Also! That buildings cost both gold and the relevant points is lame too.
YES! I think I want to spend time to try to mod that out of the game. It is really annoying and lame. If I want to build marketplaces in ten provinces, I spend 100 admin points? Really.
Basically some aspects of the game are seriously fucked in the head. Like how war-score is calculated. Against the Bohemians, killing their entire army moves it by a whole percent, and siegeing their provinces takes years, when they can siege in maybe a hundred days or less. With no cannons. With fewer troops. At a lower tech level.
Basically I'm saying that the AI cheats something fierce.
But yeah, that would've still been somewhat manageable(Bohemia is basically all of Germany by this point), if Spain hadn't decided to join in, and the usual EU3 cascade bullshit happened where I'm now at war with most of the world with a completely depleted manpower pool. At this point I'd cheat the game into playing something remotely resembling fair, but Ironman, so can't do shit to counteract this.
Bleh. Pisses me off. Especially when Bohemia's war declaration came from completely behind the corner. No prior history with them, no problems, nothing. And everyone and their brother joins in. Countries I've never had contact with and which reside very far away(so no possible diplomatic problems either from expansion). Just... Idiotic.
I understand why the AI needs to cheat. It simply couldn't otherwise beat a human player.
It's just that the way it cheats is so incredibly transparent at times. Spawning massive troop stacks out of nowhere, siegeing provinces far faster than should be possible, winning fights it should not be able to do(Like a 15k enemy stack attacking my 25k stack, defending a province, where I had higher military tech, better general and better discipline).
Is this real? Because I don't want to play that. Save-scumming is already frustrating enough when there's no odds-cheating. And I can't think of a single pile-on BS event in EU3 that I didn't reload in response to. CK2 doesn't have these things and is thus more fun to play.
Disabling Lucky Nations does rein in the cheating a lot. I was also hit by a shitload of bad luck at once there, so it was a bit of a rage-quit. This was after getting annoyed at the slow pace of expansion without relying on exploiting the PU trick. But yeah, I've put in over 30 hours into the game already, so it is actually very good. My posts probably came across fairly strong due to being very annoyed at the time of writing. The game does have problems, and needs tweaking in the future, but it's still very good. I can't really claim to understand how the game cascaded into Me vs. the World though.
The province siege-speed is still bullshit from what I've seen. Or maybe my dudes just siege super slow for some reason.
Okay good to know. Sounds like it's no worse than EU3 on those fronts at least.
Also I wish games based on RNGs would stop relying on the whole "eventually it evens out" bit and start enforcing relatively even distributions of results over a given frame of time. When the RNG goes on streaks in your favor, it's a weirdly dissonant easy-mode feeling, and when it goes on streaks against you, it's rage-inducing. True randomness is actually bad.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Also! That buildings cost both gold and the relevant points is lame too.
YES! I think I want to spend time to try to mod that out of the game. It is really annoying and lame. If I want to build marketplaces in ten provinces, I spend 100 admin points? Really.
Yeah its weird. Like a lot of the things the tech points effect, it actually causes this weird counterintuitive thing. I don't like how a lot of the time it becomes a waiting game to farm points and hope the random events don't wreck your shit too bad.
I actually sort of like that it slows the game down a little, because of the huge time span of the game, but its a weird system of doing it.
Check out their modifiers. I've seen a 5 siege value guy early on. That plus a lucky 14 on month 1 vs a level 2 fort would give you 14 + 5 - 2 = 17 or water shortage, plus breach, which means month 2 the fort would surrender on 11+, guaranteed within 6 months
Okay good to know. Sounds like it's no worse than EU3 on those fronts at least.
Also I wish games based on RNGs would stop relying on the whole "eventually it evens out" bit and start enforcing relatively even distributions of results over a given frame of time. When the RNG goes on streaks in your favor, it's a weirdly dissonant easy-mode feeling, and when it goes on streaks against you, it's rage-inducing. True randomness is actually bad.
I wouldn't want you to miss out on this game because I felt like venting over a random war-declaration ruining an 8-hour Iron Man game.
Having played some of this recently, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I like the new point system for monarch attention. It stops me from steam rolling (or at least delays it). I also like the idea that a poor or good ruler can have a significant impact on the system. Haven't had any real problems with the RNG. The AI seems reasonable to me.
The trade system is something I don't feel I understand that well yet. Upstream? Downstream? How do I redirect trade? What's optimal for making money?
Actually, it doesn't really prevent the steamroll as much as you'd think. Diplo ideas to reduce unjustified demand and coring costs (with claim it's 10/base tax), military techs and admin for cores
Coalitions do more to prevent it by creating a force that can kick your ass; but once you're past the magic "beat France + the HRE together" point you've won, the only question is the speed at which you can do it
Having played some of this recently, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I like the new point system for monarch attention. It stops me from steam rolling (or at least delays it). I also like the idea that a poor or good ruler can have a significant impact on the system. Haven't had any real problems with the RNG. The AI seems reasonable to me.
The trade system is something I don't feel I understand that well yet. Upstream? Downstream? How do I redirect trade? What's optimal for making money?
Overall, really enjoying this one.
As for trade, what you want to do is:
Maximize your trade power in a node. This is done by :
-Owning provinces belonging to the trade node. Check the trade mapview to see which belong to which node.
-Upgrade buildings in those provinces that increase trade power.
-Have light ships (barques, caravels, etc.) on a trade mission to protect the trade node. More ships give more power.
Now, you'll want to find the node or nodes near your provinces, and set your merchant to collect there. More power at the node means more trade income from it.
In the trade mapview, you'll see the trade lines, and arrows indicating flow direction. A node upstream from your collection trade node is one where the arrows are flowing from, towards your trade node. Downstream is where arrows are flowing to from your collection trade node. You'll want to send merchants upstream and set them to redirect trade towards your collection node. More trade power at these upstream nodes indicates a greater portion of trade being steered towards your collection node, increasing the income at that node.
If you have extra merchants, you can also send them downstream from your trade node, and set them to redirect trade power upstream to your node.
You can use light ships on trade missions to increase node trade power. More power -> More trade income/ More trade steering
Having played some of this recently, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I like the new point system for monarch attention. It stops me from steam rolling (or at least delays it). I also like the idea that a poor or good ruler can have a significant impact on the system. Haven't had any real problems with the RNG. The AI seems reasonable to me.
The trade system is something I don't feel I understand that well yet. Upstream? Downstream? How do I redirect trade? What's optimal for making money?
Overall, really enjoying this one.
As for trade, what you want to do is:
Maximize your trade power in a node. This is done by :
-Owning provinces belonging to the trade node. Check the trade mapview to see which belong to which node.
-Upgrade buildings in those provinces that increase trade power.
-Have light ships (barques, caravels, etc.) on a trade mission to protect the trade node. More ships give more power.
Now, you'll want to find the node or nodes near your provinces, and set your merchant to collect there. More power at the node means more trade income from it.
In the trade mapview, you'll see the trade lines, and arrows indicating flow direction. A node upstream from your collection trade node is one where the arrows are flowing from, towards your trade node. Downstream is where arrows are flowing to from your collection trade node. You'll want to send merchants upstream and set them to redirect trade towards your collection node. More trade power at these upstream nodes indicates a greater portion of trade being steered towards your collection node, increasing the income at that node.
If you have extra merchants, you can also send them downstream from your trade node, and set them to redirect trade power upstream to your node.
You can use light ships on trade missions to increase node trade power. More power -> More trade income/ More trade steering
I think I get that. So, if I'm England, I have the London center, and I go collect trade from there. I set my other merchant to Amsterdam to redirect trade from there to London, where I'm collecting. And I put light ships in both areas to maximize my trade power and redirect more trade from the continent to London.
If that's all true then I think I get the system now. Thanks!
France seems to be on a magical 100 year cycle in my game. They blob up bigger and bigger until the coalition against them gets to the tipping point, wipes them out so that they barely hold their western coast, but then over the next 100 years they grow right back to the original size if not bigger. Currently they're kicking the crap out of Castile, who dedicated all their time in completely taking over South America before most (certainly me) nations had a single colony.
HRE isn't a threat because the Emperor and just over half the Electors went securely Protestant while Catholic Poland, who absorbed Lithuania and Hungary, is closely allied with equally Popey Scandinavia (me) and puts them down at every step. This super-powered-alliance is also the counter to both the Orthodox Russian threat from the east and the Ottoman threat from the south.
My only concern is currently England-about-to-be-Great Britain (after just beating my proxy, Scotland), also Protestant, who beat me to Greenland, is competing with me colony for colony in future-Canada, controls most of the Eastern US coast and is my only equal on naval power.
The funny thing is all the major European powers are connected by Royal Marriages, many older than the Protestant split, so open war is almost unheard of, but proxy wars are abundant.
Having played some of this recently, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I like the new point system for monarch attention. It stops me from steam rolling (or at least delays it). I also like the idea that a poor or good ruler can have a significant impact on the system. Haven't had any real problems with the RNG. The AI seems reasonable to me.
The trade system is something I don't feel I understand that well yet. Upstream? Downstream? How do I redirect trade? What's optimal for making money?
Overall, really enjoying this one.
As for trade, what you want to do is:
Maximize your trade power in a node. This is done by :
-Owning provinces belonging to the trade node. Check the trade mapview to see which belong to which node.
-Upgrade buildings in those provinces that increase trade power.
-Have light ships (barques, caravels, etc.) on a trade mission to protect the trade node. More ships give more power.
Now, you'll want to find the node or nodes near your provinces, and set your merchant to collect there. More power at the node means more trade income from it.
In the trade mapview, you'll see the trade lines, and arrows indicating flow direction. A node upstream from your collection trade node is one where the arrows are flowing from, towards your trade node. Downstream is where arrows are flowing to from your collection trade node. You'll want to send merchants upstream and set them to redirect trade towards your collection node. More trade power at these upstream nodes indicates a greater portion of trade being steered towards your collection node, increasing the income at that node.
If you have extra merchants, you can also send them downstream from your trade node, and set them to redirect trade power upstream to your node.
You can use light ships on trade missions to increase node trade power. More power -> More trade income/ More trade steering
I think I get that. So, if I'm England, I have the London center, and I go collect trade from there. I set my other merchant to Amsterdam to redirect trade from there to London, where I'm collecting. And I put light ships in both areas to maximize my trade power and redirect more trade from the continent to London.
If that's all true then I think I get the system now. Thanks!
The (op) idea is to use your merchants to both redirect trade towards your home node and add 10 percent to the value of the trade. With a long line of merchants this can make you huge, game breaking amounts of money.
I took some Belgian provinces and released as many French vassals as I could. I felt like I won the game at that point and stopped.
This happens to me so much. I'll either start a game with a short term goal (see how much I can conquer as the Magyars in the Old Gods start) or long term goal (Form Ireland, Reconquista Spain, Expand East as Poland) and then quit once I achieve my goals. I have yet to reach the end date.
I took some Belgian provinces and released as many French vassals as I could. I felt like I won the game at that point and stopped.
This happens to me so much. I'll either start a game with a short term goal (see how much I can conquer as the Magyars in the Old Gods start) or long term goal (Form Ireland, Reconquista Spain, Expand East as Poland) and then quit once I achieve my goals. I have yet to reach the end date.
You know, Arumba did all that stuff, and then his actual LP was a total hilarious disaster.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that I'm pretty sure all nodes eventually end up in either Venice or the Hansa, the idea seems to be to shave off as much of the pie as you can before it gets to them.
I'm not sure who is more doomed, Granada or a French vassal.
}
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
I've been enjoying this but I think after my current game I'm going to set it aside for a few patches. The border friction modifier to opinion is just obscene and irritating, and apparently it's about to be changed. The points system... maybe could be tweaked? I just think too many things use points, like why buildings? And I don't know how I feel about ideas and tech both using the same currency.
Also, the game thinks my save file was edited, so it disabled achievements, yay. So fuck you game, I cheated for some more points and opinion to overcome those first two things.
On the plus side, while I'm going through religious turmoil I am loving the auto-stomp rebels option. I have two strong armies in northern and southern france, and I just ignore any rebels that rise up now.
I think I'm starting to get the hang of CK2. My first game (as the Earl of Dublin) the Welsh arrived with a massive army five years in and kicked in my shit, but I'm told this is a fluke. My second game, I married my son to the daughter of the same Welsh asshole who kicked my shit in, and now he's my ally. I then conquered one of my neighbors and inherited land from my father...and my shit son poisoned me. Now I'm him.
Granada is interesting in that
1) Castille starts the game with a truce, so you're good until 1448
2) Morocco & Algiers should be willing to ally with you and together they have a non-trivial force
3) Aragon will DoW Castille early on
You are probably fucked once the Iberian Wedding happens though unless you're bigger by that point
EU4 is pretty great. At first, I thought it was just a reskin of EU3, but it's really more like a service pack because a lot of the bullshit and things I hated about EU3 have been made tolerable or phased out. I really like it and just wish I bought it pre order instead of at release.
I've play 3 games so far to various states of completion.
Every single one got frustrating to play 10 years after getting a neighboring province with France. Fuck France being able to maintain positive stability, relatively good tech, and somehow be in a state of permanent war without ever losing manpower.
So, uh, I didn't think too far ahead and now there are 45,000 Swedish troops on my border. I don't think they'll attack me, because I have force limit 120, plus a large Attuyawhatever blob as a vassal, but if they do, they could push across my entire empire without any trouble. I wasn't planning on westernizing (I never did as East Asia in EU 3), but now I"m not so sure...
Does anyone know how terrible eastern units are in practice against western troops? This game works a bit differently than previous titles in that its not that hard to keep your tech up to respectable levels (though Sweden is a lucky nation and thus has max tech always so I'm behind them), but the inferior units are still here. I'm curious if its possible to actually beat a Western blob as an Eastern one.
So, uh, I didn't think too far ahead and now there are 45,000 Swedish troops on my border. I don't think they'll attack me, because I have force limit 120, plus a large Attuyawhatever blob as a vassal, but if they do, they could push across my entire empire without any trouble. I wasn't planning on westernizing (I never did as East Asia in EU 3), but now I"m not so sure...
Does anyone know how terrible eastern units are in practice against western troops? This game works a bit differently than previous titles in that its not that hard to keep your tech up to respectable levels (though Sweden is a lucky nation and thus has max tech always so I'm behind them), but the inferior units are still here. I'm curious if its possible to actually beat a Western blob as an Eastern one.
I fought France in my Byzantium game since they were allied with Papal States while I was trying to do the Pentarchy mission.
I found myself having to move around multiple armies to trick the french blob into actually fighting. My mil tech was 12 and theres was 13.
I always engaged with at least 30 to 50% numbers. But since they are always defending with terrain bonuses and I always seem to be crossing water I would barely win. Had to do save scumming unfortunately.
It may have helped to have an insane general hired when I got to 80 army tradition somehow.
In any case, the whole time I was barely winning battles and draining manpower France never fell from their max. Ended up winning from holding my wargoal and time.
I have a CB and claim on Constantinople, I was able to name it as a war goal. It's the Ottoman capital.
I've captured it, shattered the Ottoman armies, annihilated the Ottoman navies, I've taken half of their provences and it's a race between me, the Mamluks, and Venice to see who captures the most in the end.
I can't seem to name Constantinople as my condition for peace. It's all I'm really after. And it isn't an option.
Shadowhope on
Civics is not a consumer product that you can ignore because you don’t like the options presented.
I think I know why my game can't get achievements. It says that I edited my save file, which I didn't, but I did edit the game's config file to set it to windowed mode.
If the game disabled achievements because I'm running in windowed mode I will get so cranky.
This is particularly bullshit if you try to play Byz, as the Ottomans are camping in Edirne, leaving a massive blemish in your beautiful borders. Of course, you can sometimes use rebels to get it, but that's unreliable. I spent 50 years funding rebels once before they even revolted, and then it was a tiny stack that took forever to conquer the province.
It really should be possible to kick someone out of their capital. There's no real plausible reason why someone with utter military superiority couldn't do it.
Posts
YES! I think I want to spend time to try to mod that out of the game. It is really annoying and lame. If I want to build marketplaces in ten provinces, I spend 100 admin points? Really.
Disabling Lucky Nations does rein in the cheating a lot. I was also hit by a shitload of bad luck at once there, so it was a bit of a rage-quit. This was after getting annoyed at the slow pace of expansion without relying on exploiting the PU trick. But yeah, I've put in over 30 hours into the game already, so it is actually very good. My posts probably came across fairly strong due to being very annoyed at the time of writing. The game does have problems, and needs tweaking in the future, but it's still very good. I can't really claim to understand how the game cascaded into Me vs. the World though.
The province siege-speed is still bullshit from what I've seen. Or maybe my dudes just siege super slow for some reason.
Also I wish games based on RNGs would stop relying on the whole "eventually it evens out" bit and start enforcing relatively even distributions of results over a given frame of time. When the RNG goes on streaks in your favor, it's a weirdly dissonant easy-mode feeling, and when it goes on streaks against you, it's rage-inducing. True randomness is actually bad.
I actually sort of like that it slows the game down a little, because of the huge time span of the game, but its a weird system of doing it.
I wouldn't want you to miss out on this game because I felt like venting over a random war-declaration ruining an 8-hour Iron Man game.
The trade system is something I don't feel I understand that well yet. Upstream? Downstream? How do I redirect trade? What's optimal for making money?
Overall, really enjoying this one.
Coalitions do more to prevent it by creating a force that can kick your ass; but once you're past the magic "beat France + the HRE together" point you've won, the only question is the speed at which you can do it
As for trade, what you want to do is:
Maximize your trade power in a node. This is done by :
-Owning provinces belonging to the trade node. Check the trade mapview to see which belong to which node.
-Upgrade buildings in those provinces that increase trade power.
-Have light ships (barques, caravels, etc.) on a trade mission to protect the trade node. More ships give more power.
Now, you'll want to find the node or nodes near your provinces, and set your merchant to collect there. More power at the node means more trade income from it.
In the trade mapview, you'll see the trade lines, and arrows indicating flow direction. A node upstream from your collection trade node is one where the arrows are flowing from, towards your trade node. Downstream is where arrows are flowing to from your collection trade node. You'll want to send merchants upstream and set them to redirect trade towards your collection node. More trade power at these upstream nodes indicates a greater portion of trade being steered towards your collection node, increasing the income at that node.
If you have extra merchants, you can also send them downstream from your trade node, and set them to redirect trade power upstream to your node.
You can use light ships on trade missions to increase node trade power. More power -> More trade income/ More trade steering
I think I get that. So, if I'm England, I have the London center, and I go collect trade from there. I set my other merchant to Amsterdam to redirect trade from there to London, where I'm collecting. And I put light ships in both areas to maximize my trade power and redirect more trade from the continent to London.
If that's all true then I think I get the system now. Thanks!
HRE isn't a threat because the Emperor and just over half the Electors went securely Protestant while Catholic Poland, who absorbed Lithuania and Hungary, is closely allied with equally Popey Scandinavia (me) and puts them down at every step. This super-powered-alliance is also the counter to both the Orthodox Russian threat from the east and the Ottoman threat from the south.
My only concern is currently England-about-to-be-Great Britain (after just beating my proxy, Scotland), also Protestant, who beat me to Greenland, is competing with me colony for colony in future-Canada, controls most of the Eastern US coast and is my only equal on naval power.
The funny thing is all the major European powers are connected by Royal Marriages, many older than the Protestant split, so open war is almost unheard of, but proxy wars are abundant.
The (op) idea is to use your merchants to both redirect trade towards your home node and add 10 percent to the value of the trade. With a long line of merchants this can make you huge, game breaking amounts of money.
This happens to me so much. I'll either start a game with a short term goal (see how much I can conquer as the Magyars in the Old Gods start) or long term goal (Form Ireland, Reconquista Spain, Expand East as Poland) and then quit once I achieve my goals. I have yet to reach the end date.
This is entirely normal!
He has another on trade steering and another on merchants.
I think the thing to keep in mind is that I'm pretty sure all nodes eventually end up in either Venice or the Hansa, the idea seems to be to shave off as much of the pie as you can before it gets to them.
I'm not sure who is more doomed, Granada or a French vassal.
"Orkses never lose a battle. If we win we win, if we die we die fightin so it don't count. If we runs for it we don't die neither, cos we can come back for annuver go, see!".
Also, the game thinks my save file was edited, so it disabled achievements, yay. So fuck you game, I cheated for some more points and opinion to overcome those first two things.
I saw them alive and well in the mid 1600's in one game.
1) Castille starts the game with a truce, so you're good until 1448
2) Morocco & Algiers should be willing to ally with you and together they have a non-trivial force
3) Aragon will DoW Castille early on
You are probably fucked once the Iberian Wedding happens though unless you're bigger by that point
Every single one got frustrating to play 10 years after getting a neighboring province with France. Fuck France being able to maintain positive stability, relatively good tech, and somehow be in a state of permanent war without ever losing manpower.
http://cloud-2.steampowered.com/ugc/1119429689687938846/A20710D6C83AE6B104BA9832DA452959B22B5AD4/
Does anyone know how terrible eastern units are in practice against western troops? This game works a bit differently than previous titles in that its not that hard to keep your tech up to respectable levels (though Sweden is a lucky nation and thus has max tech always so I'm behind them), but the inferior units are still here. I'm curious if its possible to actually beat a Western blob as an Eastern one.
I fought France in my Byzantium game since they were allied with Papal States while I was trying to do the Pentarchy mission.
I found myself having to move around multiple armies to trick the french blob into actually fighting. My mil tech was 12 and theres was 13.
I always engaged with at least 30 to 50% numbers. But since they are always defending with terrain bonuses and I always seem to be crossing water I would barely win. Had to do save scumming unfortunately.
It may have helped to have an insane general hired when I got to 80 army tradition somehow.
In any case, the whole time I was barely winning battles and draining manpower France never fell from their max. Ended up winning from holding my wargoal and time.
And while they are good now, when I took that screenshot, I had no military tradition, and thus garbage generals.
I have a CB and claim on Constantinople, I was able to name it as a war goal. It's the Ottoman capital.
I've captured it, shattered the Ottoman armies, annihilated the Ottoman navies, I've taken half of their provences and it's a race between me, the Mamluks, and Venice to see who captures the most in the end.
I can't seem to name Constantinople as my condition for peace. It's all I'm really after. And it isn't an option.
If the game disabled achievements because I'm running in windowed mode I will get so cranky.
This is particularly bullshit if you try to play Byz, as the Ottomans are camping in Edirne, leaving a massive blemish in your beautiful borders. Of course, you can sometimes use rebels to get it, but that's unreliable. I spent 50 years funding rebels once before they even revolted, and then it was a tiny stack that took forever to conquer the province.
It really should be possible to kick someone out of their capital. There's no real plausible reason why someone with utter military superiority couldn't do it.