Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

IGC_Balance of powers

Jump to latest Follow Reply
  • We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
laurent

laurent

Colonel
3 Badges
Apr 26, 2001
1.015
0
Visit site
  • Crusader Kings II
  • Hearts of Iron III
  • 500k Club
I recently downloaded the IGC and ran a hand down game, with the following settings : "Free Ireland","Free Bretagne","Free Norway", "free/Austrian lowlands", "CoT in copenhagen", "CoT in Reval".

I noticed several major differences between this game and what I'm accustomed to. So I would like to know if these differences are usual in the IGC.

1) England : England did very well : seized Ireland, never lose Calais, had some provinces in mainland Europe and islands and of course a powerful colonial empire. Is England in a better situation with the IGC (it would be fine) or is it only out of chance?

2)Holland : annexed in 1616. Can Holland survive with a free Holland/Austria or free Holland/Spain setting or does she usually dissapear?

3)Brandebourg : Brandebourg unified Germany! Never saw this before. They had something like 17 provinces by the end of the game. Is it an usual outcome with the IGC?

4)Austria : austria did extremely well. Around 30-35 provinces, and she actually won the game with 500 more VPs than Spain. Is it a direct result of the free/Austrian lowlands setting?


5)Russia : catastrophic! Russia was beaten by almost everybody on a consistent basis (including Sibir). By the end of the game Psokv, Ryazan, etc...were still independant, Sibir turkish, northern territories Swedish, etc... Is Russia much weaker with the IGC? Is it only related to the Reval CoT which deprive Russia from its major source of income? Is it plain bad luck?


6)Turkey : nothing extraordinary, but Turkey was more powerful than usual in the end game. Once again : related to the IGC in some way?


7)Minors : very few minors made it to the end of the game as compared to what I'm accustomed to.

Related to minors : actually I downloaded at the same time the IGC and the 1.09 patch. So some of the differences I noted could be related to this patch (I was using the 1.07 before). Especially the difference in the attribution of BBs (more with the 1.07) could have induced a more agressive game, hence the dissapearing of most minors. Not sure.



Thanks for your answers. I would like to know what to expect with the IGC. Also, do you think my settings were poorly chosen (I suspect that the CoT in Reval at least was a bad idea...possibly also the lowlands setting)? And finally, is there settings which are more "standart" or agreed upon by IGC players?
 
Last edited:
Have not done many complete HO games, but playing (very minors) have loosely paid attention to the majors in a few games.

(at work so dont know all of my setting off the top of my head - I dont usually select free ireland so ENG has a boost to compete with SPA. never used free norway. Last couple games with IGC2.1 were with whatever items were selected when you bring up the config tool. Oh and only my country is a major(wish i could play a non-major so the AI could annex me))

Spain: wins VP or is a close second 90% of the time. Have seen an expansionist turkey or russia win on VPs (maybe even austria, not sure). Usually alot of the VPs are from many wars.

England: Seems they do very well or very poorly never in between. Last game they did not colonize much but took out scotland and had a couple extra provinces in france also a couple random provinces around the med.

Holland: they do pretty well it seem, but I only notice them if they colonize near me.

Brandenburg: Dont usually pay much attention to them.

Austria: they seem to do ok, to very well. Depends a lot on turkey.\

Russia: always seem to get to the pacific if my country does not give money to their enemies. (especially around the time of troubles (1611ish) ;-)

Turks: poor to very well. last game they did not expand much into europe but had sizable chunks of persia, and colonist/captured almost every province in north/south east africa (bastages!).

Minor: dont pay much attention to central european minors, but noticed that even when they are taken I often seen revolt messages for the last 100-150years. Love to see it when corsica revolts (dont know why).


Settings: they make a huge difference in the game. check the main IGC thread. Savant posted the setup he usually tests with and I thought it was a good way to go. If needed I can post my usual settings once I get back home


I hear the whip cracking (back to work),

ErrantOne
 
Originally posted by laurent
I recently downloaded the IGC and ran a hand down game, with the following settings : "Free Ireland","Free Bretagne","Free Norway", "free/Austrian lowlands", "CoT in copenhagen", "CoT in Reval".

I noticed several major differences between this game and what I'm accustomed to. So I would like to know if these differences are usual in the IGC.

1) England : England did very well : seized Ireland, never lose Calais, had some provinces in mainland Europe and islands and of course a powerful colonial empire. Is England in a better situation with the IGC (it would be fine) or is it only out of chance?

2)Holland : annexed in 1616. Can Holland survive with a free Holland/Austria or free Holland/Spain setting or does she usually dissapear?

3)Brandebourg : Brandebourg unified Germany! Never saw this before. They had something like 17 provinces by the end of the game. Is it an usual outcome with the IGC?

4)Austria : austria did extremely well. Around 30-35 provinces, and she actually won the game with 500 more VPs than Spain. Is it a direct result of the free/Austrian lowlands setting?


5)Russia : catastrophic! Russia was beaten by almost everybody on a consistent basis (including Sibir). By the end of the game Psokv, Ryazan, etc...were still independant, Sibir turkish, northern territories Swedish, etc... Is Russia much weaker with the IGC? Is it only related to the Reval CoT which deprive Russia from its major source of income? Is it plain bad luck?


6)Turkey : nothing extraordinary, but Turkey was more powerful than usual in the end game. Once again : related to the IGC in some way?


7)Minors : very few minors made it to the end of the game as compared to what I'm accustomed to.

Related to minors : actually I downloaded at the same time the IGC and the 1.09 patch. So some of the differences I noted could be related to this patch (I was using the 1.07 before). Especially the difference in the attribution of BBs (more with the 1.07) could have induced a more agressive game, hence the dissapearing of most minors. Not sure.



Thanks for your answers. I would like to know what to expect with the IGC. Also, do you think my settings were poorly chosen (I suspect that the CoT in Reval at least was a bad idea...possibly also the lowlands setting)? And finally, is there settings which are more "standart" or agreed upon by IGC players?
Click to expand...

England should do better. It's not axxured but it's quite possible. This goes for all games. They can vary quite a bit. One game isn't a good basis to draw conclusions. But overall England does better. Russia usually does well too. The lowlands give Austria a boost it often transforms in a strong performance. Quite nice to have a strong performance from them IMO. Holland from the start, which isn't really Holland, but still, should be hard to survive. They were annexed irl, and if they are, it's prolly for the best as then the revolt can take place and the real stronger Republic can show up. Never seen Brandenburg done it. Only nations uniting Germany I have seen have been played by me :D
 
One of many results

Are those consistent results you get everytime? How many runs have you let go?

I've run HO four times and each one ended up different! The balance is usually defined by the AI countries by 1600, but random events can tip the balance... especially dynastic inheritances.

I think your results were probably from a poor start by Russia... Without them influencing Turkey and Austria, those two could do better(and did, you see?). Brandenburg is actually Prussia AFAIK the way Hartmann and Doomdark set it up in the IGC. Makes sense since IRL those two countries merged (but Berlin was one of the two capitals)
 
random events can tip the balance
Click to expand...

Good point. did you have random events on? I don't use random events anymore as they seem to make the 300 year games much easier, at least when playing minors.

ErrantOne
 
Should try no random

ErrantOne: I haven't tried no random events yet. I should because I always seem to be hit with the "Poor Government" one just as Trade or Infrastructure are close to a level. Bam. Half the investment gone. Grrrr.
 
Personally I cant stand the random events, they are just to silly IMO. Yes you get the bad ones but over the long haul you get many good ones too. Since I play very small minors getting fortification events and cash gifts tend to make unbalance things a bit. Last time I was playing a 3 province (after expanding) minor and got 3 fortification events in the first 50ish years. So my capitial had a level 4 fort by the 1550s. Really impossible outside china/japan in the IGC. Within the first 100 years received cash gifts for about 600-700ducats (which was quickly loaned out to other countries at 10% interest), so you see how much easier it is with random events while playing small minors. If you are playing spain these events are no big deal. I Might modify random event table someday to make it better for minors.


ErrantOne
 
Yes, I had random events on.

And no, these are not consistent results. I only ran one game and since I was quite surprised by the outcome, I wanted to know if they were usual results due to the modification made in the IGC. For instance, I was wondering if Brandebourg has been strenghtened in some way to allow him to achieve an historical result (domination of Germany), if Holland can survive with the settings I had chosen, if Russia is doomed with a CoT in Reval,etc....
 
Last edited:
You actually bring out a good point. Maybe with the setting you choose the final results were greatly changed. I have seen much discussion (if any) on the effects of the different options within the IGCconfig tool.

For the most part, I don't change my game settings too much after I set things up with IGCconfig. Mostly the country changes and then recopy my tax_stab settings back over the IGC set ones.

ErrantOne
 
I don't actually use the IGC_config file as it doesn't do much for the 1520.inc but obviously with even more differing options as in the IGC u can get vastly differing games.
 
1. England does better overall but can still collapse like a house of cards if France and Scotland get togther

2. Free Holland always sucks, tends to vegitate rather than be annexed, sometimes swings into German orbit.

3. Never happend for me they also tend to sit on their arses a lot but sometimes pull thier finger out later on

4. Austria does ok, does very well with Netherlands has a tendency to fight France a lot now.

5. They grow slower than in the GC IMO,which is no bad thing, but they do usually become a power to be reckoned with by 1570

6. Turkey can do very good or very crap, but are more powerful than in the GC, the Moldavia Bujak option does stop them getting raped by Poland after they annex the mameluks

7. For the love of god give memel to Prussia! *ahem* Minors do about the same as before, united Italy or Germany are rare things in HO games.
 
laurent: consistent, huh? Hmm, I'll try it with random events on and run a few as well. I'll take better notes of the end results as well... usually no pattern showed up... btw, I also run at least Difficulty=Hard and AI=Agresssive.

About the only thing I really noticed was that colonization tended to lag behind the actually historical results, so the traditional colonial powers (Spain, Portugal, England, France, Netherlands) were not as dominant in Europe. I'll post a more scientific look later.
 
From what I've seen, the IGC 2.1 may have overcomensated for previous Russian Dominance. I've played through several games to near completion (I get bored in the 1720s as a rule), and what I've usually seen is this.

England : Does better. It usually survives intact as opposed to the earlier builds where england just got owned as a rule.

France/Spain/Portugal : About historical.

Sweden : Never seems to do much of anything.

Austria : Much stronger if you give them any part of the Netherlands. They are perhaps overpowered.

Turkey : Does better in that it expands rapidly for a while, but eventually spirals down in BB wars. I think its a case where the AI should be allowed to cheat the BB count a little with a country like Turkey. As it is, they aren't a real threat to the west.

Russia : Several gimped. I have seen two games where they never even got into Siberia, and have yet to see them seriously menace the west. I think the IGC overbalanced them down.

Poland : Never goes anywhere, but usually survives.
 
Originally posted by Cockney
7. For the love of god give memel to Prussia! *ahem* Minors do about the same as before, united Italy or Germany are rare things in HO games.
Click to expand...

I can't agree with this more. Giving Memel to Prussia is not only historically accurate, but, having play-tested it for over a dozen games, it also extends the estimated lifespan of the state immensely. It's a win-win situation.
 
I posted this onto the IGC Technical bugs thread (Doomie's more likely to look there)

I know you probably haven't had much time since Hartmann has moved on. I'm thinking of trying to do some runs of 2.0k for now (and 2.1 as soon as I get it) and post up the results. I would track the number of provinces held every 50 years (or something like that -- what else would be good?) for the following key countries:

France, Spain, England, Turkey, Russia, Austria, Poland-Lithuania, Portugal, Sweden, Netherlands, Prussia, United States.

Plus any minors that do unusually well.
Click to expand...

I'd try the different IGC option-settings, if I have time. Anyone else have any suggestions?
 
From the games I've played Spain seems to win practically everytime. They only seem to lose when they get involved in a slugging match with France and then either France, Austria or Russia win.

England hardly ever does well probably becuse the AI isn't good enough to realise where the Rench are shipping their invasion forces to and so they hardly ever intercept them. The only times that they do well are when they annex or cripple Scotland quickly. If they don't France usually captures Weesex and Kent and Scotland takes the north. Quite a lot of the time I have seen Spain and Poland split Ireland between them.
 
1) Engalnd: havnt played with free ireland, i thought it would make them to weak. England still need to be streanghtend

2) Holloand: I usually chsoe the same setting. They have never been annexed for me but they have not either been much to think about. I think aus/spa would be best.

3) Brandenburg: They got a lot of cb shields now. But i have never seen them expand much.

4) Austria: DoW venice once every 5 years and takes money. Total army 22k men standing in tyrol. Not to much to afraid of. I often diplo annex them for styria.

5) Russia: Without their CoT they are farked. They had two cities and 2 colonys left in 1512 for me. They lost a war to Hansa, one to Kazan, one to Ryzan, two or three to poland. They never won a single war.

6) Turkey: Annex the mamelucks, they become the bab boy everyone DoWs them and they lose a lot of land in europe and often something to persia to.

7) very different from game to game
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back