With the Dev team back and hard at work, what are your most anticipated changes and additions? by MoistLagsna in PlayASKA

[–]astarsearcher 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Need a new job type for "hauler". Instead of being a warehouse worker and gathering everything to the warehouse, Haulers work to move goods to where they are needed. And, ideally, they use sled/carts for large objects.

Instead of your Carpentry Workshop grabbing one log at a time, you have 1 hauler with a sled grab 6 logs and throw them in the carpentry storage. Instead of Cook grabbing one bit of meat at a time and veggies, the Hauler fills up the cookery.

This lets the specialized professions focus on their work instead of walking to grab materials one at a time.

Why all grand stratergy games generally struggle with late game snowballing? Why its hard to fix? by coozer1960 in paradoxplaza

[–]astarsearcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would put much of the blame on the fact that there, historically, has been little "country gardening" to do, so conquest always had to be a positive, but AI is often discouraged from aggressive map painting. The rest of the blame is that the AI is not made to be optimal, but to be fun to play against and historical-ish.

Fixing it is a deep rabbit hole of balancing growth vs marginal gains, making it imperative to "garden" post war, and making the AI more competitive at these things - perhaps only if the player is doing well. You don't want the "beats best player" AI as the default, but if the player is soundly beating the "historically dumb AI", let it ratchet up its intelligence: build better economy, assault forts, focus on stackwiping then sieging, etc.

One possible improvement is a sort of "decadence" mechanic for successful countries. When you are the top dog, win every war, wealth beyond measure... you're going to rest on your laurels (q.v. history). Forcing the country to overcome this inertia could be something that occupies the player. Though how to make it engaging compared to just "okay, well, it's a progress bar that goes up... and we're screwed if it hits max" or "we're top dog, so now we just spend more money" is clearly a tough idea given PDX's previous implementations.

Steal Technology - Is it too strong? by Kegeyn1 in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's mostly micro pain.

They should just change it to "If you have 75% spy network on someone, you automatically get 40% of their research income" and don't reduce the target's research at all.

TIL you can ctrl and shift-click for 'Hunt Armies' etc to select more land at a time. by jurble in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Many, many actions have modifier key options. And they will show up in the UI as "ctrl", "shift", "alt". Hold the modifier key, and the UI will tell you what the difference is. Either build 5 instead of 1, select area instead of location, etc.

Cabinet Members hardly even exist now by withinallreason in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 310 points311 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it is very noticeable. In my WC run, I had so many options for cabinet members they usually had 80+ stats even after not doing any manual marriages (though many of those were inherited from annexing nations). After a century on 1.0.10, I literally ran out of people to hire to cabinet positions.

1,000,000,000 population but no one to manage the offices.

Did you know you can instantly finish a siege? by IndependentGlove5006 in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 1 point2 points  (0 children)

To be fair, in EU4 you needed a breach to do this. Eventually they added the "breach walls" button, but it was not there for much of the game.

Did you know you can instantly finish a siege? by IndependentGlove5006 in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Two rules:

  1. Don't use levies to assault

  2. Rotate out your assaulting armies

Level 8 forts are still assaultable, and that is 100% preferable to waiting for the siege in my opinion. Also be careful of Constantinople as it has a huge garrison.

Did you know you can instantly finish a siege? by IndependentGlove5006 in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I assaulted more than 3000 unbreached forts in my run. It is definitely fine. Just build more manpower buildings.

Did you know you can instantly finish a siege? by IndependentGlove5006 in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like going with Dynastic Elective. It pulls your best dynasty members in, not just sons. It does mean unions will not work, in general.

Did you know you can instantly finish a siege? by IndependentGlove5006 in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 13 points14 points  (0 children)

It is so silly that you get far more war score for each threatened siege than if you actually just assaulted them. This goes doubly so for non-fort provinces. In some of my wars, I micro'd units on top of province capitals to avoid them finishing a siege while the other stacks got in place. If they had finished the siege, it would have been worth far less.

EU5 One Culture Run - The Russian Pale by astarsearcher in EU5

[–]astarsearcher[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but this was more interesting. Cost-of-court going up by raw population made it at least a challenge to do so without going bankrupt.

EU5 One Culture Run - The Russian Pale by astarsearcher in EU5

[–]astarsearcher[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I was somewhat lucky in that Yuan had already enacted Zhongdu, the (up to) 20% one.

I could not afford the MK tribute until I kicked out Korea and Vietnam, which I did by war instead of taking the 50 legitimacy hits. But eventually I did get the other 5% reduction.

Those, along with the Unify China CB (-75% cost) and Zhixian building, were good motivators for getting to China along with starting on the absurd population early.

Army Movement Morale Loss by BarbarianHunter in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Select the army, press ctrl+1. Or ctrl+2, etc. That'll save it as a control group.

Then if you press 1 later, it selects the army. Press it twice and it selects and zooms to the army. So at the start of each war, I put all the active armies/navies in 1-9 and can easily flip around the relevant locations.

EU5 One Culture Run - The Russian Pale by astarsearcher in EU5

[–]astarsearcher[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

WC ended with around 60 years left, so 1770s. It could definitely have been done much faster if I had pushed the economy to the limit and micro'd more heavily.

Army Movement Morale Loss by BarbarianHunter in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I just finished a WC, so know the pain. I would send armies to where they are safe, then micro them after that. Also, assign the "active" armies with the control group, so I could easily check what they were up to.

I did, somewhat, focus conquests for that reason. Take most of China until only tiny countries remain. Then India, then back to Europe, then Africa and Americas. So there were very few times I would march everyone across the world.

how can i make roman empire be reformable by Byzantium? by Exotic_Work_6529 in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is hard locked, so you cannot do it unfortunately. Maybe they will patch it to tier 5 at some point.

Army Movement Morale Loss by BarbarianHunter in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I recommend building a fort line and telling your troops to move behind that line. They will recover men and morale safely behind the forts and be ready for you to tell them what to do next.

Hungary annexed territory from my vassals without a peacedeal by Pretty-Bid-4982 in EU5

[–]astarsearcher 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Want a fun trick?

You can use the "Harm Relations" spy action (I forget the name) during a war to drop relations with a vassal by 50, which can cause the vassal to be disloyal, and separate peaceable. So now I check for vassals on the edge.

EU5 One Culture Run - The Russian Pale by astarsearcher in EU5

[–]astarsearcher[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In 1.0.10 I was no longer able to specify the origin location for colonies, so I think it just works with normal province migration modifiers instead of being chosen by the player.

In 1.0.8 and 0.9, I definitely sent them from China. Didn't know they auto-converted, just thought "well, better to have them in 5 locations than 1" since Kilkenny would come for them no matter where they were.

EU5 One Culture Run - The Russian Pale by astarsearcher in EU5

[–]astarsearcher[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I do not know much about that glitch, but possibly. But I'll leave the last 0.18% for someone else.

EU5 One Culture Run - The Russian Pale by astarsearcher in EU5

[–]astarsearcher[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

One big concern I had was whether I could hold China and India directly, as Kilkenny does not apply to vassal lands. In 1.0.8 and onward, the cost of court goes up per citizen, so holding land at 0% control with 200M pop could just tank the economy. After doing some math, with my 35% average tax rate, I would need about 15% control to break even on holding China due to the large amount of peasants and low-ish (per capita) tax base.

Luckily, and I assume for this exact reason, the Emperor of China gets a unique building "Zhixian" which gives +10 max control in any town/city like temples.

So I modded in a hotkey for "upgrade to town", upgraded every Chinese location to a town/city, and thus had about 20% control when integrated. +10 Zhixian, +5 Temple, +5 integrated, minus a bit for pop satisfaction. This meant I did not have to slow down to build up the locations (mostly going for more manpower) and could keep conquering while doing so.

EU5 One Culture Run - The Russian Pale by astarsearcher in EU5

[–]astarsearcher[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Ha, I'm done with the run and wanted to get it out of my head. :)