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IGC 1.8 and Real EU 2.0

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The other alternative to slowing the minors down may be to just increase their tech costs relative to majors. The readme for Real 2.0 reads:

I'In order to avoid small nations being the most advanced in research, their research costs have been raised. They should now be roughly at the same level than major nations. To achieve this , monarch values have been lowered.'

I don't think this is necessarily the best or most efficient approach. Rather, just upping the tech costs for minors should do it and that way the variance in MOnarch effects (which are very interesting and add a twist to the game) would be kept intact. My suggestion would be to avoid restricting ranges in monarch effects and allowing the tech costs to do this. This allows for differences between minors to be reflected better - removing extreme values for minors on monarch values effectively makes for more vanilla play.
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True, but I think the issue Laurent has is that the Monarch rating influences the tech investement - i.e. a higher rated monarch adds ducats to the research, and over time that has a negative affect on the game. I have not heard that the tech costs can be manipulated via configuration files, so I presume that the only manipulation available is the monarch ratings. Given that monarch ratings are relative (mostly), manipulating them could achieve the desired affect without distorting other factors.

I have done a random walk throught the monarch ratings (in IGC), and generally, they are pretty high for most countries. The other trend is that for 'historically marginalized' countries (for lack of a better term), they are pretty generic, and only the Diplomacy rating (which does not affect tech research) is high. So, I contend that one could decrease all monarch ratings in a way that maintains historical fidelity, in relative terms, while achieving the ends that Laurent is pursuing.

That said, I am speaking in a theoritical sense, since I have no direct or imperical knowledge of how the game system works other than limited play and from reading posts from experimenters. ;)

Cheers
 
I think an important aspect is that something should distinguish the nations other than size.

Just creating two distributions based on major/minor membership and restricting monarch ratings to do so is unnecessarily restrictive. The better way is to change tech advance costs so that each nation still maintains unique 'leader' effects. I think this is essential otherwise Baden will be no worse or better than Brandenburg. Would making those two minors more similar be satisfying? I don't mind that a Brandenburg jumps ahead in tech because it historically had better leaders. I would have a bigger problem with both Baden and Brandenburg having the same level of tech as a result of removing leader effects simply because they occupy 'minor' status.
 
Yes, I see what you mean and agree. I guess the question is what distinguishs the minors right now? I know Brandenburg/Prussia (in IGC at least) get some very nice monarchs. If all leaders in the game were normalized (one distribution), Brandenburg should still have an advantage. It seems the IGC team is normalizing leadership ratings now, but at a scale that distorts tech investments.

So to your original contention - change the tech investment costs (really the economic model), which have other problems as well from reading through other threads: Cost is based on provinces, inflation is not handled well in the model, etc.

On the other hand, the only tweakable items I've seen in all these discussions is the Monarch leadership and the tax-stability matrix. I do see posts from Hartmann and Laurent implying this will all be taken care of in IGC 1.9 and Real EU 4.0, but I don't know what approache(s) they are taking.

Personally, I find the diplomatic system and handling of armies more bothersome (now that there is less money in the game).

At any rate, there are conflicting goals, or something, in the design of the game and of efforts such as IGC. 1) Historical fidelity; 2) pluasable variations. The more the first is supported, the less likely the second is to occur. For example, Kleves may rise to being a strong central European power, but it will never have the great monarchs Brandenburg/Prussia had. This is fine with me, I like the historical aspect. To achieve significant variation, I would be more interested in the ability to randomize monarchs, starting provinces, etc., and have a real historical fantasy ability.
 
There is a file... I am @ work and don't have the subbdirectory to open and look @ it now. But I recall spying one in there that set such costs for different nations. I think you can ID the minors and set the cost accordingly if I'm not mistaken. Will follow up. I could be wrong.
 
Does Johan accept bribes from gamers? *s*

Sadly, I am mistaken about the availability of such a file for editing. I thought I had found one but it won't do what I hoped.

It does appear the Monarch file is the only way to achieve this at the moment. Of course this effect would seem small compared to directly changing tech costs per nation directly.

I have also adopted some of these Laurent modification suggestions along with Viking's. I haven't noticed a great difference other than a slow-down in wars - they appear to occur less frequently. But my personal mods do not completely adopt either modder's changes. For example, rather than the severe cut in taxes Laurent proposes, I use:

+15
+10
+5
0
-5
-10
-20

This produces a linear additive function for increasing stability above 0 and a negative geometric function (factor of x2) for successive deviations from 0. Countries have money and as a player you have to use your merchants and any money 'wisely' but you aren't starved until you unjustifiably (absent CB) go to war or happen to change religion.
 
I asked this over on the General Discussions board, but I'll ask it here too:

laurent-

I've applied your Real EU 3.0 tweaks to ICG 1.08 and haven't seen any problems. Will there be any fundamental conflicts between your next version (4.0) and ICG 1.08? In other words, can I edit 1.08 to include your new modifications to the Diplomatic Matrix (along with all the other changes) or will there be inconsistencies that just won't work.

We have an embarrassment of riches, between your work and Hartmann's. I like both 1.08 and Real EU, and I'd like to be able to combine the two. Will that work?
 
Originally posted by Olaf the Unsure
I asked this over on the General Discussions board, but I'll ask it here too:

laurent-

I've applied your Real EU 3.0 tweaks to ICG 1.08 and haven't seen any problems. Will there be any fundamental conflicts between your next version (4.0) and ICG 1.08? In other words, can I edit 1.08 to include your new modifications to the Diplomatic Matrix (along with all the other changes) or will there be inconsistencies that just won't work.

We have an embarrassment of riches, between your work and Hartmann's. I like both 1.08 and Real EU, and I'd like to be able to combine the two. Will that work?
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I really don't know. Maybe later, I will put some 1.8 changes in Real EU, if i've time. But the differences between IGC 1.7 and 1.8 are really minor (the new Mexico revolter being the main), and some changes have been taken into account in Real EU 4.0.
 
Originally posted by Olaf the Unsure
Thanks. That answers my question. I'll probably go ahead and convert the Real EU 4.0 changes over to ICG 1.08 since I'm most of the way there already. I'll let you know how it turns out.
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you should play first Real EU 4 out of the box. then there's the problem of monarch ID: I've been forced to use a few to fill some gaps in chronology ( avoiding Holstein or Corsica to get fantastic random monarchs) so conflicts and crashes are possible.
 
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