Quick Questions

[unmerged(4344)]

the 5% of tax spared from revolt risk is for all of the base tax, not just for the chief judge's portion of the tax.

Ah, right, I knew I was missing something.

if there is frequent revolt risk that cannot be placated, you have to figure that you will have an additional rebellion in your province every 200 years or whatever depending on how frequently there is revolt risk. If you do not put down the rebellion as soon as it pops up, your province will be looted; and you lose all your tax (and gold production if applicable) for that year.

1% extra RR should average 1 revolt per century. So this would cost 1% of your lootable income from the province, which is not much, and also most likely in the rather distant future. So, not going to affect the quality of the investment very much.

I doubt that Wreck loses control of all provinces to rebels

Right. I cull the rebels down below siege levels and leave them covering. And it is mainly the success rate that I care about, although saving money can also be nice. Depends on the country.

As for all that stuff about combat... wow, Tom is like a one-man wiki. But eventually I'll drain him of all knowledge and get in the real wiki.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

The routing phase only happens on plains and desert provinces when one army has four times more shock than the other, generally only possible with cavalry or an awesome leader endowed with a high shock stat. The routing phase can happen any day at random during a shock phase and will devestate or annihilate an enemy in terms of numbers of men. In any terrain, there is also a final roll at the end of battle if shock of one army is four times higher than the fleeing army as decided at the end of battle.

I have noticed the excess casualties at the end of some battles, but never characterized it. I have also noticed cavalry battles in plains/desert being seemingly too fast, which is perhaps routing in place of shock.

Are you sure about the 4x, and what exactly is it based on, shockpower? If it is shockpower, then I cannot see how the leader's DRM affects it. If the leader's DRM does affect it, then it must not be simple shockpower.

When a routing phase happens, how is it resolved, do you have any idea?

 

[Mats_SX]

I lived under the impression that it was the manoeuvre value of the leaders that decided the end-of-battle casualties. Or is this only for naval combat?

 

[Olav2]

Thanks for all the answers. Lots of information to digest.

A tip is to use double the navy you need, and before entering port you split it, avoiding sudden disaster. I have lost a couple of leaders that way. Worst memory was of course storming Rhodes rebels with Mehmed II Fatih......

Ouch... some of the Mediterranean islands are indeed a pain to attack.

Just try sending a tiny army that can barely survive a day of battle to fight rebels on the last day of the month; but those troops arrive at 50% maintenance.

Why send a tiny army? Wouldn't it be hard to determine if it will survive or not?

Right. I cull the rebels down below siege levels and leave them covering. And it is mainly the success rate that I care about, although saving money can also be nice. Depends on the country.

But it takes a while to decrease population. According to the wiki the chance will increase with 2% if reducing population to below certain levels (5000,10000,15000 etc). So it is perhaps only worth it in the bigger provinces, where population decrease is faster?

As for all that stuff about combat... wow, Tom is like a one-man wiki. But eventually I'll drain him of all knowledge and get in the real wiki.

Do you have a thread about the wiki somewhere here? Or some place to discuss the articles? For example, I remember Tom mentioned somewhere that mercenaries are useful to protect provinces with manufactories in case of emergencies. Maybe something for the mercenary-article?

Also, this is from the alliance-article: http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/Alliance

A country which honors the alliance call joins the ally's war coalition in the particular war that the call related to. If a member refuses, then it has dishonored the alliance: it immediately leaves the alliance. If it was the alliance leader, that role devolves to some other member of the alliance.

No way to tell which member that will be the leader?

 

[unmerged(4344)]

Olav, Tom did not mean a tiny army in the sense of "single man army". He just meant a small army, able to take a single day's fire (or shock at low tech). This is, at least in theory, computable beforehand.

The reason to keep it as small as possible is that a force in combat gets the weighted average morale of all armies that enter the fight. So, the smaller the proportion of the small army to the main army, the higher your morale will be.

One thing you can sometimes do in this end, particularly at lowish land tech (9-13, or down to land 7 with clever use of artillery), is send the main army to arrive on day 5 of the battle. At low land tech, firepower is very low, so few casualties will be caused. But morale damage is still quite pronounced. So, you get the whole fire phase to knock down the rebel morale, then any morale losses you've taken are wiped away with the arrival of the main force.

According to the wiki the chance will increase with 2% if reducing population to below certain levels (5000,10000,15000 etc).

Huh? Oh, I see... yes the wiki is a little poorly worded. No, it's not quantized in 2% chunks; the chances increase smoothly with pop. The 2%/5000pop is really 0.0004%/pop. As to whether or not the final chance is rounded or not (that is, is a displayed 33% chance really exactly 33% or is it sometimes 33.4521%?), I don't know. It would be a hard thing to test.

I'm not sure what you mean about protecting manufactories other than the obvious, that mercs can be recruited fast if nothing else can get there and a rebel army is marching in.

But in any case, something like that should not go in the mercs article; it's too specific. I'm not sure there's any obvious place to put a little tip like that.

There is no specific thread here to discuss the wiki. At least, not currently -- there have been a few in times past. In my opinion, everything discussed here relates to the wiki, in that the wiki should be accurate and complete at least in terms of describing rules. (It isn't quite there yet, but it is the best thing out there.) Ideally it should also have strategy articles discussing "big picture" strategy and useful tactics, and "opinion" articles like the country guides, where reasonable people will differ.

I've put up a fairly brief set of guidelines for wiki writers, at the writer's guide article, if you're interested.
http://www.paradoxian.org/eu2wiki/index.php/Writers_Guide
If you have some specific thing in the wiki you want to talk about, make a new thread. Or for a more general discussion -- we've got plenty of threads here.

For alliance leadership devolution, I think the order is the order they join the alliance, but not sure.

 

[Olav2]

I'm not sure what you mean about protecting manufactories other than the obvious, that mercs can be recruited fast if nothing else can get there and a rebel army is marching in.

Yeah, that was the reason behind it. By the way, on losing manufactories:

Every time an enemy or rebel army is present at the end of a month in a province that has a manufactory, there is a small chance that the manufactory will be burnt (2% chance from EU2 readme). If you place your manufactories in provinces that see a lot of action, you are very likely to lose them.

So you may lose a manufactory at the end of a month no matter what the enemy or rebels are doing there (that is, sieging, covering, moving, fighting etc)?

Or for a more general discussion -- we've got plenty of threads here.

Do you have links? Yeah, I'm lazy.

For alliance leadership devolution, I think the order is the order they join the alliance, but not sure.

Shouldn't be too hard to check. The order they join the alliance is in the save (probably the same order that is displayed in the diplomatic status window).

 

[unmerged(4344)]

So you may lose a manufactory at the end of a month no matter what the enemy or rebels are doing there (that is, sieging, covering, moving, fighting etc)?

That's what I understand, too, but we're both just reading the same source. I have had manus killed but since there's no message, and it's very rare that I lose one (due to low RR and siting of them away from enemies), I can't tell you what circumstances cause it.

No links; I was being cute. I meant that new threads here at the forum are easy to start. So, go start one if you've got something on your mind.

Yes, alliance leadership devolution should be easy to check -- and I am sure someone will eventually do that and care enough to write it in the wiki. Might be you, even. Maybe even me.

 

[Olav2]

I did a quick check of the war coalition leadership, and it's not the order of joining that decides the new leader after separate peace. I suspect it's decided on the diplomatic or military skill of the monarchs in the coalition. Have to test it some more though.

 

[Olav2]

A default leader with a siege bonus can steal a siege so long as all other nations in the siege have only default leaders and none have the siege bonus. Morale can be found via technology, or on other sliders.

Is this correct (have it been tested)? I have played many games with countries having Defensive Doctrine, but I can't seem to tell that I've been able to steal sieges with default leaders. Maybe I've been very unlucky, and sieged togheter with other countries that also got the bonus...

 

[unmerged(4344)]

I think it's incorrect too.

 

[Monkii-sama]

It's not correct. You can't do that. I playtested it earlier.

 

[unmerged(3931)]

Is this correct (have it been tested)? I have played many games with countries having Defensive Doctrine, but I can't seem to tell that I've been able to steal sieges with default leaders. Maybe I've been very unlucky, and sieged togheter with other countries that also got the bonus...

It is correct, unless something has changed in recent versions. The leader with highest siege value will lead the siege regardless of rank. Only when there are ties in the siege value, rank, time of arrival, and countries involved are important. The country is only important when Venice is involved because Venice gets some weird exception for time of arrival if it enters an ongoing battle and a new seige results after the battle; Venice gains control of the siege even though they arrive after fighting begins.

I did a quick check of the war coalition leadership, and it's not the order of joining that decides the new leader after separate peace. I suspect it's decided on the diplomatic or military skill of the monarchs in the coalition. Have to test it some more though.

Separate peace has nothing to do with it; it is the alliance leader dishonoring that is important.

When an alliance leader dishonors an alliance, the nation that first entered the alliance will be the new leader. That leader is listed first in the save game in the alliances part of the save. In the game you can get this information by looking at the order of the countries that are listed in the alliance for the alliance leader. For example if Spain leads an alliance with Aragon and Navarre; for Spain the game might say "Alliance with Aragon and Navarre" in which case Aragon becomes alliance leader if Spain dishonors. But if the game says "Alliance with Navarre and Aragon" then Navarre would be leader.

Are you sure about the 4x, and what exactly is it based on, shockpower? If it is shockpower, then I cannot see how the leader's DRM affects it. If the leader's DRM does affect it, then it must not be simple shockpower.

Well, I suspect the leader's shock stat has an impact on the actual shockpower used for combat or for routing like multiply by (1+(shock stat/10)) or something like that. I cannot be sure. But my brother told me about the four times shock because of a thread he read many years ago. It might have changed to 5x or whatever but I think it is four times.

I lived under the impression that it was the manoeuvre value of the leaders that decided the end-of-battle casualties. Or is this only for naval combat?

Yes, manoeuver is very important in the flight phase. You really wipe out an army when manoeuver is much higher than your enemy. There must be higher manoeuver to damage an army when a player intentionally flees a battle before completion. I still think there is some damage done when a battle completes due to panic regardless of manoeuver; apparently it is what was done to stop the irritating ping-ponging armies.

But I know relative shock is important too. You probably don't need four times shock, but the more the better. You can test the flight phase by playing Orleans. Henry V is sure to invade. If you build 10K infantry, there is no chance for any of them to survive; if you retreat on the first day that the army build is complete, all 10K infantry just evaporate. But if you build 10K cavalry and ask them to retreat on the first day of battle, something over 6K cavalry survive.

 

[Olav2]

Separate peace has nothing to do with it; it is the alliance leader dishonoring that is important.

If you are thinking of a AI vs AI war, I agree, as the war leader will never (as far as I know) sign separate peace with the other coalition. However if I, as a player, was a member of one of the coalitions, I would undoubtly sometimes sign a separate peace as a war leader. This was the case I was thinking of. I tested this as well, and the new coalition leader in my alliance did not follow the "rule" in the quote below.

When a war coalition leader dishonors an alliance, the nation that first entered the alliance will be the new leader. That leader is listed first in the save game in the alliances part of the save. In the game you can get this information by looking at the order of the countries that are listed in the alliance for the alliance leader. For example if Spain leads an alliance with Aragon and Navarre; for Spain the game might say "Alliance with Aragon and Navarre" in which case Aragon becomes alliance leader if Spain dishonors. But if the game says "Alliance with Navarre and Aragon" then Navarre would be leader.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

You guys are now talking about different things.

Your original question, and Tom's response, were discussing effect of dishonoring alliance calls on alliance leadership.

You are now talking about the effect of separate peacemaking on war coalition leadership.

War coalitions are not alliances.

My guess is that the order that war leadership devolves will be the order you see countries listed in the roster in "current wars". But I am not sure.

 

[Olav2]

Yeah, sorry, I was mixing up alliance and coalition leadership. I was wondering on how to determine the new war leader in case of separate peace.

Anyway, new question: how do you set your message settings? I know, it depends on your taste, but some messages are more important than others. Personally I have the messages that pop up when your alliance expire and when you capture/liberate a province on auto-pause (+ some others). Is there any other messages that are useful to auto-pause?

Also, is there a option for getting a message when an enemy alliance expires?

 

[unmerged(3931)]

1% extra RR should average 1 revolt per century. So this would cost 1% of your lootable income from the province, which is not much, and also most likely in the rather distant future. So, not going to affect the quality of the investment very much.

If it is a high tax province or gold province it will make a difference. And it costs troops to put down rebellions so that might be say 20d per rebellion and another 16d for looting Andalusia. And there is the loss of some production income. And it costs maintenance for troops and ships. Well, call it 40d per rebellion. For an investment that costs only 100d and is expected to pay for itself in 50 years, a 40d savings every hundred years is important.

Right. I cull the rebels down below siege levels and leave them covering.

Yeah, if the rebels are covering you lose the production income just not merchant tax for CoTs.

One more thing about rebels; it is better to fight rebels at 50% maintenance than at 100% maintenance unless you are using that trick I mentioned before or unless the rebels have not charged up their morale. The rebels get your same morale; so why would you want rebels to have full morale at 100% maintenance? It just makes the battle last longer but gives no improved chance of winning the battle. A longer battle means more casualties.

Anyway, new question: how do you set your message settings? I know, it depends on your taste, but some messages are more important than others. Personally I have the messages that pop up when your alliance expire and when you capture/liberate a province on auto-pause (+ some others). Is there any other messages that are useful to auto-pause?

I do not auto-pause any messages. Sometimes the auto-pause happens just as I am pausing. So the effect is that the game becomes unpaused. It takes some time before I realize and then things are all screwed up.

Also, is there a option for getting a message when an enemy alliance expires?

No, it is really annoying not to be able to get that message. I usually break alliances apart by entering them and getting everyone to dishonor. Waiting for them to expire is usually a waste anyway because all it takes is one war and the alliance is back on.

 

[unmerged(4344)]

I autopause on many messages. I pause on end-of-movement messages. But also 'battle begins' messages, rebellion messages, DoW messages, revolt messages, merchant-send messages, merchant-competed-out messages. I don't have any messages set to pop-up-but-don't-pause, except that sometimes I put peace offers to that setting.

 

[Brian Roastbeef]

If I autopause my messages, then I find myself getting messed up as I'll hit the pause button myself out of habit - making the game run, then more stuff will show, so I'll pause it out of frustration, meaning that as the next event might have paused stuff, I'm making the game run again... Its a nasty cycle. I guess it only works if you aren't already in the habit of pausing stuff.

Personally, I have a whole mess of events set to pop up but don't pause. All of the stuff Wreck just listed + troop and ship arrivals, royal marriages, effects of gifts and insults, who is declaring war on whom, who has already entered an ongoing war, who has made peace with what terms, who has vassalized whom, who has annexed whom, who has been nailed with a civil war...

I like to be aware of what's going on around me. A lot easier to exploit it to my advantage that way.

 

[Mats_SX]

What the Roasbeef said. Since you never use the keyboard anyway, I have my left hand rested at the pause button at all times. It gives opportunity to reach the + and - for zooming, as well as Enter, for closing of the pop-ups. A working strategy, I must say.

 

[anubisfike]

What the Roasbeef said. Since you never use the keyboard anyway, I have my left hand rested at the pause button at all times. It gives opportunity to reach the + and - for zooming, as well as Enter, for closing of the pop-ups. A working strategy, I must say.

X2