don't you think EU genre go into wrong direction?

[Dustman]

EU was great when first appeared. Reasonable diplomacy, interesting warfare, simple yet realistic economical simulation. EU2 added quite a bit, with flexible country selection and domestic sliders. EU3 up to Napoleon's Ambition improved once again on already great game. DW added a bit but made things worse with overcomplicated economical system and magistrates.

Why on Earth should huge country have similar amount of able men like a tiny nation? Why should simple build orders split into fraction, like it happened with tier 1-6 buildings? Why horses are as quick as foot soldier? Why naval power is mostly irrelevant and naval tradition is more or less a myth (unless you're in exploration phase)?

I've played EU Rome Gold for couple of weeks and really enjoy it. Simple comparing to EU3, nice tweak in colonization, same problem with navies, cool loyalty system.

Why so many games go in direction of unnecessary detalization and over-complication? MoO, HoM&M, Age of Wonders and now EU3.

Maybe I missing a point thinking that managing small details is tedious and boring?

 

[Gilkanese]

I agree with your point about magistrates. I feel they were a dumb addition, and they're unbalanced. Why does Aachen have as many magistrates as Ming or France? You end up constantly at 0 magistrates and many of your provinces won't have improvements.

 

[knul]

I agree with your point about magistrates. I feel they were a dumb addition, and they're unbalanced. Why does Aachen have as many magistrates as Ming or France? You end up constantly at 0 magistrates and many of your provinces won't have improvements.

Very unbalanced indeed. What chance do France and Ming have against Aachen with this new building system?

Personally, I think DW's building system is a big step forward. HttH had the very micromanagy, relatively low reward province decision system, which was no fun to me. Also, buildings before DW were a no-brainer: you simply build them everywhere once you have the tech. With DW you can have different building strategies, as you can no longer build everything everywhere.

I don't see the use of magistrates as overcomplicating things, because Eu3's economy was quite simple from a strategic point of view, with only trade requiring some decision making. With the construction ledger page, micromanagement is at a minimum, especially compared to HttH's provincial decisions "buildings".

 

[Derp]

Needing to spend magistrates on buildings is good, it makes blobbing a bit less of a no-brainer.

 

[Gilkanese]

I see what you're saying Knul, but I still feel there should be some changes to it. I'd be happy if they made it so your size was a modifier with magistrate spawning.

 

[knul]

I see what you're saying Knul, but I still feel there should be some changes to it. I'd be happy if they made it so your size was a modifier with magistrate spawning.

All the other agent types do not scale with country size, either. Being big has already many advantages, let the small guys have a bit of relative advantage.

Also, consider this: buildings require a spot, money and magistrates. Small countries are limited by spots (you can have only 1 lvl 6 building per province) and to a lesser degree money. Big countries are limited by magistrates and to a lesser degree money. Seen that way, small countries do not have a tremendous advantage in the building game compared to bigger ones.

If you simply accept the new paradigm that not every province will contain every possible building, you'll enjoy DW much more.

 

[Dustman]

I don't see the use of magistrates as overcomplicating things, because Eu3's economy was quite simple from a strategic point of view, with only trade requiring some decision making. With the construction ledger page, micromanagement is at a minimum, especially compared to HttH's provincial decisions "buildings".

New build system tries to complicate life for bigger nations. This is the only real use of it IMO. Everyone complaining about France being too powerful forgets that historically France was very powerful and out of league for OPMs and small nations without major alliances.

Progressive cost of factories and low base tax in colonies is enough to slow research even for bigger players, plus their supply lanes are rather long. Adding artificial road bumps like magistrates is pointless. The only positive side of magistrate is that smaller nations have extra cash from advisers sold and have better advisers in general.

 

[ShinEmperor]

I guess I'm in the minority here. I like magistrates, they have multiple uses and are in relatively limited supply. I don't think every province should have every building however for small nations it's a huge plus. It allows for a small able nation to compete. However, I really don't understand the "limitation" that people keep talking about. I play on normal, all fields normal and no lucky nations. By the end of the game most of my provinces have the buildings I need... and then some. The magistrates allow for large empires to have a "focus" and small nations to compete and/pr be obstacles rather than things you simple roll over.

I do agree about naval tradition. The most I've ever had it was 30... and that was as a colonial Morocco... It's hard to push navy as most of the real competition is in Eurasia... North and South America.. it's only colonial empires competing. Navy just isn't important considering the scope of the game. With magistrates I've had an unstoppable trading Morocco with over 100 merchants and Austria with a million men in reserve... very nice indeed. I also think that the bigger you are, the less flexible you should be, so limiting buildings is a great way of doing it.

 

[unmerged(297342)]

Naval Tradition is an obvious problem.

You do forget, though, that some of the richest regions in the world - Germany and north Italy - were composed of minor states. France was rich and powerful, yes, but the game reflects this. The magistrate system demonstrates that most empires relied on rich, developed central territory and that most of their other lands didn't have anywhere near the same level of infrastructure. The Sphere of Influence system goes some way towards giving more magistrates to bigger nations, and while it needs tweaking it is a marked improvement on both HttT's system and IN's.

One of the numerous reasons that the Islamic world became so technologically stagnated is because it was ruled by massive empires that didn't have the same incentives to develop and innovate as the nations around them.

(And next time you lose to an OPM as France, do take a screenshot).

 

[ShinEmperor]

I agree with your point about magistrates. I feel they were a dumb addition, and they're unbalanced. Why does Aachen have as many magistrates as Ming or France? You end up constantly at 0 magistrates and many of your provinces won't have improvements.

I simply don't agree with this... I've had fairly large empires with tons of buildings... yes my magistrates were at zero.. but that was because I was always using them. The only circumstance I can think of where there isn't enough magistrates is World Conquest.. that's it. As it stands you could build all building in all provinces to fill a continent.. at LEAST.. if not more..

 

[stnikolauswagne]

Why horses are as quick as foot soldier?

Most of your other points are valid, I disagree on that point however. Strategically the difference in speed is negligible. The Cavalry needs at least the same amount of camp followers (blacksmiths, cooks, washers, pages, servants of all kinds basically) who have to travel on foot with heavy baggage. Also the horses probably can't move very fast for long amounts of time with a rider on their back, meaning that the cavalry has to rest more often or even dismount.

 

[Mr. Domino]

If EU games are going to allow historical outcomes they somehow have to allow for a 10-20 province Prussia to defeat a 40-50 province Austria. Or an 40-50 province England or France to outperform 100+ Spain and Ottomans. I don't think the idea of magistrates is to have a OPM beat France. Its to have various small to medium sized powers (10-50 provinces) be able to compete with huge 100+ blobs. Metropolitan France is than "medium" sized nation that has enough magistrates to effectively make buildings compared to how sprawling Spain or the Ottomans could be.

How you do that is...tricky. I have many criticisms of Eu3 here. Infrastructure/trade is very simplistic. The magistrates (along with hyper teching and penalizing nations ability to trade with infamy) is a clumsy way to bring about this. But generally I am very sympathetic to the idea that you should not be able to run your massive Spanish Empire with Prussian level efficiency.

 

[unmerged(337849)]

I agree heavily on the magistrate matter
although i agree that there should be some limitation to the number of building you could make at once, i feel that when playing a huge nation this is very frustrating.
i'm ok with magistrate but you should be able to get more

The naval tradition is indeed pretty ridiculous but that's a game design problem, boats take a huge amount of time to build and you don't fight that often, and when you fight each boat that sink is lost forever
i feel that you should get some tradition depending of how much sea province you have boats in, or maybe just the number of boats

 

[Dustman]

While HoI 1 was a war game, it had very nice economical system. Few key resources to manage via trade. Manufacturing capacity and infrastructure to improve. Defense, air and naval bases for war. Simple and elegant, yet flexible and requires strategical thinking. Pity its time scope was so limited.

Contrary, Victoria was a mess. A lot of micromanagement made it frustrating. Playable but not fun.

I'd love to see a nice mixture of EU3 (vanilla), EU Rome and HoI, covering whatever period designer finds interesting. While Go-game doesn't have such variety of figures as chess, it's really deep and hard.

 

[Dustman]

Most of your other points are valid, I disagree on that point however. Strategically the difference in speed is negligible. The Cavalry needs at least the same amount of camp followers (blacksmiths, cooks, washers, pages, servants of all kinds basically) who have to travel on foot with heavy baggage. Also the horses probably can't move very fast for long amounts of time with a rider on their back, meaning that the cavalry has to rest more often or even dismount.

I'd agree with you if time covered was similar to CK's. But light cavalry of EU era was far more mobile than any infantry. Nomad cavalry was even more mobile. For example, Crimean tartars benefited greatly from their mobility in cat-n-mouse game with Ukrainian Cossacks and Polish Hussars and were only slowed down by looted goods and slaves.

 

[Mr. Domino]

While HoI 1 was a war game, it had very nice economical system. Few key resources to manage via trade. Manufacturing capacity and infrastructure to improve. Defense, air and naval bases for war. Simple and elegant, yet flexible and requires strategical thinking. Pity its time scope was so limited.

Hmmm. I personally think Hoi1 was over complicated in a lot of ways. IIRC Hoi1 had an insanely complicated tech tree. You could get into how big tank treads were on your vehicles. You could also powergame and abuse the system to find ways to research nuclear bombs by 1942. The economic aspects were very simple but the warfare/tech system was byzantine in its complexity. The same holds for the rest of the series: I have been playing Hoi2 for years but I don't know if I could tell you the practical difference between SP rocket artillery and normal SP artillery, or the exact nuances of the Japanese land doctrine tree vs. the Italian land doctrine tree. And Hoi3 intimidated me so much I never finished a game.

 

[Zenny]

Contrary, Victoria was a mess. A lot of micromanagement made it frustrating. Playable but not fun.

It is the micromanagement that I love most in this game. I remember the first time I played it, where I totally ignored any micromanaging. Then, after one hour of reorganizing nearly every part of my Empire I managed to make my Industry 50% more effective.

I'd say that it is quite hard to compare Vicky, EU and HoI with each other, since they focus on completely different aspects.

Back to topic: I think magistrates are fine like they are now, they give OPMs a chance to compete with bigger nations.

 

[Helios Panoptes]

OPMs shouldn't be able to compete with big nations.

 

[Ashantai]

I think that magistrates are a good thing. Certainly an improvement on the limited system of buildings pre-DW, and DW is far superior now that the silly province decisions no longer are so annoying like in HTTT.

When you look at history you will see an overriding point - even today it is really hard for large countries to have the same infrastructure everywhere. Bismarck, North Dakota is not as developed as Manhattan, New York. The same was certainly true in 1900, 1800 and any time before. Take England - even on the core area of England until the industrial revolution large areas were undeveloped and stock raising. Does it make sense that all these areas should have been covered in immense infrastructure from 1500 on?

There is one point I will concede to - level 1 buildings shouldn't need magistrates, and I have changed this as such in my mod.

The rest though is common sense.

 

[Derp]

OPMs shouldn't be able to compete with big nations.

And Ryukyu shouldn't be able to conquer the world but hey, it happens.