Medieval creep

[pjcrowe]

Including a revived HRE does fit the time frame, even with a later start. I just should be harder and/or more painful. Put the no-internal-CB reform first, and see how often people will choose that route.

-Pat

[Lama43]

I agree though. There's too much focus on late medieval-early renaissance period, and very little in the enlightenment age.

[Ruanek]

A lot of people want to play as Rome, and they want to play earlier. Starting earlier theoretically gives more options, because players have more time to do stuff. But most people, intentionally or not, don't play past a few centuries because the game's mechanics don't favor games much longer than that (unless the player handicaps himself). The main thing, though, is that this is a game about historical plausibility. It is certainly plausible for the Byzantine empire to have gone through a resurgance, or for the Caliphate to return, or for Al-Andalus to come back after failed Spanish crusades. But all of those are more plausible if you push the start date back farther. The option of a resurgent Roman Empire is especially popular, because of how "cool" people perceive that to be (including me).

You also have to remember that until recently people couldn't just go buy CK2 if they wanted to play earlier. And its predecessor was a bit older, making it less appealing.

Ideally, in my opinion at least, Paradox would eventually create some sort of grand combination of games combining Rome, CK, EU3, Victoria, and HoI. And it would gradually shift things around, like the importance of various parts of the military and individual characters, to make it work with the combinations. Even then, though, it might be hard to get people to not start at the earliest date, because people when they start have plans to conquer the whole world and don't necessarily anticipate it getting boring later.

[nsahn]

+1. One mechanic in particular: colonization. I think colonization would be more fun, and simulate the Early Modern Era better, if a nation could only colonize with the Quest for the New World idea. I always set land/sea spread to 200 years so that I don't have Breton colonies all over Africa and North America.

I would love to continue playing my games past the first 100 years, except for the fact by that time there are always these disgusting looking blobs here and there; Bohemia in Central Asia anyone?!

On a positive note, I recently played a Netherlands game and the available cultural decisions, missions, etc. made the game fun all the way into the 1700s.

Overall, this thread is spot-on. What I love about this game is that it is about the Early Modern Era, not the Medieval one (dealing with vassals, ugh).

[Fishman786]

+1. One mechanic in particular: colonization. I think colonization would be more fun, and simulate the Early Modern Era better, if a nation could only colonize with the Quest for the New World idea. I always set land/sea spread to 200 years so that I don't have Breton colonies all over Africa and North America.

I would love to continue playing my games past the first 100 years, except for the fact by that time there are always these disgusting looking blobs here and there; Bohemia in Central Asia anyone?!

On a positive note, I recently played a Netherlands game and the available cultural decisions, missions, etc. made the game fun all the way into the 1700s.

Overall, this thread is spot-on. What I love about this game is that it is about the Early Modern Era, not the Medieval one (dealing with vassals, ugh).

In EU 4 I would like to see the complete removal of the exploration mechanic, and have it replaced with a kind of tech-tree based system. EU3's exploration system is strongly biased in favour of the human, it's incredibly easy and also rather boring. The only challenging thing about sending a ship off all the way round the world is actually getting QftNW in the first place.

Ideally, I would like a sort of 'exploration tree', in which you spend colonists to unlock different areas of the world. As a western European, you could spend a few colonists on exploring the 'north atlantic Islands' region. Successful exploration would reveal the territories on the world map, and unlock options to find a 'western trade winds' region. In turn, this would reveal the Antilles, and give options to explore the different American regions. Other tech groups could start at other parts of the exploration tree. Muslims, for example, would start with options to explore the Indian ocean, and then the west African coast, whilst the Chinese would be able to explore central asia and Indonesia.

Give this all a nice MEIOU-like interface, and allow slider settings, ruler statistics, ideas etc. to alter exploration speed and effectiveness, and you have yourself a nice little feature. Certainly far better than guiding each individual ship around every single bend in the coastline.

[xcrissxcrossx]

In EU 4 I would like to see the complete removal of the exploration mechanic, and have it replaced with a kind of tech-tree based system. EU3's exploration system is strongly biased in favour of the human, it's incredibly easy and also rather boring. The only challenging thing about sending a ship off all the way round the world is actually getting QftNW in the first place.

Ideally, I would like a sort of 'exploration tree', in which you spend colonists to unlock different areas of the world. As a western European, you could spend a few colonists on exploring the 'north atlantic Islands' region. Successful exploration would reveal the territories on the world map, and unlock options to find a 'western trade winds' region. In turn, this would reveal the Antilles, and give options to explore the different American regions. Other tech groups could start at other parts of the exploration tree. Muslims, for example, would start with options to explore the Indian ocean, and then the west African coast, whilst the Chinese would be able to explore central asia and Indonesia.

Give this all a nice MEIOU-like interface, and allow slider settings, ruler statistics, ideas etc. to alter exploration speed and effectiveness, and you have yourself a nice little feature. Certainly far better than guiding each individual ship around every single bend in the coastline.

I can agree with that. Plus the human knows exactly what they want to discover every time they send their ship out. Better if they don't have complete control over what they discover in a new world they shouldn't know about.

[DanubianCossak]

If were throwing ideas around, heres one thing id like to see:

In EU3 as soon as you discover a province, you immediately know its economic worth - as in exact pre-set base_tax - and if you have a look through 1 file you can also guess with very high precision what trade good will appear where, and in case of gold provinces, you can even track them by exact province ID.

I think this is wrong and should have been handled in a completely different manner.

As it is, human player can go on and discover provinces with highest base_tax and colonize only those taking the absolutely highest bonuses to their land/naval force limits and gaining a huge advantage over poor old AI.

IMO all uncolonized provinces should have roughly the same base_tax value (1 for example), however once colonized a dynamic system could then increase their tax value over time as new settlers arrive (in EU3 terms thats every 100 worth of population). And then on top of that, over time various events and enterprises (all context driven) could also affect the tax value of colonies etc. It would give a more accurate and dynamic system where the player would feel like they had something to do with the development of colonial economy.

[Me_]

Regarding colonisation - I think that making QFTNW a requirements is too restrictive. What I'd like to see is for the base colonist chance to be reduced to like 5% with each of the colonial NI adding +10% Castille and Portugal could be given an extra decision increasing their chance by an extra 5 or 10% to allow them to create their colonial empires at historical pace.

As for the original topic I agree that the game focuses too much on the early game and too little on the middle and late part. The number of features actually decreases over time - Trade Leagues, Holy Wars, Excommunication (not Hordes though - they live happily well into 1600s and poorly well into 1700s).

I think it could be good for EU IV to star with a 1492-1776 timeframe and create a strong core for that period. 1453-1492 could be added in one DLC, then 1776-1789 in another and finally 1789-1836. That way the new and improved stuff would enchance the late game more than the early game.

[Fishman786]

I think it could be good for EU IV to star with a 1492-1776 timeframe and create a strong core for that period. 1453-1492 could be added in one DLC, then 1776-1789 in another and finally 1789-1836. That way the new and improved stuff would enchance the late game more than the early game.

That actually sounds like a good idea. I would be cautious about 1492 though, since part of the fun is starting off your colonisation and sending ships to find the distant new world. If it's already discovered that makes things a bit dissapointing. Also, it cuts out the enormous wars that the Ottomans got themselves into shortly after the conquest of Constantinyye.

[KillingMeSoftly]

Personally, I like the early start. But I'm still a newish to the game and I've only played a single grand campaign (to completion) as Portugal -> Spain.

Early on things are a bit more interesting with unique missions and decisions. That tends to dry up, in my experience, as you get into the 1500s. Later in the game mostly I'd get very generic missions like "Build (random manufactory) in (random province)". I think a new set of missions for the later game for key nations would be more entertaining. Also much later all the technology advances became just as bland; especially Production and Trade tech which only give a tiny bit more efficiency or a tiny bit more trade range. Government tech at least gives more government types and ideas, and Naval and Land tech give more units. But there's several levels that give, essentially, nothing. While early and mid-game at least the tech levels are more populated.

More interesting things to do from 1650-1820 would make that period more fun. But I might be playing the wrong nations?

[Ruanek]

The problem with making new missions and stuff for later in the game is you can't really tell which nations will be powerful, where borders will be, etc. It's easy to make missions based on the starting conditions, like having England conquer Ireland or vassalize Scotland, but what if 200 years later Ireland was Spanish or Scotland was inherited by Austria? (These specific things don't really happen; I'm just using them to demonstrate my point.)

[KillingMeSoftly]

Yeah, that's true! The main hurdle with making late-game missions. Surely there's a clever way to solve that; maybe we'll see it in EU4!

[Yosiu]

I would change a bit different thing i colonisation:
In the real world each country had a different way of colonising: Spain was brutal one and focused mainy on exploiting lands, portugease and dutch was a bit of trader, Great Britain in this time-frame was mainly a "refugee" colonisation, many miniorites group went to New World.
I would like to see mechanism which would reflect that. In EU2 there were at least trade points, now there is only a regular colony.
Maybe there should be a bunch of provincional deciosion, where we should decide which kind of colony it is would be enough ?
But some deeper mechanism which will influence our home lands would be nice as well.

Trade system would accept some love too. Since it's extremely powerfull so all countries should use them (in contrary to colonistaion, which is essential part of game only for a few nations) but it's boring .
After you make a decent position it's starts to get static and in effect boring. Maby some kind of "trade tax" slider should be added, depending on how greedy is COT owner ? And province would dynamically change to which COT belongs, based on distance and taxation ? it would make the system much more less static, having your COT's more beneficial and important. It would make trade system much deeper.

[IconOfEvi]

Look at all the effort put into Byzantium, for example. That time could easily have gone into more cool stuff for Poland-Lithuania, but it was instead used to create a set of fantasy missions for a dead Empire with only symbolic importance.

Shush you! They are the last of the diodachi and thus they are our Punjabi brothers with very different mothers! p-)

tbh, I wasn't aware they was anything more cool than the Byzantine Empire.

[Chamboozer]

I would change a bit different thing i colonisation:
In the real world each country had a different way of colonising: Spain was brutal one and focused mainy on exploiting lands, portugease and dutch was a bit of trader, Great Britain in this time-frame was mainly a "refugee" colonisation, many miniorites group went to New World.
I would like to see mechanism which would reflect that. In EU2 there were at least trade points, now there is only a regular colony.
Maybe there should be a bunch of provincional deciosion, where we should decide which kind of colony it is would be enough ?
But some deeper mechanism which will influence our home lands would be nice as well.

Trade system would accept some love too. Since it's extremely powerfull so all countries should use them (in contrary to colonistaion, which is essential part of game only for a few nations) but it's boring .
After you make a decent position it's starts to get static and in effect boring. Maby some kind of "trade tax" slider should be added, depending on how greedy is COT owner ? And province would dynamically change to which COT belongs, based on distance and taxation ? it would make the system much more less static, having your COT's more beneficial and important. It would make trade system much deeper.

I say remove CoT's completely and replace them with some sort of 'Trade Route' system which can be taxed.

[jdrou]

It once did.

Hmm, I don't think so. EU3 started in 1453 and In Nomine changed it to 1399. I think EU1 started in 1492 though.

[gja102]

It once did.

Ahh, EUI. How quick people are to forget their own history!

For what it’s worth I completely agree with the OP; the vast majority of players (myself included) start at the earliest possible start date to ‘get the most playing time available’, then quit after 200 years. Meaning most people’s game experiences are shaped by an unlikely medieval trio of Byzantium, Burgundy and Bohemia. It’s just wrong.

EU, to my mind, should be about the great European powers facing off over Europe, America, and eventually, the world. A 1399 start date leads to very poor balance, and makes the eventual emergence of what should be the game’s main themes increasingly unlikely.

The EUI 1492 start date gave you a unified France, a unified Spain, an England no longer fighting the 100 Years War, a Muscovy ready to form Russia from the ruins of the Mongols, a strong, Istanbul-centred Ottoman force, and an Austria poised to auto-inherit an empire. Bar Prussia and Holland, you had all your great powers up and ready to go (and that game only let you play a great power, none of this conquering the world with Ryukyu rubbish).

I can’t tell you what the absolute best start date would be, but it has to be somewhere between 1453 and 1540.

[mudcrabmerchant]

I don't think gradually developing base tax or revealing goods does much when the player already knows where the find gold or where sugar will grow or where a major colonial city is likely to pop up.

Something like Fishman's idea is the best. Exploration and colonial conquest wasn't micromanaged by the ruler. Especially early on, in involved giving someone a mandate and resources and telling them to come back with spices or gold or an empire or two. The decision/event based system Magna Mundi uses is one of the main reasons I'm looking forward to the game, as it's the only way to simulate colonialism with any degree of accuracy. People were always going to follow the major routes to the Americas, the geography of the continents was always going to lead to settlement in different areas in different ways, and having event trees that slowly expand your colonial empire along these logical lines, allowing you to make only the broadest decisions and focus your attention on the old world or your army, is the best way to go.

As for the different types of colonialism, some of it is based off of the characteristics of the nations involved (tiny, naval-trade focused countries like Portugal and the Netherlands are naturally going to be less involved in straight-up conquest), but most of it is based off of where different nations created their colonies. France behaved more like the small trading powers in Louisiana because it was deep inland and mass settlement was not feasible; England took part in such settlement because the Eastern seaboard was temperate and only sparsely populated by natives; Spain is known for brutal conquest because it's the only power that actually conquered real empires with massive population bases. If England conquered the Aztecs, they would have had their own forms of the encomienda system, and you can see what a Spanish settlement of the East Coast would look like by looking at Argentina.

[safferli]

Hmm, I don't think so. EU3 started in 1453 and In Nomine changed it to 1399. I think EU1 started in 1492 though.

I'm pretty sure Gars is talking about EU1

[chals]

the colony thing is in MMU.. just so you know.. It still have its base value thou, but you might lose some of it, or all of it(and just have a base 1 back), or gain some extra, never seen more then 10 thou)