post 04/30 patch: end-game gameplay not fixed, still too easy...

[Slaists]

In 1775, playing as Britain on H and rapidly approaching the long campaign goals I have 500,000 K cushion in my treasury and despite having ALL of my provinces developed to the max, having several big fleets, 4 full armies (two of them in India, 1 in the Americas and 1 in North Africa) I am still 'raking in' 40K to 50K a turn in profits (depending on which of my trade partners is blockaded in the particular turn).

Economy wise: it IS a step forward, my cushion is not millions just 500K... but still... My trade can be 100% blockaded for decades (not likely given what's happening in the seas) and I would still be able to stay 'above the water'...

I feel part of the reason of this ability to build up huge cushion is the industrial unrest that has disappeared with the new patch. Now it's possible to have happy faces (populus) all around even with full research in enlightenment, maximum industrialization (as many towns as any province has) and absolute monarchy. Unrest forced the player to garrison even the colonial towns previously helping to 'eat away' the cushion.

Game-play wise: end-game AI is as dead as before. It's the start-to-mid-game that CA has fixed and made more engaging. Big part of it must be the inability of the AI to make peace with each other and form diplomatic anti-player blocks.

-- Maybe opening up more theaters and giving the AI appropriate priorities would help? For example, if the player is going wild in North America, AI France still has a chance to expand and build up an empire of similar strength in Africa or South-East Asia. Just an idea.

-- Naval invasions are still something from the fairy tales. The first three decades of the game I was fully occupied in North America, guarding England with token troops that are there at the game start. Neither France nor Spain (my enemies of the time) attempted to do anything. Neither did any AI faction try to do anything about half of India belonging to rebels.

-- And here's an example of AI mid-game passivity (still present) and the broken diplomatic engine.

After having soundly beaten Cherokees, I made them into my protectorate, leaving them with Orleans and North Louisiana (they had conquered those themselves) + gifted them Texas.

They are my protectorate, but they're still at war with Spain (for taking Florida early in the game). So, here's the onion. About 30 years after I have gifted Cherokees Texas (giving them straight access to Mexico), they have done absolutely nothing about the unguarded Spanish province next to them... And we all know how active Cherokees are now at the start of the game. It seemed, like something/someone had suddenly just knocked their lights out.

I would understand that if they were bankrupt by paying me the protectorate fees. Far from that: they have 3 full stacks roaming their countryside + I've given them all the latest techs + cash bonuses every once in a while. Still, there's that insurmountable invisible wall between Cherokee Texas and the undefended Mexico...

[Lumina]

I dunno I have plenty of unrest. Have to waste 6 or more turns just trying to quash unrest in just one region when it used to take 2 turns? Now my captial is getting near unrest sadly.

[Faris ad Din]

Game-play wise: end-game AI is as dead as before. It's the start-to-mid-game that CA has fixed and made more engaging. Big part of it must be the inability of the AI to make peace with each other and form diplomatic anti-player blocks.

There should at least be unrest due to clamor for reform in university regions. Even if the individual research items lose their penalties, the presence of the universities in and of themselves should lead to some liberal ideas floating around. It happened in real life in history. I do feel that the unrest due to industrialization was a bit too punitive.

It seems that one of the only ways game companies see fit to balance their games is to add more tweaks and basically make it more and more complicated. So CA was able to extend the challenging part of the game into the mid-part of the game. This only goes so far - they have to implement a better solution. If a multiplayer campaign were played only by human players - we would find intensive usage of peace treaties and coalitions, and a balance of backstabbing alliances, and honoring them and remembering/punishing traitors. More like in real life.

The stronger a single nation gets, it reverberates around the world, and other factions feeling individually threatened, would ally together and try to beat that other nation back down. The real empires in history were able to defeat these coalitions. They faced larger and larger and larger challenges as they grew. Anti-large-faction coalitions would make virtually the entire campaign fun and challenging, without any need for hiking up prices/cutting income, making the beginning game proportionately hard.

Pre-patch:
Beginning game: challenging - Middle game: moderate - End game: cakewalk
Post-patch:
Beginning game: struggling - Middle game: challenging - End game: still easy

What we need is to make the entire campaign challenging from start to finish. The AI needs reworked principles and triggers.

The increased unrest in captured territories is more realistic... it shouldn't be easy to capture another faction's historical lands, and this was reflected from Medieval 1: Total War (all throughout the game), Rome: Total War (cultural penalty), Barbarian: Invasion (cultural and religious penalty), Medieval 2: Total War (religion), Britannia Campaign in Kingdoms (culture). I think the current ETW system mostly creates an equivalent conquest-unrest system well.

[Juggernaut]

Big part of it must be the inability of the AI to make peace with each other and form diplomatic anti-player blocks.

I think this is pretty much it. The fact that all major AI factions being at war with a dozen enemies must be affecting it's decision and efficiency. Once this is fixed(and some other issues like melee crazy AI), ETW will be at the state where it should have beeen released.

[VINDIC]

Why don't try on VH?

[Humble Warrior]

Nice to see people are finally getting used to the more stringent economy and finding that they can actually do well. Just as I was saying yesterday.

Yep, try Very Hard, that`ll test you, it certainly does me.

[Pfundner]

In 1775, playing as Britain on H

i stopped reading there

you are playing as the easiest faction on not even the hardest difficulty and you're moaning about it being too easy?

Play as austria on VH/VH with imperial splendour, if you find that easy feel free to complain

[Slaists]

i stopped reading there

you are playing as the easiest faction on not even the hardest difficulty and you're moaning about it being too easy?

Play as austria on VH/VH with imperial splendour, if you find that easy feel free to complain

Austria just does not interest me that much; neither does Imperial Splendor mod for the subjective unit changes that the author makes. I'm rather waiting for Darth to make proper adjustments to the post-patch game.

I have an Ottoman campaign going on VH and it's progressing pretty well, but I am only 15 turns into the campaign with them.

What I'd suggest to CA is rather simple (at least on paper). The idea that one does not need to conquer the known world in order to win but rather maintain and develop an empire is good. But so far it's just an idea: in the end-game, there are no other powers capable to oppose the player. 1) Probably we need more space for the AI to expand into (Sub-Saharan African theater for example). Since the current economic engine does not allow the player to disperse it's forces across many fronts; the player is not likely to expand into several theaters in the start-game. Which is good. That should allow some AI powers to build economic base in another colonial theater while the player is putting together a North American powerhouse for example.
Naval invasions need to be really fixed for that to work though. 2) AI should be allowed to make peace with each other and form diplomatic blocks to counter player's expansion.

[Rizzmond]

in my opinion, the major problem here is the AI RARELY attempting to make peace. If you want a challenging game now, never make peace.

[Yojimbo]

i stopped reading there

you are playing as the easiest faction on not even the hardest difficulty and you're moaning about it being too easy?

Play as austria on VH/VH with imperial splendour, if you find that easy feel free to complain

because using a mod is really a valid argument to a complaint with the vanilla game. He wasn't talking about mods and thinking its fine if mods are needed for a game is ridiculous.

Its like in topics when people talk about pikemen and somebody says duhh mod their swords out.

Guess what we aren't talking about mods and you completely missed the point the game should be perfect out of the box not needing to download fanmade fixes or fix it yourself.

"This game isn't too easy because I downloaded a mod that total changes it and makes it not easy" is not a valid argument because you changed it.

[Lumina]

i stopped reading there

you are playing as the easiest faction on not even the hardest difficulty and you're moaning about it being too easy?

Play as austria on VH/VH with imperial splendour, if you find that easy feel free to complain

He could try Saxony on VH/VH No collage, no agents, one region, lots of people surrounding you who don't like you, and you can't even recruit linemen at start. *loves the unlock faction mods* the none default factions are so much fun.

[Yojimbo]

try persia wiht no gun powder. they have pikes horse archers and archers. no mods.

[Aradius]

Also, what do you expect?
If you dominate the world, you dominate the world. Why should I even bother to conquer anything if it didn't allow me to field more armies, sustain more fleets and generally get income from them?
It's natural that just wrapping up is easier than starting out. Conquering two regions when you've already got 30 or so is *supposed* to be not that difficult. I'd be rather surprised if it were different.
One could introduce some ridiculously powerful threat from the outside, like they did with the Mongols and Timurids in MTW2, but that's just not gonna happen in ETW's setting.

What makes the endgame long and drawn out is that the game forces you to sit through until you reach 1799. If it awarded you victory at the time when you had reached the conditions, like they did in MTW, it would become much less tedious.

[Pink Beard]

Instead of screwing up economics CA should've made the AI more challenging. This way you'll stop steamrollers too

[VINDIC]

In 1775, playing as Britain on H and rapidly approaching the long campaign goals I have 500,000 K cushion in my treasury and despite having ALL of my provinces developed to the max, having several big fleets, 4 full armies (two of them in India, 1 in the Americas and 1 in North Africa) I am still 'raking in' 40K to 50K a turn in profits (depending on which of my trade partners is blockaded in the particular turn).

Economy wise: it IS a step forward, my cushion is not millions just 500K... but still... My trade can be 100% blockaded for decades (not likely given what's happening in the seas) and I would still be able to stay 'above the water'...

I feel part of the reason of this ability to build up huge cushion is the industrial unrest that has disappeared with the new patch. Now it's possible to have happy faces (populus) all around even with full research in enlightenment, maximum industrialization (as many towns as any province has) and absolute monarchy. Unrest forced the player to garrison even the colonial towns previously helping to 'eat away' the cushion.

Game-play wise: end-game AI is as dead as before. It's the start-to-mid-game that CA has fixed and made more engaging. Big part of it must be the inability of the AI to make peace with each other and form diplomatic anti-player blocks.

-- Maybe opening up more theaters and giving the AI appropriate priorities would help? For example, if the player is going wild in North America, AI France still has a chance to expand and build up an empire of similar strength in Africa or South-East Asia. Just an idea.

-- Naval invasions are still something from the fairy tales. The first three decades of the game I was fully occupied in North America, guarding England with token troops that are there at the game start. Neither France nor Spain (my enemies of the time) attmpted to do anything. Neither did any AI faction try to do anything about half of India belonging to rebels.

Only for curiosity I played 15-20 turns in GC (H/VH) with England and what you say is true...the incomes at that point are 12-13K per turn, but I must say also that have 7-8 indiamen around the world that give me a lot of profits......really try on VH and tell us.

EDIT: P.S. At that point - in my actual GC with Austria (VH/VH) - I had 4-5K per turn, but with only one indiamen and one commercial port.

[aeoleron9]

Speaking of lategame economy, trade nodes should be pretty high up in the broken list. The AI never attacks nodes, so you can cramp them full and rake in millions without any repercussions other than a little price fall.

[Slaists]

Speaking of lategame economy, trade nodes should be pretty high up in the broken list. The AI never attacks nodes, so you can cramp them full and rake in millions without any repercussions other than a little price fall.

I agree, AI attacking the trade nodes should make a HUGE difference... There actually would be need for war fleets...

[Xstar]

I totally agree with the sentiment of this thread; The game is so ridiculously easy, it makes me very sad and that's why I rant all the time. And then I'm talking about the early game. The late game is like shooting toddlers with a machine gun, it's so easy it isn't fun.

And you people who pretend that Darthmod or Imperial Splendour changes this fact: wake up! I've played all mods on VH/VH and they are all a toddler massacre.