|
Well PDX con is starting today and the news is fast and hot. Rajas of india for ck2 is introduceing india to ck2 giveing it a 50% larger map. Wealth of nations is the next expansion for eu4 adding a lot to diplomacy and global trade like the east india company. They're also hireing a full time "mod manager" to oversee and help out modders with the game. 2 "high profile" developers have been added to the paradox stable but they've been hush hush on who they are.
And finaly good god its come, lock up your sons and husbands because hearts of iron 4 is coming.
They're releasing some grand scale open world norse rpg as well and beiber was arrested and taken to a police station right next door to the convention. Much smugness was had at this and the stat that the average play time for a person having eu4 (which was released only on augest 13th of this last year) is 190 hours. Thats fucking crazy for only 4-5 months of release time.
|
Did they really know enough families in India year 1000 to make a DLC for that region? I mean, we got records on European dynasties and noble families from that time, but I was under the impression that India was a bit more murky.
HoI4 is not out until 2015, but year it have me very excited
|
On January 22 2014 17:51 Velr wrote: - Funj should no longer spawn with lots of natives in it.
Horray... I never ever bothered again to overtake or even "protectorate" them because it's just so annoying (imagine walking over terra incognita with tons and tons of natives in it... Only that it isn't terra incognita but part of your country).
As for early fighting: Getting offensive as first idea and just taking the +1 Shock seems very viable to me, if you plan on going into some early wars. Having a 4-5 Shock General in the early game is hilariously strong. After that you can let it rest and push it further once you want +1 fire (about Tech 10?).
I find the defensive idea really good too. Just so, so many good bonuses. The yearly army tradition +1 allowing you to field god like generals and the +25% bonus to morale is really nice.
How is everyone enjoying the DLC/expansion/whatever you wanna call it?
|
the current patch means that you 100% need defensive first or you're really really not in the game. You don't want to take a lot of military ideas early so you can keep up on miltech compared to your neighbors (getting 25% drops in damage is game changing as is cannons for sieges) so what you're really looking for is the first 3 or so ideas in a tech group as something you want to dedicate your early game ventures. Quality/offensive when filled out with a full sweden/prussia/brandenburg is strongest but that'll take 100-150 years of vulnerability before you can start winning battles.
So defensive The first 3 are Army tradition yearly increase, the moral increase and the siege general pip increase.
Army tradition increase is really good because it'll keep your tradition up at a certain level as it goes against how much it decays per year. this can mean a 50% or more drop in the amount of decay. that means more pips all around. Defensive moral boost is second only to the god-like power of high shock early generals to the amount of difference it makes. Not only will you have more moral damage you're able to take but the amount of moral damage you deal is directly corresponding to the amount of moral you have. This (I believe at least) design oversight means that a small but steady lead in moral damage early will snowball exponentially. Its not a 10% boost in combat capability of ALL your troops its not even 25%, its much much stronger then I can easily explain and it worth it in any country in any game. sweden/brandenberg don't have to worry about real battles for most of their early to mid game so they have the time to get quality-offensive. no one else does however. The siege pip's extreme value should be self explanatory but its another exponentially increasing value modifier. having that one extra point means a hell of a lot of difference in sieges in getting another point in a seige and then another and so forth. it speeds up sieges in a time where you really want to just end the war, take less seige losses, and don't want to waste forcelimits on massive artillery formations to make sieges bearable.
Even if their separate benefits were balanced (which they really arn't) the reason why you'd want defensive over everything else is how they all play off of each other. higher AT means higher moral bonus from AT which is again increased by the increased moral. having a pip bonus to siege means its more likely that there will be a breach in the walls which means your boosted moral troops will be able to take the province much quicker. it might make the math on seige pips generation based on your AT differen't but I'm not so sure on that.
TLDR: if you're sweden japan or brandenburg/prussia pick quality anyone else in the game you must pick defensive or you will have a bad time.
Edit: I'm very cross on the expansion I like that colonial nations arn't a bitch and a half and they can do their own thing. the random new world feature is amazing and I love it. trade winds are a great addition, westernization is a lot better as well as tribal nations. colonial nations need a bit of work and I think the western europe node was a bad idea in practice, protectorates are also really bad playing as a colonial nation is fun until you hit a brick wall and can't declare independence even being a ton stronger then your overlord. idk really WON should be a lot better I wouldn't buy COP if I could chose again.
|
Yeah, the balance of the Ideas is shit. You only not choose deff/quality/off when you are role-playing basically...
|
Let me start with saying: THIS GAME IS AWSOME I just got the Granada achievement, took me between 60 and 80 hours! For a single "scenario"! I felt like playing The Settlers on Amiga in my childhood, words can't describe what I felt getting that old feeling again.
So anyway, I took exploration > expansion > defensive (couldn't finish them anyway, got only 3). > trade > diplomatic. It was my first time playing colonization heavy, I did ok. But also my first time westernizing, and that went terrible but I still pulled it through. Twice in the game (once during westernization) I had max loans and "you're going to bankrut in ...". It really feels like I accomplished something big after beating blobbed France in early 1700s (with allies, but still).
Here's the final map in 1767 http://i.imgur.com/7yJoqti.png Only thing that really annoyed me is that whole southern hemisphere have "tropical" debuffs to colonizing, really slows down everyone and it's a rats race for northern part at first, and the weak ones have to go south.
Oh, and protectorates makes no sence to make, and colonial nations (subjects) are even worse (stealing your market share/bonuses).
|
I gotta ask for a little after action report on how you did it. I can't imagine surviveing as granada that much.
|
Man why is it whenever I am playing as whatever country France blobs the hell out of control and the Burgandy thing always happens. When I play France, fed up with seeing them dominate all the time and deciding to see how powerful I can get, it never pops. Still a huge power nobody can even think to mess with so I ain't complaining. My goal was to take over all of the Iberian peninsula. Didn't even take that long and my borders look so pretty. A big ass FRANCE spreading from the bottom of the peninsula all the way to near the top of the low lands. Control majority of the Caribbean and all of panama trade nodes. Still have 200 years left, wonder what I should do...
Any ideas lol?
|
don't play as the strongest nation in the game. play as burgundy and resist the bbb to form the big red machine.
that shade of red is really pretty contrasting with the ugly shade of red on the island up north.
to answer your question you can reenact Napoleons ambitions and take over the holy roman empire + the holy lands.
|
Russian Federation3631 Posts
burgundy honestly has as strong a position as France imo (Antwerp node control is just that good), even the AI Bugundy. So long as inheritance event doesn't fire, I commonly see Spanish-Burgundy alliance wrecking France, even with historical lucky on.
One time I even saw Burgundy take 5 provinces against France, get half of Europe in coalition against it (1.3) and win the next punitive war, taking even more provinces.
re: defensive being so good - I still don't see it (I will still take it most games but I prefer offensive over it by a large margin).
I find that maintaining 100 army tradition after the first 80 years to not be incredibly difficult, so long as you have several fronts to work with (even better is beating up low tech nations that have big armies). Even if you can't maintain 100 tradition, lets say the idea gives you ~20 more tradition than you would otherwise. That's about .4 for each of fire shock and maneuver and maybe .2 siege points, which is better than the straight +1 fire/shock from offensive but not hugely so.
25% morale damage is good for stack wiping, I agree. But if you have poorer combat ability / discipline than the other guy than morale just means you don't rout while getting massacred.
1 siege point is more valuable than 1 fire / shock point in terms of army tradition, true. And I guess this is useful in forcing separate peaces as battles don't count for warscore against junior war participants. On the other hand I find myself not going to siege phase until I destroy the enemy armies, which means that my vassal generals tend to handle sieging.
Reduced attrition is nice*, but I prefer to reduce manpower stress just by killing the enemy army at which point I can carpet siege at leisure (AI army compositions are pretty bad lategame, as they will all die in a horrible fire to a 25/0/25 stack)
also forced march turns every victory in enemy territory into a stack wipe (assuming no half-continent retreats), and means that every forced enemy withdrawal means they get to fight a battle against terrain penalty. I don't think 1% attrition in friendly territory even remotely compares
*whoops I totally forgot that 1.4 drastically increased attrition for everything didn't it?
having a pip bonus to siege means its more likely that there will be a breach in the walls this isn't technically true - I'm pretty sure wall breach is if you roll a 14 on the 14 sided die, it has nothing to do with siege phase. However your general argument that each additional siege point accelerates a siege more than the last one does is correct
|
That granada map looked lovely. I myself just finnished my Brittany game, yes Brittany, not the great one but the tiny one at the tip of France. I've always wanted to play them but have been discouraged as they are in such a peculiar situation only bordering France and all.
Anyway since the new DLC came out I wanted to try to them out since they are not in the worst spot to start colonizing. I must say, this was one of the most boring playthroughs I've had, extremely passive just waiting for the next colony to be finnished. It was partly my fault because I didnt get involved in the political affairs in Europe. I allied France and joined their wars that they fought for themselfs. Whenever they decide to start a war they cant win, I just declined their call to war and I'd ally Spain, Portugal and England (if they were not too angry with me) and pray France does not retalliate.
It was very fun exploring a random map and thats what kept me playing. Ill give you some screens.
Here is the world map at 1819 + Show Spoiler + Diplomacy view 1819 + Show Spoiler + The last war of this world. Again I was dragged into it by France, I ended up buying myself out of it for 1.7k because I didnt want my African provinces to be occupied at the end of the game. Oh and I had 20k so it was not a problem. + Show Spoiler + Here is where my 20k stack fended off the Mughals 70k army. My entire conquest of India relied on this battle. + Show Spoiler +
EDIT* I think the real winners in this playthrough was the Ottomans, they formed and held without revolts or hickups, the arabian empire. The Danish did a good job of holding scandinavia through the whole game. Russia was super strong as ussual. Funny facts about Russia in this playthrough, they took Brunei at like 1750, and became a noble republic at god knows what date. It was also cool too see the commonwealth become as big as they did. Only the ottomans destroyed them towards the end of the game. Split their nation in 3 basicly.
|
On January 29 2014 07:24 419 wrote: re: defensive being so good
If you plan on doing any serious warring while being evenly matched you realistically need both offensive and defensive (and quality probably). Even more so if you are playing multi.
|
Defensive is early game though. When supply bonuses haven't gotten there yet so you don't want to chase shattered stacks and lose half your manpower pool. You cant really spare manpower and cash that ealy nor can you go more then 3 levels into a tree and stay current ob the critical early miltechs.
When I get home ill run the math and explain it.
|
I think I clearly can't play this game if neither defensive or offensive are a must for me.
Technically they may be best (and it's what counts in multiplayer or world conquest attempts) but thats any games curse, there will never be 100% balance with so much variety.
|
That is why there are mods
|
Alright so lets start at the die rolls die result = die roll + max(attacking leader skill - defending leader skill, 0) + (attacking unit attack pips - defending unit defense pips) - terrain modifiers
the die result isn't shown the the die roll and the terrain modifiers. for the sake of sanity lets ignore the die roll and terrain modifiers and just look first at whats in flux ie whats added.
a few things to keep in mind the pips on the unit have nothing to do with which army is attacking but matters for the damage done and damage taken per unit. These pips on a unit are again in flux as combat modifiers and then or before discipline. math doesn't change in which order whats important is that they multiply the original pip one after another. next whats important to note is that they are added to the leaders pips not multiplied like combat modifiers and disc are. Note that this does mean that disc and combat modifiers reduce the damage taken at the same rate as it increase's that damage done to the other unit on a per unit base. what also to keep in mind is that disc and combat modifiers are not in effect for the die roll just for the more mathy part of this in the damage taken or not taken. Its important to get the die roll out of the way first because its direly affecting what comes next in casualties.
Casualties are calculated with the following formula casualties = base casualties * attacking unit strength * attacking unit modifier * (100% + attacking unit Combat Ability) * attacking unit Discipline / defending unit Tactics
with base casualties meaning Die result -2 or less -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 or greater Base casualties 4 8 12 16 20 24 32 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 100 120 with attacking unit strength meaning the amount of men in the regiment. This isn't the whole story as this "Maneuver" value goes up or down at 25 percent intervals based on how much men are the in regiment. ie a regiment with 751 to 1000 will have a 1 value here while 501-750 will have a .75 value here and so on.
The defending units tactics is something important as well to look at as its the reason why you can't fall behind in miltech early. 25% reductions in damage at 4,6,7,8 isn't negotiable and is game changing for these numbers no matter who you are. not even taking into account the new units, artillery, and the tech increased modifiers to cav and infantry. having too many cav will reduce overall tactics by 25% meaning "insufficient support".
Now onto moral damage which is calculated by the following formula. morale damage = base casualties * 0.01 / 6 * attacking unit strength * attacking unit maximum morale * (100% + attacking unit Combat Ability) * attacking unit Discipline / defending unit Tactics
you see again base casualties which is the dice roll (NOT THE ABOVE CASUALTY FORMULA) as well as the attacking unit strength which was covered above, also tactics.
now leaders. there is no explicit formula for them as they are chance based but here are the tables for 0 AT and 100 AT
Tradition: 0 · 100 generations Skill 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Fire 0 0 4 9 21 35 31 Shock 0 0 0 7 19 46 28 Maneuver 0 0 2 8 25 30 35 Siege 0 0 0 0 3 36 61
Tradition: 100 · 100 generations Skill 6 5 4 3 2 1 0 Fire 6 10 30 27 17 10 0 Shock 6 16 26 30 14 8 0 Maneuver 10 10 19 35 21 4 1 Siege 0 1 6 17 43 27 6
Finally recently the moral damage was increased by 10% in the last patch and casualties increase by 1% per day as the battle continues. this post will serve as a collection of the things we will argue on. I will ramble on about the mil idea groups henceforth.
|
Alright to present the arguments lets take the different ideas and what their first 3 ideas are in their trees. This isn't negotiable as you need a mil idea group early as a western nation and you need to keep up on miltech as well which means that the first 3 are what matters for your early game (tech levels 4-10)
Offensive 1 leader shock 25% manpower 1 leader fire is first choice for russia beacuse obviously manpower be crazy. Defensive 1 yearly army tradition 25% moral bonus 1 leader siege. is first choice when it comes to spain as they also get a moral bonus as apart of their national tradidion Quality is the obvious third idea group but first when special circumstances like sweden, prussia japan its the first and only choice
An extra shock or fire modifier from a leader reasonable will only give a 20 casualty difference per phase. an extra seige pip is much rarer then either shock and fire and the AT yearly increase will keep it high by going against the decay of AT. as pointed out before AT increase's moral as does prestige. both you gain more by winning battles.
But all these discussions pale in comparison to the larger picture. What a grand strategy game is about is about the larger picture and not just a single battle here or there. this is why defensive is better then offensive. winning battles despite loseing more manpower is fine as winning battles gives you less war exhaustion and gives you prestige as well as increased army tradition. more AT means faster manpower regeneration and more moral. Negative AT does the opposite as well WE decrease's manpower regeneration by 2% for every point of WE. as well does a lot of other nasty effects most noteably increase revolt risk.
in any large scale war more then half of my army becomes mercs as time goes on. the last thing you want is to suffer manpower lose's during sieges when you have no manpower. reinforcing units is costly so just let them refill a month or 3 and then combine the rest replacing the remainder with mercs. in a small scale war this doesn't matter as if its a small state vs a small state you can stack wipe them easy if you win the first battle to just walk over to where they retreated to. winning a large battle and forcing their army to slowly walk over small supply limit provinces will give them attrition evening out any manpower losses you suffered in that battle while increasing their WE at the same time from attrition. this was nerfed in a previous patch as the furthest they will shatter is 10 provinces which is still a really long way and has to pass bunch of low supply provinces to and from where they shattered to. winning battles is important as snowballing victories though a larger moral difference is much more consistent then any additional casualties.
The goal in any war is to deplete your enemies manpower pool and then explode their WE while growing your manpower pool and keeping your WE low. you can accomplish both of these by keeping a collection of their provinces under seige and blockading their ports while sniping the regiments that they spawn either mercs or regular units both will increase their WE lower their prestige while raising your AT and prestige.
The best thing in life is to see your enemy with 14 or higher WE, no manpower, full of loans, and with prestige in the absolute dirt. No half measures.
|
On January 24 2014 04:35 Sermokala wrote: Well PDX con is starting today and the news is fast and hot. Rajas of india for ck2 is introduceing india to ck2 giveing it a 50% larger map. Wealth of nations is the next expansion for eu4 adding a lot to diplomacy and global trade like the east india company. They're also hireing a full time "mod manager" to oversee and help out modders with the game. 2 "high profile" developers have been added to the paradox stable but they've been hush hush on who they are.
And finaly good god its come, lock up your sons and husbands because hearts of iron 4 is coming.
They're releasing some grand scale open world norse rpg as well and beiber was arrested and taken to a police station right next door to the convention. Much smugness was had at this and the stat that the average play time for a person having eu4 (which was released only on augest 13th of this last year) is 190 hours. Thats fucking crazy for only 4-5 months of release time.
Oooh excited for both.
|
Whats your take on Muslim nations (or nations with bigger techpenalties).
I found that Military till 8 is too important to get a Military Idea right away. I startet going with some diplomatic Idea and getting defensive second (which, if things go well, should be possible when Military is or is about to hit 8). I then take defensive... +25% Morale from defensive, +25% morale from the Religion "thing" and if you can afford it another 10% from being Defender of the faith. Last game i doubled the Ottomans Morale in like 1510 as the Mamluks (but iirc there was also some event active that gave another 10%).
Things went bad for them :D.
I don't know how it works out with a terrible leader (maybe take defensive first anyway and just wait it out till Military is 8?)
|
Russian Federation3631 Posts
Even with 1/2 military skill leaders I think you can hit 8 in a timely manner having gotten at least the 1st idea, maybe the 2nd (as Western).
If you have Enrique IVs and are poor then its going to be pretty rough though.
|
|
|
|