What makes them good or bad?Every mechanic (any game) essentially falls under the category of external or internal.External anti-blobbing mechanics allow foreign powers unity against a threat.Internal anti-blobbing aims to cause internal issues like revolts or reducing the goods gained from conquered lands.EU4 completely fails at these things. Coalitions fail because AE is fixed on local development instead of the relative value of its conqueror, and ultimately it just slows expansion. And its revolt system is a wacky-mole.Imperator does better at these things, but the lack of coalitions makes expansion too easy.CK3 fails miserably because factions are beyond idiotic.
The only internal anti-blobbing mechanic which is any good is in CK2, when you get assassinated and have gavelkind succession. It feels fair since its entirely dependent on how bad/tyrannical your character is, and how good you are at detecting plots. It doesn't seem gamey at all. It also makes a change since the rest of CK2/3 is full of (almost) non-political characters. Beyond a faction starting a civil war, they don't engage with you on points of policy, don't represent different parts of the state, and don't challenge you in any meaningful way other than outright rebellion. In this way, any internal mechanics act like speed bumps on the road to a huge empire, rather than actual challenges to ruling. No matter the game, internal politics should become increasingly difficult the larger the state is and the best way to do this is to make every part of your empire genuinely political active. For instance, in EU4 governing colonial settlements should way harder than home provinces, and difficulty should be based on the vast distance between European states and their colonies. Different parts of the empire should also be against certain elements of expansion; a fur producing province in Norway should be angry at the Norwegian state setting up a fur producing colony in Canada, due to the competition it creates as more fur enters the market. Pissing off provinces should shift them into the direction of a faction that generally opposes you. Amplify this to your whole country, and each action you take should result in a reaction from provinces and people upset with your rule. On top of this, there should be constant political struggle within your state, even when you are at peace. Too many GSGs revolve around building up peacefully and then conquering your neighbour. In reality, most political conflict exists within each state. A game like EU4 would be a lot more fun if you had to rattle with the intrigue of renaissance Italy or the wackiness of the reformation.
Have you tried not playing paradox games is the /tg/ equivalent of have you tried not playing d&d
>>1727296>ultimately it just slows expansionOP is a retard
>>1727296imo the best external antiblobbing mechanic were the alliance cascades of old. As a player you really felt fucked unless you kept track and care to track the diplomatic situation around you. I also think that the AI won't call to arms/ally people who are at war -1000 is BS (To the point that calling to war after a certain period is disabled which is directly making wars ahistorical, to the point that many historical conflicts that were possible, aren't anymore, and why religious leagues and wars make way less sense than they did in history)I understand that all those things can be annoying nightmare/very early difficulty spike to average blob-happy, or beginner player, but I'd rather be fucked by consequences of game mechanics that rng rebels and events.
>>1727296The only strategy game that i've seen that has anti-blobbing mechanics that feel fair is Civ 5 Vox Populi, the AI will try to stop whoever is winning>>1727389Like nearly all other stategy games are any different, in 4X games especially snowballing is basically never counteracted and if it is its with bullshit that only affects the player, the only exception i mentioned above.
>>1727424prove me wrong
Field of Glory Empires' decadence mechanic is internal anti-blobbing done right. It's completely manageable if you know what you're doing and pace your expansion, but it's also easy to failscade if you blob out of control>>1727467>in 4X games especially snowballing is basically never counteracted and if it is its with bullshit that only affects the playerOld World sidesteps city sprawl snowballing by having limited city sites. And if you manage to run away with the game early then you just straight up win instead of the game dragging out to the inevitable victory, since city sites themselves also count as victory points. Also there's an external anti-blobbing toggle option for the AI where they will band together and stop whoever is closest to winning.
>>1727296Something like the Shogun 2 realm divide? Essentially if the player gets too strong, the rest will attack them. Does make diplomacy kind of irrelevent though.
>>1727296Why is big nation bad?
>>1727296Because there is a limit beyond which nobody is capable of even challenging you militarily anymore, and the game becomes boring. Especially when combat meta is solved. That's why most people don't finish their campaigns.That's why internal management mechanics are necessary to both stop the blob, and make sure the player is engaged.>wah, that's punishing for success!Fuck you.
>>1727296Nobody cares. The majority of players don't even play past the early game.
>>1727881isn't that what happened historically
>>1727296I think Victoria 2's efficiency limit / pop militancy is one of the better ways of handling it. Of course, V2 does benefit from being in a time period where there was mostly a status quo agreement so it's easier to have AI be really pissy about player expansion without it feeling like an artificial limit (because historically, making moves in Europe back then was really hard), while blobbing in unciv areas is also kind of historical. But V2 did ensure that there weren't really huge benefits to blobbing into unaccepted civilized areas. You'd have a severe admin penalty for non-core provinces, and you couldn't core provinces without your accepted pops. Certain unit types could only be drawn from accepted pops. Unaccepted pops would have increased militancy and be a bit prone to rebellions. Land that didn't have your people in it just wasn't all that good. And low admin efficiency meant less effective national focuses, worse literacy gain, etc. Often, blobbing, especially into the softer / more easily blobbed areas (like Russia) would just mean a delay in your nation's tech progress.I've played some Victoria 2 games where I blobbed heavily and some Victoria 2 games where I didn't expand at all (not even colonies) and I found that the industry score gains from blobbing were never all that major. Some advantage, sure - but not great, and probably not worth the increased infamy and more frequent wars compared to just puppeting and/or sphereing.Take the administrative penalties for non-accepted pops and add in better rebellion mechanics and you have a pretty good system for limiting the advantages of blobbing. Not curtailing it altogether, and not making it pointless, because if you make a big country it SHOULD be more powerful - but making it so that the advantages aren't all that great and so it leads to an overall less stable / efficient realm.
>>1727912One thing i like about unrest in Vic2 is that because your troops belong to pops, when those pops rebels those troops also rebels. Makes it kinda nice to have true civil war. I like vassal management in CK2 but I'd also like something like that there too. Although I guess having your total troops suddenly shrinks kinda represent that.On the other hand while coalition in eu4 kinda make sense, one in CK2 totally doesn't and I always play with it off. I heard the one in sengoku is also like that but i never play it. I'd prefer a more natural approach where it's integrated into alliance and diplomacy calculation rather than added on top like in those games.
>>1727899I'm not an expert but I think not really? Nobunaga had consolidated most of Japan's central power under himself when he was assassinated and then Hideyoshi picked up the remaining pieces afterwards and effectively unifyign Japan under himself. On Hideyoshi's death his son, who was 5, was supplanted by Tokugawa Ieyasu, which did lead to a civil war type split, but it was over succession more than because Ieyasu actually did snowballing/blobbing of his own.
>>1727935Matsunaga, Araki and Azai betrayed Nobunaga. It was merely how it was in feudal societies.
>>1727897Yes because the games stop having any challenge and a strategy game without any challenge is one of the most boring experiences you can imagine>>1727912Victoria's limited timeline is what really limits blobbing, Victoria 3 is also lucky they have automated armies instead of toy soldiers like before, meaning that the AI will have the potential of being one of the most competent of all strategy games and that will also limit blobbing and snowballing even further.
>>1728428>Victoria 3 is also lucky they have automated armies instead of toy soldiers like before, meaning that the AI will have the potential of being one of the most competent of all strategy gamesToo bad that the devs are actual retards and so the whole system is still(after what, two or three reworks?) completely broken and filled with bugs, and of course the AI also dogshit so that it's piss easy to beat it anyhow.
>>1728434I said potential, the biggest issue is how the AI handles their economy and that in turn creates other problems, in fact i'm wondering how the AI will use the features in the next expansion if they even struggle to run their own economy as of now.
>>1728436The main problem there was making the economies into extreme command economies, because then you have to write an AI that can intelligently decide what to build and what goods to import. If they'd made all the economies laissez-faire V2 style by default, with limited player ability to interfere, then the ground would be much more even.
>>1728440Wouldn't call it extreme but at this point it is 50:50 control most of the time, the next expansion should make it even less player controlled, a V2 style economy could have worked if it worked like in Meiou and Taxes for example, so not world trade with no restrictions but actually trading only where you want to trade but then the pops decide what to buy or sell.
>>1727296The main problem with Rome is that you always know exactly when a province will revolt, so it makes it extremely easy to game except if you don't pay attention at all, but you even have an alert notification for impeding revolts. Random chances revolt can be frustrating, but they keep you on your toes.
>>1728997Agree. Ridiculous how you know 10 years in advance.A sweet place might a middle ground.Like maybe there is a low chance of "rioting" to begin, and once riotin begins there is like maybe 20% monthly chance of the rioting to erupt into a revolt.So, you have between few months and a year to get troops there. Then again, if you are completely unprepared you won't be in time.
>>1727899>ten thousandsim sure those are thousands
>>1728442>Wouldn't call it extremeIt is extreme. Even the literal historical USSR didn't have such tight state control over the economy, GOSPLAN set production goals (which was itself a disastrous policy in the long run), they weren't micromanaging factory expansions or telling factory operators what production mode to use.The better way to accurately model communism would be to still use the L-F mechanics of letting pops (albeit in this case bureaucrats instead of capitalists) build their own factories, but having the player assign production goals of every good and the prices that they can be sold at. Do that, and you'll already have your communist economy fall apart realistically over time, because production quotas and price controls don't work.
>>1727296>Goodeffective at curtailing blobbing without feeling arbitrary>BadFeeling arbitrary.Good example is eu4 capacity, overextension, and autonomy. They are great systems for curbing blobbing because they represent your government struggling to keep everything together. However they are way too easy to fix by increasing/decreasing or just ignoring. They also lack any coup de grace because rebels are a non issue and threatening coalitions are too easy to avoid. There was an old mod called countries can collapse that made actual revolts and civil wars possible that made it great. But said mod is now abandoned.Bad example is modded victoria 2 infamy. Most mods use a infamy punish system that arbitrarily cripples you by imposing huge penalties on your own pops who should either be happy that their homeland is strong or not care. It is also a yes or no check. you are either 0.1 below the threshold and perfectly fine or 0.1 above the threshold and crippled. Nations are also forced into a war with you even if it is suicide and against their interests. The dismantle wars would be great if they weren't forced though. As a Greater Germany, you won't see France or Russia, the two nations that would actually be a threat and have a reason to want to curtail you, declare war on you because you border them with a larger army which skips the forced war, but you will see every other great power declare war on you, even if a random south american nationlike Colombia managed to become gp and gains literally nothing from entering a war with a nation that has a navy and army 5-10 times their size.
>>1729063I forgot to go into more detail on avoiding arbitrary anti-blob systems.The simplest way is just to ask, would the last large war be possible under our system? If the answer is no then it's a bad system.Modded V2 infamy would cripple Napoleon's France for example. It would also force nations like the USA to go to war with him.
>>1727881>Does make diplomacy kind of irrelevent though.Yeah but that is part of why RD was utter shit. You ended up with everyone having a diplo malus with you leading even to allies and vassals turning on you no matter what.The other issue is how it just switched on after hitting the province threshold instead of an increasing breakdown of relations.
>>1727296There's 2 in dune spice wars and I like the balance of it. One it costs increasing amounts of authority the more territories you have, so expansion is slowed down the bigger you are. It's kinda meh.The other one is quite good. If you want to assassinate someone, you have create 2 (or 3) infiltration cells in their territory. Then you can start an assassination. When you do, you have to periodically send an assassin to these cells, which they can intercept and kill if they have cloak detection.After a period they discover that an assassination is going on. At that point they can start doing cell searches, which detect cells in a territory and all adjecant ones. This means that the bigger you are, the more cell searches you need to find where the cells are. You can also send units there to remove the cell and prevent more assassins that way.If you don't manage to discover/stop the assassins in time you die. You can also abandon territories if you guess that a cell is there.At high level people don't get assassinated by an attempt, but they usually lose some territory to protect themselves.I like it.
Anti-blobbing is needed to make it so that the player (and to much lesser degree, big AI nations) don’t blob too much, but I understand the criticism towards anti-blob mechanics when they are done in a way that merely slows down expansion without making it harder.For example, I don’t like it how aggressive expansion in EU is local and the coalitions resulting from it are 100% predictable and preventable as long as you don’t cross a limit. As the result, you can still expand fast and the AI is usually toothless to stop it unless you deliberately go over the coalition limits. The coalitions should be more dynamic and less predictable, with AI paying far more attention towards rising threats and forming alliances to resist them.
>>1730617>map painting simulator>aiPeople who play these games just want to make their heckin epic byzantium world conquest, why would the ai matter?Actual AI would demolish these "hardcore" players and they'd move on to visual novels, like they should.
>>1727461You should also be able to switch sides if you find yourself on the losing side or people start fearing one side is getting too powerful. League of Cambrai those bitches
>>1727899No, not really. Tokugawa-Oda alliance held on long after Nobunaga became a major daimyo and took the capital. There was also the Chosokabe-Oda alliance and before Nobu died there was even a Hojo-Oda alliance.
>>1727296>Chad>*blobs uncontrollably*>virgin>whines about chads on yak herding forums
>>1727899That historically was more of the "cascading alliances" thing, that actually would make diplomacy way more important than actual warfare, instead of a hard-coded "Everybody north of here should support you regardless of if they like/hate you and people you're already aligned with">>1730925Strawman, or watching too much online discourse?
I wish there was a strategy game where failing was a core part of the experience. In most strategy games it just feels like a nuisance and that your time is being wasted. This is why I was hyped at first for Humankind but it seems they dropped the ball on that one.
>>1727296Come up with something:>every country is given a "might score" based in its income, military strength, and tech>countries with top 3 "might score" are considered great powers>if top 1's "might score" is higher than the sum of the other two great powers, the top 1 is considered a "hegemon power">once "hegemonic power" exist, other nations will team up to attack itBecause it's completely relative, a coalition can form even without the hegemonic power conquering anything.
>>1737670Out of all Paradox games, CK is the one that has at least a bit of back-and-forth development, like hwving to deal with shitty inheritance laws, having your main character suddenly die and realm fracturing due to bad heir etc.Of course you can still keep all together if you’re really good, that’s how it is with games like this, but at least the average player isn’t going to have a completely even upwards curve and small losses aren’t instantly game over.
>>1727296The way to solve blobbing would be actually making managing your realm fun, not just making the currently fun stuff tedious of course it's an unrelated old painting as OP
>>1727572>Field of Glory Empires' decadence mechanic is internal anti-blobbing done right.Stopping the player from expanding until they've spammed enough buildings is gamey and unfun.
>>1738744I wish the whole "culture" aspect did more than just segregate your revolts and give opinion modifiers, when it comes to managing a realm.
>>1738105I also despise China
>>1740852Nothing stops you from expanding, you have to deal with the consequences of rushed expansion - risk of revolt, low loyalty in recently conquered regions, slave unrest, insecure borders, etc. These can be mitigated with buildings or with time. If you just want a map painter look elsewhere
>>1745691That sounds kinda like what sship does. On top of the general unrest that comes with being conquered that usually requires a decent general or a big army stationed there for 10+ turns to offset, the further away from your capital the more unrest that settlement will have and generals will have lower loyalty too. Every settlement also angers other factions and lowers your reputation which makes it easier to end up at war if you don't let things cool down, and on top of that if you are particularly aggressive and take over a lot fast then you will get a faction wide scaling unhappiness.Then there's a whole 'nother factor in your King. A sprawling empire may be thriving under a good king but one bad succession can send you scrambling to prevent mass revolts if you haven't taken the time to build up and stabilize them and if the king is particularly bad you may even shatter into a civil war.
>>1727296The number one most realistic and most effective anti-blobbing mechanic will always be good AI. Too bad devs are too incompetent to actually implement it, or perhaps they are just too afraid of normalfags to do it.
