Determinism in EU4(and prior titles), and a message to Paradox Development Studio

[TheMeInTeam]

Firstly, slavery within the parts of Africa the slaves were coming from was usually much more bearable than plantation life. Chattel slavery is a completely different institution in that regard.

Degrees of misery are debatable and a bit out of scope. Suffice it to say, all buyers on sellers on both ends of the ocean knew what they were doing and used whatever mental gymnastics/rationalization they needed to feel at least okay about doing it.

First time I've seen someone complain about NI sets. I understand your whole "it's determinism" point but it'd be retarded to say we should give France and England the same opportunities about navy. The NI are a way to illustrate a nation's main whereabouts and achievements in history, I think they're very welcomed.

You're claiming that a 200-year landlocked Great Britain should have access to some of the best ships in the world, while France that conquered India + owns 2/3 of the western hemisphere should be weaker on a ship for ship basis.

And you're claiming that so strongly you'd insult people for the notion of refuting that!

If you want to make NIs illustrate achievements in history, make your position coherent and assert that NIs should happen as a result of historical achievements. Quoted name-calling is comically ironic because the stance isn't coherent .

 

[mechanical_Critter]

I wonder if there could be the possibility to make accomplished missions unlock national ideas. Mission rewards function largely like that already after all.
Would probably not do too hot with AI-chan.

 

[Blust]

Calm down buddy, I didn't insult people, I insulted the idea of saying French and English navy prowess were on par. I'm not speaking my native tongue but I can still see you're twisting my word.

Furthermore, when I say "NI are a way to illustrate a nation's main whereabouts and achievements in history" I'm talking about real history, not sci-fi EU4 where England is landlocked for 200 years. It is very coherent when you see it, like I said, as a way to illustrate or reflect (I don't know which word suits you best) a country's history / achievement.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Furthermore, when I say "NI are a way to illustrate a nation's main whereabouts and achievements in history" I'm talking about real history, not sci-fi EU4 where England is landlocked for 200 years. It is very coherent when you see it

Real historical events were causally linked to previous events in their timeline. It is not coherent, even as a preference, to say that national ideas are historical in the context of a game world with wildly different preceding events from history. Ireland gets the same NIs even if you "form" it as a 12,000 development Islamic megastate. That is not illustrative of history. Nations gained their specializations in history through what those nations actually did.

The mechanic of national ideas is consistent with the notion that no matter what happened to Prussia, they would always have the best military organization in the world. Even if the Teutonic Order formed Prussia, got mostly conqured, and they wound up a rump state that culture shifts to Susquehannock. The military of such a Prussia is, per your argument, every bit as good as actual historical Prussia "because history".

So, why does your same preferences not align when it comes to other mechanics? Why change standards? And quoted argument must change them, if one is to play at EU 4's level of abstraction at all.

 

[Shiny Dog]

National ideas not so much. It was not pre-ordained that Portugal would be a naval power in 1700 as of 1444. It wasn't even pre-ordained that they would still exist. They had to work for it. They did, and succeeded. The game has mechanisms for that, w/o involving NIs.

True, but they are also the sole thing that makes each tag unique throughout the game. Aragon owning all of Europe is still different than Castile owning Europe. Why should you even play Aragon if they're functionally identical to Castile?
Variable NI (not traditions, because they are what happened BEFORE 1444) would be an interesting addition, but they should only be akin to government reforms (2-3 choices, and based off historical/what-if?). Otherwise you'll have either of these problems:

1. Choosing between any bonus means anything that isn't Discipline/Morale, ToH, or CCR/Adm-Eff is a false choice. (Like most religions in EU4, no?)
2. Your actions entirely determine what your bonus will be (no choice), which sounds nice and emergent/organic until you realize rolling something like Female Advisor Chance or "Lowered Morale Loss when Losing a Ship" is a possibility.

 

[thetrue7man]

I guess I dislike NI's the most when their consequences on gameplay are wildly out of proportion with what you are able to achieve by other means (how important the modifier is and how much of it the NI gives you vs its availability otherwise). Tolerance of Heathens is offender #1.

Landlocked Oman stuck in the desert having naval national ideas even if they don't reclaim the coast is pretty questionable, but it's not doing the same thing to the game as having TAG=TUR give you as much ToH by itself (before all other factors) as an arbitrary nation of one of all but a few religions without national ideas for it can reliably maintain by all means combined, rather than having that distributed to causal mechanics. The real problem with National Ideas is that it's ultimately a sort of cop-out from representing those things in better ways that the player can interact with.

 

[Henrious]

Its tough to try to juggle between a historical game and a sandbox game.

 

[Chevaresqye]

Very well written.

 

[dynalon]

I wonder if there could be the possibility to make accomplished missions unlock national ideas. Mission rewards function largely like that already after all.
Would probably not do too hot with AI-chan.

I've been thinking about that as well - I like mission trees in general, but think that the big ones are way too powerful. Combining them with missions might be a way to standardize mission rewards ("every tag can unlock up to X bonuses in total") and maybe allow for some customization as well. Either by a standard "Pick A or B" (for example, Spain can either choose to focus on the new world for colonization boosts or on European matters for stuff like Diprep) or by giving a pool of possible national ideas that's larger than the numbers of NIs a nation can pick.

Not particularly realistic proposition though, I guess, given how many tags still run around with the generic mission tree. Although it might be possible to have some regional missions/ideas as a placeholder, at least. Still not something I'm expeciting to find its way to EU4

 

[Lightwell]

Degrees of misery are debatable and a bit out of scope. Suffice it to say, all buyers on sellers on both ends of the ocean knew what they were doing and used whatever mental gymnastics/rationalization they needed to feel at least okay about doing it.

Many of the places the slaves came from didn't come with a moral system that spoke against slavery as a concept. European traders did, but they treated the slaves worse than they'd be treated in their home countries. With the exception of the Dagbon and their human sacrifice (which started in the 18th century, as a result of the slave trade's expansion), slaves in West Africa were seen to have rights, as a lower caste of people who could be adopted into a family. Most telling is the fact that a slave was once the greatest and most widely-beloved emperor of the Malian Empire.

I don't believe Chattel Slavery needs much introduction. Importing a bunch of bodies to work, giving them almost no edible food, and putting them in an environment that would cause any OSHA-conscious individual to have a meltdown. How telling is is that, despite American slaves generally being given the worst, most dangerous positions, and being given food of questionable quality, that Brazil, which imported 4-8 times the number of Africans, manages to have less African-Brazilians than the U.S has African-Americans? That was where most of the slaves went, and because of the nature of their work many of them died, not even leaving children for the next generation.

 

[Lightwell]

Personally, I'd rather not be condemned to the knowledge that, any time I play as the Songhai, Askiya will still end up on the throne, go blind, and cause a succession crisis. There were plenty of ways we could've seen a different outcome.

 

[Shinkuro Yukinari]

@Johan, I apologise for mentioning, but as someone who has been around since the beginning, what is your opinion on this topic? Perhaps you could give us some insight

 

[John the John]

Personally, I'd rather not be condemned to the knowledge that, any time I play as the Songhai, Askiya will still end up on the throne, go blind, and cause a succession crisis. There were plenty of ways we could've seen a different outcome.

That's why I wrote their personality (traits and skills) can be different. Either randomly generated or chosen by you, if Eu V has planned more customization in this matter. Askiya would always end up on the throne but he doesn't have to end up blind. You would be informed how did the ruler live in the real history but you will have the ability to change that.

Basically, it would be the same concept that is in Eu IV now, when you start the game but it would be with every ruler, not just at the start.

 

[Lightwell]

That's why I wrote their personality (traits and skills) can be different. Either randomly generated or chosen by you, if Eu V has planned more customization in this matter. Askiya would always end up on the throne but he doesn't have to end up blind. You would be informed how did the ruler live in the real history but you will have the ability to change that.

Basically, it would be the same concept that is in Eu IV now, when you start the game but it would be with every ruler, not just at the start.

If the same rulers live during the same times, even if they don't do the things that caused political turmoil, you still get the effects. It means that, no matter what the traits or skills of the rulers, Sonni Ali's heir is always killed a year after Sonni Ali dies, and Askiya's heirs are constantly deposed, just without reason this time. That's actually worse than having Askia be guaranteed to be blind. Now, you just get the downside of it without an in-game reason.

 

[randomgamer71]

No offense but wouldn’t the game have less replayability if the only difference between nations were their color and how big they were at game start?

Missions and national ideas are IMO what make trying different starts fun and rewarding.

There are other ways.

In eu3 there are Policies sliders, at the start of the game, for example, Venice have the sliders set up to be a trade powerhouse and a sea power, as historical, but it is still possible, with time (a lot of time) , to move the sliders around to turn her into a land military juggernaut if one really want.

 

[master_kong]

That's why I wrote their personality (traits and skills) can be different. Either randomly generated or chosen by you, if Eu V has planned more customization in this matter. Askiya would always end up on the throne but he doesn't have to end up blind. You would be informed how did the ruler live in the real history but you will have the ability to change that.

Basically, it would be the same concept that is in Eu IV now, when you start the game but it would be with every ruler, not just at the start.

That's RPG. I don't think EU games can be made RPG at all.

 

[grommile]

Basically, it would be the same concept that is in Eu IV now, when you start the game but it would be with every ruler, not just at the start.

Unfortunately, you still have to have the capacity for randomly chosen rulers, to accommodate for:

• the historic ruler names make no sense without the historic context. If the Catholics win the Religious Wars in Germany but ENG/GBR stays Protestant/Anglican, the ruler after Anne Stuart shouldn't be George Hanover.
  
• the historic heir isn't born yet and your ruler just died in battle.
• the historic rulers quite simply don't exist, because historically your country was annexed in 1464.

 

[master_kong]

Determinism(to some extent) by conditions not fate.. well written.

I will try to exemplify what you said from my perspective:
Iberians colonizing the Americas was most likely to happen. Similarly, it was not likely to happen for Muslims in Northwest/West Africa to colonize there. This statement have more than one factors(conditions) behind it like any other historical statement. Muslims living there had the access to Silk Road and Spice Route somewhat. Iberians on the other hand, especially Portuguese, were mostly poor and in dire need of a way to create income. But this was not the only reason because Algerians too were poor for instance. Lands those Berbers lived on were mostly barren lands, that is why we saw piracy here(another historical statement with condition in it). So colonizing and reaching new goods including slaves would be nice for them too. However their ships were not suitable to sail across the ocean. Iberians, again especially Portuguese living near the ocean, reached that technology with trying to sail across/through ocean for decades or even centuries. Berbers did not have that however, their focus was always Mediterranean Sea and their ships were suitable for there. Because their focus was the other side of the Mediterranean where rich lands of the Christian denominations waiting for them to plunder and ease their hunger.

Determinism by fate: Make AI Iberians choose exploaration ideas while prevent others to do that(excluding players of course, they would be pissed)

Determinism by conditions: Simply, reflect the situation over there. Make galleys not suitable for sailing across the ocean and more importantly make heavy ships an important naval technology which requires time and resource investment to reach. As a result, instead of restricting AI decisions, you can give the Iberians their exclusive ship technology from the start and sit back, relax and watch the plausible outcome to occur.

As a bonus, you can reflect other situations like Ottomans-Portuguese conflict over Arabian Peninsula and beyond on the seas as well. Ottomans were too a Mediterranean-only civilization thus their ships were not suitable for the ocean. They were indeed no match for the Portuguese on the sea. That is why we didn't see an effective Ottoman influence over SEA hemisphere not because they didn't send some money for some weird remote control over there through trade chartering.

Not just these, institutions or any other mechanic should/could be made with that thinking. In fact, Paradox Grand Strategy games in general should be made with this perspective imo. Not with a shallow sandbox aspect with gameplay over realism/history, they should put both(gameplay and realism/history) on an equal level and think both together. Because these games are not just board games but complex computer games.

 

[ImAdrian]

I don't see the problem with determinism by fate to some degree. We play on a historical map, and right off the bat some countries start with massive advantages. You can remove all events and national ideas and let the outcome be only affected by the choices the AI makes, and big countries will in most cases still come out victorious.

I personally think it's a neat thing that they added these historical events, but they made it so that they do not happen with 100% certainty (for example, Poland getting a PU on Lithuania has a 90% chance of happening). So in most games, you can sort of predict how parts of the map will look like after a certain amount of time has passed, but then you always find an anomaly somewhere, some rare case that didn't happen last time, and its a fun experience. And some games are just totally different, like Byzantium AI taking land from the ottomans. When I'm playing for example in Asia, I'm always excited to discover what happened in Europe. I don't find the game too repetitive in that sense.

Also, randomness is fun, especially in games. There's a lot of research to support that. I think EU4 does a decent job at combining randomness with pre-determined events.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Choosing between any bonus means anything that isn't Discipline/Morale, ToH, or CCR/Adm-Eff is a false choice. (Like most religions in EU4, no?)

These options can be limited in the same way that you can't pick offensive ideas 4 times and have 80% siege ability all the time and/or 4x administrative to have 100% reduced core cost. Or they could be unlocked by comparatively difficult accomplishments to make the tradeoff of delaying for them less attractive until it's an interesting choice.

Your actions entirely determine what your bonus will be (no choice), which sounds nice and emergent/organic until you realize rolling something like Female Advisor Chance or "Lowered Morale Loss when Losing a Ship" is a possibility.

Such a model would have to avoid NIs like "female adviser chance", or allow players to choose among earned NIs. There isn't much point if you don't have agency. That said, your actions *are* your choices, so it's not true that such a model would prevent player choices. If it were well balanced (which I don't anticipate seeing in EU 4), you might even alter actions situationally to get desired NIs.

I don't believe Chattel Slavery needs much introduction. Importing a bunch of bodies to work, giving them almost no edible food, and putting them in an environment that would cause any OSHA-conscious individual to have a meltdown. How telling is is that, despite American slaves generally being given the worst, most dangerous positions, and being given food of questionable quality, that Brazil, which imported 4-8 times the number of Africans, manages to have less African-Brazilians than the U.S has African-Americans? That was where most of the slaves went, and because of the nature of their work many of them died, not even leaving children for the next generation.

None of this seems wrong, but it doesn't change my point. I don't believe that the Africans who sold slaves had "no idea what would happen to them" for very long after those transactions started. The traders knew their fates too. Nobody involved in this process gets to smokescreen reduced responsibility for it. Not the buyers in America, not the people who transported, not the sellers.

That's RPG. I don't think EU games can be made RPG at all.

It's not that they CAN'T, but we already have Crusader Kings. EU 4 has a different identity than CK 2.

I don't see the problem with determinism by fate to some degree. We play on a historical map, and right off the bat some countries start with massive advantages. You can remove all events and national ideas and let the outcome be only affected by the choices the AI makes, and big countries will in most cases still come out victorious.

That is not determinism by fate. You get outcomes consistent with position in game terms (countries with advantages tend to win).

The problem is when things like "Netherlands declare independence from a large, 100% religious unity Burgundy" happen.