Why is this game losing clout?

[berto]

I don't know but certainly he AI has some hardcoded values that serve as references for its decision making... If we can tweak that, anything is possible (at least more than now)

[speaking as a programmer:]

If Johan & co. can allow us to set yes/no options as the game begins (note the many new game-tweaking options in EUIII:NA), they can certainly multiply those options and even provide pre-game dialog boxes, pick lists, sliders, etc., where we can specify numerical values as well. (I'm not talking about in-game dialogs, sliders, etc.; I'm talking about things you set before you launch the game.)

It might get to be very complicated, and the better alternative might be to edit config files (not for the faint of heart or careless, who could easily break the config file syntax or input invalid or crazy values).

But taking heretofore hard-coded values and opening them up to user (and modder) variation and control--it most certainly can be done. It might result in chaos, but if Johan & co. have the will, they can surely enable it.

 

[unmerged(66213)]

If you want an AI that follows detailed limiting-scripts, take a look at HoI2. it took about five as long to make proper historically limiting scripts to make the AI play historical, as it took to make it play with the rules at all. And still it breaks down when the world goes ahistorical.

I understand that the AI has an internal thought process, in which it evaluates its options, by taking into account its relative position to other countries (I'm guessing, location, ai/hp, and the whole long list of national stats and data); and possibly also the relative positions of other countries to each other.

That is definitely a good thing. But I often find myself wishing I could interfere in that basic thought process (telling an elector what criteria to apply for his Emperor choices would be one example).

Since NA, we do have more tools that let us evaluate country's relative position to each other (ally, overlord, alliance_with, etc. etc.), and that has added a lot of possibilities, already.

Add to that the ways of modifying ai_chance you shared, I feel like I can write an event that can tell the AI how to evaluate its situation, and to make choices, accordingly ("If the neighbor of my overlord's ally has a border with a religious enemy who is not my neighbor, I will be 20% more likely to pick option A," for example).

Finally, with triggered events on top of all that, there are no limits to the ways we can create event trees or -maps, or neuronal networks of events, or what-have-you; all fine-tuning an AI decision-making process that is based on historical precedent ("This country does something that resembles what Friedrich II did, when he faced a similar situation"), rather than historical re-enactment ("In 1756, Friedrich II will always do this.")

And the more we can give the AI countries sensible hints (based on our knowledge of historical processes) for how to evaluate their situation, the more they will act with "historical personality," while not simply following a pre-defined script.

But if we are to get to a point, where the AI truly appears as a siliconite Machiavelli, not like the stimulus-response-machine it always must be, at heart (and it does not look like a stimulus-response-machine, even now), more ways for modders to poke around in the AI's thought processes, and more tools for events to evaluate relationality, would be helpful.

My personal top item on a wishlist would be a trigger scope "any_country", essentially removing the current limitation on comparing only neighbors (other than ally, overlord, emperor).

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

I can't help but wonder why this thread turned into an argument about the pause button.

Because I was stupid enough to answer a post and ended up in one of those open-ended post-fests vs. Ubik where both of us seem, when reading it a day afterwards, to be misunderstanding at least half of what the other one posts and ignoring the other half in favour of expanding on the themes that we'd like to talk about instead.

As an example, I still don't know, which part of what I wrote about pausing in my first post resulted in the "in Peter's opinion, pausing cripples the game for people in general" line of thought, and Ubik appears to frequently understand reversed what I write with respects to micromanagement - that level of misunderstanding can only be mutual, so I'm pretty sure I'm misunderstanding his posts to the same degree, leading to him frequently asking himself just how the hell I can misinterpret him so.

 

[Hive]

BTW, Hive. Talk to Slargos. A game of EU2 vets may be forming up. Tell him I sent you.

Rest assured that no action of the tyrrant called Slargos goes unnoticed. I have tabs on his movements already.

 

[unmerged(71032)]

(...)I do not consider that other players are dumbs, on the contrary, I believe that they have a real demand for adult games which is not satisfied. I was absolutely fascinated by the gameplay of Civ I, railroad Tycoon, Sim City or Sim City 2000 in the early 90's, and I was just an uneducated teenager.

(...)
- Paradox is one the rare remaining company which release games for "snobbards" players. They hang to it like shipwrecked people to a tiny rocky island in the enraged sea.
(...)
- 3d is a failure, yet it remains a complicated issue. Apart from "subjective" considerations (but I think that subjectivity concept can't hide everything) it is a failure at least because of performance issues. Nobody seemed to demand it while other requirements had not been satisfied. It seems to me that paradox team felt they had to get the ability to develop 3D games, and they use EU3 development as a training field. Well, I do not know if it was mandatory or not fom a business point of view, every developpers must always extends its skills, but I think they should just have hired the plain skills for the job, that's it.
(...)
- (...)Build a efficient and appealing graphic engine, a solid game engine, and allow all these people to build the game of their dreams.
It's a bit late for the graphic engine, but the game engine has good grounds. Every variable of the game should be moddable.

Couple of things from long wpc post that I consider as the most important. Especially the first point is IMHO very important. It needs repeating again and again - there IS a market for serious games and there ARE nerds that form great niche that Paradox can use (and to some extend uses it right now).

At the same time, there are border conditions that have to be met to not scare new players away from Paradox products. I'm talking about new players, because IF they get scared by their first Paradox title, there is a good chance they will never touch any other Paradox title again. Nor they will be waiting for patch X that will make it work as intended.

Let's face it - most of the people around here got hooked to Paradox titles by Eu1/Eu2. Some - by HoI, even though it had huge problems at the start (I still giggle reading Peter's AAR with NatChi WC under HoI 1.1). But can you imagine someone getting hooked to Paradox titles if his first title was pre-Revolutions version of Vicky? Or even worse, CK?

TBH actually, I can imagine... But that's very very small faction of the people that got hooked by, dump-AI, sandbox-like, buggy Eu2.

At the same time, some things changed. I would not limit discussion about visual aspect of game to just silly "3d or not 3d" discussion. Real issue is not number of dimensions of the screen, but feeling if this game got "beatiful" graphical interface and equal important, if gfx quality works well with it's functionality.

In this respect, Eu3 is halfway to the point where it should be (and where I would see the Rome). 2d elements of the game are in fact of very good quality - but there are not nearly enough of them. I'm not sure if it's related to copyrights or something, but ignoring whole art of the era and replacing it with drawn graphics (or not using it in such obvious elements as event windows, technology progress, diplomacy windows and so on) makes game feel very generic compared with older titles as Vicky or HoI2. When I change units to winged hussars, I want to see those badasses charging, damn it, not info that I invented "land 21 technology"! And why not some more artsy/historical stuff that develops feeling of being part of history? All those things would turn generic "I build empire" game that market is full of into "I'm a part of history, not some fantasy fairy tale". And as I said, it was there in older titles. Why not now?

As for 3d itself, I'm far from saying it was mistake. But it's obvious that it was first attempt to use it. Some of the elements are not needed (max zoom) and if they are here, there should be some motivation ot actually use them (more animated elements of the map visible on max zoom would do the work, sort of silly Settlers/city simulator style). If we do eye candy, let's make it really sweet. And if we can't/don't want to, it's better to focus on really important stuff, which is optimizing gfx in it's most often used settings. I wrote about it earlier, so I don't think there is a need to repeat it. Ability to zoom and unzoom the map is nice, but it is not a value of itself.

But I think I'm hijacking the thread... Now, where were we? Discussing pause button?

 

[unmerged(64768)]

But I think I'm hijacking the thread... Now, where were we? Discussing pause button?

Yes. I think there should be a "pause allowance" whereby the player is given so many pauses per year. Like timeouts in sports. Use them wisely.

Discuss!

 

[Slyspy]

For me personally there are two reasons why EU3 hasn't enthralled me as EU2 did (does):

The first is the AI. I believe Johan when he says that it is a vast improvement technically over that of EU2, but that does not mean it makes for a better game. In EU2 it felt like I was playing against Spain, the Ottoman Empire, Russia or whoever. In EU3 it feels like I'm playing against Yellow Blob, Green Blob, Blue Blob etc etc. All the nations act exactly the same, with the exception that small nations are far more aggressive than large ones (sometimes suicidally so, as if they know their days were numbered and feel that they might as well get it over with). In fact it might as well be just me and one other country fighting it out for control of the planet.

Now I know that the AI, such as it was, in EU2 was nearly completely unreactive. But in making a single more reactive AI for everyone, however reactive, Paradox have IMO made a much more boring. It doesn't help that the AI reactions can be extremely dumb or downright bizarre. I would have preferred to see further development of the EU2 model myself rather than this completely new system.

The second feature which turned me off EU3 is the event engine. Yes, sorry, but there it is. As previously mentioned here there are lots of events in the files but hardly any ever get triggered. Those that do are, inevitably, the most generic and uninteresting examples. Bad Harvests, Rebels (oh look, whack-a-mole again. I thought it was gone?) and so on. Sorry, but I like my actions in game to have consequences beyond the obvious "gain a territory, place a merchant" and so on. So I'd like to see a large variety of events actually applied and I'd like to see game-changing events too (especially those based on historical events) although I suspect MP fans would object to the latter. As it is every game of EU3 is the same rather bland plod with no real distinguishing features.

In conclusion then for me EU3 is simply too bland, too boring, to stand the test of time.

 

[unmerged(514)]

[...]

The new situational events system in EU3 may have cured that. I'd certainly much rather have a system where the player has to balance the prospective benefits of high Serfdom and high Centralisation against the chance of a meltdown with a weak monarch rather than "you have to get to 1 Free subjects or higher and 0 Centralisation or lower by 1580 to avoid the Time of Troubles."[...]

This is what EU3 moddability allows us to do. Any mod around will do just that.

And facing off against an AI major that wants your hide and won't take "no" for an answer doesn't involve drama or calculated risks?

But the AI is like the borg. It comes relentlessly if some conditions are fulfilled. Everyone.

To be fair, if Magna Mundi makes the diplomacy system work better (for example, the AI not blithely backstabbing its allies when it gains nothing from doing so), then I'm all for it.

No, at least directly.

Likewise an alliance system which let countries team up against a major threat (rather than all-ignore-the-monster until the BB limit is breached and all hell breaks loose) would be a gain for realism and gameplay.

Sure.

Historical plausibility is very much in the eye of the beholder. How plausible is it that the Teutonic Order should survive the reformation? That Hungary should survive the Turks? That Poland should survive its eighteenth century crisis? No-one but a hyper-realist (or a masochist) would want to play a country that is doomed before game-start, but if you give the player an escape-hatch you do end up twisting the gameplay (since 95%+ of players will run for the escape-hatch once they find out where it is). And if you let the AI use the escape-hatch, well, every so often it will throw up a super-Poland that beats the Russians and the TO and goes on to dominate Central Europe, at which point the cries of "that's unhistorical" start and we all go round again.

Agreed. Plausibility in this context means the actions and their results on the map make some sense. Vanilla has many aspects that lead to unbelievable results. The fact that countries never stop to grow (or die!) is not believable in itself. Eu3 vanilla leads to continuously senseless results.

If Magna Mundi is "plausible" in the sense that Poland will not attack a fellow-Catholic with which it has good relations while a Muslim threat is building on the opposite border, then I'm all for it. If turns out that Poland will not attack the TO full stop, even if Poland is Protestant and the HRE has dissolved and the Ottomans are not longer a threat, then I'm not. And the first sort of plausibility will not lead to a "historical" outcome often enough for EU2-style historical events to work - great flavour thought they undoubtedly were.

Unfortunately we can not directly adress that with the current modding tools available. The AI puts too much emphasis in foreign cores for instance, while relations are not that important for AI decision making.

We can address that indirectly, however. It is a fine exercise in balancing events for causes and effects, but it is feasible.

And I agree with you anyone who faces Magna Mundi expecting AGC-EEP 2.0 will *not* be pleased.

But blaming EU3 for not being Magna Mundi is a little harsh, I'd say. At this point, I'd guess that MM has probably had more development and testing work done on it than Paradox were able to put into the original EU3 events - which is a credit to the Manga Mundi team, but they're not working against a commercial deadline.

You are the one mentioning Magna Mundi. Up to now, I suppose I only mentioned mods in general.

Speaking of Mangna Mundi, there are two very different aspects to it: The core design tweaks and the events.

The overall feeling of Magna Mundi that made it so successful back in March was due to the basic changes we did to the core design... Not to the events. After those changes, events started to add depth to the experience AND started to be used to control the core aspects we could not affect directly.

And if Johan is reading this, please, fixing the peace system and getting the AI to perform competitively without hundreds of ducats a year worth of free stuff is much more important at this point than worrying about plausibility. (IMHO, of course )

Besides the technical point of providing a competitive AI without cheating, For the AI to perform competitively it needs to ever grow like the Borg contradicting your opinion here:

"If Magna Mundi is "plausible" in the sense that Poland will not attack a fellow-Catholic with which it has good relations while a Muslim threat is building on the opposite border, then I'm all for it."


and here:


"To be fair, if Magna Mundi makes the diplomacy system work better (for example, the AI not blithely backstabbing its allies when it gains nothing from doing so), then I'm all for it."


Add too much competition and the plausibility goes out of the window, add too much roleplay and the challenge is nill. A middle ground should be found. Right now, the AI is heavily competitive without means fro the userbase to change it.

 

[unmerged(514)]

[speaking as a programmer:]

If Johan & co. can allow us to set yes/no options as the game begins (note the many new game-tweaking options in EUIII:NA), they can certainly multiply those options and even provide pre-game dialog boxes, pick lists, sliders, etc., where we can specify numerical values as well. (I'm not talking about in-game dialogs, sliders, etc.; I'm talking about things you set before you launch the game.)

It might get to be very complicated, and the better alternative might be to edit config files (not for the faint of heart or careless, who could easily break the config file syntax or input invalid or crazy values).

But taking heretofore hard-coded values and opening them up to user (and modder) variation and control--it most certainly can be done. It might result in chaos, but if Johan & co. have the will, they can surely enable it.

Sure thing.

 

[Johan]

All the nations act exactly the same,

The irony is that the AI behaviour is more varied in Eu3 than in Eu2, as there are much more variables they evaluate. The only thing in Eu2 that made countries "different" was which countries that they were scripted to attack.

For me this discussion has been an interesting application of the Wizard's First Rule. People will believe what they want to believe or what they fear is true.

 

[unmerged(514)]

Because I was stupid enough to answer a post and ended up in one of those open-ended post-fests vs. Ubik where both of us seem, when reading it a day afterwards, to be misunderstanding at least half of what the other one posts and ignoring the other half in favour of expanding on the themes that we'd like to talk about instead.

As an example, I still don't know, which part of what I wrote about pausing in my first post resulted in the "in Peter's opinion, pausing cripples the game for people in general" line of thought, and Ubik appears to frequently understand reversed what I write with respects to micromanagement - that level of misunderstanding can only be mutual, so I'm pretty sure I'm misunderstanding his posts to the same degree, leading to him frequently asking himself just how the hell I can misinterpret him so.

 

[unmerged(514)]

The first is the AI. I believe Johan when he says that it is a vast improvement technically over that of EU2, but that does not mean it makes for a better game. In EU2 it felt like I was playing against Spain, the Ottoman Empire, Russia or whoever.

Bullseye!

The second feature which turned me off EU3 is the event engine. Yes, sorry, but there it is. As previously mentioned here there are lots of events in the files but hardly any ever get triggered. Those that do are, inevitably, the most generic and uninteresting examples. Bad Harvests, Rebels (oh look, whack-a-mole again. I thought it was gone?) and so on.

This has to do with the temptation given by the current language to make the "pefect" event, firing in the "perfect" of conditions. The problem is it will fire once in 5000 years. So, we end up with time wasted in coding the event AND no juice for the players.

 

[unmerged(7537)]

For me personally there are two reasons why EU3 hasn't enthralled me as EU2 did (does):

The first is the AI. I believe Johan when he says that it is a vast improvement technically over that of EU2, but that does not mean it makes for a better game. In EU2 it felt like I was playing against Spain, the Ottoman Empire, Russia or whoever. In EU3 it feels like I'm playing against Yellow Blob, Green Blob, Blue Blob etc etc. All the nations act exactly the same, with the exception that small nations are far more aggressive than large ones (sometimes suicidally so, as if they know their days were numbered and feel that they might as well get it over with). In fact it might as well be just me and one other country fighting it out for control of the planet.

Now I know that the AI, such as it was, in EU2 was nearly completely unreactive. But in making a single more reactive AI for everyone, however reactive, Paradox have IMO made a much more boring. It doesn't help that the AI reactions can be extremely dumb or downright bizarre. I would have preferred to see further development of the EU2 model myself rather than this completely new system.

I've always thought I had been playing EU2 all these years, but it looks like I have been playing a completely different game than some people here on these boards...

 

[Johan]

Bullseye!

So to make an AI that feels like spain all you have to do is..

1) Be Placed in Spain.
2) Do a random action at a random interval.
3) Have a small weight to colonise s.america before anything else, and declare war on some historical neighbours.

So to make an AI that feels like Russia all you have to do is..

1) Be Placed in Russia.
2) Do a random action at a random interval.
3) Have a small weight to colonise siberia before anything else, and declare war on some historical neighbours.


hmmm..... am I missing something here?

Ok, I get it..
A country feels like its historical if it doesnt do anything better or different than historical. So if the country sits braindead and fails at what it does most of the time, they all feel more "different".

 

[unmerged(64768)]

So to make an AI that feels like spain all you have to do is..

1) Be Placed in Spain.
2) Do a random action at a random interval.
3) Have a small weight to colonise s.america before anything else, and declare war on some historical neighbours.

So to make an AI that feels like Russia all you have to do is..

1) Be Placed in Russia.
2) Do a random action at a random interval.
3) Have a small weight to colonise siberia before anything else, and declare war on some historical neighbours.


hmmm..... am I missing something here?

Ok, I get it..
A country feels like its historical if it doesnt do anything better or different than historical. So if the country sits braindead and fails at what it does most of the time, they all feel more "different".

You fail to grasp the greatness of your own game, Johan

To replicate Spain, you need to do this:

1) Be placed in Spain
2) Colonize the right places
3) Attack the Incas and Aztecs
4) Pretty much leave Portugal alone
5) Get involved in Northern Italy
6) Inherit a wealthy rebellious territory in the Netherlands most of the time
7) Experience events that drive up inflation and put a drag on your economy in the late game
8) Have events that simulate American rebellions when you are invaded by Napoleon

That is how you replicate Spain. And EU2 does it. EU3 doesnt.

The historical events and targeted nations for war have an ENORMOUS impact on the feel of the game.

 

[unmerged(84859)]

Right, I'm gonna be a bit dangerous and just throw in some comments, with the risk of being shattered. I say that because I'm not an EU2 vet, so I can't compare it. But I still want to say something about it.

The thing I like about EU3, is the fact it's sorta random. Of course there will be the major blobs around, but usually I end up as a blob aswell. I've seen mentioned in this topic that this blobbing could be there, to make sure you have competition when you're a blob. Whether this is true or not, I don't have a problem with it. I'm not one for the WC, I usually stay friendly with the bigger blobs and haven't had real problems with that.
I like having Brittany, Leinster and other unexpected countries colonise lands in Africa and The America's. It's fun in my opinion. I like history, I like to search info about it whenever I played in EU3. Yes, I do that everytime I play with a nation I know little about. Mind you, my history knowledge is pretty limited to what I've learned in school, which is mostly about my nation, the Netherlands.

The other thing I like about it, is that there is a possibility to get a more historical feel or a different gameplay experience, due to mods. MagnaMundi is a real experience and I love it. Now I'm trying TerraNova and I have to say, that's class aswell. I got wiped out as an Indian minor, but that doesn't stop me from trying again.
The thing is, these mods give a different feel to the game and I really like that. But due to the current setting, I can play a random game when I want to (Vanilla), or a more historical plausible one (for example with MMG).

What does concern me, is a post about the events. As it seems there are more events in the game than I have seen. I also see, in Vanilla, usually the same events. So if there are more events, but they only get used every once in a while (like once every 1000 years), that's a shame. That should be more, events do at to the gameplay. I'm not saying they have to determine the game (as in, force it to be historical), but it could add a lot to the game.

Now you can start calling me names for trying to throw in comments without really grasping what it's about.

 

[unmerged(514)]

So to make an AI that feels like spain all you have to do is..

1) Be Placed in Spain.
2) Do a random action at a random interval.
3) Have a small weight to colonise s.america before anything else, and declare war on some historical neighbours.

So to make an AI that feels like Russia all you have to do is..

1) Be Placed in Russia.
2) Do a random action at a random interval.
3) Have a small weight to colonise siberia before anything else, and declare war on some historical neighbours.


hmmm..... am I missing something here?

Ok, I get it..
A country feels like its historical if it doesnt do anything better or different than historical. So if the country sits braindead and fails at what it does most of the time, they all feel more "different".

The flavour AI for any country would be:

- Read agressivity of this country
- Read naval tendency
- Read land tendency
- Read trade tendency
- Read infrastructure tendency (since we are just writing )
- Read personal list of natural allies
- Read personal list of natural enemies
- Read interest in colonization
- Read preferred areas of expansion
- Read preference for religion
- Check several ingame parameters to decide actions outside warfare using the previous points as modifiers (relations, power ratio, existence of foreign cores, religion, current diplomatic stance, etc)

- Use the current War AI when warranted
- Use the current build AI to develop capabilities



If you gave us the parameters used for the AI to evaluate what to do next, it would be very, very good. The 23 parameters available for EU2 are purrrfect!

 

[unmerged(514)]

You fail to grasp the greatness of your own game, Johan

To replicate Spain, you need to do this:

1) Be placed in Spain
2) Colonize the right places
3) Attack the Incas and Aztecs
4) Pretty much leave Portugal alone
5) Get involved in Northern Italy
6) Inherit a wealthy rebellious territory in the Netherlands most of the time
7) Experience events that drive up inflation and put a drag on your economy in the late game
8) Have events that simulate American rebellions when you are invaded by Napoleon

That is how you replicate Spain. And EU2 does it. EU3 doesnt.

The historical events and targeted nations for war have an ENORMOUS impact on the feel of the game.

Too deterministic in my opinion, but certainly provided a better feeling for Spain!

 

[unmerged(64768)]

Now you can start calling me names for trying to throw in comments without really grasping what it's about.

SHUT UP NOOB! j/k

Too deterministic in my opinion, but certainly provided a better feeling for Spain!

I didnt say you couldnt include triggers. You could add triggers so that those events only happen on a normal trajectory. If Austria fulfills trigger X, then they pass Netherlands to Spain. If not, no transfer. If Spain fulfills trigger Y, bankruptcy. I would agree that the triggers in vanilla EU2 events were probably a bit too deterministic. The solution isnt to dump the concept, but revise the triggers.

The Polish events were very harsh, the bankruptcy trigger was flawed in that you could give away just a couple provinces to avoid it in MP, etc. They need work. But not total destruction, in my opinion.

 

[unmerged(514)]

Now you can start calling me names for trying to throw in comments without really grasping what it's about.

No man. To each its own.

What you are basically asking is for the base variables upon which the AI makes its decisions to be randomized. So, spain may end up being extremelly agressive condemning Portugal in one game, while Algiers can favour immensely trade and the Ottoman Empire can be quite peaceful.

Given the right coding structure, it is very easy to do and could be an interesting option for the game.