Each of my 50 Provinces supports 3 Trade Routes

[Crim]

Whose stupid idea was it to make it cost 25 per trade route?

[Crim]

I mean you don't even get them till mid to late game,

Besides 1.0 didn't even have this, this is basically an untested arbitrary tax

[Lemur]

who would have thought that you would need to make some choices and decide what is the best way of spending some resource in a strategy game?

[Crim]

Originally posted by CrouchingLemur:

who would have thought that you would need to make some choices and decide what is the best way of spending some resource in a strategy game?

There is no choice

Spending extravagant amounts of key resources on insignificantly small bonuses is not a choice it's just wrong.

Which means that it's currently not balanced. The amount of time alone to setup the trade routes should be enough of a tax, but if they wanted to setup a cost

10 per capital trade route and 2 for province trade route would be more accurate to the other relative usage of that resource.

[Ares]

Agreed on the province trade route except I'd say keep the capital cost the same. The benefits of nationwide bonuses are huge.

[Xajmai]

Everything in the game costs an insane amount of Civic power. Moving pops setting up trade routes that the trade partner cancel after 2 months as well as all your tech. This means I won't move pops if its not to move slaves in my capital, also no need to get trade routes in every province since the gain is marginal compared to the tech lost. The Mana system as is could be quiet good but it needs serious tweaking. Building military roads cost gold, military power and occupies your army for long periods of time. It's to expensive, make it cost only gold and time instead of you having to chose between via Appia and triple acsies. Pop promotion/conversion is also overpriced unless you're a small tribe. No use in converting pop that way, a possible fix would be buffing the religious conversion/cultural assimilation government policies to make more people get converted but also costing some Civic/religious power to adapt, let's say that it goes for 10 years after implemented and after that the governor chooses his own policy to prevent a new governor from changing your policy one month later. Investments like this needs to be more rewarding and need to have a lasting strategic effect instead of "oops I spent all My Civic power on trade routes and now I lost them all, didn't get the tech I wanted either" because in that case the strategic decision you will always tend to make is "I'll rather save for tech" or "I will rather save for military tradition" the only power that you never seem to run out of is religious power since you basically only use it to stab pigs. I have had such an abundance of religious power that I can basically go to war during truce and then stab pigs up to full stability again. Oratory power is what you use for basically anything else all your actions regarding diplomacy and character management cost oratory so better not use that to promote pops either.

Tl;dr Mana system is unbalanced and leads you to make the same strategic choices over and over

[Xajmai]

Also something that's crazy broken is the tech system, small gallic tribes can advance their tech faster than Rome,carthwge, Macedon and India because they've promoted all the few pops they had to citizens and are now producing more tech procentually than the bigger empires.

[Xajmai]

Originally posted by BrockSamson:

Originally posted by Xajmai:

Also something that's crazy broken is the tech system, small gallic tribes can advance their tech faster than Rome,carthwge, Macedon and India because they've promoted all the few pops they had to citizens and are now producing more tech procentually than the bigger empires.

yea, bunch of a-holes ruining MP games like that lol talking like tech level 10 at 480 AUC

even the ai has better tech by like 3-4 levels than my 4000 score empire with only 2 unhappy/disloyal provinces. And it aint the big ai players, its the 1 province migratory tribes. A small migratory tribe is outteching the romans xD

[Crim]

If I remember my history correct, the Vikings were the first people too land on the moon in 200 bc

[curtadamsCA]

Originally posted by BrockSamson:

Originally posted by Xajmai:

Also something that's crazy broken is the tech system, small gallic tribes can advance their tech faster than Rome,carthwge, Macedon and India because they've promoted all the few pops they had to citizens and are now producing more tech procentually than the bigger empires.

yea, bunch of a-holes ruining MP games like that lol talking like tech level 10 at 480 AUC

Is it that good a strategy in MP? My impression was that to get that crazy cranked research you had to forgo conquest. The tech leader barbarians don't seem to do all that well in my game, although the ones that do well still manage to keep up with Rome.

It is definitely weird to see every barbarian on the planet on a mad civilization rush.

[Skrain]

If you expect the game to be balanced around what you've seen in random pubbie multiplayer matches you're an idiot.

[The Silver Santana]

You can also use the insane tech lead to grab all the techs that give you more tech points, then keep that lead after you expand, even if you "just" civilian tech up and don't glitch anything.

Also, moving pops should really be military power based, at least.

BTW, I usually make trade routes with myself at that point, as long as getting export bonus for that good. You lose a small amount of import income, but you don't have issues with goods not being sold, or with people canceling your trade routes. Civic power trade becomes much more economical when you don't have to remake those damn things over and over again.

[Xajmai]

Originally posted by The Silver Santana:

You can also use the insane tech lead to grab all the techs that give you more tech points, then keep that lead after you expand, even if you "just" civilian tech up and don't glitch anything.

Also, moving pops should really be military power based, at least.

BTW, I usually make trade routes with myself at that point, as long as getting export bonus for that good. You lose a small amount of import income, but you don't have issues with goods not being sold, or with people canceling your trade routes. Civic power trade becomes much more economical when you don't have to remake those damn things over and over again.

Still somewhat of a broken mechanic if it forces you to act in a certain way don't you think?

[The Silver Santana]

Originally posted by Xajmai:

Originally posted by The Silver Santana:

You can also use the insane tech lead to grab all the techs that give you more tech points, then keep that lead after you expand, even if you "just" civilian tech up and don't glitch anything.

Also, moving pops should really be military power based, at least.

BTW, I usually make trade routes with myself at that point, as long as getting export bonus for that good. You lose a small amount of import income, but you don't have issues with goods not being sold, or with people canceling your trade routes. Civic power trade becomes much more economical when you don't have to remake those damn things over and over again.

Still somewhat of a broken mechanic if it forces you to act in a certain way don't you think?

No, not really. All gameplay features make you play a certain way. The problem is that it's not modeling anything you have control over or can manipulate.

For instance, it makes sense that war disrupts trade. And once you are a power like Rome, it gives you incentive to maybe prevent war from disrupting your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trade. But you can't actually accomplish anything by, say, using interfere in war or other major power interactions to force people not to kill each other so they can shut up and buy your olives, because once you realize that the route is disrupted it's too late, you need to use civic power to re-establish it.

Likewise, trading inside of an insular nation or with established, secure trading partners is logical-and part of the real world (it's a contribution to the modern tragedy of Africa, that the civil wars incited by resource shortage prevent foreign or domestic investment in infrastructure that would end those shortages).

However the game isn't actually guiding the player to interacting in these ways because money isn't ever important enough to actually challenge the player into playing differently so they can eek out more income; they always lack for civic power more than money, so you're best simply ignoring trade and using civic power for other things. Also, you can make more money by simply ignoring foreign trade in practice, no matter what you want to do.

If the game created situations where you felt obligated to vassalize someone or use those great power diplomatic actions so you could prevent someone's rivals from disrupting your trade with them it would have successfully modeled four thousand years of political interactions. And the fact that the barest hints of that are possible to imagine in this system is so tantilizing, but it's kept from being a thing because the system is so half-assed it's immaterial what it could be.

[redned]

I really don't understand the problem here. If everything was cheap and affordable there would be no challenge, no strategy, just point and click.

[The Silver Santana]

Originally posted by redned:

I really don't understand the problem here. If everything was cheap and affordable there would be no challenge, no strategy, just point and click.

I make trade route with nation 1. Nation 2 declares war and takes province trade is from. Trade route ends, requiring me to then spend civic power to ask nation 2 for trade; there is no discount.

I make trade route with nation A. Nation A. is a civil war of Nation B. Nation A wins, and then the trade route dissolves because Nation A is now called Nation B again.

I make trade route with nation A. Through some hilarious circumstances beyond my control, nation A. decides it likes nation B. more than me and cancels trade. I attempt to make trade route with Nation C., and after 3 months of effort, they also break the route. In anger, I begin a war of bloody genocide, win, and compress every pop in their country into a tiny city state which I then construct 10 forts on and incite an enemy into besieging, causing the entire population to starve rapidly due to overpopulation.

That's the problem. Paradox's trade routes cause genocide, it's just a fact.