EUIV - Development Diary - 11th of February 2020

[MiniaAr]

I like the new DotF changes, but the tier should be based on number of provinces, not countries.

About provoke rebels: it shouldn’t increase the stack, it should cost military mana points.

Interesting.
So kind of making it a reverse harsh treatment? Actually, if you could chose between provoke rebels or harsh treatment, increasing or reducing rebel progress by 30%, this would be easy to understand and consistent.

 

[Tue_p3]

Smart innovations,

I like that dotf counts countries. As dotf your main aim should be to protect your flock.

I also hope dotf gives claims on important religious centers. Since 'defending the faith' also meant going on crusade

 

[Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom!]

Honestly, it felt a bit OP to be Anglican DotF. I'm ok with this.

 

[flogi]

So I hope that the defender of the faith mechanics really interact with other new mechanics like teased by Groogy, cause 50 countries for the full bonus feels quite a lot. I mean once Client States are around it could be easily absued, but its questionable if it would be worth it. Though I hope that the wording "nations" was chosen carefully it in fact does not mean "country."
Could be tied to cultures somewhat as well.

 

[Chocolate Orange]

Looks like you have a double Kotor with the ottomans there. May want to fix the dynamic names. Karadağ maybe for Montenegro?

 

[BrotherJonathan]

@Groogy Let's say you're going for the One Faith achievement on 1.30. You obviously want 50 nations of your faith for the tasty -30% missionary maintenance cost. So optimally, you want up to 49 client states/vassals that are landlocked within your borders so no one will declare on them (at least without the Imperialism cb or no cb). That's a lot of button clicking, although one faith runs already have a bunch of button clicking due to needing to convert 2000+ provinces.

This might be something to consider when weighing whether to have the tiers based on # of countries, total dev, or # of provinces.

FWIW, I do believe that # of countries should have some impact, since a defender of the faith title when you're the only nation of that religion is pretty cheesy.

You make a good point. Maybe they can do what someone else suggested, where your own provinces would only count for half of province count/dev count. That way you can't become DoF just by being huge. It would also fit with what I'm starting to think is one of the main goals of the devs with this update, which is to fight late-game steamrolling without relying on mechanics that a lot of players find annoying or arbitrary.

 

[paulatreides0]

I like the idea of making DotF more active, but it seems a bit weird just having it depend on the number of nations.

Imho the number of countries should factor into some stuff, but it should be more like the islam mechanic, where you have some level and doing X increases it while doing Y decreases it. Namely:

Increase: Win a defensive CtA as DotF, Force Convert, Force Convert through War, Force Reconversion (e.g. Cath => Prost => Cath), convert a province to the religion.

Ideally conversions should be fairly small bumps but can add up if you convert a ton of provinces, reconversion should be worth more than conversion, and force conversion worth more if done through peace rather than war (to represent that it is actually harder to do game-wise, but one could also justify it in other ways).

Decrease: Lose a defense CtA as DotF, have a nation convert away from religion, have a province convert to a different religion,

Maybe also ticking up/down depending on how many countries follow the faith for some extra incentive to have a lot of members?

Ideally with, as above, having provinces convert away being a small cost but that it adds up over a number of provinces.

Also, another weird thing: Shouldn't DotF have a bonus to conversion power and force conversion cost? These seem like they would be rational things for a DotF to have. Force conversion cost especially.

Would also help converting centers of reformation

 

[po8crg]

How about scaling Defender of the Faith by dev of that religion (in countries of that religion), except for the dev of the actual defender and their vassals.

IOW, "how much outside of your own territory are you actually defending here?"

Counting countries seems to overvalue tiny HRE minors.

 

[master_kong]

It requires the faction to have already reached a progression of 50% before this option can be picked and when done it will cause those rebels to appear 50% stronger than they would have usually. You can also not use this feature at war so you can not rebel bomb your opponents with it.

You know you can't prevent using rebel bomb especially with this situation of mil access. Alternatively:

• Admit the rebel bomb as a legitimate strategy
• Narrow the margin of it by increasing required progression to %75 or sth from %50
• Add a cost attached to it. diplo or both diplo and mil points dunno
• remove %50 stronger thing it doesn't make sense

Or maybe a better but more difficult way; rework the annoying rebel mechanic finally and make them like tags with their own diplomacy. This way they won't attack every army they encountered brainlessly.

It's really nice that you guys are adding a provoke option for rebels. And i also like the immersioning of DotF, i'm sure you will sharpen this idea with some nice feedbacks. Keep it up!

 

[kontinos]

Btw, can we make it so when we mothball forts, they reset to 0 garrison with the month change? Its tedious to want and keep a fort up and manually uncheck the rest instead of using mil tab to mothball all and manually check the ones you actually need.

 

[AlleyTheToaster]

sounds pretty neat

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No we haven't tweaked that, and there are two different spawns of rebels so not sure which one you are referring to. Event spawned ones are limited by the supply limit of the province while the faction spawned ones are limited by the size of your nation. Size from faction spawn is calcualted as (dev of province * 0.3 + 1) * tech impact * (0.5 + forcelimit / 2) with forcelimit being scaled to 0 to 1 and capped to 0.5. For now I haven't tweaked any of that spawn and I haven't seen any need for it.

There are still situations that spawn ~21 rebels in one stack for a nation with a force limit or 13. This is obviously not possible to fight reasonably with normal means, though there are some workarounds to deal with it.

There is also still the issue of unrest set to 0 --> generates rebels because type switches and stacks (only reasonable conclusion is that this is bugged, reducing unrest should not instantly produce rebels).

 

[Grimhat]

I like this a lot, what I and @Johan want though is that you don't benefit as much if you own literally everything. That it is better for you if there are other nations to defend.

Then if you change it to be right religion devellopment from all same religion nations, you could cut the amount of dev the PotF adds to the equation by, say, 50%?

 

[holyvigil]

Solid nerf to Coptic, Orthodox, Shia and all late game Dotfs.

It looks there are new ways to counteract that but I'm guessing it's going to involve war and a quite a large amount of war score. Which means it won't be worth it.

 

[--M--]

I don't think it's a good idea to sclae the power of the DoF with the power of it's faith -- be it number of nations, development or other.
It should scale inversely with the power of the faith: The lesser brethren there are, the more radically it's believers will fight for it.

The DoF should have two scales: Fanaticism and Righteousness.
Fanaticism could scale inversely with the power of the faith, giving more military boni the weaker the faith gets. If you are the last stronghold of your faith, suicide squads will flock to your banner. If everyone on earth is a follower already, no one will actually care about this faith.
Righteousness resembles how believable you are in defending your faith. I'd favor something like the muslim mechanics here: Helping a fellow believer against heretics or heathens, attacking heathens should give more Righteousness points while not helping or even attacking fellow believers should decrease this value.
A high trust would give the religious boni (like missionary power) or diplomatic boni. If trust drops below a certain point, you would lose the DoF.
Righteousness points could work like power projection in that you gain or lose them depending on the outcome or the war. Actions like taking true believer provinces from a heathen could get bonus points.

 

[durbal]

None of this matters. Why would I keep 50 little OPMs around so that I can get some negligible morale and pointless conversion cost modifier?

And using either development or province count is just plain problematic. The point is to be the Defender of the Faith, not some guy who wants bonuses because his religion just happens to be well-proliferated.

 

[Soulburger]

@Groogy

Several people have mentioned opening up DotF to other religions. Thematically I agree with current restriction as there is a significant history of Christian and Islamic crusades. However I can see gameplay reasons to include a system for the other religions.

What about granting a religious icon for non DotF religions? Like a guru for Dharmic or shaman for Totemist. Just spitballing a few examples. These wouldnt have the military focus like regular DotF but could have other bonuses. Main focus though is to give them an extra missionary which really restricts their conversion options. If you do want to roll in a military bonus perhaps more passive ones like manpower recovery or replenishment rate would be a better thematic fit.


Also can you add a cooldown if someone loses the DotF? Its gamey for the player and AI to drop it only for them to pick it up the next month.

 

[Josar]

Late game you could be a tier 3 defender of the faith with all the colonial nations and vassals you can have, even if you are the only independent nation. That is interesting.

 

[TheAtreides84]

no it didn't made any sense. it's the "religion = anti science" meme that really needs to go

Even less sense as things like papal controller, icon of st. John, individual creeds and even legalism actually give bonuses in the same areas. Never understood that logic, glad it's gone.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

I've been reading the comments defending the bonus being related to country number, and comments suggesting something else like provinces or development to be used. Its honestly hard to make a decision here because both sides have good arguments and yet significant flaws.

But one thing that i definitely agree is that the defender of the faith should be an active roll you earn, and not a passive one you declare.

My views on the defender of the faith are perfectly encapsulated by Stannis Baratheon in ASOIAF: "I had the cart before the horse. I was trying to win the throne to save the kingdom, when I should have been trying to save the kingdom to win the throne."
(Replace "throne" by title and "kingdom" by faith.)

The Defender of the Faith shouldn't be a title you instantly proclaim for a temporary buff and then drop out at the first call to action. The bonus should depend directly on your actions as the defender.
I would suggest a ticking mechanic like "Authority" representing how serious you are taken as the Defender, and the bonuses would scale accordingly to that percentage.

When you claim the title you start at something like 50% and it will slowly decrease over time.
It slowly ticks up while at war with an infidel, and it gets slightly boosted every time you convert a province or enforce religion on a vassal. Answering a call to arms from a faithful believer who requests your aid against the infidel should greatly increase it, and refusing the call to arms should massively decrease it. When it reaches 25% you could potentially be usurped by someone with higher prestige and at 0% you would loose the title.
If you do loose the title, you shouldn't be able to claim it again as soon as you have the money for it, instead there should be a cooldown to allow your unreliable reputation to be forgiven/forgotten before you can attempt it again.
It should also be possible to step down from your title (provided you still have above like 30% authority) without taking the prestige and diplomatic penalty for failing your duties.

This way, it wouldn't really matter weather there are a lot of OPM's from your religion or weather they are few but strong, all that matters is if you are effectively fulfilling your duty as their defender.