Europa Universalis IV

[Average Manatee]

If you can't see the difference between a province being accepted as a core part of a country because of 50 year of being held vs. being accepted because a magic monarch wizard waved his wand and produced a magical core in a matter of years if not months, then I don't know what to say. Good going, retard?

Obviously things need to be abstracted in games. That doesn't mean that some abstractions can't be massively, earth-shatteringly better and appropriate than others.

Also Gamey != Retarded. Gamey things are appropriate in a game. Monarch Mana as the basis on which all national actions depend is not appropriate in a historical simulation. I'm pretty sure that CK2 is the gamiest of Paradox games, but that certainly doesn't stop it from being good.

 

[Kane]

If at least we just had one single form of mana and not 3, all of different importance. That way you could specialize and somewhat alleviate a string of bad monarchs. Right now its just retarded, they might as well just give everyone a tech-level every X years.

 

[Malakal]

If you can't see the difference between a province being accepted as a core part of a country because of 50 year of being held vs. being accepted because a magic monarch wizard waved his wand and produced a magical core in a matter of years if not months, then I don't know what to say. Good going, retard?

Obviously things need to be abstracted in games. That doesn't mean that some abstractions can't be massively, earth-shatteringly better and appropriate than others.

Also Gamey != Retarded. Gamey things are appropriate in a game. Monarch Mana as the basis on which all national actions depend is not appropriate in a historical simulation. I'm pretty sure that CK2 is the gamiest of Paradox games, but that certainly doesn't stop it from being good.

50 years coring is as arbitrary and unrealistic as are monarch points. Some provinces took centuries to core and the fires of revolt never really stopped (like Ireland) some provinces were cored instantly - like Constantinople. The Constantinople example shows what monarch point coring is all about - you use your monarch power and move people into the province to establish your rule. You do not wait for the local population to accept it, you make them accept it.

Also you cant really argue that monarch ability wasnt the driving factor behind the era. Poland wouldnt have collapsed if it had a string of strong monarchs. Austria wouldnt have achieved nearly as much without Habsburgs. Spain lost its empire due to bad rulers too. One bad ruler could mean total collapse of a successful state. MP are an abstraction of this ability and a 000 ruler should be a real pain in the ass. Granted I would weaken advisers and instead move some point generation towards parliaments to simulate the situation in republics and later in the era when monarch role diminished.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

Also you cant really argue that monarch ability wasnt the driving factor behind the era. Poland wouldnt have collapsed if it had a string of strong monarchs. Austria wouldnt have achieved nearly as much without Habsburgs. Spain lost its empire due to bad rulers too. One bad ruler could mean total collapse of a successful state.

This is a highschooler's misconception.

Funny you mention Austria and the Habsburgs too, since the Habsburg's greatest strength can not be parametrized in this game.

Spain collapsed due to the insane pressures exercised from all sides, France regaining stability being the killing blow. Iberia isn't a particularly rich land, low demographic potential, at the time, yields less resources than the northern neighbors. They had gold and were pioneering trans-oceanic trade. Monopoly on trade you can lose, especially as France, England or the Netherlands starts doing what you do. Gold gives you an all time high, then comes back to bit you in the ass. Then there is also the emigrants, in this case the elite was moving to the new world. It was a country bound to be satellited if a strong and stable nation state was to arise above the Pyrenees, which eventually happened.

Some provinces took centuries to core and the fires of revolt never really stopped (like Ireland)

Yes, and every 6 month 35 000 Irishmen were rising against the English oppressor. Equipped with state of the art canons and riffles, rigid organization led by the most competent officers, right out the finest rebel academies (a network which apparently spans world wide). It's a wonder how the English could hold on to those land and their own country while replacing their royal army every year.

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Yes it's there alright, and the scaled truce years (this is where the 15 years comes from) is also there.

EDIT:

How hard it would've been for Johann to tell his team to make truce time a option in the menu?

Given that it took me 15 seconds to find it and figure out how to mod it, I'd say they shouldn't bother. Let e-sportfags play their "balanced" game, this nigga always has his own personalized mod active (speaking of which, does anyone know HOW the new localisation files work?).

i am curious about that mod of your lillebror, what have you changed and what does it do?

Haven't yet gotten around to the new expansion, where I'll probably roll back the changes to truces and whatnot if I find them too annoying. Otherwise just my old modification to accepted culture loss threshold and some special minority flipping on culture conversion (currently just for Poland/PLC for anything East/North of Vilnius becoming either Ruthenian or Lithuanian on culture-flip + accepted add if not accepted at the moment; and another one for Sweden/Scandinavia for Finns and Estonians east of Turku; should add one for Austrians and Hungarians). I took a liking to the way the game occasionally spawns you advisors with accepted culture names instead of normal namegen, so I figured might as well ensure those stick around.

EDIT: My personal pet peeve that I've been trying to come up with a solution for has been "how to stop fucking Spaniards from colonizing in Australia and Siberia".

 

[aleph]

Some provinces took centuries to core and the fires of revolt never really stopped (like Ireland)

Yes, and every 6 month 35 000 Irishmen were rising against the English oppressor. Equipped with state of the art canons and riffles, rigid organization led by the most competent officers, right out the finest rebel academies (a network which apparently spans world wide). It's a wonder how the English could hold on to those land and their own country while replacing their royal army every year.

Which has nothing to do with the Coring mechanic in EU IV and everything with a borked rebellion system. With EU III coring you would see exactly the same rebel spam.

 

[fastjack]

If you can't see the difference between a province being accepted as a core part of a country because of 50 year of being held vs. being accepted because a magic monarch wizard waved his wand and produced a magical core in a matter of years if not months, then I don't know what to say. Good going, retard?

50 years coring is as arbitrary and unrealistic as are monarch points. Some provinces took centuries to core and the fires of revolt never really stopped (like Ireland) some provinces were cored instantly - like Constantinople. The Constantinople example shows what monarch point coring is all about - you use your monarch power and move people into the province to establish your rule. You do not wait for the local population to accept it, you make them accept it.

Was it different in EU3 from older EU games or isn't the 50 years just the mtth (mean time to happen) meaning that sometimes you get a core very quickly and sometimes you wait on it for a very long time? Perhaps I am confusing it with how religious conversion happened?

 

[Malakal]

If you can't see the difference between a province being accepted as a core part of a country because of 50 year of being held vs. being accepted because a magic monarch wizard waved his wand and produced a magical core in a matter of years if not months, then I don't know what to say. Good going, retard?

50 years coring is as arbitrary and unrealistic as are monarch points. Some provinces took centuries to core and the fires of revolt never really stopped (like Ireland) some provinces were cored instantly - like Constantinople. The Constantinople example shows what monarch point coring is all about - you use your monarch power and move people into the province to establish your rule. You do not wait for the local population to accept it, you make them accept it.

Was it different in EU3 from older EU games or isn't the 50 years just the mtth (mean time to happen) meaning that sometimes you get a core very quickly and sometimes you wait on it for a very long time? Perhaps I am confusing it with how religious conversion happened?

No, MTTH was with some mods like MMU in vanilla EU3 you had 50 years to the day to core a province. You could change it in game settings but it always was an arbitrary number.

Besides in EU4 coring does not kill province nationalism. Only once that ends you can really tell the province truly is yours. Therefore we can safely assume that cores in EU4 represent claims and set up of administration.

 

[Average Manatee]

Therefore we can safely assume that cores in EU4 represent claims and set up of administration.

Complete bullshit. Why does the mouseover for a core say "x considers this to be one of her core provinces"? Why are cores left on land you no longer control? Why can you be forced to "revoke" a core in a peace deal? Why does retaking cores cause less AE?

The concept of a "core" province has been fairly stable throughout most Paradox games, from EU to HoI. To say that they somehow turned the concept on its head without any explanation or reasoning just because they implemented cores in a retarded fashion is stupid. The fact is that they simply implemented cores in a retarded fashion.

Besides in EU4 coring does not kill province nationalism. Only once that ends you can really tell the province truly is yours.

Instead not having cores in EU4 causes magical world-wide rebellion, which is even worse (and ridiculously dumb). Furthermore it DID in fact kill province nationalism in earlier versions, and we can take that to be the original vision of the game rather than the current random-changes-every-patch thing we have.

 

[Malakal]

Actually if we consider cores as an administrative issue then those rebellions arent very magical - simply locals decide to leave your nation due to lack of actual control. Many empires collapsed this way.

Of course rebel numbers and actual threat are another thing entirely but that issue was present in EU1 and havent been fixed till now.

 

[Average Manatee]

Actually if we consider cores as an administrative issue then those rebellions arent very magical - simply locals decide to leave your nation due to lack of actual control. Many empires collapsed this way.

Yes, Londoner decide to leave Great Britain due to lack of control of India.

Pretty much magic bullshit.

 

[XenomorphII]

If your capital is revolting due to expansion, you have lots of other problems as well.

 

[Average Manatee]

Happens all the time when sitting at -3 stability due to events and conquering foreign land with a different religion. Double whammy of religious unity (why the fuck are people in London revolting because people in India aren't christain?) and OE making your entire empire have revolt risk.

 

[aleph]

Happens all the time when sitting at -3 stability due to events and conquering foreign land with a different religion. Double whammy of religious unity (why the fuck are people in London revolting because people in India aren't christain?) and OE making your entire empire have revolt risk.

-3 stability and too much OE and having your nation set up in a way that the lack of religious unity becomes a problem. If this is actually comes up often for you than that means that you have no fucking idea how EU IV actually works and should better stop posting about it and learn to play.

 

[Malakal]

Well he has a point, rebels arent represented well in Paradox games. In Victoria we have gigantic Jacobin uprisings, in HoI we have random one province rebellions, in CK2 we have a similar situation to EU. At least they added causes and demands for rebels now.

 

[Average Manatee]

Happens all the time when sitting at -3 stability due to events and conquering foreign land with a different religion. Double whammy of religious unity (why the fuck are people in London revolting because people in India aren't christain?) and OE making your entire empire have revolt risk.

-3 stability and too much OE and having your nation set up in a way that the lack of religious unity becomes a problem. If this is actually comes up often for you than that means that you have no fucking idea how EU IV actually works and should better stop posting about it and learn to play.

No, that's actually the correct way to play. Do you know how to play EU4?

 

[aleph]

Well he has a point, rebels arent represented well in Paradox games. In Victoria we have gigantic Jacobin uprisings, in HoI we have random one province rebellions, in CK2 we have a similar situation to EU. At least they added causes and demands for rebels now.

Yeah, rebellions could use a lot of work. But that is not what Average Manatee is saying. He does not complain about the rebel system itself, about numbers and threat, but about hoe cores and rebels are connected which somehow for him invalidates the entire game.

 

[Average Manatee]

Plenty of things invalidate the game. No need to single out rebels.

 

[Malakal]

Plenty of things invalidate the game. No need to single out rebels.

Thats like your opinion man. For me its the best title of the series and the best Paradox game, at least as far as number of hours invested goes.

 

[Luzur]

Yes it's there alright, and the scaled truce years (this is where the 15 years comes from) is also there.

EDIT:

How hard it would've been for Johann to tell his team to make truce time a option in the menu?

Given that it took me 15 seconds to find it and figure out how to mod it, I'd say they shouldn't bother. Let e-sportfags play their "balanced" game, this nigga always has his own personalized mod active (speaking of which, does anyone know HOW the new localisation files work?).

i am curious about that mod of your lillebror, what have you changed and what does it do?

Haven't yet gotten around to the new expansion, where I'll probably roll back the changes to truces and whatnot if I find them too annoying. Otherwise just my old modification to accepted culture loss threshold and some special minority flipping on culture conversion (currently just for Poland/PLC for anything East/North of Vilnius becoming either Ruthenian or Lithuanian on culture-flip + accepted add if not accepted at the moment; and another one for Sweden/Scandinavia for Finns and Estonians east of Turku; should add one for Austrians and Hungarians). I took a liking to the way the game occasionally spawns you advisors with accepted culture names instead of normal namegen, so I figured might as well ensure those stick around.

EDIT: My personal pet peeve that I've been trying to come up with a solution for has been "how to stop fucking Spaniards from colonizing in Australia and Siberia".

so i guess its still WIP then?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well it's not much of a mod, the Swedish culture flipping thing is a single event file that just defines when it happens, and I haven't managed to figure out how EU4 localization files work at all. I haven't done that much. One idea that I had bouncing around my head today, having finished a Sweden campaign with Res Publica, is that I could put in a triggered modifier hard limit on the number of colonial subjects each nation can have, as well as a continental limit trigger (meaning, if Spain colonizes in South America, Mexico, Caribbean, and Africa, their number of colonists will drop to negative; additionally a -100 colonists and -10000 colonial growth trigger for anyone who isn't East European coming from inland or Asian/Native American colonizing even an inch of Siberia).

 

[MoLAoS]

Well, I have some free time while I wait for my new computer to get all its parts delivered. The constant refrain if you complain about Paradox ruining EU4 is to mod it so I figured I'd go crazy. I'm making a totally new map with over 7000 provinces, the better to stretch my new computer. There are 5 large inland seas about mid way on average between the med and the baltic in a large squishy circle shaped main continent. This contains maybe 4k-5k provinces, all pretty simply in shape. The two largest island packed inland seas will contain many nations around them with one nation being the last remnant of a society which covered their entire coast plus a decent bit of land along the coasts of where they merged with the oceans. The other seas will contain 3, 4, 5 large existing powers fighting it out. With or without islands the seas allow nations to have a large empire around the sea, with the sea serving as fast transit. There will be a large landlocked empire, which will be the largest currently existing nation. These nations should cover about 2000 of the provinces. The rest will be medium to small states, maybe a few hordes. Another 1000 provinces will be part of an archipelago with 2 large nations fighting over it, one of each from 2 large bracketing landmasses of maybe 300 provinces each with the smaller islands worth 400 total. There will be a large mostly uncolonized landmass, maybe 1000 provinces, on the east of the north- south archipelago and west of one of the ancient empire ruled large inland seas of the main landmass. There may be a few native nations as well as a medium sized but very weak off shoot of the ancient empire. The empire remnant and its neighbors plus the 2 major arch nations and a 100 province medium sized central arch nation will generally be competing to colonize this land. Each will make decisions on whether to focus here or their other spheres of warfare. The remnant and the offshoot will ally but neither will be able to much aid each other for a good period of time.

The remaining 3000 will be spread across the main continent and some smaller archipelagos as well as 4 medium size Britain-esque islands which may attempt to interfere with main continent politics. They will of course not function precisely as England did but each will probably contain a part of England. One will be fight a dynastic war with a large mainland power, one will attempt to control large stretches of mainland coast and one will at least at first attempt to gain control of the smaller archipelagos, one will attempt to control the islands of the 3rd largest main continent inland sea, one will go after the uncolonized continent and dabble in the larger archipelago.

Ideally the mainland will be so large that even without Johan's stupid WC nerfs, trying to control more than 30% of it will be quite difficult. With 3000-4000 provinces it is larger than all of the base EU4 map combined and there is a France+Russia level major power of the possibility of 2 Roman Empire like powers, providing a good amount of endgame and also allowing you to be curtailed by normal alliances rather than having to make a coalition form. The AE level should be such that only a really huge landgrab will spawn a continent wide coalition. And there will be many major theaters for expansion which will make AE tick up even slower. I will probably slightly nerf decay so that there are more long running feuds once you actually spike AE with a given nation to a truly scary level.

Will post here how a few games end up working out. Probs won't make it downloadable unless its really, really fun.

 

[tyrannosaurus rex]

A sort of Uber endgame with colonial area left?

Good luck, its gonna suck. You picked the worst aspects of this game to play around with.

 

[MoLAoS]

A sort of Uber endgame with colonial area left?

Good luck, its gonna suck. You picked the worst aspects of this game to play around with.

Well, if you start with a major power, you'll probably not have the best time if you min max it. But if you start with a medium power or even a minor one it should be interesting. Its a lot freer of constraints than vanilla, no HRE, no France Burgundy England Castile war covering 80% of the western half of the continent, maybe 10% of the continent is enough to make a similar situation so that you still have other options. Also there are no techs, so no part of the world is massively nerfed at the start thus giving a lot more viable nations who can expand to multiple areas, and way more freedom to vassalize. Colonies will not be CNs if I can avoid that. The original colony mechanic although not ideal is much preferable. Plus by the time the map is done the new expansion will be out so you can play with all those features.

 

[Delterius]

Therefore we can safely assume that cores in EU4 represent claims and set up of administration.

Complete bullshit. Why does the mouseover for a core say "x considers this to be one of her core provinces"? Why are cores left on land you no longer control? Why can you be forced to "revoke" a core in a peace deal? Why does retaking cores cause less AE?

The concept of a "core" province has been fairly stable throughout most Paradox games, from EU to HoI. To say that they somehow turned the concept on its head without any explanation or reasoning just because they implemented cores in a retarded fashion is stupid. The fact is that they simply implemented cores in a retarded fashion.

Besides in EU4 coring does not kill province nationalism. Only once that ends you can really tell the province truly is yours.

Instead not having cores in EU4 causes magical world-wide rebellion, which is even worse (and ridiculously dumb). Furthermore it DID in fact kill province nationalism in earlier versions, and we can take that to be the original vision of the game rather than the current random-changes-every-patch thing we have.

If coring in Eu4 does indeed mean set up admnistration and claims, non cored provinces mean an empires effort to maintain control of places not unlike XIX th century balkans. It does not seem entirely unrealistic that other groups across empires would.feel like it is the time to strike. It often happened in Spain.