I have mentioned the "mana problem" to a friend of mine, and he asked me whether Paradox had a reason to go with that direction. I said that I'm not aware of a official reason, but I can make an informed guess.
Basically many questions in strategy game design seems to boil down to:
"what is simulated in the game, and what can the player influence"
and
"what resources limit the player's ability to modify the simulation".
These include literal resources (gold, minerals, gas), abstract resources (sciene/culture points, diplomatic power) and things like time ("I could explore the whole map with a single unit in theory, but I have to make decisions as to what I do now, and what I do later")
I understand the idea of having few abstract resources that regulate the power of the player in specific areas. Then balancing them with each other can be relatively easy, and split into few steps:
- "how much can the player do with military power"
- "are all options for spending military power viable at some point, or are some too bad or too good?"
- "what are the ways for the player to acquire military power"
- "how does this power compare to other powers the player can acquire"
I also see the problem of not having relatively-easy-to-balance resources like that. False choices.
You might be able to make 4000 decisions in the game and invest in 100 different resources, but actually, only 2 play styles (priorities for decision-making) are viable and 3 of those 100 resources are the only ones that matter.
So sure, boiling down resources in a grand strategy games to less than 10, including some abstract "mana"? I get that. I get that it could allow to balance the stuff better, making more playstyles viable. Allowing players to play the same country differently, and also to make playing different countries different (as opposed to "always go for this strategy with every country" problem. Where the only difference is the difficulty, as in the size and power of the country you start with.)
So, in the end, I guess I'll defend the "mana" apporach. I prefer it over the
"here's 20 systems that simulate something, and you can adjust parameters in 15 of them." Because it has a clause:
"But really, just look on the forums for the perfect solution already calculated by some guy year ago."
The "mana" seems to be a better tool to get the "multiple viable strategies" gameplay dynamic. As in: "limited number of resources that one can compare against each other".
Also, it might make some decisions more clear.
"Want 100 military power or 50 gold and 50 diplomatic power?" is a more understandable question than something like
"10% infantry morale and 5% more oil income, or inflation reduction of 15% and culture of Northern Italy becomes 30% more like culture of Southern Italy"
I might not be the biggest fan of how this is designed/implemented in Europa Universalis IV, but that's more to do with what these powers do and what they don't do, what you spend them on, etc. Not with the approach itself.
I don't really have an opinion on Imperator: Rome yet.
