While I like all your ideas, this one should be particularly easy to implement: weight the merchants power in a trade node relative to the power and opinion of other countries towards you. Et voila, you will have to either dominate the node completely or try to have good relations with the other nations active there. In the end, trade has always be based on good-will, right?Another big area that could improve peacetime gameplay is trade. Trade should be tied to diplomacy. It makes no sense that you can just pull your goods through dozens of hostile nations to your doorstep. Making wealth through trade should require a combination of sword AND pen. Perhaps the goal of better peacetime gameplay could be the thing that finally gets us the trade overhaul the game has needed since day one.
Do you have ideas how to make eu4 'taller and less blobby'?
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Nick stuff from CK2 and V2 where appropriate. POPs would be great. They don't have to be V2 complicated, because ~95% of the population is going to be either agricultural workers or artisans, but just having Urban / English / Protestant 5,623, Rural / English / Protestant 14,627, Urban / French / Calvinist 2,341 gives you something to work with. Literally just (urban/rural) / culture / religion. Then instead of having arbitrary base tax and manpower values, base tax is some proportion of your total POPs, production is some proportion of your urban pops, and manpower is some proportion of your rural pops. Then, losing lots of manpower actually hurts your economy for real, and takes time to regrow.
Then, flesh out estates. Don't just have one estate in one province. Estates should be able to own parts of each province - so 34% of the land in Kent might be owned by the Crown, 33% by the clergy, 20% by the greater nobility, 10% by the lesser nobility, and 3% by freemen. Estates should be a more constant battle, something like political parties in V2-ish. Each estate should have particular goals they want to achieve and try and force you to implement those goals, and you'd have to play the estates off against each other.
Basically, all the stuff Paradox got right in their other titles.
Then, flesh out estates. Don't just have one estate in one province. Estates should be able to own parts of each province - so 34% of the land in Kent might be owned by the Crown, 33% by the clergy, 20% by the greater nobility, 10% by the lesser nobility, and 3% by freemen. Estates should be a more constant battle, something like political parties in V2-ish. Each estate should have particular goals they want to achieve and try and force you to implement those goals, and you'd have to play the estates off against each other.
Basically, all the stuff Paradox got right in their other titles.
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I just don't want arbitrary anti blobbing mechanics. I've yet to see much that makes playing tall fun.
I agree with YuriiH when he says that we need more moving parts other than the soldiers to improve the player's involvement and fun with the game, especially in peace time. So my suggestion would be to add more "agents" traveling through the map, and create different layers of agents that could be tied to the map mode (so, when you are in Trade map mode, the soldiers would give place to the merchants and caravans). For that to succeed though, many systems would have to be revamped, like trade and diplomacy, so I don't think it can happen for EU4 anymore, but I'm gonna suggest it anyway...
Diplomacy/Politics
Make Rulers, Diplomats, Advisors, Spies and Colonizers have avatars and travel between your provinces and to other countries to perform different actions. This would be similar to CK2, but with realistic travel time (no more instant teleporting). Also, you should be able to see where the Rulers and diplomats of other countries are as well, and that would open new interactions, for example:
- If a Ruler (who would act like a more powerful Diplomat when he is not leading troops) or a Diplomat is in your capital improving relations with you, you would be able to improve relations back with them without having to go to their capital.
- If a Ruler or a Diplomat is inside your country at the moment you declare war on them, you would have the option to capture/execute them to destabilize your enemy, greatly impacting your relations.
- If two rulers are in the same place, it would give a massive boost to the improvement of relations.
- You send your spies to the enemy province you want to claim, to your own provinces to try to uncover enemy spies, or to another country's capital if you want to perform espionage actions.
- You send your advisors to specific provinces to give minor boosts to things like unrest, autonomy etc.
- Colonizers would be able to walk from one colonial province to the next one, instead of having to go all the way back to the capital and then travel 500 days to go back.
- If you are Italy and you want to improve relations with Ming, you would have to either put your diplomat on a boat and take him there or make the poor guy walk through Asia, no more teleconferences in the 16th century
Trade
I would also like the Trade system to be more dynamic, especially the inland one, with each country having real Caravans (I'm not a fan of the abstract caravan power) and Merchants competing for power over the nodes. I believe this could be impacted by Diplomacy, so a country that has negative opinion of you wouldn't let your merchants and caravans to trade in their land, and if you are at war you could also attack the enemy's merchants while having to care for your own. The current embargo mechanic is also very abstract, i would like if you could have your merchants and caravans actually engaged in embargoing your rivals in specific nodes.
I think that by making these important parts of the game as visually engaging and dynamic as operating soldiers at war, you could make the "tall" and peaceful gameplay at least somewhat as enjoyable as the warmongering one.
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Time to-strike-or-not is defined easily even with a minor in single-player game:
1) Pause game;
2) Watch your enemy's diplomatic screen for warscore;
3) Watch ledger on its current military / naval forcelimit + current money.
4) Check your allies (whether they join or not)
Then you unpause and resume 4-5 speed in peace, or start war and use 2-3 speed.
Probably, one needs more information on how the battles are going, but the most significant info is displayed on the “operator's screen”
Moreover, your potential targets are not always warring, and you do not always have any ability to see anything beyond your borderline
Besides, you do have truce timers and agressive expansion as well that is crucial for tiny minors especially. While the truce time or AE ticks down you have virtually nothing to do, except operating a game-machine by once-a-year / once-half-a-year clicking.
I just posted a suggestion about development in suggestion section. Hoping to know what you think about it
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-i-imagine-development.911091/
I think I ranted about this ages ago (when I occasionally pop into these forums), but I think the issue is that monarch points being mana is not functional for a 'tall game'. Its arbitrary and you have minimal control over the most important thing in the game. So you wait until you get enough to click a few times in a province, choose an idea, or incorporate something you conquered. It's the same reason that the entire "stability" metric isn't particularly fun either (though of course that isn't new to EU IV). It abstracts a ton that doesn't need to be, impacts everything, its a random tax on mana, and it is neither fun to do nor an interesting choice to make as a player.
There is no real reason to stay at peace or to stay small, unless you really like clicking those development increase buttons.
Most of the changes that have been implemented so far do make it harder to blob, but it generally comes down to either 1) a ticking timer of some sort is longer than before so the player waits more or 2) something that the player has to deal with but is more hassle and less fun like estates or 3) arbitrary hard barrier. There is still very little incentive for the player to not to want to blob.
Frankly I think the answer is to go back to how eu3 did it - tie more things into ducats. Because while wars don't cost mana, they are expensive (and should be). And if ducats are also used for tech and development (right now its mainly tied into buildings, but that also a straight ducats=war=ducats relationship as most buildings just help you make more manpower or ducats one way or another), which in turn helps create more gold, it makes war or peace a serious choice. And war has a serious cost outside your ability to wage the next war.
In any case, I acknowledge I'm probably not the best authority on this. I've had more difficulty really enjoying EU IV from the start than any other game Paradox makes, so I may just find something very fundamental about it unpleasant. I think its this - I find myself playing EU IV like I play Total War games (always preparing for and then doing the next conquest), but I'm not certain.
There is no real reason to stay at peace or to stay small, unless you really like clicking those development increase buttons.
Most of the changes that have been implemented so far do make it harder to blob, but it generally comes down to either 1) a ticking timer of some sort is longer than before so the player waits more or 2) something that the player has to deal with but is more hassle and less fun like estates or 3) arbitrary hard barrier. There is still very little incentive for the player to not to want to blob.
Frankly I think the answer is to go back to how eu3 did it - tie more things into ducats. Because while wars don't cost mana, they are expensive (and should be). And if ducats are also used for tech and development (right now its mainly tied into buildings, but that also a straight ducats=war=ducats relationship as most buildings just help you make more manpower or ducats one way or another), which in turn helps create more gold, it makes war or peace a serious choice. And war has a serious cost outside your ability to wage the next war.
In any case, I acknowledge I'm probably not the best authority on this. I've had more difficulty really enjoying EU IV from the start than any other game Paradox makes, so I may just find something very fundamental about it unpleasant. I think its this - I find myself playing EU IV like I play Total War games (always preparing for and then doing the next conquest), but I'm not certain.
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Bingo - with things like trade power transfer costing a diplo slot / only being 50%, there's very little appeal to using it.
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War doesn't cost monarch power, but obtaining more development by warfare costs monarch power.
If peaceable economic expansion costs only ducats, then rich countries are better at it than poor ones, and generally speaking the richest countries are the biggest.
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No I get that entirely - In EU4, obtaining more development by warfare costs monarch power, as does obtaining more development without war. Leaving the player the choice of getting development by war or getting it via clicking on provinces.
The only reason it worked in eu3 was the escalating tech cost by size mechanism. I'm not saying that exactly is the answer- in fact it had the terrible result of making you want to either be 1 province large or be absolutely huge (with 7 being the magic number not to be if I recall).
But what it did mean was that the largest countries weren't always the richest or the most advanced.
Eu4 has a lot of much more fleshed out systems for generating gold than eu3 (things like a much better trade and colonial system), but then it just gets geared into warfare. And the resource that matters most for development, ideas, technology, coring, etc. - monarch points - you have very little control over.
Guys EU4 will never be about playing tall, if you are looking for that, this is just the wrong game. That said having a less blobby strategy be viable would be amazing.
I found idea of having development cost gold amazing because it would allow development to cost less Monarch points (Not necessarily 0). For example most my SP games come down to picking Admin+Influence and blobbing ASAP as big as possible. But if I had an alternative in picking Economic+Trade and using the gold I got from that to develop my provinces, conquering only once my existing provinces hit diminishing returns, this would provide a viable alternative to outright expansion. Spending MP on ideas and staying ahead of time to generate even more gold.
This also plays well into recently announced States mechanic. A lot of people look at it and see arbitrary magical walls that prevent expansion. When in reality they are meant to represent the fact that even if you did mange to conquer all of europe in 1500, infrastructure simply wasn't there to tax the lot of them without utilizing Feudal vassals with a great degree of autonomy. With this sistem in place tall states can get more bank out of their territories despite being behind on size margins.
I found idea of having development cost gold amazing because it would allow development to cost less Monarch points (Not necessarily 0). For example most my SP games come down to picking Admin+Influence and blobbing ASAP as big as possible. But if I had an alternative in picking Economic+Trade and using the gold I got from that to develop my provinces, conquering only once my existing provinces hit diminishing returns, this would provide a viable alternative to outright expansion. Spending MP on ideas and staying ahead of time to generate even more gold.
This also plays well into recently announced States mechanic. A lot of people look at it and see arbitrary magical walls that prevent expansion. When in reality they are meant to represent the fact that even if you did mange to conquer all of europe in 1500, infrastructure simply wasn't there to tax the lot of them without utilizing Feudal vassals with a great degree of autonomy. With this sistem in place tall states can get more bank out of their territories despite being behind on size margins.
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Manual combat mode should be removed. You no longer engage yourself with troop movements nor will you watch and listen to battles. Instead your focus will be shifted into building (aforementioned by others) infrastructure for waging wars and your country stability: roads/barracks/trade buildings/churches/etc, passing laws and meddling with other countries politics. You will capitalize on veto power in Commonwealth using bribes and what not to advance your agenda (partitioning the blob). You will use your papal influence to strike your own version of Treaty of Tordesillas. You will be in talks with HRE Emperor to get privileges on buying salt (or any other resources) in exchange for military helping them in 30 year war or just to sell your neutrality on the matter. Because you need salt to stockpile food and, well boost your economy and population (salt at that time was like oil now, right?). Etc, etc.
And wars will be waged by you trusty(?) generals. Troops will move on AI commands (depending how good generals are). Same with actual engagements. This will allow for decisive battles as they were in history (now there is no such things at least for blobs with infinite mercs, just siege, siege, siege). You also will no longer need any anti-player obstacles like ZoC, exiling, military access rules, etc.
Inside your country you will shift and change balance of power between nobles, artisans, traders, clerics and other groups of influence to strengthen the Crown. Before declaring the war you will have to struggle with question of how you'll fund it. Will important groups support it? Whom you will additionally tax? How much? How big will there be economy damage? Will you be able to sustain it long enough? Will war outcome worth it?
There are no such things in eu4 and they will never happen. That's why we'll have to wait till eu5.
And wars will be waged by you trusty(?) generals. Troops will move on AI commands (depending how good generals are). Same with actual engagements. This will allow for decisive battles as they were in history (now there is no such things at least for blobs with infinite mercs, just siege, siege, siege). You also will no longer need any anti-player obstacles like ZoC, exiling, military access rules, etc.
Inside your country you will shift and change balance of power between nobles, artisans, traders, clerics and other groups of influence to strengthen the Crown. Before declaring the war you will have to struggle with question of how you'll fund it. Will important groups support it? Whom you will additionally tax? How much? How big will there be economy damage? Will you be able to sustain it long enough? Will war outcome worth it?
There are no such things in eu4 and they will never happen. That's why we'll have to wait till eu5.
That sounds nothing like EU at all, but color me interested nonetheless. If the mechanics play well, that could actually be pretty fun.
Idea of ditching manual armies control was born out of frustration with mid-late game wars. When you have to move 3+ death stacks (even more stacks if you want carpet siege) and "wait for siege completion, click on next fort, rinse, repeat" while you know that you will win. At that times I wanted strategic warfare screen: draw some arrows, adjust priorities and just tell AI to go conquer me, say India.
Then sit and watch the destruction of enemies, marveling on your strategic genius
New poster, and I feel the need to comment after reading a lot of suggestions about ways to make the game "less blobby" over the past few days.
How about you don't make the game "less blobby," because some of us (and by that I mean me) like it that way. Most of the suggestions I see on this forum regarding changes to encourage "tall" playstyles are things like "don't let players benefit from taking lots of territory" or "make it even longer/harder to obtain cores" - stuff that's designed to punish me for playing the game the way I enjoy in order to try and get me to play it the way somebody else enjoys (or wants to enjoy) playing it. I also see some suggestions of "implement X feature from Victoria II or CKII" - I've played CKII and I like it, but there's a reason I play EUIV more and it has a lot to do with the fact that there is a greater focus on simply conquering as much land as you can get your grubby hands on. If you want features such as being restricted to only conquering the 1-4 province war goal with most CBs, not being able to fabricate claims except by random chance, or receiving only 25% of the possible soldiers from land outside your De Jure empire, you can play CKII where they are already implemented. Please don't introduce them into EUIV, as I play EUIV to avoid those features.
I'd much rather a "tall" playstyle were encouraged by adding features to the game that a player can choose to take advantage of if they don't want to blob rather than by imposing restrictions on those of us who want to play "wide." They seem to have moved a little bit in this direction with development, except that a "wide" country can then just conquer you after you develop your provinces and spend less to core them than you did to develop them. The change to the fort system also made staying at peace more viable, since you can't really get up to and stay at 90+ army tradition from capturing hundreds of forts in near-constant warfare (well, I can't at least), meaning it's more viable to remain at peace for long periods. I'm not really sure what else they could add in this direction, though.
I'm also surprised to hear that "the general consensus seems to be that once you've out-blobbed your rivals the fun peters out." Yes, I've enjoyed fighting wars where I actually have to take loans to beat the enemy, but part of the fun of fighting those wars for me is that I eventually grow my country to the point where I don't have to fight them any more. Once I've out-blobbed my rivals the fun becomes figuring out how I can fulfill whatever long-term goals I set for myself in the campaign and seeing what silly stuff the AI ends up doing. I even find wars against large but relatively weaker powers to be entertaining - the entertainment comes not from trying to figure out how to win, but how to win the war in the most effective manner. To be honest I wouldn't like it if the game were changed so that it was no longer possible to out-blob your rivals, because the AI is rather fickle and untrustworthy.
I think that ultimately, it might just be important for them to add in features that make remaining at peace or "playing tall" more entertaining rather than more powerful. By the same token, maybe people should accept that "playing tall" is simply a different playstyle that doesn't necessarily need to result in a country that's as powerful as one that expands aggressively. It's certainly possible to survive to 1821 without expanding a whole lot - back before development was introduced I did a successful Sweden game where I didn't expand outside of Scandanavia, and I had a competitively sized army for pretty much the entire game. I can only imagine it is easier now.
How about you don't make the game "less blobby," because some of us (and by that I mean me) like it that way. Most of the suggestions I see on this forum regarding changes to encourage "tall" playstyles are things like "don't let players benefit from taking lots of territory" or "make it even longer/harder to obtain cores" - stuff that's designed to punish me for playing the game the way I enjoy in order to try and get me to play it the way somebody else enjoys (or wants to enjoy) playing it. I also see some suggestions of "implement X feature from Victoria II or CKII" - I've played CKII and I like it, but there's a reason I play EUIV more and it has a lot to do with the fact that there is a greater focus on simply conquering as much land as you can get your grubby hands on. If you want features such as being restricted to only conquering the 1-4 province war goal with most CBs, not being able to fabricate claims except by random chance, or receiving only 25% of the possible soldiers from land outside your De Jure empire, you can play CKII where they are already implemented. Please don't introduce them into EUIV, as I play EUIV to avoid those features.
I'd much rather a "tall" playstyle were encouraged by adding features to the game that a player can choose to take advantage of if they don't want to blob rather than by imposing restrictions on those of us who want to play "wide." They seem to have moved a little bit in this direction with development, except that a "wide" country can then just conquer you after you develop your provinces and spend less to core them than you did to develop them. The change to the fort system also made staying at peace more viable, since you can't really get up to and stay at 90+ army tradition from capturing hundreds of forts in near-constant warfare (well, I can't at least), meaning it's more viable to remain at peace for long periods. I'm not really sure what else they could add in this direction, though.
I'm also surprised to hear that "the general consensus seems to be that once you've out-blobbed your rivals the fun peters out." Yes, I've enjoyed fighting wars where I actually have to take loans to beat the enemy, but part of the fun of fighting those wars for me is that I eventually grow my country to the point where I don't have to fight them any more. Once I've out-blobbed my rivals the fun becomes figuring out how I can fulfill whatever long-term goals I set for myself in the campaign and seeing what silly stuff the AI ends up doing. I even find wars against large but relatively weaker powers to be entertaining - the entertainment comes not from trying to figure out how to win, but how to win the war in the most effective manner. To be honest I wouldn't like it if the game were changed so that it was no longer possible to out-blob your rivals, because the AI is rather fickle and untrustworthy.
I think that ultimately, it might just be important for them to add in features that make remaining at peace or "playing tall" more entertaining rather than more powerful. By the same token, maybe people should accept that "playing tall" is simply a different playstyle that doesn't necessarily need to result in a country that's as powerful as one that expands aggressively. It's certainly possible to survive to 1821 without expanding a whole lot - back before development was introduced I did a successful Sweden game where I didn't expand outside of Scandanavia, and I had a competitively sized army for pretty much the entire game. I can only imagine it is easier now.
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The main challenge in the EU4 period was the building of the modern state, which was a whole process of back and forth. Even if you look at China, the main challenge they had was to keep the state administration going, and a big part of the downfall of the Ming was simply their insistence on maintaining an agrarian-based administration in what had become a heavily mercantile society. We look back and see the whole thing as being step-by-step: centralizing tax collection, establishing standing armies, national bureaucracies, bringing the Church into line, etc. And the EU4 tech system represents things in that way. But in practice, rulers had to negotiate with their nobles, clergy, merchants, etc. to push forward reforms, some of which panned out and some of which didn't (and even sometimes, the same ones didn't work in different conditions. Look at standing armies: the Jannisaries spiraled out of control, while the British redcoats did not. Or paper money: it worked for a time for China, but really, really messed up France in the 1700s, before working in the modern world). Ideally, there should be an internal politics segment to the game that is equally as important as the war/blobbing half. It would involve manipulating internal power structures to reach some planned reform goal: either strengthening your army by getting them to adopt some new way of fighting, or encouraging trade, or increasing taxes to fight the French, or converting to Protestantism, or ensuring that your daughter succeeds to the throne of Austria, etc. and getting internal factions to go along with it (by bribing them with some other bit of power or cash, or crushing their opposition with force, or by propping up another faction to counterbalance them etc.) The key should be that there isn't any one path to success - you may end up with a constitutional monarchy in one case, and a divine god-king in another, but these arise as the consequences of your actions.
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Personally I don't agree with this. I really like that a lot of things are usually aren't automated in other strategy games are automated and abstracted in Paradox games. Micromanagement without strategic impact is just busywork, and probably the #1 reason I am really burned out on the 4X genre right now. It may be more engaging moment to moment but gets really tedious in a long-form game like EU4. When I send a missionary to convert a province, I don't want to need to constantly check on his progress or play some minigame that may speed it up.
I also love that Paradox has generally been pretty good at paring away at pointless micromanagement wherever they pop up in the game. No manually dispensing papal influence in a bidding war for the papacy, no focusing all your attention on your exploration fleet for a couple of years just clicking on the next sea tile. No memorizing of army templates and manually combining regiments into an army.
I think the problem is not peace-time vs. war-time, it is military mechanics vs. non-military mechanics.
The game need more *interesting* non-military mechanics that give the player what the war-game give him:
1. Final goals - for example, unify Germany.
2. Intermediate goals - conquer those two provinces so that will get you closer to the next three countries that I need to attack.
3. Affects and affected by almost any aspect of the game - diplomacy, religion, trade, technology - every aspect of the game has some trade-off with war.
4. You have to always plane ahead - build more soldiers, take technology that will help you have the strongest army etc.
5. You can specilize and progress a lot, and feel the results of this - better soldiers and *different* soldiers, army composition, lot's of ideas, war strategy etc.
In short - In almost any country I can play a war game - have a war derived goal, with lots of intermediate ones (so I feel that I'm "getting somewhere") that keeps me always thinking about how I will get it and almost any move I make is aimed at making me militarily stronger so I can accomplish those goals.
I think EU4 currently have aspects that can give you this - I think the HRE is probably the only one that can fill an almost complete game of strategising with mostly non-military mechanics, but it is not just that - after reading the guide to royal marriage, I just left a game I was on to try an Austria run where I want to win mostly diplomatic - there will be war there probably, but this time war will be a tool to get a diplomatic result and not the other way around - I will take ideas in order to get more possible relationships, I will choose my rivals based on the possibility to get a succession war and I will look on the disputed succession as much as I look on the military ledger.
I would LOVE to see more mechanics and areas that can give me an option to based an entire game on - trade for example - today I might decide to conquer a province because it has a trade bonus, but I don't see how I can base a game on being the largest trader without it being a mostly military game.
The same goes fore colonization, or a new world/RotW country - I would like for it to be interesting for me to play a small African country, trade slaves with the European or the Muslims, create a big country, then becoming a protectorate of a European country, get stuff from them (westernize) and then break free.
The two things I think that need to be changed are:
1. Add playable mechanics - colonization, religion, internal politics, deplomacy, province specialization - not just "invest X ADM to get this", but long time connections, statistics a player can change that snowballs, and most of all - a thing I can call "a win" if I get it.
2. Remove some of the anti-gamey rules that maybe balance a military game, but just destroies any non-military game. For example "going tall" - I think the estates and the development is a good thing, but the weird cap that don't let me specialize a province just destroys it - if I would try to play a peaceful Switzerland for example, I would try to maybe take one or two provinces, but I will also like to build one or two military oriented provinces and give them to the Nobility. The same goes for the big hit to when you try to ally two large countries - it is reasonable when you want to prevent a super allaynce, but if I'm a samll country between France and Austria *it makes sence* for them to keep me alive.
The game need more *interesting* non-military mechanics that give the player what the war-game give him:
1. Final goals - for example, unify Germany.
2. Intermediate goals - conquer those two provinces so that will get you closer to the next three countries that I need to attack.
3. Affects and affected by almost any aspect of the game - diplomacy, religion, trade, technology - every aspect of the game has some trade-off with war.
4. You have to always plane ahead - build more soldiers, take technology that will help you have the strongest army etc.
5. You can specilize and progress a lot, and feel the results of this - better soldiers and *different* soldiers, army composition, lot's of ideas, war strategy etc.
In short - In almost any country I can play a war game - have a war derived goal, with lots of intermediate ones (so I feel that I'm "getting somewhere") that keeps me always thinking about how I will get it and almost any move I make is aimed at making me militarily stronger so I can accomplish those goals.
I think EU4 currently have aspects that can give you this - I think the HRE is probably the only one that can fill an almost complete game of strategising with mostly non-military mechanics, but it is not just that - after reading the guide to royal marriage, I just left a game I was on to try an Austria run where I want to win mostly diplomatic - there will be war there probably, but this time war will be a tool to get a diplomatic result and not the other way around - I will take ideas in order to get more possible relationships, I will choose my rivals based on the possibility to get a succession war and I will look on the disputed succession as much as I look on the military ledger.
I would LOVE to see more mechanics and areas that can give me an option to based an entire game on - trade for example - today I might decide to conquer a province because it has a trade bonus, but I don't see how I can base a game on being the largest trader without it being a mostly military game.
The same goes fore colonization, or a new world/RotW country - I would like for it to be interesting for me to play a small African country, trade slaves with the European or the Muslims, create a big country, then becoming a protectorate of a European country, get stuff from them (westernize) and then break free.
The two things I think that need to be changed are:
1. Add playable mechanics - colonization, religion, internal politics, deplomacy, province specialization - not just "invest X ADM to get this", but long time connections, statistics a player can change that snowballs, and most of all - a thing I can call "a win" if I get it.
2. Remove some of the anti-gamey rules that maybe balance a military game, but just destroies any non-military game. For example "going tall" - I think the estates and the development is a good thing, but the weird cap that don't let me specialize a province just destroys it - if I would try to play a peaceful Switzerland for example, I would try to maybe take one or two provinces, but I will also like to build one or two military oriented provinces and give them to the Nobility. The same goes for the big hit to when you try to ally two large countries - it is reasonable when you want to prevent a super allaynce, but if I'm a samll country between France and Austria *it makes sence* for them to keep me alive.
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This is a really fair point. I think EU IV is paradox's most popular game by a fairly large margin. People obviously like a lot about it. Of course I disagree, but we do still have the older games (not to mention Victoria). Don't want to ruin anyone else's fun either.
I think the key is to find a way to let blobbers blob, but also make not blobbing a perfectly viable strategy that has its own benefits.
I don't think blobbing needs to be impossible (nor do I think that paradox's current approach of making it an ever increasing hassle is correct). I just think blobbing or staying like a small Italian state should be a choice - both should have their (different) advantages and disadvantages.
The problem is that that right now, while blobbing can put more of a burden on the player, it is still almost always the best long term strategy.
You may probably confuse micromanagement (like former Papal Influence, rebuilding troops, etc.) and “moving” visual models.
The first one is an immediate visual response similar to simply changing numerical value.
The second one, which I propose to add in peacetime, is a character / figure / unit that is moveable; you get a visual response, but it is percieved differently compared to the one-click-one-response micromanagement of values and icons. Of course it would affect the multiplayer game, but EU4 is still mainly a single-player one.
Such micromanagement as you have noted have nothing to do with actual unit control.
Still, unfortunately, even now in EU4, you still need to “play” the game actively when it comes to a war, especially in the endgame when you battle with highly increased force limits at numerous number of provices.
However, your desire for an operator's gameplay is understandable; sometimes I would also like to have a kind of “HRE-swarm” option (AI-controlled army) for my own country when I have mood to be a passive (or low-active) observer instead of moving my numerous units.
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