I think most of us are glad that modern Paradox games are not railroaded to any major degree. They're alt-history simulators, after all, not history simulators. As they say, as soon as the game starts, history veers off course.
And yet, there is a phenomenon that is a pillar of Hearts of Iron 4 and has recently been added to Europa Universalis 4 which I'll call "roading" which is a milder version of railroading and is also bad, though not as bad as railroading.
In EU4, the mission trees are bad for the same reason railroading is. They're a gamey way of making countries follow actual history to a degree, but only on a superficial level without any of the reasons actual history occurred the way it did being in place. The whole permanent claims thing is particularly bad; the claims system in EU4 is very simplistic, to put it nicely, but mission granted permanent claims are a buff that's better than regular claims with zero historic/in-universe justification. This doesn't pose a problem for those who don't care about historicity, but as with all the complaints about when things are historically accurate, lots of people do. I play Paradox games because nothing even comes close to reaching their historical accuracy, and I'm clearly not the only one.
In HOI4, the much smaller time scale renders much of the above moot, as it's extremely hard to radically alter the historical factors that were in place in 1935 by the game's end date. Nevertheless, focus trees are still bad, for a wholly different reason that also applies to a lesser degree to mission trees: that every tag needs one.
This creates a massive amount of work for devs/modders, and cripples alt-history by adding more hurdles for countries to be added. It's not just me; there was a huge amount of complains about the price of Death or Dishonor. There's no simple solution to the issue, but the fact that such a large amount of dev time and effort was devoted to a handful of small countries rather than universal (or regional) mechanics speaks ill for the game as a whole. Throughout Indian history, a number of large empires have broken apart into chaotic messes. In CK2 for instance, though this is unlikely to happen, it can for as long as the game runs, and would happen a whole lot more with a number of fairly minor changes that I don't know the devs reasons for not implementing. In EU4 on the other hand, empries crumbling from within only ever happened with the forced and ahistorical Mingsplotion. Even if it did happen in EU4 India, the countries would ether ahistorically be recycled tags (in reality, country names recycle, but countries only do within decades) or have a generic mission tree.
There is one final problem with roading; its superficial fixing of problems leads to the underlying problem never being fixed. This is best illustrated with EU4's rare railroads of the Burgundian Inheritance and the Iberian Wedding. People wanting a more historic game sometimes complain about these events, as do those wanting a more varied one (railroading is bad) but more rarely does anyone complain about EU4's shonky personal union system. The most famous and important union of the era was between Aragon and Castile, and since there's a clumsy substitute for a decent system in the game in this one instance, people care far less about the game's general lacking in what could be a fun minigame of marrying your heirs to people in line for other thrones, then in the latter stages balancing this with getting enormous AE like in the case of the War of the Spanish Succession. This applies to roading too: focuses to grant factories or forts in HOI4 cover up some other problem which could theoretically be fixed with better economy simulation or AI understanding of geopolitics, something which can and probably would make the game better in other respects too.
Tl;dr: Paradox games would be better without countries getting a buff from a short list of options based on a tree.
And yet, there is a phenomenon that is a pillar of Hearts of Iron 4 and has recently been added to Europa Universalis 4 which I'll call "roading" which is a milder version of railroading and is also bad, though not as bad as railroading.
In EU4, the mission trees are bad for the same reason railroading is. They're a gamey way of making countries follow actual history to a degree, but only on a superficial level without any of the reasons actual history occurred the way it did being in place. The whole permanent claims thing is particularly bad; the claims system in EU4 is very simplistic, to put it nicely, but mission granted permanent claims are a buff that's better than regular claims with zero historic/in-universe justification. This doesn't pose a problem for those who don't care about historicity, but as with all the complaints about when things are historically accurate, lots of people do. I play Paradox games because nothing even comes close to reaching their historical accuracy, and I'm clearly not the only one.
In HOI4, the much smaller time scale renders much of the above moot, as it's extremely hard to radically alter the historical factors that were in place in 1935 by the game's end date. Nevertheless, focus trees are still bad, for a wholly different reason that also applies to a lesser degree to mission trees: that every tag needs one.
This creates a massive amount of work for devs/modders, and cripples alt-history by adding more hurdles for countries to be added. It's not just me; there was a huge amount of complains about the price of Death or Dishonor. There's no simple solution to the issue, but the fact that such a large amount of dev time and effort was devoted to a handful of small countries rather than universal (or regional) mechanics speaks ill for the game as a whole. Throughout Indian history, a number of large empires have broken apart into chaotic messes. In CK2 for instance, though this is unlikely to happen, it can for as long as the game runs, and would happen a whole lot more with a number of fairly minor changes that I don't know the devs reasons for not implementing. In EU4 on the other hand, empries crumbling from within only ever happened with the forced and ahistorical Mingsplotion. Even if it did happen in EU4 India, the countries would ether ahistorically be recycled tags (in reality, country names recycle, but countries only do within decades) or have a generic mission tree.
There is one final problem with roading; its superficial fixing of problems leads to the underlying problem never being fixed. This is best illustrated with EU4's rare railroads of the Burgundian Inheritance and the Iberian Wedding. People wanting a more historic game sometimes complain about these events, as do those wanting a more varied one (railroading is bad) but more rarely does anyone complain about EU4's shonky personal union system. The most famous and important union of the era was between Aragon and Castile, and since there's a clumsy substitute for a decent system in the game in this one instance, people care far less about the game's general lacking in what could be a fun minigame of marrying your heirs to people in line for other thrones, then in the latter stages balancing this with getting enormous AE like in the case of the War of the Spanish Succession. This applies to roading too: focuses to grant factories or forts in HOI4 cover up some other problem which could theoretically be fixed with better economy simulation or AI understanding of geopolitics, something which can and probably would make the game better in other respects too.
Tl;dr: Paradox games would be better without countries getting a buff from a short list of options based on a tree.
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