Home Trending Latest threads New posts Developer diaries

New big maps bad for young bulls in the MP community

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.
Show only dev responses
unmerged(6147)

unmerged(6147)

Banned
Oct 22, 2001
8.242
0
Visit site
In another thread Tonio claimed that if you want a lot of human to human wars then the new maps are bad for MP.

His reasoning is that
- there are many more colonisable provinces on the new maps compared to the vanilla map
- this means that there is room for many more nations than usual to become heavy colonisers
- and colonisers are basically less likely to indulge in human to human wars

On the surface this seems to be a correct observation. If so we should perhaps work to get yet another new map with perhaps only 100 or so more provinces compared to the vanilla map?

And perhaps the new EUIII map is a mistake from a MP point of view? It has around 1700 provinces IIRC (vanilla has around 960).

There are plenty of EU MP players who appear to have a need to get rid of a surplus of testosterone... They are like young bulls :D and for them this change is not that wellcome.

Even I, peaceful Daniel, mourns such a change to a more peaceful game since these wars are a very good money-wasting feature for my opponents. ;)
 
Daniel A said:
And perhaps the new EUIII map is a mistake from a MP point of view? It has around 1700 provinces IIRC (vanilla has around 960).
Click to expand...

Correction, it is not the matter of number of provinces.
It is matter of money spending on colonizing provinces.
 
FAL said:
Vanilla has ~1600 provinces ;)
Click to expand...

Vanilla has ~1600 provinces+seazones.
 
Cut down the wealth of non-european provinces, and get the players to start fighting for the good spots in Europe. It's historical too, as most colonies were not profitable/big burdens on the coloniser. Owning land outside Europe shouldn't be a way to dominate Europe, besides trade and South American silver and gold.
 
I think you're right in your observation Daniel A... the new maps potentially lead to less wars, especially navally because there's usually less of a risk/reward factor in colonising new areas than trying to conquer them off players.

EU3 will have extra provinces, but IIRC the number quoted was for total provinces including seazones. So there won't be nearly as many more as there were for Kasperus' map and MyMAP.
 
I actually didn't notice a lot of this in my current AoD game (YGtDftG). Then again, I'm not sure if colonizers play optimally when they fight these European wars (and besides we got a decently aggressive French player triggering them).
 
FAL said:
Vanilla has ~1600 provinces ;)
Click to expand...

There is around 960 provinces in vanilla - as all WCers knows ;)

In case you and/or Paradox are mixing upp Sea zones with provinces the two of you have a problem. Perhaps the makers of the new maps as well fail to make the correct distinction between a province and a sea zone. The fact that sea zones are numbered together with provinces in the same excel file in the db directory does not change the basic fact that a province is a province and not an area of water.

Could it be that Paradox are actually making false PR for EUIII? Is it not 1700 (or whatever the number is) provinces in EUIII? Is it merely 1700 entries in the province.xls file? :confused:

---------

EDIT: I started writing this before I went to lunch and finished it after I came back and I now see that several other pointed out this conceptual confusion before I did it.
 
Daniel A said:
Could it be that Paradox are actually making false PR for EUIII? Is it not 1700 (or whatever the number is) provinces in EUIII? Is it merely 1700 entries in the province.xls file? :confused:
Click to expand...

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/europauniversalisiii/news.html?sid=6144284

That's the link where Johan gives out the 1700 number.

JA: We will be announcing a more complete feature description next month, but this is what I can reveal right now: The game starts in 1453, right after Constantinople has fallen to the Turks, and continues up until the revolutions in France and America. It is played out on a map with about 1,700 provinces and sea zones covering the entire world. The game will let you play any of over 250 different historical nations.
Click to expand...

My interpretation is that 1700 is the number of provinces plus sea zones, so I don't think its false PR, maybe it got misunderstood due to the 'Chinese whispers' issue.
 
There is a conceptual problem that every mod designer faces. Players have a very difficult time with any kind of radical advancement. Even with a new setup, they make the same decisions as before in most cases.

Lets take Norrefeldt's idea. If you raise the values of land in Europe, then Portugal and England will continue to be played in their normal capacity. The English player may intervene a little in Northern Germany but that is it. Then in 1600, he will be relatively very poor. At this point, people will cry out: the mod is imbalanced against England. Which it isnt. Its just that the English player didnt realize what he needed to change about his playstyle.

A new idea takes a long time to go from idea to concept to implementation. It takes 3 seconds for the community to dismiss it. Players dont sit down with a new mod and really breathe in all the changes. They gloss over them, find something that annoys them, and then berate the designer for shoddy work. People generally dont have the patience to play a lot of test games and provide feedback; unless of course the changes of the mod are marginal. Radical mods dont get played very much at all.
 
Norrefeldt said:
Cut down the wealth of non-european provinces, and get the players to start fighting for the good spots in Europe. It's historical too, as most colonies were not profitable/big burdens on the coloniser. Owning land outside Europe shouldn't be a way to dominate Europe, besides trade and South American silver and gold.
Click to expand...

True. The situation in EU2, where colonies become these big cash cows that deliver more tax and production than the home provinces, is just totally removed from reality... and trade needs to be more Euro-centric.
You make the money when the goods are sold in the big and wealthy European cities, not straight away in a 'COT'.
 
ObserverDrone said:
At this point, people will cry out: the mod is imbalanced against England. Which it isnt. Its just that the English player didnt realize what he needed to change about his playstyle.

A new idea takes a long time to go from idea to concept to implementation. It takes 3 seconds for the community to dismiss it. Players dont sit down with a new mod and really breathe in all the changes. They gloss over them, find something that annoys them, and then berate the designer for shoddy work. People generally dont have the patience to play a lot of test games and provide feedback; unless of course the changes of the mod are marginal. Radical mods dont get played very much at all.
Click to expand...

This is so well said ObserverDrone! :)
 
Djeheuty said:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/europauniversalisiii/news.html?sid=6144284

That's the link where Johan gives out the 1700 number.



My interpretation is that 1700 is the number of provinces plus sea zones, so I don't think its false PR, maybe it got misunderstood due to the 'Chinese whispers' issue.
Click to expand...

How nice. This is 100% clear.

Then the question is: how many land provinces is it on the EU III map? That is the importat question for us all. We do not care that much about Sea provinces.

And how many are there on e.g. Kasperus's new maps?
 
A province is defined in game-terms as a piece of the map that can contain some type of unit and is open for unit-movement.

I don't think it's accurate to claim that "we" don't care about the sea-provinces. They are important for the naval aspect of the game. :)

As for number of land-provinces, it can be changed, improved and increased ad nauseum. The only way to satisfy everyone will be dynamic borders and even then some sort of formula will need to be used to make borders natural since it wouldn't be historically reasonable to allow players to draw their own straight and pretty borders.
 
I wrote "we do not care that much for Sea provinces", not "we do not care about Sea provinces".

There is a certain difference between those two expressions.

While the former expression is true, the 2nd, as you describe, is not.
 
The other thing people are missing is the greater BB. This gets very noticeable as Russia or the OE since both have to expand a fair bit. Austria also picks up a lot from taking over Germany, as does Brandenburg. Anyone taking over Italy also experiences this even greater than on the vanilla map.

If anything, I'd boost the worth of having colonial areas, some are worth it, but a lot are just places you'll take to stop others colonising in the area. If areas are richer, people will be more willing to launch a war, rather than wait and let the owner get the wealth.
 
I am not sure that actually the new maps are bad for MP wars. Actually, in EGA5 there had been a fair share of wars (average I think). And Portugal -my country there- had been more active than usual I believe.
 
Daniel A said:
I wrote "we do not care that much for Sea provinces", not "we do not care about Sea provinces".

There is a certain difference between those two expressions.

While the former expression is true, the 2nd, as you describe, is not.
Click to expand...

Curious request for clarification: Who are these "we" you represent?
 
ObserverDrone said:
Lets take Norrefeldt's idea. If you raise the values of land in Europe, then Portugal and England will continue to be played in their normal capacity. The English player may intervene a little in Northern Germany but that is it. Then in 1600, he will be relatively very poor. At this point, people will cry out: the mod is imbalanced against England. Which it isnt. Its just that the English player didnt realize what he needed to change about his playstyle.
Click to expand...
I think many provinces outside europe should have lower values, while europe stay the same. Right now england is perhape the easiest country to play in MP, it can trade and explore, has good leaders and is far from as vulnerable as Portugal. If it ends up poor it being played badly, even with the changes I suggest. They should still get very good incomes from trade and holding COTs. But colonising big areas should be just as bad idea early on as it was IRL.


ObserverDrone said:
A new idea takes a long time to go from idea to concept to implementation. It takes 3 seconds for the community to dismiss it. Players dont sit down with a new mod and really breathe in all the changes. They gloss over them, find something that annoys them, and then berate the designer for shoddy work. People generally dont have the patience to play a lot of test games and provide feedback; unless of course the changes of the mod are marginal. Radical mods dont get played very much at all.
Click to expand...
I don't suggest anything radical. Cutting down a bunch of provinces worth 5-6 to 3-4 outside Europe will do.
Sure it can be dismissed, but not on historical grounds, which is a strenght. ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom
Back