Brainstorming peaceful playstyle for EU4.

[Zak Preston]

Hello!

First of all I'd like to clarify from the very beginning that this thread is not for demands, petitions or hating. This thread is supposed to give PDS ideas how to improve RU4 and make it fun. Some of suggested features will be hard to implement due to performance issues, some will need serious AI or game balance overhaul and some won't be as effective as they seem to be. I repeat, that with this topic I intend to give EU4 game designers sketches for possible new features and it's up to them to decide which one are worth a try to implement or not. Maybe they already have their own ideas and for sure they have a vision on how EU4 project should develop in future.

Eu4 vs classic Global Grand Strategies​

My favorite global strategies are Civilization I/II, Alpha Centaury, Colonization and Master of Orion II, Crusader Kings II and Europa Universalis IV. Still I can't master Victoria II, And I didn't play any previous PDS games.
First of all I was wondering what EU4 really lacked when compared to any other listed above game. The answer was quite simple: peaceful ways to dominate the world or region.
That thought and forum searches led to another thoughts: will this peaceful way be fun and challenging enough to compete with unmatched EU4 warfare?
The last ideas were inspired by a recent topic about any single reason for a nation to stay small.
Europa Universalis has the most complex and advanced warfare I've ever met in any strategy before. All those tricky CB's, attrition, supply limits, manpower, forcelimits, tricks with protectorates, marches, vassals feeding are quite challenging for any new player. But when one accommodates to all those factors, EU4 becomes quite simple and comfortable to play thanks to awesome automation tools. This is where the lack of peace time activities shows in full strength.

• Some games like Civ series, MoO2 or Alpha Centauri have give player a choice to build military, cultural or technological civilization by allowing research different technological branches. This is why an expansionist civilization may lag in cultural or technological aspect, while a small technologically advanced race can have a small but extremely powerful army.
• Colonization I on the other hand gives player some micromanagement of economics and population management, which means that if your colonial nation is really big, you won't be able to manage everything perfectly, and there would be less population per town, since colonists flow from Europe is limited.
• Crusader Kings 2 offers a superdetailed dynasty management, plots, assassinations and all that dirty stuff that spins around power struggle. You can build cities, castles and temples, upgrade them and become a regional superpower as a 5-10 province minor with little to no conquests due to careful internal politics, wise marriages, bribes and succession law regulations.
• So, let's start from simple: Anyone of us least once has had been stuck with Regency Council and the 1-year old monarch and prayed that at least any aly could call us to arms. But sometimes it doesn't happen and 14-15 game years turned into complete boredom even on x5 speed.

What activities are available to player?

• Support rebels
• Exploration and colonization (if proper ideas are unlocked)
• Improve relations
• Build upgrades in provinces
• Try to experiment with trade nodes, steering and all that weird stuff (still dunno how it works)

I guess it's not quite enough for a saturated peaceful gameplay.

Why expansion is not always the best way.​

Some large empires can encounter rebellions or peasants uprisings, which are not a big deal and still are quite boring. But what should small states do in that period
Personally I always prefer a peaceful way in any global strategy, but EU4 doesn't give any reasonable and fun activities that seriously impact your state. I always wondered, what is the sense of building a huge empire, conquer countless nations when your own nation suffers from war casualties, loans, stability drops, rebellions and hostile sieges? Anyway WWI will make almost any empire crush to dust and WWII will finish any remaining for sure. So a restored Roman Empire, arguably, won't survive industrialization (since westernization is not that easy) and countless nations will find their way to freedom and independence. Also, as we know, any large empire had tensions between it's cultures which led to stability drops. Unfortunately even Autonomy system is quite simple and straightforward, without any challenges and hard decisions. By the way, the most realistic multinational empire-like state in EU4 is PLC with it's constant rebellions, noble uprisings and religious zealots. I can be wrong, but I can't remember any single empire in EU4 timeframe that has accepted foreign cultures (from other cultural groups in game terms) as their own. Even Austria has accepted Hungarian culture in 1876 only. So, in vast majority of cases every single large state had a dominant culture, which led social inequality and birth of nationalism.
On the other hand, small states like Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Moldavia, Wallachia or Italian minors showed huge resilience and some of them even have formed larger nations.

Foreign affairs​

Eu4 has a lot of fun and tricky ways to drag an opposing state into war, but what mechanics actually punishes player for aggressiveness? Guess it's an "aggressive expansion" penalty and long truce timers, aside from manpower, stability and war exhaustion issues which are quite simple to manage for a semi-decent player. But AE only affects those who annex territories, and there is a small penalty called "was at war". IRL foreign affairs are much more complex, and waging war means serious problems with stability for all who neighbor opponents, cutting down trade, stability, noble's relations, but boosting arms and supplies production, which leads to negative attitude increase towards aggressor anyway.
For example, if Milan starts waging wars to make enemy pay reparations, transfer trade power, release nations, annul treaties or force fleet basing rights on Italian minors, none around won't think bad about peaceful but aggressive Milan.

Suggestions:

• Make any aggressive act (except reconquest, maybe) hit your diplomatic reputation with nations that were friends with a victim.
• Give a small diplomatic reputation bonus to nations that don't play aggressively.

If Milan starts fighting with Savoy, their friends will dislike the aggressor, for example, allowing victim to form a military block to defend from the raging neighbor =)

Dynasties, monarchs and their relations.​

Sometimes personal relations between rulers were more important than religious, economics or even geopolitical. For example, Russian army suppressed Hungarian rebels in 1848-1849, or saved Austria from collapse in The War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802) or took part in Seven Years War. For sure geopolitical interests had it's own weight in decisions, but I can't find any serious gains Russian Empire received from those wars.
On the other hand, personal antipathy or rivalry between sovereigns could lead to countless casualties on both sides.
Eu4 monarchs are completely faceless sets of stats, sometimes you don't know who will rule next your precious empire, and when you see a 1/1/2 3 years old heir I guess the only wish encountered is to kill that abomination. I have yet to encounter monarch education events, but no possibility to remove an imbecile from succession to the throne or send him to first grade school for incapable makes me cry sometimes.

Suggestions:

• Add a simplistic family tree with
• Add a basic interface that would allow to choose a royal marriage.
• Add more obvious alerts when Claim Throne is possible.
• Add small penalties and bonuses for relations between monarchs (more\less likely to join war, for example)

More obvious and deeper matrimonial system will improve gameplay.

Staying a small nation or playing peacefully shouldn't be boring.​

In EU4 the larger state you play, the more fun you get. Mostly thanks to extremely comfortable and user-friendly interface, allowing to perform same actions in various ways. AoW pushed standards even further, making recruiting super easy. Many global strategies don't have a good UI, making people click a lot to build what they need in multiple cities, which somehow serves a "peace time activity".

History has examples of small but influential and prosperous nations that didn't expand much, but still were rich and quite influential. For example Switzerland, Sweden (past 1721), Norway, Netherlands, Italian states, and Japan (they tried, but mostly failed). I can suppose that the secret of their survival in Grand European Bloodbath was in national unity, certain resilience, strong allies and economics.
The secret of most small countries is in their relatively high and homogenous population with minimum possible national and religious minorities. "One nation – one state" is a good slogan that started working in XIX-XX centuries mostly, when nationalism ideas started spreading over Europe.
In theory more people that live in province means more taxes, more recruits, more production output, which leads to overall prosperity. Simply speaking, prosperity means more more urban population (traders, lawyers, teachers, aristocracy, artisans, architects, poets, scientists, officers, and burgers). So here we got a nice perfect circle: more population => more wealth => even more population => even more wealth. The only thing you need to maintain is peace on your own territories and avoid heavy casualties in military campaigns.

Proposals:
Add an option to increase quality of provinces for small and peaceful nations if they are stable, mononational:

• Build small towns/villages (goods produced + tax), castles (FL + defensiveness) and monasteries (-enemy missionary strenghth + tax) aside from buildings to increase population => BT, defensiveness and goods produced. The function of population growth depending on settlements quantity shouldn't be linear to avoid abuses.
• Spend MP and ducats on immigration programs to settle low-pop provinces.
• Small bonuses to trade, production and science if the state is small and peaceful. This will encourage players to avoid aggressive acts and concentrate on dirty politics and trade.
• Increase Diplomatic relations for small countries.

Any small prosperous state (like Ragusa was IRL) wants to have a strong ally that also benefits from this friendship, (even better to have multiple allies for sure). But if your country is small but rich and has influence, why not to try to increase your sphere of influence on other small states? In EU4 force vassalization is the only way for a small state to control another small state, which is not enough for such an advanced game.

Proposals on military options:

• Allow to form military blocks for small nations (as a way to upgrade an alliance) that make the whole block take part in war automatically (both defensive and offensive).
• Allow military blocks that later could be turned into confederations (like NA natives) if one of the members has enough money, influence and power to do so. Power struggle inside those small alliances may be hillarious =).
• Allow to clarify wargoals for your alliance (like Crimea goes to Theodoro and Kuban to Circassia) before starting an expansion war to avoid problems with multiple claims on one province.
• Add new CB's to release whole nations (like Basque nation form Spain) as a sovereign state.

Let's try to imagine some alternate history:

• 1. Ireland has managed to defend it's independence and became a "second Portugal", colonizing North and Central America. For sure there would be colonial wars started by other colonizers and subjugation attempts started by England. But if Ireland withstands and expands it's colonies, why wouldn't it become more populous, rich and why wouldn't Dublin become a trade node itself (possibly removing another trade node)? In gameplay terms there should be a way to increase BT for some provinces, and stable rich minors might have some advantages over blobs.
  In EU4 fully formed Ireland has 10 forcelimit and around 25 naval FL. Any large nation can swallow Ireland without a sweat.
• 2. Theodoro: took all Crimea and all almost uninhabited Northern Black Sea and Azov steppes, somehow got allies (PLC or Muscovy\Russia for example). What happens next IRL: colonization of super fertile chernozem lands, building new ports, cities and towns (like Russia did after conquering those lands from Turks). Population grows, tax income raises, manpower and force limit pool grows.
  Same for Goths: One single war with PLC\Russia\Ottomans, and poor Theodoro are annexed.

What gameplay changes proposed features could bring:

A small nation plays not around expanding territories, but rather expanding it's influence over neighbors. Instead of grabbing any land they can snatch, a small antion will try to find allies, form a military block and try to strenghen it's bonds to confederation. Once the goal is achieved, the real fun begins: you can start to release nations from large empires, invite them to your block, help them rise from dust and turn into another small but powerful force.
Besides warfare my proposals would allow people to take breaks from conquests and start developing their state.

Peaceful gameplay for large nations​

Let's take Russia for example: a huge colonial empire with relatively large population but low pops density. IRL Russia tended to populate numerous steppe regions (Black Sea steppes, Siberian Tundras, Caspian regions and so on) which isn't represented in EU4 completely. Because of high aggressiveness, Russia somehow forgot to concentrate on it's people's needs and tended to lag behind in terms of “technologies” and social development (Russia was one of the last empires that canceled serfdom and started industrialization).
And now imagine Russia that lost battle of Poltava and chose the Swedish way: improve quality of life, adopt humanism, tolerance and cooperation instead of countless wars.

Proposal:

• Allow large states to increase BT of their title nations provinces in a slower rate
• Give some sort of national decisions to grant accepted cultures title nation privileges, (much like forming Austria-Hungary or Three Nations Commonwealth).
• The possible drawback is a period of largely increased unrest and pretenders rises or nobles wars (like peasant's wars) could be equivalent to a small westernization.
• Add a decision to federalize or decentralize large empires, boosting stability and reducing accepted culture threshold at the cost of autonomy. This would help multicultural and multireligious empires to build a more tolerant and humanistic society.

Conclusion​

I don't want to limit or discourage players from conquests and don't intend to make harder for anyone. I would like to add more edges, complexity and deepness to EU4 by adding a peaceful gameplay mechanics that would be fun and challenging.

 

[Zak Preston]

To do:
1. Espionage, sabotage, advanced rebels
2. Different types of monarchies and interaction between king and possible parliament.

 

[Zak Preston]

reserve 2

 

[cleef]

Maybe you could add and develop a real ESPIONAGE branch into your post. Espionage atm is bland and c**p pretty much.

I want to see heir/ruler/merchant/monarch/general assassination plots! Gain a CB if the enemy's plot fails, etc.

 

[PiriReis]

Add factions to the great powers.

 

[WeissRaben]

Add factions to the great powers.

Factions to everyone, really. Every nation had its internal quarrels.

 

[ero_sk]

Good article, totally agree with majority of the content. Personally I think that Paradox's games such as EU and Victoria have great potential to greatly simulate management of the nation and international relations however that potential is not enough exploited (although it's much better in Victoria 2).

Factions to everyone, really. Every nation had its internal quarrels.

Agree. However I think that current faction system such as the one for merchant republics is still too simplistic.

 

[Zak Preston]

Maybe you could add and develop a real ESPIONAGE branch into your post. Espionage atm is bland and c**p pretty much.

I want to see heir/ruler/merchant/monarch/general assassination plots! Gain a CB if the enemy's plot fails, etc.

[skip IMG]

Espionage, sabotage and advanced rebel system is really something that needs to be taken into consideration =)
Also current trade system is too hard for me to understand, this is why I can't propose anything.

 

[Zak Preston]

Add factions to the great powers.

Factions to everyone, really. Every nation had its internal quarrels.

I'm afraid that internal factions and generals assassinations, alongside with pops system may be a good idea, but would seem like EU4 stealed features from CK2 and Vic2...

 

[moscal]

High governmental body - (parlament; sejm; senate; divan; etats-generaux). Different factions will have an impact on what is happening in the country. But long-term domination of one faction will spoil the state (eg. aristocracy in France) so player can not always invest in one fraction. BUT faction was a very dissatisfied with the loss of influence.

State controlled economy - france administration to take control of the guilds, merchant houses, regulated prices etc. More and more in France depended on the ability of the king and the stewards and less and less of a free market. Inefficiency of controlling market power can lead to tragedy, but without control economy may be unprepared for the great war.

Migration - if the country is wrong, the manpower and the tax base flees to other regions.

Controlled internal migration - BYZ, TUR or PER have a tradition of involuntary resettlement of people to separate the interacting groups hostile to the central government.

 

[Zak Preston]

High governmental body - (parlament; sejm; senate; divan; etats-generaux). Different factions will have an impact on what is happening in the country. But long-term domination of one faction will spoil the state (eg. aristocracy in France) so player can not always invest in one fraction. BUT faction was a very dissatisfied with the loss of influence.

State controlled economy - france administration to take control of the guilds, merchant houses, regulated prices etc. More and more in France depended on the ability of the king and the stewards and less and less of a free market. Inefficiency of controlling market power can lead to tragedy, but without control economy may be unprepared for the great war.

Migration - if the country is wrong, the manpower and the tax base flees to other regions.

Controlled internal migration - BYZ, TUR or PER have a tradition of involuntary resettlement of people to separate the interacting groups hostile to the central government.

Different types of monarchies could really have their own unique mechanics, not only a couple of small bonuses.
Migration is something I proposed in initial post to increase province's BT.
Agree about economics and add that trading with strategical goods (mostly food, arms and ship lumber) with other states could add more deepness to the game.

 

[zorkman]

Very well thought out & detailed post, with lots to agree with. Like the OP I am not a warmonger, but find the game is certainly against you if you don't expend constantly, & boring when war doesn't occur. Vicky 2 & CK2 are far better in this regard. Cannot understand why some of the character interaction & dynasty's from CK2 wasn't introduced into the game. It is like any characters in the game are just cardboard.

 

[Enewald]

I would play a Victoria game stretching from 15th century to 19th century so hard...

Eu4 just seems too simplistic. Wage wars, ally someone, conquer stuff, keep repeating until you get bored. After the first century I am usually bored because I know I have my large Empire already that can beat any neighbour with just some careful calculation involved in the tactical planning of the wars required.
Eu4 should be less about just conquering stuff, more about actually guiding your country through the centuries, with each century presenting new challenges and goals. 15th century, survive amongst the feudal institutes of Europe and turn your fiefdom into a national state, 16th century, brace for the reformation and discovery of new lands, 17th century, the global connections become one global network of trade, imperialism truly begins, 18th century, the New Age begins with Rationalism and technology advancing, science starts to really flourish, productivity increases, new thoughts of liberty and equality, early 19th century, the clash between revolutionary thoughts and reactionary thoughts.
But what we have is a game where you just focus on expanding and beating the crap out of your neighbours until you become so good at it that eventually you just want to test your limits and conquer the world as some randoms OPMs.

I would truly appreciate the game being less about expanding and more about actually changing the course of history for your nation, especially internally.

 

[Zak Preston]

That's the point of my post: you can create a huge empire, but you can't forge a nation of it. What's the point of carving land corridor to India and conquer the whole subcontinent if all those nations will break in industrial era sooner or later? =) Intead some kind of real cultural union mechanics could be introduced to allow your empire (if you really like warfare that much) become rock-solid and homogeneous.

 

[MaxStrategis]

I suggest adding "base tax increase/decrease over time" to symbolize demographic changes and migrations. This system would work like this: Provinces will we divided according to their "prosperity modifier" that will be affected by events, being at peace or at war, country stability, tolerance, etc. The provinces with higher level of prosperity will increase their basetax quicker, meanwhile non-properous porvinces will not gain or even lose base tax during time.
Intruducing this system will solve the "demographics don't matter" in this game. Hope I explain myself clearly and somehow some of you can develope more this idea.

 

[Zak Preston]

I suggest adding "bas tax increase/decrease over time" to symbolize demographic changes and migrations. This system would work like this: Provinces will we divided according to their "prosperity modifier" that will be affected by events, being at peace or at war, country stability, tolerance, etc. The provinces with higher level of prosperity will increase their basetax quicker, meanwhile non-properous porvinces will not gain or even lose base tax during time.
Intruducing this system will solve the "demographics don't matter" in this game. Hope I explain myself clearly and somehow some of you can develope more this idea.

This kind of system would be ideal for EU4, but I'm afraid that it would cost performance (much like demand\supply system slowed the game before 1.8).

 

[MaxStrategis]

This kind of system would be ideal for EU4, but I'm afraid that it would cost performance (much like demand\supply system slowed the game before 1.8).

Yeah, that's the problem. I just thought that since they had a similar system in EUIII, adding this kind of thing to EUIV would be doable, I don't know how much horsepower will require though.

EDIT: I just got the feeling this game it's turning into a "lucky event" base game, lacking core mecanics that handle economy and demographics like in Vicky 2. Hell, in fact after the patch the whole trade system relies on random events now

 

[johnymathias]

At the beginning I wont to say, that I really like EU4 - for me this is the best part of the EU series, (I was playing in each of 4 parts of EU a lot of time). In the gaming world, it is not obvious that the successive parts are better than the previous. But in that case the last one is the best. But still there is a lot of things that Paradox could do better or expand some aspects of the game.

I agree with your diagnosis about peaceful playing in EU4, I also agree with most of your proposal, but like you say - part of them could be hard to introduce with current systems/game construction/AI. But about foreign affairs I can't agree with your proposal: "Make any aggressive act (except reconquest, maybe) hit your diplomatic reputation with nations that were friends with a victim." For me the problem is that now taking provinces is the best option for almost all players - "I get province, so I'm stronger, enemy loose province, so he is weaker", so I think that this is not good idea to add penalties for other, more 'soft' options. Or if yes, then the penalties for taking province suppose to be stronger also to keep the balance between 'soft' and 'hard' peace conditions.

For me personally the most important thing in peaceful time is an administration of my lands/government. Administration this is not just a build more buildings and collect more bonuses for provinces or country. There suppose to be much more problems to resolve in our own country: the political opposition, bureaucracy, local feuds, economic issues or just natural disasters. So I like the proposal to add factions to each country (that I also planning in my mod, but still there is a lot of to do with new patch...). Also I public in forum the idea to create a new administration system with possibility to create your own provinces from some lands. I described it in that thread (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?795236-Concept-for-new-DLC-lands-and-provinces), so I don't wont to write here this same again. So probably there is more people and ideas to make the peaceful game more interesting. But the problem is, that war is the most spectacular aspect of the game, so most of devs and players focus just on that part of the game

 

[987655mm]

I really like the amount of work you put in the thread. The awesome thing about it is, that it is very flexible when it comes to the execution of certain things. I would maybe like to see some numbers here and there so I can get a rough idea how powerful/rich something should be, but other than that this thread is a great piece of work.

11/10 Pls paradogs luk at thiis thred

 

[ThatGuyYouKnow1]

+1