How much randomness should EU5 have?

[Ixal]

Assuming that there will eventually be a EU5, how much randomness would you prefer?

Currently EU4 has a lot of randomness to it. The amount of monarch points rulers have, the number of pips of generals (influenced by army tradition) and of course the dice rolls during combat itself which have a huge influence. But also all the events which can make a big difference.

 

[Razor Feather]

Honestly I think eu4 hits the mark fairly well on the randomness curve. Enough rng impact to make it so you never quite know the outcome and you occasionally have to adapt to the unexpected, but not so much that the game can reasonably hand you total victory or defeat based purely on rng outside of the more extreme cases (Initial Byzantium alliances, for example).

The only area I might want to see changed is sieges, since they can reasonably vary quite a lot and outside of artillery barrage into repeated painful assaults, it is entierly possible, though very unlikely, for RNG to be so unfavorable as to make overcoming it totally impossible, which is a bit silly, so maybe reign that in a little. Its not normally a huge deal for me, but it is undeniably frustrating when the time progress is capped out and you fail a 50/50 roll 6 times in a row and there isn't really much that can be done about it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Assuming that there will eventually be a EU5, how much randomness would you prefer?

Currently EU4 has a lot of randomness to it. The amount of monarch points rulers have, the number of pips of generals (influenced by army tradition) and of course the dice rolls during combat itself which have a huge influence. But also all the events which can make a big difference.

Randomness isn't created equally. Monarch point RNG is a lot more cancerous than general pip rolls, which are significantly less cancerous than combat dice (which are fine).

Events are a little different in that in the overwhelming majority of cases they confer a small benefit or nuisance while not altering player's decisions much, if at all. The fact that they pop up and obstruct the screen is more impactful and annoying than most event effects themselves .

As a design point having player decisions meaningfully influence their outcomes interacting with RNG is good. Where RNG becomes a problem is when you get run-defining outcomes based on a single or few dice rolls. The more counterplay RNG has, it increasingly goes from bad to healthy or even good for a game.

So how much RNG? However much makes sense when designing player choices interacting with a particular mechanic within the constraints of the model.

The only area I might want to see changed is sieges, since they can reasonably vary quite a lot and outside of artillery barrage into repeated painful assaults, it is entierly possible

Rather than the mechanic of sieges being the problem in EU 4, I would argue that siege phases are too long by default. There were some incredibly long historical sieges, but they were the exception. Overwhelming majority were <1 year.

It's also annoying that siege assaults are still bugged and require excessive micro to overcome the bug.

 

[Torredebelem]

Assuming that there will eventually be a EU5, how much randomness would you prefer?

Currently EU4 has a lot of randomness to it. The amount of monarch points rulers have, the number of pips of generals (influenced by army tradition) and of course the dice rolls during combat itself which have a huge influence. But also all the events which can make a big difference.

An healthy amount of randomness, which means a bit more than EU4 has at present, mostly in coring, converting and the stability department.

 

[Battlex]

Randomness isn't created equally. Monarch point RNG is a lot more cancerous than general pip rolls, which are significantly less cancerous than combat dice (which are fine).

Events are a little different in that in the overwhelming majority of cases they confer a small benefit or nuisance while not altering player's decisions much, if at all. The fact that they pop up and obstruct the screen is more impactful and annoying than most event effects themselves .

As a design point having player decisions meaningfully influence their outcomes interacting with RNG is good. Where RNG becomes a problem is when you get run-defining outcomes based on a single or few dice rolls. The more counterplay RNG has, it increasingly goes from bad to healthy or even good for a game.

So how much RNG? However much makes sense when designing player choices interacting with a particular mechanic within the constraints of the model.



Rather than the mechanic of sieges being the problem in EU 4, I would argue that siege phases are too long by default. There were some incredibly long historical sieges, but they were the exception. Overwhelming majority were <1 year.

It's also annoying that siege assaults are still bugged and require excessive micro to overcome the bug.

Eu4 can't replicate sieges irl, you get some buffs from salt and terrain, as well as national ideas, and that event of 'local fortification expert discovered' but you can't have the quick surrender, or rebels giving up the forts for you, bribing the garrison or promising amnesty to the population within.
The knights do get some events and buffs to Fort defense, but there really should be stuff for how hard it is to siege small islands where most of the land is the Fort. Inland river forts should simialry get some buffs if the river is neither blockaded nor diverted

Fixing the sacking event and using your spy network to bribe key Fort commanders rather than a generalised malus to Fort defense would be the priorities for me imo

 

[Travis_Bickle]

I think the mana system will be dumped for EU5. Monarch points are too random.

I also think the rivalry system is incredibly random and annoying. I hope that changes.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think the mana system will be dumped for EU5. Monarch points are too random.

I also think the rivalry system is incredibly random and annoying. I hope that changes.

If devs wanted they could make mana 100% deterministic, which means that in this particular case tethering a lot of resources to relatively few dice rolls is a problem. At least over the years they have made player influence on this more possible in EU 4.

Rivalry is an example of something that is deterministically bad (AI behaves somewhat predictably with it) . AI decisions are different from the mechanic itself, there isn't apparent RNG for rival eligibility or related bonuses/modifiers. Another example of deterministically bad mechanics is fort ZoC, which is broken by design and still bugged. Both RNG and deterministic mechanics can be good or bad.

 

[st360]

I don't want EU 5.

I don't want to play a base game with 0 features waiting 10 years for the DLCs to flesh it out to EU 4s level.

All in the name of 3d advisor portraits and fogs on minimap mountains and other graphical nonsense that is both irrelevant AND often ends up looking worse.

 

[Travis_Bickle]

If devs wanted they could make mana 100% deterministic, which means that in this particular case tethering a lot of resources to relatively few dice rolls is a problem. At least over the years they have made player influence on this more possible in EU 4.

Rivalry is an example of something that is deterministically bad (AI behaves somewhat predictably with it) . AI decisions are different from the mechanic itself, there isn't apparent RNG for rival eligibility or related bonuses/modifiers. Another example of deterministically bad mechanics is fort ZoC, which is broken by design and still bugged. Both RNG and deterministic mechanics can be good or bad.

I think mana should actually be partially representative of the player's actions. Let's say I spend a lot of time focusing on my military. Military ideas, military building, drilling, generals all around, all of that...I don't think I should end up being punished because the game decides to roll me an incompetent 3/4/0 mil guy. If that makes sense, I think the players actions should at least have some kind of influence on the points they are given.

In regards to rivalries, they're just dumb. Burgundy rivalling me as Aragon (We have zero claims on each other and our trade ports are in different seas, but we do have a big scary blue thing in between us we may want to team up on). Rivalries make the game so predictable and the AI just does stupid things like not attacking a country they could get clay on just because they aren't rivalled. Seriously, top 3 annoying thing in the game for me.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

In regards to rivalries, they're just dumb.

Believe me, I agree:

Meme rivalries | Paradox Interactive Forums (paradoxplaza.com)

 

[Travis_Bickle]

Believe me, I agree:

Meme rivalries | Paradox Interactive Forums (paradoxplaza.com)

I mean, I don't need them but for example, if I wanted to ally Hungary to attack the Ottomans on a no-CB Byz Aragon strategy, I can't because Hungary rival player Aragon 80-90% of the time. How ridiculous is that? What are Hungary going to do march all the way from Budapest to Barcelona to attack me?

The other thing is, given the whole Burgundian inheritance is bugged for rivalries a major shift in game power can happen based on something totally arbitrary.

It really annoys me that you cannot "diplomatically end a rivalry". A country you want to be friendly with rivals you, you have no mutual claims and you have mutual enemies, but the game won't say "Oh okay we have no reason to rival each other, let's be friends".

Really needs work imo.

 

[Reman]

EU5 should have as little randomness as possible. Preferably there'd be a random seed at the beginning to create different diplomatic environments that would spiral outwards to create unique games every time you played, but after that everything would be deterministic. This article is a good primer on what I'm talking about: Input randomness is fine and even desirable. Output randomness is a cheap trick to create fake depth, and should be avoided. It's the high-fructose corn syrup of game design.

I don't think EU5 will even get remotely close to the ideal of removing output randomness entirely, but here's a list of a few of the things that could be worked on:

1. Monarch point generation: This was terrible at the beginning of EU4's lifecycle, but got somewhat better over time as we got ways to deal with it from things like the National Focus, level 5 advisors, and especially disinheriting. Games like Stellaris and HoI4 have a single currency, Influence, that's mostly free of RNG, and the system works better and is much less frustrating.
2. Siege dicerolls: One of the issues that makes the warfare in EU4 and many other strategy games boring is an overemphasis on sieges where all you do is wait. I'd like to see field battles matter much more than they currently do, but barring that, I'd at least prefer that EU5 uses deterministic sieges like CK3 instead of the RNG system currently in place.
3. Battle dicerolls: These can make or break runs early on, and I'd prefer to see more emphasis on skill than hoping for 9s (or rather, hoping not to get 0s and 1s). At the very least I'd like to see the variance turned down significantly, like in HoI4.
4. Attitude: This includes stuff like "Austria views us as friendly" and "France is threatened by us". This stuff has a huge impact on diplomacy and can make or break games early on. For all I know this might actually be deterministic, but so much of it is obfuscated and hard coded that it's essentially RNG. I'd like to see a simpler deterministic system based on opinion and power level, e.g. if opinion is >100 and the power level of the two countries is about equal, they'll be friendly. I'd also prefer more scrutable rivalries.
5. Major events: Some things like the Burgundian Inheritance have silly RNG and could become deterministic, or at the very least have a set of conditions where they'd be guaranteed to trigger. CK2 used to have RNG claim fabrication but switched to make it deterministic in CK3, and the system is better for it.
6. Minor events: This is less of a complaint about RNG and more an issue with popups. Minor events do very little, and most players autopilot through them after a few dozen games. At this point the popups just become a nuisance especially when you're focusing on an important war. An option to turn the generic ones off would be nice. HoI4 has sort of done this.
7. Personal Unions: These have the potential to be incredibly powerful but have been very annoying ever since RNG dynasty spread became a requirement. The gameplay essentially boils down to "hope their king dies without an heir lol", with excessive marriage micro being involved if you want to cheese the system by creating + breaking marriages over and over. It's so bad that I don't even bother with dynamic PUs outside of the more deterministic ones like Poland. It'd be nice if we had an active gameplay component to circumvent the RNG like the dozens of options we have in CK3.

 

[Miroku20X6]

EU5 should have as little randomness as possible. Preferably there'd be a random seed at the beginning to create different diplomatic environments that would spiral outwards to create unique games every time you played, but after that everything would be deterministic. This article is a good primer on what I'm talking about: Input randomness is fine and even desirable. Output randomness is a cheap trick to create fake depth, and should be avoided. It's the high-fructose corn syrup of game design.

I don't think EU5 will even get remotely close to the ideal of removing output randomness entirely, but here's a list of a few of the things that could be worked on:

1. Monarch point generation: This was terrible at the beginning of EU4's lifecycle, but got somewhat better over time as we got ways to deal with it from things like the National Focus, level 5 advisors, and especially disinheriting. Games like Stellaris and HoI4 have a single currency, Influence, that's mostly free of RNG, and the system works better and is much less frustrating.
2. Siege dicerolls: One of the issues that makes the warfare in EU4 and many other strategy games boring is an overemphasis on sieges where all you do is wait. I'd like to see field battles matter much more than they currently do, but barring that, I'd at least prefer that EU5 uses deterministic sieges like CK3 instead of the RNG system currently in place.
3. Battle dicerolls: These can make or break runs early on, and I'd prefer to see more emphasis on skill than hoping for 9s (or rather, hoping not to get 0s and 1s). At the very least I'd like to see the variance turned down significantly, like in HoI4.
4. Attitude: This includes stuff like "Austria views us as friendly" and "France is threatened by us". This stuff has a huge impact on diplomacy and can make or break games early on. For all I know this might actually be deterministic, but so much of it is obfuscated and hard coded that it's essentially RNG. I'd like to see a simpler deterministic system based on opinion and power level, e.g. if opinion is >100 and the power level of the two countries is about equal, they'll be friendly. I'd also prefer more scrutable rivalries.
5. Major events: Some things like the Burgundian Inheritance have silly RNG and could become deterministic, or at the very least have a set of conditions where they'd be guaranteed to trigger. CK2 used to have RNG claim fabrication but switched to make it deterministic in CK3, and the system is better for it.
6. Minor events: This is less of a complaint about RNG and more an issue with popups. Minor events do very little, and most players autopilot through them after a few dozen games. At this point the popups just become a nuisance especially when you're focusing on an important war. An option to turn the generic ones off would be nice. HoI4 has sort of done this.
7. Personal Unions: These have the potential to be incredibly powerful but have been very annoying ever since RNG dynasty spread became a requirement. The gameplay essentially boils down to "hope their king dies without an heir lol", with excessive marriage micro being involved if you want to cheese the system by creating + breaking marriages over and over. It's so bad that I don't even bother with dynamic PUs outside of the more deterministic ones like Poland. It'd be nice if we had an active gameplay component to circumvent the RNG like the dozens of options we have in CK3.

Strong disagree here. Of course trying to land a PU is hoping their king dies without an heir. What do you want, some progress bar where you get a Claim throne CB in like 100 years? Same principle with Burgundian inheritance, etc. If there were no variability, we would force it every time

I would be okay with some of the combat changes, though.

 

[Ekcrbe]

Strong disagree here. Of course trying to land a PU is hoping their king dies without an heir. What do you want, some progress bar where you get a Claim throne CB in like 100 years? Same principle with Burgundian inheritance, etc. If there were no variability, we would force it every time

I would be okay with some of the combat changes, though.

The problem is that the game has an incredibly simplistic view of dynastic politics. Either a country has an heir, or it doesn't. There's no sense that maybe because we've been married for the last 200 years, your heir might be related to my heir, or even be the same person, or I might be able to press my claim on another throne through a matrilineal descent, and on and on. It's just either you're the same dynasty or you're not. And then there's the completely nonsensical system of whether you get a dynasty spread or a PU or a straight inheritance, which is based on what year it is, and whether you gain or lose provinces, and who the Pope is, and... ugh. I'm not looking for a CK level of detail, and certainly it shouldn't be guaranteed, but something that gives the player a little more to do would be appreciated.

 

[Reman]

Strong disagree here. Of course trying to land a PU is hoping their king dies without an heir. What do you want, some progress bar where you get a Claim throne CB in like 100 years? Same principle with Burgundian inheritance, etc. If there were no variability, we would force it every time

I would be okay with some of the combat changes, though.

On PUs, I'd like an active gameplay component I could pursue to reduce/remove the RNG component of "hope for their king to die without an heir". Some of this actually already exists in the game, but is either not worth the cost (reverse dynasty spread), or has even more RNG itself to operationalize (consort regencies). CK2 and CK3 both have a lot of options here, and while I don't expect EU4 to be a full dynasty simulator, I'd like a viable path to PUs that doesn't rely on RNG or mission trees. A progress bar doesn't seem like it would be very engaging, especially if it would last for 100 years.

 

[sjobenrit]

my 2 cents:
1) Make a fixed chance of major events firing (think of Poland choosing the union, austria getting hungary, the norwegian event for independence, etc)
2) Make heirs much more rare. Look at the 'Countries that dont have heirs' at the beginning of the game. Long list, isn't it? That is because it is historical. Check the same list in 1470, and you see that there are much more heirs. I dont know if THAT is historicly accurate, but immo PU's should be easier to get AND to lose.