. This is why having a glut of cultures potentially screws up this entire idea. For that reason, I don't really know what's best to set the stab bonuses at, though I still lean toward making them cheap. Perhaps with that providing an ability to sustain the costs in combination with periods of monarch mediocrity, we'll still see enough deterrent to inquisitions to prevent uber consolidation from happening.

Keep in mind that everyone will start with their sliders providing 75% less stabcost (50% from serfdom, 25% from Narrowminded). That is huge of course. Since anyone can't move the Inno slider for quite a while probably, and the Serfdom slider wouldn't be the first choice for most, then this bonus will stay. After about 20 clicks I reckon the bonus will still be at least 50% for the vast majority of players. Do we really want even MORE stability bonuses? Stabhitting will become useless soon.

One thing that we should do to stem a tide of quick religious consolidation is set annual missionaries to zero, so that you're only getting whatever you get from your sliders. This would also help to balance the inno-narrow slider.

That could be an idea, but I think 0 is too small. 0.5 at least would be more appropriate. We could set all players to start with 0 though.

Here's an idea on how to set up the other aspects of the religious file. How about if we let everyone design their own religions? Granted, a few people wouldn't be able to do this as there will be more players than religions, but maybe some with similar tastes could team up in creating their religions? We could design a points system for the different qualities: 1 point for +1 production. 3 points for +1 trade. 4 for +1 tech, and so on. Those numbers are probably not quite balanced, but we could fine tune it, if we wanted to do such a thing.

I don't really like the idea. Main issue: it will be too much of a hassle. Also, everyone will tend to normalize their choices and we'll get more or less the same religions anyway.

 

[TC Pilot]

Ok, I think I'm going to start editing the religions today. I'm probably going to kick stab bonuses up substantially from Mats' screenshot (maybe another +1000 uniformly across the board).

I'll reserve taking action on the sliders until later, but I don't see much reason to alter them too substantially from the 5-across-the-board I have it at presently (for player countries. AI countries are at their historic pre-sets), with the possible exception of inno/narrow and the FAA idea. However, I don't particularly like the idea. It strikes me that overseeing land/naval is problematic enough, and people can just stay narrowminded, wipe out their wrong-religions with all the missionaries they'll get from it (2 per year, assuming none from religion), and spend their money on other manus.

I can generate those at any time. The easiest way is to give me a scenario file (.eug) and I can then write the monarchs into it with simple copy+paste from my generated list.

Originally we were going to pick which order the monarchs came in, though.

Buddhism and CRC are zeroed out and shouldn't be used. Pagan is for ROTW and Hinduism for non-player Europe.

Wait, so change non-Euro countries to pagan?

Edit - I'm also going to start giving player countries extra cores. What did we settle on? 30?

 

[King John]

Setting up our own religious files is probably too much trouble, aye. Not necessary. Though, I believe we do have two weeks left.


If everybody is at 1300, that may be ok. The catholic bonus should not be increased from 1500 to 2500 though, as that would, as I understand, effectively remove all costs. I'd suggest 1700 at the highest. Perhaps 1600.

As for sliders, if we have 0 missionaries from religion, we may not need to have a FAA rule to help balance innovativeness, and could probably stand to start everyone off at 5. But regarding central, offensiveness, and quality, there's no reason to have them at 5, and little reason in the case of serfdom. Put them at 0(and ten, in the case of serfdom).

We should also set tech groups at, or ideally muslim, so as to keep tech a relevant part of the game in all fields.

Originally we were going to pick which order the monarchs came in, though.

True, but irrelevant now. Randomizing the monarchs has been on the agenda for ages, and for good reason as it distributes the stats evenly and avoids a lot of trouble getting everyone to submit theirs(not to mention the hassle just to plan your own monarchs. How is anyone going to know when they'll need certain kinds of monarchs anyway?).

 

[Mats_SX]

This is getting ridiculous. First we are having 4 cultures, and now we ALSO have insane stability bonuses from religion?? Do we want to have everyone at +3 for the entire campaign!? I hate to say it, but I am not gonna play in a campaign where we have -50% off from religion and then -75% off from sliders (at start), AND with 4 cultures we will have mono-religious realms. It's just ridiculous. Stability is supposed to be an issue. With this setup we'll never ever have to tech stab. Why not up PE and TE with 20% units across the board too while we're at it?

In a standard game, Protestant and Reformed nations have a PENALTY in stability. And they're doing just fine anyway.

 

[admiral drake]

This is getting ridiculous. First we are having 4 cultures, and now we ALSO have insane stability bonuses from religion?? Do we want to have everyone at +3 for the entire campaign!? I hate to say it, but I am not gonna play in a campaign where we have -50% off from religion and then -75% off from sliders (at start), AND with 4 cultures we will have mono-religious realms. It's just ridiculous. Stability is supposed to be an issue. With this setup we'll never ever have to tech stab. Why not up PE and TE with 20% units across the board too while we're at it?

In a standard game, Protestant and Reformed nations have a PENALTY in stability. And they're doing just fine anyway.

this is not a standard game tho
but i kinda agree i missed the part that we get 4cultures each now, if thats the case i agree with mats his religious suggestion tbh

 

[TC Pilot]

As a brief aside, about two weeks ago I spontaneously decided I really didn't care all that much and went with 3-culture setup.

 

[Mats_SX]

Oh the twists and turns xD

OK, so I've made this new religion set-up, based on a 3-culture idea:

According to drake's suggestions, everyone's been upped in stability bonus. Reformed also got a slightly lower percentage in trade. I've made annual missionaries 0.25 and annual diplomats 3.5. I see no reason why we should not have lots of diplomats.

I also want to summarize what John said that at least I and drake thought made sense:

Centra start at 0
Inno start at 0, steps regulated by FAAs.
Merc start at 5
Offensive start at 0
Quality start at 0
Serfdom start at 9

Then John and drake seems to think Aristo should start at 9. I think it should start at 6.

Or here's an idea for Aristo: have it start at 5-6, and regulate moves towards Pluto with number of Naval Manufactories. It makes sense, since Pluto makes warships cheaper. Also, naval manufactories are usually considered to be pretty useless. Thoughts?

 

[admiral drake]

works for me with aristo at 6 and i like the concept of regulating it with naval manus

alot of manus will need to be build this game tho should be worth fighting over them

 

[Mats_SX]

works for me with aristo at 6 and i like the concept of regulating it with naval manus

alot of manus will need to be build this game tho should be worth fighting over them

Smart, I didn't consider the fact that you could conquer a manu from a nation and thus allow for you a slider move...

Although we should prohibit selling manus to other nations to allow them to move their sliders.

 

[TC Pilot]

Alright, I'll revise the religion stats.

But I'd like some clarification: I should make non-player Euro Hindu, and non-Euro countries pagan?

On a related note, I think I'll play Orthodox.

On the issue of manus/sliders, I don't particularly care how they're set, but I still have some concerns about tying them to the number of manus you have. Naval manus and aristocrat/plutocrat I'm fine with, since they don't show up until rather later in the game (or by the rare random event), but I think tying inno to fine arts academies is counterproductive. I just don't see any incentive to build FAA when I could be building more useful manus like refineries or using my missionaries to wipe out wrong-religion in my right-culture provs.

Selling manus is another issue, but I don't see it as much of a problem.

Edit - how about naval (and/or army manus) tie into aristo/pluto and land/navy?

 

[admiral drake]

we should always fix land/naval at 5 anyway

being narrowminded & decentral for a long time will make technology alot more important tc pilot, in most recent games people all tend to be simular teched and majority has ahead of time penalty for half the game, with this setup it should be tougher to achieve and make it more important to make proper choises since i doubt your gonna be stuck with ahead of time by 1600 here in even 1field

fine art is alot more intresting with this rule vs refinerys, having 10fine art alows you to sit at 10inno, that is quite alot faster in all fields then somebody that build 10refinerys but 10refinerys will alow for higher income


you should not be alowed to take random events(unles there is only 1option) that affect your dp clicks above the limit your country has, or move them manually above that limit (inno/pluto)
and if you loose a manu your sliders should be edited back to the max alowed at the end of that session to the limit you have then

the sliders should be based on the manus you have at the end of a session so trading a manu just screwes you unles you build em for him with his gold

 

[Barca]

You guys might want to consider how tying sliders to manus will force players to take certain options in random events. This isn't that big of a deal for the innovative/narrowminded slider, since most of the narrowminded choices have other positive benefits. However, the "reigning in the ..." series of events will force the player to take -centralization, -mercantilism +aristocracy option. Given the frequencey of that event, within thirty years every nation is going to quickly be at 10 aristocracy, and anyone who tried to move their centralization slider is going to be contemplating suicide.

 

[King John]

I think that in the case of recieving random events we should just make the appropriate adjustments at the end of the session. If somebody gets a +1 inno event that allows them to be over their limit for a decade or whatever, that's not a really big deal.

TC, regarding fine arts academies, that's the point. They're not a useful investment in a normal game. Now they have worth, so the choice of what manu composition to have is something we'll all have to think of a little bit harder.

What's this about opening up the land/naval slider? That needs to stay locked. People will start to think we're all a bunch of noobs if we start playing a game with no standard land 5 rule. But movement should be allowed as in the last game with the understanding that it will be reset between sessions.

 

[King John]

You guys might want to consider how tying sliders to manus will force players to take certain options in random events. This isn't that big of a deal for the innovative/narrowminded slider, since most of the narrowminded choices have other positive benefits. However, the "reigning in the ..." series of events will force the player to take -centralization, -mercantilism +aristocracy option. Given the frequencey of that event, within thirty years every nation is going to quickly be at 10 aristocracy, and anyone who tried to move their centralization slider is going to be contemplating suicide.

I think that's more of a vanilla thing, isn't it? I don't remember receiving any -central events in the recent past that didn't have an option to take a stabhit instead, and the same for the other categories. Could be I've just been very lucky .

It would be neat if the centralization events were based on your stab level and size, or perhaps just the stab level since small nations tend to more easily maintain high stability. A nation at high stability would have an easier time evolving into a more centralized state, as a nation wracked with instability would tend to devolve into decentralization. Maybe we ought to make our own event file too, since we're changing everything else. If at +2 stab or higher, you have a chance of getting a +1 central event with an accompanying stabhit or two, maybe some RR as well, and if at -1 stab or lower, you have a chance of getting a -1 central event, but maybe +1 or +2 stab as a payoff.

We could do similar things with other sliders. Long ago, Ry*o*ken had a mod that included a lot of events that would raise or lower your quality and/or offensive based on whether you were at war or not. If at war, you had a chance of getting a positive event. If at peace, a chance of a negative event, which modeled military experience and tradition quite well.

 

[TC Pilot]

TC, regarding fine arts academies, that's the point. They're not a useful investment in a normal game. Now they have worth, so the choice of what manu composition to have is something we'll all have to think of a little bit harder.

As far as I can tell, the only use of going innovative is getting a better tech modifier. But as I said, whose going to bother spending thousands of ducats on multiple FAA when they can spend that money first using the +2 missionaries you get from full narrow to wipe out wrong religion, and then on actually useful manus like refineries? In contrast, putting the slider in the middle gives an option between higher teching and getting a useful number of missionaries (the new religion setup will mean a default .25, IIRC, per year). Although, I suppose the effect will largely be negligible, given that I doubt anyone in their right mind will build 10 FAA.

Though, if the last campaign's any indicator, the fewer sliders we need to be normalized by edits the better. I myself went for quite a few sessions off the normalized land/navy slider, much to Sweden's misfortune.

 

[Mats_SX]

As far as I can tell, the only use of going innovative is getting a better tech modifier. But as I said, whose going to bother spending thousands of ducats on multiple FAA when they can spend that money first using the +2 missionaries you get from full narrow to wipe out wrong religion, and then on actually useful manus like refineries? In contrast, putting the slider in the middle gives an option between higher teching and getting a useful number of missionaries (the new religion setup will mean a default .25, IIRC, per year). Although, I suppose the effect will largely be negligible, given that I doubt anyone in their right mind will build 10 FAA.

Though, if the last campaign's any indicator, the fewer sliders we need to be normalized by edits the better. I myself went for quite a few sessions off the normalized land/navy slider, much to Sweden's misfortune.

Don't be so fast to judge it out. At 9 Inno you will have 30% faster teching than your opposition. That could become a strategical advantage as good as any.