Penalties for hyperteching...

[artemis667]

I'm wondering if there's some way we can, through random events, put a couple of minor deterrents against hyperteching.

Something like, if (infra or trade) is at a certain point and (land or naval) isn't, then introduce an event:

'Military leaders angry over domestic policy'

Effects would be: option a - 'Placate them' - small boost to land and naval tech, significant loss of cash, significant penalty to infra and trade tech - option b would be - 'Who cares about the military' - significant drop to stability, significant drop to land and naval tech, -1 to quality DP.

Another idea - if (infra or trade) is significantly higher than where it should be at a certain date, and also have peace as a trigger, than have a random event
'Decadence' - 'In long periods of prosperity and peace, there was a tendency for people to become less productive' - effections would be small boost to inflation, significant drop to infra and trade tech. No option to avoid the event.

What do you guys reckon? They'll tie in with the rest of the random event set nicely, IMHO. They can and would be scaled as needed.

I'll write the event set myself, if no one has any objections to the theme

 

[TheLoneTaco]

what we need is floating techgroups...when you get too far ahead you switch to pagan and can never switch back again! bwa haha!

the events sound good to me...just have to make sure to test 'em is all. good luck

-Matt

 

[TheArchduke]

Definete no.

I am totally against imposing artifical tech restrictions against people, because they hypertech. The other guys should prevent them from doing that in a MP.

 

[artemis667]

After a bit of investigation into a couple of MP games, as well as the tech tables, I would suggest the following triggers:

'Angry military leaders:'
Triggers before 1570, if either infra or trade tech is 4, and neither land or naval tech is 14.
Triggers before 1650, if either infra or trade tech is 6, and neither land or naval tech is 18.
Triggers before 1760, if either infra or trade tech is 8, and neither land or naval tech is 31.
Triggers any time, if either infra or trade tech is 10, and neither land or naval tech is 51.

'Decadence:'
Triggers before 1570, if either infra or trade tech is 5
Triggers before 1650, if either infra or trade tech is 7
Triggers before 1760, if either infra or trade tech is 9
Triggers any time, if either infra or trade tech is 10

Obviously these events are random, so you won't necessarily get them if your tech is at the trigger levels and dates, but the more, earlier, and harder you hypertech the more likely you'll be hit.

Event would be scaled for countries of size 5-29, 30-79, 80-199, 200+ (Don't see a problem with one-province minors hyperteching really)

Example effect of 'Angry military leaders' for a 30 province country:

'Placate them'
Land +1000
Naval +1000
Cash -500
Infra -3000
Trade -3000

'Who cares about the military'
Stability -3
5000 inf desert, 5000 cav desert, 2 revolts in a random province
Land -2000
Naval -2000
Quality -1

Example effect of 'Decadence' for a 30-province country would be

Inflation +2
Trade -1000
Infra -1000

 

[artemis667]

Definete no.

I am totally against imposing artifical tech restrictions against people, because they hypertech. The other guys should prevent them from doing that in a MP.

It's not an artifical restriction, nor I suspect a significant deterrent. These events wouldn't happen to everyone who hypertechs, a random few maybe, and more likely to happen to people who hypertech more.
But I'll go along with your ruling.

 

[TheArchduke]

Hmm, checking your table, I correct first call, that might be a nice idea and the events are modest.

 

[artemis667]

Hmm, checking your table, I correct first call, that might be a nice idea and the events are modest.

Yep... I'll script them up when I get home in a couple of hours, and test them out.

I don't want to change the way anyone plays through events either, which is why I'm aiming to keep the effects relatively modest - so it won't ruin anyone's game, but it will be enough to make them go 'eugh' when it happens - kinda like a corruption or a cities demanding old rights with a tiny little bit more of a sting.

 

[Avernite]

well, I think the 1570 one is somewhat harsh. infra and trade 4 isn't that high to reach before land/naval 14, I think.

 

[TheArchduke]

Not really, but what would the military say??

 

[unmerged(21937)]

EDIT: Reworked.

Yes, getting infra or trade 4 before getting land or naval 14 is of course easier, but it just encourages you to do some investment in land or naval too.

 

[Medicine Man]

I hate to be the lone dissenting voice here, but I really don't like this idea.

I have a host of reasons for my objection, but I'll stick to the best ones. Here they are:

1) Due to the nature of random events in EU2, we will not fix, curb or event lessen the overall value of hyper economic teching in the game by making these changes. All we will accomplish is making the game more annoying to play in an effective manner, because you can be sure that all decent players will still hyper tech. In short, it is not practical.

2) I have nothing against bad events being introduced. Although I am not personally fond of them, I feel one needs to take the good with the bad. In this case however, we would be introducing events that restrict a valid game strategy without adding anything else. The problem with hyper teching isn't that it is effective, possible, or even commonplace, but that it is recognized as the superior grand research strategy and there are few alternatives available -- if any. Adding bad events to punish hyper-teching nations does not add strategic variety; it only serves to antagonize. Negative value added.

3) Although I could be accused of being dramatic, I would also call these changes a bit draconian. Seriously, why go through all this trouble to make a mod that removes the historical imperatives from the game, only to add arbitrary strategic imperatives? What we would be telling the players, in essence, is 'play the game our way' or perhaps 'play the game below your abilities'.

Countries with less-than-latin techgroup are going to find these events bloody annoying. Not having the luxury of spreading their research dollars around, they will just have to eat them whenever they come up. Ditto for nations that are landlocked, as I doubt they will spend on their navies.

No disrespect intended to Byakhiam and Artemis, both of whom have contributed generously to the mod, but I don't see what value these events will add -- other than a bit more frustration for the unlucky. My feeling is that any real solution to hyper teching must be one that adds viable options, rather than taking them away. It seems that the best possible results of these changes would be to restrict rather than broaden play strategy.

If we are going to do something about hyper teching in Abe, we should work on the scenario config so that few countries are in an ideal position to hyper tech. Or better yet, we should lobby Johan for changes.

Anyhow, I hope you'll reconsider making these changes, Archduke.

 

[artemis667]

I hate to be the lone dissenting voice here, but I really don't like this idea.

I have a host of reasons for my objection, but I'll stick to the best ones. Here they are:

1) Due to the nature of random events in EU2, we will not fix, curb or event lessen the overall value of hyper economic teching in the game by making these changes. All we will accomplish is making the game more annoying to play in an effective manner, because you can be sure that all decent players will still hyper tech. In short, it is not practical.

2) I have nothing against bad events being introduced. Although I am not personally fond of them, I feel one needs to take the good with the bad. In this case however, we would be introducing events that restrict a valid game strategy without adding anything else. The problem with hyper teching isn't that it is effective, possible, or even commonplace, but that it is recognized as the superior grand research strategy and there are few alternatives available -- if any. Adding bad events to punish hyper-teching nations does not add strategic variety; it only serves to antagonize. Negative value added.

3) Although I could be accused of being dramatic, I would also call these changes a bit draconian. Seriously, why go through all this trouble to make a mod that removes the historical imperatives from the game, only to add arbitrary strategic imperatives? What we would be telling the players, in essence, is 'play the game our way' or perhaps 'play the game below your abilities'.

Countries with less-than-latin techgroup are going to find these events bloody annoying. Not having the luxury of spreading their research dollars around, they will just have to eat them whenever they come up. Ditto for nations that are landlocked, as I doubt they will spend on their navies.

No disrespect intended to Byakhiam and Artemis, both of whom have contributed generously to the mod, but I don't see what value these events will add -- other than a bit more frustration for the unlucky. My feeling is that any real solution to hyper teching must be one that adds viable options, rather than taking them away. It seems that the best possible results of these changes would be to restrict rather than broaden play strategy.

If we are going to do something about hyper teching in Abe, we should work on the scenario config so that few countries are in an ideal position to hyper tech. Or better yet, we should lobby Johan for changes.

Anyhow, I hope you'll reconsider making these changes, Archduke.

Look at it this way. Someone who hypertechs is always going to be at a comparative tech advantage against countries who don't. These events (if they actually hit, which is by no means a given even if you are hyperteching) are not significant enough to set the country backward a great deal. The effects are comparable in size to other random events in the event file, this was deliberate design, and a hyperteching country will be more than equipped to handle these events with barely a hiccough.

There are other bad random events that will hit players who choose certain strategies (e.g. high centralisation, high serfdom, high badboy). Why should we refrain from adding in other random events based on differenging strategies? I think these events are perfectly feasible myself, and there's no doubt that similar things have occured over history. And I reiterate, I do not see them restricting hyperteching in any way shape or form. I don't even think they'll provide an annoyance - they'll add flavour if anything. A bigger annoyance to me in MP games is when your enemy gets 3 exceptional years in a decade, and you get nothing. In vanilla, that would practically break your game.

In answer to your third point, this change is not a strategic imperative. Rather, it is simply to introduce a bit of balance whereby hyperteching (assuming players allow you to do so) is still the best long term economic move, but it is not so significanty better than researching your techs at historical rates as it used to be.

 

[Medicine Man]

Comparing the DP sliders events to anti hyper teching events is not a good analogy. In theory, DP slider settings are chosen to match strategy or avoid problems -- in practice, some DPs are better balanced than others. The point being, DP settings are a choice; Teching up as quickly as is humanly possible is not.

By the same logic, we could add random events to punish large nations and help smaller ones -- in fact I did something like this once for my personal mods. The end results is, you punish everyone equally. Staying small is not an affordable luxury in MP -- either by colonization or continental expansion, every player will try to grow as much as possible and profitable.

Throwing more negative events at a player who achieves high tech levels is just punishing a person for being successful.

Besides, you as much as say it in your reply. These events will barely be a hiccough to a hyper teching nation. They will not bring hyper economic strategies into line (or even nearly into line) with other research strategies. They will only serve to annoy the poor schumck who is unfortunate enough to roll 3 of them in a 10 year period.

This is another thing you say quite plainly in your reply, Artemis. A lopsided distribution of good or bad events sucks in any MP game. While I would much rather suffer from events with some internal logic, such as the ones we are discussing here, rather than a handful of vague political crisis, the fact remains that we would be adding a lot more opportunities for random frustration by including these events. I seem to remember that we reduced the power of exceptional years for just this reason. I didn't complain about that for exactly the reasons that I *am* complaining about this.

I'm sorry, Artemis, I'm just not convinced that this is a good idea at all.

 

[artemis667]

Comparing the DP sliders events to anti hyper teching events is not a good analogy. In theory, DP slider settings are chosen to match strategy or avoid problems -- in practice, some DPs are better balanced than others. The point being, DP settings are a choice; Teching up as quickly as is humanly possible is not.

Teching up as quickly as humanly possible is actually a choice. You have the option of investing in military techs, raising armies, or going on wars.

These events are not inevetable. The one will only happen if your land and naval tech levels are undeveloped to match your infra, the other will only happen if your land+infra are *very* advanced and you are at peace.

By the same logic, we could add random events to punish large nations and help smaller ones -- in fact I did something like this once for my personal mods. The end results is, you punish everyone equally. Staying small is not an affordable luxury in MP -- either by colonization or continental expansion, every player will try to grow as much as possible and profitable.

I don't have a problem with that, although I'd personally make the events hit very large countries (50+ provs) with high badboy values.

Throwing more negative events at a player who achieves high tech levels is just punishing a person for being successful.

Besides, you as much as say it in your reply. These events will barely be a hiccough to a hyper teching nation. They will not bring hyper economic strategies into line (or even nearly into line) with other research strategies. They will only serve to annoy the poor schumck who is unfortunate enough to roll 3 of them in a 10 year period.

It's not punishing the player for being successful, but it's not making the game any easier for him either. But do you really need the game to be easier when you've successfully hyperteched? I think not.

And these events are not, I repeat not, intended to destroy the game of someone who hypertechs. That's why I deliberately kept the effects modest. And the triggers are modest too, compared to the 'dates' in the engine that these techs should be reached at. I refuse to accept that every country will hit these events, because if a country does trigger them, it means they haven't been maintaining armies, making war, building forts, or investing in military technology. Not everyone follows that strategy in MP.

This is another thing you say quite plainly in your reply, Artemis. A lopsided distribution of good or bad events sucks in any MP game. While I would much rather suffer from events with some internal logic, such as the ones we are discussing here, rather than a handful of vague political crisis, the fact remains that we would be adding a lot more opportunities for random frustration by including these events. I seem to remember that we reduced the power of exceptional years for just this reason. I didn't complain about that for exactly the reasons that I *am* complaining about this.

Roll a dice, sometimes you get a six, sometimes you get a one.
Not every random event should be a shower of bounty, some should be showers of crap. If a player can't handle bad things happening in a game and gets frustrated, he probably shouldn't be playing.

 

[Medicine Man]

I'm not suggesting that we make the game easier for people who hyper tech. I am suggesting that we don't add events that do more harm than good, which is what I insist these will do, if anything at all.

Unless these events are really necessary, we should not introduce them. Anything that makes successful strategy more dependant on random events, or encourages the players to play in a fashion predetermined by us, should be introduced only with the utmost consideration. If hyper teching is a not clearly an unbalancing factor, then it is not a problem that has to be fixed.

I do think that hyper teching should be rebalanced somehow, but trying to put in a quick fix for what is a complicated issue is just going to add more grief than value.

 

[Medicine Man]

I also find it curious that you don't even answer one of my best points: the reduction of deflation from exceptional years. This is a change that was implemented in vanilla EU2, if I'm not mistaken. These changes were introduced ostensibly for the purpose of reducing the impact of random events on player success.

Now you are advocating adding in events to reduce the impact of player *strategy* on player success. Excuse me while I faint. Doubly frightening is your agreement with the idea of penalizing large nations with badboy, despite the significant economic and domestic penalties already in place for being a large, badboy. Sorry, but not everything that makes the game harder, makes it better; and not everything that makes it more frustrating, makes it harder either.

While laudible, and even logical, I just don't think the ideas in this thread are going to be positive additions to the mod.

 

[artemis667]

I'm not suggesting that we make the game easier for people who hyper tech. I am suggesting that we don't add events that do more harm than good, which is what I insist these will do, if anything at all.

Unless these events are really necessary, we should not introduce them. Anything that makes successful strategy more dependant on random events, or encourages the players to play in a fashion predetermined by us, should be introduced only with the utmost consideration. If hyper teching is a not clearly an unbalancing factor, then it is not a problem that has to be fixed.

I do think that hyper teching should be rebalanced somehow, but trying to put in a quick fix for what is a complicated issue is just going to add more grief than value.

Look, if we only introduce events that are *really* necessary, we'll never add anything, we might as well play vanilla, or even fantasia. I fail to see how these events can do any harm at all, for the reasons that I've elaborated on in detail. And random events are good - they reduce a bit of determinism.

I do think hyperteching is unbalanced, but I do not believe everyone, or even most people, will hypertech enough to have a significant probability of receiving these events. I simply think this change will give a slight bit of relative advantage to people who are unable, or choose not to hypertech. I fail to see how this can be a bad thing, and I think the game will be improved with these events in.

For a player who receives them, these events will not make or break a game, even if you got a couple of them, they're less significant than a single occurence of the vanilla exceptional year, and your odds of getting them are significantly lower. They primarily add flavour and balance.

 

[artemis667]

I also find it curious that you don't even answer one of my best points: the reduction of deflation from exceptional years. This is a change that was implemented in vanilla EU2, if I'm not mistaken. These changes were introduced ostensibly for the purpose of reducing the impact of random events on player success.

That was a change I actively supported. Vanilla exceptional year was much more significant in impact than these events, and by a MASSIVE factor more likely to happen.

Now you are advocating adding in events to reduce the impact of player *strategy* on player success. Excuse me while I faint. Doubly frightening is your agreement with the idea of penalizing large nations with badboy, despite the significant economic and domestic penalties already in place for being a large, badboy. Sorry, but not everything that makes the game harder, makes it better; and not everything that makes it more frustrating, makes it harder either.

You suggested punishing large nations, not me. I was simply suggesting how I'd think about implementing such an event, I did not go into specifics of the description of an event, the triggers, or the effects.

While laudible, and even logical, I just don't think the ideas in this thread are going to be positive additions to the mod.

You're entitled to your opinion

I think these events will be positive additions to it. I wouldn't have proposed them otherwise.

 

[Medicine Man]

I don't advocate adding in events *only* when they are necessary, Artemis. What I insist on is that events intended to encourage or discourage a certain playstyle had better have a *good* reason for existing. My philosophy is that choices of playstyle should be left in the hands of the player, or in MP, in the hands of the player and his detractors.

If these events will hardly ever come into play, then there hardly is a good enough reason to include them. If you want to add random events that put in more flavour, flexability or scope into the game, I'll be behind you 100%. If you want to make players predisposed towards more conservative or predetermined strategies, then I'm going to need some serious convincing.

 

[artemis667]

By your own argument, players are currently predisposed toward hyperteching.

Therefore, is not a change that, in a very minor way, counterbalances this predisposition not a good thing? These events will still come into play, but they won't trigger for every country.

If you like, we could remove the triggers, and just have them as general 'bad' random events. But I think a hyperteched country is better equipped to handle them than one that isn't.