One does not have to have programmed an AI to look at the way the AI's peace negotiation behaviour has been changed and go "dear Paradox, why are you making the AI stab itself in the spleen with a rusty garden fork?"
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Does the game feel historical to you?
- Thread starter keynes2.0
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Is Eu4 totally historical? No, there simply can't imagine a game being totally historical.
Does Eu4 feel historical? Yes and no. A balance between historicity and mechanics is needed in order to make the game fun. On the other hand, I got stuck many time in historical situation helping me to understand decisions, both good and bad, that were historically made. I also found many cases of historical leaders setting similar goals (and very ambitious goal) as mine.
In the end, historical immersion really depend on you. The way you play, your goals, your imagination greatly influence your degree of historical immersion.
Personally, I founded that reading about the country I play while playing is a great way to increase immersion. Plus, it make regency or to long forced peace pass quicker.
Does Eu4 feel historical? Yes and no. A balance between historicity and mechanics is needed in order to make the game fun. On the other hand, I got stuck many time in historical situation helping me to understand decisions, both good and bad, that were historically made. I also found many cases of historical leaders setting similar goals (and very ambitious goal) as mine.
In the end, historical immersion really depend on you. The way you play, your goals, your imagination greatly influence your degree of historical immersion.
Personally, I founded that reading about the country I play while playing is a great way to increase immersion. Plus, it make regency or to long forced peace pass quicker.
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That and it's a good opportunity to pot-shot the "explanation" we got for why "length of war" is somehow a necessary factor for the AI in weighting peace deals as-implemented. Supposedly, not having it makes wars not carry enough risk (which, in SP, should come off as something in the neighborhood of a joke to experienced players and is irrelevant in MP where the human is deciding peace deals on both ends). Is length of war in one of the 6-8 ongoing late game wars with full annexation in mind something I'm supposed to view as adding risk? Wasn't the justification of the 15 year truces in part to disincentivize total war as stated by the devs, despite that it and this length of war nonsense make anything other than total war a false choice in an overwhelming #cases?
Jomini crushed that argument pretty effectively from a different angle in that thread and then further discussion on it kind of died, as it usually does when the justification for status quo implementation is complete nonsense (nerfing native colonization, native ships, nerfing hordes, and regency councils have a similar tendency to result in "disappearing devs").
It's an example of making the AI self-harm on purpose with no observable benefit to the AI and claiming that the intention is to make it harder on the human. It's just as nonsensical as the horde nerfs but far more universal in that you will observe it as any nation you pick. If one's sense of immersion is from a "historical" perspective (good luck if that's your source in this game), this would be utterly shattering. Even moving cap to the new world (Portugal did it out of desperation temporarily) has more historical basis than "we have exactly what we want already and/or we're getting crushed, but we don't want to stop bleeding resources because this fight hasn't gone on long enough", which happened in history exactly 0 times.
But yes, regardless of a legit historical context or not, creating a system whereby players will harm themselves/worsen their own long term position to the extent that it lowers the odds of victory for them outright (in contrast with a dogpile on a runaway which has a legit basis) necessarily clamps down on immersion in strategy titles. Having opponents self-harm in a way that creates an active detriment to themselves and the player (while boosting someone else at random, or nobody) is a fast-track to killing immersion without any justification or redeeming value. Creating that system in a way that simultaneously lowers the difficulty and adds tedium and claiming that it adds difficulty though? Yeah, that's worth calling out, just like regency councils in their current implementation are (another immersion-killer from both realism and gameplay perspectives that has no valid justification or historical basis whatsoever).
Mechanics that are both ahistorical AND punish success with tedium (or add tedium at random) have no place in the game and are the most obvious immersion killers.
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I don't think it is possible to create "historically plausible" game and sell more than 100 copies. It would require improving tinny details as e.g. soft reset of relation (AE, trust) on monarch death. Heir should have its potential for Miracle of the House of Brandenburg.
Managing nobles, magnates, using their intrigues would be most of your work in most types of Monarchy (absolute should give more power, but not less intrigues). This nobles should push you to conquer X or demolish fleet of Y, force trade privileges in country Z. To be honest it would be boring as hell probably. Most of monarchs choose rather to launch great parties or hunt game deep in the forest than paint the map.
Logistic is big problem, it would be another anti war mechanic. Even if Devs make it easy way it would be probably "unfun", "AI breaking", "worst change ever" and patch would be "unplayable, for time being i am stuck with beta". By easy way i meant something like you pay if you exceed 25% of Attrition limit in own/ally provinces or you are in hostile province either by paying lots of money or slowly looting target province (you don't get cash). "Army events" (provincial in fact) about spoiling supplies in winter, plagues on the top of that (hitting 0 morale and/or loosing men). No supply lines, supply bases, speed of transport etc.
Fact is there is not much not WW2 games with not bad logistic system.
Length of war modifier isn't good, but i wouldn't call it self harming AI. It prevents too fast war: sit on target, use mountainous, grab few provs in peace deal before AI ship their men from home area or get MAs, produce army, you run out of cash to fund your Merc super army, deal with rebels or minor war or whatever. It should be canceled out by devastating disproportion in forces or more pressing matters like end of truce with rival or Coalition war coming. I do think this mechanic work better than general war management by AI. It's annoying yes. I would argue that it was rather common to destroy neighbour without interest in most of their provinces (route their armies, grab few cities, watch them sink). AI treasury (manpower already affects that) or danger of being attacked by others should force them to peace out quickly. I don't see any way to implement this.
Perhaps length of war modifier should be applied in this coalition war or wars with rivals or mortal enemies or colonial wars (in short: pretty much any war), when monarchs could put destruction of enemy before good shape of their own kingdom any time.
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I roleplay it as much as I can.
It is hilariously lacking mechanisms to actually simulate the era in any depth. But in its genre it is unparallelled. It is like democracy, the best of all the worst possibilities out there
It is hilariously lacking mechanisms to actually simulate the era in any depth. But in its genre it is unparallelled. It is like democracy, the best of all the worst possibilities out there
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Historically realistic? No. More historically realistic than any other game I've played in this genre? Yes. I really enjoy the Civ and TW series, hundreds (actually, thousands, going back before steam) of hours in them...but this is a completely different league.
As a couple of posters already mentioned above, I think the most historical value to games like this, at least for some of us, is that they pique interest to learn a bit of the actual history. As an example, I knew almost nothing about ancient Rome a few years ago (vaguely aware there was once this guy named Julius Caesar, and a bunch of other dudes stabbed him). Then I played Rome Total War. RTW itself didn't teach much of value, of course, but it did cause me to start reading. I'd like to think I'm pretty knowledgeable now about that period, at least for a casual layman. Similarly, I started playing EU4 a few weeks ago, and am now grinding my way through a book about the Thirty Years War (sheesh what a dense & complex topic); I certainly wouldn't have picked it up otherwise.
As a couple of posters already mentioned above, I think the most historical value to games like this, at least for some of us, is that they pique interest to learn a bit of the actual history. As an example, I knew almost nothing about ancient Rome a few years ago (vaguely aware there was once this guy named Julius Caesar, and a bunch of other dudes stabbed him). Then I played Rome Total War. RTW itself didn't teach much of value, of course, but it did cause me to start reading. I'd like to think I'm pretty knowledgeable now about that period, at least for a casual layman. Similarly, I started playing EU4 a few weeks ago, and am now grinding my way through a book about the Thirty Years War (sheesh what a dense & complex topic); I certainly wouldn't have picked it up otherwise.
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It's a fair point. However the OP asked the question so I gave the answer. The perplexing thing on this forum is how often "plausibility" gets cited as a reason for not liking something in the context of a game that actively ignores or diverges from history on purpose and out of necessity. March cannons 2000 miles? Okay. Westernization of a nation that didn't? NO, AHISTORICAL/IMPLAUSIBLE! Sail 50k troops across the world? Sure. Hordes can use rifles? NO WAY BECAUSE HISTORY (with the irony of people being wrong added). Long-lasting rich merchant republics? Sure, why not. Ottomans not consistently a powerhouse? Must be fixed!
Even the devs are inconsistent in this regard, to the extent of having preferences based on whims and then defining those preferences as "balance" (such as how Wiz justified Hungary/Poland as not being historical friends to protect the poor, hand-held Ottomans, but makes no special effort to ensure Qing ever even makes a showing, let alone becomes a power, despite the importance of the latter to history).
It's a game first, and when it comes to immersion/strategy/having depth, it's important not to forget that.
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0% plausibility
Frankly only people who are already looking at real history as if it were a computer game can see EUIV or any other Paradox game as producing plausible alternate histories. Even ignoring all considerations of gameplay elements, in the EUIV universe the diplomatic systems that existed in Europe in 1443 suddenly broke down the following year into a free-for-all between states. No plausibility can come out of that.
It's not a criticism of EUIV - no game can really produce plausible alternate history. But it's definitely a criticism of people who are deluding themselves into thinking it can.
Thankfully though it seems like the number of people with that perspective has shrunk. I'd see people refer to the game as realistic all the time just a year ago, but now it's relatively rare.- 1
Sure it is just game and it should be fun, but it should reflect some realistic mechanics (i guess it's game developer's assuption). Not to well, because casual player is not as skilful as Frederick the Great and with realistic mechanic chance to get rescued by young (mad?) Russian tzar should be slim at best. Devs are ones who say this one is important and this is not. They are concentrated on Europe and most flashy (good for sales) parts of history. Merchant republics weren't that bad, they perform only slightly worse than Hordes actually ;P. They are European countries however. Genoa lost their power only after Spain lost theirs. Hansa is .. I don't know, probably too close to Sweden and worth buffing for some old DLC. Free cities, republics (not revolutionary dictatorships) were great in banking and something close to technology development in first part of time frame. What they were not is expansionist, stable and superior in military aspects (i.e. in general they tend to rely on mercenaries and police forces, as they don't have real armies).
I agree with you in regard to most (all?) of listed developers decision, but you know. It's their game
. Game is "European realistic" plus republics (all their game need some strange op country like Ming in EU4W) plus ROTW conquest is "fun".
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Length of war absolutely is AI self-harm. The majority of wars in a SP game are AI vs AI wars. AIs both winning and losing drag wars out like idiots to take or give way less than the time needed, resulting in flagrant idiocy like "Ottomans is 800 in debt" after fighting wars against nothing but hordes where it has a tech lead. And what did the horde get for losing that war slower? Rebels.
Length of War definitely needs to be looked at. "Hey, you're the biggest blob on earth, I got no allies, you just want that ONE province? Nuh-uh my friend, you'll have to get my WE much higher, even if I don't stand a chance".
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People love to say that, then disappear when asked to show what cheese becomes available that is materially different from what exists now in scope or strength.
Taking less in peace means you get less. Less risk for less reward is a reasonable design concept.
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Other modifiers should act as non-linear functions, so that you completely negate *lenght of war* in case you alone outnumber all the enemies 5 to 1 and have same ratio in economy; also provided you're at least equal in tech. I don't see how imposing few checks like this can be that hard to implement or open new cheese options.
At the moment even a totally wrecked dude will still have only like -20 relative military power modifier, which is a joke.
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mechanic are different from reality but make the game behave in a way it would in reality... you dont have any relation to a specific country, they hate you... rivalry make you hate another country by default which is historical...
of course # of troops / manpower / regency is innacurate but well, a game must also be fun...
of course # of troops / manpower / regency is innacurate but well, a game must also be fun...
It lacks plausibility partly because of the efforts to inject historical events. You get these weird game events that reference something that happened in the real world post-1444 that bear no connection with what is going on in the alternative history of the game and are sometimes inconsistent with it. Then there are things like battles that always last months and sieges that go on for years. Oh, and the CNs that spontaneously form on pre-determined borders. Everything about CNs is unrealistic. Independent nations did not spontaneously form from European NW colonies early in C16. They did not get to elect their governors. It would have been unthinkable treason at the time. They did not get there own assemblies until centuries later and when they did it was with the consent of their overlord (or they were already in rebellion). The Spanish colonies in particular attempted to reproduce the European lord/serf relationship.
While this is true, the issue with statements like this is that they lead to the obvious follow-up question: Would the game then be plausible if it didn't have determinism? The answer is still a definite no. The problems with plausibility go far, far deeper than that.
The deepest problem of all is that EUIV lacks continuity with real history. 1445 should be fundamentally the same as 1444, but in the short time from the start of the game until the turn of the next year the whole world has turned upside down.
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