This is crazy. EU timeline is nowhere near the WWI and Vic timeline. If you want to play WWI with EU mechanics, use a mod. There will surely be at least one for that in time.
Is there going to be a world war 1 timeline?
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Love all the people saying that the mechanics of the game don't support the WW1 timeframe
the game isn't even out yet
the game isn't even out yet
Its definitely one of the most retarded responses being thrown around. No crap it doesn't support it, lol. That's why its a suggestion.
I'm always for making the timelines longer and allowing for more alternate history. The barriers are more imagined than real.
Also I think people are underestimating Paradox's abilities to adapt and improve when they insist that WW1 "can't be done right" in an EU game. EU3 was a very different game too before 4 expansions.
Fallacy - The game isn't fundamentally different from EU3, as is proven by countless developer diaries and information released - Nor is the timeframe.
Again, saying a game that isn't even out yet can't support a certain timeframe.
Ok well let's compromise here and agree that EU4 won't be able to present the WW1 era the way YOU want it presented.
Ok well let's compromise here and agree that EU4 won't be able to present the WW1 era the way YOU want it presented.
And you completely missed the point of the argument you're criticizing. The mechanics don't support the period because there's nothing to simulate industrialization, mass politics, immigration (on anything but the largest and clumsiest scale), or the military tactics and technologies of the period. Yeah, they could cram a bunch of that stuff in via an expansion. But then they just have the issue that those things don't make sense for the preceding 90% of the game. There's a reason why these periods are handled in seperate games. And even if none of that were true, they already have a game covering that period. Why would they release competition for their own product?
I believe we know enough about the mechanics and focus of the game to know this. As I said, new mechanics could be added on, but what's the point? You have a bunch of new stuff for the last century of the game that doesn't fit what came before, and is already covered in more detail by another game from the same company. It's just not realistic.
1. You're assuming you know everything about the game mechanics just based on a handful of diaries and zero playtime. If you're a beta tester you're not supposed to be talking about it anyway so we'll leave the whole mechanics issue alone.
2. You're assuming Paradox can't adapt existing mechanics to fit the entire timeframe
3. The biggest error of all, you're assuming that there is a single and certain way that the WW1 era MUST be presented in games. If you weren't making this assumption you'd have no basis in claiming the mechanics can't represent the period. This is why I'm saying it's more correct to say that EU cannot present WW1 the way YOU want it presented.
Seriously, some of you have a critical lack of imagination for fans of sandbox games. Have a little faith in these wonderful programmers for once!
2. You're assuming Paradox can't adapt existing mechanics to fit the entire timeframe
3. The biggest error of all, you're assuming that there is a single and certain way that the WW1 era MUST be presented in games. If you weren't making this assumption you'd have no basis in claiming the mechanics can't represent the period. This is why I'm saying it's more correct to say that EU cannot present WW1 the way YOU want it presented.
Seriously, some of you have a critical lack of imagination for fans of sandbox games. Have a little faith in these wonderful programmers for once!
I have a tremendous amount of faith in Paradox's programmers, and although I have many problems, lack of imagination is not one of them, I assure you. The problem is two-fold. First, Paradox likes to make its games as specific to the period in question as possible. This is why their games play very differently from each other, despite sharing many basic similarities. This means they would likely want representations of the first World War to be as accurate as possible. It's not a matter of handling the mechanics the same way as Victoria. It's a matter of combat in the EU series being nothing like that of the early 20th century. Could they overcome this? I have no doubt. But that would, as I said, leave a big chunk of gameplay at the very tail end of the game that would be quite different from what came before. The question is whether this is cost-effective, i.e. will this draw in enough people who wouldn't have bought the game anyway to offset the extra time spent developing it? The second part is, again, they have another game which covers this period. Adding this material to EU4 would just give people less reason to buy Victoria II, or possible future installations in that series. They would effectively be creating their own competition. Why would they want to do this, from a business perspective? That's what I meant by saying it's not realistic. Now, if we were talking about a seperate game which focused solely on the war, and nothing else, that might be different (like March of the Eagles), as that would be less in direct competition with their other products. But I've no idea whether they're interested in such a thing.
1) There have been almost forty development diaries and additional interviews and streams to provide information. With all that, there is far more than a "handful" of information sources available, and it is safe to say we have a fairly good idea of how the game will play. You can't leave the mechanics alone, as they have been clearly developed and aimed at simulating this period in history.
2/3) No one has assumed there is a single way to present the Victorian Era, please point out where someone has stated that. It would be more correct to say you can't present Victoria's time period well. For instance, both EUIII and EUIV's trade mechanics represent trade adequately for the era. The issue here is that the coding in the EU series is not aimed at the Victorian Era. Industrialisation and the early modern period represented a fundamental shift from the previous paradigm. Just as Crusader Kings is designed to represent the medieval/feudal period and could not adequately present EU's period, EU is designed for the Age of Discovery and not designed to handle Victoria's time period. Yes, the developers at Paradox are amazing, which is why they've taken the time to create games that tackle each facet of history as it deserves, not jury rigging it onto a system that can't properly simulate the factors of the time.
Big mistake trying to bring combat into the discussion...in CK2, EU3, and V2, Paradox has always trivialized combat to a huge degree. None of those games ever came close to representing combat even somewhat accurately it's always super abstracted. So there' no reason to start claiming that EU4 couldn't present WW1 combat correctly. If we're making assumptions of game mechanics based on dev diaries, then it doesn't even present combat of its own era correctly. But people (including myself) still love all 3 games despite the oversimplification of combat so what's to say that every aspect of WW1-era life has to be presented 100% correctly?
Again the whole argument is based on assumptions of what the game engine is capable of and assumptions how WW1 is supposed to be represented. You're assuming that abstraction and simplification will kill the gameplay. I'm not going to argue anymore about whether or not the game can definitely do WW1 because the game isn't out so no one actually knows(although I will argue that indeed, you don't know) but I will say to have some faith in the Paradox devs and open your mind about what makes a good history game.
I don't even know why you typed up all that stuff about business it has nothing to do with whether or not the EU game can support the WW1 era.
Again the whole argument is based on assumptions of what the game engine is capable of and assumptions how WW1 is supposed to be represented. You're assuming that abstraction and simplification will kill the gameplay. I'm not going to argue anymore about whether or not the game can definitely do WW1 because the game isn't out so no one actually knows(although I will argue that indeed, you don't know) but I will say to have some faith in the Paradox devs and open your mind about what makes a good history game.
I don't even know why you typed up all that stuff about business it has nothing to do with whether or not the EU game can support the WW1 era.
Post #6: "Overall the mechanism are not very good to simulate WW1 with EU4 (same as EU3)"
How can you say the mechanics aren't suitable for WW1 if you don't have some preconceived notion of how WW1 is supposed to be simulated?
Hell, you even said it yourself "jury rigging it onto a system that can't properly simulate the factors of the time." so you're saying there's a right way to simulate the era and a wrong way.
I feel like you are being deliberately obtuse, since I specifically cited an example in my post.
No one is declaring there is one and only one way to simulate the Victorian Era. They are recognising that said era is markedly different from the preceding era, and that the EU series has been designed with that in mind, not the next century or two. People are looking at the important facets of the 19th century and comparing them to the core mechanics of EU. Let me go back to my example. Both EUIII and EUIV have an adequate trade system for the time period. Two different methods that are both good.
I find Death and Taxes to be an amazing mod, and I think that their WWI was largely the best you could get from the EUIII engine. It was even fun. Didn't mean it was practically fantasy, and even more so than the abstractions EU imposes on the time period it's actually designed to handle.
I suppose you could say that my preconceived notion is that a game dealing with the 19th century should be relatively accurate to the 19th century. If that's the case, I totally agree I have a preconceived notion. However, it seems like a rather reasonable one.
Look at it this way. Crusader Kings II deals with the feudal world. Now, let's port it to the EU time frame. It's not designed for colonisation and exploration. It can't handle the Reformation or the bitter conflicts both at the national and international level. It can't handle the end of feudalism, the centralisation of states and the rise of absolutism.
I'm sure that a mod could jury rig something that would be playable. But, it's even more abstract and inaccurate than EU is. Similarly, I'm sure that Paradox could do this if they were so inclined. It would just be an inferior product to simply starting from scratch, and designing a game that actually revolves the important facets of the time period.
I'm sure that a mod could jury rig something that would be playable. But, it's even more abstract and inaccurate than EU is. Similarly, I'm sure that Paradox could do this if they were so inclined. It would just be an inferior product to simply starting from scratch, and designing a game that actually revolves the important facets of the time period.
Which has nothing to do with whether the existing mechanics (which I remind you that we haven't even tried, only read about) can do an adequate job of representing the newer era. Again, the whole argument is based on assumption that the existing mechanics can't possibly be applied towards anything else if they were originally designed for a certain time period. Your assumption is at odds with real games. The total war games have presented both gunpowder and ancient warfare using the same basic mechanics and it's been a powerful franchise. A Star Wars RTS was released using the same exact engine as Age of Empires 2 and it did fairly well. Hell, Empire Earth let you play all the way from the stone age to the future with the same basic mechanics. Did it work? I've got my own opinion on that but I'll let its 1 million sales and its GOTY award speak for themselves. The whole argument is based on the idea that the two time periods are distinct and that they must require distinct mechanics to be properly presented. Other games have proven otherwise, and if those studios could pull it off then there's no reason to be doubting that Paradox couldn't pull it off if they wanted to.
Worst thread I've seen so far...
The point quite a few before me have tried to make is, that the EU timeline and the Victoria timeline cover radically different eras, so it doesn't make sense, to try to cover them in one game. For example Mechanics covering industry are obviously critical for WWI and are just as obviously useless before 1750 at the earliest. In the same way the EU4 trade system stops being useful at the end of the 18. century, because the trade flow changes direction due to the English textile industry.
The point quite a few before me have tried to make is, that the EU timeline and the Victoria timeline cover radically different eras, so it doesn't make sense, to try to cover them in one game. For example Mechanics covering industry are obviously critical for WWI and are just as obviously useless before 1750 at the earliest. In the same way the EU4 trade system stops being useful at the end of the 18. century, because the trade flow changes direction due to the English textile industry.
And all of those arguments are silly, because the only barrier is the level of abstraction. There's nothing more pathetic than seeing a good suggestion getting swamped by people who nay-say on a gaming forum for a living. I've never seen such knee-jerking.
Honestly, Victoria 2 can play a lot like EU. It is closer to EU than CK2, that is why I like Vicky 2 more than CK2. (EU > Vicky 2 > CK2). Give it a try.
paradox already has a game that covers ww1....it has a couple of games that cover that era if you are eager to play it.