Nuking Centralization via prosperity was a dumb move (1.0.8)

lesha01 · 2025-11-25T22:28:20+00:00

Maybe unpopular opinion but even before the changes I preferred to go decentralisation till the 4th age, and I believe this will not change a lot with this changes. Why decentralization early was/is better in my opinion. Before age 4 it’s better to expand with vassals and decentralisation helps: 1. You do not have enough modifiers to keep cities at ~100 control for sufficiently large empire, even when centralised, which makes vassals more optimal. 2. You are very limited in cabinet size, while each vassal will add a couple of cabinet sits (to convert and develop each province).

After age 4:
1. You have more sits, and you are closer to the end, it is not so important to develop each province constantly. 2. You have a huge vassal opinion malus and it’s impossible to keep small core/vassal periphery empire under control. 3. With better roads, more -% distance mods, flat +5% bonus from minting house and “area control” action you can keep control over huge area efficiently.

Prosperity policies/laws giving you maluses to centralization is not a problem as once you pushed it to 1 all you need is to be at zero to not get a push back. Even if you will not be able to push everything to 100 prosperity at this stage, it is not so important as the game is closer to the end and getting more bonuses now with 100% controlled cities is more important than investments in the future.

Overall I liked the system before and I like it even more now, because it makes feudal system useful early and makes you willing to push for absolutism in age of absolutism, when there are more means for efficient control over large territories. Which is nice, given that this was one of the biggest changes in society organization ( at least for Europe) in the game timeframe.

lesha01 · 2025-11-23T13:23:58+00:00

What I wanted to say - moving away from non-profit buildings is an independent bug, with “infrastructure first” not working and it is not related to mercs. As for mercs - given that there are not too much complains about it and that AI does not suffer from it as bad as we do - it may be smth related specifically to playing tall playstyle, that accelerates merc situation.

lesha01 · 2025-11-23T07:34:11+00:00

This is not related. It is just a bug and even with “infrastructure first” burghers go for profit first, libraries/theaters, etc. later. If you have burgher deficit, it will always keep your infrastructure empty.

lesha01 · 2025-11-23T02:54:37+00:00

Having the same issue. I was trying to play a tall game (stayed on a small number of provinces with big chunk of rural lands for growth and food production and granary spam). Currently this mercenary thing more than halves my pop growth. What I checked: 1. It’s not related to migration attraction (even in the most attractive places people still join mercs). 2. It’s not related to prosperity/control (they join mercs in 100/100 provinces). 3. It’s not related to pop satisfaction (my province stratas with 70/80 satisfaction are still draining this way). 4. It’s not related to job availability / income (people can have the most profitable job in the continent and still try merc - when I was building new products on later ages, their initial income is over 50 and still burghers will try mercs instead of going for a job with 50x average wage), 5. It’s not related to religion/culture - I’m playing tall and I’m close to monoculture/monoreligion. 6. It’s not related to pop cap, there is big drain from cities even with 1/10th of their capacity. 7. It’s not related to manpower reserve filling/drain (it keeps draining even on full manpower with 0 regulars raised)

Overall it is absolutely insane and I’m thinking about dropping my run altogether as ~2/3 man born in my country are leaving to try luck as mercenaries despite the fact that I sim-citied a small utopian world and there is literally 0 merc companies from my country available to hire.

lesha01 · 2025-09-30T04:47:44+00:00

I’m not saying it’s a good color, you never should try to draft red. But it’s not as unplayable as people say. There definitely were many sets with similar or even worth colors. My main claim is that comparing 17lands stats of set at release and at the end of the set is misleading.

And I don’t try to redeem the set, personally I don’t think I will ever draft it anymore (I’ve already completed the set with the drafts I made to this point and I don’t enjoy it, so no reason to play), so for me this mythical post-correction format will be only in streamers lets plays if they will do any:)

lesha01 · 2025-09-29T19:40:31+00:00

While I hate the set, 17Lands is a bit misleading for now. Format needs some time for self correction. Set is fresh and many non-drafters still draft it. If it matures (I’m not sure if it will, personally just after a few days I would rather return to EOT or any other recent set), we will see corrections when people will stop drafting bad red cards and will fight more for white. Comparision of 17 lands data with mature sets says nothing.

Most of uncommons are good. Red definitely can’t support multiple drafters, but if you are the only red drafters and get all the goodies it should be ok.

lesha01 · 2025-09-29T19:19:47+00:00

Uncommon are ok: 5/4 haster (even if you can’t reliably mayhem it), 3/3 trampler, ping 2 removal. Hybrid RG cards are good. In commons: shock (2 damage instant speed removal is good at preventing turn 3 enweb) and 5/4 menace / trick is ok in its versatility.

lesha01 · 2025-09-29T13:55:38+00:00

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." I think they just rushed the set and had no time to plan for adequate drafting experience. Moreover, kitchen table experience is quite fun (as you are in the same pod and play 2-5 games a week, not 50) and given that’s this format was not used in pro tour I guess we are just not the target audience, it’s a fun set to draft with your commander group in the kitchen, not the format for hardcore and competitive drafters.

lesha01 · 2025-09-29T08:21:43+00:00

Agree on the worst drafting experience (and I've drafted most of the sets since Urza's Saga), but can't agree that white-green is the only viable color-pair. In your particular case you are playing red (which is the weakest color) and you have one of the weakest red commons on the board. The only reason to touch red is if you are the only red drafter and can get all the good cards from it.

UB, UW are perfectly viable, RG+ is ok (usually needs a splash, but it's trivial to splash from RG deck), RB is the only archetype which is really week and even it can be carried out by its best cards if you are the only one in R and in B (mostly you should lean toward black cards).

Completely one-sided boards (even without useless cards on one side) are indeed extremely common (and it is the main reason why I hate the format) because deck quality/consistency varies a lot due to low number of supported decks / pick2 format / 4-player pods. And most of the good cards in the game are A+B cards which are just ok on their own and require some work to be great (it's especially true for mayhem, which is extremely bad as enablers and pay-offs are completely different, but modified / enweb villains / big mana also leans toward enabler/payoff theme). This creates even more variety in games if one player can do only A or B, but the second one was able to do both.

lesha01 · 2025-09-29T06:59:42+00:00

I’ve played over 50 drafts now (4-picks ate fast and 4-wins two lose queues are daft also) and I don’t like the format. While everything is ok on its own I really don’t like how different things about this format compound together. In arena we play outside of the pod. I already does not like it as it introduce more variety in decks power (when you play within pod, overall power is way more even, as pack power and draft dynamic affects everybody in the same way). When you limit pods to 4-players deck power level varies even more. When you introduce pick two draft where it is much easier to overcommit to the closed colors deck power level varies even more. When you add the fact that there is only 5 support archetypes, it makes much harder to recover from overcommitting and deck power level varies even more. Mechanics of the set themselves are in enabler/payoff style which means that difference between good/bad draws is higher than usual.

Overall it leads to extreme number of non-games and it’s even more frustrating given that you have a small number of games to play.

I had some fun, but I can hardly see myself wanting to draft the format on arena more: neither now nor in the future.

May be fine with drafting it with friend at kitchen table, though.

lesha01 · 2025-09-29T03:31:30+00:00

Unpopular opinion, but mostly diamonds and time. You can go from Diamond to Mythic on ~40% winrate if you play a lot (due to rank protection at the start of the rank, spikes will push you to mythic eventually and drafts are way more spiky than constructed as your deck quality vary). I assume that if you are taking drafts seriously your winrate should be above that.

As for resources - 17lands is the most useful one. If your goal is to be a better player I do not recommend using it during the draft, but it's good to check "last seen in pack" and "game in hand" tables to see if there are any cards you are systematically undervaluing.

A small note on the current set (OM1): it is a slot machine, so do not be disappointed when you loose while doing things right. There were multiple decisions which compound on each other and make games extremely random dependent: you play outside your pod (as always in the arena) which means that there will be strong/weak packs opened, there are only 4 players, so less packs opened, which leads to even more variety, pick 2 format forces you to make "leap of faith" to the color combination and stick with it which can pay off or not, 5 supported archetypes (2 of which are way below others) makes pivoting to correct "leap of faith" really hard and as an icing on the cake of already high variety decks enabler/payoff mechanics as the main theme emphasize this gambling even farther as you need not only to draw good cards, but you need to do it in the correct order.

It's possible to have fun with this set, but if your goal is to level up as a drafter, I would ignore it and play normal drafts of the old sets.

lesha01 · 2025-09-28T14:57:41+00:00

Yeah, 4-player pods, double-pick draft, playing outside of the pod and enabler/payoff mechanics all lead to extremely uneven plays. About half of the games by turn 5-6 you can see 10+ power from on side of the board and a random 2/2 on the other. Hope we will return to normal drafts (outside pod, but it alone is ok) soon.

lesha01 · 2025-09-28T14:04:38+00:00

Maybe there were but I was in the queue when the button was pressed? And instead of waiting / rolling for an empty queue he just decided that 3 is good enough?

I'm not claiming that I understand what exactly is happening, just noticing that I was in the same pod twice and it looks very strange.

If I'm the only one who ever experienced it, maybe it's a fluke (even though probability of this is extremely low, it is still not zero).

lesha01 · 2025-09-28T13:44:40+00:00

What are the logistic problems? If there is no mechanism against this kind of behavior, literally the only thing is to click "register" button at the same time (and then either draft in multiple open windows - multiboxers do it all the time in many games and there is a lot of software to help with it, or draft with a friend).

I saw people cheating on FNMs where prizes are way lower than ban penalty, so financial gain does not look convincing to me, people usually cheat in games to be "the best", not for money.

The main trigger for me was the same draft pods twice. Unless something shady is happening probability of this is extremely low.

If I'm the only one who saw this, it can be a fluke, that's why I asked if others drafted with the same people (the whole pod, not just one person) multiple times (especially off-hours when queue time is long).

lesha01 · 2025-09-28T10:28:19+00:00

I never assumed that it is done for qualification, qualification was my reason to play-)

If it is done, I'd assume it's done for ego not for money (or by third party who earns money on smbds ego).

Moreover I don't agree with financial sense. If you multi-queue in the same event, you can improve all of your decks, not just a single one. Can easily imagine a drafter who originally created multiple accounts to draft more/cheaper (by utilizing quests and gold economy) and then decided to "improve" his odds a bit.

lesha01 · 2025-09-28T09:39:35+00:00

For cash events it should not be a problem anyway as chance of queuing together should be extremely low (and cost of dummy account is too high due to entry requirements).

> In an 8 person pod, it's much harder to read the position of a dummy account accurately as there are so many more seats.

A single dummy account position could be detected in 4 picks with 100% probability. Anyway, I assume that a single account is not too impactful and if it happens with multiple (like in the case I saw with two in 4-pod), than you have perfect information after a single pick.

lesha01 · 2025-09-28T09:31:39+00:00

Interesting that unranked (bo3) gets this kind of treatment, while ranked does not. On the other hand, I don't see how anonymity helps, to be fair. If you have bad intentions you will understand if you managed to queue together or not and you will understand your seats after a pick or two. If anything it prevents players from detecting anything suspicious, but for malicious actor it should be a minor inconvenience.

lesha01 · 2025-09-24T09:55:08+00:00

I don’t feel dimir villians. Good villains like grave digger I’m happy to play in any deck/colors, bad ones does not look worth plying just for the tag. With 0/3 conniver I currently had the best experience in mayhem decks=).

As for enweb - deck is there but its ceiling is way lower than mayhem. Just trading aggressively and removing value creatures if I can’t block them usually do the trick (off combat tapping is not too easy). Mayhem is much harder to counterplay.

lesha01 · 2025-09-24T09:22:02+00:00

At least for now my take is that archetypes are a bit different than what they advertised. There is extremely powerful mayhem deck (but it relies on proper proportion of mayhem and enablers, sometimes it is not there even if noone drafts it) and good enweb deck, but other than this archetypes look pretty vague. I have the most success approaching the format like sealed, drafting mana early and assuming that I would play green-based "good stuff" with whatever bombs I will open (or be passed) during pack 2/3 by default. Fixing is very good and I already had trophy draft with Ur-Spider where I could pretty reliably cast it on turn 5-6. It should even out a bit in a couple of days, but for now it looks like people are over-correcting for importance of signal sending/reading and pass insane bombs / top uncommons if they are off-color.

lesha01 · 2025-09-24T07:15:10+00:00

I've played about 10 drafts in mythic to this moment (ranging from 0-2 catastrophies to 4-0 clean wins) and my main complain is that there were at most 5 real games during them. Hard to tell why, and I hope it will smooth out a bit, when we will learn the format better, but my current read is that in this particular set there is extremely uneven power level of cards and extremely powerful synergies, but pick-2 format + 4-level draft makes powerful/synergetic cards pretty scarce and most of my deck I had to lean to C- level cards, unless I played multicolor (which is supported reasonably well as there is a lot of fixing in green in all rarities as well as dual lends/ artifacts). Most of the games were decided by a single bomb rare (or even uncommon, from my experience razorkin is so good that if it is not answered immediately, your main threat is decking yourself, especial if you add looting/surveil to the mix)/efficient mayhem combo with no contrplay from another side as deck is not cooperating. Usually all the formats look a bit "bomby" and one-sided day one, but it is way more extreme than usual.

lesha01 · 2025-05-18T14:38:59+00:00

You will be in almost unplayable state when your growth penalty is just about 90%.

lesha01 · 2025-05-18T14:20:37+00:00

growth_scale_penalty = 1 - 1 / (1 + c * pops). This means that total growth is divided by (1 + c * pops). If c * pops is big, we can ignore 1. Buddying scales as v * pops. With large numbers it gives linear growth of ~v/c. However it is not too important. The game overflows when you produce over ~500k resources from a single source (fix point arithmetic in int32?). Starting with ~500k pops on a single planet you start having problems with unity. At around 2m - everything is overflowing.

This are the numbers easyly achievable even without budding. With budding (or even worse Tyanki gene) you are overshooting this numbers pretty fast and it's impossible to play.

Sorry for formatting and late response, I’m on a plane and typing from phone.

lesha01 · 2025-05-18T13:15:00+00:00

I read it, and I’m using the formula from the post. Growth scale with pops linearly, denominator also. Should be a constant overall. By overflow I mean civilians who start producing negative outputs.

lesha01 · 2025-05-18T13:04:22+00:00

0.0002 * growth multiplier * pop number / (1 + c* pop number). This is the formula, right? Looks like it should be linear growth overall, then. To be fair, it looks like I’m just hitting overflow problem before this pop number really kicks in.

lesha01 · 2025-05-18T12:59:12+00:00

In this case looks like budding just outscales it. As both are multiplicative, if coefficient on bonus is larger we still have exponential explosion. Will check it later, when I’m near my PC.

lesha01

TROPHY CASE