Is there a "consensus" on mana?

[EarlKonrad]

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.

Why can't you make a great, deep strategy game with a mana system? Please, elaborate.

 

[Vohen]

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.

On that note, I should say it's really unfair to call mana as generally bad or suggest it'd be universally better if implemented as an over time mechanic.
Most uses of Mana in the game are already constrained by time (tech, ideas, coring, culture conversion, diplo annexing, etc) or situational enough to be abstracted away (inflation, mercantilism, military actions, move capital, recruit generals, etc).
(I will maintain that the ones constrained by time would be ideal as over time investment, but the result is pretty much the same gameplay wise, it's only a matter of immersion, and personal preference I guess).
The exception to this, which are neither situational nor time constrained, are really the sore thumbs that give me such a sour taste for this whole mechanic: increase stab, legitimacy and development, and reduce WE (boosting factions too, but they are such a terrible mechanic overall, I think it's a problem of its own).
They are very impactful to gameplay, but don't receive their due attention on management, being the poster children for "press a button to get x".

Incidentally, for anyone who may be interested, I've made a mod addressing those issues, except development (and reworking factions as well).
It's "The Internal Balance" mod on my signature, and has a much more involved process for stability, making full use of estates.

A case could be made for development being instant action, as meaningful several point increase is a long term investment, and it serves a mechanical purpose of being a fairly safe mana sink for when you're approaching the cap without anywhere else to spend it.
However, that is not to say it couldn't be constrained by time as well, perhaps it should work like coring, where between you pressing the button and the dev actually being applied there's a set time to wait, with you being able to "queue" development to not lose the "mana sink" function.

 

[master_kong]

Why can't you make a great, deep strategy game with a mana system? Please, elaborate.

Why would you put mana on your game? To make things more instantaneous, that's why we call it like a board game. And when things are instantaneous, that game is not a deep strategy game. I'm not saying it's a bad game or a bad strategy game.