Some Ideas from Ahmed

[MattyG]

A few thoughts Ahmed sent me.

1. Recruitment Centres

Ahmed would prefer to see these in the early game a lot more, because it makes recruitment easier. It doesn't add to your manpower, but does reduce the 'micromanagement' of raising troops.


2. Gaining of cultures

Not structly a new idea, this concept has been debated at length ever since EU2 came out. Do people feel that it should be possible to gain virtually any culture that is right-religion? Obviously, there would need to be time and concession costs, but what limits ought there to be?

3. African Population

Ahmed feels that the negatives on pop growth in Africa are not reasonable. African populations are quite high. He's right in that sense, of course, but the pop growth relates to colonists, not native-based populations. But it also has strong Euro-centric assumptions based on temperate climate people being unwilling to move to/endure the conditions of the sub/tropics. I think we can adjust the values for provinces, but otherwise it can be done by event.

4. Inflation

Ahmed always finds he runs up high inflation. Personally, I have never had more than about 10%. But he'd like to see more inflatio-reducing events.

5. Badboy

Ahmed would like more events to reduce badboy. he's a pretty aggressive player. Funny, because I want MORE badboy in the game to help punish that kind of activity and make the game and the ai more responsive to aggressive countries.

6. Cores

Events to mimic ideas in EU3 for the gaining of cores, especially on right-culture provinces. It would be easy if the provinceculture trigger worked, othgerwise, it would be a bigger coding exercise. But I am not averse to it myself ...

 

[siafu]

Ah, finally, commentary from Ahmed! Has he anything more to say about Asia in particular?

1. Recruitment Centres

Ahmed would prefer to see these in the early game a lot more, because it makes recruitment easier. It doesn't add to your manpower, but does reduce the 'micromanagement' of raising troops.

I think the tech level requirement for recruitment centers is a little steep, but they're still kind of dangerous, especially in Europe. In China, for example, it doesn't usually matter because you can recruit large numbers of troops (10K to start with) in any province.

If they were to be added in Asia, Ming and Korea seem the most likely candidates to me.

2. Gaining of cultures


Not structly a new idea, this concept has been debated at length ever since EU2 came out. Do people feel that it should be possible to gain virtually any culture that is right-religion? Obviously, there would need to be time and concession costs, but what limits ought there to be?

This certainly allows for more leeway in sticking to any particular history. I think that neighboring cultures should be easy-ish to add (e.g. Korea gaining "Japanese" or Brittany getting "Burgundian") but more distant ones should be difficult to impossible. History doesn't help us too much in creating examples. Basque culture, for examples, continues to survive despite centuries of domination by Spain and France, but elsewhere cultures have been assimilated rather more easily, like, say, in China or Russia.

I think being able to gain more cultures than is currently allowable through existing events would be good, but shouldn't be overdone. Cultural identity has survived the ages in many cases and led to latter-day revolts or independence. It would also probably help to be decentralized and innovative, I think.

That said, my aesthetic feeling is that a mix of provinces flipping cultures and national culture gains is important. One or the other just makes things kind of... bland.

3. African Population

Ahmed feels that the negatives on pop growth in Africa are not reasonable. African populations are quite high. He's right in that sense, of course, but the pop growth relates to colonists, not native-based populations. But it also has strong Euro-centric assumptions based on temperate climate people being unwilling to move to/endure the conditions of the sub/tropics. I think we can adjust the values for provinces, but otherwise it can be done by event.

Enh. Foreigners historically didn't do so well in Africa, primarily due to disease and the like. There are obvious exceptions, like South Africa, but it's a tough place to live. Colonists would drop like flies.

That said, it does seem a bit off that non-Euro countries have this same restriction. Colonists from the Middle East and India, for example, shouldn't have such a hard time adapting to the local climates. So maybe tone it down just a little bit, 1-3%ish.

4. Inflation

Ahmed always finds he runs up high inflation. Personally, I have never had more than about 10%. But he'd like to see more inflatio-reducing events.

I've never really had a problem with this. Just keep your monthlies low unless you're in a serious bind or crisis.

I suppose there are certain situations where this would be helpful, or make sense, like when a series of events seriously messes up the economy. The goal of the mod isn't to make things too easy, though, so I don't think we should mess with inflation without reason.

5. Badboy

Ahmed would like more events to reduce badboy. he's a pretty aggressive player. Funny, because I want MORE badboy in the game to help punish that kind of activity and make the game and the ai more responsive to aggressive countries.

I'm with you, MattyG. More badboy.

6. Cores

Events to mimic ideas in EU3 for the gaining of cores, especially on right-culture provinces. It would be easy if the provinceculture trigger worked, othgerwise, it would be a bigger coding exercise. But I am not averse to it myself ...

I like the EU3 method of dealing with cores, also, but I am also kind of split on using it in Interregnum. EU3 seems to be less scripted in general than EU2, so having really restrictive cores makes less sense. In EU2 (i.e., in Interregnum), we have control of the cores and it's one of the few tools that allows us to guide the general sweep of history.

I do like the idea of gaining cores in particular because I think that revolt should really cool down after awhile as people get accustomed to their new rulers. Additionally, holding a province for a long time, even a non-core and non-colony, should entitle you to declare war on someone else who comes to own it.

Alternately, I think it fits well that non-core provinces don't produce as much income or manpower as core provinces do. People living in conquered territories were used as soldiers, but were generally seen as less trustworthy, all else being equal.

It would probably be a coding nightmare to split up those two properties in some way, but we could have cores gained through events that also reduce manpower and BVT in the gained province. That is, we could have certain "mundane" events where holding a province for sufficiently long makes it your "core" province even if it's outside any of the event story arcs, and other events where cores are gained without penalty.

Of course, that also means making an awful lot of events.

Unless we could fix the problems on this one (or I can be convinced), I vote no to a generalized way of getting any province as a core just through time, for what it's worth.

 

[MattyG]

Ahmed haa made an Islamic website and it has its own mail service so he was emailing me from there and it probably went stratight into my junk box. But we have gotten back in contact and I have a lot of his emails to make my way through. Sometime his English is hard to understand, but his analysis always requires me to review events and files and write back and debate, so answering him is a lengthy process. Which is all to say that there may be more comments on Asia.

His big one was that he thinks Champa needs to be redone and toned-down. I will continue working with his original material and - don't worry I would have anyway - tone it all down. But there's some good stuff and I would not want to miss it.

Ahmed felt that the file was too linear and needed an alternative direction to take. I think the obviuos one is that Champa could become more naval and be one of the explorers, aiming maybe for the Azteca region.

 

[Don_Quigleone]

1. I never have a problem recruiting troops, however I think those troop centers makes world conquest that much easier, Also when you're in a defensive war and have one of those your life is much easier, I only think it can be justified on a country by country basis (like the ottomans in vanilla)

2. This certainly might be a good idea but would be difficult to code in a balanced way, one way is to have the culture in a province flip to your own and that might be more realistic, however I can't really say much, if you can get it to work then I'm all for it

3. Europeans had difficulties IRL, but maybe arabs should have an easier time of it

4. I have to say that one of the few sources of difficulty in EU2 is inflation, if infaltion reducing events were common then the game would be 10X easier, I mean part of the difficulty early game is using that yearly income, however I think Eire needs a far higher income, I mean it's impossible not to go into debt with them, you literally only get 75 a year, it should be bumbed up to 125

5. Badboy is one of the other few sources of difficulty, I say leave as is

6. If you can do it, do it