Well people are also mentioning how easy gold is to get by... so why not build military buildings and raise big army to conquer more stuff?
The Tech system seems kind of... busted?
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Well people are also mentioning how easy gold is to get by... so why not build military buildings and raise big army to conquer more stuff?
Also the system is made so that you will eventually spend points on your NI groups.
So if you have so many military points, pump your military ideas to Max and crush everyone.
So if you have so many military points, pump your military ideas to Max and crush everyone.
This is the same for me.
Aside from things being skewed towards needing Administration points (At least as Brandenburg/Prussia/Germany now in 1780), I am actually a huge fan of the system so far.
This is actually an interesting solution as well.
It's evident I see the mismatch, as I keep picking the 4/1/1 leader as my Administrative Republic, but that would be somewhat interesting. This would still allow administrative rulers to be good at coring, building admin buildings, and so forth. It may still need to fix that imbalance, at least somewhat (since this wouldn't really fix that), but it's an interesting suggestion.
Given that I pretty much stayed right at the tech limit for everything (including Administrative power) excepting the very beginning of the game (with a crap ruler) and the very end of the game (when I went conquering like mad and built up an insane infrastructure of buildings), I actually don't think there's a huge deficit of points. And I have a decent sized Germany now that still has colonies in Africa and even some in North America.
The nice thing about the earlier EU games was that there was progress even though you didn't do anything. You were mostly focusing on different things to get an edge (or mint). The fact that, you get immediate effects after spending monarch points is also very unrealistic compared to earlier games where every tech/stability investment you make had a gradual/progressive effect (It was harder to abandon investing in land tech when you had just 1 years of getting it to the next level). You had long term commitments to certain goals. Right now you can just save up points and decide what to do later.
With ADM points you can make cores, invest in national ideas, raise stability, move capital, change government, reduce inflation. Points that can be spent on a big variety of things, also render them very abstract. Especially when they're based on randomly generated people, and they are the only currency you need.
When you look at EU4 you have a monarch that has absolute effect on everything your country does which is unrealistic. The feudal system in europe, the timar system in Ottoman Empire, shogunates in Japan etc, had certain mechanics that would keep them going even with the craziest of monarchs.
The past games had "Gold + Monarch + Long term goals", now we have "Monarch + Immediate results".
With ADM points you can make cores, invest in national ideas, raise stability, move capital, change government, reduce inflation. Points that can be spent on a big variety of things, also render them very abstract. Especially when they're based on randomly generated people, and they are the only currency you need.
When you look at EU4 you have a monarch that has absolute effect on everything your country does which is unrealistic. The feudal system in europe, the timar system in Ottoman Empire, shogunates in Japan etc, had certain mechanics that would keep them going even with the craziest of monarchs.
The past games had "Gold + Monarch + Long term goals", now we have "Monarch + Immediate results".
See, in situations like this, I take the stability hit. In fact, I often found myself taking the stability hit since I found monarch points so valuable. Especially since Diplomatic/Military points don't feed into your own stability. If you're above 0 stability, the stability hit seems to be the most obvious choice.
I changed to a Bureaucratic republic which set my stability down to -3 and I actually found it interesting. Doubly so because the Republic Tradition was 0 to start, so no way in hell was I paying that stability modifier. It's like my country went through a real rough spot, where I couldn't really focus on doing anything on the outside, because I was dealing with my internal strife.
Already crushed at that point.
Not much reason to continue crushing enemies which I already beaten. (Though I haven't tried a coalition world war yet. Probably would get nasty, since trade makes up a hefty portion of income and ships are much harder to come by.)
Base point is 3 for each. You then have three advisor slots. Even f you have no money for advisor and a 0-0-0 monarch, you still get 3 points in each category. Spend them wisely and your country will be fine. If you're rich in income and lucky with advisor roll, you can get 6 points in each on a 0-0-0 monarch. That sounds like the system helping in tough times.
Besides don't people complain money doesn't have enough uses? Hire three lv3 advisors then (if you still have extra, then well, war subsidies to friends?).
My experience is a tech system that I forget about and still have no problem keeping up. It had less affect on my long term planning than this one. This one I have to balance my spendings. Immediate results from tech is really the same. Whether the points I'm saving up for next tech is also an emergency reserve for stuff is good or not is personal taste.
I knew there is something in this game that makes it boring (sounds too hard, its not a bad game at all but i cant find the perfect word) to me.
I thought it was about little details that i didnt like but thanks to this thread i really know now what its about.
The fact that the game rewards you for not doing is the problem.
Thats just the wrong way over all. A game is made to have fun and you have fun by doing stuff and see how it influences your country.
Not doing is the fun-killer number 1.
Every time you expand or build a building of stuff like that you have this bad feeling because it costs you points.
That has to be changed in my opinion.
I like the fact that its harder to blob compared to EU IV. I love the idea of the coalition mechanic. It needs a bit of work but in general it is pretty good.
I dont really like the overextension mechanic but i like the effects in the end. So im more of less fine with it.
So its not like a want a very easy game but i dont want to feel bad when i have success. Thats just the wrong way imo. Make expansion hard, very hard. But if you manage to do it you should be rewarded.
Yes it will lead to snowballing in the end but it kinda has to to be good. They way it should be is not to prevent snowballing from happening, just make it a lot harder to reach the point at which you can really start hardcore snowballing.
I thought it was about little details that i didnt like but thanks to this thread i really know now what its about.
The fact that the game rewards you for not doing is the problem.
Thats just the wrong way over all. A game is made to have fun and you have fun by doing stuff and see how it influences your country.
Not doing is the fun-killer number 1.
Every time you expand or build a building of stuff like that you have this bad feeling because it costs you points.
That has to be changed in my opinion.
I like the fact that its harder to blob compared to EU IV. I love the idea of the coalition mechanic. It needs a bit of work but in general it is pretty good.
I dont really like the overextension mechanic but i like the effects in the end. So im more of less fine with it.
So its not like a want a very easy game but i dont want to feel bad when i have success. Thats just the wrong way imo. Make expansion hard, very hard. But if you manage to do it you should be rewarded.
Yes it will lead to snowballing in the end but it kinda has to to be good. They way it should be is not to prevent snowballing from happening, just make it a lot harder to reach the point at which you can really start hardcore snowballing.
its sort of the point though, different countries have different needs. Early game when Im trying to get england or portugal going in colonialism, my admin is fine, but Im hurting for diplo trying to get both ideas and tech in as fast as possible. It makes sense that a nation like brandenburg which focuses on a lot of coring would have more need for admin. though in my brandenburg I never did run out or get behind on admin tech Are you taking things without claims? Spending to much on stability? Or taking to much to quickly? You have to take it slow. Or you'll end up like mine, where 60years in I decide to push it just a bit to far, end up with all the german minors and scandinavia coalition on me right after poland and lithuania break there alliance, and they end up breaking my country I spent the last 60 years carefully building. IT was pretty cool, actions with consequences.
I don't say that there might be some balancing that needs to be done here and there but there are a few thing we need to keep in mind.
1. We all are playing with too few a sample to really know and understand the full scope of the balancing done until release.
2. Administration points are there to balance up expansion, stability and economic infrastructure. You are not suppose to be doing everything unless perhaps you have an administration 6 monarch and a Lv3 advisor.
I do get that certain people don't like the randomness of monarchs because they can't plan their future expansion and therefore feel they can't do anything because there is a drought in points.
Other people find this mechanic as a refreshing reminder of real life and a good abstracted way of simulating the influence that monarchs actually had on nations in this period.
If you for example play a republic you actually can know pretty well in which category you will get points and even how many for how long a period. Those that want that kind of control could try a republic and see if that feels more engaging.
1. We all are playing with too few a sample to really know and understand the full scope of the balancing done until release.
2. Administration points are there to balance up expansion, stability and economic infrastructure. You are not suppose to be doing everything unless perhaps you have an administration 6 monarch and a Lv3 advisor.
I do get that certain people don't like the randomness of monarchs because they can't plan their future expansion and therefore feel they can't do anything because there is a drought in points.
Other people find this mechanic as a refreshing reminder of real life and a good abstracted way of simulating the influence that monarchs actually had on nations in this period.
If you for example play a republic you actually can know pretty well in which category you will get points and even how many for how long a period. Those that want that kind of control could try a republic and see if that feels more engaging.
I made clear in my AAR (which you have not bothered to read obviously) that the goal of my game was not to play Ironman, but to see if a player could actually keep on tech parity with the Western powers. The answer is an obvious NO for Admin and Diplo, and a YES for military.
You can call save scumming "cheating" all you want. Sounds like you don't understand what I was aiming to do. Even *with* keeping an unusually long string of very talented leaders, a country like Ceylon cannot keep up with the west in anything except military.
You are correct that it also cannot keep up with ideas.
I went through the process of westernization, and by game's end I was pretty satisfied with the results. Even so, since Westernizing, I built very, very few buildings. I simply kept on ideas and techs. The fact that buildings cost MPs led to them being deprecated. Because I didn't, or felt I couldn't, spend money on buildings because it also cost MPs, I ended up banking between 10,000 - 20,000 gold in the latter centuries. I just used it as a cushion to afford wars without raising war taxes. I'd have had a better basic economy if I could have just built improvements without spending MPs too. But as it was, I just gave up trying to do that. Because I had religiously bought buildings as soon as I could early in the game, and it ended up costing me a lot of tech levels by mid-game.
In all, what you fail to somehow realize was that I was purposefully trying to "cheat" the system with save scumming to see if you could keep competitive in any way as an Indian nation without westernizing. As I said, Military tech worked. Nothing else did.
The Westernization process seemed very daunting at first. It nearly did cripple my country, and set me back decades. Once westernized, but only with über leaders, it was a very different game. I could finally play a centuries' long game of catchup.
You can call save scumming "cheating" all you want. Sounds like you don't understand what I was aiming to do. Even *with* keeping an unusually long string of very talented leaders, a country like Ceylon cannot keep up with the west in anything except military.
You are correct that it also cannot keep up with ideas.
I went through the process of westernization, and by game's end I was pretty satisfied with the results. Even so, since Westernizing, I built very, very few buildings. I simply kept on ideas and techs. The fact that buildings cost MPs led to them being deprecated. Because I didn't, or felt I couldn't, spend money on buildings because it also cost MPs, I ended up banking between 10,000 - 20,000 gold in the latter centuries. I just used it as a cushion to afford wars without raising war taxes. I'd have had a better basic economy if I could have just built improvements without spending MPs too. But as it was, I just gave up trying to do that. Because I had religiously bought buildings as soon as I could early in the game, and it ended up costing me a lot of tech levels by mid-game.
In all, what you fail to somehow realize was that I was purposefully trying to "cheat" the system with save scumming to see if you could keep competitive in any way as an Indian nation without westernizing. As I said, Military tech worked. Nothing else did.
The Westernization process seemed very daunting at first. It nearly did cripple my country, and set me back decades. Once westernized, but only with über leaders, it was a very different game. I could finally play a centuries' long game of catchup.
Each -1 stab = ~180-230 Adm = 2-4 years' worth of points. And if you keep getting those hits year-after-year, it can seem like a never-ending cycle. When I was down in the -2 to -3 world, without save-scumming and getting a lucky RNG +1 stab event, it was rapidly leading to a national nuclear meltdown. And if I was able to only focus on internal politics, that would have been one thing. As it was, wars were breaking out all over, ally calls were constantly pinging, and my meters were all red-lining.
Again, my complaint is that you can't really do much but react to the situation the game puts you in. You can't make national decisions to prepare your people for westernization. None of the national ideas soften the blow particularly. Building colleges does nothing to help or hinder the transition. I had really hoped to be able to be a more enlightened ruler. But how did I westernize? By crushing the heads of tens of thousands of rebels.
As a game mechanic, it's WAD. I just didn't find it particularly satisfying.
Again, my complaint is that you can't really do much but react to the situation the game puts you in. You can't make national decisions to prepare your people for westernization. None of the national ideas soften the blow particularly. Building colleges does nothing to help or hinder the transition. I had really hoped to be able to be a more enlightened ruler. But how did I westernize? By crushing the heads of tens of thousands of rebels.
As a game mechanic, it's WAD. I just didn't find it particularly satisfying.
The issue isn't that focusing on tech gets you higher tech, it's that "focusing on tech" means sitting there and not doing anything.
In RL comparison, you could say the government is actively encouraging invention and research by spending their points to tech instead of splitting their focus on war and buildings. Something like a nation who spend 80 percent of their budget to education and research and actively inviting geniuses since they dont have to spend their budget on military or infrastructure.
That is so wrong.
Someone in this thread said if you shoot a gun often, you get better in using it but you dont know how to make better guns.
That might be true for a soldier, but its completly wrong for a country.
Wars help you military tech way more that siting aroung and think about it. Only if you fight wars, you can see what your soldiers are lacking of and what you need to be more effifient.
If 100k soldiers fight with your guns years and years a shitload of guns will break. Soldiers will tell you why the break, what to make better. The soldiers will try to repair it in thousand of different ways, some will work surprisingly good and help you make better guns....
The same with naval tech. If you sit it a university with 100 very smart people and think about how to build the best ship but no one had ever seen the ocean.
In real life, tech was developed mostly by doing and only in second place by theory. That might change as stuff get more complex, you cant just try cold fusion at home, but in the timeframe of EU IV there is no doubt about this.
Someone in this thread said if you shoot a gun often, you get better in using it but you dont know how to make better guns.
That might be true for a soldier, but its completly wrong for a country.
Wars help you military tech way more that siting aroung and think about it. Only if you fight wars, you can see what your soldiers are lacking of and what you need to be more effifient.
If 100k soldiers fight with your guns years and years a shitload of guns will break. Soldiers will tell you why the break, what to make better. The soldiers will try to repair it in thousand of different ways, some will work surprisingly good and help you make better guns....
The same with naval tech. If you sit it a university with 100 very smart people and think about how to build the best ship but no one had ever seen the ocean.
In real life, tech was developed mostly by doing and only in second place by theory. That might change as stuff get more complex, you cant just try cold fusion at home, but in the timeframe of EU IV there is no doubt about this.
Its still not an issue, specializing in this game does not mean being ahead on technology (as you get huge negatives for being ahead, huge extra costs you can easily and should avoid). No specializing in EU4 is being able to keep level with tech with everyone, while picking up NI's in the same category, which is not a difficult task at all, unless your rushing NI's, which at times can be a good strategy, though you might end up a tech level behind, which is no big deal. I feel like a lot of people rush there ideas, and end up 4 tech levels behind then complain that there navy is terrible. Well yeah it does! you have to balance ideas and tech. Be smart, play smart, get everything when it needs to be got. It might be wise to get a tech or 2 behind as portugal to rush the first 3 colonial ideas, then after that you sit it out, re-tech with your new discounts, You're now a naval power focused on colonialism, slowly get the rest of your ideas while keeping up on tech. It's really really simple, why's everyone not getting this?
If you're level in diplo tech with you're neighbor, but they got exploration, and you got naval. You are the naval power, they are the colonial focused power. YOu're navy will be better then his, he'll be a better colonial power. But your tech's the same. That is what specialization in EU4 means. Not being 8 levels ahead on tech.
Yeah, it was a really bad system, get everything at once, move some boring sliders every 12 years for small negligible changes, the bigger and richer you get the faster you tech, snowball, world conquest as montenegro.
It's just not that fun when you can world conquest, in EU4 they've made it so you have to exploit every mechanic to be able to world conquest which is wonderful, if you're just playing the game, its highly unlikely you'll ever WC. Snowballings basicly dead, even if you blow up your economy, your tech and ability to take mass tracts of land is still limited, and coalitions and better AI also help.