Discussion - Is EU4 more complex than Chess?

[tngen toppa]

well at first eu4 is more complex,because there is a wider spectrum of things to consider,but ultimately chess is more complex,because eu4 is largely based on RNGs.

there is not and ounce of luck in games like chess,go and the likes.all those games are rather simple to play,but endless complexity awaits you on your quest to master them.

on the other hand once you reached a certain level of eu4 proness you can't improve anymore,from there on out its just about numbers and luck

 

[zsImmortal]

I'm not sure in what way they're relatable. Easier for what? Chess has basic rules and limited pieces. EU4 is generally a very straightforward game that requires you to evaluate your situation and improve it to the best of your ability (if the idea is to simply exponentially grow, because the game has no real purpose other than not dying). At some point, an Ottoman player will never lose to a Byzantium player. It is simply impossible for a human to make such a grave mistake.

Chess players may not have as many 'variables' and random events to consider, but high level players have to calculate so many moves ahead that I'd say to be a great chess player you have to be much more proficient than being great at EU4. If EU4 required so much mental strain for you to do great feats, it wouldn't be an enjoyable game. Not only are all positions salvageable for even mediocre players, there's a power threshold that can be reached in the first 150 or so years of the game which makes you largely unassailable and a steamroller.

 

[FrigidSoul]

Chess has been studied exhaustively for thousands of years. There are people, right now, dedicating their lives to it -- and a very few making comfortable livings doing it. To say that chess is less complicated than EU4 is reasonable; to say that EU4 is more difficult or deep would be farcical.

And yeah, if the computer only had to manage one tag or two tags, and if it played truly to win, it'd solve EU4 just fine.

 

[DubiousMaster101]

No it's not. Chess is much harder and complex than EU4. I know that all the elitists on here really want EU4 to be some kind of super hard and special game to they can rub their ego nipples though.

 

[Junuxx]

I know that all the elitists on here really want EU4 to be some kind of super hard and special game to they can rub their ego nipples though.

Looks like some chess elitists have the same tendencies.

 

[Grand Historian]

We must play EU4 very differently. Chess has a specific goal: putting your opponent into Checkmate. EU4 has no such goal, at least not for me. Every time I play it's a different start with a different goal. There is no real Victory condition except for the one you provide yourself.

I'm pretty sure everyone plays EU4 because they want to succeed at something.

And I was referring more to how exactly both games operate; they may provide different goals, but, fundamentally, you operate in similar ways, under similar constraints, and succeed in similar ways.

 

[Chaingun]

And yeah, if the computer only had to manage one tag or two tags, and if it played truly to win, it'd solve EU4 just fine.

Not so sure about that. Countries is just one axis of the iteration space; another is provinces; a third the number of armies, etc. At least, without constraints on these a competent human would still beat the best AI we could conceive in a fair 1v1 fight due to the impossibility of brute force. You would have to seriously simplify the gameplay to enable deep enough searches.

 

[lolada]

Can't really compare these two. Its certainly much harder to become good in chess than in eu4.

 

[deezee]

Its worth pointing out that, even in the category of strictly non-random games in which both players have complete information (which EU4 is not in), Go is much more complex than Chess.

It is why Chess computers, while better than any human, are incapable of perfect play like AI for other games like Connect 4, while Go computers can still be regularly defeated by advanced players, let alone masters.

 

[Mcwynne]

For me, FatHippo (with Extra Credits) nailed it.

Other than that this seems more like a debate over how to define complexity rather than which game is more complex.

 

[Willem IV]

I'm only a medicore club player at chess, but your strategy is way more important with chess then with EU4. One minor mistake and you lose because lost a pawn. With EU4 you start planning a new war when you lost one. I have to think more moves ahead then with EU4

 

[SknerusMck]

 

[WSnova]

This reminds me back in the days of BroodWar that topics like thisused to pop up.I`ll give the same answer:

Whats the point of asking this question? Does it matter which one is complex? Do you want a justification for all the time you play this game, so that when you are asked you answer that you are a EUIV scholar?

They are not even similar in terms of mechanics nor rules.

 

[Darth Samuri]

I'm only a medicore club player at chess, but your strategy is way more important with chess then with EU4. One minor mistake and you lose because lost a pawn. With EU4 you start planning a new war when you lost one. I have to think more moves ahead then with EU4

I agree, I am not a chess master by any means, but with EU4 i can have no strategy and play in the moment and still crush the AI. However in chess if I am not 5 moves out I've already lost.

 

[mcmanusaur]

I don't think "depth" (in contrast to complexity) is a very useful concept per se.

However, I think that we can draw a distinction between absolute complexity (which is, perhaps, proportional to the total number of permutations of game state) and effective complexity. Effective complexity would describe how much of that absolute complexity can be accounted for by a human mind attempting to make optimal decisions. Theoretically, the threshold for effective complexity would be proportional to the brain's processing power (and therefore relatively constant across different games), although it might be higher for a game with a more intuitive UI, for example.

In these terms, I think it's clear that EU4 does possess more absolute complexity than chess. The strength of chess is that its absolute complexity is not too much higher than its effective complexity, which is to say that there is little "wasted" complexity that goes unnoticed by an experienced player. However, with EU4 there is a much greater discrepancy between absolute and effective complexity: the game is far too complex for a human to "solve" it optimally, and EU4 is accordingly more forgiving than chess in certain ways. That said, EU4 has occasionally struggled to bring its immense absolute complexity to bear.

There are of course other factors at play when it comes to their respective strategy, such as the fact that there is no randomness in chess, and the fact that chess is extremely symmetrical.

 

[Red John]

No.

Chess has no RNG.

Eu4 does.

Checkmate, atheists.

 

[Noel84]

No.

Chess has no RNG.

Eu4 does.

Checkmate, atheists.

not completely accurate. The other player's move is RNG.

 

[zsImmortal]

not completely accurate. The other player's move is RNG.

The opponent's move is calculated and thought out, not a random number. In fact, in any high level chess game, most moves are anticipated or forced, which is why in the eyes of mid-level player, a perfectly balanced board can be checkmate in 15 moves for a grandmaster, so the other one will simply concede.

 

[Noel84]

The opponent's move is calculated and thought out, not a random number. In fact, in any high level chess game, most moves are anticipated or forced, which is why in the eyes of mid-level player, a perfectly balanced board can be checkmate in 15 moves for a grandmaster, so the other one will simply concede.

okay, the who gets white (and therfore moves first) is RNG

 

[Incompetent]

Even games with quite simple mechanics become massively more complex when there are more than two teams and different factions can choose to cooperate or compete. (The board game Diplomacy is an example of this - if you reduce it to pure tactics, it's not much more sophisticated than rock-paper-scissors.) This already makes EU4 a completely different kind of problem than chess. I don't think anyone has cracked the problem of creating an AI that is good at diplomacy (again, see attempts to create bots for Diplomacy the board game).

If you reduce EU4 to a straight 1-on-1 fight, then it has more complexity than chess, but I don't know if much of that translates into depth as too much gets obscured by randomness. Yes, there is strategy in playing the odds in a random game, but it tends to destroy the intricate structure of long sequences of moves that can emerge in deterministic games (including deterministic games with incomplete information - fog of war is completely different from the game being thrown about by an RNG).