Imperial Splendour v1.066 General Feedback

[Liberius]

First off, grats on getting your own forum.

meh...after playing IS for a while i'm done. Nice go at it.

Things I don't like:
-The CAI is extremely aggressive, but not very smart.
by 1730 in my game as UP:
-Poland and Austria steamrolled Prussia
-Every minor nation i share a border with has declared war on me and I've run them into the ground, since diplomacy isn't working.
-Auto-resolve battles(naval and land) which are clearly in my favor lose more often than not. This results in my having to play Every Single Battle, be it minor or major.

Things I like:
-Maratha and Mughals have gone back and forth in a lot of territory trading, but no decisive winner(makes me think of the Korean war)
-Same with Russia and Sweden, back and forth. O and Sweden actually took Denmark.

All in all: the CAI is very interesting until you realize it is just way more aggressive. I guess this wouldn't be such a big deal if diplomacy worked. However, I remember diplomacy working rather well in vanilla. oh well.

[Quixote07]

Post your general reactions and concerns about the latest versions here.

[Quixote07]

First off, grats on getting your own forum.

meh...after playing IS for a while i'm done. Nice go at it.

Things I don't like:
-The CAI is extremely aggressive, but not very smart.
by 1730 in my game as UP:
-Poland and Austria steamrolled Prussia
-Every minor nation i share a border with has declared war on me and I've run them into the ground, since diplomacy isn't working.
-Auto-resolve battles(naval and land) which are clearly in my favor lose more often than not. This results in my having to play Every Single Battle, be it minor or major.

Things I like:
-Maratha and Mughals have gone back and forth in a lot of territory trading, but no decisive winner(makes me think of the Korean war)
-Same with Russia and Sweden, back and forth. O and Sweden actually took Denmark.

All in all: the CAI is very interesting until you realize it is just way more aggressive. I guess this wouldn't be such a big deal if diplomacy worked. However, I remember diplomacy working rather well in vanilla. oh well.

What aspect of diplomacy do you find unsuccessful? Are you maintaining your diplomatic relations before attempting to negotiate? The reason being - the actual relations you maintain with a country are currently the single most important factor for the AI in determining whether to declare war. It sounds to me like you let your diplomatic relations fall and now you're faced with the result.

As far as autoresolve results - what battle difficulty are you playing at? On higher battle difficulties the AI receives large advantages in autoresolve calculations.

[Disaray]

I have found diplomacy to be a bit finiky but not broken. I have got trade deals out of unfrendly nations with no cash payment to them, but at the same time been unable to negotiate trade with nations listed as frendly. But I figure they were giong to be invaded by me any way. When it comes to geting a peace agreement with people, that is hit or miss. When I get draged into wars by allies I can often get peace for me just by asking but when the war is declared by me or on me it is a little tuffer, as it should be. I find takeing a regon from them sets the diplomatic mood for peace a lot better. With the minor nations it is a moot point as they are often destroyed after that one provence, it would be nice if the loss of an army, or a major millitary defeat of some kind, could put them in the peaceful mood.

[uos_spo6]

Here's my problem after going through the steps and installing the .pack, .lua and .esf files accordingly as listed.

My factions are all open and their victory conditions there etc. I started as Portugal and ran through a few turns real quick and noticed that in the unit stat listings, none of the changes you mentioned in the "Land" section of your update synopsis have taken effect. . .

Unit costs the same, none of that higher cost to 15% upkeep ratio. Ranges and Accuracy's all appear as what they originally were.

Is something not implimenting correctly or do the changes simply not show up on screen? I have not played a battle yet to test out the other mods to see if they are in effect yet.

I restored my original "main" folder with the old .lua and .esf's and removed the .pack file. Tried putting in the mod ones all over again and still the same issue.

The direction say to put the .lua in the scripts folder, where there is none intitially, and then to also overwrite the existing .lua in the main folder. Did I smoke too much today? Someone please help me out. .

I'm switching three files correct?

starpost.esf in "main" replaced. The .lua in "main" replaced. The .pack dumped off in the "Data" folder with a bunch of other .packs residing there, and then the .lua in the "scripts" folder also?

[OTZ]

I'm getting a CTD playing as Spain. The Peublo's DoW seems to be the cause on turn # 4. No matter what I try, I get it. I understand this is an issue with vanilla, but to be honest, this would be the first time in a month I've had a CTD like this.

[Quixote07]

Sorry about that, the install instructions got muddled. There should be a .txt file included with the .pack. That goes in the scripts file. That directory should exist, if you can't see one, there's a guide listed in the install instructions.

[Quixote07]

Hmm, I'll look into it. In the meantime I encourage you to make the Pueblo your best buddies, I guess.

[OTZ]

Too late for that. It's only turn 4, I'll restart and see what happens. No need to look into it - I'd see if the error (if it is one) is expereinced by more than just myself.

EDIT: In terms of general feedback - it may be worth making a special post, or a sticky to identify the things that you can not fix/alter/control - like diplomacy as an example.

[uos_spo6]

Boo ya.

Thank you sir. My heart got all warm and fuzzy after seeing that Prussian Jaeger range of 180. I'll report back with my experience after some indulging.

[Liberius]

What aspect of diplomacy do you find unsuccessful? Are you maintaining your diplomatic relations before attempting to negotiate? The reason being - the actual relations you maintain with a country are currently the single most important factor for the AI in determining whether to declare war. It sounds to me like you let your diplomatic relations fall and now you're faced with the result.

As far as autoresolve results - what battle difficulty are you playing at? On higher battle difficulties the AI receives large advantages in autoresolve calculations.

actually, i tried starting trade agreements with Hannover and Westphalia from turn 1. I tried giving them state gifts and then dealing on turn 5ish, no dice. Ironically, the turn AFTER i gave Hannover its gift, it declares war on me, and it was Very friendly to me(i think i was indifferent).
-this war against Hannover was very exciting. i enjoyed the constant attacks by the AI. It even got to Amsterdam once.

10 turns into this war, Westphalia declares war on me(same relations as to hannover just before the war)

As the campaign progressed, other countries got more ports for me to open trade with. Each proposal was swiftly rejected, no matter our relations. Even once i conquered Bavaria(which declared war on me with indifferent relations), Austria my ally since the beginning of the campaign wouldn't trade with me despite Very Friendly-Very Friendly relations.

[Quixote07]

Hmm, that sounds extremely atypical. I'll do some testing with the UP and general invasion parameters.

Oh, the trade port thing is a known problem with the AI's diplomacy. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do right now without seriously breaking the AI Hopefully it'll be fixed in the next patch.

Edit - just tried to repeat the scenario you described. It seems like the AI doesn't want trade as much as it wants your military backing. If you throw in a military alliance or an offer to be their protector, they accept happily.

Tweaked friend/foe analysis a bit, hopefully should no longer see friendly or very friendly attacks.

[cherryfunk]

I think we might want to remove Corsica as a victory condition region for all factions; playing as Venice I captured Genoa, leaving Genoa only with Corsica. I loaded up an army for a naval invasion, but couldn't land them anywhere on Corsica. I clicked on every inch of the shoreline and the game wouldn't let me disembark anywhere. I'm not sure why that is, but we might want to avoid Corsica being a required region to make sure no one loses a campaign because they can't land an army there...

[Jihada]

I've been playing Austria with IS and I find the diplomacy ok.Lot of action in central Europe and I've actually lost some battles which I think is a great improvement. My allies fight Prussia's allies and Poland is one huge battleground which keeps changing owners. Great fun.

[Quixote07]

Hah, that's pretty funny actually. Does Corsica eventually get a port?

[BagpipeDan]

Liberius, in my (admittedly vanilla) UP game I also had problems with trade. I figured it had to do with the fact that as the UP with access to a lot of goods people don't (the far east trade), these deals generally tend to favor you and not your trade partner. I remember paying heavily for most of my trade agreements...

Also in my Vanilla game I had very good relations with Hannover and Westphalia from turn 1 but the moment I got a little too successful they instantly declared war (I think it was after I conquered nearly all of New Spain and all the Carribean), so this may not be an issue with the mod, they may just be naturally responding to your growing power/expansion.

However, in the vanilla game I absolutely steamrolled them since they never attacked, would've liked to have had a real war (I didn't have Amsterdam or Flanders defended well at all [I was doing a lot of offensive stuff in France], they would have caused me a lot of problems)

[cherryfunk]

Hah, that's pretty funny actually. Does Corsica eventually get a port?

Eventually, but that might be 50 turns down the road or more... would suck to have to wait around for a port to be built before you can win the game.

One more sign of CA's excellent beta testing process

[cherryfunk]

I've seen some real variation in the way central Europe plays out in IS, which I like. In my second to last campaign, Prussia just destroyed Austria. I actually had to intervene as Venice and help my ally Austria beat back the Prussians, until an uneasy stalemate settled over the frontier. It was pretty cool; I had a full stack, Austria had a full stack and Prussia had a full stack, and we just stared at each other for 5 years, not daring to make the first move.

In my last campaign, Prussia was sliced to ribbons by Poland and Austria. There's a lot of fighting going on, and the results seem to hinge on a few critical battles.

[Quixote07]

I only hope that the patch will fix the campaign pathfinding and region_group problems, so that all of Europe can be as exciting as that Poland/Prussia/Austria triangle.

[Dogmeat]

I noticed on the India front the two games ive played as Portugal, Marthas get crushed pretty quick by Mysor and Morgul Empire, maybe they could do with a bit more cash in the war chest at start.

I only hope that the patch will fix the campaign pathfinding and region_group problems, so that all of Europe can be as exciting as that Poland/Prussia/Austria triangle.

So true that area is one tough cookie to crack on VH setting, has a real balance of power feeling that if you attack one party you will get stomped by another, has that Imperial Glory feeling of Diplomatic mexican standoff.