Europa Universalis 5

[Me_]

Some of you may still be in denial, but the signs are clearly there. EU4 is now where CK2 was before the Holy Fury DLC. Years after release, with a dwindling team. One huge DLC that takes a year plus to develop. Less and less frequent Dev Diaries. There may yet be one smaller DLC left - the devs have repeatedly mentioned South East Asia as an area that could be expanded, but that may also come in the form of a Manchu or Iron Century style big free patch. the scope of revamps coming with the next DLC is no excuse - CK2 got lots of huge revamp in Holy Fury and following patches. Even if the development of Europa Universalis 5 hasn't yet started, it soon will.

That being said. What are your hopes and expectations regarding EU5?

I, for one enjoy the thopugh of finally putting monarch points bechind us. Initially lauded as the bright future of all Paradox Games, it turned out to be too abstract and clunky, being referred to as mana, even by the Devs these days.

One of my big hopes is EU5 inheriting the HRE no less complex than the one that will come in the Europa DLC. Ever since Heir to the Throne DLC for EU3, the complexities of the HRE have been one of the most defining factors of European politics in Europa Universalis, and so it shall be, as in history also every European ruler had to position themselves somehow in relation to the HRE.

Something more that I look forward to is the rework of mechanics that did not glue toegether as well as they seemed at first. Stuff like the trade companies should be build again from the ground up, as hordes and the Shogunate were, when the EU3 to EU5 transition occured.

There is no reason to be sad or angry about the passing of Europa Universalis 4 (please, refrain from trolling). The franchise will continue and I'm sure Europa Universalis 5 will be a great game.

 

[wielkicien]

Actually I doubt that EU5 is in serious development... The only option is that Wiz is working on it - who else could develop next EU?

But let's jump to wishes:

I, for one enjoy the thopugh of finally putting monarch points bechind us. Initially lauded as the bright future of all Paradox Games, it turned out to be too abstract and clunky, being referred to as mana, even by the Devs these days.

+1 Returning to money sliders from EU3 wouldn't be so bad idea. Or they could introduce something like "leadership" bound together with "research points", that would buy tech and ideas.

I would love to see replacement of the advisor sistem: again, mechanics from EU3 were almost perfect there...
No colonists, diplomats and merchants. We should get diplomatic points, colonial power and merchant power (not in mana style, but in a way V2 handled it)
Province system from Imperator - many little settlements+cities, each with its own trade good
No pops (EU is not good for pops, IMO) but also no development clickfest
Reform of the army system (maybe similar to March of the Eagles?)
Some kind of really tall mechanics - there should be a way to "win" the game without conquering half the world. Again - industrialization from V2 is the best example but in EU5 it could be represented via cultural and religious development, also pre-industrialization and manufactories)

I'm afraid that we will get instead more map-painting, more shallow game than EU4. Half of the features will get scraped, half will be reworked, few will be added meaning that we'll have to wait again for 20 DLC's to make it truly enjoyable...

EDIT: Also I would like to change siege system to CK2 one. The less random are sieges better the gameplay is.

 

[Albert I]

Tall mechanics would be very nice,
A more flexible trade, were we can change routes and directions.
A more real map, using openstreetmap.org for example.

 

[User29]

EU was always Johans baby Idk if he's ready to let someone else take the helm. And with Wiz's seeming love for economy changes in stellaris i think it's safe to say he's working on vicky 3 at the moment, but I honestly never expected the ck3 announcement so maybe the secret product he's on right now is actually eu5, ck3 was being developed at the same as the last 3 ck2 dlc's i think

 

[Wixelt]

Fix the Americas being way too far north compared to Europe or Africa.

 

[Badesumofu]

I would be quite surprised if Wiz' game is EU5. Actually I'd be quite surprised if EU5 had a game director other than Johan, and he's pretty busy with Imperator for the foreseeable future. I don't think we're seeing EU5 any time soon.

 

[C.N.]

Since we are talking EU5, I'm not going to mention things that could be overhauled in EU4. Instead I will just consider things that are so deeply integrated into the system that it is unlikely that they will be modified. After all they will not do EU5 unless they have a killer feature for it.

Two things come to my mind:
- An improved trade system. While the EU4 trade system was a major improvement over the whack-a-mole of earlier games, it does have problems, especially when playing in Asia.
- The army composition system. This front row infantry, back row artillery optimization could be replaced with a system that gives more historical army compositions.

 

[Lordkaiser]

-use of ressources (like if you have no iron, you cant build things made out of iron like cannons and you have to buy it from other countries)
-that way: improved trade and playing as trade nation becomes fun.

-also maybe a little bit improved graphics of the models on the map like cooler forts and harbours that just look good.

 

[Meglok]

If, and it is still a big if, EU5 is more than a twinkle in Johan's eye then we are looking 2 -3 years out.

A bigger question and indicator is who if anyone becomes EU4 director. If no one is appointed in the next 6 months that would be a huge red flag. Or if Wiz disappears from Stellaris.

Others can post their EU5 wish lists, I would rather see exactly what 1.30 does. That will gives us a good idea of where the game may be going.

 

[maximus1312]

If we are never getting Vicky 3 i want some of the Vic 2 features ported. The big one is a dynamic trade system, I dont like that every resource has a fixed value irregardless of market demands and monopolies. For example If France takes over 80% of the global opium market, then they should have the ability to manipulate the price and artificially increase it. It will add more meaning to colonization which at their roots were for creating resource monopolies.

I also want to see a proper trade empire mechanic (not something slapped with the colonization mechanics). For example Portugal didnt rely on big colonies (only exception was Brazil) and instead made small trade stations around the world with which they conducted trade. It makes sense as they just didnt have the population base. Smaller countries cannot make huge colonies all over the world without severely depleting their home manpower. So a population mechanic should be added to limit over colonization (or add consequences for spreading too wide from smaller countries). This mechanic would also be useful for Venice to create its own Mediterranean trade empire.

Playing tall is also not feasible in EU4. Vic 2 solved it by industrialization and population (you can educate them etc), so even smaller countries could be rich powerhouses. There should be significant buffs for investing monarch points in your provinces (more than the simple tax/manpower bonus) and there should be building combos. Like if I build a factory+market there should be some synergistic bonus.

Navies are also a big one, I find them mostly useless and once you have a big empire they are busy work. Maybe a way where you can assign a Viceroy (AI) to naval theaters to micro manage for you. It could be linked to your tech level/naval traditions on how optimized it is. Wars are also very tiresome if you have a big empire like Russia or Colonial Spain, and some HOI4 type of army management system where you can assign war goals would be epic.

Army drilling is also very useless currently and you lose the benefits in 2 battles. I think it should be more permanent like in Rome 2 Total War, where your battalions get upgraded with time and get bonuses and traditions. Benefits should carry down over the years, and countries with battle trained armies should be better compared to others.

There should also be more control over vassals and colonial subjects. Colonists regularly exported their culture to their colonies like language, and recruited soldiers from them. I want more interaction with them. Especially if a colony is richer than the home country. A simple liberty modifier is boring and over simplifies something which could be fun. Colonization itself is also boring as hell. The early colonies should be extremely difficult to set up, and extremely expensive. There should be a higher failure rate, and they should need constant support from their mother countries in their early days. I also dont like that there is unclaimed land, since all of Americas and Africa was under some local powers. All the land had to be taken, traded or stolen. Thats why you should have the option to either befriend the local native powers, buy it from them, or declare war and take it Cortez style. Colonization should be time consuming and a real achievement, not something where you click two buttons and then just wait a few years.

Last point is that Asia is not done well. China is too boring to play, and SEA is non-existent. Even as colonizing if you make it to SEA there should be cool event chains to explore (the early explorers had a lot of adventures there and got involved in local politics). India is a big improvement now, but they suffer too hard with the tech trees.

 

[Amtep]

I would like to see a less blobby representation of empires. Autonomous regions, home rule, more vassal types. Done in a way that they do feel like part of one's empire, even if they're only loosely integrated.

More flexibility in the status of an empire's parts -- in EU4 the only transition allowed is ally to vassal. Even tributary to vassal is forbidden. Instead of those rigidly defined relationships I'd like to see regions shift along a spectrum from absolute rule to effective independence. I'd like to see border wars and the possibility that parts of a weak empire will slip out of its grasp, without having to have a total war first.

Of course fully unified empires should still be possible but it should be hard, and also they're more of an Age of Absolutism thing.

EU4 does have some of this, but only as hardcoded special cases. There's the HRE as an example of a decentralized empire (where parts can indeed leave without having to win a war against the emperor), there's Ming as an example of a centralized empire (more centralized than it really was IMO), and the shogunate somewhere in between. Colonial empires are hardcoded too. Like, India can be a core part of your empire but Canada can't, for no real reason. I'd like to see a more flexible system as the base, with historical flavor (such as HRE electors) added on top of that.

In summary, I'd like better representation of decentralized empires, and ways to further unify them or break them apart.

 

[mechanical_Critter]

I, for one enjoy the thopugh of finally putting monarch points bechind us. Initially lauded as the bright future of all Paradox Games, it turned out to be too abstract and clunky, being referred to as mana, even by the Devs these days.

There is always the need of a type of abstract kind of currency, not just to allow some ease of representation of rewards / pain in some parts of the game (court, economy, environmental, social) that are undesirable to represent, because they are beyond the scope of a map painter. Also it serves as a way to maximise the effect of the player's good management, making for effective strategy. Arguing to remove mana because it's abstract is a nonstarter, of course there are gonna be abstractions, it's a videogame.

Now, we can, and should have the discussion if these goals are met by the current point system. There are a few issues with them currently. Overflow due to recent additions that are probably an attempt to make the game easier (estates, missions), garbage development system, mana being trivial to allocate (rediplo is the worst in this, mil is quite okay imo), but asymetry or being forced into making decisions is not one of these issues.

The entire removal of the mana system would not be a solution without renewing the design of the game. The outrage for abstract mechanics would simply move on to another topic (and this outrage doesn't even play the game), but the strategy part of the game would be hurt significantly.

Something more that I look forward to is the rework of mechanics that did not glue toegether as well as they seemed at first. Stuff like the trade companies should be build again from the ground up, as hordes and the Shogunate were, when the EU3 to EU5 transition occured.

Agreed. Other examples: corruption, religion, culture, national ideas…

+1 Returning to money sliders from EU3 wouldn't be so bad idea. Or they could introduce something like "leadership" bound together with "research points", that would buy tech and ideas.

Sliders have in their inception the issue of asking the player to babysit a useless mechanic. It's not a good piece of design, usually. corruption slider for instance is just useless if you have only 2 reasonable position to have it in.

EDIT: Also I would like to change siege system to CK2 one. The less random are sieges better the gameplay is.

idk CK2 siege system, but I also think that rolling 14 die is a bit too much. maybe halving that would make things better.

No pops (EU is not good for pops, IMO) but also no development clickfest

Some are advocating for pops, but it's really essential to not fall into some faulty logic here. One cannot argue that pops > dev because dev is an abstraction (which it is). Pops are also an abstraction, and there is no reason to believe that it would fit into eu better than dev, because economy is largely abstracted anyway. So same as mana, I hope the reflexion takes place on the basis of design, rather than caving in to short sighted demands from a small part of the playerbase (if even all of them play the game).

Playing tall is also not feasible in EU4. Vic 2 solved it by industrialization and population (you can educate them etc), so even smaller countries could be rich powerhouses. There should be significant buffs for investing monarch points in your provinces (more than the simple tax/manpower bonus) and there should be building combos. Like if I build a factory+market there should be some synergistic bonus.

I think also that the current dev pushing system is ass backwards, with the penalty to dev pushing being larger from current total dev than local modifiers, which makes no sense as it promotes pushing desertic area over urban centres. It is also very easy to reach game breaking levels of pushing modifiers, so idk how you're saying it's not possible, leaving aside if it's a desirable situation or not.

Army drilling is also very useless currently and you lose the benefits in 2 battles. I think it should be more permanent like in Rome 2 Total War, where your battalions get upgraded with time and get bonuses and traditions. Benefits should carry down over the years, and countries with battle trained armies should be better compared to others.

Agreed, battle honed armies should get better modifiers than these sitting at home 'drilling', yet they get nothing. That's rather silly. But then again it's the design of professionalism which is in question here, which is an afterthought before the design of army tradition, so we should expect some changes.

 

[Failtier]

I know that might sound too revolutionary for many, but I always wondered how you could change the army movement system in a map which is more interactive than the current version. What I tried to do with the CK3 map attached (I know it looks a bit messy) is to represent each day that is required for an army to move with a red/orange/grey dot. In the current system, armies are sitting in a province until the day passed they have actually arrived in another province (which often requires you to check the arrival dates of armies). Now, imagine that instead there are predetermined paths you can move along and you will always have a visual feedback where your and your enemies armies actually are on the map.

The red dots are normal paths that can be upgraded (roads). The orange dots are places which offer, depending on the building type, some kind of fortification bonus and supply. The grey dots are alternative paths which take longer to move and cannot be upgraded since they lead through rough terrain (e.g. forests). Now, depending on what you built in your provinces, you will have strategic bonuses.

Such a system would not drastically change how movement is currently envisioned in Paradox games. But it would add a lot more immersion, strategic decision-making and possibly enable to add something like a supply line system. Less board gamey, more realism. Imagine you would cut off your enemy, who is hiding in a fortification, from supply lines and thus starve the remaining army (yet if it is a coastal province and not suffering from a blockade, that wouldn't work of course). Or you would defend yourselves in a small village in the marshes as the Brandenburgian army did when fighting at Fehrbellin. Or your armies would fortify on a hill to block enemy troops from passing through.

Also, such a system could be beneficial for how the trade system generally works (and more realistically distribute goods and resources, similar to Meiou and Taxes 3.0). If you built a road, the economy should also profit from it (less time for goods to be transported from A to B).

PS: I definitely added too many dots / days to get from A to B.
PPS: Many might be reminded of the movement system of Total War, which I don't particularly like. The system I am proposing is a compromise since movements are still railroaded, similar to how it currently works.

 

[Etrutian]

Are people heavily fighting the concept of there being an EU5 in the making?

I do miss EU3 and the COT mechanic. I would love to see it come back so I could exploit free-trade again and all the wonderful sliders. Conquering all of europe by teching' into guns before France and unlimited vassals in the east/middle east was quite fun.


I don't think they will ever do away with monarch points though. Reasonable concept that 'increases player agency'. Its arbitrary, like monarch-based decisions should be.

 

[wielkicien]

I don't think they will ever do away with monarch points though.

Johan just said at PDXcon that he will never again make a game with mana...

 

[Lightwell]

It'd be neat if your army compositions were based directly on the sorts of resources your nation had access to. If you want a supreme gunpowder-based army, you have to maintain access to gunpowder. Same with Iron, food, and other miscellaneous supplies. In order to expand somewhere, there should be a requirement that you have both the necessary materials, and the requisite tech.

 

[Etrutian]

Johan just said at PDXcon that he will never again make a game with mana...

thats an interesting method of announcing ones retirement

jokes aside though, I do wonder what they will do instead.

The old system was a bit like turning the wheel of a ship, slow, but eventually the outcome would be met. I wonder if getting to the 'reward' over time was more enjoyable.

'modern' system is more direct, and theoretically its engaging since the player has a lot of balance out.

Perhaps a new system would be some mish-mash?

 

[Lightwell]

The old system was a bit like turning the wheel of a ship, slow, but eventually the outcome would be met. I wonder if getting to the 'reward' over time was more enjoyable.

If it was possible for me to just set up a Trading City with pop attraction, I'd be the happiest man in the world.

 

[Aquilegia]

I think it's pretty obvious that monarch points failed at one of their initial objectives: portraying the rise and decay of nations. Instead it was a very annoying and non-interactive feature, with DLC's trying to return some player agency but still keeping the whole thing abstract and the game devolving into a constant quest for monarch points above all.

If there will be a new EU5, I hope they'll find a way to make (AI) nations rise and fall and strong contenders to rise from the ashes. Without strong player intervention or with merely other nations blobbing into each other.

And if that makes single player easier, I definitely hope they won't be adding many nerfs to keep "balance". The most important "balance" that I want to see is nations trying to keep a balance of power, without the black/white distinction of coalitions where everyone joins in without thought (and which rarely happens to expanding AI's).

("Mana" such as legitimacy/prestige/cash/etc. is fine though)

 

[Niptium]

Colonization should be reworked. Right now it's too easy to just paint the map of your colour. Settlers had to live in unhospitable lands that was seldom connected to Europe and developed mostly by themselves with the occasional help from the motherland.