Is there a "consensus" on mana?

[EarlKonrad]

I used to love "mana" until I looked into it. I find the term offensive, as, "mana" is often equated to "magic" and the "mana" mechanics are supposed to represent complexities. I found it quite offensive for people to be implying the game was simply dismissing these complex things as "magic".
except
that's what the game is doing.
So yea, I'm not a fan of it anymore.

Wholeheartedly agree with your first paragraph.

Mana IS used as a derogatory term and a short hand for "thing I don't like" by many PDX fans. It is the boogeyman of modern day paradox and a term thrown around without any care for how it is used, its meaning or how you define it to begin with.

But of bloody course the game will simplify, abstract and reduce complex IRL stuff. EU 4 is NOT War in the East to model each individual military unit, military equipment and so on so forth. Not even HoI 4 cares that much about the minute details of a simulation opting to abstract a hell of a lot more stuff than HoI 3.

If you want to play this game, go ahead! You can easily Criticize and poke holes at every single game in existence and label stuff as mana on the basis that it is a bar that fills, you spend and then it recharges. After all, that is what a currency system is at its most basic level.

 

[Titanius Puffin]

To me the monarch points is a highly abstract representation of a government's effectiveness- which is often highly influenced by the person who's leading the government.
Monarch points = effort and effectiveness.

The 'highly abstract' bit means that instead of spending government 'effort' on projects immediately (and having them blow up in your face sometimes), you're allowed to save up some effort, and spend it opportunistically. You can divert effort to stabilising your country, retroactively diverting administrative effort that from implementing new 'admin technology', for instance.
That technological effort now didn't actually happen, because several clerks and lawyers were dispatched to solve a pressing legal dispute.

Are monarch points too abstract? Maybe. But it's also very accessible - and creatively flexible.
Since I have a poor idea how Frederick the Great ruled Prussia (and Freddy's not around anymore to comment), asking for realism seems self-defeating.
I'm content to accept the monarch point framework as the basis for my own imagination.

 

[treb]

Mana, to paraphrase Churchill, is the absolutely worst system of creating intangible game resources, except for everything else that has been tried.

Show me a better system that does it, and that isn't completely RNG, and I will agree to ditch Mana.

Im just spitballing but i've had this idea for a while, Mana is supposed to represent your government's capabilities? Why not just model them? have 3 branches of government that represent the administrative bureaucracy, The Military and the Trade guilds/foreign policy.

Each branch has a set of reforms to boost its efficiency that can only be enacted and maintained by a leader with high enough stats in that category. Which effects its overall efficiency of the institution, which you can then allocate to tasks like coring, developing and other needs. Technology is no longer bought by x number of points that hamstrings your ability to govern. Tech development is increased by the efficiency of a branch and the skill of a leader, with an optional ability to devote some of a branches attentions to technological development.

It would work something like this:

The bureaucracy is 100% efficient*, You then assign 10% to developing a state administratively, 25% to coring some land, 15% to lowering inflation 30% to raising stability and lastly 20% on developing techs. Each one would then boost the speed of whatever they are assigned to. the only rng would be the leaders.

* It's a hypothetical don't @ me with your expanding bureaucracy jokes

 

[Laurent1944]

Well, to be closer to the reality, tech progress should probably be more or less independent of government action most of the times. Government may choose to spend MPs to help search a technology but if you do nothing your country will still evolve. The indians tribes did not discover the rifles but still had them at one stage. Basically tech should spread as institutions do, with maluses/bonuses depending on a variety of factors.

For me a better system than the MPs would be actions points, not storable, but giving you a number of actions to be done each month:
_ ADM: coring a province, forging claims, fighting inflation, developping taxes, helping search admin tech, helping search admin ideas, increasing legitimacy, and so on
_ DIP: integrating a vassal/PU, increase relationship, spy/counter-spy, reducing war exhaustion, developping production, helping search diplo tech, helping search diplo ideas, conclude alliance/royal marriage, develop colony, interact with burghers, interact with CNs, etc...
_ MIL: reduce rebels, increase legitimacy, threaten war, support rebels/independence, declare war, train troops, raise army, raise merc company, developping manpower, helping search military tech, helping search military ideas, interact with nobles, etc...

I would also add a fourth type of MP, the religious one, used for access to religious bonuses (if you push them), for converting provinces, for interacting with clergy.

So most actions would be long term. Basically your action points will represent the capacity of government and you can choose to devote them to long term projects (so allocating one of your actions points to it for a long time) or to keep a pool of points for taking other actions.

Edited: apparently treb posted a very similar idea at the same time than me

 

[Cancerofthehead]

Well, to be closer to the reality, tech progress should probably be more or less independent of government action most of the times. Government may choose to spend MPs to help search a technology but if you do nothing your country will still evolve. The indians tribes did not discover the rifles but still had them at one stage. Basically tech should spread as institutions do, with maluses/bonuses depending on a variety of factors.

I think an important idea is that you are investing your political influence into developing technology or our concepts, you are embracing them. Adopting the new weapons for your military, implementing new burocraric concepts for your administrators, shaving your diplomatic corp. The ahead of time penalty, meanwhile exists because it is more difficult to push the general adoption of something before it is accept by most of the people. In that sense you could say it does resemble institutions, you just don’t see the spread from oeovinfdd Ed to province.

 

[erneiz_hyde]

Just eliminate instant effects. Your 3 mana pool is your resource which you allocate to various things monthly and accumulate progress overtime. Allow for decimal placements for more fine tuning...maybe sliders? *gasp*

 

[R.Graymarch]

Or have instant effect but a cooldown timer to avoid spamming a button. On development, war exhaustion, stability. We may of course fight on the length of the cooldown and if it should evolve: going from Dev 3->4 and going from Dev 25->26: same cooldown length? Or even better, there is a mana* penalty if you click before the end of the cooldown.

* I wanted to write "MP" for Monarch Power and realised that it could be mistaken for "Multiplayer". So yeah, "mana" is more practical now that everybody knows what it means. It's not derogatory anymore to me (I agree it might have been the case at the beginning)

 

[Laurent1944]

Any magical effect should be erased from the game IMHO. The cooldown between two clicks could be a good idea. Let's say a one year cooldown between each action of the same type (and on the same province when it applies). Meaning that a truce break effect on stability will last at least two years, and developping for institutions will be very slow. As for developping, I will still allow to develop each category independently, allowing you to grow a province by 3 each year. Also no more legitimacy 25 to 75 in one day and so on.

As for the other magical effects, I will list TC buildings and trade centers being build/upgraded instantly, teleport of generals/admirals and diplomats being able to teleport on the way to another country (but having to walk on the way back). Also instant successions with no interregnum and instant Papal or HRE Emperor elections while IRL they were very long processes. For all cases where succession is not clear, I will rather have an event chain with possibility for other countries to postulate or support candidates, eventually going to a war between countries or a pretender rising.

As for being able to see most of the world and know what happens to your armies/fleets everywhere, it enters into the "magical" category compared to in real history but it will be hard to get rid of it. While technically possible, I think it will not please most of the players (imagine that all your armies and fleets, except the one led by your leader will be controlled by the AI... and that you will learn what they did weeks or months after it).

 

[EarlKonrad]

As for being able to see most of the world and know what happens to your armies/fleets everywhere, it enters into the "magical" category compared to in real history but it will be hard to get rid of it. While technically possible, I think it will not please most of the players (imagine that all your armies and fleets, except the one led by your leader will be controlled by the AI... and that you will learn what they did weeks or months after it).

Were you to change this, you would be changing one of the best aspects of EU 4, namely being able to see what is going on with the rest of the world. It both gives players information which they can act upon and also lets them have fun/dread by knowing what is going on with the other nations. You could introduce a harsher FoW like in Total War for example but all that would accomplishes is frustrating the player by hiding what is happening outside of his bubble.

And in regards of instituting limited control/information when it comes to combat, how would it benefit the game in any way shape or form? This isn't Majesty where the entire game is built on the premise of seeing independent actors going about their business and having limited agency to influence their decisions -- no -- EU 4 is built upon the premise of giving players agency in regards to shaping their Country and its actions. The few instances where the game does break from this is to its detriment (see you needing positive opinion of another Country to make some diplomatic actions).

 

[EarlKonrad]

* I wanted to write "MP" for Monarch Power and realised that it could be mistaken for "Multiplayer". So yeah, "mana" is more practical now that everybody knows what it means. It's not derogatory anymore to me (I agree it might have been the case at the beginning)

That's an argument I hadn't heard before and fair enough. Although I would be hard pressed to name a situation where MP could be interpreted to mean either Multyplayer or Monarch Power. Besides, MP could also mean Military Power or Manpower but no-one ever uses it for these terms.

Much worse and easier to make confusion is AE which, in theory, is short for both "Aggressive Expansion" and Administrative Efficiency" but I rarely, if ever, see AE used to indicate the later rather than the former.

 

[R.Graymarch]

I accept that the fact that the player has a lot of information on his/her country and all the others (ledger) is a good thing for the game. Yes, it never happened (happens) IRL for our nations but I'm not sure it would be fun to add some authenticity in that manner.
Regarding generals teleporting, OK, it's strange. But to me, it's a side effect of the fact that you have 4 generals in 1800 even with hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Having so few general is an abstraction which is fine to me (do you imagine dealing with dozens/hundreds of them?) and it's linked to DIP/MIL pool, which make sense. So, I'm OK that they can teleport: I just imagine that there are several generals of this type in my army.

. Although I would be hard pressed to name a situation where MP could be interpreted to mean either Multyplayer or Monarch Power.

On internet forum, misunderstanding can come from stuff like this. I agree that it should not be interpreted this way in the sentence but I may (will?) be. I prefer to be more precise, especially if it's a short word like "mana". At worse, it has no effect, at best, it makes the post without ambiguity. I agree also on Manpower (Military power is something I did not meet yet). And also for your examples on AE

 

[erneiz_hyde]

Well, apparently people like the current instant effects judging from the number of dislikes in my post. In which case, I guess the consensus is mana is fine as it is and it's probably not gonna change.

 

[Dlin369]

I’m personally ambivalent regarding mana - I don’t mind the current system all the much because while abstracted I think it does create an interesting resource management mini game. I do think making players have to slowly invest mana for effects instead of getting them instantly would be good - I don’t know about sliders though, I suppose I’d have to see it implemented first to judge

 

[MinhowMinhow]

I had played EU3 again, there was no mana there, for this aspect, the game was much more enjoyable compared to EU4.

But yeah, EU4 is better in many aspects, except for the mana.

 

[Atlanteax]

Hopefully no Mana mechanics in EU5 ... the EU3 tech/stability system was superior

 

[Cancerofthehead]

I think some instant actions are fine, for example technology, ideas, and appointing generals.

Both technology and ideas are things already around, you just use the political capital you accrue over time to force the government to adopt It. And obviously your armies have plenty of Generals, but you exert your political influence to have this guy made the top dog (maybe “Marshall” would be more accurate than “General”), the Army may not want him but you use your political capital to force them to accept him. Sure they wouldn’t be instant, but close enough.

Others, like culture conversion or development does make sense as instant actions. No matter how much political power you exert, it will take time to get people to adopt your culture or to build up a city.

I would like EUV to have a system similar to Monarch Points, but I would also like to see it somewhat reduced in importance and/or interact with other mechanics more.

I think that EUIV is about as reliant on MP as it can be without seriously harming the game, while Imperator is the example of crossing that line.

 

[treb]

That's an argument I hadn't heard before and fair enough. Although I would be hard pressed to name a situation where MP could be interpreted to mean either Multyplayer or Monarch Power. Besides, MP could also mean Military Power or Manpower but no-one ever uses it for these terms.

Much worse and easier to make confusion is AE which, in theory, is short for both "Aggressive Expansion" and Administrative Efficiency" but I rarely, if ever, see AE used to indicate the later rather than the former.

I've heard of the various monarch points being referred to as bird, paper and sword mana respectively, regardless of weather its derogatory or not, its entered the fanbases jargon.

 

[Vohen]

I think some instant actions are fine, for example technology, ideas, and appointing generals.

I tend to agree with that, but it's important to note that the first two only work as instant actions because they are already gated by time.
Tech has ahead of time penalty and ideas are unlocked by tech.

Generals are an interesting case, as previously the only consideration was on filling your leader slots and that'd be the end of it, but now with army professionalism and slacken recruitment, you are actively encouraged to exchange MIL for manpower for a prolonged war (if you don't have anything more pressing to spend your MIL on, of course).
But the important bit isn't exactly the exchange itself, it's how it happens.
You buy generals with MIL, which in turn increases your professionalism, which in turn allows you to slacken recruitment for manpower.
The process is more involved and integrated to more mechanics than it would be if you simply pressed a button to buy manpower with MIL, which would be wholly unsatisfying.
And that's what makes it work with being an instant action imo, generals themselves are gated by slots, and when you ate incentivized to go on a mana spending spree on them, it's a much more elaborate process that involves multiple mechanics and two middle men between the MIL and the manpower.

 

[EarlKonrad]

I've heard of the various monarch points being referred to as bird, paper and sword mana respectively, regardless of weather its derogatory or not, its entered the fanbases jargon.

True. Personally, I like paper, bird and sword.

 

[master_kong]

Mana is a perfect system for board game-like grand strategy game. But it'll be a good board game at its best. Apart from EU4 could be a much better game with all these mechanics, flavor and effort; would you want to pay all that money to a pc board game. I would not and it won't happen again for me since I eminently satisfied my desire(!) for it with EU4. Also, you can't make a great, deep strategy game with a mana system; although you can make a fun map painting game which is EU4.