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What am I looking for in terms of Army composition? I know cavalry is much better here than it is in EU4 and Heavy Infantry is better than Light Infantry in every respect other than than cost but thats as far as I got.
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Oct 24, 2019 01:14
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RabidWeasel posted:Unfortunately a pretty hefty chunk of the playerbase does not appear to give a gently caress about competent AI since they just want to play in their own sandbox and having an AI which might come and bully you is actively detrimental to that. Yeah, true, but I think what we're talking about goes beyond that. If we're talking about a stereotypical "casual" gamer then no, they don't know or care much about what makes a good AI versus bad a AI, and that's ok! But that's mostly in regards to stuff that's under the hood, things that are largely invisible at the surface layer. Like, Civilization has terrible AI but it doesn't present that. As far as player who doesn't get super into the game and just chills can tell, there is nothing amiss. The AI players build cities, they make armies, they engage in diplomacy, the do the things they should do. They might not be good at those things, and they're probably cheating in secret, but they put up appearances. Paradox poo poo is different. In Stellaris, even the most detached, non-critical player can tell "hey, every single time I capture a planet it's full off starving people on undeveloped land" (I don't know if this particular problem is still common, but it was for quite a long time, the specific issue isn't important). In Imperator, any bozo can tell "hey, there literally isn't a single city anywhere north of the Alps, and every Tribal I conquer is barren ground at 0/0/0". This is visible in a big way, and it feels wrong. I don't think it's comparable to your typical bad 4X AI. It reminds of early Total War games, where it was basically impossible to lose a siege if you shot the AI's one battering ram, because the entire army would just sit there and be arrowed to death, completely inactive until they broke moral. It was bad, it sucked, and anyone who played or even watched the game for ten minutes could tell. But Creative Assembly fixed that poo poo eventually and their games have only gotten better. Now, this isn't to say that broken AI means the game is trash and anyone who likes it is wrong. I'm not even saying I think the games are bad. But I think you're underestimating how visible this is, even to regular players. This isn't under the hood poo poo like Civilization AI. This is obviously busted in a very visible way that anyone can see. I think it's a problem for Paradox. Not one that kills their games, but one that people like their games in spite of, to a big degree. I don't think it's safe to assume that very few players notice it just because they might not notice in other games, because I don't think it's comparable. Meme Poker Party fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Oct 24, 2019 |
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Oct 24, 2019 03:52
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AnEdgelord posted:What am I looking for in terms of Army composition? I know cavalry is much better here than it is in EU4 and Heavy Infantry is better than Light Infantry in every respect other than than cost but thats as far as I got. I haven't crunched the numbers or anything but I think it depends somewhat on who you're playing as and what bonuses their ideas give. As Rome in my Mare Nostrum run I went with roughy 2:2:1 light infantry:heavy infantry:light cav with the Triplex Acies formation and didn't have any trouble trouncing everyone in combat. As anyone from the Barbarian idea group I usually go with a similar ratio but archers instead of light infantry.
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Oct 24, 2019 04:04
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Chomp8645 posted:Yeah, true, but I think what we're talking about goes beyond that. I've played a single game of HoI4 couple of years after release. As USSR I was able to conquer whole Europe without ever touching navies or air or commander management (I just assigned random guys to armies). Of course, it's a major power that won the war historically but it's a game where you're supposed to play as the major, no one else gets any content. Stellaris bad AI is legendary. CK2 isn't that good either but there AI is supposed to roleplay so it's not that important. Sadly EU4 seems to have the most capable AI. I:R was pretty good on release too, there's little hope it will ever be as good as it was on release as devs will again focus on feature creep and adding solitaire mechanics AI wouldn't use. And you're right that AI complaints aren't just about hardcore guys wanting bigger gates to gatekeep. I think it's fine when AI cheats in Civilization (as long as it doesn't break strategies, e.g. if AI could conjure strategic resources it would make denying it strategic resources moot; so AI getting twice as many resources is fine but getting flat resource income is not good). And even there the most casual person would not like seeing AI shooting itself in the foot, e.g. embarking land units right in front of your fleet or I don't know - building Petra in a city with a single desert tile or something. It's much more irritating than seeing AI not using its military effectively. I was infuriated with Civ when I saw how AI has several space ports and doesn't build any space ship parts handing me easy victory. And true, seeing that the land you conquered wasn't managed at all gives exactly that impression in earlier EU4 versions. ilitarist fucked around with this message at 09:14 on Oct 24, 2019 |
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Oct 24, 2019 09:06
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The AI in paradox games is generally quite good. Only cheats I take issue with are military access only being a factor for the player and taking shortcuts with fort rules.
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Oct 24, 2019 16:17
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Average Bear posted:The AI in paradox games is generally quite good. Only cheats I take issue with are military access only being a factor for the player and taking shortcuts with fort rules. But what's so bad about military access where Ming marches their armies into Egypt because they got into a war with the Mamluks somehow? Or some tiny Dutch state getting sieged down by France so they run down to the Black Sea to occupy Genoan land? And then they frequently cancel access to prevent you from using the same way or hide inside third party territory they have access to but you don't because lol.
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Oct 24, 2019 16:41
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Poil posted:Don't forget completely omniscient about where your armies and fleets are so when the war starts they head for the area you don't have any soldiers in even though they should have no scouting information whatsoever. In my last (and only complete) game of Imperator, as Rome I made it a distinct point to forcibly break subject between Carthage and Massylia (or whoever) in a peace treaty because that whole shtick where Massylia isn't in the war but Carthage just pops in and out of their land, making any push down the coast a back-cap nightmare, is some bullshit!!!
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Oct 24, 2019 17:16
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Chomp8645 posted:In my last (and only complete) game of Imperator, as Rome I made it a distinct point to forcibly break subject between Carthage and Massylia (or whoever) in a peace treaty because that whole shtick where Massylia isn't in the war but Carthage just pops in and out of their land, making any push down the coast a back-cap nightmare, is some bullshit!!!
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Oct 24, 2019 17:21
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Chomp8645 posted:In my last (and only complete) game of Imperator, as Rome I made it a distinct point to forcibly break subject between Carthage and Massylia (or whoever) in a peace treaty because that whole shtick where Massylia isn't in the war but Carthage just pops in and out of their land, making any push down the coast a back-cap nightmare, is some bullshit!!! You dont need to. With a few minutes of improve diplomacy and one gift, they'll grant you military access so you can chase those armies.
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Oct 24, 2019 17:29
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Poil posted:Don't forget completely omniscient about where your armies and fleets are so when the war starts they head for the area you don't have any soldiers in even though they should have no scouting information whatsoever. I totally forgot about that. My last Spain game I lost a 3k stack suddenly in a war to England. I zoomed in to find it was my conquistador deep in the Amazon discovering uncharted lands. The English army did not land anywhere else.
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Oct 24, 2019 18:05
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Average Bear posted:The AI in paradox games is generally quite good. Only cheats I take issue with are military access only being a factor for the player and taking shortcuts with fort rules. This is mostly true in CK2 and EU4, which are well designed. In Stellaris, however, it's pure garbage because of the sheer amount of mechanics it doesn't understand. Tiles used to cause the whole "millions of hungry aliens on bare land huddling around the colony shelter" problem and everyone rejoiced when Paradox finally replaced them with another mechanism. Unfortunately, it turned out to be not much better, to the point where a moderately skilled player will still be able to run circles around the AI.
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Oct 25, 2019 11:42
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Gantolandon posted:This is mostly true in CK2 and EU4, which are well designed. In Stellaris, however, it's pure garbage because of the sheer amount of mechanics it doesn't understand. Tiles used to cause the whole "millions of hungry aliens on bare land huddling around the colony shelter" problem and everyone rejoiced when Paradox finally replaced them with another mechanism. Unfortunately, it turned out to be not much better, to the point where a moderately skilled player will still be able to run circles around the AI.
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Oct 25, 2019 14:33
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Playing as Rome, wrapping up the last war against Syracuse to unify Italy south of Cisalpine Gaul... Carthage actually declared the Punic Wars against me  Don't think I ever got DOW'd my whole first Rome playthrough when the game came out.
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Oct 29, 2019 16:10
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So my aggressive expansion seems to be increasing rapidly during peacetime. Is this a bug or am I loving up somehow?
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Oct 31, 2019 05:21
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Attempted any assassinations recently? It's easy to miss that those incur AE.
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Oct 31, 2019 05:38
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Azuren posted:Playing as Rome, wrapping up the last war against Syracuse to unify Italy south of Cisalpine Gaul... Carthage actually declared the Punic Wars against me Some of the major powers got AI tweaks to make them actually do things, Carthage is one of them
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Oct 31, 2019 08:22
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You continuously gain AE if you support rebels.
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Oct 31, 2019 09:22
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Any advice on fleet comps, or should I just mass the heaviest ships I can and aim for a numerical advantage? The Diadochi have locked up Greece and even if I'm not looking to expand into Magna Graecia, I can always go raiding for...personnel acquisitions in the meantime.
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Oct 31, 2019 14:51
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Yesterday my fleet of 130 ships (mostly comprised of hexareme and Qua.. (poo poo i can't spell it out)) engaged the Carthaginian navy of 80 ships. Despite having more ships and higher moral, my entire fleet was wiped out. Everything was going well until at one point my number of ship was literally cut in half mid battle. I still have no idea wtf happened but I had 3 armies on that fleet and thagt literally lost me the game. I could have tried to keep going but.. losing 3 armies and an entire fleet without the possibility of rebuilding it without each individual ship getting murdered on their way to the rendez vous point kinda ensured that I wasn't going to get the Nostre Mare achievement (Yes, I'm still on that... wtf)
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Nov 1, 2019 16:00
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fwiw I did my mare nostrum run without a navy. just go overland also, whoever bought daleal's new av, if you're reading this thread, thank you
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Nov 1, 2019 22:54
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Wafflecopper posted:fwiw I did my mare nostrum run without a navy. just go overland *In a AVGN voice* You just... walk over it.
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Nov 1, 2019 23:22
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Im confident in most of this games mechanics, its basically Classical Stellaris, and my nation is reducing entire ethnicities into slavery. Cool, cool. But what is the logic on tribesman, I know they are valuable for manpower and straight cash. The problem is that I cannot seem to keep their population up in my various provinces, they all migrate to cities and then either turn into slaves or freemen. Is this part of the games promotion logic? Like can tribesman only flourish in provinces that are without cities?
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Nov 2, 2019 02:48
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I think that freemen give more manpower and slaves give more cash, so unless you have bonuses to tribesmen (eg via the tribal decentralisation laws) then you're better off having them promote/demote into freemen/slaves. Cities I believe always have a desired tribesman ratio of 0% so all tribesmen in cities will eventually promote or demote. I'm not sure how their ratio works in settlements. Building farms, mines, slave estates or barracks seems to always result in 100% slaves or freemen over time even though only the barracks says that it affects the ratio. Looking around some of my provinces in old saves, even places with tribal settlements that I never got around to bulldozing and replacing seem to be trending towards 0 tribesmen. It might be related to government type or civilization value although the tooltips don't say anything about that. Perhaps the ratio is affected by the happiness of the different pop types? Civilization value doesn't say anything about affecting tribesman ratio but it does make them less happy so maybe that's it?
Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 03:15 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 2, 2019 03:10
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well this seems wrong, i can't declare on my neighbour because they're outside my diplo range? i guess it's measured to their capital or something but that's still hosed e: actually i was gonna declare earlier (decided to wait and fabricate a claim on a better war goal) and it wasn't greyed out then, some kind of bug? e2: now i can declare again Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Nov 2, 2019 |
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Nov 2, 2019 06:30
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Wafflecopper posted:Cities I believe always have a desired tribesman ratio of 0% so all tribesmen in cities will eventually promote or demote. I'm not sure how their ratio works in settlements. Building farms, mines, slave estates or barracks seems to always result in 100% slaves or freemen over time even though only the barracks says that it affects the ratio. Looking around some of my provinces in old saves, even places with tribal settlements that I never got around to bulldozing and replacing seem to be trending towards 0 tribesmen. It might be related to government type or civilization value although the tooltips don't say anything about that. Perhaps the ratio is affected by the happiness of the different pop types? Civilization value doesn't say anything about affecting tribesman ratio but it does make them less happy so maybe that's it? So: territories have “ideal fraction” ratings for the different pop types. These are weights, though they’re given as percentages for no good reason. This value is used to calculate a “final desired ratio” for the pop type. This calculation is simply the weight for the pop type divided by the total weights for all pop types in that territory. So, if you have a territory with an ideal fraction for slaves of one and an ideal fraction for tribesmen of one then the final desired ratios for that territory are 50% slaves, 50% tribesmen, 0% everything else. Note here that the value of a point of ideal fraction is entirely contingent. If the territory had ideal fraction values of 5 for slaves and five for tribesmen then it would still have a final desired ratio of 50% slaves and 50% tribesmen. As you might have guessed, the final desired ratios are the values the population will trend to over time. If a pop type makes up a greater fraction of the territory’s population than its final desired ratio it will de/promote into other types that are below their desired ratio. Now that we have the rules, all we need to know to understand the system is what affects the ideal fraction values. Fortunately, the answer is “basically nothing”. It boils down to government type, laws, buildings, city status and the location of the capital. Every territory in the game has a base slave ideal fraction of 5. This is the only universally applied ideal fraction bonus in there, as far as I know, so: absent any other modifiers, all territories trend towards 100% slaves. If you are a tribe, you also have a base tribesman ideal fraction of 5. This means that non-cities held by tribes will trend towards 50% tribesmen and 50% slaves. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, this is the only source of tribesmen ideal fraction available, so if you are not a tribe, tribesmen will eventually disappear from your realm. The most significant factor in the system is whether or not a territory is a city. Being a cities confers +35 citizen ideal fraction, +35 freeman ideal fraction, and +25 slave ideal fraction, meaning that by default, cities trend to a ratio of 35% citizens, 35% freemen and 30% slaves. Note also that these values are much, much larger than the base tribesmen bonus for being a tribe, so that even if you are a tribe, tribesmen will eventually disappear in your cities. Also, there is as far as I know no way to get citizen ideal outside of cities except in the capital, so citizens cannot exist outside of cities. There is no additional effect from metropoleis. Then there are laws. I haven’t made a comprehensive survey across all government types, but the monarchy I have here in front of me can get +10 citizen ideal or +10 freeman ideal in cities from domestic laws and +15 slave ideal in cities from the “tyrant kings” option under military reforms. If you really like not having any manpower and took both the slave and the citizen option this would change your default city ratios to 36% citizens, 28% freemen and 36% slaves. So, not a huge impact from these. Then there’s buildings, which can be pretty impactful. For settlements, the only thing that matters is the barracks, which gives you +15 freeman ideal, and would make your ratios 75% freemen, 25% slaves for settled nations and 60% freemen, 20% tribesmen and 20% slaves for tribes. Tribal settlements have no effect on the ratio of tribesmen. In cities you have one building for each of the three settled pop types: libraries for citizens, fora for freemen and mills for slaves. Each gives +6 ideal for their respective type, which is not a great deal in a city. You’ll need four or five of the things to make any appreciable difference and dozens to skew the ratio enough to produce a near-monoculture. Remember also that the value of a point of ideal fraction is inversely proportional to how much is already there, so buildings have sharply diminishing returns in this area. Finally, your capital gets +2 citizen ideal and +2 freeman ideal, which is basically irrelevant in a city, so the only real impact of this is to give tribes a non-zero research output.
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Nov 2, 2019 14:54
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It's on me to transfer slaves out of settlements past their pop cap, right? My capital city is second only to Alexandria in terms of density, but the rest of my Greek holdings are surprisingly bare or a lot less populated.
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Nov 2, 2019 14:59
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Dalael posted:Yesterday my fleet of 130 ships (mostly comprised of hexareme and Qua.. (poo poo i can't spell it out)) engaged the Carthaginian navy of 80 ships. Despite having more ships and higher moral, my entire fleet was wiped out. Everything was going well until at one point my number of ship was literally cut in half mid battle. I still have no idea wtf happened but I had 3 armies on that fleet and thagt literally lost me the game. Historically accurate I'd guess they either had a better leader, and/or used a tactic that beat your chosen tactic. Carthage also gets a boost to ship damage inflicted from their heritage, I believe.
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Nov 2, 2019 18:59
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toasterwarrior posted:It's on me to transfer slaves out of settlements past their pop cap, right? My capital city is second only to Alexandria in terms of density, but the rest of my Greek holdings are surprisingly bare or a lot less populated. Pretty much, yeah. It's probably the clunkiest part of pop management.
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Nov 2, 2019 20:29
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Ive tried a couple games with Rome and Parnia, all of the mechanics feel really solid now but the game still feels so sterile and lifeless compared to other paradox games. Luckily they're addressing that next patch but until then I think the game is going back on the shelf for me.
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Nov 3, 2019 00:22
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Very helpful effort post Thank you for this. It'd be nice if Paradox made the same effort to explain this anywhere in the game. Where did you get this info? I'm guessing a dev diary? Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Nov 3, 2019 |
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Nov 3, 2019 01:15
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Wafflecopper posted:Thank you for this. It'd be nice if Paradox made the same effort to explain this anywhere in the game. Where did you get this info? I'm guessing a dev diary? Honestly, from the UI. All the buildings and laws that shift the weightings tell you they do that in their tooltips and the current/final ratio breakdown in the territory pop screen will tell you what the factors going into the calculation are. It's not particularly well sign-posted (why does this building that says "+15% Freemen Ideal Fraction" on it transform three-quarters of the population into freemen??), but you can work it out eventually.
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Nov 3, 2019 16:17
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  Well played Paradox. Now I know I'm not going to be forming Gaul with Arvernia.
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Nov 4, 2019 20:15
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Honestly, from the UI. All the buildings and laws that shift the weightings tell you they do that in their tooltips and the current/final ratio breakdown in the territory pop screen will tell you what the factors going into the calculation are. It's not particularly well sign-posted (why does this building that says "+15% Freemen Ideal Fraction" on it transform three-quarters of the population into freemen??), but you can work it out eventually. Oh right. Yeah the fraction being listed as a percentage definitely threw me off completely, it should say weighting or something because fraction doesn't exactly make sense either. I also didn't realise that when the tooltip said "x out of y creates a final desired ratio of z%" that x and y were weightings. I still think that as well as labeling this stuff better in the tooltips, the game should really have a civilopedia equivalent and/or an optional advanced tutorial that explains the more advanced game mechanics.
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Nov 5, 2019 06:24
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Does AE scale with pops? Seems like it's a flat +1 per city taken (while warscore does scale with pops, I believe). If that's the case, seems it's a lot more efficient to go for densely-populated areas, over the same amount of pops spread out over low-density low-civ lands (for that and other reasons). I've been trying a Rome run with the goal of getting to the maximum borders of the Empire before the game ends (in vanilla I got to the Republican borders) and trying to conquer stuff in the historical order, first consolidated Italy, then beat up Carthage for Sicily + Sardinia, and then again for coastal Iberia, then Cisalpine Gaul, then I just won my first war against Macedon and am gonna consolidate Greece then Illyria. Conquering all that poo poo tribal land put my research efficiency in the dump (as low as 40-something percent). I've been trying to keep it high by spamming libraries and academies in the key cities, but it gets diluted bad... Never really noticed it until I was fighting Macedon while I had 4 mil tech and they had 6 
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Nov 7, 2019 18:58
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 That uuh, sure is an alliance you got there Macedon, could you please stay in Getia lands? Please? Guess I will just try and stall and bleed as many of the fuckers as possible!  And hope Phrygia decides to attack them, but with my luck they attack Getia too or something
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Nov 17, 2019 15:54
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Started up another game of this in earnest since 1.2.0 has been out, picked Dobunna (?) and united Pritania, and I just invaded Belgium to break onto the mainland. I played a bunch prior to the overhaul in the hellenic world (Rome, epirus, masillia, crete, some other small Greek states) so I know the drill with monarchies/republics, but as a tribe, I basically wanna rush to centralize/civilize as fast as possible right? Because of the bad research of tribes? Also how do I decide where/when to build cities? I've been aggregating slaves in good trade good provinces and then building them into a city to handle the population/build buildings to boost output. Any other tips on cities? So far I really like the changes mechanically, I like the buildings, single power system, pop movement is a lot nicer now, lots to like. I still feel something of a lack of sterility, like I'm just some gallic tribe thats just expanding to expand, but the mechanics are a lot more satisfying now. The tribe thing makes characters a little more interesting, but I still haven't bothered to learn names.
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Nov 17, 2019 16:11
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:Also how do I decide where/when to build cities? I've been aggregating slaves in good trade good provinces and then building them into a city to handle the population/build buildings to boost output. Any other tips on cities? I just stick them wherever has a high pop cap
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Nov 17, 2019 16:18
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:Started up another game of this in earnest since 1.2.0 has been out, picked Dobunna (?) and united Pritania, and I just invaded Belgium to break onto the mainland. I played a bunch prior to the overhaul in the hellenic world (Rome, epirus, masillia, crete, some other small Greek states) so I know the drill with monarchies/republics, but as a tribe, I basically wanna rush to centralize/civilize as fast as possible right? Because of the bad research of tribes? Farmland, coast, ports and rivers are good areas, try to combine as many as possible, while avoiding food type resources if possible. I usually try to get out of being a tribe ASAP as well, but going negative and playing a migrating tribe is fun as well, last time I started out in Tibet and migrated to western Germany edit: That might be a solution to the Macedon problem if I survice actually, change my laws and try to migrate away. Noir89 fucked around with this message at 16:33 on Nov 17, 2019 |
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Nov 17, 2019 16:30
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Sparq posted:
I get that the second flag is Obelix; is the first one Asterix? E: Oh it’s his belt.
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Nov 17, 2019 16:57
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hot cocoa on the couch posted:Also how do I decide where/when to build cities? I've been aggregating slaves in good trade good provinces and then building them into a city to handle the population/build buildings to boost output. Any other tips on cities? I've been putting them in ports, which seems to work fine, and on desirable trade goods I want to have a lot of (that aren't food). That hasn't worked out so well, because while all your slaves do automatically go there when they're captured... they also promote real fast, so you never end up with enough for a surplus. Putting them on food provinces is a mixed bag, because they turn the food trade good into a random urban one- reducing your food supply as your food demand is increased. Some of the urban trade goods are nice and they're all rare, though. Buildings wise, to my mind the point of a city is research, so I usually build one academy + a bunch of libraries until I'm up to ~66% desired citizen ratio, then more academies. If your capital gets really large in the late game you might have trouble assimilating/converting all the slaves that end up there, which means temples and theatres might be worth building.
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Nov 18, 2019 00:44
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