Tinto Talk 113 - AI Disposition & Achievements

Hello everyone, happy Wednesday and welcome to another Tinto Talk. I’m Ryagi, Community Manager at Paradox Tinto.

First a confession of my sins, last week I said:
"Next week we'll be diving into the feedback we have received on the updated Italian Situations in 1.3"

If you were looking forward to this I’m sorry to say it’s no longer accurate. Instead, I wanted to spend the effort on some more time sensitive info! Primarily some of the small but meaningful changes in 1.3.6, along with the new achievements. We will still be covering Italian Situations next time however.

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On 1.3.4

Before we dive straight into 1.3.6, lets take a moment to recap on 1.3.4, released June 16th. You can find the full patch notes here.

Why is it 1.3.4 and not 1.3.3?​

I have to say I’m surprised not to see many questions about this, maybe you’re super smart, already a software dev, or just simply didn’t notice.... We’ll go ahead and answer it anyway though!

As I talked about in last Tinto Talk, The plan with the 1.3 open beta process is to have weekly patches, early each week, with the room for hotfixes into the week if absolutely necessary. This means that odd numbers such as 1.3.3 are reserved for a hotfix that never came to be public, it’s the same story for 1.3.5, 1.3.7 etc.

What did 1.3.4 actually do?​

The headline changes in beta 1.3.4 are longer Casus Bellis, Cats in loading screens, adjustments to Italian Wars, Scaliger War tweaks, along with various misc fixes and adjustments. What might turn out to be the most impactful are the economy changes below:

1. Stockpile Capacity: Market stockpile capacity has been significantly reduced, base values cut from 200–250 down to 25–50, with late-game growth now earned through the market-center building chain (Entrepôt through Clearing House). A basic 1337 market town drops from 455 to 55; a late-game megalopolis from ~2400 to ~630.

2. Changed pops to buy fewer goods when the estate they belong to is running an income shortfall: an estate covering only half its expenses pulls every pop's goods demand down by 25% at the default scale, and an estate with no income at all halves demand entirely, with the contribution surfaced as a new line in the per-good demand tooltip that names which estate is responsible and shows the resulting multiplier.

Both of these changes are pretty big swings, so we’ll be listening to your beta feedback to tell us how the economy plays out with them in the wild. The 2nd change is something that we implemented to address artificially inflated economies and estates conjuring money. We’re monitoring the impacts of this change, and have seen some mixed contradictory reports on the results, so we’ll be continuing to investigate. If you have any opinions on the new economy in 1.3.4, please do feel free to share them here.

What is coming in 1.3.6​

1.3.6 is set to be released early next week. Some of the changes include:

• Changes to Mercenaries (See more below)
• AI personality/disposition improvements (See more below)
• 6 new achievements (See more below)
• The outcome of Hussite Victory will no longer penalize allies and subjects of Bohemia (eg. Poland!)
• A buff to the serfdom societal value that includes replacing fort maintenance efficiency with building upkeep efficiency
• Cabinet trait rebalance: reworks the cabinet trait pool with mixed modifiers, weighted rolls, and yearly decay so bad traits become a tradeoff rather than a swap-out signal, and so the trait roll respects age, stats, and estate.
• Many more…
  

Starting with 1.3.6, we also intend to finalize the change allowing achievements to be gained in modded/non iron man saves. But you’re probably curious about the Merc and Disposition changes, so let’s get into those.

Mercenaries ​

Mercenary usage has been a point of contention as of late, since mercenaries being impactful and actually used by the AI is a design goal for EU5. However, the way in which the merc system is communicated to the player is in need of improvement. The other problem is simply there are too many mercenaries right now. The “Merc spam” issue has a few causes. Firstly, the most important causes but also the hardest to fix, is that the AI is choosing to spend its money on mercenaries more than it should. Unlike a player who will spend their money on buildings, exploration, and other things, the AI tends to hoard its money. This means when it is attacked, it will spend that money to win the war. This leads into problem number two, which while not as systematic as the first issue is still a big contributor. The AI is, unlike a player, unable to fully distinguish between a war for survival and something less consequential. Finally, to top both these things off, the pool of mercenaries both players and AI pulls from is simply in need of more tuning. For 1.3.6 we did two things in regards to mercenaries. Firstly, we added more tooltips and information so you can see more details on the sizes of mercenaries in each area. This should improve the players understanding of the merc pool, and hopefully give a better idea so it doesn’t feel like mercenaries are summoned from thin air. Second, we bound the amount of possible mercenaries fully to the population simulation itself, which should see a drop to about 8% of possible mercenaries around. (That's 92% less than 1.2.5)

A view of all mercenaries available in range, divided by region

The new regional tooltip

We hope these changes do not completely prevent the AI using mercenaries, but make the use of them less frustrating and less extreme. Once beta 1.3.6 drops next week, we’ll be monitoring your feedback!

Now that we’ve quickly looked at mercs, lets take a look at some of the personality improvements we’ve made for beta 1.3.6. Johan has put together some examples below

AI Personality and Disposition:

AI Conquer Desire Mapmode Change

In 1.3.6 we added a breakdown to WHY the AI wants a certain location, rather than just have an accurate but somewhat hard to grasp percentage value

AI Disposition Tooltip Improvement

When you hover a foreign ruler's disposition, you'll now see why they feel that way, with the actual factors driving it (their fear of your army, a casus belli they hold, the provinces they covet) laid out beneath the label. Each disposition also ends with a plain "Expect ..." line that tells you what the AI is likely to do next, whether that's building defensive pacts, fabricating claims, or backing your enemies. It turns the disposition from a mood label into something you can read and plan around.

Opinion Bias Changes

We also added in a small estimation for when temporary opinions will be lost.

New Country Disposition - Domineering

For countries that are more powerful than you and view you as a possible target, even if they are not actively desiring your lands currently.

New Country Disposition - Friendly

For those that really like you that are not threatened..

Distance Impact on Threat

Small countries further away will be indifferent, as they have less reason to be alarmed or wary.

Disposition Alerts

Now if any AI country changes their disposition towards you, you’ll notice it in a friendly popup.

Foreign Disposition

Clicking on a country now shown on the map how other countries view them, but you can also see their 5 most important stances in the UI as well.

In summary, we feel these minor improvements are not the sort of thing that are groundbreaking on their own, but put together in actual play, will make for a much more enjoyable experience. Excited to hear what you think!

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Achievements in 1.3.6​

To wrap things up, let’s also show off the 6 new achievements coming in 1.3.6:

"Gilt-Edged" — Reach 80 Creditworthiness without ever going bankrupt.



"Cowabunga!" — Have a painter, a sculptor, an architect and a scientist at your court at the same time.


"Counting Circles" — Start as a County and become the leader of an Imperial Circle.


"If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em" — Win the Guelphs and Ghibellines situation after having switched sides at least once.


"League of Legends" — Emerge victorious from the Italian Wars situation as the leader of any League.

"Uomo Universale" — As a country of Italian culture, own the birthplace of the Renaissance while fully Innovative.



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That's all for this time folks. next week we have a Spanish holiday on Wednesday which means we’ll be skipping a dedicated Tinto Talk that week. However, normal patch plans continue with 1.3.6 releasing early next week. Next time, we’ll return to talk about the reception to the Italian Situations.

Until then!

- PDX Ryagi