Do you have ideas how to make eu4 'taller and less blobby'?

[GAGA Extrem]

There are two great ways to promote "tall" or "non-blobby" gameplay - and both were part of EU3:

(1) Magistrates:
A limited resource that did not scale with empire size, but instead was depending on your tech level and type of goverment, modelling the transformation of a medieval nation into the modern centralized state. They were needed to max out building levels in provinces and to unlock powerful special edicts. In my opinion, they were one of the best ideas in all of EU3, making a tall approach viable without making expansion pointless.

(2) Scaling Tech and Stability Cost:
In EU3 you used gold to improve technology, stability or mint money for use. Obviously more provinces equaled more income. However, each province did also increase tech AND stability cost, so taking over a piss-poor region (e.g. conquering Norway as Netherlands) meant that your tech rate would suffer AND that it took significantly longer to regain stability (amplified by the fact that the stab cost increase by a province was significantly increased by wrong religion or culture).

This made expansion a trade-off: You gained more land, which meant you could mint more coins (= more gold for investment and upkeep) and gain more manpower, but your empire became less stable and (usually) a bit slower in terms of tech rate. I still remember a MP game where it tool me a decade to regain a single stab point with a significantly overexpanded (and thus underdeveloped) Spain. That feeling of being vulnerable despite owning all of middle and South America was amazing. Just like the feeling of slowly developing all the colonies and catching up the smaller nations, but now with the ability to raise 100k more soldiers if needed and a +100 ducate bigger income that you could use freely (when not recovering your stab).

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Neither of those make 'tall' or 'non-blobby' gameplay interesting. They just punish wide play. That just results in neither option being ideal.

If done right they can add a lot of decision making for empire development. I still remember pondering how I should use my last few Tier V slots as Netherlands - for 10 straight minutes before I came to a conclusion.

The next step after a basic balancing of tall vs wide is obviously to add actual mechanics (like a faction or pop system) that adds internal simulation and management.

The natural disadvantage of wide empires as the fact that the government could not control every corner of the empire and that factions and interest groups meddled with politics everywhere. But in EU4 you are a god-like being controlling king and country. Which is actually a secondary deisgn problem: In CK2 you play a character, in HOI you can argue that you play something like the military branch of your country, but in EU you play... the country itself? If you think about it, that concept is quite awkward because it doesn't really allow you to model internal stuff without taking away the player's total power.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

For the record: The fact that EU4 has so much less empire management and long-term decision making compared to EU3 (alas, poor sliders!) is the main reason why I can't even bring myself to play the game anymore. Thank you, but no thank you - I think I'd rather play Vicky 2. :/

Either way, there is a big difference between balancing tall vs wide and making tall vs wide a fun game mechanic. The latter is not possible with the current state of EU4. As I stated above, you'd need complete new mechanics to make that happen. And you can't really make these up "on the fly".

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Well, considering that the game became a lot more "arcady" when jumping from EU3 to EU4, it seems quite unlikely to me that the problem will be fixed any time soon.
I mean, heck, the basic combat mechanic was carried over from Vicky 2 - and EU is a WARGAME. Even CK2 has a better feel to the combat system than that... :/

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Unless you were playing a mod, both the Policy and Monthly Budget sliders were dull as deionized water.

Well, obviously I was playing my Balance Improvement mod. Where sliders (yes even centralized) were actually a choice.