Ways to prevent or slow the game becoming too easy.

[Sexual Velociraptor]

You know how it is. No matter how small you start, eventually you hit a point where the AI won't declare on you and you can't lose unless you make a MASSIVE mistake. (Like a massive HRE coalition or something.)

I feel like to prevent the game from getting super easy you should be able to warn people of any size, and the AI should do it frequently to expanding nations.

I think AE is a problem as it is now, because the whole world will pull an ostrich and stick their heads in the sand while you grow year after year without a second of peace if you're careful-ish on managing it.

Secondly I think that larger empires should face problems.

I'd like to see autonomy scale over distance from capital, so rather than a flat 75% overseas it goes from 0 to 75 slowly, and a decent area around your capital can sit at 0.

To offset this you could add extra diplo relations with techs, so you can create subject nations or vassals to handle the land more efficiently. In this way a WC would still be possible, although hopefully much harder.

Lastly consider making AE not decay while in an offensive war, because seeing people decide I'm not that aggressive and leave coalitions against me when I'm in 3 wars with 3 nations on the other side of my empire is silly.

I'm sure these ideas could use some tweaking and balancing. If something doesn't make sense let me know and when I wake up and am not so tired I'll try and figure out what I messed up.

Otherwise let me know what you think.

 

[tobias.mb]

Secondly I think that larger empires should face problems.

+1 Maybe add some "minor" desasters? Nothing too big to disencourage expansion altogether though.
The Autonomy by distance sounds good but needs tweeking. It should also depend on continent, region and culture (and maybe other factors). Austria should get less autonomy (if any) in northern Germany than in southern greece for example.
As for AE; Maybe it could inversely scale with relative realm size (big nations get more ae against smaller ones). Especially the distance modifier on AE should be influenced by this (So at a certain distance nations only care about the actions of big nations). France shouldn't care about one HRE OPM annexing another. But England taking a Province in the Netherlands is a concern to them.
And Württemberg should feel a lot more threatened by France taking Alsace than from Baden taking it.

 

[Sexual Velociraptor]

Yeah. The fact is that the most ahistorical part of the game is how little internal conflict there is. So many giant nations fell to internal issues rather than external ones.

The problem of course is that being super historical here would be bad for gameplay. Having your empire torn apart via events mostly out of your control would be a horrible feeling, no matter how realistic it would be.

I'm trying to think of ways to increase difficulty so the game doesn't become microsoft paint by 1600 without discouraging expansion or causing people to rage quit via internal combustion of their empire.

 

[AmbroStoics]

If think a big part of it is that there is very little to do outside of warring. I hope common sense will fix some of this and make it fun to be at peace too.

 

[grommile]

To offset this you could add extra diplo relations with techs, so you can create subject nations or vassals to handle the land more efficiently. In this way a WC would still be possible, although hopefully much harder.

As far as I can tell, the only thing that a province owned by a vassal generates more efficiently for you than a province you own at 75% LA is military force. Remember, vassals (by default) only give you a slice of their tax income.

I mean, in an Ottomans game I would typically have huge swathes of land uphill of 40% LA (because Despotic Monarchy has no peacetime LA reduction and its bonuses are too useful to sacrifice until Absolute Monarchy comes along) without really caring.

 

[Sexual Velociraptor]

As far as I can tell, the only thing that a province owned by a vassal generates more efficiently for you than a province you own at 75% LA is military force. Remember, vassals (by default) only give you a slice of their tax income.

I mean, in an Ottomans game I would typically have huge swathes of land uphill of 40% LA (because Despotic Monarchy has no peacetime LA reduction and its bonuses are too useful to sacrifice until Absolute Monarchy comes along) without really caring.

I mean that the land is more useful to them, and where you'd get 10 force limit at 75% autonomy they'll have 40+.

You could still keep the land though and that's the point. I'm not suggesting making expanding a bad idea or not beneficial. I want it to be much harder to get to the point where you don't need to check ledger or think before declaring war.