'Favors' system

[YolkOnYou]

This seems to be new and I'd like to request information on this, if you'd be so kind.

[YolkOnYou]

Originally posted by TsarAlexis:

You gain favors by coming to the aid of your allies in offensive wars. While allied with them you also slowly gain favors usually 1 or 2 every year depending on how powerful you are compared to them. With favors you need 10 to call allies into offensive wars. or to tell them to prepare for a war using 10 favors. Without favors you can still possibly call in allies if you promise them territorial gain if the target nation has something they desire. Defensive calls to arms works as it did before.

Ah, thanks mate.

[ajmflesch]

Favors are a mechanic which tries to adjust how allies are called into wars.

To call an ally into offensive wars, you either need:

1) To offer them territorial gains
2) To use favors

Favors seem to be granted 1 per year of the alliance, and then for additional actions such as honoring calls to war, participating in the war, and so on. Use of this system does away with the 10 year timer for calling allies into offensive wars; if you have the favor, or are willing to promise territorial gains, then you can use the same ally in back-to-back offensive wars.

--------------------

Now, my opinion of the system

This favors system slows the start of the game, since most alliances in the game are started in the year 1444 (I haven't encountered any alliances in the start of the game, so I can't say that all alliances start at zero favors). It takes at least 10 years to build up favor (unless you happen to get called into an ally's war) so your first ten years will be spent observing the world around you, or fighting in wars against small nations with weak alliance chains.

This system puts a brake on players who ally big, powerful nations and immediately launch into big wars of aggression; play slows while the amount of favors needed jumps up.

On the other hand, I find myself using Enforce Peace a lot more -- I indicate territories of strategic interest, build up positive opinion of weak neighbors, and then jump into their war once an aggressor takes the bait. I have even done this after a war begins: in my Brandenburg campaign, Brunswick invaded Luneburg; I quickly indicated my territorial interest in Braunsweig, built up my opinion in Luneberg (already middling since I wanted a secure neighbor without tangling alliances), and then used Enforce Peace to join the war. Now, the down side is that I am depending on the AI to honor my strategic interest -- in this case, it did, and I was given Braunsweig in the peace deal.

It definitely changes how alliances work. I'm still learning how much things have changed, but that is my opinion so far.

[Lord Kraken]

I agree with the above except for the rate of favor accumulation with an ally. Portugal in alliance with Spain accumulates one favor every two years. Same thing as regards the Portugal-England alliance.

[Vyndicu]

Originally posted by ajmflesch:

Favors seem to be granted 1 per year of the alliance, and then for additional actions such as honoring calls to war, participating in the war, and so on. Use of this system does away with the 10 year timer for calling allies into offensive wars; if you have the favor, or are willing to promise territorial gains, then you can use the same ally in back-to-back offensive wars.

This is not strictly true!

If you are a Dutch OPM that mange to get france as an ally. Favor will be gained each 3 years as opposite to 1 years because France has stronger army than you do. Same story if you are Korea with an alliance to Ming.

So generally you will want to try get smaller allies on top of power ones anyway so if you need a small quick wars with favor you use small allies instead of always call in powerful ones like under the old system.

[joefitts63]

So essentially it is just another mechanic designed to slow the game down? Seems like that is mostly Paradox's focus these days. Massive AE, huge revolts, long truces, etc, etc.

[Locomotive]

Originally posted by Ultrix Prime:

Originally posted by joefitts63:

So essentially it is just another mechanic designed to slow the game down? Seems like that is mostly Paradox's focus these days. Massive AE, huge revolts, long truces, etc, etc.

It can slow it down. Otoh, the 10 year time limit on offensive CTA is gone. I've found its not terribly hard to generate favors. Just join a war, send in mercs, suffer some losses and the AI is happy. Essentially you just buy them this way.

The thing I dislike is even with lots if favors it doesn't matter because the AI goes into debt all the time and won't join anyway.

So in a way it's just more clutter thus far. In 200 years I've spent 10. Every other time, in debt, low manpower, yah tah duh dah.

Uhh, I don't think the 10 year limit is gone. It's still there as a -1000 negative modifier to join your offensive wars. The truce is 15 years btw, sometimes I noticed it extended up to 20.

I really hate the way it's going with slowing down the player. It's a freaking single player game, let us do what we want. This game has little of diplomacy or RPG aspect that conquest or colonization is the only thing do do. With overextension, AE, truce limit, favors, coalitions, and the now rediculous revolts. All with the intention of limiting the player from conquest, which is the whole point of the game.

[YolkOnYou]

Originally posted by Locomotive:

Originally posted by Ultrix Prime:

It can slow it down. Otoh, the 10 year time limit on offensive CTA is gone. I've found its not terribly hard to generate favors. Just join a war, send in mercs, suffer some losses and the AI is happy. Essentially you just buy them this way.

The thing I dislike is even with lots if favors it doesn't matter because the AI goes into debt all the time and won't join anyway.

So in a way it's just more clutter thus far. In 200 years I've spent 10. Every other time, in debt, low manpower, yah tah duh dah.

Uhh, I don't think the 10 year limit is gone. It's still there as a -1000 negative modifier to join your offensive wars. The truce is 15 years btw, sometimes I noticed it extended up to 20.

I really hate the way it's going with slowing down the player. It's a freaking single player game, let us do what we want. This game has little of diplomacy or RPG aspect that conquest or colonization is the only thing do do. With overextension, AE, truce limit, favors, coalitions, and the now rediculous revolts. All with the intention of limiting the player from conquest, which is the whole point of the game.

I second this, after 1.5 they've really tried limiting the player which took away a bit of the fun. Especially with the massive AE penalties.

[Locomotive]

Originally posted by Александр Ёнес:

Originally posted by Locomotive:

Uhh, I don't think the 10 year limit is gone. It's still there as a -1000 negative modifier to join your offensive wars. The truce is 15 years btw, sometimes I noticed it extended up to 20.

I really hate the way it's going with slowing down the player. It's a freaking single player game, let us do what we want. This game has little of diplomacy or RPG aspect that conquest or colonization is the only thing do do. With overextension, AE, truce limit, favors, coalitions, and the now rediculous revolts. All with the intention of limiting the player from conquest, which is the whole point of the game.

I second this, after 1.5 they've really tried limiting the player which took away a bit of the fun. Especially with the massive AE penalties.

The overextension hits me the hardest in many cases since it not only generate more revolts on the newly conquered provinces, but also at your home front. Why the hel.l would anyone in Spain care that I conquered some provinces in Indonesia? If anything, they'd be more happy with the prestige and wealth coming back. I wasn't aware of this after haven't played the game in a while and I had to quit my game because of the revolts everywhere. Now I am more careful, but I keep seeing AI nations falling apart because of it. I saw France literally lost all the newly conquered Aztec lands due to revolts.

[Locomotive]

Originally posted by Ultrix Prime:

Originally posted by Locomotive:

Uhh, I don't think the 10 year limit is gone. It's still there as a -1000 negative modifier to join your offensive wars. The truce is 15 years btw, sometimes I noticed it extended up to 20.

I really hate the way it's going with slowing down the player. It's a freaking single player game, let us do what we want. This game has little of diplomacy or RPG aspect that conquest or colonization is the only thing do do. With overextension, AE, truce limit, favors, coalitions, and the now rediculous revolts. All with the intention of limiting the player from conquest, which is the whole point of the game.

If you're running the Cossacks it is gone. If you aren't, then its still there. I've had plenty of wars where the same ally wants to join on their own when I left them out for that matter.

I see. However, the point remains that the manpower and AE are already a huge limiting factor on how fast you can expand. There's no need to add other mechanics like overextension and increasing coring times.

[Vyndicu]

Technically you can conduct a warfare with litereally nearly zero manpower by using mercenaries which make money another limiting factor.

[YolkOnYou]

Originally posted by Vyndicu:

Technically you can conduct a warfare with litereally nearly zero manpower by using mercenaries which make money another limiting factor.

Yes, but is less so a limiting factor than manpower, and AE; mainly because there is loans so even smaller nations can get 35,000 - 50,000 mercenaries if they're willing to go into more debt than the United States.

[Vyndicu]

When I said money is a limiting factor I do meant that litereally. You can borrow up to the max loan and if you don't start pay off before that. You run the risk of bankruptency which drive your army morale down to half of what it used to be. You will not be able to do anything, by yourself, unless it was an american native behind the curve.

I have fought war with that -100% (yes one hundred) morale malus and it is not fun.

[YolkOnYou]

Originally posted by Ultrix Prime:

Well if it was just AE and manpower and no CC, for instance, it would be more like EU3 which didn't do as well.

Right now it seems like rebels screw up the game more than anything else with crazy revolts happening everywhere. I'm more afraid of my enemies' rebels than their actual armies which are usually much smaller.

I wanted to attack the Ottomans, for instance, but they had over 200 regiments of rebels running around so I had to sit and stare at them but do nothing, waiting for the rebels to collide and reduce their overall numbers.

It was both amusing and boring at the same time.

Yeah, this happens to me a lot too. At any given time mid game, all major powers have at least 150,000 rebels. It's pretty bad as of now.

[Sir Slasher]

Originally posted by Ultrix Prime:

Well if it was just AE and manpower and no CC, for instance, it would be more like EU3 which didn't do as well.

Right now it seems like rebels screw up the game more than anything else with crazy revolts happening everywhere. I'm more afraid of my enemies' rebels than their actual armies which are usually much smaller.

I wanted to attack the Ottomans, for instance, but they had over 200 regiments of rebels running around so I had to sit and stare at them but do nothing, waiting for the rebels to collide and reduce their overall numbers.

It was both amusing and boring at the same time.

suport those rebels so they wont attack you and u can have your war

[Vyndicu]

Won't supporting rebel run risk of having your diplomat kick out of any further spy actions?

Are those 150k rebel stacks late game or what? I usually see up to 30k ish. It may just be that I have not play much late-game yet to see that much rebel.