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

[paulatreides0]

More abstract things on top of abstract things? No. Just no.

It's hardly abstracting on top of abstracting. The differentiation is there for a reason and actually adds to gameplay. Ignoring the huge post that came after it as if I did not explain why the system has huge practical benefits in-game that are not very hard to understand, but can radically rebalance the game for the better isn't a very good argument.

Not to mention that cores are hardly "abstract" unless you think that administration and bureaucracies are somehow abstract.

Likewise, the difference in the administrative lands of your kingdom/empire that are considered a core part of your empire (De Jure cores) and are home to your people (e.g. the people who are seen as "full citizens" and are properly represented, as with the British in the UK as opposed to the Irish in the UK), as opposed to those administrative lands that aren't (De Facto cores) and contain your second class citizens (see the previous example), is hardly an arbitrary abstraction, but actually rooted in reality and how countries actually functions.

Because of this, you can't have war to further some other objective. The reason you go to war is to get stronger so that you can win more wars. War is the fundamental gameplay, and your actions are ultimately in support of war.

In order for there to be some motivation to play tall, or avoid blobbing, or whatever, you have to have some actual compelling gameplay that isn't war. Then you could go to war in support of that other mode of gameplay. If trade management were an actual game, rather than just placing a merchant, you might want to go to war to further your position in the trade game. As it is, you might go to war to expand your trade, but it's ultimately so that your trade will enable you to win more wars in the future.

The two are not mutually exclusive. The game can encourage building tall while still keeping a focus on war - although expanding peace time features would still be nice if only to differentiate gameplay some. If periodic periods of peace gave you an advantage and made you stronger instead of encouraging constant war and making any time you aren't at war a waste of time, then the game would benefit. It doesn't have to be perpetual peace, but if you had some reason to slow down the pace of war for reasons other than "let manpower slowly tick up", but could also manage to put yourself in a better geopolitical position for a future war, then the game benefits. Likewise, if you rebalanced the game so that war could be about more than just blobbing and allowing other options that can be, under certain circumstances, preferential to just blobbing, the game would also benefit.

 

[Lemont Elwood]

I have said this many times: if you want peacetime to be fun, you have to have a focus NOT on warfare, but on economics, internal politics, administration, or some other factor.

CK2 is already the internal politics game, and V2 is already the economics game. I think EU4 should be the administration game, with a focus on building a healthy government more than the state/empire itself.

It'll never happen, though.

 

[Tiax]

The two are not mutually exclusive. The game can encourage building tall while still keeping a focus on war - although expanding peace time features would still be nice if only to differentiate gameplay some. If periodic periods of peace gave you an advantage and made you stronger instead of encouraging constant war and making any time you aren't at war a waste of time, then the game would benefit. It doesn't have to be perpetual peace, but if you had some reason to slow down the pace of war for reasons other than "let manpower slowly tick up", but could also manage to put yourself in a better geopolitical position for a future war, then the game benefits. Likewise, if you rebalanced the game so that war could be about more than just blobbing and allowing other options that can be, under certain circumstances, preferential to just blobbing, the game would also benefit.

When you're playing wide, going to war helps you get wider, and getting wider helps you win more wars. It's a nice feedback loop that gives you the sense of progress that makes games like this compelling. But where is that feedback when going tall? There are rare opportunities to get taller via war - such as by taking a nearby trade port that vastly enhances the trade income from your other provinces - but most of the time there's no way to become taller by winning a war. And once you get tall, what are you going to use your power for? To fight wars that don't advance your strategy?

 

[nicksinger7]

I'm on my first play through. I love seeing you pros talking about the 'simple' aspects of the game. I think the game is so incredibly complex and only have common sense and art of war. I have been playing it since eu2 on and off and I am amazed how far they have taken it. I guess after 1000s of hours any game may seem simple. Many are now ready to actually run a full sized country!!

 

[paulatreides0]

When you're playing wide, going to war helps you get wider, and getting wider helps you win more wars. It's a nice feedback loop that gives you the sense of progress that makes games like this compelling. But where is that feedback when going tall? There are rare opportunities to get taller via war - such as by taking a nearby trade port that vastly enhances the trade income from your other provinces - but most of the time there's no way to become taller by winning a war. And once you get tall, what are you going to use your power for? To fight wars that don't advance your strategy?

I completely agree with you that this is true under the current system. However, this need not be the case and the game can be rebalanced so that growing wide isn't the only method. Going to war to go wide can and should be viable (although probably not infinitely so, as is currently the case), but tall nations have a reason to go to war too - to secure their positions and weaken your enemies - ala England and the Netherlands.

Going tall allows you to centralize your power and create a more stable and efficient realms, as was historically the case. If the game can be balanced about somewhat establishing this balance, then war becomes more interesting as an actual instrument of diplomacy and politics instead of just a tool of blobbing and direct growth.

 

[Tiax]

I completely agree with you that this is true under the current system. However, this need not be the case and the game can be rebalanced so that growing wide isn't the only method. Going to war to go wide can and should be viable (although probably not infinitely so, as is currently the case), but tall nations have a reason to go to war too - to secure their positions and weaken your enemies - ala England and the Netherlands.

Going tall allows you to centralize your power and create a more stable and efficient realms, as was historically the case. If the game can be balanced about somewhat establishing this balance, then war becomes more interesting as an actual instrument of diplomacy and politics instead of just a tool of blobbing and direct growth.

I see what you mean. The non-territory CBs are pretty lackluster at the moment. It's basically never worth it to fight a war over an embargo or whatever, unless you're really using it as an excuse to get some territory. The day when I use a conquest CB as a pretense to fight a trade war will be the day playing tall is a real option.

 

[LWE]

Victoria 2 is somewhat less blobby, but is it really that less blobby? The whole "Paradox Clausewitz game" genre seems to suffer from this problem, to a greater or lesser degree. Admittedly, I am only starting playing Vic2.

 

[drake546]

I'm on my first play through. I love seeing you pros talking about the 'simple' aspects of the game. I think the game is so incredibly complex and only have common sense and art of war. I have been playing it since eu2 on and off and I am amazed how far they have taken it. I guess after 1000s of hours any game may seem simple. Many are now ready to actually run a full sized country!!

Eu4 has a great many features. Simple isn't really the right word, because even things like development aren't simple. However, all those features are shallow. They lack interaction and depth of choice.

Development is simple a place to dump extra points, that also opens building slots. Its numerous other affects don't offer strategic choices. Estates are better, but still really shallow. You respond to random events to manipulate three sets of numbers to maximize the advantages. You also have one off activations you can use.

The key is to think of these aspects independently. Is the gameplay inherent in trade enough to make a game about? No. Its shallow and has very low levels of interaction. Colonization? The same. Exploration? They've ruined that completely. Unfortunately, warfare is the only aspect of the game that offers enough interaction to really qualify as a game. This makes everything else largely window dressing.

Which is frankly a shame. Paradox is capable of a lot, some of their other games offer really interesting gameplay in economics and the other areas. Eu4 just doesn't.

 

[atwix]

make a mod in civilisation 4 named europa universalis 4.

Problem solved.

(cynical mode off)

Maybe some achievements focussing on tall play would incite players to try it. But I bet some players would get silly bored of playing taller and less blobby.

If you want the game to be taller and less blobby, then paradox should prefect the ai, rather then making madagascar have 5 new nations, and making mechanics that install a new layer of rules over old layers of rules, that will surely cause serious balancing problems that require them to shift attention to this even more.

If they would script the ai to be better at manoeuvring, and install counter measures to adapt to commonly used tactics, then eu4 would become less blobby.

 

[mursolini]

To make peace time compelling, EU4 basics need to be rebuilt from the start. The game needs you to make a grand project, imperial infrastructure, that would feed imperial economy and military.

EU4 simply doesn`t accomodate for such infrastructure building the way Civilisation does. In EU4, provinces are largely static. Their base values rarely change. EU4 doesn`t have elaborate logistic aside from trade. It doesn`t force you to embark on all the invastments real world countries had to make. EU4 doesn`t devatsate lands in which war happened. EU4 doesn`t force you to back up your conquest with building the infrastructure, troops, goverment, ex, to actually keep local land under controll. Even Total War series is better at that, than EU4.

It is no wonder it is so easy to expand. Your goverment is absolutely free, your empire is self-sustaining, public order needs no investment into, infrastructure just magically appear for free. Why would you not conquer everything you can grab?

 

[DicRoNero]

I feel like there should be a bonus to Admin and Diplomatic monarch points during peace and a malus while at war. On the flipside, there should be a bonus to military points at war and penalty while at peace.

Might not help with "tall vs wide" per se but at least makes logical sense so that being at perpetual war (and getting the Power Projection bonuses) isn't always better than being at peace. In theory your nation should prosper more when not at war.

Now the true way of displaying how detrimental the war actually is would be to stop thinking of your men as of "manpower". Then the whole process would balance itself, i.e. one would be perfectly fine fighting some light small-scale wars, but entering a flat-out mode surely will ruin the nation; but not because some virtual Peasant War might happen, but for the reason he lacks both working hands and brains to advance the nation. Something Victoria-like, if you so please.

That is something really really different to a simple knee-jerk reaction, like cutting MP generation for no reason whatsoever other than mere jealousy.

 

[Freudia]

Victoria 2 is somewhat less blobby, but is it really that less blobby? The whole "Paradox Clausewitz game" genre seems to suffer from this problem, to a greater or lesser degree. Admittedly, I am only starting playing Vic2.

Vic2 is pretty blobby if you want to play it that way, but Infamy (which is an even worse cludge than AE is in EU4) tries its best to prevent that unless you've snowballed hard enough to where nothing can stop your runaway.

For everywhere else, it's fairly about just fine-tuning your nation and attempting to bring it to a secondary or great power status before 1870 so you can colonize, then after that it's about seeing what you can do with your new colonized lands.

 

[gramis]

You guys are talking about complexe changes when the solution to blobbing can be quite simple and historical as well.
Supplies for armies. The farther you are from home the harder to maintain your army supplied. For example historically it took the ottomans a long time to plan an execute the siege of Vienna. In EU it's quite easy to move a huge army a lot of provinces away from home and keep it there with no impact whatsoever.
I would say harsher penalties the farther u are and longer you stay away from home/allied territory(like naval attrition until certain tech).

 

[mursolini]

You guys are talking about complexe changes when the solution to blobbing can be quite simple and historical as well.
Supplies for armies. The farther you are from home the harder to maintain your army supplied. For example historically it took the ottomans a long time to plan an execute the siege of Vienna. In EU it's quite easy to move a huge army a lot of provinces away from home and keep it there with no impact whatsoever.
I would say harsher penalties the farther u are and longer you stay away from home/allied territory(like naval attrition until certain tech).

Armies in time period were not supplied from home region, this is no WW2 industrial armies. In many cases supplies were easier to find in enemy land, since there was no real resistance to looting enemies, as opposed to your own population.

Armies didn`t require complex manufactured supplies, so there was no need to pull them across. Now, obviously supplies mettered, but supply chain really was not present for larger part of the game.

 

[drake546]

Armies in time period were not supplied from home region, this is no WW2 industrial armies. In many cases supplies were easier to find in enemy land, since there was no real resistance to looting enemies, as opposed to your own population.

Armies didn`t require complex manufactured supplies, so there was no need to pull them across. Now, obviously supplies mettered, but supply chain really was not present for larger part of the game.

Actually, eu4 occurs during an era where the major countries began to rely heavily on their depot systems and logistics for supplies. Living off the land was not reliable. Looting and pillaging still occurred, but major civilized armies didn't live off the land, because it was too easy to starve and lose.

 

[gramis]

Armies in time period were not supplied from home region, this is no WW2 industrial armies. In many cases supplies were easier to find in enemy land, since there was no real resistance to looting enemies, as opposed to your own population.

Armies didn`t require complex manufactured supplies, so there was no need to pull them across. Now, obviously supplies mettered, but supply chain really was not present for larger part of the game.

So you think you they could sustain back than an army of say 30k plus horses in enemy territory for years without an impact? Or they could reinforce said army at a steady pace ?

 

[grommile]

I would say harsher penalties the farther u are and longer you stay away from home/allied territory(like naval attrition until certain tech).

Given that forts are a hard block to territorial penetration (and that, in principle, once you've taken control of a fort you'd be able to use it as a logistics node), this has - in SP, at least, where you face opponents who actually build forts - much less impact than you think.

The biggest thing that should change about war IMO besides from naval overhaul and fort shenanigans is it should be really really expensive.

Ironically, this actually makes life easier for the player, in the same kind of way that raising coring costs does.

 

[Incompetent]

When you're playing wide, going to war helps you get wider, and getting wider helps you win more wars. It's a nice feedback loop that gives you the sense of progress that makes games like this compelling. But where is that feedback when going tall? There are rare opportunities to get taller via war - such as by taking a nearby trade port that vastly enhances the trade income from your other provinces - but most of the time there's no way to become taller by winning a war. And once you get tall, what are you going to use your power for? To fight wars that don't advance your strategy?

In previous EU games, there was a 'tall' positive feedback loop known as hyperteching. By deliberately keeping a low province count and making most of your money from trade, you could maintain high stability and buy techs cheaply. If you focused your tech spending on the economy, with just enough military to avoid being too much of a target, you could zoom ahead of the rest of the world. It was kind of overkill in Europe (you just ended up hitting the ahead of time penalties, which were partly put in place in order to put a cap on hyperteching), but if you started in an inferior tech group, it was a good way to play, probably better in the long run than blobbing out at the first opportunity. EU4 broke the positive feedback loop with regards to economic tech, because a more efficient economy in EU4 doesn't let you tech up faster (ahead-of-time is practically a hard cap that even the 'widest' Western-tech countries routinely hit, and a larger *total* economy lets you hire better advisors, but that's not really something that rewards going tall). It's mostly been a good thing in making the tech disparities between countries less extreme, but it has killed off a certain style of play. We could bring something like this back to EU4 if there was a way to make development feed on itself somehow and not depend purely on MP.

 

[grommile]

We could bring something like this back to EU4 if there was a way to make development feed on itself somehow and not depend purely on MP.

There is! It's called events.

 

[Incompetent]

There is! It's called events.

Well yes, the basic mechanics are there. I mean from a design perspective, it needs to be system that makes going tall feel somewhat rewarding without leading to ridiculous positive feedback loops (as economic tech often did in previous versions of the game). Gifting 'tall' countries with a shower of random development-increasing events is not a good approach IMO.