Balancing Request

[EdwinM]

Hi there,

First, this game is pretty great, and the new concepts like Decadence present some interesting new dynamics. I would like to submit a few balancing/labeling issues you may want to consider.

Easy is surprisingly hard.

On easy, with a revolt risk of 3%, there is definitely going to be a revolt. And a force half the size of the garrison I send will absolutely route me, every time. Maybe the risk should be shown higher, or maybe it's something else, but 3% doesn't seem like "guaranteed loss". (there have been a few events I noticed that indicated a coming reconquest revolt, but I just had one in one of my starting cities.)

Cities over 20 population consistently require garrisons, no matter the ethnic integration or culture level, which seems excessive.

Most provinces with a foreign neighbor that isn't allied will be raided, requiring all border provinces to have garrisons. Even "cooperating" neighbors raid.

Metal maintenance for all those garrisons keeps you from being able to accumulate or save for a future invasion.

I'd be happy to share my saved game file if you'd like to review it, but "easy" in this game is WAY harder than the max level in most games.

Thanks!
Edwin

[EdwinM]

Also, the Saba dam breaks every 2-3 turns, because once the province is created Saba trades away all of it's infrastructure.

[Ragu777]

3% is only that it can be revolt with 3% per turn - it not influence how much revolters will be

and if you have revolt risk in your old regions - you do something wrong, try to keep loyality more than 50 (avoid growth, build loyality buildings)

[Hurz_slith]

Revolt risk seems to be a little bit strange to me. I had some regions on high revolt risk (7-9% if I remember right) that I wanted to loose - but no revolt happened there. I have another one, an objective region that seems to revolt every time it has a 2-3% revolt risk. Maybe just bad luck...

I saw no larger problems with cities size 25 to 30. If you generate enough culture for welfare points and build some loyalty buildings they stay mostly quite. Watch out on the number of slaves you have and take care to have enough slave markets to trigger the decision to distribute or sell them away (there are already some helpful threads on the forum about slaves). But this is only my experience from balanced difficulty so far...

You can stop raiding if your relationship is above 25. Send a gift to increase it. I see more the problem that too many of neighbors love to declare war, even if they have no chance to win and you had a co-op treaty with them... More balancing here would be nice.

[MoLAoS]

Hi there,

First, this game is pretty great, and the new concepts like Decadence present some interesting new dynamics. I would like to submit a few balancing/labeling issues you may want to consider.

Easy is surprisingly hard.

On easy, with a revolt risk of 3%, there is definitely going to be a revolt. And a force half the size of the garrison I send will absolutely route me, every time. Maybe the risk should be shown higher, or maybe it's something else, but 3% doesn't seem like "guaranteed loss". (there have been a few events I noticed that indicated a coming reconquest revolt, but I just had one in one of my starting cities.)

Cities over 20 population consistently require garrisons, no matter the ethnic integration or culture level, which seems excessive.

Most provinces with a foreign neighbor that isn't allied will be raided, requiring all border provinces to have garrisons. Even "cooperating" neighbors raid.

Metal maintenance for all those garrisons keeps you from being able to accumulate or save for a future invasion.

I'd be happy to share my saved game file if you'd like to review it, but "easy" in this game is WAY harder than the max level in most games.

Thanks!
Edwin

Literally never had revolts on easy even when I was pushing the game so hard I won with an early 3X legacy victory on turn 50 as Rome, the nation programmed for extra revolts. Easy is shockingly easy unless you are making some major mistake you don't notice because you haven't played a similar game before.

[pnoff]

Hi Edwin,

You don't have to garrison everything, let them raid border provinces if you can't raise relationships.

Against full scale invasions use defence in depth strategy: let them do the first move and destroy their army by concentrated counterattack. (This is also quite historical). Make sure to have full frontage of melee infantry AND skirmishers.

But I also hope diplomatic system will improve soon, or at least it will be more convenient to peace out attackers by retaliation campaigns (they already working on something like that I believe)

Goodluck!