We had 5 dev diarys already and not one mentioned fixing the current problems of the game

[holyvigil]

I feel corruption is ok. It could be more in depth rather than a static modifier but it is ok.

The thing I really don't like about corruption is if you play in TC land you are penalized when historically your geographic location had nothing to do with how corrupt you are.

USA, Japan, and others should not be penalized in their corruption limit because they don't have their capital in Europe.

 

[rimworld inbox]

Let's debunk this. There has never to this day been a reasonable debate over corruption changes. The supposed "support" for the new changes comes entirely from people who are upset that the person is attacking the game developers, and/or from people who admittedly never encounter it. You may be upset at the open hostility many players have let loose over this issue, but understand the main reason why these players might be so angry: they're being told something is fine from people who have an entirely uninformed opinion.

Every game that in this and neighboring genres has to answer the question of how will expansion be penalized. The two theoretical extreme positions to the answer are:
Double the land, double the strength
Additional land is never worth it

Now for obvious reasons either of these extremes is bad. In the first situation you quickly snowball out of control, and the game becomes trivial after a war or two. On the other hand, additional land never being worth it kills the motivation to expand, which is the main motivation behind the game. Even small indie studios understand this and pick some kind of middleground option usually incurring temporary penalties, such that the land acquisition isn't worth it in the short-term, and acquiring too much of these short-term penalties can stall your country entirely.

EU4 5 years after release has suddenly gone with the 2nd option. There's a number of states/territories "X" that once you exceed it you receive an unnegotiable penalty that makes the addition of all territory after X bad. The cost you pay to buy down the corruption is always more than the profit from the territory. This isn't because of some strategic "you took land you weren't supposed too lulz". It happens with any land after you have X states. This is quite possibly the most embarrassingly bad gameplay decision PDX as a company has ever made, on any game. It's a completely asinine answer to a question that many companies, PDX included, have already found better solutions to for the past 20 years. It's the equivalent to DDRJake making a dev diary claiming to have reinvented the wheel and the new shape is square.

Yes there are "loopholes" such that the above reasoning isn't absolute. Currently that loophole is to either rush TC land or vassal storm. The two strategies that were already the most OP in the game now become mandatory. It's also worth noting there is actually an upper bound # of territories "Y" where additional land suddenly, mysteriously, no longer has an additional corruption penalty. This completely undermines whatever the supposed reasoning behind the corruption penalty was to begin with. It also means there is a number of territories, "Z" such that finally you've made a long-term profit on states acquired after X. The difficulty is ofc getting to this Z value. Right now the way to afford it is TCs. You haven't added "strategic decision making" in expansion routes, it's been railroaded to one single choice. New capital restrictions make the difference between Europeans and non-Europeans quite huge and yet based on a technicality. It also leads to fully bizarre issues where most Asians/Africans should prioritize an exodus ASAP, do some kind of trickery, or sit there and not do anything for 50 years until they can colonize Australia.

this is the most clear explanation of the issue that I've seen.

 

[tip001]

How about instead of tantruming you learn a strategy to deal with it? Considering you have over 10k hours you should be able to do that much, yes?

As someone who has much less hours in the game, I really hate it when people like you claim to be speaking for people like me. I do not get bored in the slightest playing EU IV, and the issues I have with the game are not the false "issue" of religious conversions costing money, but more practical matters such as the infinite amount of mercs as you get past 1650 or the inevitable stratification of alliances after 1650. EU IV has a major issue of the mid-late to late game being extremely insufferable. I could care less about religion, half the Great Powers are in two alliances and they don't give a crap about casualties because mercs are the meta.

Suggesting somebody has a tantrum is not a very positive way to start your message. He clearly showed the reason why he was upset about that specific situation.
At the most you can debate if this was needed for that situation.
He is also not claiming to speak for you. He is just upset about the direction the designers of the game take lately. It could well be you are not hit by these issues as you have a totally different play-style but that doesn't mean his arguments for bad design ar not valid in many other play-styles.
And if you talk about strategy he is the probably the best guy you want to ask advise, even for your own play-style.

So hope you see the one doesn't have to conflict with the other

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

How about instead of tantruming you learn a strategy to deal with it? Considering you have over 10k hours you should be able to do that much, yes?

As someone who has much less hours in the game, I really hate it when people like you claim to be speaking for people like me. I do not get bored in the slightest playing EU IV, and the issues I have with the game are not the false "issue" of religious conversions costing money, but more practical matters such as the infinite amount of mercs as you get past 1650 or the inevitable stratification of alliances after 1650. EU IV has a major issue of the mid-late to late game being extremely insufferable. I could care less about religion, half the Great Powers are in two alliances and they don't give a crap about casualties because mercs are the meta.

That was really funny as I used the 1st person, that is only my opinion based on my personal experience and also wrt to what I read in these forums and viwer opinions during my streams. But yeah I really cant strategize around the high level changes of 1.26 and above, sad but true.

 

[WeissRaben]

And then what should we, the players, do in a game that has nothing to offer besides "blobbing"?

Lobby for something else to do but blobbing, which is pretty much the reason I stopped playing. It's not a Grand Strategy Game - it's Happy Happy Hippo in the Early Modern Era. Barely worth playing.

 

[I like wars and maps]

How about instead of tantruming you learn a strategy to deal with it? Considering you have over 10k hours you should be able to do that much, yes?

As someone who has much less hours in the game, I really hate it when people like you claim to be speaking for people like me. I do not get bored in the slightest playing EU IV, and the issues I have with the game are not the false "issue" of religious conversions costing money, but more practical matters such as the infinite amount of mercs as you get past 1650 or the inevitable stratification of alliances after 1650. EU IV has a major issue of the mid-late to late game being extremely insufferable. I could care less about religion, half the Great Powers are in two alliances and they don't give a crap about casualties because mercs are the meta.

This is the most ironic sentence I have read in this thread. You claim he should be the one having to deal new strategies countering corruption and religious conversion costs wich both can´t be prevented unless you don´t play the game while at the same time say that a problem players like him have found solutions too (2 great powers allying) is the bigger problem.

 

[rimworld inbox]

The conversion problem has a solution but its so asinine that the immersion crowd will no doubt complain about it too.

Hint: There's a way to get missionaries to work for a huge discount and at extremely rapid speed. Its like non DV religious ideas, but actually not worthless.

 

[Casko]

So you are a small and backward tribe, and you were not able to convert your population.

Where's the issue?

People been complaining that religious conversion was too easy for years.
It gets made harder.
People complain it's too hard.

My main issue is not that its hard, not that its bad in theory. but the fact that AI can't handle it. And it literally breaks the AI conversion, which can lead AI to an endless cycle of fail due to things such as AI Emperor Austria being stuck at 0 religious unity.
And I believe, or think that atleast part of the complains about the new religious changes is from players like me who can't help but to shake our head while watching AI fail harder than ever.

 

[Twoflower]

Let's debunk this. There has never to this day been a reasonable debate over corruption changes. The supposed "support" for the new changes comes entirely from people who are upset that the person is attacking the game developers, and/or from people who admittedly never encounter it. You may be upset at the open hostility many players have let loose over this issue, but understand the main reason why these players might be so angry: they're being told something is fine from people who have an entirely uninformed opinion.

Wow. I'm not sure if I should be more amazed by the sheer amount of arrogance and lack of manners or the fact that eight people seem to think that this is a jolly fine way to post. Either way, there doesn't seem to be a point in continuing to participate in this discussion. Reflexively calling a dissenting opinion "uninformed" and claiming fanboyism is an excellent way of creating a filter bubble where you can be sure that everyone agrees with you.

 

[maxirage]

I want to point out that End-Game tags are hated because they're another case of treating the symptom instead of the cause, just like the capital movement restriction. The problem isn't that a country can form another country, it's actually the ability to so easily change your primary culture. Primarily culture swapping was nearly nonexistent in history, yet in-game it's trivial and simply requires changing your internal administration and paying some mana. The Ottomans couldn't just conquer Greece and say "we're Greek now" (even though historically they claimed to be) and then form Greece. In-game they are prevented from doing to due to the Ottomans being a super-special country which cannot change, while is silly and like I mentioned is treating the symptom instead of the cause. In reality the issue was that they were still clearly Turkish. The most historical solution would be like Vicky 2, where your cultures are set in stone and don't change outside of events. That would probably upset most players, so you could set a middle-ground and go for the old culture swap condition, which takes into account all the land that you own.

Though right now cultures overall are a mess. The devs don't seem to have an understanding of how countries in the new world worked, or actively ignored it in order to push the new expel minorities DLC feature. Colonial countries went from being hyper-cleansers which quickly homogenized everything they owned, to hyper-tolerant utopias where religion and culture are of no importance. What the heck was that?

 

[rimworld inbox]

Its not really arrogance.

Here is an example.

I basically don't play multiplayer. Thus when discussing the game in multiplayer contexts with people with thousands of hours more experience than me in those environments, I approach with the assumption that I am highly likely wrong.

My assumptions about game states will often not reflect reality. My opinions about what is optimal and efficient will likely be incorrect. My understanding of key mechanics will almost certainly be worse.

If I go into such environments with certainty in my arguments, would you be surprised if others basically treated me as the eu4 equivalent of a flat earther?

Unsurprisingly the same applies to other settings of eu4.

 

[gigau]

Laides and gents, please remember that there are different ways of playing, some you might not agree with, but everyone is free to one's opinion.

So please respect other people's opinion and be nice.

 

[bly08]

Maybe the devs aren't talking about it because they know that, to put it mildly, there isn't really a consensus about the corruption changes being a problem.
Some people are very clear and vocal about their intense dislike of the corruption changes, others like them, some aren't really affected by them in their playstyle at all. Putting it up for discussion in a dev diary right now would just trigger a very heated and bitter discussion and probably not result in anything productive.

I remember you made a suggestion thread asking for IA gain via adding provinces to be nerfed because it suddenly became ridiculously OP after someone spent hundreds of hours crafting and executing a fast revoke strategy based on the mechanic. My advice would to stop worrying so much about edge cases and enjoying the game for yourself. Your immersion of the game should come from your own experience, not the AARs of other players.

 

[bly08]

Raise your hand if you regularly end with 15k development and think the corruption change is good for the game.

 

[gronak]

The expulsion of minorities feature is awful; it is so unrealistic. Look at this:

Castillians in Austria. North Africa mostly Portuguese. Consistent Castilian Sicily. I understand that it can be fun to do for a player, but it makes no sense at all - people weren't shipped out of a province entirely to allow for another people group to become the majority. I get that it is to make CN's more diverse, but it really shouldn't convert the province afterwards.

Take the 'Highlanders' for example. Yes, some were shipped off to America, but they still remained the majority in the province after.

Really expelling minorities should cost more money to do, rather than dip points, colonise faster due to the extra people being sent away, then the province in the new world takes that culture/religion. The reason it would cost more money is that historically when the highlanders were sent away they would get paid to do so, with their transport costs covered for them. It would be fair to then make the province discounted for converting the religion or culture - it makes sense as there are less people there to oppose it, this also would mean that Spain isn't 100% Castillian, or Britain 100% English.

 

[Murrax9]

Right now the problems with the game for me are currently:

Corruption needs some change (Not much, just a few tweaks to balance)

Trade companies need to be changed or made so that they cannot be exploited

Converting provinces needs a lot of work. Right now it's messy and not fun. I know some people say (It's hard now just get good and deal with it) but the problem is it's expensive. It should provide issues to deal with but shouldn't be so expensive that it's impossible. I think it should be more like colonizing, with some provinces being more aggressive than others.

Estates (They were just a mistake in the first place and now we are stuck with them.) They need a total overhaul

The HRE is too simplistic and for being one of the most important places in the world at that time it needs to change and be fun for people not named Von Habsburg

Catholicism is just bad for anyone outside of Spain, Portugal and Austria (Hey I made a full post about that! https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/catholicism-features-suggestion.1165233/ )

Why is the custom nation tag switch exploit still a thing? Why hasn't it been fixed yet? People are still getting around this and are earning achievements by using overpowered immortal 6/6/6 rulers at the start of the game with insane ideas.


It's not too bad, but they need fixing. (of course there are more problems, but these are the ones that I have a problem with) Give them time, they are working on it. Just be glad you are getting one good DLC this year and not 7 bad ones that give us even more problems.

 

[Had a dad]

Posts deleted, infractions handed out. When a moderator posts a warning, do heed it

 

[tafsiwerd]

I meant what I said. Think critically about why it would be that the OP got 33 agrees and 44 disagrees while my post buried on the 2nd page got 16 agrees and 2 disagrees. As arrogant as I supposedly am, I doubt it was because I'm just an amazing poster. I would suggest it instead supports what I claimed. A lot of people visited purely to defend the devs from a hostile post, but they didn't care too much about the actual corruption issue and were elsewhere by the 2nd page. I would also say that I've seen a dozen or so of these threads and have seen plenty of people admit to not actually being affected by corruption. On the other hand, I've never seen anyone even dubiously claim to both regularly hit the corruption cap and be a fan of it. While it's true that opinions on the issue aren't unanimous, that doesn't mean that the issue is debatable. In all the threads on this issue there's never been a debate. Many arguments have been made about the problems with corruption, yet I haven't seen a single response addressing these specific arguments. A lot of people will post short opinions without any support and without replying to existing discussion. I get it, it's the internet, but that's not a debate or even a discussion. The most notorious one liner of them all that we've seen is of the form "corruption stops mindless blobbing". That sentiment doubly betrays the poster. It reveals both that they've never encountered the corruption cap and that they haven't read the prior discussion. Otherwise they'd know that quite the opposite is reality: in the current iteration corruption railroads you to TCs, meaning blobbing has never been so mindless. I welcome any honest response to any of the arguments put forth against corruption, some of which I've restated in the spoiler.

Spoiler: Corruption

The main problem is that it's designed to be an unnegotiable cap on expansion (ignoring loopholes like TCs and vassals for now). How to deal with expansion is hardly a new question in the genre, but a natural consensus was to throw up some kind of short to mid-term costs associated with the acquisition of new territory such that you can grow but not snowball too quickly. We already have AE, OE and unrest mechanics for this. These are very well integrated mechanics with dozens of ways the player can attempt to minimize or deal with their adverse effects. The penalties do get increasingly dire but are both temporary and not an absolute cap. Corruption is completely different. Once you hit X number of states any additional states are hit with a penalty that either drains their autonomy and monarch power, or as most choose, drains their bank account. This cost greatly exceeds whatever benefit you'd get from the new province even decades after the fact. You should no longer conquer new lands. Most players are unsurprisingly not happy to be locked out of something as pivotal to the game as conquest. It runs in the face of the rest of the design of the game. I mean consider how ironic it is that this can happen a little before or around the time Absolutism becomes a thing, the mechanic that lets you conquer even more land faster. It also largely obsoletes AE/OE/unrest as you can expand cautiously enough that those have a minimal impact and still run into the corruption cap. So we've replaced longstanding well integrated mechanics with a hard expansion cap 5 years into game development.

There is of course a way around the cap and that is to conquer TC land. This means the game has now been heavily railroaded that the midgame of every campaign has to be to conquer TC land, mainly SEA. That's boring. And it's laughable since TCs were already the best place to conquer prior to the TC DLC and prior to corruption forcing the issue. Several people have proposed eliminating the TC loophole, but you can't forget that as bad as a forced railroad is, it's not as bad as your campaign essentially ending because you can't conquer any more land.

There are also many smaller issues with corruption. From an immersion standpoint it's incredibly weird to me that conquering lots of land leads to a decrease in monarch power but on the plus side, less unrest. Bizarre. Also the penalty you can get from corruption is capped, which means once you hit Y number of states you only take the normal expansion penalties. This undermines whatever "but big countries become harder to manage" rationale sits behind the feature. Instead, countries between X and Y states take an obscenely large penalty for acquiring new land that is mysteriously completely absent for countries with < X or > Y number of states. Another thing is the border gore. I recently played a Poland game, no TCs, limited vassals to test the corruption restraints. My country looked like swiss cheese as a natural result of trying to maximize high dev states under my control. There was also a lot of tedium swapping back and forth between "states view". Even if all loopholes were removed, you'd find the game very railroaded in that you'd conquer the same high dev areas over and over again. But what's really damning about this is that it undermines many countries' natural expansion path and mission trees. They've undermined their own DLC/IPs. The very last thing Russia should ever do is colonize Siberia. Why would GB want to take tiny low dev Gibraltar? And colonizing Greenland? lolol.

 

[Zelius]

I meant what I said. Think critically about why it would be that the OP got 33 agrees and 44 disagrees while my post buried on the 2nd page got 16 agrees and 2 disagrees. As arrogant as I supposedly am, I doubt it was because I'm just an amazing poster. I would suggest it instead supports what I claimed. A lot of people visited purely to defend the devs from a hostile post, but they didn't care too much about the actual corruption issue and were elsewhere by the 2nd page.

Really? I honestly thought your post was much better than the OP, which only mentions the issue of "You know wich [sic] problems I´m talking about the corruption changes", makes two cryptic comparisons to games of other genres and just slams the devs for not having any coherent design. In fact, nothing constructive is written.

I don't think anything has ever come of analysing the red and green marks too deeply, anyway. Best to just ignore it. It seems clear to me that the reason polls are heavily restricted / de facto banned is that posters would continue to refer to poll results ad nauseum, making increasingly wild deductions about their perceived supporters and opponents.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

The most notorious one liner of them all that we've seen is of the form "corruption stops mindless blobbing". That sentiment doubly betrays the poster. It reveals both that they've never encountered the corruption cap and that they haven't read the prior discussion. Otherwise they'd know that quite the opposite is reality: in the current iteration corruption railroads you to TCs, meaning blobbing has never been so mindless.

That is one of the reasons why I´ve been saying that a brain is no longer a requirement to play EU IV despite the game director saying "we want our games to be an intellectually stimulating experience"; the fact that the game as never been this dumb speaks volumes about their true intent and/or ability to understand their own game. TBH I can’t wait for the changes to the mercenary system if the pattern holds those should also be very "stimulating".