I do apologise, the point of that post was to outline a possible approach to achieving the goals the previous author was suggesting. Hence “make drill exponentially more expensive…” further on.
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It's time for Paradox to accept that subjects should not take up relations slots for ANY nation.
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But it's comically easy to make master-subject relations internally consistent.
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Sorry, where has this fascination with internal consistency come from?
Its not only impossible, it’s not even desirable.
Internal consistency is a formal quality, which is to say a quality of form rather than function. It’s rationalistically nice because rationalism likes elegance; we like things that are internally consistent because they are aesthetically pleasing. In and of itself internal consistency delivers no benefit; “it’s internally inconsistent” is an empty observation, like “it’s blue”.
Anyone advocating for changes in pursuit of internal consistency first needs to explain what benefit would be delivered by internal consistency in this case, and how it outweighs whatever cost the proposed change incurs. The benefit is never “internal consistency”, because internal consistency delivers no inherent benefit. “It’s internally inconsistent” is a brainless critique.
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General good game design. Good games don't have to be, and usually can't be/shouldn't be consistent with reality. However, examples of a game deviating from its own established rules, narrative, or presentation being good are few and far between the times it just results in broken incentives, bad tradeoffs, or plot holes.
The vast majority of EU 4's mechanics are internally consistent. Given equal modifiers, coring costs the same every time. The same amount of time passes every tick. Even RNG situations, like battle dice, don't randomly deviate from their percentage rules; you can't just sometimes roll 0-352 rather than 0-9 on particular nations. These systems exist for a reason. The burden is the opposite of what you say. If something among EU 4's systems should deviate, it's valid to question what benefit that's bringing, and if it's worth contradicting the game world's system/model.
One might reasonably make the case that it is the shogunate and HRE which deviate from the established rules (and don't need to do so in principle). I'd consider that valid. However, nobody going for record WC is running shogunate, nor does it appear to runaway militarily etc. The assertion that it's "overpowered" doesn't appear correct, unless a great many other things are overpowered as well...enough that the word isn't meaningful.
We have PUs and inheritance, and they happen organically in EU4 already. The problem is trying to magic BI to be particularly more likely than alternatives, using standards that are immediately forgotten when considering most other historical events in the period. BI as implemented is nothing more than someone deciding, at random, to ignore the game rules to bias EU 4 in favor of one particular historical event. Sad irony being that it doesn't even kind-of result in a "historical" outcome in that region with reliability. It's not needed any more than the Aq Qoyunlu conquest of Persia is needed. But someone decided to put that magic into the game anyway. And thus magic we got, along with many bugs and a lot of extra dev time to what is still a random mechanic bypass.
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I don't understand the infatuation with universal mechanics. History consists of particularities - which can be analysed as traits general to areas, eras or peoples. It seems strange that a historical games should deviate radically, from that which it's trying to portray: history (which is particular).
I have to disagree that The Shogunate, Holy Roman Empire or Burgundian Inheritance are deviations from established rules or magic. The rules are that there are generalized mechanics with particular events with particular effects. I understand the point you're making, but creating a game where the only particularities are tag names and colours seems both boring, and like a departure from the historicity of the current game.
As for the latter, obviously I'm not arguing for more memefied (Teutons) content for single tags. I think mechanics should be generally bound to regions, culture and religion - with some particular phenomena like HRE or BI on top. But having a historical game with only universal mechanics seems... flat.
I have to disagree that The Shogunate, Holy Roman Empire or Burgundian Inheritance are deviations from established rules or magic. The rules are that there are generalized mechanics with particular events with particular effects. I understand the point you're making, but creating a game where the only particularities are tag names and colours seems both boring, and like a departure from the historicity of the current game.
As for the latter, obviously I'm not arguing for more memefied (Teutons) content for single tags. I think mechanics should be generally bound to regions, culture and religion - with some particular phenomena like HRE or BI on top. But having a historical game with only universal mechanics seems... flat.
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Says who? Who defines the difference between e.g “interesting diversity” and “internal inconsistency”?
This is undemonstrated invention (and would turn the logic of EUIV design until now on its head). I had thought better of you.
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Strictly speaking, the devs. More usefully, the mechanics should make sense in the context of game world + design of the other systems in that game world.
Why stop at BI? What makes BI special? Answers to these imply things we don't observe in EU 4.
I gave an example, you want throw in that "auto annex Persia" mechanic? Or do you want to explain why BI needs to be special?
Why not have a nation that rolls 0-350, for "interesting diversity"? Why not throw in more ways for land to switch hands which can ignore wars and even war score too?
In history, we don't have any instances of effects not flowing from their causes. One might hold up BI with arbitrary preference, though I see no reason the game should privilege arbitrary preference.
What you cannot do, objectively, is justify it with "history", because it's causally inconsistent to the rest of the EU 4 model. It happens in situations which didn't exist in history. You can't use history to justify that. You can use something else, but "x should happen because it happened in history which EU 4 is modeling" is a pre and self-refuted argument. If the game's causal model breaks, history as justification necessarily breaks with it.
Again, while you can disagree, the rationale isn't "history". Unless you can explain why, in history, the shogunate as a system was so capable of maintaining extra relations that no matter who was shogun, that guy could maintain more relations than the otherwise best diplomatic rulers in the world by a wide margin, even thousands of km away. I expect that this is something you cannot do. But perhaps there's something to the historical system I missed. Feel free to show that
.Not arguing for that though.
You can create conditions whereby additional abilities/events/etc can happen, regardless of TAG etc. In fact, tying missions, events, governments, and more to those conditions, rather than to TAG or special cases, is more historical. It allows more "history-like" things to happen, without shoehorning them to happen or making the weight of the world alter due to a name change.
When the same people + primary culture + tech + etc have different abilities due to TAG, that isn't history. It literally can't be. It's magic.
I would rather see the PU system lose its opacity and reworked into something that allows for organic examples of BI to happen anywhere that PUs are a thing, than to leave it in its present state and then try to special case events because the current mechanic which could/should be producing that thing isn't good enough to actually do it.
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Certainly it’s nice when they do, but broadening that to “must be internally consistent” is a statement of preference. I don’t believe the devs have ever made such a statement, not have I ever seen an argument for it be the case beyond rationalistic aestheticism.
Well, the fact that it has its own mechanic makes it special, for one. And that is directly observable in EUIV.
You may recall that I don’t much like the BI mechanic either. But pretending that the problem is its failure to deliver on some a priori requirement for internal consistency is intellectually bereft.
Well, I’m very much in favour of the latter. I’m not sure what you’re trying to demonstrate with these points; are you seriously suggesting that the only reason you think we don’t have tags that roll 0-350 is for “internal consistency”?
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If I can ask you "why does X happen," and you can't give me an answer, that's bad in all cases, not just in games but in politics, philosophy, science, etc.
"Why does Burgundy get an event chain for their inheritance?" Any answer you can give me for this can apply to a thousand other things in the game that aren't hard-coded.
I can answer the same question for Poland, though: Because Poland begins the game in interregnum and there is no other game code extant for interregnum periods or their resolution, so code specific to Poland needed to be written. If other nations could have interregnums without hard coding, then asking "why Poland" would be valid, wouldn't it be?
So why do the Ottomans get a special type of vassal nobody else gets?
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literally any "special" modifier or thing happening, regardless of how wacky it is, fits that standard.
Might as well have something called a "super PU", and make them way more useful than regular PU. Give it to Ulm. That would also be "special".
I built on that argument though, in this thread and before. I did not just stop at an a priori assertion and leave it there. I examples of deviations from the game's model which exist and don't. I demonstrated why a couple of these can't possibly be justified with "historical flavor", and are thus at *best* "flavor". I've received a few disagrees over these assertions, but nobody has actually addressed them beyond your statements that internal consistency in games isn't necessarily good. Which I would agree or disagree with, depending on how much you tighten or narrow the scope considered (hence the battle dice roll example, I think we agree consistency is good there).
Broadly speaking, I see no benefit to arcade-based "flavor" that breaks otherwise established limitations of EU 4 mechanics. In contrast to, say, a new mechanic entirely...this break in the game's model does not provide any clear benefit that could not have just as easily been attained through working with existing mechanics, or making mechanics that can be translated elsewhere (such as a loose organization similar to shogun gov being allowed to exist anywhere).
If I were seriously suggesting that were the only reason, I would have said it.
Because the paradox devs have a serious fetish for the Ottoman Empire. Other nations and cultures only exist at the mercy and grace of the perfect God race that are the Ottomans.
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Yes.
Yes. In neither case is "other tags don't have this therefore it's no good" a valid critique, because internal consistency has no inherent value. The conclusion does not follow from the premises. It might if there are other premises, but if there are other premises strong enough to make the case that "X therefore it's not good", internal consistency is a non sequitur.
I have not here argued for historical flavour or any other particular reason for deviations from the game's model (although I've proposed that "interesting diversity" might be a justifiable argument).
[I don't know that I've ever argued for any deviation from the game's model for reasons of historical flavour, though some occasion might escape me. Typically I argue for alterations to the game's model itself.]
There is, therefore, no reason to engage with your arguments with respect to "historical flavour", they're non sequiturs and I have treated them as such.
I do not believe that there is any question to be had about the assertion that internal consistency in anything is not necessarily good. Or I certainly haven't seen a question meaningfully raised about it. If internal consistency is necessarily good, in any context, then it just is; if it isn't necessarily good then it might or might not be good but not by dint of being internal consistency.
Your battle dice roll example isn't really a question of consistency, it's a question of balance. It just happens to be the case that making dice roll scopes consistent helps battles to be balanced. Everyone rolling the same dice is good because it produces balance in a space that everyone agrees ought to be balanced, not because it achieves internal consistency. If half the tags on the map rolled 0-9 and half rolled 0-90 / 10 with Swedish rounding then the outcome would be (just about) balanced as well. This solution is better, but that's because it's easier to comprehend and compare at a glance, not because it's more internally consistent. Internal consistency is neutral on the pros and cons list, you just happen to like it.
As it happens, of course, no one with a functioning brain thinks that EUIV should be "balanced" on the global level, and so even cases like battle dice roll where "internally consistent therefore probably balanced; balance is good therefore internal consistency good" prevails do not obtain in EUIV at the macro level. Internal consistency is even less relevant. Or, more accurately, internal consistency doesn't even look relevant, whereas it speciously appears relevant in the case of dice rolls.
Internal consistency is a purely formal quality. As a consequence—like the colour of the textbox with tips on the splash screen—it has no a priori value and anyone advocating to make changes in pursuit of "internal consistency" needs to produce some justification beyond appealing to aesthetic preference.
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This is absolutely it. I don't get it at all. They were a paper tiger for almost their entire existence that only ever successfully invaded collapsing and destabilized states, but in this game they're basically Prussia. Other than a couple of gigantic flukes where two monarchs were killed in battles against them, their biggest military "success" was getting their asses kicked by Poland at the siege of Vienna. They couldn't even beat the Knights at Malta with a 15:1 numerical advantage.
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Hard disagree here. Games teach players what to expect in lots of different ways. Hitting someone with a "gotcha!" that screws them works for games like "I wanna be the Boshy", but it's out of place in "strategy" games.
Game systems/mechanics and the resulting expectations exist for a reason. There is inherent value to not deviating from these expectations. Value that must be overcome by whatever deviation is being done. Absent that value, there does seem to be non-zero value in internal consistency by default which overcomes just throwing crap into the game randomly (which devs broadly don't do).
This is one of those troubles with arguing with multiple people and lines of rationale on forums.
- My initial responses to you specifically were to refute balance assertions (refutation which was never countered), and point out how some of the things mentioned actually work in EU 4 (vassals giving "instant free cores" is a blatantly false assertion, for example).
- After that, I responded to a few other posters, some of which did implicate historical flavor, historical accuracy, or both. Internal consistency first cropped up in this discussion; my refutation of your assertions about balance didn't mention it at all.
- You then took this mention of internal consistency, made in response to someone else's argument, and ran with that. So we discussed it. But inherent to this discussion is that it came up as a consequence of other peoples' posts, and that's the frame of mind I'm going to have when talking about it. It's not like you specifically stated that you reject the other posters' viewpoints and just want to talk about internal consistency in a vacuum or something.
- "interesting diversity" is hard to define, in no small part because what is "interesting" will depend on the player. That's often the fundamental source of disagreements in topics like this.
See above. If you're going to jump in on arguments involving historical flavor, the default assumption is that you're participating in that discussion in some capacity.
"historical flavor" is one of the biggest sources of incoherent preferences in EU 4 player base, and a particularly annoying one since players love to cite it when it's convenient and make it disappear into "we must abstract" the second it isn't.
Preventing TAG magic is good for balance too. I also note an implication of balance being an a priori good, when it's arguably even less so than internal consistency.
If they were that crucial, it's worth asking what the game is doing adding multiple examples where they don't look very crucial to balance based on any measure I can come up with...and I doubt you can come up with such measures either. I suspect there's a reason we've deviated into theory discussion on internal consistency rather than the refutation of balance assertions
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I have noticed that a very powerful Sunni nation can easily collect vassals. Likewise, a powerful Christian nation can do so in a dismantled HRE game quite easily as well -- at least with their co-religionists.
In the past, this would be mitigated by the need to keep your vassals in check and manage the diplo reputation penalty you receive from annexing a vassal. However, there is now the "Noble Integration Privilege" that creates a diplo annex bonus and eliminates the integration penalty. 15% liberty desire is a small price to pay to eat a relatively endless supply of small nations that exist (or that you created) without AE and Diplo Rep penalties.
Admin + Influence + 20% policy + Noble Integration Privilege + Papacy Bonus = Win
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You mean the thing that actually happened between Prussia and Austria after the HRE was dismantled, leading to the North German Confederation?
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You still take an opinion hit and use up diplomat time, so there's significant pressure to use fewer larger vassals rather than ~10 small ones on annexation cycle. In fact, this is already a dominant constraint over relation slots available in the game right now in some cases, even if you're using regular vassals or client states.
I agree the slots mechanic is too rigid to be interesting, but I don't think one should accrue vassals left and right without any concerns.
Basically I think the more vassals a country has the higher the chance one of them would break ties. This chance can be influenced by a host of factors, such as the DIP of the overlord, its Stability (but then, Stability itself needs a huge rework... the idea of clicking a button to magically increase it is rubbish), cultural acceptance between both countries primary cultures, religious acceptance between both countries state religions, vassal's liberty desire (that should be reworked to be increasing in most of the cases unless specifically countered by a diplomat assigned to take care of it), etc.
Basically I think the more vassals a country has the higher the chance one of them would break ties. This chance can be influenced by a host of factors, such as the DIP of the overlord, its Stability (but then, Stability itself needs a huge rework... the idea of clicking a button to magically increase it is rubbish), cultural acceptance between both countries primary cultures, religious acceptance between both countries state religions, vassal's liberty desire (that should be reworked to be increasing in most of the cases unless specifically countered by a diplomat assigned to take care of it), etc.