I think Johan and Paradox Tinto are secretly working in EU5

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Biggest new features should be:
- redoing colonisation
- redoing trade
- the demographic and economic damage of war should be more punishing. Manpower losses. Add refugees emigrating war torn areas. Preserving peace from time to time while war rages around you should be a viable strategy. This would add another diplomatic/espionage layer where you could provoke war between neighbours to your benefit.
- no mana
- minority religions and cultures
- better proportions in map (not-Europe is WAY larger in reality than in game).

Your third point : I've got the impression most people already restart after losing one war, something like this would have to be thought through very well to not make that issue worse...
 
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I don't think they'll jump straight to EU5 without at least trying another kinda game first.

But I think we can be pretty sure that Tinto are working on something more than just EU4, something secret.
 
Will mission trees be removed from future versions of the EU series? I think there was a comment from the development team that they regret adding it to EU4.

I really hope they do not remove mission trees altogether. I like that different tags play differently, that there is different content for the tags and that the game nudges them into a historical/historically plausible direction.
What I would like to see is mission trees with alternative and often mutually exclusive branches, i.e. basically a mission system that is more like the national focus system of Hoi4. Right now, there is one set of missions for each tag and the game incentivizes you to complete all of them. Which basically means that the missions encourage exactly one style of playing a country. This means:

1. Low replayability. Once you have completed all missions for a tag, the mission system doesn't give you any incentive to play that tag again.
2. Less strategic decision-making. Since you can always complete all missions for a tag, you are not really forced to pick between different options. There is only a decision of when to complete a certain mission or a certain branch of missions, not of if you want to be able to do one thing or another. You can always be, for example, both a colonial Portugal and a Portugal that conquers all of Iberia.
3. Less player agency. The mission system encourages one specific way of playing a country rather than letting you pick what kind of playthrough you want while still interacting with missions.

A system that would let you pick different "paths" and where there are real decisions and real opportunity costs and real decisions would be a lot more interesting.
This is done better not only in HoI4, but also to a certain extent in Rome's mission system where there are (sometimes) missions that are mutually exclusive.
 
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Johan made EU1, EU2, EU3, EU4. He can do EU5.

Biggest new features should be:
- redoing colonisation
- redoing trade
- the demographic and economic damage of war should be more punishing. Manpower losses. Add refugees emigrating war torn areas. Preserving peace from time to time while war rages around you should be a viable strategy. This would add another diplomatic/espionage layer where you could provoke war between neighbours to your benefit.
Yes, but I have a few things that should be fixed before EU5 happens.

First, bring back colonisation pre-1.32. Ever since Leviathan came out, you have limited ways to expand into the new world because once you reach Florida or Labrador, the East Coast has already been occupied by Powhatan, Iroquois and other tribes that have federated with border gore galore.

Secondly, revamp RNW. It feels like it was a mechanic that was underlooked from the beginning as it just gets buggier and buggier and left out. Maybe having custom formable nations like in Crusader Kings where if you have enough land you can create your own kingdoms and empires.

Third, I'd love provinces to be able to have trade ports that you can interact with; like with CK2's buildings.

Fourthly, population could be a thing, but it should be its own mechanic in EU5 because it would destroy the EU4 system because of how different it is to development in so many ways. Having refugee events that move development from one neighbouring nation to another could be a smart idea as in the late middle ages until nationalism was a thing, there was nothing to define a nation and its territorial borders.

Finally, having more ideas and having them interact with missions could be fun, similar to Flavour Universalis playing around with the Expanded Family's mechanics
 
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- no mana
- minority religions and cultures
- better proportions in map (not-Europe is WAY larger in reality than in game).

Your third point : I've got the impression most people already restart after losing one war, something like this would have to be thought through very well to not make that issue worse...

- customize building models
- Army designer
- Each nation has its own monetary system

EU5 would have a great, glorious, bright future if the community was charged with designing it.
 
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When CK3 was announced, with info that it had been in development for four years already (iirc), I thought it very clearly meant an EU5, even by then (2019), would be well into development as well, possibly with release in mind for 2022-2023 at the latest.
Then the move to Tinto made things quite foggy in my head, it was announced it'd "take on the role as [...] developer of the Europa Universalis brand", which if taken at face value (meaning they would be in charge of both EU4 and EU5) could mean a couple things for EU5:
I could've been right, and the game is indeed well into development, but it would be transferred from PDS to Tinto. Doesn't seem like a very optimal idea to me, this would be a massive disruption for an ongoing project, a huge delay would be the best case scenario here.
Or I was wrong and development hadn't even started yet, and with Tinto coming fully online it is only now (maybe) entering pre-production which, taking CK3 as reference, would mean release somewhere around 2025-2026.
And all that doesn't even takes into account how covid probably threw schedules out the window.

That's EU5, but what does it mean for EU4?
My original assumption was that this year would be the last one of full development for the game, taking CK as reference again, I figured next year would be used for wrapping up the game with some patches right until the announcement of EU5.
But this new scenario with Tinto makes this seem unlikely, which has me very worried for EU4, the game is clearly collapsing under its own weight, just thinking it may have some 4 or 5 years ahead of DLCs makes me shiver with pessimism.
At this point I just hope they wrap up EU4 soon, hopefully by next year, with a few patches and a nice bowtie to leave the game in a good state, even if EU5 won't be ready for announcement for a few years to come.
Let this game have a well deserved rest, please don't wring it to the last drop for DLC.
 
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I really hope they do not remove mission trees altogether. I like that different tags play differently, that there is different content for the tags and that the game nudges them into a historical/historically plausible direction.
What I would like to see is mission trees with alternative and often mutually exclusive branches, i.e. basically a mission system that is more like the national focus system of Hoi4. Right now, there is one set of missions for each tag and the game incentivizes you to complete all of them. Which basically means that the missions encourage exactly one style of playing a country. This means:

1. Low replayability. Once you have completed all missions for a tag, the mission system doesn't give you any incentive to play that tag again.
2. Less strategic decision-making. Since you can always complete all missions for a tag, you are not really forced to pick between different options. There is only a decision of when to complete a certain mission or a certain branch of missions, not of if you want to be able to do one thing or another. You can always be, for example, both a colonial Portugal and a Portugal that conquers all of Iberia.
3. Less player agency. The mission system encourages one specific way of playing a country rather than letting you pick what kind of playthrough you want while still interacting with missions.

A system that would let you pick different "paths" and where there are real decisions and real opportunity costs and real decisions would be a lot more interesting.
This is done better not only in HoI4, but also to a certain extent in Rome's mission system where there are (sometimes) missions that are mutually exclusive.
Johan hates mission trees (mostly because of how much content design work they add, I think), so I don't expect to see them if he directs EU5. Which is a shame, because I like them a lot :)
 
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It's easy to bash on Johan or Tinto. You emphasize the few failures, don't consider that he is a large reason why grand strategy games even exist. And tinto had to start in difficult situations, I'm pretty certain they will learn from their mistakes.

Honestly, I look forward to both EU IV dlc as well as EU V (eventually). Hopefully they find good new ideas for mechanics to make interesting gameplay.
 
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Since I've had to clean up this thread here's a reminder: critiquing our games is fine, bashing our devs is not. Stay on topic, stay kind.
 
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Based on this twitter I think, that EU4 will have 4 big patches.

I hope that Europa Universalis series will have pause. For refresh own minds, finds real new ways etc. Maybe return to Imperator Rome (this game have still greater, unused potential in compare to Europa Universalis) or big focus on Victoria 3.
You know, I:R really is a great foundation, mechanically, for EU5. About the only thing that wouldn't work for it is the awful trade system in I:R (way too micro-managey, even when you automate it).

So, I say EU5 should be about 50% I:R ported to the early modern period, 35% EU4 updated, and 15% whatever makes sense from Vicky3.
 
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I really hope they do not remove mission trees altogether. I like that different tags play differently, that there is different content for the tags and that the game nudges them into a historical/historically plausible direction.
What I would like to see is mission trees with alternative and often mutually exclusive branches, i.e. basically a mission system that is more like the national focus system of Hoi4. Right now, there is one set of missions for each tag and the game incentivizes you to complete all of them. Which basically means that the missions encourage exactly one style of playing a country. This means:

1. Low replayability. Once you have completed all missions for a tag, the mission system doesn't give you any incentive to play that tag again.
2. Less strategic decision-making. Since you can always complete all missions for a tag, you are not really forced to pick between different options. There is only a decision of when to complete a certain mission or a certain branch of missions, not of if you want to be able to do one thing or another. You can always be, for example, both a colonial Portugal and a Portugal that conquers all of Iberia.
3. Less player agency. The mission system encourages one specific way of playing a country rather than letting you pick what kind of playthrough you want while still interacting with missions.

A system that would let you pick different "paths" and where there are real decisions and real opportunity costs and real decisions would be a lot more interesting.
This is done better not only in HoI4, but also to a certain extent in Rome's mission system where there are (sometimes) missions that are mutually exclusive.
Hope you like the latest dev diary
 
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It's easy to bash on Johan or Tinto. You emphasize the few failures, don't consider that he is a large reason why grand strategy games even exist. And tinto had to start in difficult situations, I'm pretty certain they will learn from their mistakes.

Honestly, I look forward to both EU IV dlc as well as EU V (eventually). Hopefully they find good new ideas for mechanics to make interesting gameplay.
Your prize race horse is 20 and starts losing races, he can't breed anymore, do you sell him to the glue factory?
 
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Your prize race horse is 20 and starts losing races, he can't breed anymore, do you sell him to the glue factory?
That depends.

How much is the dog food factory offering?
 
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I really hope they do not remove mission trees altogether. I like that different tags play differently, that there is different content for the tags and that the game nudges them into a historical/historically plausible direction.
What I would like to see is mission trees with alternative and often mutually exclusive branches, i.e. basically a mission system that is more like the national focus system of Hoi4. Right now, there is one set of missions for each tag and the game incentivizes you to complete all of them. Which basically means that the missions encourage exactly one style of playing a country. This means:

1. Low replayability. Once you have completed all missions for a tag, the mission system doesn't give you any incentive to play that tag again.
2. Less strategic decision-making. Since you can always complete all missions for a tag, you are not really forced to pick between different options. There is only a decision of when to complete a certain mission or a certain branch of missions, not of if you want to be able to do one thing or another. You can always be, for example, both a colonial Portugal and a Portugal that conquers all of Iberia.
3. Less player agency. The mission system encourages one specific way of playing a country rather than letting you pick what kind of playthrough you want while still interacting with missions.

A system that would let you pick different "paths" and where there are real decisions and real opportunity costs and real decisions would be a lot more interesting.
This is done better not only in HoI4, but also to a certain extent in Rome's mission system where there are (sometimes) missions that are mutually exclusive.
That seems to be the direction with the new mission trees. It's a bit of a shame that it only comes now, when major nations already have old style trees, but better late than never and who knows. if missions survive into EU5 the new style may become the norm.
 
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Anyway. About mission trees.

I actually like more the mission trees than the old mission system.

Though I think it should be more historical and less fantasy world.

One of the best thing about mission trees, specially if well done, is that it helps the AI to have a bit of historical railroading with the permanent claims. Before missions trees everything was very random and countries didn't expand in their historical borders.
 
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