Ease restrictions on switching NIs on tag formation

[Lysistrata]

So from what I can gather, the most common conditions to have the option of switching NIs: no custom ideas, and you must be either a player or an AI with generic NIs.

First of all, there's not much reason for the custom ideas block to apply to players outside ironman. I'd certainly appreciate not having to waste precious time customising NIs in the nation designer when I just made this tag for the dynasty and would rather just use existing idea sets, e.g. making a Yamato dynasty tag in Japan.

The generic NIs rule's a bit overly restrictive for the AI too. Like, which tags, be they OPM starter tags or not, still have the generic NIs at this point? Probably not too many. Say France somehow ceases to exist, and is reformed by some OPM duke released in a peace deal or something with French ducal ideas. A France stuck on French ducal ideas is just weaker for no good reason. I think a lot of tags could do with consideration for case-by-case exceptions like these.

 

[thetrue7man]

First of all, there's not much reason for the custom ideas block to apply to players outside ironman. I'd certainly appreciate not having to waste precious time customising NIs in the nation designer when I just made this tag for the dynasty and would rather just use existing idea sets, e.g. making a Yamato dynasty tag in Japan.

As someone who extensively uses non-ironman games to test mechanics for planning out ironman runs later, I'd greatly prefer what you can normally do in the game to remain the same regardless of if you are in ironman or not, console notwithstanding.

I do not disagree that the restrictions seem a bit questionable in general (If this would make any achievement too easy just make that achievements 'happened' check that you still hold custom ideas; not sure what other problems these restrictions are really directed against in the first place), but I don't want an ironman-dependent change to get made and for someone who doesn't know this rule to plan stuff out for a run and then get screwed because the game arbitrarily worked differently on the real thing; there are enough surprise road blocks in this game.

The only other thing about it is that I'm not sure how easy this is to actually change for custom nations; I know that the fact that country formations don't fire "new traditions and ambitions" if you were a custom nation and that that event doesn't give you the new ideas option if you somehow get it as one aren't all there is to it; you can go delete these from the decisions and events yourself and it still won't give actually give you new ideas. There's some sort of lower-level block here, and those restrictions are then just there to try to not present false options to the player, which they are usually successful at. So the underlying hard-coded mechanic of "custom nations can never get new ideas even if the events say they should" would have to be changed also, not just the decisions and events, and I of course have no idea if that is connected to other stuff. I couldn't find anything in defines about it either, though all I did is control f on "custom" real quick.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

The generic ideas for AI should definitely not be there, I'm not sure why it was (it was only there in a handful of cases e.g. Spain and France) but I've already eliminated it for 1.30.

I believe the main reason for the custom nation check is so that you don't get the cheapest ideas and buff your country with everything else, then just immediately form another nation and get much stronger ideas.

 

[mechanical_Critter]

The generic ideas for AI should definitely not be there, I'm not sure why it was (it was only there in a handful of cases e.g. Spain and France) but I've already eliminated it for 1.30.

There's a third one, I'm slightly worried that you're not mentioning it. Hopefully you didn't forget it lol. I think it's Golden Horde.

 

[Caligula Caesar]

I was going from memory, I did this ages ago (and it's a Sunday...).

 

[BugJr]

Custom Nations Ideas should not be a thing you can swap out for other ideas(although I do like the idea of allowing you to copy preexisting ideas) and here's why.

For Custom Nations, you have to balance what you choose to have and what you choose to sacrifice. There are 3 main categories for what you need to balance.
1. Starting power(government ranks and land)
2. Point Generation(starting monarch + heir)
3. Custom Ideas

Each of these categories has a timeframe for when they are most impactful. Starting power is most important for the Early to Mid game when you are setting up a power base to use, and can provide a head-start or a hinderance depending on how hard you focus it. Point Generation is usually restricted to Early game in importance(although there is an exception which I will cover later) because within 100 years your king and heir will have died, leaving you with randomly generated rulers. Custom Ideas have the largest impact in the late game where you have all of them unlocked and since you will usually get a good position by the time the late game comes around.

However, if you allow CNs to swap their ideas for other ideas, then there is a way to break this balance for Ideas Guy runs(and runs where Starting power doesn't matter)

Let's look at the categories again and see what allowing ideas swapping would entail.

1. Starting power(as mentioned for this scenario, is pointless)
2. Point Generation
3. Custom Ideas(can be swapped out)

This time, all you need to care about balancing is just Point Generation and your ideas. However, since you can swap out your ideas later for better ones(such as Prussian, Mughal, or Yuan/Qing ones) you don't actually need to bother with Custom Ideas, allowing you to have a 6/6/6 immortal ruler(this works best for ideas Guy since it has an 800 point limit which is how much immortal costs) with crappy ideas that you can exchange out for better ones so you can have a strong early game(good point generation and no better starting power), middle(still good point generation and hopefully the good ideas), and late game(point generation is less powerful since level 5 advisors, great ideas).

This is actually what I wanted to achieve for an Ideas Guy run starting in Bornholm with Prussian culture(to form Prussia for their military ideas) and an immortal 6/6/6 ruler. I could neglect getting good ideas only because I though I could swap them out for better ones, and starting position didn't matter much since all I could really do was upgrade my government rank(nice to have, but not required), leaving me with all 800 points to invest into Point Generation.

So to conclude, no, Custom Nations should not be able to swap their ideas out for other ideas(honestly, I feel that they should be treated as an end game tag and thusly be unable to form any nation at all). As for nations with generic ideas or certain NIs, they should be able to swap their ideas out and I don't know why they weren't able to anyways.

 

[Lepaso]

Custom Nations should not be able to swap their ideas out for other ideas(honestly, I feel that they should be treated as an end game tag and thusly be unable to form any nation at all)

This seems like a narrow-minded view; just because you play a custom nation on Very Easy difficulty doesn't mean that you should be operating under the assumption that it should be considered the default mode. It makes no sense to restrict someone playing with a meager 50 points as if they have an immortal 6/6/6 ruler, those two nations are going to be and play completely different to each other. Restrictions like that would also demolish a good chunk of reasons for using custom nations to begin with; you can use custom nations to play things unavailable at game start, if you want to play Brazil/Australia/etc. at/around game start, the easiest way to go about it would be to use custom nations and form them when you can, same thing with roleplay, if you're enacting some alt-history scenario with a French duke or something along those lines, it makes no sense to be unable to form France. And let's not forget that there's far more reasons to form a nation besides just NIs - you have DHEs, Missions, decisions, and so on; all this quality(?) content that only a certain nation can have, content that custom nations (hell, most nations, too) are starving for and could never gain access to unless they form a nation, yet you want to restrict them from doing so, even if they've essentially become the nation in question. Your restrictions really only make sense if you're playing on Very Easy or Easy, and even then, what would the point be, to restrict people because... you want people to feel a sense of pride and accomplishment for beating Ideas Guy the 'balanced & proper' way, and people doing it the 'imbalanced & improper' way shouldn't be allowed to get it? And even then, Ideas Guy is the only custom nation achievement that allows you to play on Very Easy, restrictions just because of it and it alone would be ridiculously overkill.

 

[TheDungen]

The generic ideas for AI should definitely not be there, I'm not sure why it was (it was only there in a handful of cases e.g. Spain and France) but I've already eliminated it for 1.30.

I believe the main reason for the custom nation check is so that you don't get the cheapest ideas and buff your country with everything else, then just immediately form another nation and get much stronger ideas.

Then just lock it for the first 50 years. Sure it'll still be gamey but much less so than being able to instantly form something.

 

[BugJr]

Then just lock it for the first 50 years. Sure it'll still be gamey but much less so than being able to instantly form something.

While locking swapping ideas for X amount of years will prevent instant switches, it is arbitrary and also could prevent a player from ever obtaining the ideas they want if they form the nation too early. Instead, I think you shouldn't be able to take a nation's ideas if your ideas are maybe less than half the converted cost(essentially the cost of getting the country ideas directly from the country creator) of the ideas you want to take. So, for example, you could have a French Duchy with some decent but not stellar ideas that can form France to upgrade their ideas to better ones. Maybe the difference in idea cost could also change for the points you have to work with, with Very Hard(50 points as well as the requirement for from Humble Origins) maybe allowing for your idea cost to nation idea cost ratios of 1:4 and Very Easy(800 points or the max you can have) having a ratio of 1:1 so that there's more of a middle ground of idea points you need to spend to get the good ideas you want.

 

[TheDungen]

While locking swapping ideas for X amount of years will prevent instant switches, it is arbitrary and also could prevent a player from ever obtaining the ideas they want if they form the nation too early. Instead, I think you shouldn't be able to take a nation's ideas if your ideas are maybe less than half the converted cost(essentially the cost of getting the country ideas directly from the country creator) of the ideas you want to take. So, for example, you could have a French Duchy with some decent but not stellar ideas that can form France to upgrade their ideas to better ones. Maybe the difference in idea cost could also change for the points you have to work with, with Very Hard(50 points as well as the requirement for from Humble Origins) maybe allowing for your idea cost to nation idea cost ratios of 1:4 and Very Easy(800 points or the max you can have) having a ratio of 1:1 so that there's more of a middle ground of idea points you need to spend to get the good ideas you want.

Not locking them from switching ideas, locking them from forming nations, loads of nations have "can't be formed by custom tags" which should be "can't be formed by custom tags in the first x years of the game". That way you allow for progression even for custom nations while making the worst exploits a little less viable.