Curry Favors Question

[jasonbarron]

Hi y'all. Very inexperienced player here. Following a guide for the Ottomans and I noticed that when he was currying favors with Crimea in the opening first few months of the campaign he was gaining favors at a crazy fast rate, like ten in the first twelve months. I'm trying to follow along but even getting my rep up with them via royal marriage and "improve relations" is barely moving the needle. I think I'm getting 0.13% per month in the first eighteen months of the campaign.

The guide I'm following is from 1.35, so is it possible that the mechanic has changed that drastically in the last 11 months or so?

[Marquoz]

No, it's pretty much the same as it's always been. Multiple factors affect the rate at which you curry favors, but they haven't changed:

--Relations--so max those out with a diplomat
--Relative military power levels--the stronger your military is in comparison to theirs, the faster you earn favors, so max out your armed forces, too
--Diplo rep--stack diplo rep by taking idea groups that increase it. Diplo and Influence should be two of your first three groups anyway if you're looking to run the most powerful Ottoman Empire possible, with Admin being the third.

You also earn favors by answering a call to arms, the amount earned dependent on your war participation score.

It's always possible that the creator of your guide cheated. Streamers in particular are notorious for using cheats that they don't tell you about. They survive on clicks and will do whatever it takes to get them.

[jasonbarron]

Ok, thank you for the clarification of the mechanic, Marquoz. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something really easy and obvious.

[Marquoz]

Based on your OP, I think you have a good understanding of the mechanics of favor currying. If you max out the things I listed, you'll earn them at the fastest possible monthly rate. The unpredictable variable is answering a call to arms, but I very much doubt that the guide's author earned extra favors that way "in the first twelve months" of the campaign because...

1) Someone would have to attack Crimea knowing they were allied with the Ottomans. But the AI doesn't declare hopeless wars. No one attacking Crimea would have enough favors to call in their own allies, so they'd have to think they could beat Crimea + the Ottomans + any other Crimea allies all by themselves. This seems pretty much impossible.

2) Then your guide's author would have to win that war within the first year. Any AI strong enough to declare an offensive war against that combo with hope of victory isn't going to lose that fast, especially because sieges are sloooooow before artillery unlocks.

So yeah, impossible.

[Jean-Maurice Nya]

Try to avoid guides, you can do without it even with no experience of 4X games with a grand strategy focus. It's tedious to read, but that's it. You'll get a hang of all mechanics if you do it by yourself. A proper complete guide would take about 20-30 pages on a A4 paper format with a writing police of 10-12 (if that makes sense for non French people). Plenty of tactical moves imply reasoning with game mechanics, be it an optimal move or not.

I spent 130 hours on my first run. Speed 1 as Ottoman. Then I spent probably 50 hours playing 20-30 years with different religions and government form to test their mechanics.
About 20-30% of that time is just my computer running without me playing but it's to give an idea on the best way to learn before asking/checking for more specifics infos.

[jasonbarron]

Originally posted by Jean-Maurice Nya:

Try to avoid guides, you can do without it even with no experience of 4X games with a grand strategy focus. It's tedious to read, but that's it. You'll get a hang of all mechanics if you do it by yourself. A proper complete guide would take about 20-30 pages on a A4 paper format with a writing police of 10-12 (if that makes sense for non French people). Plenty of tactical moves imply reasoning with game mechanics, be it an optimal move or not.

I spent 130 hours on my first run. Speed 1 as Ottoman. Then I spent probably 50 hours playing 20-30 years with different religions and government form to test their mechanics.
About 20-30% of that time is just my computer running without me playing but it's to give an idea on the best way to learn before asking/checking for more specifics infos.

Thank you for the advice. I have no doubt that you are correct. It's just that there are so many buttons and menus that I was intimidated and wanted to take the "easy way out."