OK, big post.
Victoria 2 - it will have expansions, is not released yet, we can wait. Also, with our complaining when it cames out, you can introduce the features we want. So both of us win.
HOI 3 - the game is recent and already has an expansion. Now it can rest a little, with an expansion arriving and more surely to come.
Now the hard stuff. Should we polish sculpture nº 1 or take the rough edges out of sculture nº 2? It's hard to decide for me.
EU 3 is brilliant and one thing I tried to do by modding it was exactly to make the rest of the world look as buzzy and beautiful and complete like Europe. That's why I named my mod Terra Universalis - not just a game around Europe, a game about the entire planet, with all the countries it had. I wanted to have fun with a minor indonesian or south american or african country. I adapted Divide et Impera's Asia because it was already work done and because I don't have time I didn't do Africa and the Americas yet, but the mod is already very slow and I fear if I try to add more stuff it will freeze. I want to add more provinces, more countries in these zones to make them fun to play, instead of a wait for europeans and die gameplay. Of course provinces+countries is not enough. More representation of cultures, religions, etc. I'll elaborate on this below.
Rome is suffocating. I look at Rome and I see a copy-paste of EU 3 (I don't say it is, of course you worked a lot to make the game and to be distinctive enough, this is just what I feel when I look at it). But then the EU 3 mechanics don't work well in Rome as it is. Rome is considered by many people as a "lost" potential and a non fun game. I like Rome but I agree with them, Rome is not as open minded or exciting as EU 3. I think Rome desesperatly needs an expansion to use this potential and become a more "fun for most" game, without needing to be a gimmick of the sucessfull and praised EU 3. It just needs to expansion to take all the dust above it.
Now something that probably will not fit in this thread, but still I'll do it: what I think needs improvement.
EU 3
- The fulfillment of Terra Universalis
p), that is, much more work with province, cultures, religions and specially countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Try to discover optimizations, IDK, but make these continents look like Europe, a huge cluster of nations to play, that is, try to make the game as full of countries as possible with reasonable speed (I think that in EU 3 it is the additional flag files that slow it down so much). Make fun for us to play in a continent like it is in Europe. Please do not be light with it, do it massively.
- No permanent terra incognita. For the conquest of the world, it is really sad we can't explore some zones. Yes, historically it didn't happen, but in a sandbox game why can't Portugal focus in Africa for 400 years and discover all of it? Maybe link the colonization of these "waste lands" with a particular tech or idea. Also, these "waste lands" were not a waste for who lived there - rotw folks.
- More rotw countries will decrease the colonization importance, hurting countries like Portugal. Why not a special mechanism for these small rotw tribes than can be "colonised"? The coloniser would sort of make it a protectorade and slowly changing them into a full colony, depending on various factors. It would work like an influence. Also, prevent/make difficult/make costly massive landings by europeans overseas. In the game European countries just run over the north american tribes in like 5 years after touching them. In reality it took much more time.
- Add more diplomatic but simple to add actions and AI: defensive only alliance, grand alliances against a big guy, regional alliances (examples: look at the Portuguese-Vijayanagar colaboration against the muslim indian states. In the game this is impossible as countries of different religions hate each other) etc.
- A patrol like commercial action: trade route. Chose the ships, the provinces they should link, click on the "start trade" akin to the "patrol" button, and watch they go and bring income to both provinces/countries. Of course pirates can be specially implemented to disrupt and work with it and it adds a nice representation of the early portuguese and of the dutch empire: seafaring trade nations, that rely mostly in sea trade routes.
Rome
- Add more provinces, more countries, more tribes. One of the problems of Rome is that the map is too small, the countries too few and the big ones too dominating. If it is set in the Alexander time, Greece should be an interesting place, not a 5 province thing. Make it much more complete, add small countries, city states. Do this for all the map because the current map is too simple. Provinces are so big that Carthage touches the Lusitanians easily and then obviously steamroll them. The big 5 are too dominating and few provinces only helps them in steamrolling small, 1-2 province countries.
- Of course, expanded map. The obvious step in an Alexander based expansion is to expand it wast to the Indus and north to the Aral sea at max. Also adding Meroe. This is the minimum. However, when I imagine a start at a date the macedonian height, a map like this would be hilarious. You would own half the map and then proceed to steamroll smallish Rome and Carthage. I mod Rome too and again, referring my mod this time for Rome (sorry for the publicity, but it really completes what goes in my mind), Magna Terra, I wanted to make it possible to start at an Alexandrian time and have fun. How? Including all the known world. Ouch! India, the giant steppes of Central Asia, Arabia, Nubia and Ethiopia, China. Too much? Surely for an expansion, but I think it would be a much more fun game with an Alexandrian empire with much more to conquer. And suddenly the game is not the monotonous big 5 in Europe, we can start at a post-Maurya India and with the warring states in China. The Seleucid syndrome (east backs safe) would be solved too by India added (this syndrome would also probably exist in a Macedonia that ends in the Indus). If well done, it increases the fun, as it will be very different experiences. We can pick a giant empire and go for world conquest. Of course these big empires require what I'll refer in the next point.
- Make it enough funny to play with our country and characters BY ITSELF. That is, in big empires like Rome and Macedonia, give us toys to make us entertained and thrilled and think to conquer our neighbours later or make us suffer the consequences of a major war with an weakened ruler internal network. Make families matter, make governors/government interaction much more visible, make us keep an eye in what's going on in our empire. Create governors/governors interaction. Family rivalries/alliances. Political character marriages. Use our armies not to conquer other countries but to remove governors in mini-civil-wars. Allow us to use military stacks of doom for conquest only after we have our empire internally stable (example: make sure governor A of a important province will not use its own military strength to create a civil war by ensuring it is allied with our family and giving it prestige and all he wants, while having national armies close to governor B that likes to rebel), making conquests slower and helping the small countries to have a chance to breathe with their smaller manpower. This "country only game" would pave the way to a further expansion dealing with the Roman Empire.
- Make us care about characters, not only by their skill but also by their political/wealth importance. Guy A sucks, but he is powerful, so we must do something to make him entertained otherwise our ruler/dynasty may be start to be looked as weaker compared to theirs, affecting income, loyalty, etc. Create more positions for characters than just tech guy/governor/government. Link families and/or character to regions and/or create a regional influence ranking by family, adding lots of possible events and help us sort all the characters of our empire. Example: family X is very influent in Galatia. Maybe it's better to allow them to dominate the local businesses (micromanageable or automatic - like a turn on/off switch then for all the jobs in that region for that family)
- More decisions and laws. Missions are too blank too. Give us a big reward for unifying Greece.
- More diplomatic interaction between countries. Nothing happens in EU Rome diplomatically. Barbarian/Civilized country/provinces interactions - take this money, don't attack us. Grand alliances of small countries, defensive alliances.
- Tribe migrations (can be left for an hypothetical Roman Empire expansion), internal administration too but made different for tribes.
Sorry for this brainstorm. And sorry for its misplacement, but I wanted to explain why my vote on Rome and how hard it is to left EU 3 Rotw left, and how there is more matherial for both to have more expansions.
