Well, I have to reply.
I am now up to 1720 in my 3rd GC. I estimate at least 150 hours of playing, plus around 6 hours of scanning the FAQ forum, perhaps 30 times for perhaps 100 threads (this excludes reading AAR's etc.) And it is STILL true that I am mostly playing against the non-existent manual, not the AI. That is, if I had known the way a feature worked, I either would not have tried a tactic, or would have done it differently. No amount of enthusiasts trying to make a virtue of this will ever convince me that it's acceptable. This forum is evidence that I am far from alone in finding that much of the time spent on the game is trying to work out how to play it. It's more of a triumph to understand how vassalisation works than it is to vassalise somebody - this cannot be right.
Without wanting to brag, I play these sorts of games reasonably well, and once I know how a part of this program works, I'm playing that OK as well - not yet good enough to win with Ragusa on Hard/Aggressive, but getting there. So I don't listen too hard to folk who want to tell me that my bleats are just evidence of my incompetence.
The game will not run for more than 10 years without crashing. I estimate 40 crashes for a GC.
There are many bugs documented on this forum. I note, to pick a few varieties of bug at random, that:
- the percentage increases in population are not the actual (or even remotely similar) increases that take place
- countries have a -200 relationship with themselves throughout
- the percentage chances of colonisation that are shown are not the percentages that apply (though in this case they may claim it's a feature not a bug - hard to be sure, we don't know whether the percentages are supposed to be the full story)
- Alt-Tab crashes the program
- the graph lines don't line up with the x-axis values in the ledger
- the sound volume controls don't work
- Monarch VP's in the ledger are rubbish
- The y-axis for inflation is rubbish
- etc. etc.
Now you want me to believe that these sorts of problems only apply to the small proportion of the program that is documented or self-evident. You presumably take it on blind faith that all the huge parts of the program that are hidden are all working fine. Well, I don't take it on faith; in fact I assume that the testers also had great difficulty testing a largely undocumented program, and that large parts of the internal workings are also faulty. This may or may not include, for example, the extension of alliances for computer players - I certainly don't believe that you or anyone else can know that it works. Does it work as intended? Who can tell? What was intended?
There is, of course, no such thing as a bug-free piece of software. I'd expect a fault level. I certainly think that the faults on this program are well above an acceptable level. It's probably about ready for Beta test as it stands. God only knows what it was like on release 1.0. Fortunately I played nothing before 1.07 (that was the one where the only way to play the tutorial to the end was in a single 5+ hour session, because it was unsaveable, if you could get 5 crash-free hours of play, if you remember).
I spent about 7 hours reading the 'manual', twice, from cover to cover (you know, the one without an index or contents). It is largely a history lecture, which I find condescending. My history isn't too bad - what I need is to know how the game plays. The programmers have got carried away with their own belief in their creation - they think that it's such a good simulation of history that for example, the way to tell me how the economy works in EU is to tell me how the economy worked in Europe between 1492 and 1792.
Well they're wrong. EU is an intriguing and compelling abstraction, not the real world, and as an abstraction it needs explanation. I know that many on this forum use this as the catch-all justification for the lack of documentation, so I, and others, are treated to more history lectures in answer to our questions. e.g. Will repeated requests for vassalisation work? Answers - 'you can't expect a country that is nearly the same size as you without any problems to want to be vassalised'; 'our little alliance is so safe that it's silly to expect them to want to be vassalised' etc. These are statements about the real world, which I find patronising. I want a non-patronising answer about the game. And although I absolutely acknowledge that many of those answering the questions have a huge skill level and knowledge base about the game, yet I think they are at best naive in post facto attributions of historical rationales for game workings that are equally explainable as bugs. I say, 'at best naive', because some of those answering are surely implicated with Paradox in the creation of the game, and have some vested interest in passing it off as acceptable.
I've spent about 2 hours on Huszics FAQ. Some of it is very helpful. Much of it consists of tables from the board game, with the health warning that nobody knows whether the computer game is a direct replication of the board game.
Should I have to spend 10+ hours on a history lecture, 10+ hours on the internet, 150+ hours in game experimentation, just to know for example whether it's worth asking for vassalisation twice in 3 months (and still not know the answer)?
So you call that a strategy for merchants do you? So the computer AI doesn't just follow you into the non-competitive markets then? So the AI is stupid then? Any attempt by a human player to work out the balancing act of (at least):
- merchant dispatch cost
- competitiveness in various markets
- COT size
- impact of technology levels
- impact of monarch attributes
- likelihood of new COT formation
- impact of country attributes
- impact of COT ownership by human or computer competitor
is doomed. This is a very complex linear programming problem (if the functions involved are indeed linear - who knows? And if indeed they have programmed the functions properly - who knows?).
So all one can do is either:
- resort to general historical principles. But it's an ABSTRACTION, not the real world. There was, and is no such thing as monarch attributes, a fixed COT size, a fixed date for COT formation, a fixed set of country attributes. And in the real world, there is a host of data on which to base decisions.
- or play the game so many times that you can work out what is going on - yet another example of playing against the non-existent manual, not the AI. I estimate perhaps 600 hours might do it. You reckon you've got it taped in a week; well, sorry, but I don't believe you. And even if you have stumbled on a magic trick for out-performing the AI, that doesn't make the economic aspects of the game sensible.
These are the reasons that I say that this is largely a wargame. At least with the combat, after about 20 hours you can get the hang of what will probably work in most situations, and put the rest down to legitimate randomisation (or bugs, how would one tell the difference?). To be fair, it's also possible to get the hang of colonisation. So after as little as, oh, 60 hours, you can play some sort of sensible game as Spain, England, presumably Portugal.
Judging by the AAR's none of the real experts pay much attention to the diplomatic and economic aspects of the game. Hence the very high proportion of the forum and FAQ's devoted to the arcane issues of attrition, siege workings, morale behaviour etc. Yet the idea behind the game is much richer than that. And in case I am about to be treated to a history lecture, the greatness of, e.g. France in the 17th century was NOT largely based on complex and detailed moves of just the right armies into just the right provinces at just the right time.
I gain loads more from trade then I invest. It's where I get most my income from cuz my census tax usually sux seeing I like to play minors.
