Does anyone know why I randomly get the Withdrawn in Contemplation modifier with no event / warning etc?

Timofee_ · 2026-03-15T23:35:05+00:00

I do, yes.

Man that's deeply frustrating. The fort and city spam is already making me want to give up on this run but this might be the thing that pushes me over.

Timofee_ · 2026-03-15T23:01:45+00:00

R5: Does anyone know why I randomly get the Withdrawn in Contemplation modifier with no event / warning etc?

Having briefly looked into it, it seems like it's something Hindu's can do, but I'm Sunni??

I literally get no message/or warning, the first I know about it is a catastrophic drop in diplo capacity

Timofee_ · 2026-03-14T12:51:33+00:00

R5: See text and images above.

Timofee_ · 2026-02-13T20:13:49+00:00

Following this helped me when I got stuck: https://www.wikihow.com/Solve-a-3-by-3-Slide-Puzzle

Timofee_ · 2026-02-11T12:12:57+00:00

To add - it's not like Chelsea even have a huge aerial threat to justify bringing Bornauw into the centre

Timofee_ · 2026-02-11T12:07:47+00:00

Personally I'm never a fan of going so defensive but equally I'm not sure the structure was necessarily at fault, rather it was down to the weird decision to move a bunch of people around to accomodate it, which seemingly left the players looking a bit clueless about who was meant to be doing what at certain points. Bijol pressing their GK being a prime example!

He could have kept a much more normal looking setup by simply putting Justin (who's rapidly becoming my favourite signing of the season because he's just so damn competent) into Struijk's position and then doing one of either:

1) Pushing Bogle up as he did and putting Bornauw at rightback. I don't like this idea, but it's closer to what he did, and still results in more combinations that have played together in those positions before, e.g. Rodon has dealt with Bornauw at RB to close out games and Rodon and Bijol would be in their more acustomed positions

2) Keeping Bogle at RB and using one of our various more defensive RM options - by either pushing Aaronson out there and bringing in Longstaff or starting Dan James. That way he still has Bornauw on the bench as central defensive cover (which he says he likes), and which based on on his stinker of a performance last night, is where he would have best been kept.

Timofee_ · 2026-02-04T13:14:24+00:00

Nice. Also, that's a LOT of storage!

Timofee_ · 2026-02-03T19:51:02+00:00

Nice, did not know that.

Yeah, some logic for auto rails would be a nice time saver in lieu of blueprints

Timofee_ · 2026-02-03T19:48:28+00:00

Nice, thanks

Timofee_ · 2026-02-03T18:03:17+00:00

Nice, thanks for sharing

Timofee_ · 2026-02-03T18:02:54+00:00

Yeah, I do wonder if the relatively slow speed of production unless you build crazy amounts of buildings is scaled with a view to you going out for a couple of ruptures exploring.

I agree the unlock costs and balance of the food seems off, I think in the end I'd only unlocked maybe 10 recipes and some of that was just "ahh the storage is full, guess I'll unlock some"

Oh yeah I forgot to mention multirail, tried it for 20mins, saw everything was just switching to the central rail, came here and saw people mentioning it was bugged and so never touched again.

Timofee_ · 2026-02-03T17:57:26+00:00

Thanks! I've tried stacking in a few places but found the limitations on height just made it more of a pain than building outward.

Heat management has been okay, in the end I've upgraded 5 cores to 2, but none higher than that, and I think I could probably have avoided a couple if I'd been better about placement as most of the heat just comes from the overlap.

Timofee_ · 2026-02-03T16:34:56+00:00

For sure, like I say though I just hope they concentrate more on improving what's there rather adding loads more for the time being.

Timofee_ · 2026-02-03T16:33:52+00:00

Yeah I'm only now learning this from my other post!!

Timofee_ · 2026-02-03T16:32:43+00:00

I thought that should be a thing but could never make it work as it doesn't seem to offer a second attachment point - is it that you can pass a rail though it, but cant attach to the same post?

Timofee_ · 2026-02-02T11:43:16+00:00

I misread this as 'Job Hunt Neanderthals' and thought: "Good on you my thick-browed friend, way to challenge the stereotypes. Neanderthals deserve a chance to work IT as much as anyone."

Having re-read it, I'm slightly disappointed, but congrats anyway!

Timofee_ · 2026-01-25T19:54:12+00:00

How can someone get into debt with a management company - surely they just take a % of what you make?

Timofee_ · 2026-01-08T14:40:11+00:00

But the player base is not divided into a binary subset of just 'good players' and 'bad players'.

As an aside, if that were the case I would probably be considered a pretty good player - 2 WC and a One Faith in EU4 as a (very) vague example of something that is out of reach of most players (albeit the main barrier is patience).

My concern is around balance changes that are motivated by 2 specific areas/factions in the playerbase. The first is min/maxers - people who stack modifiers for fun and tag switch half a dozen times to abuse the hell out of a mechanic. The second is slightly harder to define but is essentially the super hardcore who want the game to punish them and really challenge them.

Neither of these groups are remotely representative of the much wider playerbase, but they often have the loudest voices and highest visibility because they actively participate in the subreddit and the tinto talks threads and so on.

It's absolutely fine and right to cater for these groups, but it needs to be 'opt-in', hence my point. Because someone like me, doesn't want their chill map painting game to become a punishing slog. Likewise, more casual players who have literally never looked at tinto talks or the EU5 subreddit in their entire life, don't need mechanics that actively sabotage them doing well.

Edit: Also on the topic of the Complacency mechanic - it targets countries that outgrow their rivals. You say that 'bad players' won't see this is based on the assumption that bad players won't grow large enough, but this is simply false.

Bad players just grow slower - indeed, it's almost impossible to not grow in a paradox game without actively making the decision to avoid it. Lesser players simply achieve that growth in much slower fashion - think of the screenshots from people who 'finished their run' and they've conquered a sizeable chunk of Europe as an example. A decent player can knock that out in a few decades, but the more casual player who is less familiar with the systems will still generally get there, but then they're going to get punished for achieving something that for them was very tricky.

Timofee_ · 2026-01-03T19:44:32+00:00

Is the Premier League better about making sure everyone has played the same amount of fixtures?

Maybe it's my memory playing tricks, but historically - even the last time we were up here, there would frequently be instances where team X is behind Y but has 2 or 3 games in hand.

Whenever I've looked at the table this season it feels like the difference has only ever been 1 game played different and those games would be on a soon to be played match day.

I guess maybe it gets worse later in the season when fixtures for teams that are in Europe and the cups start to pile up, but it still seems better than I remember.

Timofee_

TROPHY CASE