Europa Universalis IV announced

[garbon]

I'm glad I saw this. I had this happen to me when I took a brief spin as Poland and just thought Polish armies must be really bad!

Change / bug: Retreating from battle causes the unit to flee to same province and (in most cases) be wiped out.

Well tested indeed.

[Syt]

The MP balance is relevant for the game to work as a "play any nation in a vibrant world". Explaining why its important to a bunch of players is a bit like trying to explain algebra to 3 year olds..

If we don't balance for the game being balanced and fun in MP, then you will get a FAR WORSE singleplayer game.

Didn't we have that with the EU3 release? A game balanced and geared towards the MP, leaving all nations bland and same-y in SP?

[garbon]

I also don't see how MP balance makes it "play any nation in a vibrant world." Unless "vibrant world" is being used to describe human competitors?

On a different note, I think I'm going to have to remove some of the NA states. They so keep ending up all along the eastern seaboard - which largely prevents European nations from getting a foothold.

[Jaron]

If Johan ever spoke that way to me, I'd give him the business.

[garbon]

If Johan ever spoke that way to me, I'd give him the business.

Enough with the sex talk, kay?

[Syt]

I also don't see how MP balance makes it "play any nation in a vibrant world." Unless "vibrant world" is being used to describe human competitors?

From what I get from Johan's comments (I only got to page 6 of the thread, it has been removed now ) they want to balance the game for MP, then teach the AI to play like a human.

Which is, based on their previous AIs a bit outside the range of their capabilities.

Also, having a min/max AI on par with human play may be great for "paint the map" kinds of gamers like Peter Ebbesen, but not for players like me who don't take this aggressive stance and are more into "roleplaying" countries and rulers and who might then be faced with insurmountable odds if they opt for a smaller/weaker country to play.

[dps]

I also don't see how MP balance makes it "play any nation in a vibrant world." Unless "vibrant world" is being used to describe human competitors?

From what I get from Johan's comments (I only got to page 6 of the thread, it has been removed now ) they want to balance the game for MP, then teach the AI to play like a human.

Which is, based on their previous AIs a bit outside the range of their capabilities.

They can't even get the AI to be able to handle attrition.  (I assume that's still true?  If not, when did that change?)  I'm not a programmer, but all that should take is a decision tree somewhere in the AI files that checks each fleet at sea and not in combat to see if it has any ships with attrition over X amount, and if so, return it to the nearest friendly port.  That ican't be that hard to do.

And this:

How the AI behaves is compeltely irrelevant until you have made the rules correct.

Well, then, how about fucking not releasing the games until you make the rules work correctly?

[garbon]

They can't even get the AI to be able to handle attrition.  (I assume that's still true?  If not, when did that change?)  I'm not a programmer, but all that should take is a decision tree somewhere in the AI files that checks each fleet at sea and not in combat to see if it has any ships with attrition over X amount, and if so, return it to the nearest friendly port.  That ican't be that hard to do.

This is what Wiz has said on that topic.

To actually address the topic, as I said in the dev diary thread this is a crutch I'd like to do away with, but won't do so until it doesn't negatively impact gameplay (ie the naval AI is able to fully understand the naval range system and 'acceptable' attrition).

And

Making an AI that can handle naval attrition is absolutely something I could do and would like to do. It would however take quite a bit of time to get right, and ultimately wouldn't have very much impact on the player's gameplay experience, so it's not a priority issue right now.

Well, then, how about fucking not releasing the games until you make the rules work correctly?

Yeah, I thought that bit rather odd.

[Zanza]

Doesn't seem sensible to balance a single player game for multiplayer. He recently posted some figures on how people play EU4 (with mods etc.). I wonder how many people actually play MP. That seems to be a very small, close-knit community with outsized influence on game design.

[Syt]

There were comments in the now deleted thread that Paradox said somewhere that 15% of EU4 players play MP.

It also explained that they do most of their testing in internal office MP.

Though the actual argument seems to be, "Johan likes MP, so this is getting geared towards MP."

[Syt]

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?789736-Has-it-ever-occurred-to-you&p=17734093&viewfull=1#post17734093

Originally Posted by Katakakes View Post
I despise this 'LETS MAKE THE GAME SUPER FOCUSED ON MULTIPLAYER' attitude the developers seem to have over the past year, but your post reads like some sort of copy pasta.

I am sorry, but its been since 1998, not last year.

[Duque de Bragança]

Res Publica is just five Euro. Nice. I wish they would add more such flavor packs that add some country-specific mechanics to various nations. That's what makes me revisit this game to see the new content in action once.

Is it worth the 5 €?

[Tamas]

There were comments in the now deleted thread that Paradox said somewhere that 15% of EU4 players play MP.

It also explained that they do most of their testing in internal office MP.

Though the actual argument seems to be, "Johan likes MP, so this is getting geared towards MP."

As far as I understand (could be wrong) that statistic means that 85% of players haven't even launched multiplayer, ever. 15% includes the ones who had a peek on how it looks like and never went back.

[Viking]

Res Publica is just five Euro. Nice. I wish they would add more such flavor packs that add some country-specific mechanics to various nations. That's what makes me revisit this game to see the new content in action once.

Is it worth the 5 €?

well, it's worth more than one beer.

[Syt]

I think what annoys me most is their methodology. They see a player exploit and then tinker with arbitrary solutions till one feels right, when the better question would be, "Why didn't this happen historically, and what can we do within the engine to recreate those factors?"