Dear PDX, when are you going to start working on EU5?

[SolSys]

What I really like to see:
... stuff ...
I know this is ambitious but this is what I like to see and cant be done in EU4. However, as said above, if they overhaul the HRE mechanic I probably spend another 400 hours on the game But that's the only new feature I can think of.

Imperator is PDX's latest [announced] game being developed at the moment and as such is based on the latest fork of their engine that users know of.

If you want to extrapolate what could be done in EU4 [heads-up -- rendering layer got updated] you can read some of the DDs on the game.

 

[tip001]

At this point -- and after being answered so many times -- these threads feel just like trolling.

And before you mention something about the OP not being able to find them -- forum search is a thing.

I searched the internet and found nothing. Didn't think about a forum search as already stated above. If I had known I would not have started this thread. Still happy you visited

 

[misiceman]

The thing is the engine is not the limiter as many people put it. All the main PDX games use the same engine and we can see how vastly different those games are, especially when you go to something like Stelaris. While each game is obviously forked at some point for game stability we dont actually know what code has been migrated from the newer version of the engine to accomplish certain tasks. From a graphical perspective thats just polish and to keep assets looks consitant, not to mention to keep system spec requirements the same. They can always update this after a certain point, which i think would be nice, but they have the hardware stats, not us. And if you look at newer model sets they look better then the old ones where they even went back and updated some.

The real "limiter" is the size of the team, and the time they have to spend on a feature set. Its not a huge team. None of the PDX games have ginormous teams. Which means large sweeping changes take serious amounts of time. And code bases being what they are EU4 is probably huge, which slightly complicate matters.

That being said I am sure naval is on their to do list, but quite frankly unless they can come up with something that is cost effective, what can they do. Also is it actually a problem with the naval system or just naval AI.

Which leads to AI being is its own bag of worms. People expect the moon, when in fact AI is SUPER difficult in a game like this. I am sure we can have @Chaingun, @Wiz and others tell some fun war stories about just how crazy AI development actually is. In fact for me it would make an interesting panel video or something because many people dont have a clue, especially since we all dont run super computers.

TLDR, the engine isnt the issue. I can agree or disagree what the devs are doing is right/wrong, but lets be honest with the statement that its not the engine. That topic has also been discussed to death and is littered with misinformation from things about 32/64 bit, multi thread support, garphical support, ram, etc... Thats not to say their might not be a limiter in the actual engine, but no engine is perfect, and they have been updating this one for a long time.

 

[BuchiTaton]

Just a few things that can be added:
- Detailed dynastic trees.
- Court interaction (heir education, intrigues, etc.)
- Real factions and ideologies in republics.
- Meaningful climate, weather and terrain.
- REAL logistic and supply lines.
- Diverse colonial system (slave plantation, native religious misions, immigrant settllement, etc.)
- Mortals diplomats, merchants and missionaries with specific traits (bonus).
- DISEASES!!!
- Strategic resourses (tradegoods) like iron, guns, horses, etc.
- Dynamic trade routes.
- Dynamic market.
- Some cultural system, with art sponsorship, cultural blending, etc.
- Not linear technological advance.
ETC.

So there are a lot to add.

 

[tip001]

The thing is the engine is not the limiter as many people put it. All the main PDX games use the same engine and we can see how vastly different those games are, especially when you go to something like Stelaris. While each game is obviously forked at some point for game stability we dont actually know what code has been migrated from the newer version of the engine to accomplish certain tasks. From a graphical perspective thats just polish and to keep assets looks consitant, not to mention to keep system spec requirements the same. They can always update this after a certain point, which i think would be nice, but they have the hardware stats, not us. And if you look at newer model sets they look better then the old ones where they even went back and updated some.

The real "limiter" is the size of the team, and the time they have to spend on a feature set. Its not a huge team. None of the PDX games have ginormous teams. Which means large sweeping changes take serious amounts of time. And code bases being what they are EU4 is probably huge, which slightly complicate matters.

That being said I am sure naval is on their to do list, but quite frankly unless they can come up with something that is cost effective, what can they do. Also is it actually a problem with the naval system or just naval AI.

Which leads to AI being is its own bag of worms. People expect the moon, when in fact AI is SUPER difficult in a game like this. I am sure we can have @Chaingun, @Wiz and others tell some fun war stories about just how crazy AI development actually is. In fact for me it would make an interesting panel video or something because many people dont have a clue, especially since we all dont run super computers.

TLDR, the engine isnt the issue. I can agree or disagree what the devs are doing is right/wrong, but lets be honest with the statement that its not the engine. That topic has also been discussed to death and is littered with misinformation from things about 32/64 bit, multi thread support, garphical support, ram, etc... Thats not to say their might not be a limiter in the actual engine, but no engine is perfect, and they have been updating this one for a long time.

Thank you very much for this interesting response. I have two remarks:
1) I quote PDS developers when I say that the AI processing is limited in the way commands are given and periodically reevaluated (dynamic updates, remember when an unit is walking from Europe to Kamchatka without any update in two years) and the amount of commands that can be processed at the same time by (I assume) the engine. Of course I am at a complete blank on how it works but PDS told us it had to do with performance balancing. This has a detrimental effect on the timely adjustments of AI movements. In relation to this the AI only recognizes a single mode, like "we have to attack unit X" and all AI units will move to that destination while only 10% was needed for that action (hence "headless chickens"). So also in this case it seems it is difficult to let (read; to code) the AI run multiple modes of action at the same time and only commence based on strength per mode of action. These are just two examples of AI limitations which seem related to the engine performance.
There are also other subjects like implementing dynamic trading where I am fairly sure (not 100%) PDS stated that that was "not possible" in the current game state (on the why I dont know)
This strongly indicates an engine performance limitation. Think of cores or other optimizations in engine coding and engine interfacing with modules. I personally have severe lag late game, even with above described limited AI behavior.

2) Your inside on the development process, hours of coding and testing needed, creating limitations on the delivered product versus revenue is right on the spot. This is where I refer to the "current DLC/ Patch process" as potentially limiting in what can be actually delivered in patch size. Again, it is not fully clear for us if that's actually the case but that could very well be an important (financial) factor on the amount of feasible changes per DLC.

So although I agree with you fully in the second point I still have some unease on the first one. Can we now only expect relative small changes with emphasis on content ? (just a guess of course )

 

[misiceman]

For AI not updating commands thats not an "engine" issue. The engine just runs a bunch of AI agents and they do their thing. Weather or not AI code be good or not is sperate from the engine.

As far as i understand it it is not the engine that is at fault with how trade works, but the code itself and how its implemented. Also their are two points, dynamic pricing and dynamic trade nodes.

For the second one. With the code as written we cant have loops in the trade system as it would cause infinite money and it basically crashes the game (also that would be a "small" problem). A fundamental rewrite would be necessary to change this as far as i am aware. I would relish this though but I am actually ok with the current implementation because it actually works (whether one likes it or not ,its actually one of the systems that doesnt have HUGE issues with its actual function, like say forts/zone of control).

As for dynamic trade good pricing... we actually had that.... it crushed performance and was removed a while back, and then we got the price change events. I think it might be 1.8 - art of war, but i could be wrong on the exact time. This in turns applies to other periodic updates. Which had a HUGE optimization pass a few patches ago (which helped some users and hurt others - my early game runs a little slower but late game runs a lot faster).

To that I will ask the following question (one to which i dont know the answer btw): What is the minimum experience PDX is expecting on performance, and what would that translate to minimum specs? I ask that because the min reqs are still single core CPUs. Until the vast majority of players are on multcore cpus (again we dont have hardware stats of users from PDX), we cant keep adding cpu overhead to that single threaded performance and expect it to work on a single core as we would reach 100% very quickly, and it would be ... well... unfun for those players. As I said I dont have an answer, but IMO unless they up the minimum specs it just cant "get significantly better". Newer released titles like Imperitor Rome, HoI4 and Stelaris have newer release dates and thus higher system requirements so they can handle things differently, but they also suffer from late game performace (we will see how bad Imperitor gets ).

Also again i will say: EU4 is multi threaded. I would generally point to the PDX con video with @DDRJake emphatically saying it is and that like it will still come up on the forums and everywhere.

While I would love everyone to have quad cores (minimum) and the AI updating more frequently to compensate, that just isnt a reality, not when people are playing eu5 on much older hardware, as it is a "5" year old game - and its not like Intel has been doling out the cores in the lower end CPUs. Perhaps in the next 5 years with AMD laying the smack-down on cores we can see a shift as consumer baseline hardware just has more cores available.

We have discussed engine limitations a lot on the stelaris forums (like A LOT) and basically most of what we thought were issues, or limitations was us not understanding what the engine actually did (and I was right up there in that discussion being wrong about a lot). Also I think in general people who dont program (not saying you dont know but in general), people misunderstand what engines actually do in video games, and on top of it what the Clausewitz engine actually does and doesnt. That doesnt mean there cant be improvement or something is just wrong, but starting fundamentally with bad information doesnt help (been there).

If you want more info do a search on the sterlaris forums and a good number of threads should pop out with devs chiming in on different aspects.

Wow Wall of text. If you made it through have a virtual cookie

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

It's not stupid... but there is a significant difference between teasing and making fun... because PDS doesn't see fit to give a precise answer regardng EUV when they are still working on a EUIV DLC doesn't mean evil intent. That's all i'm saying.

The bottom line is that no one forced him to reply and despite the appearance I never said or even think (...) the intent was evil. Thanks for your POV.

At this point -- and after being answered so many times -- these threads feel just like trolling.

And before you mention something about the OP not being able to find them -- forum search is a thing.

Are you saying that the forum search actually works these days? Cool I got used to never using it since it was an absolute garbage back in the day (...) Using Google to search the forum was the only reliable/good method.

Anyway, thanks for your support Marco

NP if someone deserves my support it is you.

Yeah, no.

"Yeah, no" I never agree whenever someone asks for info or help and the forum users give what in a best case scenario constitutes an unhelpful reply. This time around I could not contain myself maybe because I know the OP and I know he wants the best for EU and all PDS games in general.

 

[RELee]

"Yeah, no" I never agree whenever someone asks for info or help and the forum users give what in a best case scenario constitutes an unhelpful reply. This time around I could not contain myself maybe because I know the OP and I know he wants the best for EU and all PDS games in general.

The developers are just as entitled to have a sense of humor as anyone else. Personally I approve, obviously. Rising up to accuse them of belittling customers simply because they are having a lighter moment is personally annoying to me. These guys are great and more than willing to step up and answer questions about their product. In this case, the OP Mr. tip001 asked his question about EU5. After several other folks actually answered his question, then Groogy stepped in with a bit of humor.

Accusing me of being a Paradox employee is simply funny. While it's true I can be considered a part of the forum staff, the check has been in the mail for 15 years now. I don't see that changing anytime soon. I'm a volunteer and I'm here to help, crack jokes about my advancing age and post memes at every opportunity. So my response stands.

Yeah, no.

I'm basically a 15 year old introverted Jesus freak with serious people interaction issues in the body of a 64 year old. That should sum it up for everyone. That and I'm just so darned cute!

 

[Knut Skallagrim]

you will get it in 2025

 

[tip001]

The developers are just as entitled to have a sense of humor as anyone else. Personally I approve, obviously. Rising up to accuse them of belittling customers simply because they are having a lighter moment is personally annoying to me. These guys are great and more than willing to step up and answer questions about their product. In this case, the OP Mr. tip001 asked his question about EU5. After several other folks actually answered his question, then Groogy stepped in with a bit of humor.

Accusing me of being a Paradox employee is simply funny. While it's true I can be considered a part of the forum staff, the check has been in the mail for 15 years now. I don't see that changing anytime soon. I'm a volunteer and I'm here to help, crack jokes about my advancing age and post memes at every opportunity. So my response stands.

Yeah, no.

I'm basically a 15 year old introverted Jesus freak with serious people interaction issues in the body of a 64 year old. That should sum it up for everyone. That and I'm just so darned cute!

View attachment 395365

Just WTF

 

[RELee]

Just WTF

I'm used to that reaction.

 

[Starisc]

I would like this answer: "Never is too early!"

EU5 would start with vanilla feature set and take years to reach the feature richness of my beloved EU4. What improvements would you like to see, which cannot be added to EU4 to make it even more awesome? (Except for the multi CPU support in the "engine" of course ). I don't need improved graphics...do you?

I hope @Groogy is allowed to make expansions for the next five years. #fivemoreyears

PS: 5th anniversary coming up 13 August

 

[cristofolmc]

I would like this answer: "Never is too early!"

EU5 would start with vanilla feature set and take years to reach the feature richness of my beloved EU4. What improvements would you like to see, which cannot be added to EU4 to make it even more awesome? (Except for the multi CPU support in the "engine" of course ). I don't need improved graphics...do you?

I hope @Groogy is allowed to make expansions for the next five years. #fivemoreyears

PS: 5th anniversary coming up 13 August

EU5 would have to say the least all the content EU4 has taking out the bad stuff, so it wouldnt take years to reach the "feature richness" (you mean bloat) of EU4 because it would be eu5's base. So it can only improve eu4.

Like CK2 or Imperator include everything added in CK and EU Rome and from their they build it up, so it can only get better.

 

[jdrou]

Every time someone miss attributes something to be in the engine we delay it by a full year just out of spite.

(Except for the multi CPU support in the "engine" of course ).

There goes another year. . .

 

[rohirrimelf]

Signed in. So i could respectfully disagree with OP

 

[RELee]

Just WTF

Basically, it means I'm a grumpy old man who chases kids off his lawn for the fun of it.

 

[Paravorkian]

If they come up with some amazing mechanic that needs a new engine and will totally shake up the way EU is played, then we might get an EU5. But for now I am happy to keep buying DLCs and pushing the current game to its limits.