Bigger nations must have more problems!

[WeissRaben]

As I hoped to make clear with 'one which turns up frequently', I was trying to get at an argument which I seem to see a lot rather than respond only to you. I agree with the great part of what you've said.

I will point out (to the thread more than to you) that Rome had a good bit of pax romana before the crisis of the third century with even more primitive administrative resources, and over a huge territory. Even after the crisis, it was looking pretty OK under the Five Good Emperors - all talented adopted children rather than firstborns with as it were random stats. With an effectively immortal player in charge, why not a golden age of five hundred years?

Because Rome had almost no external problems in that period, which is something that would hardly happen in the way more crowded Old World of the Early Modern era (mind you, I can see that happen in the New World... before the Europeans arrive) - when the issues did start, it was a boulder rolling down and not stopping until Odoacer ruled in Rome. Moreover, "not talented ruler" is a thing that exists, in EU4 - no matter how you push, a 0/0/0 ruler will be a bother for some and disastrous for others. Could it be used more? It could, yes - IIRC, in EU3 there was a strict difference between a 3* and a 9* ruler, in that it had effects on every facet of that value. It could be brought back, but I think that the slower/higher mana generation is already enough.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Because Rome had almost no external problems in that period, which is something that would hardly happen in the way more crowded Old World of the Early Modern era (mind you, I can see that happen in the New World... before the Europeans arrive) - when the issues did start, it was a boulder rolling down and not stopping until Odoacer ruled in Rome. Moreover, "not talented ruler" is a thing that exists, in EU4 - no matter how you push, a 0/0/0 ruler will be a bother for some and disastrous for others. Could it be used more? It could, yes - IIRC, in EU3 there was a strict difference between a 3* and a 9* ruler, in that it had effects on every facet of that value. It could be brought back, but I think that the slower/higher mana generation is already enough.

Some crisis do depend on the level of the ruler, but those are far and few.
Then again, I can see how some people would then try to change the government for a republic or something like that if it meant never rolling 0's again for a ruler.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Blobbers here forget one important thing. What makes Paradox games great is the overall historical flavour and immersion.

Nobody forgot that. Historical flavor is clearly present in the game with events, national idea descriptions, actual historical nation names, units (though leather cannon is kind of trololol) and more. Immersion is dependent on the individual playing and not a valid argument of game mechanics, nor can it be. Using in the fashion quoted is akin to claiming one person's preferences are better than another. That might be fun in arguments over who has the best fries or something, but not so good in arguments about mechanic interactions. It doesn't add anything.

This increase in difficulty is missing in eu4. The larger you become, the more easy it gets because you are fighting the same enemies as before. So in an RPG sense with level 50 and beyond you still fight lvl 20 enemies and forever will.

High level play in RPG is notoriously easier than low level, in terms of character levels. You have more options + more mechanical interactions and if you optimize them, same-level enemies become increasingly less difficult. Final fantasy had to gouge stats in optional dungeons just to force players to try in the late game. Even Dark Souls, a very different type of RPG, shares this reality. Once you're high enough level in that series, additional levels mean very little and your damage output can be nuts.

Progression is that way in games, and hard to avoid. The best practice IMO was established > 20 years ago in the Warlords series (back when it was really good, Warlords 2 and 3) and MOO. These games had ways of naming a functional runaway the winner without slogging through to an end outcome everyone knew would happen, and integrated such a victory condition into the game.

EU 4 doesn't have a VC, so you set whatever goals you want or use preset ones aka achievements in SP. In MP I guess you can play for score, but it's kind of silly. Mostly it's a last man/alliance group standing thing.

 

[Jules Brunet]

Nobody forgot that. Historical flavor is clearly present in the game with events, national idea descriptions, actual historical nation names, units (though leather cannon is kind of trololol) and more. Immersion is dependent on the individual playing and not a valid argument of game mechanics, nor can it be. Using in the fashion quoted is akin to claiming one person's preferences are better than another. That might be fun in arguments over who has the best fries or something, but not so good in arguments about mechanic interactions. It doesn't add anything.

Well, the leather canon did exist in the early 17th century.

 

[bbqftw]

I go away for just one night and immediately my point is proven. What a surprise.

this is the same genius who cannot tell the difference between a typical WC and a pre 1600 record holding one.

 

[bbqftw]

It demands skill, sure. But, well, I do not care about it. I want to see the game have mechanics that try to make it logical. Sure, as you did, there is ''small point'' that do not make senses (like, number of troops, artillery, casualty...) but those are small detail that do not change the game ''big picture'', while having big country just as stable than any OPM is plainly illogical. Be it in term of game play (where Bob Ross strategy gives more rewards than playing tall form all perspective) or in term of realism (where big Empire were their own worst enemy).




Well, no. I prefer a ''world'' that makes senses when I play and having Ulm WC isn't something that interest me. If you like that, good for you. But it isn't a world that is ''logical'' in a Grand strategy game based on history.

Behold this argumentation.

Claims certain countries runaway with ease on VH, that the difficulty primarily matters early.

When asked what experience he would have that would support this, answer of course is none. But since he is morally indignant he is still right?

This is what is most irking about this type. You claim certain things are trivial, or things that are just not true, based on no actual evidence or personal experience.*

One day I would like to learn some game mechanic from the anti blob crowd. I've argued with a lot of different types of players (tall play fanatics, multiplayer wizards, etc.) and they've all taught me something. But all this anti blob crowd offers is...nothing, all while insisting they have the highest understanding of game mechanics to critique them in a meaningful level.

* you can know things without experiencing them, true, but you have to be familiar with outcomes of similar situations to be able to simulate such outcomes

 

[Jules Brunet]

Behold this argumentation.

Claims certain countries runaway with ease on VH, that the difficulty primarily matters early.

When asked what experience he would have that would support this, answer of course is none. But since he is morally indignant he is still right?

This is what is most irking about this type. You claim certain things are trivial, or things that are just not true, based on no personal experience.*


* you can know things without experiencing them, true, but you have to be familiar with outcomes of similar situations to be able to simulate such outcomes

Thanks for being civilized. Not like a moderator came sooner about it but oh well

Yes, at some point even on VH it doesn't change anything. Sure, your neighbour can have more from the same DEV than you, but does it matter when you have twice or thrice their development? Unless you go, like you seem to like, for WC and you have to navigate between coalition, you will find it quite easy at some point. Meanwhile, game like the CIV franchise (didn't play on the six though) will give you some intern difficulties since, well, it isn't a ''World conquest game only''. That means, any plays style will have a challenge on the higher difficulties level. Meanwhile, a player who wants to, let's say, form Italy on VH will probably find the game quite easier once its done and he won the first war against Ottoblob and France. Sure, it wasn't a walk in the park until that point, but once you are bigger than your rival, you do not have internal challenge to manage.

 

[Bearjuden]

I actually see EU as a hybrid between traditional RPG and Grand Strategy. Instead of picking a race, a class and choosing talents or feats, you pick a country and choose its government form and idea sets. And you can choose between power gaming and roleplaying and both routes are considered fine.

Very few RPG would think that "higher-level characters must have more problems" though. Instead, the generally accepted consensus is that "higher-level play should be somewhat different from low level one, so that the player can have fun from the beginning to the end".

That is something it arguably should be, but it simply isn't. It is, right now, a 4x game. It has the barest hints of an rpg layered on top, courtesy of ruler traits, but you can't even level up your stats (mana) the way a true rpg would let you, nor choose your skills. At its core it is a 4x game through and through (as I said, it maps to all four x's pretty well). That in turn means the goal of the game is mega conquests, one tags, one faiths, etc. Which is exactly what you see. By game's end, it literally doesn't matter who you started with, you'll have no less than a continent's worth of land.

RPGs don't change when you get higher level, either, they expand on your powers so that you feel stronger while also raising the challenges so that you don't become overpowered. If you want to simulate this in a historical sandbox, you don't have other countries megablob (an external threat that once defeated leaves you in the same problem you were in), you instead make it so that as you get larger, your domestic situation is harder and harder to maintain somehow (inverse positive feedback, in a sense - the larger you get, the harder internal stuff gets to make up for the decreasing external challenge; I have ideas but I'm not pushing anything here, just a general principal). That's what brings countries down historically anyway, and it works nicely as a mechanic that smaller countries won't have to worry about it as much while larger ones eventually collapse.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well, the leather canon did exist in the early 17th century.

I'm aware. The idea of nations choosing to use them in scenarios with viable alternatives is comical.

Meanwhile, game like the CIV franchise (didn't play on the six though) will give you some intern difficulties since, well, it isn't a ''World conquest game only''.

Hahahaha!

Non-military VCs in Civ are only viable because the AI doesn't try. If you can actually post up and defend vs nukes or have such a tech lead you can live while going for culture, you either a) could have won militarily or b) opponents just sat there while you won because they're programmed to actively throw. Which Civ game am I referring to?

All of them. And they share the same "runaway before the game ends" issue described here too.

 

[Jules Brunet]

Non-military VCs in Civ are only viable because the AI doesn't try. If you can actually post up and defend vs nukes or have such a tech lead you can live while going for culture, you either a) could have won militarily or b) opponents just sat there while you won because they're programmed to actively throw. Which Civ game am I referring to?

All of them. And they share the same "runaway before the game ends" issue described here too.

Sure, military is the main focus that you need even if you go for a cultural victory. But you still have the ''possibilities'' to win without going for a world conquest, even if it only means that your big army that could eat the world is on stand still.

And Civ got backlash mechanics for the size of the Empire, be it unhappiness or corruption, depending on the game. Which means, you got a ''sweet spot'' of number of cities, depending again on which Civ game, where you have the best of everything. After that, you get less and less reward from other cities.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Sure, military is the main focus that you need even if you go for a cultural victory. But you still have the ''possibilities'' to win without going for a world conquest, even if it only means that your big army that could eat the world is on stand still.

And Civ got backlash mechanics for the size of the Empire, be it unhappiness or corruption, depending on the game. Which means, you got a ''sweet spot'' of number of cities, depending again on which Civ game, where you have the best of everything. After that, you get less and less reward from other cities.

Only civ 5 had a contrived sweet spot. None in 4 or 6 long-term, and while you got diminishing returns in earlier civs from corruption/waste they were always net positives if you didn't put poor building choices in there.

The "possibility" to win via opponent game throwing/not trying is not an attractive mechanic, nor is it a convincing argument. At least the EU 4 AI doesn't ignore the game's own rules to that extent just to make a VC "possible".

 

[Jules Brunet]

Only civ 5 had a contrived sweet spot. None in 4 or 6 long-term, and while you got diminishing returns in earlier civs from corruption/waste they were always net positives if you didn't put poor building choices in there.

The "possibility" to win via opponent game throwing/not trying is not an attractive mechanic, nor is it a convincing argument. At least the EU 4 AI doesn't ignore the game's own rules to that extent just to make a VC "possible".

It has been a few years since I played Civ 4, but cities did have a maintenance cost the farther it was, making far colonization less ''profitable'' than close one. You do not have it in EU4, as long as you got a good number of State (Which can get easily quite High with Empire Rank and Admin). And the possibility to ''win'' without a world conquest is something that I find attracting, even if IA aren't build for those victories and will only challenge you in some war.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It has been a few years since I played Civ 4, but cities did have a maintenance cost the farther it was, making far colonization less ''profitable'' than close one. You do not have it in EU4, as long as you got a good number of State (Which can get easily quite High with Empire Rank and Admin). And the possibility to ''win'' without a world conquest is something that I find attracting, even if IA aren't build for those victories and will only challenge you in some war.

Expanding to 12 cities by 1 AD in higher difficulties was pretty tough in civ 4 (on deity you'd need an amazing start where you don't get mass AI forward-settled, marathon speed + luck, or something of that nature). Even if you got them paying for them would be non-trivial (but possible). But eventually maintenance was capped and mid game techs/civics could remove the distance modifier completely or make it a joke depending on what you pick (> 100 cities all net positive easily).

This is the same as in EU 4 where expansion is most costly and slow early on than it is late game. It's not unrealistic to get ~5000-6000 development by 1700, then pick up the remaining 17000ish in the world over the last 100 years.

But again, the best players accomplish this markedly sooner, so skill variance in approach is real.

 

[inreadible]

Yet higher level characters are fighting higher level monsters.
This increase in difficulty is missing in eu4. The larger you become, the more easy it gets because you are fighting the same enemies as before. So in an RPG sense with level 50 and beyond you still fight lvl 20 enemies and forever will.
That suits some players whos concept of challenge is limited to not winning fast enough. They will still play a lot to get their "server first" maxlevel achievements and put a lot if effort into the game to perfect their grinding strategy to set a new lvl1 to max record.
Yet when all you can do is killing mobs that are way too easy for you the game itself is rather dull. If the mobs would still be a challenge at higher level you could still do speedruns (just not as easy) yet the game would still be fun for others, too.

Thats what people are asking for. That blobs in eu4 still face a challenge. Preferably not by having the AI blob like crazy, too. That would destroy a lot of eu4 quasi historical flavor when all minors are gone by 1530.
So instead "high level" (blob) nations need a new challenge.

So would limiting expansion make the game any more challenging than it is or would the challenge end even earlier in the game than currently? The suggested changes would shoot the AI nations in the knee also, so instead of a 2000 dev player fighting against a 1000 dev Ottomans we might end up with a 1500 dev player fighting against a 500 dev Ottomans. I really can't see restricting blobbing as a way to make the game more challenging as pretty much any change would hit the AI harder than a decent player. Unless we are talking about player only changes, but that would just be stupid.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Something that made me think. Whenever a new monarch takes over, the stability drop will be 1 plus a certain value depending on which attributes the heir has lower than the dying king, so it could go from a 1 to 4 drop (or 2 to 5 if he was a general).
I guess you can circumvent this by keeping admin points on stand by for when the Monarch buys it, but it could be a way of slowing down coring or teching a little but while trying to better show the initial chaos that comes after a new King assumes, specially if the previous one was considered such a good ruler.
Just a suggestion, I guess there will be pros and cons arguments for this, in which case I would like to see what would be the general opinion on this thread.

 

[inreadible]

RPGs don't change when you get higher level, either, they expand on your powers so that you feel stronger while also raising the challenges so that you don't become overpowered. If you want to simulate this in a historical sandbox, you don't have other countries megablob (an external threat that once defeated leaves you in the same problem you were in), you instead make it so that as you get larger, your domestic situation is harder and harder to maintain somehow (inverse positive feedback, in a sense - the larger you get, the harder internal stuff gets to make up for the decreasing external challenge; I have ideas but I'm not pushing anything here, just a general principal). That's what brings countries down historically anyway, and it works nicely as a mechanic that smaller countries won't have to worry about it as much while larger ones eventually collapse.

Wouldn't this, in RPG terms, mean that when your character grows in levels over a certain point, he will start losing stats? We have to remember that whatever changes, the gameplay should be rewarding. If there is a point after which holding your nation together becomes impossible, then players will just conquer until that pre-determined size and stop. What then? You hold your lands, pick all military ideas, are the strongest nation on earth and are left wondering why the game didn't become any more challenging, it just ended sooner because you know that if you would conquer 1 more province, everything would just blow up and you might as well start a new game.

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

Expanding to 12 cities by 1 AD in higher difficulties was pretty tough in civ 4 (on deity you'd need an amazing start where you don't get mass AI forward-settled, marathon speed + luck, or something of that nature). Even if you got them paying for them would be non-trivial (but possible). But eventually maintenance was capped and mid game techs/civics could remove the distance modifier completely or make it a joke depending on what you pick (> 100 cities all net positive easily).

This is the same as in EU 4 where expansion is most costly and slow early on than it is late game. It's not unrealistic to get ~5000-6000 development by 1700, then pick up the remaining 17000ish in the world over the last 100 years.

But again, the best players accomplish this markedly sooner, so skill variance in approach is real.

My proposal is to nerf late-game blobbing. The reason why we see such massive spikes in dev is due to things like Admin Efficiency and Absolutism, which are all plus and no minus(barring the disaster, but it is manageable).
Is it realistic for countries to take so much dev from one war as they do? No, not at all! Napoleon established many puppet states, France itself didn't expand that much.
My idea is to make admin efficiency less rewarding core-wise and to give drawbacks to Absolutism. Perhaps make Absolutist governments very fragile, much like IRL(look at Tsarist Russia). It would give a late-game challenge and keep players on their toes whilst providing meaningful gameplay

 

[Dominion]

Only civ 5 had a contrived sweet spot. None in 4 or 6 long-term, and while you got diminishing returns in earlier civs from corruption/waste they were always net positives if you didn't put poor building choices in there.

The "possibility" to win via opponent game throwing/not trying is not an attractive mechanic, nor is it a convincing argument. At least the EU 4 AI doesn't ignore the game's own rules to that extent just to make a VC "possible".

To add, those issues weren't felt in civ5.

You went up to your desired number of cities, then pursued your victory path.
It was more of a roadblock than a strategical element. Just saying "nope, can't do that. Do something else." works when empty land can stay empty even in a WC. Not here.
On top of that, EU4's WCs are Civs normal victories. Always been like that. Nobody aimed for conquest specifically. It was just the easiest one prior to c5.

And there was no hard block prior to civ5.

We're comparing apples to oranges.

 

[Bearjuden]

Wouldn't this, in RPG terms, mean that when your character grows in levels over a certain point, he will start losing stats? We have to remember that whatever changes, the gameplay should be rewarding. If there is a point after which holding your nation together becomes impossible, then players will just conquer until that pre-determined size and stop. What then? You hold your lands, pick all military ideas, are the strongest nation on earth and are left wondering why the game didn't become any more challenging, it just ended sooner because you know that if you would conquer 1 more province, everything would just blow up and you might as well start a new game.

Of course you shouldn't lose your stuff at high power levels, don't be silly. And I'm not proposing a threshold at "oh, at 600 development your empire magically explodes". In CK2, once you've reached the size you want, an easy majority of your interactions are going to be with people within your own realm. When you're just one province, that's not true; your interacting with a ton of people outside of you. The type of actions you undertake and who you do them to are directly impacted by your size.

In EU4, to me, this would translate to some indeterminate system of internal politics which would require more attention as you grow. With very few provinces, everything is close enough to your capital that you can keep a firm hand on things. At some intermediate number, the noble dynasties or what have you are growing a bit wayward. And then at some point, it requires the players pretty much nonstop attention to keep them happy. At some soft limit, your skill in managing what you have is reached and further expansion must be indirect - beating up your enemies to prevent them from growing too strong while also holding your country together, forging strategic alliances to prevent those nations from attacking you, guaranteeing countries that could provide land to your enemies, etc. And if you don't do that for whatever reason - some bad combination of events, inability to declare war, etc, then they band together and well now all of a sudden you're being knocked down a peg or two. Not to your destruction - they'll eventually run into the same problems you did, of course - but you won't be on top anymore.

That's what I mean by raising the difficulty of challenges in this case. Not that you get weaker, but your problems and difficulties grow in correlation with how close to top dog you are. Either you choose not to push yourself to the limit and not ever reach number one, or you do to maximize your power at the risk of eventual collapse.

(Edit: of course, this is just the GSG solution to the problem. The 4x version is just to have your enemies blob as hard as you do so that at every given point you have an enemy of comparable strength to fight, but as noted before, this leads to the classic 4x problem of at some point, sooner or later, you will be the last man standing)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My proposal is to nerf late-game blobbing. The reason why we see such massive spikes in dev is due to things like Admin Efficiency and Absolutism, which are all plus and no minus(barring the disaster, but it is manageable).
Is it realistic for countries to take so much dev from one war as they do? No, not at all! Napoleon established many puppet states, France itself didn't expand that much.
My idea is to make admin efficiency less rewarding core-wise and to give drawbacks to Absolutism. Perhaps make Absolutist governments very fragile, much like IRL(look at Tsarist Russia). It would give a late-game challenge and keep players on their toes whilst providing meaningful gameplay

Still not establishing a credible basis for the need to change. History isn't, for reasons I already presented and were not refuted. No criteria, no viable history-based argument on this, period. For an argument to be valid it must be coherent, and without that criteria it is not .

Nobody aimed for conquest specifically. It was just the easiest one prior to c5.

If by easiest you mean objectively the most challenging VC in most of the six mainline civ titles...if not all six. If you can win conquest in pre civ-5, you can win any other VC without exception, which is why I use "objectively" (note I'm lumping domination/conquest here for brevity). Civ 5 made its domination weird in only requiring capitals, so you could conceivably sneak raid them and win that way, utterly ignoring a true runaway military. Civ 6 that is less likely but still possible. Still, on average military dominance in civ 5/6 to the extent of allowing conquest still allows you to also deny any VCs to the enemy, therefore attaining any VC you want.

Civ 5 had a contrived expansion limit, akin to limiting nations in EU 4 to 1000 development and massively penalizing further expansion so much that doing so hurts you (IE no incentive). Suggestions on this thread seem to want this kind of idea present in EU 4, but it was a cancer to civ 5 and I'm not seeing why spreading it into EU makes EU better. Rather than artificially limiting skill variance, I'd rather see won games end faster.

With no actual VC in EU 4, however, it's not clear what could be done to make it better in that regard other than just improving the sheer volume of unnecessary inputs in the game so it's less tedious.