Should the political reformer perk be nerfed?

[waidizss]

Currently it provides a hefty +4 +8 +12 % bonus to research, which IMO is extremely overpowered. Especially larger nations can see huge returns on farming 8 generals for passive XP gain from governing. I've been playing with passive XP off for a while now but still I'm over-hoarding RP% bonuses by turn 50 due to aggressive gameplay. Should it perhaps be nerfed to 2% each rank?

[pawelrut]

I agree

[Theon Greyjoy]

I disagree, wouldn't you say it seems like an even trade off especially since the AI advances with tech fairly fast?

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I also disagree. A player has to go out of their way to do this.

We don't balance the game around power Gamers because somebody is always going to find a way to exploit something that upsets the balance.

[Dresden]

Its probably a bit too high at the top levels. It could be 4/6/8 or something.

[waidizss]

But this is not an exploit, it is a legitimate strategy that needs a rebalance. I have suggested nerfing passive xp gain that creates over-competent generals in the first place, but if not that, something needs to be done with the RP% boost. Compare this to a bare 20% you get with level IV RP building that is a late game exclusive. It's not a problem of exploitables, the problem is the relative RP gains through various methods.

The tech scaling seems to work as is, but I think the political reformer should be nerfed with a buff to the building, and if possible, scaling for imperium level. That way smaller nations will not be penalized so harshly for being small.

[popovic]

I agree. Things like this SHOULD be curbed.

Not everyone is a roleplayer, powergamers are players too...

[Satansblofish]

We are putting the cart before the horse. We need to stop and back up here.

Let's try and some more clarity to the situation in general and for people such as myself who were not aware this was being abused.

Are we sure this is even being abused by more than a small group within the forum posters? A minority within a minority. My understanding is by far most of DeI players are passers through. I don't get the feeling this is being abused at high percentages among dei players.

My other immediate question is, are you rushing to max out that talent first? On all 8 generals? Or are you saying you get this in addition to your other talents?

If you can abuse that talent and face no repercussions, what difficulty/sub mods are you playing with? I think establishing that is an important factor before we start calling for any kind of balance. In my mind, if that is happening on normal well then that is just fine. If you are doing that on VH with some of the tougher submods then I think this more of a case where you are a really good player. If you are not on some ramped up difficulty, and you can carry out that strategy in every campaign play-through with impunity, it sounds like you have some room to ramp things up.

I think we also need to acknowledge that the reality here is that a handful of players are choosing to abuse or exploit this talent in the name of power-gaming. Making a change from the status quo is very likely to only have a net-negative on the vast majority of players who do not abuse this. Many of those players only play a handful of campaigns. I think the idea is for players to choose an array of talents and I'm guessing that is right now the case. It makes sense that the talent is attractive and useful for that vast majority who spec into it with much overall less points. It doesn't make sense to nerf it when the desired outcome is to prevent abusing the talent or even just make it less effective to the small handful who choose to abuse it, especially because the talent in turn becomes unattractive to the vast majority of players to pick at all.

At the very least, getting other players to try and abuse the talent to see if that significantly outweighs the opportunity cost of choosing any other skill, is the actual first step. Doing some actual testing first and ONLY then do I think should a potential discussion begin about ideas for some kind of balance.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

To add to this. Other things like buildings and ancillaries are permanent boosts. Once that general dies, you lose that bonus.

@Popvic: No where did I say we balance the game for roleplayers. The objective is to find the middle ground, and do the bulk of the balancing there. Then go back and trip egregious outliers that are either too difficult or can be too easily abused.

Right now it takes about 40 turns of a general sitting in a city to gain the levels to get three levels of political reformer.
If you want to sit there for 40 turns, per 8 generals to do that, that sounds like a pretty extreme case to me. While you are doing that, those generals aren't leveling up other traits, and aren't commanding armies.

Assuming you have 8 generals to spare, that means you are at imperium level FIVE. That's 8 generals and using them all to sit in a city to gain levels. (ignoring the use of admirals for the same effect, but again, the same argument applies).

By this point in the game you Already have the territory and economy to trivialized the rest of the campaign. Having additional research from generals is a very low contributing factor at this point of the game towards your victory.

This is not a big issue.

[Fest]

Research rate strikes me as pretty robust to abuse since it features diminishing returns, I don't know exactly the formula but it probably can be approximated by ax^-b. Even if it is just turns/rate, if it takes 40 turns to research something, and you invest in it massively, say 500% or whatever you can get up to, it'll take you 8 turns to research. If you go in and nerf, say to where you now only get 400%, it now takes 10 turns instead. Doesn't seem like a huge deal unless you really nerf it.

I thought unwavering patriot was worse, since you reduce PO penalties by 50% and increase your cultural conversion, which can allow for faster expansion, through better PO faster, which also leads to higher taxes/growth sooner.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

500% is a ludicrous figure to throw out in the first place though, considering 8 generals sitting for 40 turns will get you 8 x 12%.

So if you take 40 turns (and keep in mind this is requires imperium level FIVE to have 8 armies) and exclusively just camp your generals in cities to level up, after those 40 turns you have 96% additional research.

Nothing takes 40 turns to research, most techs are 4-12 turns. Some later techs start out with somewhat high research times, but those go down as the campaign progresses.

Realistically you are knocking 1 or 2 turns off of techs AT MOST. (1.44 turns off of a 12 turn tech. Congrats, this is somehow super unbalanced?)

Again, this is a non-issue.

You have to completely sideline your generals for this to work, or be actively exploiting rebellions to farm EXP, or actively neglect useful battlefield talents if you are using them as a general in the field.
It takes many turns to see any kind of return, and that return is minor at best. Not to mention by the time you can do this, you already are snowballing to victory.

People need to sit down and actually test these things as well as do the math instead of jumping to conclusions and calling something OP and demanding we do something about it.

[pawelrut]

I like to use the political reformer skill because it reduce corruption, I don't use it for research, I get the research as a bonus, but I find it makes it to easy on the research. Different style of play, different players, it's hard to balance thinks so everybody is happy.

@Satansblofish
I get what you saying, but you start minimaxing once you become a experienced player, once you find the formula, that sweet spot, it's hard to use a strategy that is inferior. DeI is meant to be hard to play. The team did a excellent job of making the skills matter in a much better way comparing with the base game.

[Satansblofish]

I like to use the political reformer skill because it reduce corruption, I don't use it for research, I get the research as a bonus, but I find it makes it to easy on the research. Different style of play, different players, it's hard to balance thinks so everybody is happy.

Which getting in the first 50 turns is not that useful either, especially when compared to the other talents. Even if you are experiencing high % corruption early game, increasing tax income is still better.

@Satansblofish
I get what you saying, but you start minimaxing once you become a experienced player, once you find the formula, that sweet spot, it's hard to use a strategy that is inferior. DeI is meant to be hard to play.

With respect, I don't think you do. I am fundamentally disagreeing with your premise. If you have a 'sweet spot' in that you can pick the same talents over and over and over and you think that is OP because your campaigns don't feel difficult enough anymore as a result of abusing said talent, then you absolutely have room to increase the difficulty of your campaigns, unless you are already completely maxed out. I would go as far to say the inferior strategy is the one described in the OP. I personally need to see some evidence that demonstrates this is OP. Currently, no one has even made an argument or gave any sort of detail as to how abusing research % has significantly advantaged their campaign. All the posts calling for the change only offer a handful of sentences and no actual information.

I have almost 3000 hours in DeI. I play on VH with an array of difficulty increasing sub mods. I use house rules to prevent abusing mechanics(no destroying fort towers, no ambush, etc). If you want to increase the difficulty in your campaign in DeI, these are the things you do.

On another note, I feel I have been very diplomatic and am now going to be a bit more frank. In terms of impact on player base, I think this issue is extremely narrow. Like, very possibly, the 3 people in this post narrow. Probably one of the more narrow cases posted of late. I think as regular players and posters, we know the DeI team is busy pumping out new content, features, and bug fixes for us. As such, we should not be apart of the group of players who use these boards to drum up support for minor changes based on assertions that are not verified. That crap happens enough from fly by posters already. I am obviously not a mod and don't speak for them, but as a human being, I know that to be on the receiving end of that behavior to be annoying as . Doing that all the time wears on anybody.

I think the solution here, more than anything, is if there is a group of players that think this needs to be changed then they need to organize themselves and do some grunt work in order to test these things out. Post the findings and some numbers or video if possible. Then, and only then, do I think there is room for ideas to make changes. Asking for help to do or on how to do that rather than asking for changes to the game makes more sense and is the most beneficial to the dei guys.

[T2av]

Currently it provides a hefty +4 +8 +12 % bonus to research, which IMO is extremely overpowered. Especially larger nations can see huge returns on farming 8 generals for passive XP gain from governing. I've been playing with passive XP off for a while now but still I'm over-hoarding RP% bonuses by turn 50 due to aggressive gameplay. Should it perhaps be nerfed to 2% each rank?

You play with passive xp off and use your aggressive generals for passive (governor type)bonuses, instead of say combat oriented ones?

[Dresden]

@Satansblofish To be honest I think your point is valid for a lot of various things posted here. The vast majority of players never post anything or only post when they have a bug and decide to spam the Steam comments page That doesn't mean the feedback is less valuable, but I agree that we have to be careful about how we balance and who we balance for. On the whole, players posting here will tend toward the more hardcore veteran players. Nothing wrong with that, and we get great feedback and help from all of you.

In terms of this specific issue, the truth is that research % is really just not that important from what I can tell. We can lower this specific skill a bit, but overall a few % points into research isn't going to be that effective in game one way or another.

[Garbad]

/disagree

Its a good bonus, but without that bonus many barbarian tribes can't get any significant research bonuses. Plus, I don't think it actually harms anything.

[waidizss]

This thread garnered more salt than the sack of Carthage. Just close it before Ivan pulls a finger smashing the keyboard. Expect better behavior from devs.

[Fest]

I don't see why barbarian tribes can't get significant research bonuses. You can get +10% research rate now from one of the main capital buildings, you can also get +research rate via Governors as well as Generals. I've played Kaledonoi and Saka Rauka, and I never felt the research rate was a hindrance, are other barbarian factions dependent on a particular tech?

[JCB206]

This thread garnered more salt than the sack of Carthage. Just close it before Ivan pulls a finger smashing the keyboard. Expect better behavior from devs.

Did I miss a post? Ivan didn’t say anything that showed negative behavior. He and others have just stated that the game can not be just continually made harder for the few players that power their way through a campaign.

[Ivan_Moscavich]

I don't see why barbarian tribes can't get significant research bonuses. You can get +10% research rate now from one of the main capital buildings, you can also get +research rate via Governors as well as Generals. I've played Kaledonoi and Saka Rauka, and I never felt the research rate was a hindrance, are other barbarian factions dependent on a particular tech?

I think Garbad meant comparatively. As You get a tech bonus from main chain buildings and higher bonus to research from library trees as Greeks and successor factions.

Did I miss a post? Ivan didn’t say anything that showed negative behavior. He and others have just stated that the game can not be just continually made harder for the few players that power their way through a campaign.

I'm not sure. Maybe he didn't like my maths.

Joke is on him, though. I don't even use a keyboard!