EU4 - Dev Diary - September 17th

[IdiotsOpposite]

Exactly. Not having another uses of military MPs, unrealistic development increases from AI in combination with too high coring costs and the need to work around it by my tactic is bad design.

But you do have another use for military MPs. You said it yourself, you use them to pump manpower into your own territories... while simultaneously denying the AI the ability to do so, because you apparently lack the ability to mod coring costs down or something, since that seems to be the only complaint you have, is "Prague takes 900 points to core, this is unrealistic and bad".

Note: Abusing the pause mechanic to pump development into your own land, then turning it off for the AI, is an exploit and shouldn't be taken seriously as a reason for "bad design". If anything, it's just you cheating. Might as well use the console.

 

[Beagá]

Death spirals make for engaging history, but horrible gameplay.

It´s not that simple.

Stagnation was a very real problem as were civil wars. PLC is classical example but there are others.

The game is already quite nice, nations were crippled by less damaging things than you can do with one 100% warscore war.

 

[TheAtreides84]

I must say I don't really like "magic" mechanics like revanchism. It would be better if it scaled with ideas, governments and game year, to represent the growing nationalism and the strenght of a certain national ethos (revolutionary freedom, patriotism or religious fervor) to drive the people through sacrifices for the good of the nation.

 

[TheAtreides84]

It´s not that simple.

Stagnation was a very real problem as were civil wars. PLC is classical example but there are others.

The game is already quite nice, nations were crippled by less damaging things than you can do with one 100% warscore war.

The problem is that 100% warscore is basically "debellatio", a roman era and 20th century concept of warfare that was extremely rare inbetween. EU4 needs a way to simulate limited wars.

 

[Gringovoir]

But you do have another use for military MPs. You said it yourself, you use them to pump manpower into your own territories... while simultaneously denying the AI the ability to do so, because you apparently lack the ability to mod coring costs down or something, since that seems to be the only complaint you have, is "Prague takes 900 points to core, this is unrealistic and bad".

Note: Abusing the pause mechanic to pump development into your own land, then turning it off for the AI, is an exploit and shouldn't be taken seriously as a reason for "bad design". If anything, it's just you cheating. Might as well use the console.

Let me try to say it one more time as, I guess, I wasn't clear the first time. Cheating/exploits here has nothing to do with bad design as I understand it.

Game without common sense expansion - I don't have anything to spend military MPs on
Game with common sense - unrealistic development of AI with high coring costs means that as a player I don't want to use it.

Both types of the game don't satisfy my needs/wants from the game. I would have been ok with the first if I could spend something my military points on. I would have been ok with the second if coring costs were much smaller and increasing development would have also cost money.

As I can't find a version of the game that satisfy me I switch between the two. That is bad design because there is not any option that would satisfy me.

 

[chrnno]

Let me try to say it one more time as, I guess, I wasn't clear the first time. Cheating/exploits here has nothing to do with bad design as I understand it.

Game without common sense expansion - I don't have anything to spend military MPs on
Game with common sense - unrealistic development of AI with high coring costs means that as a player I don't want to use it.

Both types of the game don't satisfy my needs/wants from the game. I would have been ok with the first if I could spend something my military points on. I would have been ok with the second if coring costs were much smaller and increasing development would have also cost money.

As I can't find a version of the game that satisfy me I switch between the two. That is bad design because there is not any option that would satisfy me.

By that logic everything is badly designed because I can guarantee you no matter what it is there will always be at least one person that isn't satisfied.

 

[Zelius]

Let me try to say it one more time as, I guess, I wasn't clear the first time. Cheating/exploits here has nothing to do with bad design as I understand it.

Game without common sense expansion - I don't have anything to spend military MPs on
Game with common sense - unrealistic development of AI with high coring costs means that as a player I don't want to use it.

Both types of the game don't satisfy my needs/wants from the game. I would have been ok with the first if I could spend something my military points on. I would have been ok with the second if coring costs were much smaller and increasing development would have also cost money.

As I can't find a version of the game that satisfy me I switch between the two. That is bad design because there is not any option that would satisfy me.

What did you do pre 1.12? Are you saying you built all of the manpower buildings, even when it wasn't worth it?

 

[Gringovoir]

By that logic everything is badly designed because I can guarantee you no matter what it is there will always be at least one person that isn't satisfied.

You vulgarize the point. But, yes, bad design is defined by how many people find it inconvenient.

 

[Gringovoir]

What did you do pre 1.12? Are you saying you built all of the manpower buildings, even when it wasn't worth it?

I did build a lot of manpower buildings. They were almost always worth it.

 

[Zelius]

I did build a lot of manpower buildings. They were almost always worth it.

I suppose - ironically - if you expanded a lot pre 1.12 then you could build a lot of tier 1 (+25 manpower IIRC) buildings, but surely it's not worth it to build up to tier 4 (or even 6) in a province with poor base manpower... especially since it will be mid-late game before you unlock those.

 

[Gringovoir]

I suppose - ironically - if you expanded a lot pre 1.12 then you could build a lot of tier 1 (+25 manpower IIRC) buildings, but surely it's not worth it to build up to tier 4 (or even 6) in a province with poor base manpower... especially since it will be mid-late game before you unlock those.

I think tier 2 building was also a flat increase in manpower. Also, in the mid/late game it might be worthwile to take military ideas.

 

[Atlantians]

You vulgarize the point. But, yes, bad design is defined by how many people find it inconvenient.

One: you used the word 'vulgar' entirely wrong.

Two: "I don't like to play the game the way it is designed therefore the game is badly designed" is not a valid criticism. It is an irrational complaint.

Two point five: The Devs like the way it is designed. You don't. That doesn't make it bad design. You can mod the game if you want.

 

[zukodark]

I don't see the problem with high coring cost on good provinces. It is inconvenient for world conquests and such, but it was not supposed to be easy anyways. Eu4 is not based around conquering the world. It is based around playing as a country, and make it great, hopefully greater than in reality. If I wanted easy world conquest, I would play something like Civ 5 instead. Eu4 is history. Also, people seems to complain about small nations playing tall. Was small nations playing tall not the point of development? While I think they sometimes develops they cities too much, I don't think development should be restricted to large empires. That is probably what would happen if you added a cash cost. Smaller nations could easily land in situations where they cannot develop their nations at all, due to their small amount of money. I am personally more on the side of "develop time". Development should cost time and effort, not money. Money is used for buildings.

 

[Gringovoir]

One: you used the word 'vulgar' entirely wrong.

Two: "I don't like to play the game the way it is designed therefore the game is badly designed" is not a valid criticism. It is an irrational complaint.

Two point five: The Devs like the way it is designed. You don't. That doesn't make it bad design. You can mod the game if you want.

Just google "vulgarize". Good design is giving options for people to choose from so that many preferences are satisfied. Bad design = having one option that doesn't satisfy a lot of people.

Vulgarize
make less refined.
"her voice, vulgarized by its accent, was full of caressing tones"

• make less subtle or complex.
  "a vulgarized version of the argument"

 

[ChildeR]

Two: "I don't like to play the game the way it is designed therefore the game is badly designed" is not a valid criticism. It is an irrational complaint.

It isn't irrational, and I'd say it's even a somewhat valid criticism. It's just incredibly subjective, and the generalization (I don't like it -> it's bad) doesn't follow.

 

[War_lord]

You vulgarize the point. But, yes, bad design is defined by how many people find it inconvenient.

Bad game design is objective, your personal tastes are not.

There's plenty of COD junkie adrenaline addicts who'd find a slow paced stealth game like MGS V to have "inconvenient" mechanics, that doesn't mean that MGS V is poorly designed, it means it's not their type of game.

Equally Paradox games are moving towards a slower paced simulation style. You might not like that, but it's not bad design.

 

[grommile]

Just google "vulgarize". Good design is giving options for people to choose from so that many preferences are satisfied.

Design excellence is not about how many things you do; it is about how well you do the thing or things that you have chosen to do.

The original Tetris was excellently designed, yet it has, for all practical purposes, no options.

 

[Gringovoir]

Design excellence is not about how many things you do; it is about how well you do the thing or things that you have chosen to do.

The original Tetris was excellently designed, yet it has, for all practical purposes, no options.

This definition of design is too vague and is not operable as it doesn't constrain the set of possible designs too effectively. Also people seem to always go on a tangent to what I am saying. I don't think many would argue that a game without CS expansion shows good features of design when there is nothing I could spend military points on under some "efficient" playstyle.

But the argument can be made broader/more philosophic if people insist. Game industry is probably going towards empowering a player more with open worlds and staff like that. EU4 has lucky nations, ironman and what not that you could turn on/off. I don't think that having more options to choose from so that players with completely different ideas/playstyles of how they want to play it are satisfied would be such a bad move.

 

[DominusNovus]

Something occurred to me: Revanchism (with some minor tweaking) could be useful in simulating a nomadic realm. They would lose territory somewhere, and have to move in the opposite direction, conquering new territory for themselves.

Of course, nomadism was on its way down the drain by the timeframe of the game.

 

[alpaca]

This definition of design is too vague and is not operable as it doesn't constrain the set of possible designs too effectively. Also people seem to always go on a tangent to what I am saying. I don't think many would argue that a game without CS expansion shows good features of design when there is nothing I could spend military points on under some "efficient" playstyle.

But the argument can be made broader/more philosophic if people insist. Game industry is probably going towards empowering a player more with open worlds and staff like that. EU4 has lucky nations, ironman and what not that you could turn on/off. I don't think that having more options to choose from so that players with completely different ideas/playstyles of how they want to play it are satisfied would be such a bad move.

There is a price for options, which is more work most people won't see and an exponentially increasing balancing workload. It's the same problem that RPGs have with branching storylines, and the reason why freedom of choice is usually an illusion in games: if you create two option branches with two choices each, you need to balance four combinations. Three branches, and you need to balance 8 combinations, etc. From a developer point of view, providing options is a losing battle if you want to keep everything balanced. Even the very limited monolithic options for EU4 (DLC on or off) are very hard to keep track of.

Of course, hiding one of the most relevant point sinks (especially for military) behind a paywall without providing a replacement is a bit of a bad move.