What do you think could be done against post-1600s snowballing?

[durbal]

How many have you done though? The past few threads with the same complaints were all made by people who barely understand the game. Since you're making an assumption about all WCs it'd be nice to know what kind of experience you're speaking from.

Wait, who said you understand the game? Why is it assumed that if you aren't a Twitch streamer that you must not know the game?

The WC crowd on these forums is a strange militant minority. Great, you enjoy your playstyle. A lot of others don't. It's a common complaint on these forums, and I personally find the early game much more interesting than late game, even if my games end up as WC. I'd bet most WC players would agree with my sentiment as well.

I don't even mind blobbing itself as a game mechanic. I just wish there were more options in terms of politics and diplomacy and using existing game systems (supporting rebels, naval wars, gunboat diplomacy, economic warfare, etc.) rather than just declare war - conquer - repeat. (And don't tell me there's so much more to it -- hurr durr gotta manage AE, gotta culture switch and other nonsense-- because none of that is difficult which is why it ends up playing like a script in most games. There needs to be more to keep the game interesting.)

 

[Cataphract887]

The WC crowd on these forums is a strange militant minority. Great, you enjoy your playstyle. A lot of others don't. It's a common complaint on these forums, and I personally find the early game much more interesting than late game, even if my games end up as WC. I'd bet most WC players would agree with my sentiment as well.

In the end these threads always look like the fun police cracking down on other people enjoying playing the game their own way. People who dont WC trying to prevent WC, and people who play tall suggesting ways to prevent wide play from being successful. The suggestions revolve around preventing other people from playing the way they do, rather than adding actual interesting mechanics or strategy decisions.

 

[Ketilsen]

I think the discussion in this thread is confusing two issues:
1) after a certain point (usually 1600s-ish) the player is top dog, there are no relevant threats, and there's nothing much left to do but blob away, which is boring; and
2) going from there to a full World Conquest is a serious challenge that is far from trivial.

I don't really think these are related at all. The first problem is a real one: once you get the hang of the game mechanics (fair enough, that may take a few hundred hours of gametime), you reach that point in the early 1600's, and the last half of the game's timeline never gets touched because going on from there is boring. Something needs to be done about it, and there's been some good suggestions here for internal "hard to keep big empires stable/unified" mechanics, which is pretty much the biggest place where the game mechanics deviate from historical dynamics anyway. Keep going, this is worth talking about.

The second issue isn't really going to change depending on what's done about the first issue. I'm not the WC'ing kind of player, but I know they thrive on the challenge of mastering the game mechanics (whatever they are), and I can't really see that making the challenge harder in whatever way is going to deter them from a) going for it, or b) enjoying it. After all, the fact that blobbing over everything fast enough is hard, doesn't change the fact that blobbing is in itself boring, so I can't really see that the complaints here about "WC is going to get boring" are particularly relevant to the thread topic.

 

[The-Doc]

The game drastically underrates the difficulty in administering any sized government. If anything autonomy and estate size demands should increase as country size does, and potential instability should too. Trying to rule from Constantinople to Baghdad in the 16th century should not be anything like running Switzerland. Perhaps autonomy growth and corruption should occur naturally and only be combated by particularly adept governments and advancements in tech and ideas.

The great struggle for most governments in this period was being able to raise funds and maintain any kind of standing army, these were in no way guaranteed functions. In Eu4, revenue and standing forces are a constant that never really diminish. You don't see the inability to maintain garrisons, or how a navy could be maintained in one generation and go to rot in the next. Instead you perfectly control a country and grow in power with every step, barring some massive military defeat or bad events.

 

[StefanFan]

The game drastically underrates the difficulty in administering any sized government. If anything autonomy and estate size demands should increase as country size does, and potential instability should too. Trying to rule from Constantinople to Baghdad in the 16th century should not be anything like running Switzerland. Perhaps autonomy growth and corruption should occur naturally and only be combated by particularly adept governments and advancements in tech and ideas.

The great struggle for most governments in this period was being able to raise funds and maintain any kind of standing army, these were in no way guaranteed functions. In Eu4, revenue and standing forces are a constant that never really diminish. You don't see the inability to maintain garrisons, or how a navy could be maintained in one generation and go to rot in the next. Instead you perfectly control a country and grow in power with every step, barring some massive military defeat or bad events.

I think that you put it wrong. Not the distance is the issue, but the cultural differences. Distance is a secondary issue IF and only if there are cultural differences.

EDIT: A good example is the USA. Huge land, huge country, and since at the beginning it was an amalgamation of cultures, it worked out fine, they don't need to repress minority ethnic groups, forbid rights and send to prison the "bad" people. Other large countries need to do that even now, because of cultural issues.

 

[bbqftw]

All these suggestions about rebels simply shift certain ideas from "you should strongly pick this" to "you should 100% pick this" (e.g. liberation combo, potentially also explohumanist required for non NI ToH countries).

Anyways lets go over interesting strategic situations for what blobbing offers that no other playstyle really can:

With new 1.24 patch there is a bug/feature where Ming will break tributary with you seemingly randomly (seems like high dev influences this but a causal factor has not been identified, in any case its not in patch notes like classic paradox). This tends to mean that the traditional way of eating the tributary network from the inside is gone, you have to fight / circumvent Ming to deal with the tributary instead of just ignoring it.

So I am confronted with situation where eating one tributary with 100 dev = permanent coalition range from the other Theravada guy that shares culture group with him, rest of the Buddhists I have allied. Of course it is a big pain having a Ming tributary in perma-coalition range especially with others in outraged mode, which means with new 1.24 diplo AI you are forced to evaluate actions like "Ming allies your other 2 potential coalition members" and how you will play against that. Or the potential of Ottomans slapping a guarantee on potential coalition member. Or "how many diplo slots do I run over cap to maximize my AE shielding / ability to bleed Ming's mandate". Things like allying people that border Ming just so you can get dragged in defensive war and thus have a timing window to attack his tributaries freely also become viable plays. Evaluating even no-CBing certain tributaries because you can call more people into war as a result.

You will never get to make these decisions in anything less than a world conquest, because frankly if you're not playing against the clock, almost every sub-WC achievement can be accomplished without any sense of pacing lategame especially since you can pick ideas that would be considered strongly suboptimal in a WC (mostly mil ideas). We make jokes that pre-1600 in WC doesn't matter, but having the right diplo / income setup absolutely does.

 

[Northernwwater]

Autonomy should be more important and dangerous.

For starters, autonomy should start rising automatically unless you have a fort or an army (or maybe some buildings like courthouses) nearby, requiring you to crack down on them (and thus generating unrest) if you want the province to stay under your control. (stuff like different religion, different culture, etc. would accelerate this process)

If a province reaches 100% autonomy it should have a chance to just slip out of your grasp, becoming independent without any actual fighting.

I like this idea a lot.

 

[Northernwwater]

But the main thing I'd like to see are AIs that are more interested in containing powers that look like they might become regional hegemons. Real nations that got very powerful (most notably, Spain, then France, and to some extent Great Britian) weren't limited in their expansion by rebel spam, but by fighting long expensive inconclusive wars against coalitions determined to stop them. That's what I'd like to see more of.

I agree 100% with your core idea, but I still think there is room for penalization type pressures against blobbing. For example, Over a certain power limit rebels would not just be more numerous, and hence tedious, but would gain independence much more easily. The idea being that your blob would become much more fragile and disintegrate much more easily. The blobber would have to reconquer what they have already conquered.

 

[Northernwwater]

I don't even mind blobbing itself as a game mechanic. I just wish there were more options in terms of politics and diplomacy and using existing game systems (supporting rebels, naval wars, gunboat diplomacy, economic warfare, etc.) rather than just declare war - conquer - repeat. (And don't tell me there's so much more to it -- hurr durr gotta manage AE, gotta culture switch and other nonsense-- because none of that is difficult which is why it ends up playing like a script in most games. There needs to be more to keep the game interesting.)

Yes!

 

[bbqftw]

Wait, who said you understand the game? Why is it assumed that if you aren't a Twitch streamer that you must not know the game?

The WC crowd on these forums is a strange militant minority. Great, you enjoy your playstyle. A lot of others don't. It's a common complaint on these forums, and I personally find the early game much more interesting than late game, even if my games end up as WC. I'd bet most WC players would agree with my sentiment as well.

I don't even mind blobbing itself as a game mechanic. I just wish there were more options in terms of politics and diplomacy and using existing game systems (supporting rebels, naval wars, gunboat diplomacy, economic warfare, etc.) rather than just declare war - conquer - repeat. (And don't tell me there's so much more to it -- hurr durr gotta manage AE, gotta culture switch and other nonsense-- because none of that is difficult which is why it ends up playing like a script in most games. There needs to be more to keep the game interesting.)

it is difficult enough that masters like florry and atwix will chain bankrupt to stay afloat which are situations that a non blobbing player will never consider.

Coalition management isn't trivial at all especially in Sunni heavy start areas.

Scripts, c'mon. You are normally a smarter poster than this (I mean ignorant RPcrowd always will say what they say, but I did expect more from you..)

 

[raikaria]

The problem is that some of the most realistic and reasonable ways would be frustrating for the player:
- having more and more nations band together against you
- having more and more internal difficulties.

I honestly think perhaps the best way in terms of "feel" would just be to have extreme diminishing returns. (There are slight ones now in that OPMs get a significant boost, but they don't keep going past that.) For example, if a nation 2x the size only had 1.2x the troops and money, then you would never really reach "complete runaway" size... 16x the size would mean 2x the power, and 256x the size would mean about 4x the power.

We kinda do have that; states.

 

[Northernwwater]

it is difficult enough that masters like florry and atwix will chain bankrupt to stay afloat which are situations that a non blobbing player will never consider.

What is difficult about playing the debt game?

 

[Mutagen_Prime]

I just hope EU5 reintegrates the noble hierachy from CK2. Then we have a perfectly functional, transparent, intuitive anti-blobbing mechanism that the player can sink their teeth into. If every piece of conquered territory the player acquires needs to be administered by a noble with his own agenda and distance-relative autonomy levels like real life, suddenly the middle and late game is made much more interesting and empire-wide distintegration is an actual possibility if the player doesn't put significant effort in to reign in the noble class.

 

[Northernwwater]

A mega power, at least in the time periods this game covers, should have almost insurmountable pressure from both internal and external factors pulling toward disintegration.

 

[grommile]

I just hope EU5 reintegrates the noble hierachy from CK2.

When I want to play CK2, I bloody well play CK2.

 

[bbqftw]

What is difficult about playing the debt game?

it isn't cost free, and often a heavily invested war that doesn't produce requisite return is a quick trip to bankruptcy. This isn't unsurvivable but its certainly not a first resort.

Just because those aforementioned players make it looks easy doesn't mean it is. Sure, if you have a pulse you can do TTM (and if you can't why is your opinion on game mechanic valid?), but the bar is raised above that for doing interesting things in game nowadays.

 

[inreadible]

Autonomy should be more important and dangerous.

For starters, autonomy should start rising automatically unless you have a fort or an army (or maybe some buildings like courthouses) nearby, requiring you to crack down on them (and thus generating unrest) if you want the province to stay under your control. (stuff like different religion, different culture, etc. would accelerate this process)

If a province reaches 100% autonomy it should have a chance to just slip out of your grasp, becoming independent without any actual fighting.

Nice, I can already see AI nations' recently conquered provinces flipping all around because of them raising autonomy to 100% right after the war.

 

[Northernwwater]

it isn't cost free, and often a heavily invested war that doesn't produce requisite return is a quick trip to bankruptcy. This isn't unsurvivable but its certainly not a first resort.

It's hard because it's not cost free? Really? It's hard because you may go bankrupt? Really? Playing the debt game is just as scripted as any WC tactic. It's always the same. Money is obtained through an endless cycle of taking development and ducats. Debt is just a matter of button clicking sequence. Interest is just another cost, like forts, and which in the aggressive WC versions basically replaces forts.

Just because those aforementioned players make it looks easy doesn't mean it is. Sure, if you have a pulse you can do TTM (and if you can't why is your opinion on game mechanic valid?), but the bar is raised above that for doing interesting things in game nowadays.

lol ... yes no one except an elite few can talk intelligently about game mechanics.

 

[bly08]

Wait, who said you understand the game? Why is it assumed that if you aren't a Twitch streamer that you must not know the game?

The WC crowd on these forums is a strange militant minority. Great, you enjoy your playstyle. A lot of others don't. It's a common complaint on these forums, and I personally find the early game much more interesting than late game, even if my games end up as WC. I'd bet most WC players would agree with my sentiment as well.

I don't even mind blobbing itself as a game mechanic. I just wish there were more options in terms of politics and diplomacy and using existing game systems (supporting rebels, naval wars, gunboat diplomacy, economic warfare, etc.) rather than just declare war - conquer - repeat. (And don't tell me there's so much more to it -- hurr durr gotta manage AE, gotta culture switch and other nonsense-- because none of that is difficult which is why it ends up playing like a script in most games. There needs to be more to keep the game interesting.)

I assumed from the sentence "Any player who has ever attempted a World Conquest can tell you how boring blobbing mindlessly is. And this is still the case even if you're playing on the higher difficulties, once you come over the initial hurdle, nothing can stop you" that the OP lacks understanding of the very thing he's trying to fix.

Players are welcome to not expand fter mid game if they find blobbing boring. Yet instead of doing so, multiple threads are made every week that try to impose arbitrary restrictions on others who choose to do otherwise. Most of those suggestions do nothing to prevent players from wanting to expand and instead only makes WCs more tedious. I find this just a bit annoying, along with ignorant assumptions such as WCs are easy, or that WCs only consist of mindless blobbing, or that all WCs are the same, etc, especially from players with no experience and are, to put it crudely, talking out of their asses.

 

[bly08]

It's hard because it's not cost free? Really? It's hard because you may go bankrupt? Really? Playing the debt game is just as scripted as any WC tactic. It's always the same. Money is obtained through an endless cycle of taking development and ducats. Debt is just a matter of button clicking sequence. Interest is just another cost, like forts, and which in the aggressive WC versions basically replaces forts.


lol ... yes no one except an elite few can talk intelligently about game mechanics.

What do you find difficult about this game?