EUIV as an accurate simulator?

[Konstantine]

Greetings,

I have been conducting a research project having to do with predicting the downfall of countries. To help prove this and give accurate predictions I looked towards things that could simulate countries and their various factors accurately and with a precise measure of time. I've known and played Europa Universalis along with Crusader Kings for some time now and I felt that EUIV was able to give the most accurate and natural simulation of countries, the aspects of running them, and their behavior. With its uncanny simulation of history, I would then take countries and add/eliminate factors that may cause its downfall, then measure the time it takes to fall.

However, before I proceed, I have questions about the more hidden mechanics of the game, things that would hinder an accurate representation of history. Since I cannot enter in direct contact with Paradox via email I figured this would be the next best thing.

If you've made it this far and are still interested in this topic, here are some of the questions I have:

Is this a good simulator to use? Would it do well with providing accurate information on the downfall of countries?
Is there a matter of random factoring when simply observing games that I should be aware of? (given that all the options are set to as historical as possible)
Is there a better way to directly contact Paradox developers or spokespeople?

That's all for now, I will likely update this with more questions if this receives any attention.

 

[Rikissa]

It's probably better if you write about it as a simulator than trying to use it as one

It's a game first and foremost

 

[Republic of Mercury]

Is this a good simulator to use? Would it do well with providing accurate information on the downfall of countries?

No, and no.

Is there a matter of random factoring when simply observing games that I should be aware of? (given that all the options are set to as historical as possible)

Yes. For example, the king of burgundy might never die, and his lands not be split between France and the Austria. Or they might go to a different nation instead of Austria. Poland might not form a union over Lithuania. Denmark might maintain their unions with Sweden and Norway, eventually integrating them fully. Something something Balkans. The Ming dynasty in China might never collapse. Iran might never become independent. Muscovy might be split between Novgorod and the great horde, with Russia never being formed. The Ottomans will almost certainly never acquire their historical borders (as everyone on this forum is probably well-aware of by now.)

The chances of the game accurately simulating history are pretty much nil. There are far, far too many factors that the game makes no attempt to take into account, due to the fact that it's a game, not an actual historical simulator.

I think trying to accurately recreate history in a simulator is pretty much impossible.

 

[Dominion]

Unless you mod it yourself and are able to run multiple games simultaneously, there's no way you will be satisfied with the outcome.

PU mechanics alone will ruin every kind of simulation you may attempt.

Have a game open where Austria inherited Bohemia and Hungary in 1600. Completely derailed.

You would need to block PU's, reduce AE a bit, manage to remove the expansion cap for AI and rebalance Rebel scaling (weaker starting point, stronger with more dev), change conditions for rivalries, throw a few events in and make the decision in important events yourself (Poland rejecting the Lithuania PU for example).
Don't see any reason why you shouldn't be able to use the game as a simulation. But not the base game without doing any work yourself. Just hitting observe nets you nothing.

 

[kitemasaki]

There isn't any reason why you 'should' use this game as a simulation. It is a game. That makes it infinitely less complex than reality.

 

[eon47]

You wouldn't be able to draw any objective conclusions from it. Even ignoring that the game either fails to model or models poorly (in terms of realism) many aspects of history, certain countries are rigged to succeed or fail. The Timurids, for instance, frequently fall apart because of a dedicated Persian rebellion event that cannot happen to any other country.

 

[Rikissa]

Since we're talking about the downfall of countries and civilizations, I would recommend reading the book The Conquistadors from the A Very Short Introduction series and then comparing it to how colonization and conquest of the Americas works in the game

I'm not saying you can't learn a great deal from playing EU4 (especially historical geography) but its design is to a great extent determined by its boardgame-like nature

I'm not sure how many people already tried to apply game theory like it is used in economics or policitcal science to history, but if this is your wish you're probably better off creating your own models

 

[grommile]

You're better off creating your own models anyway.

You need to be able to explain how they work, after all.

 

[Insentient]

Is this a good simulator to use? Would it do well with providing accurate information on the downfall of countries?

You mean, historical or realistic in even the most basic sense? Let's see;

Warfare? No.
Diplomacy? No.
Governance? No.
Technological or scientific progress of nations? No.
Social progress? No.
Trade and economics? No.
Rebellions? No.
Colonies and trading empires? No.
Modeling all the challenges of the early modern period and modeling how nations overcame them? No.

I could go on and on. This is not a game "about" history, it's a strategy game that uses history as a "flavor", that's all. Does it have the potential to be a decently historical game? Yes, it does. Will that ever happen in a vanilla version? No, because that wouldn't be good financial move on Paradox's part.

Nevertheless, you could treat any Paradox game like Wikipedia, or YouTube channels who deal with history in an engaging way. It could be a fun starting point for building a baseline understanding of historical processes for people who would otherwise not be interested in the subject of history at all.

 

[MagnusDux]

Is this a good simulator to use? Would it do well with providing accurate information on the downfall of countries?

No, for 3 reasons:

- The game does not have an accurate demographic system, there is no population, the closest thing you have is development, that doesn't grow on its own, just increases when the state spends the highly abstracted monarch power, consequently you don't see a natural growth of the population, nor any sort of migration process;
- The game does not have an accurate economic system implemented, tax and production are very simple and, without population, these are not accurate enough mechanics to be used in a model, and trade well... trade is the weirdest mechanic in the game... "trade value flows from a to b?", prices are global and almost fixed... ;
- The lack of an economic system leads to the lack of an accurate political system, even with the estates, groups of interest are not well represented, otherwise the player would be very limited in how to lead the country.

 

[Rikissa]

The game certainly contains a lot of information and it's incredible as a medium for actually getting historical information to people, it showcases the amazing potential games could have as an educational tool

But that information is contained more in the setup/setting and less in the underlying mechanics of how the game progresses

 

[D4id4los]

Well I would guess that in in the course of your research you would have come to formulate a theory on what factors might influence the downfall of a nation. In that case the most important question would be whether those factors are even being represented in EU4 or not.

On the whole I am a bit sceptical of using EU4 as a historical simulation because it is first and foremost a game and the developers have repeatedly stated that with regards to design decisions gameplay trumps realism 100% of the time. Given all this I would expect writing some sort of GUI-less simulation to produce better results than observe-mode EU4 games.

But maybe I'm wrong, who knows, it is certainly a interesting direction of inquiry and I wouldn't want to detract you from trying.

 

[Sfan]

If you truly want to experience the downfall of Empires, CK2 is actually a better simulator, just look at what happens everygame to the Byzantine Empire and the number of revolts and civil wars. This is a better representation of this.

EU4 failed at finding a fun mechanic to make big Empires almost impossible to manage. Autonomy is an abstraction of this, going over your statelimit as well. But these are first steps. If EU4 replicated historical outcomes and downfalls of Empire, there should be frequent revolts of local governors claiming independance in territorial cores, and increasing corruption the bigger your Empire is unless you take some drastic measures. Just look at the administration of the two biggest Empire of the timeframe, Ming and the Ottomans. What made them weaker and weaker at some point is that they totally losed control of some parts of their land, whether it is because a region declared independance and promised some vague help in wars in exchange, or because a region almost entirely stopped giving taxes to the capital because of corrupted officials.
The only problem is that such things would be insanely unfun.

 

[Konstantine]

Right, well I welcome all the rather quick replies, I suppose I'll move onto something else to help simulate factors for my means. I know CK2 isn't a very good candidate due to the main mechanic relying on variable rulers and I also can't test my own factors using it. If anyone else knows of a simulator that accurately represents history from which I can then alter certain aspects of a country to then observe how it behaves, I am all ears.

 

[IndraSunrise]

"I think trying to accurately recreate history in a simulator is pretty much impossible."

Recreating real life isn't the goal. Simulation is the goal.
Is it a great simulation? No.
Is it inexpensive and readily available? Yes.
Ultimately, its use will depend on how you choose to use it.
No simulation will ever be perfect. In fact, most will be massively flawed. If you are aware of this, you can still use it to examine things.

 

[pharaomatic]

Slightly OT, but I think you might find this interesting. The US Marine Corps actually tried using HOI2 for training it's soldiers. The test was evaluated with mixed results.

https://warisboring.com/u-s-marines...complex-strategy-game-7f69a1a5583f#.hzwewud62

 

[IFWanderer]

Is this a good simulator to use?

It's (appart from Paradox's Victoria series) probably the closest thing to an accurate simulator within the market of strategy games (I'm not going to delve into particular sub-genres of it), but that by itself doesn't make it into a good simulator.

Would it do well with providing accurate information on the downfall of countries?

In my opinion, what the EU series simulates the best is the starting situation of the world in 1444 (with some small liberties like not having countries start at war with each other. There are mechanics that can contribute to model the collapse of a nation, both as their main function and in particular circumstances (War Exhaustion, Rebels, Corruption, Bankruptcy, Liberty Desire, Religious Unity, Estates and Local Autonomy come to mind) and some that are rather unhelpful, if they don't directly hinder simulation (Monarch Points, Monarchs and Stability, for example). But the biggest problem of using EU4 as a simulator is the focus on warfare over anything else, since (as far as I can tell), internal circumstances are generally a bigger factor in the collapse of a state.

Is there a matter of random factoring when simply observing games that I should be aware of? (given that all the options are set to as historical as possible)

Random Events, which can be disabled through modding anyway.

Is there a better way to directly contact Paradox developers or spokespeople?

Here in the forum, they can be notified of this post by mentioning their usernames with an @ before it (for example @Johan).

I'd personally suggest you use either the game Victoria 2, or see some mods for the game, like MEIOU&Taxes or Veritas et Fortitudo (assuming neither mod is dead), which have deeper simulation.

 

[Florryworry__]

As a history student here's my take on eu4 as a simulator:

From all the games I've played with a historical setting, eu4 is by far the most historically plausible.
That being said, real history is impossible for a game to accurately portray. The way eu4 uses abstractions is amazing though and it really is imo the best game ever with regards to that.

Even the best historians know that the 'past' is totally unreachable and impossible to perfectly depict. One can merely give interpretations based on sources.
Eu4 as a model for research would be like using an abstraction of interpretation of an interpretation of an interpretation of the past and woefully inadequate.

It might however be an interesting research topic something like: The evolution of the use of historical themes in popular culture and videogames.

 

[Chaingun]

The EU4 AI does a mix of simulating a historical nation, a human player, and a sacrificial lamb. I wouldn't expect very useful results, simply because the intention of EU4's design has never been simulation. A lot of the logic is driven by randomness, which might be another issue (then again, it's possible to do Monte Carlo sampling).

 

[Exemplar Voss]

Right, well I welcome all the rather quick replies, I suppose I'll move onto something else to help simulate factors for my means. I know CK2 isn't a very good candidate due to the main mechanic relying on variable rulers and I also can't test my own factors using it. If anyone else knows of a simulator that accurately represents history from which I can then alter certain aspects of a country to then observe how it behaves, I am all ears.

There is no such thing as a history simulator.

You can't reset the variables and rerun the experiment. Nothing is testable or repeatable. You can't even identify the factors: 'their various factors' just doesn't cut it. History is not a science, it is interpretation and extrapolation from a limited set of source material (which may or may not be congruent with or useful in identifying what actually happened). Often the author and the intended audience have as much influence on the work as the source material.