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I voted! https://twitter.com/producerjohan/status/1132161374371700736
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May 25, 2019 08:11
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wow, 49% to 51% right now, with 500 votes. Looks like the community is divided  E: looking at the comments, it seems people want CK2 in Rome, even asking for the same currency of "prestige" and "piety" that go up or down based on your actions. Guys, we're not getting that, this is EU4 map painting with a sprinkling of CK2, I doubt they're going to modify the game enough that you'll be happy... I really don't get all the hate for monarch points, they work perfectly fine in EU4 (and Imperator too, actually, they just need to be rebalanced a bit). Someone even said that 2 or 3 abstracted powers is fine, but 4 is too much 
TorakFade fucked around with this message at 08:37 on May 25, 2019 |
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May 25, 2019 08:21
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Same, I like monarch points.
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May 25, 2019 08:54
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I'm less interested in the result than I am the reason why you'd publicly post "Do you prefer my superior cool choice with lots of scope or doing everything simple dumb style dummies?".
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May 25, 2019 09:15
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Mana in general can be good, but the implementation in Rome leaves a lot to be desired. - There should probably never be a mana type that's only used for one thing (and having multiple single-use resources like Rome does is completely insane) - instead, the effect of regularly spending that mana should be a passive modifier. - Being able to turn money into mana freely makes it pointless - instead of being limited in the things you can do by mana costs, you're only limited by money, but there's this fiddly layer of mana you need to go through before doing the thing you actually want to do. - Lots of things should be gated by both time *and* mana, rather than just by mana alone. It works well in EU4. Techs and Ideas are the fundamental drain on every single type of mana, and they're a dynamic scale - the more you can afford to spend on them, the more ahead-of-time you are, and the bigger benefits you get. The individual things you can spend each type of mana on are layered on top of that common foundation. Rome doesn't have that, instead you have Mil points that are only used for the military tech tree (which is totally different from the rest of the tech stuff, including the other military technology thing), Religion points which are only used to peg your stability at +3 and pick a passive bonus every time it expires, whatever the laurel wreath one is that is only used for the other other tech tree thing (inventions), and then you have Oratory mana which you have to spend for literally everything else and never have enough of. Jabor fucked around with this message at 09:24 on May 25, 2019 |
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May 25, 2019 09:21
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See I don't get the "gating behind time" thing. The game is already pretty short, spanning about 280 years - shorter than EU4, and MUCH shorter than CK2 if you start at an early date, and you pretty much have to be conquering quick it seems to me that people that don't like "mana" and map painting / things done instantly should just find another game to play, honestly, or wait for CK3. If you start adding hard restraints on time this game will probably not be satisfactory since it's all about conquest, not playing tall - while I agree there should be the choice and possibility to play tall, you should not "restrict" the main gameplay for the sake of that (again, the game is set in a period where huge empires formed incredibly quickly and no one told them "hey stop you have to properly assimilate the conquered population, here's a 10 year timer before you can expand again", so AE and fabricating claims already seem perfectly valid to me as "time-consuming" tools in which you have to let the first tick down, or the second accumulate oratory power) and one of the worst parts in EU4, to me, is the fact that you have to send a diplomat and wait to fabricate claims; I really hate that, it seems contrived when you already have other hard limits and choices to make, and considering it's a map painting game first and foremost. That is a "false" choice (because most of the time you can spare that diplomat and getting claims/going to war is high priority), a "false" waiting time (because if you're in a hurry you'll just speed up to get the one needed for war and attack, and if you're not you're just slowly fabricating claims one at a time while waiting for truce to expire or whatever) I'd rather it be a fixed expense of monarch power, competing with all the other sources of monarch power expenditure rather than time where it doesn't really "compete" with anything besides artificially slowing you down and putting a "hard cap" so to say (and you can still no-CB so it's not even that hard of a cap) I can't think of anything else in EU4, besides building and that's pretty inconsequential, that requires time as a resource. Well truces, but that's obvious and present in Imperator too (and you can break them). What am I missing? Edit: of course I get the point that power use in Imperator should be improved, and I agree, but I expect that will come with balancing, DLC, patches, new features. No point in asking for a complete change of a system they are surely already planning to expand upon and improve... TorakFade fucked around with this message at 09:40 on May 25, 2019 |
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May 25, 2019 09:37
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To be honest, I don't understand at all why some people find the monarch points system in EU IV better than in imperator. Oratory and civic points give much more interesting decisions than any of the monarch points in EU. I also like that you can buy points with money, but they're probably should be more money sinks for people playing tall.
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May 25, 2019 09:56
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I like the monarch points. It's a lot more interesting than just throwing money at everything. It makes sense that some characters would be better at civic or military stuff while others are more charismatic or whatever. Its neat how faction leaders with high oratory skill will flip senate seats and influence elections. In my current game a super charismatic populist started taking over the senate so I threw him in prison before he became too much of a threat, then used a sacrifice to get stability back up. It would be nice if there was more stuff you could do with those points but I like the direction the game is going.
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May 25, 2019 10:29
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Yes, Monarch Points all the way. Still Paradox didn't... advertise them well, for lack of a better word. People associate "points" with gamey things. I think it'd be better if they'd pretend you have envoys or agents or something, but of course it would still be strange to have hundreds of 1-use agents. People are fine with gold that behaves like a magical dust from Endless games, but they're irked by points. And sometimes MP used too easily. After you play long enough you understand that you can't rely on MP conversion/assimilation, it's a MP sink or used in case of emergency. But things like that really make some people mad. They think that the game lacks depth cause it seems like you can solve any problem by throwing MP at it. They don't play long enough to see that ineffective use of MPs mean that you don't expand fast enough to become a world power. Maybe when AI becomes more competent and external threat will be more obvious than the need to handle MP right will become more obvious, but for now, it seems they have to add some sort of a timer to many of those actions.
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May 25, 2019 10:54
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ilitarist posted:And sometimes MP used too easily. After you play long enough you understand that you can't rely on MP conversion/assimilation, it's a MP sink or used in case of emergency. But things like that really make some people mad. They think that the game lacks depth cause it seems like you can solve any problem by throwing MP at it. They don't play long enough to see that ineffective use of MPs mean that you don't expand fast enough to become a world power. Maybe when AI becomes more competent and external threat will be more obvious than the need to handle MP right will become more obvious, but for now, it seems they have to add some sort of a timer to many of those actions. Agreed, did not really think of that but it's completely true besides, it's true in EU4 too and no one would dare say that's a shallow game... Cheat yourself infinite monarch points there, and you'll be so far ahead that nothing in the game can cause you problems anymore. When you're ahead in every tech, have filled all ideas, rerolled generals until you have 3 stars ones, developed your lands, have high stability, bought down war exhaustion, delayed rebellions and raised legitimacy, cored everything ... well you have "solved" every problem the game throws at you besides money (but you get that through more warring, coring and developing so in a sense it's still linked to monarch power) the real "problem" to solve in EU4 is that you don't have enough MP normally to do all this stuff, not even with a 6/6/6 God king which is relatively rare and so you have to make choices. In Imperator it kind of seems you have infinite points at times (see religious power) and can just spam conversions/assimilations/stability gains/etc, but once they add more uses / balance the uses somewhat (for example claim fabrication could be based on military power, or at least half military half oratory: this way if you expand furiously you'll have to cut back on your military traditions or other military uses, making it harder to expand furiously!) it will feel more and more like EU4 it already has some "timegating" in the form of military traditions and techs (and consequently inventions), the more you're "ahead" the more it will cost to go further ahead, in the case of traditions in pure point cost, in the case of tech having to put only the most skilled researchers on duty otherwise you'll progress abysmally slow once you're ahead of time
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May 25, 2019 11:07
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Ivan Shitskin posted:In my current game a super charismatic populist started taking over the senate so I threw him in prison before he became too much of a threat See this sounds like the start of a cool story for your playthrough. quote:then used a sacrifice to get stability back up. But it ends in this gamey and toothless fashion because you have some super abstracted points laying around that can solve the problem. Like I’m not zealously anti-MP, but this is definitely a situation where it sits really poorly with me. That should be a defining point in your campaign that’s resolved way more interestingly.
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May 25, 2019 12:11
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Walh Hara posted:To be honest, I don't understand at all why some people find the monarch points system in EU IV better than in imperator. Oratory and civic points give much more interesting decisions than any of the monarch points in EU. I think it's partly just looking for an explanation on why they're not having fun, and latching on to a common criticism. But it's also because when a player is already struggling to enjoy the game, the monarch points gate actions and amplify the poor experience of the player. Also note that monarch points have seen a lot of criticism in other Paradox games. I would hypothesize that monarch points can amplify an enjoyable experience by adding an addictive factor of waiting for points to accumulate enabling the next endorphine hit. Timers can also do this, and sometimes in a better way, but there are situations where points give a better experience than timers. However, points can also amplify a negative experience, when a player is stressed out or annoyed at other parts of the game. Players can very easily come to associate points with frustration and lack of agency. I would argue EU4 and CK2 have a core gameplay loop that works pretty well even without spending points. In EU4 you have diplomacy, wars, trade, buildings, colonies, missionaries, estates, missions and tons of other things. Monarch points add an additional layer of juggling tech, development and ideas. Imperator makes it easy to waste points and completely gimp your options, as you need points to perform fundamental actions such as diplomacy, changing laws, changing policies and managing pops. Blowing through your points in EU4 can be a very poor choice, but it doesn't restrict your actual gameplay in the same way. Finally, EU4 lets you spend all 3 kinds of mana on province development, tech and ideas. Imperator doesn't have anything like that. To sum up what I think are the main problems with monarch points in Imperator: - Having actions of greatly varying importance gated by the same type of points. - Not having enough actions available without spending points. - Points having insanely huge impact differentials (religion vs civic). - Not having the same kind of usage symmetry in the core areas of development, tech and ideas. PederP fucked around with this message at 12:22 on May 25, 2019 |
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May 25, 2019 12:18
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TorakFade posted:the real "problem" to solve in EU4 is that you don't have enough MP normally to do all this stuff, not even with a 6/6/6 God king which is relatively rare and so you have to make choices. In Imperator it kind of seems you have infinite points at times (see religious power) and can just spam conversions/assimilations/stability gains/etc, but once they add more uses / balance the uses somewhat (for example claim fabrication could be based on military power, or at least half military half oratory: this way if you expand furiously you'll have to cut back on your military traditions or other military uses, making it harder to expand furiously!) it will feel more and more like EU4 See, I feel like they've done a cool thing with powers. In EU4 you have a use for every power, always, no matter who you play. In I:R it seems like they've conciously made so that you use different MP depending on who you are and where you are. Civic might be the most important MP for most countries, but if you're tribal you soon get every invention you want and you don't trade much so you don't need civic. If you're divided religiously then religious mana is the most important now, but for most countries it's not that needed until you get a streak of old monarchs dying one after another. Military power is supposed to slowly stockpile in the background but if you're raider you will need a lot of it, same when you get to roads. And when you become big you won't ever have enough power to affect your governors and characters and create trade routes and so on. And you have different relationships with points: Military and Religious ones should be stockpiled while if you have more than 100 Civic or more than 250 Oratory then you're doing something wrong. There are phases of need for each power. If you don't get far into the game you might just think it's imbalanced. It's probably is, but it's imbalanced in an interesting varied way. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 12:26 on May 25, 2019 |
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May 25, 2019 12:24
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The problem with monarch points for actions instead of time gating is more of a role playing one tbh. If you don't spend time to prepare for war with someone, like if it just costs MP to do it, you can just pivot your target last minute, which is not really 'grand strategy' as strategy implies forward planning. Being able to do so many things while the game is paused, like spending MP to drastically change your country, is not a good thing
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May 25, 2019 14:50
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The game wants to be a blobbing sim limited by point timers or a character driven story like CK2 and it can't make up its mind.
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May 25, 2019 16:32
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Average Bear posted:The game wants to be a blobbing sim limited by point timers or a character driven story like CK2 and it can't make up its mind. Oh, I think it's very firmly made up it's mind to be the former, but having some superficial elements of the latter. Characters are really just points-sinks and the game makes it hard to care about or pay attention to characters other than your ruler. Having the majority of interactions with characters involve them being an annoyance or threat doesn't help. The way civil wars are implemented is another tell about the design priorities.
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May 25, 2019 16:51
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Average Bear posted:The game wants to be a blobbing sim limited by point timers or a character driven story like CK2 and it can't make up its mind. It demonstrably does not want to be the latter. I've repeatedly come back to "CK2 has the lessons Imperator needs in how to make a fun, character-driven, content-filled game, at least as much as CK2 at launch", but Paradox has repeated time and again they wanted this to be as much like EU Rome as possible, which is a 10 year old, bad game.
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May 25, 2019 17:13
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ilitarist posted:I think it'd be better if they'd pretend you have envoys or agents or something, but of course it would still be strange to have hundreds of 1-use agents. This was how EU3 worked and it was loving terrible, and replacing them with monarch points was a tremendous and well-received improvement.
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May 25, 2019 17:32
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Most people here probably only know of EU Rome due to the Crete LP. But that was popular because it focused on readers playing the role of politicians, and not expanding until like the very end when a dictator took power. I know paradox dev's read this forum and hell, some are goons. Just an odd lesson to take from the popular reception of that broken game.
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May 25, 2019 18:44
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Average Bear posted:Most people here probably only know of EU Rome due to the Crete LP. But that was popular because it focused on readers playing the role of politicians, and not expanding until like the very end when a dictator took power. I know paradox dev's read this forum and hell, some are goons. Just an odd lesson to take from the popular reception of that broken game. That sure is some smug. Are you RPing Comic Book Guy?
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May 25, 2019 19:02
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EU Rome could have been a good game had it not clearly fallen through the cracks of the change in Paradox structure. On a base level EU Rome was a fine game that just needed more content. Something one half assed expansion couldn’t do
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May 25, 2019 19:14
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I think several functions in the game could have their mana cost either changed our removed. Make roads require gold. Look into moving slaves use military power. Have the inventions use their respective mana instead of entirely civic. Setting up trade between provinces in your empire either doesn't require monarch points or gives tyranny for overriding whatever trade routes the governors set up. Things like that. Also it'd be nice if there was some consistency to diplomacy costs. Some cost monarch points and others cost nothing. I can understand why improving relations costs oratory, but I can't understand how forming alliances and such doesn't in that same system. E: as for religious, it's got two common uses and then the rest you spend on conversions because there's nothing else to do. It seems like you could get rid of it but it'd feel super wrong to not have religious power. TTBF fucked around with this message at 19:35 on May 25, 2019 |
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May 25, 2019 19:33
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Family Values posted:That sure is some smug. Are you RPing Comic Book Guy? I don't know why you chose to read it that way. Probably the AIDS rear end GBS avatar someone gave me.
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May 25, 2019 19:35
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Anno posted:See this sounds like the start of a cool story for your playthrough. I definitely agree that more could be done with that stuff but I do like the idea of it. Like it makes sense that if you have a strong religious leader he would be in a better position to placate the masses after you pull off shady poo poo like imprisoning party leaders for no reason. All this stuff could be tweaked or fixed pretty easily though I think, and I'm sure they'll be adding a million other things you can do with the monarch mana eventually. I suppose it would be nice if the personal skills of your leader had more of an impact, so fighting over senate seats becomes a bit more important.
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May 25, 2019 19:48
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Beamed posted:It demonstrably does not want to be the latter. I've repeatedly come back to "CK2 has the lessons Imperator needs in how to make a fun, character-driven, content-filled game, at least as much as CK2 at launch", but Paradox has repeated time and again they wanted this to be as much like EU Rome as possible, which is a 10 year old, bad game. Yeah. I guess I expected more ck2 than we got, but it's also on me thinking that ck2s core loop of characters driving the conflict would apply to the classical world as well. I basically wanted ck-ancient edition, so this game is sadly looking like it will never be something I enjoy, regardless of what improvements they make. Map painting isn't fun to me without all the rp stuff behind it.
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May 25, 2019 21:25
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Ivan Shitskin posted:I definitely agree that more could be done with that stuff but I do like the idea of it. Like it makes sense that if you have a strong religious leader he would be in a better position to placate the masses after you pull off shady poo poo like imprisoning party leaders for no reason. For sure! But I just can’t abstract me spending 300 religious mana into that. Meanwhile you have an actual character appointed as the religious leader of your nation, right? I feel like he should be doing the placating, more or less well depending on his religious skill, and could fail and cause the local freemen pops to all rebel or something. Idk that just sounds more interesting in a way that uses your characters instead.
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May 25, 2019 21:44
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Azuren posted:This was how EU3 worked and it was loving terrible, and replacing them with monarch points was a tremendous and well-received improvement. And EU1 and 2, sort of. And mana system was always controversial, it's not like people started hating it in Imperator.
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May 25, 2019 22:37
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quote:This is a bit of a rambling of my thoughts, take them as you like. So I appreciate this sort of post, it's at least a formal acknowledgement the game is fundamentally bad right now and in need of massive restructuring. I'm not sure of the path forward but this is the first time I feel like Paradox has a grasp on what they did wrong here.
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May 26, 2019 03:34
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For pop conversion I think they should just shamelessly steal Stellaris's pop editor. You might not have the same need to micromanage pop traits like Stellaris but converting one or several provinces to your culture/religion would work better as a project you undertake that is completed over time as opposed to tediously converting them one by one and having them switch instantly. You could still have it take monarch points too.
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May 26, 2019 03:51
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That's definitely promising. I think the major patch that ends up coming out of this rethinking will be a big step in the right direction.
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May 26, 2019 03:52
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The first major patch is slated to come out in about a month, but you probably shouldn't expect it to be a huge rework or anything. The changes talked about so far have been promising, but it's all being developed in the context of stuff they knew about and wanted to do before or just after launch. It sounds like they're still exploring how they want the resource system to be structured, so we should probably expect that in patch two instead, which will be a while since they have the customary Swedish summer break coming up.
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May 26, 2019 08:32
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Beamed posted:So I appreciate this sort of post, it's at least a formal acknowledgement the game is fundamentally bad right now and in need of massive restructuring. I'm not sure of the path forward but this is the first time I feel like Paradox has a grasp on what they did wrong here. You have to read it in a really special way to see the idea that game is bad.
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May 26, 2019 10:06
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Anno posted:See this sounds like the start of a cool story for your playthrough. Good points, I think this kind of hits on the problem players have with mana in this game vs their use in something like EUIV. Even that game runs somewhat into the problem of pushing a bad thing away with some accumulated points, but at least in that game mana is precious enough it still feels meaningful to burn a ton of points to fix a gently caress up rather than a time sink (at least in my experience). Like an idea I had was that mana should be more a pool for actions your faction ruler at the time (king, consul, tribal chief) and their success with those actions should tie to their stats. Say you want to do something that requires oratory, you have to spend a certain amount of oratory on that act like we already do, but instead of buying the action and making it an instant success, the game rolls to see if you succeed. Your guy sucks as oratory, well you are more likely to not succeed. This ties into an idea I had to expand the council screen to include a bunch of additional posts (diplomat slots, tax collectors, vote counters, etc) dudes get appointed to. Say you wanna manufacture a claim, you have to have a dude assigned to a diplomat slot to send him out and when you spend mana to roll and use his skill as the rolling counter. Tax collectors have to be assigned to each largish administrative unit, and every year they roll against their civic to see if they can provide a boost to the efficiency of their tax collection. Now coming back to your ruler, say you want to boost stability using religion, but you suck at religion. You can have to option to delegate the stability boosting ceremony to one of the big religion guys on your small council instead. Now you have to hope that goes well, but wait, black news my consul, the augur went poorly and our stability wasn't boosted, it turns out the guy may have torpedoed the ceremony because he was pissed at your ruler for some reason. Expanding the role of the council, adding more positions and using mana to just roll to see success against a stat really opens the door to some interesting possibilities. In addition, it allows each 3 government to play differently. Kingdoms can plug and play their council and other positions (since the king can hire and fire at will), but risk power blocs forming as they delegate more and more responsibilities (al la people act like your Hand of the King is really in charge not you), Republics should have to have votes to confirm people for spots, so your uber diplomat guy might not make the cut because of lobbyists  , but if you want to boost a certain faction to maintain power you can try and maneuver people into key positions. Tribes can have different clans be responsible for certain things, so you better hope your religious tribe is on the ball for ceremonies to Wodan.
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May 26, 2019 15:44
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I bought Imperator: Rome thinking it was the next big grand strategy game from Paradox Interactive, but I only have 7 hours played on it. I don't like it, and I don't know why. Sorry, I couldn't be more helpful, Paradox!  I'm hopeful that it will get better with time though.
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May 26, 2019 16:18
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I hope paradox looks into the manpower <-> pops balance Atm, I'm playing as sarmartia, migrated myself to a great power by 500, 50 years into the game. I have a standing army of 505 cohorts now, with about 250 in retinues to various clan chiefs, the rest i got from dead chiefs, disassembled most of it, so i only have horse archers left. I got 550k manpower sitting around, as i havn't been in any real war, with potential to go up to 700k. Just maybe, cohorts should represent a freeman/tribe or slave pop. I read that vic2 has something similar, but haven't played it. But right now, i have a standing army, bigger then maurya, seleucid, phrygia, egypt, macedon, rome and carthage combined. The retinues just continues to grow, with the biggest having 154 cohorts alone.
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May 26, 2019 17:17
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My most rebellious area is my capital region, because screw you if you want garrison governor troops there! hohoho says the paradox troll...
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May 26, 2019 17:34
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Descar posted:I hope paradox looks into the manpower <-> pops balance The AI is very bad at managing manpower because they nerfed the gently caress out of manpower generation near the end of development since it was making their MP game have eternal hellwars that nobody could win Also clan mechanics are very obviously broken and that combined with using migration to become massive is kind of a corner case which maximises your army size without actually draining any manpower Jabor posted:That's definitely promising. I think the major patch that ends up coming out of this rethinking will be a big step in the right direction. Someone made the very good point that the game doesn't do a great job of indicating to the player which expenditures of power are cost effective vs. wasteful, like manually culture converting pops is one of the things that people get most pissed off about but in actual gameplay you basically never do it because it's an inefficient use of your resources. You could probably fairly easily replace the entire manual pop promotion system with a few more governor policy options and some other tweaks, without even changing the gameplay significantly. RabidWeasel fucked around with this message at 18:34 on May 26, 2019 |
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May 26, 2019 18:31
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Descar posted:My most rebellious area is my capital region, I suspect they wanted to simulate a common problem of royal guard being a leading cause for coups. Praetorians are most famous for that but it happened everywhere and still happens. Or, more likely, just copy Roman tradition of not letting armies into Rome everywhere. Would be much more interesting if it depended on the government type.
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May 26, 2019 18:35
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https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/a-new-currency-design.1181893/ Johan gave in: - Monarch power is gone, to be replaced by 'political influence' a currency based on your cabinet and their loyalty. - Converting and moving pops remains a one-time action since they can't re-balance it for the new system in time for 1.1 - Money, aggressive expansion, stability and legitimacy will play a much bigger role in government/character actions to account for the removal of monarch power. Doesn't really cover what this means for character stats, especially ruler ones.
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May 26, 2019 19:45
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I would say that gave in is a really bad way to phrase it. It takes a good character to admit you may have been wrong and move on to be positive and productive so good job Johan.
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May 26, 2019 20:03
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