UI of the game should never lie to player

[vranasm]

Yesterday in my Ironman game with Sweden I made peacedeal with Denmark where I get couple of provinces.

aggressive expansion was cited as "48.7" average (or something like that) in mouseover tooltip there was cca 7 nations cited with denmark having 97, the lowest being like 7....

I took the peace deal, 3 days later I realize that France accumulated 60 AE and Austria 50 AE... that is MORE then the lowest cited nation and THEY WERE NOT MENTIONED IN THE TOOLTIP

This absolutely unexcusable, because how can I form strategic decisions when the game LIES to ME ABOUT MY ACTIONS?

I will not discuss if I like or not like the mechanism as is, but if the UI LIES to me about my actions then it's absolutely impossible to make strategic decisions and sorry to say, this garbage has to go.

And I won't even start to talk about some actions generating AE without you even knowing.

For the record I was fine with the average of 48 and the amount of AE in denmark etc, I made "knowledgable" decision based on the risk of having in coallition the nations in the tooltip, but what I can't predict is coallition of nations that they are not even mentioned in the tooltip!

If you want to hold upto this mechanic (you as Paradox) you basically need to change the UI so player always knows who will get AE and how much, since in this way it's just a joke to make strategic decisions.

 

[Nhadala]

The amount shown is the base AE, that base AE is then modified by certain factors depending on the country.

 

[xyra]

48.7 is base AE, not average

This is then modified by several factors (religion, culture, hre, distance, relationships like alliance)

from each grouop, you'll see only one. And this is the problem: You have maybe seen burgundy with something of 60 AE and maybe bavaria with 50AE. Sadly the game doesn't tell you that this also affects austria and france and a lot more nations.

 

[vranasm]

48.7 is base AE, not average

This is then modified by several factors (religion, culture, hre, distance, relationships like alliance)

from each grouop, you'll see only one. And this is the problem: You have maybe seen burgundy with something of 60 AE and maybe bavaria with 50AE. Sadly the game doesn't tell you that this also affects austria and france and a lot more nations.

and that is what is totally wrong...

I don't mind if it's base or average or whatever... this isn't the topic of discussion...

 

[AnguyTheArcher]

Agreed. Tooltip should say exactly how much AE will be gained. I don't understand why it's not implemented.

 

[Tub]

I agree with the sentiment of the post - if the peace screen tells you you'll get a certain amount of AE with a certain nation, that's how much you ought to get. In the HRE, the AE displayed in the tooltip is doubled - but there's no way to know this without prior experience, and I'd have no idea about it for other situations. It would be nice to make it clearer.

 

[parachute]

Agreed. Tooltip should say exactly how much AE will be gained. I don't understand why it's not implemented.

Because the system is so opaque that the tooltip will be bigger than your screen.

 

[vranasm]

Because the system is so opaque that the tooltip will be bigger than your screen.

than make better screen and make it more transparent... if we are to play strategy game we should have all informations so we can form strategic decisions and not make some guessing work...

imagine EU III with BB trying to tell you you will get 2BB, but you will eventually get 4 just because...

 

[brifbates]

Because the system is so opaque that the tooltip will be bigger than your screen.

More to the point, the list of nations getting AE is often too long to fit on the screen. If I remember correctly, the tooltip shows your neighbors, allies, and rivals which is generally the most pertinent information.

 

[PAnZuRiEL]

rivals

It should show your enemies instead, or as well. It's much more important to know about the changing opinions of states that have set you as their rival than states that you set as your rival.

 

[Bibor]

I agree with the OP. IF the tooltip (mouseover) exists, it should state the *exact* AE you're going to get. It should calculate in all the respective modifiers, not state -3 and then actually generate -16. If not, then why is there a mouseover anyway? Let us just "guess" the AE based on hundreds of hours of gameplay wasted on learning trivial parts of game mechanics.

 

[Zakath]

I agree with the OP. IF the tooltip (mouseover) exists, it should state the *exact* AE you're going to get. It should calculate in all the respective modifiers, not state -3 and then actually generate -16. If not, then why is there a mouseover anyway? Let us just "guess" the AE based on hundreds of hours of gameplay wasted on learning trivial parts of game mechanics.

It states the exact AE you gain with the countries in the list, thing is it doesn't list every country in the tooltip due to the aforementioned issues with a long list of countries in a tooltip. Mostly that's fine, as you hardly care if Japan gains 0, 1 or 50 AE when you're Sweden, but it can cause issues like major European powers being "hidden" behind other countries as they share the same AE calculation. It's important to note that it is not the top X list of AE modifiers, it's the top list of _distinct_ AE calculations (and rivals/neighbours I think?). That means that you could see Portugal gaining 30 AE in the list, and think "Meh, no worries they're small", while in reality Spain also has the same modifiers (culture, religions, distance, etc)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The amount shown is the base AE, that base AE is then modified by certain factors depending on the country.

Irrelevant to OP.

from each grouop, you'll see only one. And this is the problem: You have maybe seen burgundy with something of 60 AE and maybe bavaria with 50AE. Sadly the game doesn't tell you that this also affects austria and france and a lot more nations.

In other words, OP is correct to point out that the tooltip inaccurately represents a critical feature.

Because the system is so opaque that the tooltip will be bigger than your screen.

Even showing AE per religious/culture group would be a better representation than this, where undisplayed countries get huge AE.

More to the point, the list of nations getting AE is often too long to fit on the screen. If I remember correctly, the tooltip shows your neighbors, allies, and rivals which is generally the most pertinent information.

In the OP, he is accruing 4x more AE than needed to form a coalition with two of Europe's strongest powers, and it they aren't even mentioned in the tooltip whatsoever. If it works as xyra says, then your assertion that it generally shows the "most pertinent information" is asinine.

This is far from the only time the UI lies to the player. Between the manpower UI bug, claim throne being utterly opaque, allies displaying "yes, we will join your war" and then not honoring CTA, inaccurate tooltip displays in some vassal deals, the human attitude icon, and this there are a ton of UI problems that directly lie to the player, some of them major.

 

[arthurs towel]

Hmm, I hadn't noticed any weirdness, but maybe there is. Perhaps this should be toggleable, just like the messages can be. The message display defaults to 'interesting countries' and does a halfway decent job usually of picking them for you. That said you can opt to add/ subtract from that list. For example as Prussia I really really care what the electors have going on, after all I want to retain emperor, so they should be there. My allies matter greatly. My enemies and rivals usually matter, though Bohemia you are a bug waiting to be stomped. I'm also interested in Sweden and Russia, as they could make life very difficult for me if they joined forces. So my ideal setting is something like allies, enemies, rivals, some conditional (like electors), and great powers (that I share a continent with). If that was all it showed, that be good for most cases. But I really would prefer if it used the same menu for interesting countries that messages use, that way I can customize. So then if I care what Spain thinks, I can find out.