It's time for Paradox to accept that subjects should not take up relations slots for ANY nation.

[Pellucid]

They've already all but admitted it by making every single kind of relation they've added post-release not take up a slot. Colonial Nations, Trade Companies (which I don't really consider a subject), Tributaries, Daimyos, Protectorates, and now Eyalets have all been spared the waste of time that is the subject relation slot. The only relation added since release that takes one up are Client States, which are indistinguishable from Vassals anyway (and which Eyalets, which means "states" in Turkish, basically are, so can we just use that system instead of giving the Ottomans a magic relationship that only they can use for some reason?).

There's literally no logical or gameplay reason that Ottoman vassals shouldn't take up a slot but other nations' vassals should. If you argue that their system is somehow different, then put the ability to make that system using reforms into other nations (hell, maybe just change Feudal Nobility to have "vassals don't take up a relations slot" as its bonus instead of the income bonus).

I'm tired of all of these special snowflake mechanics that only some nations can take advantage of. EU4 long ago abandoned even attempting to be a realistic historical simulation, so preventing me from making Eyalets (i.e. Themes) as the Byzantines "because they didn't do that" is asinine. Preventing me from making my own Holy Roman Empire (with blackjack! And hookers!) in France or Italy adds nothing to the game. Poland is the only nation that can have an elective monarchy for some reason! Russians have magical self-replication powers that allow them to colonize Siberia but nobody else does! It's getting tiresome. Let us play with the mechanics you add to the game. Don't force us to play specific nations to have a good time with a new experience, especially one as snooze-inducing as the Ottomans, French, or Russians, all of whom are trivially easy for anyone experienced with the game and will provide little to no fun for people looking for a challenge.

Stop trying to prevent me from having fun! I don't understand why you do this!

 

[TheCleanerDragon]

Poland is the only nation that can have an elective monarchy for some reason!

Not any more, they're adding a generic elective monarchy reform in the next update.

 

[Pellucid]

Not any more, they're adding a generic elective monarchy reform in the next update.

Nice. I'm glad they're finally addressing that. It was so weird that such a relatively common government form was locked to one country.

 

[Korsjan Rīkis]

I agree with the part that Client States shouldn't take up diplo slots.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Unfortunately vassals are so bananas powerful that removing the diplo-slot cost would seriously impact game balance. I agree in principle that diplo-slots just are kind of strange and probably shouldn’t exist (diplomatic relationships are too strong, is the problem they were introduced to fix, but they treat a symptom rather than the cause), but without fixing that problem just removing the limiting factor isn’t going to deliver improvements.

More broadly I agree that tag-locked mechanics should not exist, should instead be tied to religions, estate situations, geographic positions, etc.

 

[Pellucid]

Unfortunately vassals are so bananas powerful that removing the diplo-slot cost would seriously impact game balance. I agree in principle that diplo-slots just are kind of strange and probably shouldn’t exist (diplomatic relationships are too strong, is the problem they were introduced to fix, but they treat a symptom rather than the cause), but without fixing that problem just removing the limiting factor isn’t going to deliver improvements.

More broadly I agree that tag-locked mechanics should not exist, should instead be tied to religions, estate situations, geographic positions, etc.

I don't see vassals as particularly more powerful than most of the other subject types. I mean sure, if you're utterly incompetent at the game then a Daimyo could take over your throne, but that will literally never happen. Colonial Nations are FAR better than vassals, giving you huge manpower, sailor, and force limit bonuses as well as money. Hell, they even ship their gold income to you and you can make them fight wars without declaring them yourself. Eyalets sound like they're going to be more like Colonial Nations, but with favors, which ultimately also sounds better than vassals.

If the game would be broken by making vassals not cost a diplo slot, then the game is already broken.

 

[grommile]

The underlying concern is specifically about the start.

If vassals are free, France gets to put together a full deck of allies.

(I have no horse in this race.)

 

[ForVictory]

If vassals don't take up a Diplo slot then you would get some huge powerhouses in the game and it would get unbalanced.

 

[Brynjar]

Remove vassal feeding and I'll agree with you

 

[Nostalgium]

I'm leaning more towards the camp of diplomatic capacity, with different subject types and allies taking up more or less of that capacity based on their size. I disagree with the notion that a subject Trent should be free, but I do think it should be cheaper than an allied Commonwealth. This could be implemented in EU4 by doubling (or tripling, or quadrupling, or scale it however much you want depending on what level of granularity you're after) diplo relations from all sources, and making any relation cost more depending on the relations type, the dev of the target nation, the government rank, etc., but I think it's best saved for EU5, since it basically constitutes rebuilding the diplomatic game from scratch.

 

[cumaethor]

If every country had same mechanics game would get boring. I would go even further give us more differences between nations. On the other hand your comment on byz Themes does makes sense, but that doesn't mean I want themes in Japan.

 

[EUnderhill]

It is still a game, and the idea of deciding how to spend a limited number of slots helps keep it that way.

 

[HypnoSkales]

They've already all but admitted it by making every single kind of relation they've added post-release not take up a slot. Colonial Nations, Trade Companies (which I don't really consider a subject), Tributaries, Daimyos, Protectorates, and now Eyalets have all been spared the waste of time that is the subject relation slot. The only relation added since release that takes one up are Client States, which are indistinguishable from Vassals anyway (and which Eyalets, which means "states" in Turkish, basically are, so can we just use that system instead of giving the Ottomans a magic relationship that only they can use for some reason?).

There's literally no logical or gameplay reason that Ottoman vassals shouldn't take up a slot but other nations' vassals should. If you argue that their system is somehow different, then put the ability to make that system using reforms into other nations (hell, maybe just change Feudal Nobility to have "vassals don't take up a relations slot" as its bonus instead of the income bonus).

I'm tired of all of these special snowflake mechanics that only some nations can take advantage of. EU4 long ago abandoned even attempting to be a realistic historical simulation, so preventing me from making Eyalets (i.e. Themes) as the Byzantines "because they didn't do that" is asinine. Preventing me from making my own Holy Roman Empire (with blackjack! And hookers!) in France or Italy adds nothing to the game. Poland is the only nation that can have an elective monarchy for some reason! Russians have magical self-replication powers that allow them to colonize Siberia but nobody else does! It's getting tiresome. Let us play with the mechanics you add to the game. Don't force us to play specific nations to have a good time with a new experience, especially one as snooze-inducing as the Ottomans, French, or Russians, all of whom are trivially easy for anyone experienced with the game and will provide little to no fun for people looking for a challenge.

Stop trying to prevent me from having fun! I don't understand why you do this!

A good idea would be to implement something like I talked about in my post: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/blobbing-vassal-play-and-ai-behavior.1573214/

Basically, vassals would only take up diplo relation slots after reaching a certain amount of development (maybe 30?) so that players can keep lots of small vassals without issue, but couldn't exploit it that much.

 

[moscal]

Vassals spam will be too OP, dude

 

[Vityviktor]

There should be a way to limit how vassals/client/satelite states you can have. Maybe not DiploRelation slots, but another category of slots specific to vassals.

 

[InvisibleBison]

If every country had same mechanics game would get boring. I would go even further give us more differences between nations. On the other hand your comment on byz Themes does makes sense, but that doesn't mean I want themes in Japan.

Interesting gameplay should come from what you do, not from the tools you use to do it.

 

[cumaethor]

Interesting gameplay should come from what you do, not from the tools you use to do it.

Interesting gameplay should come from what I do, but tools I use in a game should be diverse so I have different enough experience when I play in France or in Japan.

 

[InvisibleBison]

Interesting gameplay should come from what I do, but tools I use in a game should be diverse so I have different enough experience when I play in France or in Japan.

If the only difference between playing in France and playing in Japan is what tools you use, the game has failed to represent the two regions correctly. Or contrapositively, if the game accurately represents both France and Japan, you don't need different tools for the two regions to feel different.

 

[Nostalgium]

If the only difference between playing in France and playing in Japan is what tools you use, the game has failed to represent the two regions correctly. Or contrapositively, if the game accurately represents both France and Japan, you don't need different tools for the two regions to feel different.

Genuine question, because I see this sentiment a lot and always wonder, what would this look like if you were to describe it to me? I don't need a full design document or anything, but if you don't "lock" certain tools - religion, government mechanics, etc - to the tag, or the culture (since for a great many tags, the culture can form the locked tag in question, the difference is pretty much semantics), what, broadly, would separate a Japan run from a French one except for the starting conditions? If I can essentially government switch Poland into something that plays identically to a Shogunate, how would you otherwise differentiate Japan - and Poland, for that matter - from any other country in the world?

 

[Cuke]

Genuine question, because I see this sentiment a lot and always wonder, what would this look like if you were to describe it to me? I don't need a full design document or anything, but if you don't "lock" certain tools - religion, government mechanics, etc - to the tag, or the culture (since for a great many tags, the culture can form the locked tag in question, the difference is pretty much semantics), what, broadly, would separate a Japan run from a French one except for the starting conditions? If I can essentially government switch Poland into something that plays identically to a Shogunate, how would you otherwise differentiate Japan - and Poland, for that matter - from any other country in the world?

The answer is "same as CIV", isn't it? IIRC, SMAC factions differed from one another by bonuses and penalties, that's enough (Oh, and they had 1 favourite policy and 1 banned policy). Here, in EU-4, different tags have different national ideas, so that bit is covered.