When fighting tag-switching, Do it right.

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Piotrzeci

Complaining is my hobby
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May 27, 2017
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End Game Tags. Do they make sense historically? Maybe.
Does it solve the issue with ahistorical tag switches? Partially.
When I first looked at them it seemed to be a list of tags, that are limited in their ability to form other nations. Instead of adding 20 times "Tag can't be XXX" for every decision, they would be stored in other file, with their exceptions next to them.
But it rises problems already.
Why isn't Prussia an EGT (End Game Tag)? Should they be able to form anything else than Germany/HRE/Roman Empire? Add to list.
Why isn't Aragon an EGT? Should they be able to form anything else than Spain/HRE/Roman Empire? Add to list.
And so on.
Which leads to a conclusion, shouldn't we limit all countries to only the possible historical tags for them? Let's say Poland, they should be able to form HRE/Roman Empire/PLC and nothing else. But it goes against the very thing EGT could solve - limiting the amount of necessary requirements put into decisions and the option to tweak them all at once.
Can we do it without EGT? Is there something that can limit players from tag-switching to countries they shouldn't go to and avoid going into a hell for programmers with just adding every single country into the list?
Yes we totally can. Actually we've already had the limitation - cultures.

The issues with tag-switching isn't in tags, but in culture shifts. It is the big limitation put on countries and most formable nations base on this. If you own Northern India it doesn't mean you form Mughals unless you are of right culture, you can conquer Italy as France, but you are still French. It ought to be the limiting factor, and it isn't in current versions.
With the changes to cultures' management (which I still love) came a change to culture-shift (which I hate), an easy way that can make any country culture shift into anything just by unstating land.
As I said in other post; It doesn't do it's job. You can easily culture-shift if you want (Ming into Japan? click-click-click, Done), but it causes problems when you should; your country is 33% Moroccan, 33% Berber and 33% Algerian, but you are Portugal exiled from Iberia - you can't shift to any of them.

So before the final decision comes with a system that won't solve much apart from throwing barrels at players expecting it to discourage them from finding a way around it (We will always find something), I want to propose just changing culture-shifting.

Now to important question: "When you should be able to culture-shift and when not?" and the answer is "When your country is mostly of this culture group and it isn't some minor one."
I came up with: 75% of your non-TradeCompanies lands (stated or not) has to be of it's culture group and this culture has to be the most common culture in your empire.
Example: France with 10% French 5% Breton 45% Castilian and 40% Catalonian can culture shift to Castilian only.
I think it would greatly limit the possibility of exploiting it. If you want more protection add a rule, that a culture shifting nation can't have vassals or marches to prevent good-old releasing them from your cultural lands. It's not like culture shifting isn't something that can be done only under very strict circumstances, so why not?
Also a wide empire of many cultural groups won't be able to change theirs, but a small one can. Also culture shifting in your own group (which shouldn't be a huge issue) isn't problematic and all you need is more land of target culture than yours (if you have only these 2 in your country). And a nation that is expelled into lands of foreign culture group isn't locked anymore, because of "has to be in more than 50%" requirement.

Adding a list of locked tags in a file that can be easily accessed by all decisions isn't a bad move: add HRE, Roman Empire, Papal State, Ming, Otttomans (maybe even few more), but it totally shouldn't be a main counter to tag-switching as it just won't work as well as limiting culture shifting and that is even without noting that shifting needs changes anyway.
 
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I agree that revamping culture system is the path to victory here, instead of adding hard locks on tag switching. Probably could tweak it to be 50% of all non-tc is in culture group and culture is majority of that land (i.e. 50% Iberian 35% Portuguese 15% Castilian allows switch to Portuguese)
 
Maybe a culture system revamp is something they plan for the future, and this is just a stop-gap measure to try and fix things for now.
Personally, I would prefer that the requirements for forming a tag include being a specific tag, it makes a better stopgap until culture shifting can be pulled off properly to represent how it actually goes.
 
imo the best way to solve the culture switching thing is partially revert to the old system, where it look at all your non-oversea provinces instead stated areas. I guess for excepting culture you can look at the states while to switch to primary it needs to look at non-oversea ones + 50%
 
Culture shifts may be unrealistic but I don't get why they need to be nerfed urgently. Unstating land hurts your economy/manpower. Shifts cost mana. Unless it's to tag shift to get better ideas there's usually no point. If someone wants to sabotage themselves to do something unhistorical I don't see the problem.
 
Culture shifts may be unrealistic but I don't get why they need to be nerfed urgently. Unstating land hurts your economy/manpower. Shifts cost mana. Unless it's to tag shift to get better ideas there's usually no point. If someone wants to sabotage themselves to do something unhistorical I don't see the problem.
You sir, have not thought the problem fully through. Due to the fact that trade companies provide considerable economic resources through trade and production (and don't require states) unstating reducing economy is basically irrelevant and since the meta is merc spam which relies on money and not manpower, doesn't matter there either
 
You sir, have not thought the problem fully through. Due to the fact that trade companies provide considerable economic resources through trade and production (and don't require states) unstating reducing economy is basically irrelevant and since the meta is merc spam which relies on money and not manpower, doesn't matter there either

Oh I see, so then the problem seems to be that trade companies enables and encourages not making states? But I thought the problem was culture shifts?
 
Also take territories in consideration. Destating all Chinese lands to switch to Manchu should be prevented.
 
Culture shifts may be unrealistic but I don't get why they need to be nerfed urgently. Unstating land hurts your economy/manpower. Shifts cost mana. Unless it's to tag shift to get better ideas there's usually no point. If someone wants to sabotage themselves to do something unhistorical I don't see the problem.
It does, but people still do it. Tag-switching for claims or abusing missions is a thing and the current system of culture shifting pretty much encourages it. On one hand you lose points, but on the other you gain ideas, missions, claims and Nationalism, which can be worth it.
As I said, the system is easily exploited and blocks actual culture shifting when it is needed.
 
I think they dont want to make tag switch harder... they want "ULTIMATE TAG SWITCH" imposible
things like "mughal to yuan to germany for perma claims entire world" thing of stuffs . they bored of adding more blocks to those nations so they said "you know what... lets block those nations from forming anything... I mean why not"
prussia not being end game tag is ok because doesnt give perma claims at massive region. they dont have anything aganist nation formations they are aganist formation that is abuseable too much as I said before.
I mean seriusly mughals to yuan to germany to italy to mamluks to ... you understood XD
this is what they are not ok with... they want to say "dude... you can only have ONE MAJOR formation
prussia formation is not major... its regular one. yea its strong but starts very small
mughals and yuan and bharat ARE HUGE AND MASSIVE formations
 
things like "mughal to yuan to germany for perma claims entire world" thing of stuffs .
And there is the simplest way to implement it. Just give tags like Mughal or Yuan or Germany special cb in their target regions instead of claims, like China have for China superregion.
 
I think they dont want to make tag switch harder... they want "ULTIMATE TAG SWITCH" imposible
things like "mughal to yuan to germany for perma claims entire world" thing of stuffs . they bored of adding more blocks to those nations so they said "you know what... lets block those nations from forming anything... I mean why not"
prussia not being end game tag is ok because doesnt give perma claims at massive region. they dont have anything aganist nation formations they are aganist formation that is abuseable too much as I said before.
I mean seriusly mughals to yuan to germany to italy to mamluks to ... you understood XD
this is what they are not ok with... they want to say "dude... you can only have ONE MAJOR formation
prussia formation is not major... its regular one. yea its strong but starts very small
mughals and yuan and bharat ARE HUGE AND MASSIVE formations
I get why they want it. It's just they can do it the hard way, listing the countries, or use an already existent system and also fix other problems. These huge empires, that EGT would block from reforming into something else would also be blocked by their inability to have some culture group be present in majority (the 75%) development.
It would essentially do the same thing and make it easier for countries that want and should be able to culture switch. It's not like there are no nation, that could benefit from changing their culture to some other in the early game (Theodoro or Trebizond for example).
 
And there is the simplest way to implement it. Just give tags like Mughal or Yuan or Germany special cb in their target regions instead of claims, like China have for China superregion.
then again I will form mughal conquer entire india then form yuan and conquer entire china
still same story
 
There are only so many formable tags in the game and so many unique mission/claims. I feel like tag switching/mission abuse has become a meme based on the dev clash. If the goal was WC or be in the strongest position by 1600 then unstating all of your land and giving up estate interactions is probably not the best way. Culture shifting is very strong for other reasons that don't concern most of the player base.

For Nationalism CB, you're getting 50% WS for same culture group provinces but 100% + unjustified demands for the rest. It's only better than Imperialism if the country has all or most same culture provinces, has more than 100 WS, and where the difference between 50% WS for same culture and 75% for all provinces actually saves warscore, because lots of times it doesn't. Shifting from unaccepted culture also costs 200 dip and you need to be on one state already.
 
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then again I will form mughal conquer entire india then form yuan and conquer entire china
Not quite exactly. It would still be here, yes, but you'll need to conquer with not-ideal-ideas, government and contain your conquests in one region (which means more AE).
Not ideal, sure. But ideal would be changing cultural system - which I believe should be done, but haven't ideas yet.
 
Not quite exactly. It would still be here, yes, but you'll need to conquer with not-ideal-ideas, government and contain your conquests in one region (which means more AE).
Not ideal, sure. But ideal would be changing cultural system - which I believe should be done, but haven't ideas yet.
why? mughal ideas are best ideas in game and I would form nation that I desire its ideas before than others. if I want yuan I will form yuan first if I want mughal I will form mughals first
you even fail there!
 
There are only so many formable tags in the game and so many unique mission/claims. I feel like tag switching/mission abuse has become a meme based on the dev clash. If the goal was WC or be in the strongest position by 1600 then unstating all of your land and giving up estate interactions is probably not the best way. Culture shifting is very strong for other reasons that don't concern most of the player base.

For Nationalism CB, you're getting 50% WS for same culture group provinces but 100% + unjustified demands for the rest. It's only better than Imperialism if the country has all or most same culture provinces, has more than 100 WS, and where the difference between 50% WS for same culture and 75% for all provinces actually saves warscore, because lots of times it doesn't. Shifting from unaccepted culture also costs 200 dip and you need to be on one state already.

tagswitching-mission abuse imo is not meant for fast growth/expansion, it's for easy no-brainer expansion which devs seems to not like it.
 
And doing so costs something like 800+ admin.
no it doesnt? when you do massive world conquest you dont state your cores so it costs only 200 diplo points
100 for accepting culture 100 for switching
...
PLS CONSIDER THIS KIND OF STUFF BEFORE POSTING THESE ARE MOST BASIC THINGS OF TAG SWITCH ABUSING YOU CANT CRY OUT FOR THIS WHEN YOU DONT KNOW ANYTHING!