Progress Tokens.. I give up (UPDATE: no I didn't)

[BigSexy]

I just summarize since this could be a short novel. Enjoying the game so far, there are plenty of QoL features that IMO are missing that should be added. Hopefully the next patch.

I'm playing France in camp and
- almost have all of modern day France regions
- almost all regions doing great in pop, loyalty, and piety
- have been going up in Authority max was 70 but some wars went down, but still around 50s.
- metal, manpower, money all near cap
- my leaders have all been around 4-5s-2-4s-3-5s

So why is it that I got stuck on 4 tokens on petty kingdom (ascending ) between turn 25-100??? Then I actually lost a token and so at 3 tokens on petty kingdom (ascending ) in 112 years. So wtf is going on? I'm actually hoping this is some sort of bug, cause I can't figure out why the game mechanics would be working this way?

Can anybody shed some light onto this blackbox that is progression tokens?
Thanks

[Grognerd]

Well, if you lost a token that means you had to have been in the bottom third of the Auth track? Only the bottom third loses tokens.

If not, then yeah it must be a bug, I guess?

You should see the Auth rankings at the start of every turn, during turn processing:

Top third = green text = chance to gain token
Middle third = white text = no token gain or loss
Botton third = orange text = chance to lose token

If this goes by during processing and you miss it, you can always view it in the Ledger under 'Authority.'

[BigSexy]

Originally posted by Grognerd:

Well, if you lost a token that means you had to have been in the bottom third of the Auth track? Only the bottom third loses tokens.

If not, then yeah it must be a bug, I guess?

You should see the Auth rankings at the start of every turn, during turn processing:

Top third = green text = chance to gain token
Middle third = white text = no token gain or loss
Botton third = orange text = chance to lose token

If this goes by during processing and you miss it, you can always view it in the Ledger under 'Authority.'

So how the heck to you gain tokens? No idea why I got stuck at 4 tokens for petty kingdom ascending for ~80 years while my nation was growing and doing great.

[bylandt11]

Originally posted by BigSexy:

- have been going up in Authority max was 70 but some wars went down, but still around 50s.

If there's no bug, there's your problem. 50 is not enough. Not by a long shot. It will still land you in third tier of the global authority index, an esoteric concept that ruins the game for me.

Your experience also illustrates my main gripe with this game. You can be the perfect ruler, with a booming economy, a devoted population, a powerful military, with not a heretic in sight. Your neighbours can be war-torn, plague-ridden hell holes. It doesn't matter. You need a high ranking among the nations of the world and the way to do to that feels very contrived, with cut-off demesne limits, a very academic typology of governments and a lot of factors that depend on RNG or or are otherwise out of your control. Yes, I think it's possible to master the rules of that very abstract authority game, but it's nor realistic or immersive. I hope the devs will open up the doors to more intuitive paths to victory. Because otherwise, it's an ambituous and great game.

[PocusFR]

It's indeed a pivotal notion of the game; you need to be in the top tier of nations in Authority to gain progress tokens, which will allow you to move from one government to another. It's not mandatory, by the way, to reach a Tier III Realm to be very successful. Tier III realms are more considered as having "always something to do" in our mind.

The game formalizes government progression because it's a game—a crude approximation of reality. It requires gaining tokens through Authority so that A leads to B, which leads to C. As you see, it's already not that obvious to new players because the game is still full of moving parts and interwoven concepts. Making it less formalized would be even harder for them.

Back to the original poster's message: you need to be in the top tier in Authority, and to reach this point, you need to either save on Authority or have a steady income of it, like with some Tier II structures. There is a sticky thread that will also explain some concepts about how to progress, named "Kingdoms Conundrum: Perceive it, solve it!"

[PocusFR]

I should also add that the competition for authority between nations, even if it seems artificial to you, is almost a necessity to provide a sense of challenge and pressure that keeps the game interesting. Moreover, it is actually designed to be closer to what happened in history. There weren't a plethora of empires during the medieval period, to say the least, but rather a large number of minor kingdoms, duchies, and principalities—a huge fragmentation of power among dozens of modest lords and nations. Without this competition, you would have dozens of empires or grand caliphates all over the map, which would not be realistic.

[BigSexy]

Sorry but seems very broken. Doing great in all respects, than get some random far away nations making claims on my land. Now with 4 claims I can't do really anything about my authority is tanking. Game seems broken and my game seems over. I grew France to 46 regions but this thing called Demesue Size is -3.6. Wtf is that? lol

The game just doesn't make a lot of sense historically IMO. The way it stand. Feel like I just wasted 20 hours to find out the game is fundamentally broken just from the silly claim feature. Really?

Also the mirco management is a killer now for ~50 regions. The province control thingy doesn't build stuff and IMO doesn't do a good job for what it's there for. Oh well. Is there a way just to show me region with nothing building? Do I really have to click 50 times then later 50+ each turn to cycle thru everything to see if it can build something. Clicking on things with map icons somethings can work, but found some occasions where it didn't find regions not building something.

[Patrus]

When you select any of your regions and press "space", it takes you to the next region with free building slot, that doesn't have any structure planned.

The game is quite complex. You need to manage your authority - it requires developing your regions (building authority-producing structures and castles) and not expand too quickly, also having good relations with your neighbours (giving them gifts) helps, as they don't make claims on your regions then.

It requires careful planning, but to do it, you need to learn game's mechanics. In my first game I also did quite badly.

[PocusFR]

Regarding your remark on micro-management, yes, there is an overlay (filter) above the minimap that can color idle regions, idle provinces, etc. This should limit which regions need to be checked. If you don't want to optimize down to the last infrastructure point, then in provinces, just start building 3-4 buildings at once. Until the last one is done, you have nothing to do, as infrastructure points will be sent to the single region still doing something.

We have improved several points of the "distant claim" issue for patch 1.01. It should be easier even if you don't want to spend time in diplomacy making sure your neighbors don't hate you. You'll receive compensation when you declare war if the enemy has hostile claims. Hostile claims, in general, will sap your Authority much less often. Vassals of foreign nations won't be able to establish hostile claims, and so on. So if you are willing to give the new patch a chance, you should see that the situation has quite improved.

[BigSexy]

Originally posted by Patrus:

When you select any of your regions and press "space", it takes you to the next region with free building slot, that doesn't have any structure planned.

The game is quite complex. You need to manage your authority - it requires developing your regions (building authority-producing structures and castles) and not expand too quickly, also having good relations with your neighbours (giving them gifts) helps, as they don't make claims on your regions then.

It requires careful planning, but to do it, you need to learn game's mechanics. In my first game I also did quite badly.

Thank you. I think I built to fast and didn't focus on 'authority' structures. Does that mean stewardship or does it literally have authority bonus in the structure description?
I will go back to a way early save and try and do things different. I didn't know about space bar so thanks.

Is there a way to just automate a region to build stuff based on a setting? Province control doesn't seem to build stuff just adjust your population. Which I guess is better than nothing...

[BigSexy]

Originally posted by PocusFR:

Regarding your remark on micro-management, yes, there is an overlay (filter) above the minimap that can color idle regions, idle provinces, etc. This should limit which regions need to be checked. If you don't want to optimize down to the last infrastructure point, then in provinces, just start building 3-4 buildings at once. Until the last one is done, you have nothing to do, as infrastructure points will be sent to the single region still doing something.

We have improved several points of the "distant claim" issue for patch 1.01. It should be easier even if you don't want to spend time in diplomacy making sure your neighbors don't hate you. You'll receive compensation when you declare war if the enemy has hostile claims. Hostile claims, in general, will sap your Authority much less often. Vassals of foreign nations won't be able to establish hostile claims, and so on. So if you are willing to give the new patch a chance, you should see that the situation has quite improved.

oh you can queue up buildings in a region? Will try the overlay. thanks.
Look forward to next patch. Any ETA on that 1.1 patch?

[Patrus]

There are some buildings that add authority value, which is separate from stewardship. They usually give small bonuses (+ 0.1), but if you build a few of them, it adds up.

Lord's estate - tier 2 food building, upgrades from Manorial Demense, I think it also requires "regional roads" (tier 2 infra)
Craftsmen district - tier 2 infra, upgrades from Craftsmen Borough
Lord's manor - tier 2 stewardship, upgrades from Mense-Lord Manor
Jousting Field - tier 2 military, upgrades from Tournamend Ground
Fortified Church - tier 2 religion, upgrades from Parish Church, which upgrades from Wooden Church

Building forts and castles can also improve authority. Low-level forts don't give direct bonus to authority, but they increase likelihood of events, that do it. So, building them doesn't give you a straight bonus, but if you have some, you will get events, that give additional authority quite often (almost every turn?) and they do add up.
Higher level castles additionally give straight authority bonus (+ 0.1).

Forts and castles are built in a different way, than normal buildings. If you hover over "fortification" indicator on a region panel, it displays what is region's current fortification level. If you achieve high enough level (10) you can build first real fort. At higher levels you can build better forts and castles.
To increase fortification level, you need to build military structures, that are marked as "temporary" - they are usually cheap to build and they don't show on the region building list, after completion, but they permanently increase fortification level.

When you are selecting structure with the authority button, the fortification buildings actually don't cost any authority to pick, so they are good to build if you don't have any other good choice at the moment. If all the available buildings are poor, you can click the authority button, pick a temporary fortification building (if it's available) and build it, after completion it rerolls all the other picks.

I don't know anything about automation, haven't been using it.

[BigSexy]

Originally posted by Patrus:

There are some buildings that add authority value, which is separate from stewardship. They usually give small bonuses (+ 0.1), but if you build a few of them, it adds up.

Lord's estate - tier 2 food building, upgrades from Manorial Demense, I think it also requires "regional roads" (tier 2 infra)
Craftsmen district - tier 2 infra, upgrades from Craftsmen Borough
Lord's manor - tier 2 stewardship, upgrades from Mense-Lord Manor
Jousting Field - tier 2 military, upgrades from Tournamend Ground
Fortified Church - tier 2 religion, upgrades from Parish Church, which upgrades from Wooden Church

Building forts and castles can also improve authority. Low-level forts don't give direct bonus to authority, but they increase likelihood of events, that do it. So, building them doesn't give you a straight bonus, but if you have some, you will get events, that give additional authority quite often (almost every turn?) and they do add up.
Higher level castles additionally give straight authority bonus (+ 0.1).

Forts and castles are built in a different way, than normal buildings. If you hover over "fortification" indicator on a region panel, it displays what is region's current fortification level. If you achieve high enough level (10) you can build first real fort. At higher levels you can build better forts and castles.
To increase fortification level, you need to build military structures, that are marked as "temporary" - they are usually cheap to build and they don't show on the region building list, after completion, but they permanently increase fortification level.

When you are selecting structure with the authority button, the fortification buildings actually don't cost any authority to pick, so they are good to build if you don't have any other good choice at the moment. If all the available buildings are poor, you can click the authority button, pick a temporary fortification building (if it's available) and build it, after completion it rerolls all the other picks.

I don't know anything about automation, haven't been using it.

thanks good info about fortification levels, something I was ignoring since they were temp buildings and seemed like a waste of production. yes, I need to understand how to find and build these 'authority' structures. They appear to be all tier 2 which I think means I need to build a 'milestone' structure in that category (color) before I can see that tier 2 structure?

thanks again

question: where is the Authority button, don't think I've ever used it. Unless you are talking about the button that lets you seem more structures in each category?

[Patrus]

To build tier 2 structures you need at least three tier 1 structures of the same type.
For most of those buildings their prerequsite is already a milestone structure:
Manorial Demense, Craftsmen Borough, Mense-Lord Manor, Parish Church - those are the "milestone" tier 1 buildings

For military, I think that building "Fortified Village" or "Fortified Manor" may be necessary to access tier 2 buildings (apart from constructing at least 3 military structures), but I'm not sure.

When you are selecting a structure to build in a region, there is a "stamp" button at the bottom of the list. When you press it, you get larger selection of buildings but you need to pay authority to select one of them. However, those "temporary" fortification buildings from the military category don't cost any authority to pick.
They are good choice if you want go for the fort / castle or if you want to "reroll" the selection of buildings for almost free (you need only to spend some time to build that fortification).

[BigSexy]

Ok just saw this in my national panel

Progressing (Top Tier (progress), tokens:5, 0% chance to receive a progress token)

I'm currently and Ascending Perry Kingdom.
BTW I did restart a previous save around T60 using new knowledge. My T110 game was a done as the authority got tanked by many sources.

So why do I have a 0% chance to gain a token???

[Grognerd]

Originally posted by BigSexy:

Ok just saw this in my national panel

Progressing (Top Tier (progress), tokens:5, 0% chance to receive a progress token)

I'm currently and Ascending Perry Kingdom.
BTW I did restart a previous save around T60 using new knowledge. My T110 game was a done as the authority got tanked by many sources.

So why do I have a 0% chance to gain a token???

Because 5 token is the max you can have. Which is great, mission accomplished! As far as tokens go, that is.

The next thing you need to check on is the number of regions needed to advance from Petty Kingdom to normal Kingdom. So now is the time to go on the warpath and expand. Once you hit the requisite regions, the promotion should be automatic.

I will add that you are generally doing things in the correct order here, IMO. In general, you want to collect your 5 tokens first prior to a big promotion, THEN get the regions. Because the added regions will slow down your Auth gain, making it harder to be in the top tier for token gain. Nice work!