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

[zsImmortal]

I'm not trying to make conquest more of a grind but make it more realistic and force the player to become more involved in the game so that every decision is important and every decision involves trade-offs. Every step should involve a decision or activity or event.
The purpose is to make the game more immersive.

It does already. But those are all related to increasing one's own power while diminishing that of the others. I'd love a more in-depth and immersive game, but EU4's mechanics simply don't handle it well. You're talking about autonomy and corruption, but what do you do once you've reached your breaking point? Game over? Simply put, once you've expanded to a degree that makes any more territory impossible to incorporate effectively or takes large amounts of time, you just end up in a situation where you can't do anything compelling anymore, except beat up people for money or such.

 

[TenshiN]

Less blobby? I always said that in order to achieve that there should be more strict and more DEVASTATING. Waging too much wars? - Disable the bonus monarchpower events and make -stability events more frequent when the warscore is not in your favor, lose stability after being defeated in major battles, reduce tax and production income because the peasants are paying their taxes in blood now, in addition to paying for reinforcement. In general, fighting wars should be much more expensive in all aspects, because it nets you more land which can be slowly incorporated in your realm for large increases in all sorts of income.
On the contrary, being at peace for prolonged periods of time will net you more +mana events and other kinds of positive events (generally, the longer at peace, the higher the ratio of positive to negative events will become, although it can also depend on other factors, like tat shiny new "corruption"), drastically reduce development costs, increase production income... And so on. I firmly believe that this objective is easily achieved by rewriting the events and changing their frequency.

 

[Incompetent]

On the contrary, being at peace for prolonged periods of time will net you more +mana events and other kinds of positive events (generally, the longer at peace, the higher the ratio of positive to negative events will become, although it can also depend on other factors, like tat shiny new "corruption"), drastically reduce development costs, increase production income... And so on. I firmly believe that this objective is easily achieved by rewriting the events and changing their frequency.

Not keen on the idea of punishments for waging war as such (it's right and proper to be at war a lot in a game set in the early modern era), but bonus mana while at peace would certainly take some of the sting out of periods when you can't wage war (e.g. during Regencies). The trouble with tinkering with event frequencies is that it just gives more power to the RNG, which already frustrates players when it comes to monarch stats for instance. It's also not very perceptible to players unless you make the effect ridiculously large, or outright enable/disable specific events (people are very bad at observing/estimating probabilities).

 

[bbqftw]

Less blobby? I always said that in order to achieve that there should be more strict and more DEVASTATING. Waging too much wars? - Disable the bonus monarchpower events and make -stability events more frequent when the warscore is not in your favor, lose stability after being defeated in major battles, reduce tax and production income because the peasants are paying their taxes in blood now, in addition to paying for reinforcement. In general, fighting wars should be much more expensive in all aspects, because it nets you more land which can be slowly incorporated in your realm for large increases in all sorts of income.
On the contrary, being at peace for prolonged periods of time will net you more +mana events and other kinds of positive events (generally, the longer at peace, the higher the ratio of positive to negative events will become, although it can also depend on other factors, like tat shiny new "corruption"), drastically reduce development costs, increase production income... And so on. I firmly believe that this objective is easily achieved by rewriting the events and changing their frequency.

Yes, but how does this make peacetime more interesting?

When you're fighting a existencial threat war, there's multiple considerations that go into every army movement and decision to fight. What does peacetime offer besides things that can be easily mathematically optimized?

 

[Jaapje]

The question is; should WC still be possible? I personally think conquering the world is ludicrous. As much today as back then.

In order to stop blobbing be a viable strat, conquered provs of a different culture shouldnt give manpower. Or atleast, less depending on their distance from the capital. Culture should change over time and should increase manpower gradually in conquered provinces.

In all seriousness, conquering France as Spain wouldve tied up more men trying to keep it in check than it would've added to any Spanish armies.

 

[grommile]

Waging too much wars? - Disable the bonus monarchpower events

My experience makes me think that events are already more likely to consume monarch power than produce it. There is probably an element of selection effect bias in that, of course.

and make -stability events more frequent when the warscore is not in your favor,

That lets me inflict more damage on computer players via warfare, because the warscore is usually in my favour, not theirs.

lose stability after being defeated in major battles,

That lets me inflict more damage on computer players via warfare, because I already go to some trouble to avoid losing major battles that involve my soldiers.

reduce tax and production income because the peasants are paying their taxes in blood now,

That lets me inflict more damage on computer players via warfare, because I'm better at managing my economy than they are at managing theirs.

 

[Freudia]

The question is; should WC still be possible? I personally think conquering the world is ludicrous. As much today as back then.

In order to stop blobbing be a viable strat, conquered provs of a different culture shouldnt give manpower. Or atleast, less depending on their distance from the capital. Culture should change over time and should increase manpower gradually in conquered provinces.

In all seriousness, conquering France as Spain wouldve tied up more men trying to keep it in check than it would've added to any Spanish armies.

I don't think people are discussing this in context of world conquest.

And if you make blobbing a non-viable strategy, then what is a viable strategy in this game? Not playing? I'm good at that, but I doubt that'd be very good for the health of the game.

 

[GMOEU]

I think a 'problem' is that there's no 'victory' in EU4.

You can go wide or tall and at the end there's nothing.

There's nothing to compete for and nothing to achieve unless there are personal goals.

It's like playing a sport (Football/soccer, American football, hockey etc.) and no one keeps score and there are no points awarded at the end of the game and no standings/table. It can become boring very quickly.

If some type(s) of victory conditions would be added then there's something to plan for, create a path or scheme to get there, and every event and decision would have a purpose.
It would be something to aim for.

There could be various types of victories - e.g. a military victory (or victories if there are more than one way to get a military victory) where various military conditions or goals are met, administrative or diplomatic-type victory conditions/goals, or economic victory, or cultural etc.
If you attain those condition(s) first then you would have met your goals and you win (though you could continue to play on afterwards if you want).

(I know EU4 keeps a score of some sort but it doesn't produce a victory as such, and it's weighed more towards countries that are around the longest because it's cumulative though the highest score could be one way of achieving one type of victory.)

Of course there should be an option to play without any victory condition, as EU4 is right now.

Having a goal to reach would make EU4 more interesting and add a purpose to the game that's missing right now and add a purpose to every decision/event that's made while playing it.

 

[TenshiN]

Yes, but how does this make peacetime more interesting?

When you're fighting a existencial threat war, there's multiple considerations that go into every army movement and decision to fight. What does peacetime offer besides things that can be easily mathematically optimized?

Every turn-based strategy (lets face that eu4 is not really realtime, the turns are just faster) comes down to mathematical optimization. It is based on raw numbers, and Paradox are nice enough to let us know them, unlike many other games (hello AI diplomacy in Civ.). Therefore, with things as they are, it is impossible to make it not "easily mathematically optimized" without a total revision of the base mechanics, which is unlikely to come.

 

[Incompetent]

I think a 'problem' is that there's no 'victory' in EU4.

There is a scoring system if you really want it, but I like the historical sandbox feel of the game (and many other players do too). It's easy enough to come up with your own major goals, like 'unite the HRE' or 'control the world market in dyes' or whatever it is. If you've run out of ideas, you can always go for achievements as well.

The problem is that unless you impose some specific restrictions on yourself, the easiest way to achieve your goals is to blob out, and it doesn't really matter what exactly those goals are. Economy/manpower needs a boost? Not enough building slots? You could develop, but taking more land is far cheaper. Need more merchants for your great trade setup? Grab enough land to get a bunch of CNs and TCs. Rival Emperor candidate causing you grief? Get big so you can smash him; best way to take him out permanently is to take all his land, making you even blobbier. Need some more IA for the next HRE vote? Take land, add it to the Empire (possibly using it to make more HRE princes). Country you'd love to be friends with doesn't respect you? Eat your way into Asia and reach Empire-level development, and suddenly all the European majors will be fawning over you. You *can* achieve all these goals in other ways, but simply taking and coring a lot of land (+converting it to your religion if necessary) makes everything better for your country in the long run; the downsides are significant (AE, overextension, mana consumption, revolts), but they are all short-term. So blobbing simply dominates everything else as a long-term strategy.

 

[JustMormegil]

Tried to suggest how to make blobbing harder (hard, not annoying!) using scoring system here
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/great-power-mechanics.911437/

 

[GMOEU]

I think a 'problem' is that there's no 'victory' in EU4.

You can go wide or tall and at the end there's nothing.

There's nothing to compete for and nothing to achieve unless there are personal goals.

It's like playing a sport (Football/soccer, American football, hockey etc.) and no one keeps score and there are no points awarded at the end of the game and no standings/table. It can become boring very quickly.

If some type(s) of victory conditions would be added then there's something to plan for, create a path or scheme to get there, and every event and decision would have a purpose.
It would be something to aim for.

There could be various types of victories - e.g. a military victory (or victories if there are more than one way to get a military victory) where various military conditions or goals are met, administrative or diplomatic-type victory conditions/goals, or economic victory, or cultural etc.
If you attain those condition(s) first then you would have met your goals and you win (though you could continue to play on afterwards if you want).

(I know EU4 keeps a score of some sort but it doesn't produce a victory as such, and it's weighed more towards countries that are around the longest because it's cumulative though the highest score could be one way of achieving one type of victory.)

Of course there should be an option to play without any victory condition, as EU4 is right now.

Having a goal to reach would make EU4 more interesting and add a purpose to the game that's missing right now and add a purpose to every decision/event that's made while playing it.

A possibility of a victory is to have not more than 20 (or more or less) provinces and each province have a development of at least 35 (or any number).
So you would have a small country that you have to maintain independent but also have a high development level for each province.

Or

Dominate 3 ( or more or less) trade nodes (>50%) but maximum number of total provinces not more than 20 (or any number of provinces depending upon how easy or difficult you want to make it).

Or
Must dominate a trade node (trade power share >50%) and all provinces must have development of at least 10 before you can own another province in another trade node.