Europa Universalis IV

[Linx MP]

EU3 is deceptively easy but once you try and play it is not easy at all. It has a sheer cliff-side as a learning curve. HoI3 is a simpler game by far. EU3 requires a lot of knowledge about how it works before you can play and the interface is a mess. Most mechanics of the game are not explained anywhere except on the separate wiki which you therefore need to have open if you are still learning the game. And there is an incredible amount of mechanics to learn. This makes EU3 also a very rewarding game to play but never call it simple.

As I said before my most anticipated feature would be a better distinction in settlement colonies and trading posts.

[bobjohnny]

EU3 is deceptively easy but once you try and play it is not easy at all. It has a sheer cliff-side as a learning curve. HoI3 is a simpler game by far. EU3 requires a lot of knowledge about how it works before you can play and the interface is a mess.

See I thought the exact opposite. I thought it was rather easy to figure out the EU3 interface and could never decipher the interface for HOI3.

[Ikenos]

Military-wise, I don't want a wargame, but I do want a few more options.
1. A couple more troops and the ability to have mixed groups of troops without different cores. rather than a universal switchover. Perhaps 'heavy' and 'light' or 'front-line' and 'ranged'
2. Speed as a troop stat. Do you want fast-moving weaker infantry or slower, more solid infantry?
3. Recruiting different sizes. Cavalry should be say 500, and artillery around 200. Without getting them slaughtered by the large infantry groups.
4. Shore support. It would make the navy more relevant.
5. Modifiers that directly affect troop pips rather than just general's stats.
6. Some sort of auto-general feature or possibly a general 'leveling-up' system.

General
Navigable rivers (only major rivers) and river navies that can block crossing armies. Smaller ships should have huge advantages here.
Bridges that can allow aforementioned armies to cross anyway.
More uses for the special people. Spies and merchants at least should have internal uses and missionaries should have external.
A more complicated step-by-step colonization process.
More provinces, possibly borrowing the state system used by Vicky 2.
More frequent changes to province stats (taxes, trade goods, manpower, etc) as well as changes in both directions.

Some of this is doable by mod or expansion, of course.

[GoguRomania]

See I thought the exact opposite. I thought it was rather easy to figure out the EU3 interface and could never decipher the interface for HOI3.

It is opposite. I learnt to play EU3 in a few weeks Now i practice one hour each day to try and learn some HoI But i am as noob as i was in the first day.

[Frax]

i would to see a new pop system, how population is growing is quite stupid, also the limit is lame in some cites. also the culture system should be improved. and ofc the hordes

[Valiant_Hogers]

EU3 is deceptively easy but once you try and play it is not easy at all. It has a sheer cliff-side as a learning curve. HoI3 is a simpler game by far. EU3 requires a lot of knowledge about how it works before you can play and the interface is a mess. Most mechanics of the game are not explained anywhere except on the separate wiki which you therefore need to have open if you are still learning the game. And there is an incredible amount of mechanics to learn. This makes EU3 also a very rewarding game to play but never call it simple.

As I said before my most anticipated feature would be a better distinction in settlement colonies and trading posts.

HOI3 makes my EU3 mind go WUT WHY ARENT MY TROOPS WINNING, THEY HAVE BETTER EQUIEMENT AND MORALE! AND NUMBERS!

[Atlanteax]

Wish-List for EU4:

Metaserver that is capable of HOSTING multi-player games.

[Beowulf1990]

+1 to the "hoi3 is harder" camp. That game seriously tested my determination when I saw just how much micromanagement would be needed to keep my fronts in line (Operation Barbarossa anyone?). I thanked the FSM when they introduced working AI theatres, to take some of the workload off. And I never did figure out which units to use for what.

[PeterCorless]

1) Allow diplomatic intercession in wars between neighbors. If you have a high enough relation with both parties, you can help negotiate a truce. Or, if you have sufficient forces that you intimidate one of the nations, you might get them to back off.

2) Allow "Armistice" as a war settlement offer. Allows for the temporary cessation of hostilities, say, 1-12 months, without requiring a full five-year White Peace.

3) Fix the escalating costs of refineries, universities, etc. Why in the world should it be increasingly expensive to establish facilities?

4) Create local militias that would serve to defend home provinces, but they would not want to leave their homelands to fight foreign wars. If you take them outside your borders, they'd suffer huge attrition. That way you could really play a "defensive" (militia-heavy) or "offensive" (standing-army-heavy) game.

5) Allow creation of administrative regions. One huge sprawling empire should become inefficient to manage from a single global capital. There should be a way to create smaller subdivisions of a large sprawling state which would be necessary to manage a large empire. You might need to pay to build regional capitals, but it would help with stability, and so on.

6) Overhaul Reputation. If you are a large global empire, why is your annexation of parts of China alarming people in Bavaria? Shouldn't there be "reputation" towards Christian nations, "reputation" towards Muslim nations, etc., i.e., based on religion, or couldn't there be "regional" reputation, so that you might be seen as a hero in Europe, and a villain in Africa? Doesn't this actually reflect more of the truth, when a nation might have different pluses and minuses depending on the demographic audiences you're talking about?

7) Allow for cultural and religious mixes of provinces. Places rarely tend to go from 100% Catholic to 100% Protestant, even after years (or decades or centuries) of proselytizing. Similarly, there are often cultural minorities amongst populations. Allow for this by letting each province keep track of the percentage of minorities. There can be "splashing" from nearby provinces, modeling the migration of ideas and peoples over time. Narrowminded cultures would have less mingling, etc.

8) Control large empires more by "management span" rather than by "reputation." Right now, the thing that keeps the world empires from expanding is their concern for their "reputation" more than anything else. They have large enough armies to crush any uprisings. Those do sometimes succeed. But really what should limit their global growth is their ability to administrate large spans of territory, especially as it could take years for word to travel from one end of their empire to another. That's why I am suggesting the concept of regional administration. To put more focus on how to create centralized or decentralized states, and how to rule a global empire, rather than just stopping your conquests because you are afraid that Luxemburg might think you're a bully.

9) Allow for more than 3 advisors based on an investment in your Ministry.

10) Allow the hiring/appointment of foreign ambassadors.

11) Make the province decisions less idiotic so people might actually implement them more often.

12) Fix the "build" tab; don't show me that I can build refineries in more than 3 provinces, if you can't also show me the provinces where I can build them, and where I can build them for the 2x bonus.

[MasterOfGrey]

PeterCorless, that is an amazingly comprehensive list of minor but significant changes which I agree would be great to see. (Some are more complex but generally speaking)

With *regional capitals* I'd like to see one of those reduce the distant overseas penalty to 40%. You still suffer it, but you can lessen it. I'd suggest that logically your upper centralisation limit would decrease by 1 for each regional capital though...

also, number 12!

[Beowulf1990]

PeterCorless, that is an amazingly comprehensive list of minor but significant changes which I agree would be great to see. (Some are more complex but generally speaking)

With *regional capitals* I'd like to see one of those reduce the distant overseas penalty to 40%. You still suffer it, but you can lessen it. I'd suggest that logically your upper centralisation limit would decrease by 1 for each regional capital though...

also, number 12!

Those aren't exactly minor, you'd need some serious overhaul to get most of those in action. They are good though.

I especially like relativistic reputation buildup.

[GoguRomania]

Has someone heard the smallest and insignificant rumor of Paradox creating EU IV ? (please link me to it if you did)
This whole topic seems to much SF for me to feel confortable.

[jdrou]

Has someone heard the smallest and insignificant rumor of Paradox creating EU IV ? (please link me to it if you did)
This whole topic seems to much SF for me to feel confortable.

No rumors that I've heard of. People have been making suggestions for "EU 4" almost since EU3 was released though.

[GoguRomania]

Well in this case we should start and make suggestions for EU5, since EU4 was already topic-created enough.

[Hathokk]

I have been playing with paradox games for nearly 12 years (started with EU1, released in 2000 as far as I remember).
I enjoyed all of them, but I found them way too simple. I do like grand strategy games, and the EU series just like the Victoria series are complex games - for those who are new to the grand strategy genre. However I always thought these games had the potential to be ultimate strategy games, but something was missing.
They offer a deep strategic experience and complex management system, but they are far from what they could have been.

So I started to collect the possible features of the Ulitmate Europe Univeralis game. Some of the suggestions have been already posted, some of them not. If you see your idea(s) written down here please do not regard me as a plagiarist, we all just want to have a better game to play with
So here is the list of features I'd like to see in the new release! The list is a quite massive, but I hope you will read it, and comment on it


Economy:

I think, a complete overhaul in the field of economy would be great.
First of all, provinces should be divided into holdings (just like in CK2). There should be different holding types: in the early games (until the 16th Century) Castles, Monasteries and Cities, later manufacturies, plantations (in the colonies), quarries, mines, forts etc. Players should research specific tecnologies in order to build different types of holdings as the game proceeds. Each province should have a capital holding (Castles - later forts - in the old Continent and colonial forts in the colonies)

There should be strategical resources (e.g.: iron, sulphur, stone, marble, gold, silver, gems - just to mention some) to make the game more interesting. For instance, if you have iron in a province, after having researched the necessary tech you should be able to bulid an iron mine (and later expand it), providing you with iron, which will reduce the cost of recruiting soldiers. Or, you may have access to stone and will be able to build paved roads, enhancing the trade and the movement speed of your troops. Each strategic resource should have its benefits. There should be a limit as well, for instance if you have an iron mine in a province, only limited amount of iron can be extracted (depending on your technology level) monthly. So if you have one iron mine, you will be able to extract 1000 units a year by deafault, and will be able to equip 2000 soldiers for free yearly. Or, if you have one gold mine, you will be able to mint 50 Ducats for free yearly (which would increase your inflation, of course).

Each holding should have it's unique building hierarchy, and all of the holdings should produce a specific amount of income, manpower and food. Food should regulate the growth of your cities and the maximum size of the army allowed to built and maintained. Players should also be allowed to adjust how much food citizens are allowed to consume in a province.

For instance a city produces 20k units of grain a year may have the maximum population of 20k by default. However, if players allow people to eat more, the maximum number of citizens allowed to live in the city would be 15k, resulting in less income, however citizens would be happier and much more resistant to diseases such as smallpox or plague. On the other hand if players barely feed their people the population allowed to live in a city would be 25k producing more income but would be more likely to revolt or to get a disease, resulting in an epidemic. Epidemics may affect not just one province but densely populated areas as well, where people are not resistant enough to cope with diseases. Changing the slider (how much food you give to your people) should have a periodic effect instead of an immediate, preventing people to get healthy and resistant within one day when the eidemics is in the neighbourhood. On the other hand, if you have 25k people living in a city, and you change the slider, people will start dying, causing discontent in a province. The same would happen if your army (if barely paid) or your enemy's army marches through your land. They would start pillaging, and your people would have an increased militancy and less food.


Core Provinces:


Core provinces always played a huge role in your economy (In all EU games). However the process players gained cores on provinces used in vanilla EU3 was not flawless at all. The system I imagine is the following:

Your empire should have tolerated religions and tolerated cultures as well. (Depending on your national ideas and sliders you may have only one, or multiple accepted cultures or religions).

The cultural identity and the religion of each province should be shown on a percental scale, so players may track the process easily. Missionaries may be sent to accelerate the process of religious conversion and magistrates to accelerate the process of cultural assimilation.
Both missionaries and magistrates may have an impact on the monthly change in assimilation and religion in a given province.
When 50% of the population is converted to your state religion (or at least 50% is following one of your tolerated religions) and the assimilation process became succesfull, the province will be your core. Armies may also accelerate the process of assimilation. But the assimilation is not over yet.
Citizens of a core province now pay taxes like all other provinces however they won't give you manpower. For instance if you are playing with French and capture a Spanish province, you have to first assimilate the province, so the population will yield into your majesty, and pay you taxes just like any other core province.
However they are still Spanish, and have Spanish identity, so they won't go into your army to fight for your sake.
You have to change the composition of the population so your newly conquered territores may send you levies. You can do two things. First, use magistrates to expand the influence of your nation over a province (e.g.: force your language to be the official one), and also use your army to make the population more French-like. For example playing with French, french and occitanian should be both accepted cultures. So if your army's batallions are of occitan culture, than the conquered territory will be occitanian too, but if they came From Paris, the conquered province's culture will be french. If 20% of the population is french, than the province will only have 20% of its possible manpower, while the percentage of french living in a country is 80% and only 20% is spanish, you will receive 80% of the possible manpower. (If you are using mercenaries to pacify a conquered province, than the percentage of the population will change according to the nationality of your mercenaries.)

Another way to get manpower is to fully accept a culture. For instance playing with England you can annex Scotland. If you do so, scottish culture will have no nation. (Scottish will not be a primary culture in any Nation) Therefore, with the help of your magistrates you can pick the scottish culture into your primary culture. However if you are playing with French and conquer a Spanish province, you cannot pick spanish as your primary culutre, because Spain still exists, and Spain's primary culture is spanish.



Primary and Secondary cultures:


You may have primary and secondary cultures as well. I think the maximum number of cultures each nation may have should be dependent on your technology. By default 2 primary and 2 secondary cultures should be enough per nation. Primary cultures may give your soldiers maximum moral, while secondary cultures may give you only 70% of moral. (Therefore they would be less effective in combat, and more likely to withdraw) Secondary cultures may also have a minimal revolt risk. And to make things more comlicated secondary and/or non-accepted cultures may have increased militancy and would be more likely to form new Nations, where their cultures would be accepted as primary. Let's see an example: Playing with England you annex Ireland, thus irsish will be your secondary Culture. (You have english and welsh as your primary, and Scottish and Irish as your secondary). However irish is only a secondary culture, therefore they will try to form a nation (Ireland), where Irish would be the primary culture.

When a nation declares its independence, they should get core on provinces where their primary culture is dominant (over 51% of population). This system allows your nation to integrate provinces - where your primary culture is dominant - significantly faster (so forming Germany would be easier when north german and south germanare primary cultures). You'd only have to assimilate (and maybe convert) the province, and tax and manpower will be yours.


Colonization and Missionaries:



The process of colonization has been greatly improved since EU1/EU2. EU3 has a quite good colonization system, however some things should be added or altered.

What I really missed was the difference between each level of colonies are negligible. There is a big diference between cities and colonies, but there is hardly nothing between a level 1 colony and a level 6 colony. Colonies sholud be divided into holdings, just like other provinces. The capital holding should be a colonial fort (if conquered by a European nation. Native nations should have their own types of holdings). When you attempt to colonize a new province, first you have to send an army there and conquer it, or send a diplomat or merchant and buy the loyalty of the local tribes (every province should have its own holdings. Wether its a native nation (like the Aztecs) or not, there should be a local capital holding you have to capture one way or another.)
When you use force to conquer a province, you must take into consideration that brutality will follow your soldiers' deeds (whenever you are fighting against heathens, your soldiers will slowly kill the local population, until it reaches the minimal. This should take years). Pagans are heathens for all in Europe. On the other hand your soldiers will eat the food produced in the given province, resulting in decreased birth rate. What is more, local population will be more likely to get dieseases. Therefore if you try to conquer and colonize the new world, you have to calcualte with the loss of at least half of the local population.
After you have conquered a province, you can start colonizing it. Capital holding should change to colonial fort, and you can start sending colonists (and army to maintain loyalty) to the conquered province. One colonist should be able to create one holding in the new world. Colonist should be also needed to create holdings in the old world, but they should also cost money to build in Europe. Holdings in the new world however will not be as effective as old world ones', but would be cheaper to build. Colonies should also have different types of goods, so expansion to the new world would be much more fun.
Another way to conquer a colonial province would be to buy it via trade or money, depending on the domestic state of the given nation you are dealing with.
Also the colonial growth slider used in EU3 should remain still so you can accelerate the growth of your colonies by allowing your people to emigrate to the new world. Of course that would cost more money (but the surplus population can be sent to the colonies).
Missionaries have to be used again to convert the conquered provinces, and you also have to assimilate the conquered province.



National Ideas and Sliders:


I do like National Ideas in EU3. You can specialize your own nation, and give her a unique taste. That's one of the coolest feature of EU3. Little alteration and adjustment should be done here, maybe some new ideas to fit in the new system. However besides the Domestic Sliders (Aristocracy, Centralization, etc.) there should be some kind of National Doctrines as well, where you can set your Nation's other important parameters. Here you may set other parameters of your nation: for example, if you are a Catholic Kingdom you should decide wether you want to be loyal to the Papal States and have a Free Church (less income, because bishops won't pay you taxes, however your reputation is higher among Catholi Rulers), or should you have State Church, get money from your bishops, but Catholic rulers would hate you. Also, you may set wether you want to have conscription and have batallions from non-accepted culture (increased manpower, but lower moral for foreign troops in your army, and higher militancy in provinces with non-accepted culture) or you only want to have loyal soldiers. Therefore, in later games Austria, which had a very diverse population, may have plenty of soldiers, but their morale won't be as strong as for instance the French army's morale. Later on you may also decide to have soldiers in your army from different Religions (like Gurkhas), but your soldiers would be discontent because of the heathens in the army they have to fight with.



Army:

I like the combat system used in CK2, with flanks included. That system would be awsome here too. Also building military acadamies and adapting National Doctrines like Professional Army (grants you access to better officer corps and leaders, but upsets the nobility and aristocracy) may result in better armies. Players should also be able to improve and extend the size of a garrison in a given province - to maintain order and to convert population to your primary culture. Increasing Garrison in a given province over the limit however would cost more money for the budget. Also idle armies should be used to build roads, macadam roads, paved roads and later railroads, or to improve fortifications. Later, with improved technology they may help locals to expand farms or drain swamps. Overally, soldiers should be able to reduce building time of fortifications, roads, and other things.



New Bulidings and Actions:

Each holding should have its own building hierarchy. Depending on your technology, you should build more types of holdings, fortifications, roads. Swamps and rough terrain should be improved later to be more fertile.



There are other things in my mind I have not mention, however I have no time to do that right now (fleet, building hierarcy in holdings, great people, printing press and the influence of press on the population)
However this is the brief list of my ideas, I hope you find some of them useful!

Please, comment!

[enf91]

For instance a city produces 20k units of grain a year may have the maximum population of 20k by default. However, if players allow people to eat more, the maximum number of citizens allowed to live in the city would be 15k, resulting in less income, however citizens would be happier and much more resistant to diseases such as smallpox or plague. On the other hand if players barely feed their people the population allowed to live in a city would be 25k producing more income but would be more likely to revolt or to get a disease, resulting in an epidemic. Epidemics may affect not just one province but densely populated areas as well, where people are not resistant enough to cope with diseases. Changing the slider (how much food you give to your people) should have a periodic effect instead of an immediate, preventing people to get healthy and resistant within one day when the eidemics is in the neighbourhood. On the other hand, if you have 25k people living in a city, and you change the slider, people will start dying, causing discontent in a province. The same would happen if your army (if barely paid) or your enemy's army marches through your land. They would start pillaging, and your people would have an increased militancy and less food.

This sounds exactly like something from Civilization: Call to Power. Not that that's a bad thing: that game had a lot of features I want to see in games I like.

[Jazumir]

To me, that sounds like ´Kaiser´: ´Gutes Wetter - Reiche Ernte ... Wieviel Korn wollen sie kaufen?´
[just a quote from an ancient german c64-game]

[Iwanow]

NECROMANCER!!! xp