Monarch Points - The Evil Root of All(?) Problems in EU4???

[ARASHI]

Ever since the recent release of patch 1.4, a lot of discussions and debates about the various mechanics (AE/OE/Vassal Feeding etc.) and how PDS has been seemingly going back and forth with their design approach between patches have re-surfaced. While I was browsing through different topics. A stream of thought has striked me that a lot of the issues we are having seems to be deeply tied down to how resources are generated and consumed. This thread aims to explore the underlying problem of these issues that the game is facing.

I noticed a lot of people complain about the lack of action in EUIV as most of the time players are simply fast forwarding between wars and the associated preparations. Which prompts me to think about why is there so little to do during the course of the game. In most games that I have played in my entire life, performing actions always require consumption of certain resources to do so:-

- Think about FPS, 99% of the time you are shooting the hell out of zombies or online opponents with bullets and you have to reload as soon as you cleared your magazine, which requires you to temporarily take a break from "action".

- Think about MMORPG, most of the time you are slamming your keyboard furiously, unleashing a dozen fireballs or weapon strikes upon your enemy before you run out of mana/energy/rage whatever, until then you must recover before you can return to "action".

- Think about RTS, namely starcraft/age of empire, can be even more action intensive than shooters and the like while maintaining a high level of strategic planning and implementation in their gameplay, as pro gamers issue hundreds of commands per minute micro-managing between warfare, base expansion and resource generation.

By now, most of you would say my comparison is quite irrelevant as I have already pointed out myself, that those examples are of different genres. Granted EUIV is not a FPS nor a MMORPG, by definition a strategy game like EUIV is not as intensive on the "action" side of things but focus on the planning and implementation of "strategies" to achieve an objective, which usually relates to something about painting the whole map or most of the map with a certain colour. However, if you look deeper into the core of all games, you might notice that in order to perform certain actions within the game, you either consume some type of infinite resources or limited resources in the process.

In EUIV, we have both infinite resources (diplomats/colonists/merchants/missionaries) in the sense that they can be re-used indefinitely after performing an action, as well as limited resources (monarch points, manpower and ducats) which are spent as soon as you hit the button and cannot perform another action that requires the same resource until you accumulate the required amount. The reason why I even bother mentioning about games across different genres is that, no matter what kind of game you play, a good game always involves a decent resource system. One way of achieving this is to grant the player a high degree of control over the generation of limited critical resources. This is the first step of anyone wanting to perform some kind of action. This is the first step for the formulation of any kind of strategy.

I hope most of you would have realised that EUIV has failed at this very first step of game principles. The monarch points system as of now involves a base generation of 3 per month (2 for certain tech groups), 0-3 from advisors (the player controlled portion), and lastly 0-6 from the ruler of the nation. It doesn't take a math genius to work out that 25% of your MP generation is fixed (less for chinese/indian/nomads etc), 25% in your control, and 50% by pure dumb luck. Never, have I seen a game in my entire life, that 1/2 of the generation of critical resources to be based on pure RNG mechanic throughout the entire length span of the game.

- You look at RTS, the player controls the speed of resource accumulation by creating "mining units".
- You look at MMORPG, player controls resource generation by attributes/gear/potion/skill.
- You look at Civ, player controls resource generation by city size and improvements.
- You look at CKII, player controls resource by influencing character attributes through the dynasty/marriage/education system and buildings.

You look at EUIV, you have no control, it's a dice roll. You look up at the sky, pray that you don't see a comet randomly slam in your face and somehow you would get a ruler with decent stats that doesn't die in three years.

When I first came across EUIV, I was actually interested in the monarch points idea. I am fine with creativity, I am somewhat fine with the randomness of ruler stats, but I am totally not fine with a random stat playing such a major role in the determination of such a critical resource. Simply put, it is a very poorly thought out mechanic and ruined many other aspects of the game which are actually good.

To make things worse, the design of consumption among different resources are extremely uneven. Most players always end up finding themselves with a huge unused surplus of MIL, moderate amount of DIP and hopelessly depleted ADM. The fundamental mechanics of the resource system does not require the player to make strategic decisions (resource-wise) on trade-offs amongst ADM/DIP/MIL points save for a few random events. You are always starved with ADM and have very few options to spend your MIL on. It's a no brainer when it comes to the player determining which type of MP they want most according to different playstyles. There is no clear distinction of MP usage towards different goals and objectives. Say a warmongering nation would need to spend tons of MIL that can help benefit his warfares or a colonial/trade power spending a large chunk of DIP that would help him achieve his ambitions. The buildings/ideas/techs are there, but they didn't do the trick. Everyone always ended up wanting more ADM. And that kind of distinction wouldn't have worked anyway, because players have no control over which MP they want to generate more with the only exception of republics, which are extremely rare and greatly limits the player's choices of nations.

So I hope some of you would agree that the broken monarch point system really is one of the major undermining factors of the other various issues. One of the most relevant being the vassal feeding technique. In contrast with the not-so-appealing traditional war conquer method, what the technique does in essence is to have the vassal help you GENERATE MORE ADM to cover the extra coring cost or simply skip the coring costs altogether if you feed them lands with their cores. It is incredibly powerful simply due to the fact the game is setup in such a way there is no other way the player could in a sense "generate" such an abundance of ADM points. This technique, or exploit as some of you would view it, is the only solution to the huge gap between the otherwise uncontrollable supply and infinite demand of ADM due to how poorly the resource system is thought out and implemented. Hence the popularity of vassal feeding with its ability to save insane amounts of ADM, completely avoid OE/AE/coring duration and lack of drawbacks. In order to make traditional war conquest more appealing, they reversed the decision of bumping up AE to hell and instead nerfed it to oblivion, without solving the actual problem.

The outcome is that, any player utilizing the said technique gains an unprecedented advantage over the AI or other players by simply looking at their "effective ADM consumption" vs actual ADM spent. The difference is measured in order of magnitudes. This difference is further magnified if you compare a western power to other tech groups as 1 monarch point for western tech group does not equal 1 monarch point for other tech groups. For some unknown reason PDS decided that cultures from other parts of the world are somehow genetically inferior and therefore should earn less monarch points (which is a purely arbitrary resource itself) per month and at the same time spend a significant extra amount for technological advances. In order to overcome this PDS imposed genetic defect the only solution is to westernize your nation which is impossible until you land a province next to a western nation.

If you managed to read through my wall of text so far, kudos to you and please accept my sincere apology for the bad formatting and subjective opinion. I hope the community would agree with me that the resource system of EUIV is fundamentally defective and requires a major overhaul if this game is to see any true success in the future. I enjoyed this game a lot despite the numerous problems it has atm and it pains me to see that a game with so much potential is plagued with the nowadays common beta-like quality and poor game balance. I am not sure whether PDS would truly fix this game and redo the resource system instead of applying band-aids all over the ravaged limbs or is it too fundamental that we would not see any improvement to it and simply have to hope for the best in EUV. I am left pondering with PDS rationale on many things such as why coring costs has to be purely ADM instead of evenly distributed among ADM/DP/MIL. Sure it would not magically fixes all problems but at least I would think changes like this are more logical given that MP itself is already arbitrary. There are many other mechanics that seem to pull out from nowhere but im gonna leave it here and let you guys leave some suggestions if you agree or leave some comments nonetheless if you disagree.

EDIT TO ADD ABSTRACTS OF SOME VALUABLE FEEDBACK

In fact though, I'd argue that the points system is actually worse than what you're indicating. Claiming the player controlled advisors account for 25% of the total points is a nonsense for the following reasons. The biggest of which is this, the advisors themselves are drawn from a random pool. You might be in a position to only afford 1* advisors, yet you don't get any. Or you might be in a position where you desperately want a 3* advisor to boost a particular area, but you only have 1-2* advisors. Quite often, I don't feel as though I have a lot of choice when picking my advisors, and my choice is likely only changing what I could actually accomplish by 1 point, and on a very rare occasion 2. The way advisors costs are done, where they seem to grow exponentially once you hit the 3* level, means it's far more economical to have a 1* advisor in everything than a single 3* advisor in the skill you really want.

Paradox has a sad history of adding innovative but half baked ideas into their games. The MP system has a lot of potential but is also horribly balanced.

Coring of provinces for example is not an active action done by a ruler but more a process being done over time. Thus it should work with the old Mtth triggers (+modifiers for hard to core cultures like berbers). It should only cost monarch points if I actively decide to speed up the coring by going on PR tour for it.

The main problem of this brand is the setting of artificial limits. The limits should be determined by the possibilities and capabilities in the game, not by to hard coded mechanisms. But for this the game needs much more additional features which it lacks at the moment..

I like the randomness of rulers. In history, every country have faced periods of growth and abundance, and times of stagnation. This is modeled perfectly through the game, and player even has the choice to choose on which domain he might want to get a little edge (advisors). It's also true that some kind of points are more needed than others, somthing might be tweaked there. While manpower could be a concern for exemple, it quickly gets much easier later on as mil points have little other use, outside teching.

I like the IDEA of monarch points. It creates a ressource; you say it is better when you can control the primary ressource, but you missed one point I believe. Ressources are important for macromanagement. Some gameplays in strategy games however, are based on micromanagement. You start with X units, and correct positioning, movements, use of abilities,... allows one to do better with less than others. That could be how monarch points could be interesting: should I core? Or should I save up for teching? This is, IMO, the flaw of the system. I feel there is little if any choice. Leaving uncored provinces is a no go. Regardless how many points I have, I MUST core, or else everything goes wrong. So, tech goes after. For every way to spend monarch points, there is an obviously better choice, which will make pick option A rather than B. The only real choice that I make is beetween ideas VS tech. Buildings - I build; it costs little MP, while more money means much bigger army, ie crushing my neighbour and better advisor. Inflation, do my best to avoid it; used MP once so far to lower it. Scorch earth, when I use it, I'll pretty muc loose anyway, only used as an emergency measure; why would I want to spend MP to damage my lands? Given that I might have to do it 2/3 times before ennemy actually moves to this province.

In real life a government can increase it's administrative powers by hiring more bureaucrats. They can increase diplomacy and trade tech by hiring more diplomats and pay for research in trade. They can improve technology by building universities, and hiring scientists and war engineers and so on.

A bigger, richer country can be as effective (or most likely more effective) as two countries of half the size. In EU4, two countries of half the size will on average generate almost two times the monarch points. This is why vassal feeding is great. They spend monarch points for you. However, in real life it would be more effective just to annex them, and use the resources of the other country to expand your own bureaucracy. That is why monarchs should have skills from 0 to 3. And instead have advisers from skill 1 to 6. Trading in tea would be OP as fuck though, so perhaps scale that adviser cost reduction modifier.

The big problem with monarch points are that they devolve into simple optimization problems. How do I get more monarch points? Hire better advisers. And that is pretty much it. How do I get more efficient at using monarch points? Idea groups, westernizing, and maybe some minor fiddling with events/governments/decisions. And that is pretty much it.

You can be richer than Midas, and that doesn't change your monarch point accumulation. You can be Ares reborn and your legions swarming up the Danube and down the Rhine - and your monarch point gain is utterly unaffected.

So for any given king you are going to be have X AMP, Y DMP, Z MMP. Well you can always trade off, short changing something military so you can functionally get (Z - e) MMP and (A + e) AMP effectively - nope. By and large each type of MP is not involved in strategic tradeoffs with the other types.

Well maybe there are deep interconnections in the buildings. Not really. Most buildings provide simple things like money + MP now for more money later, money + MP now for more manpower in just a bit, and a few incidentals (stronger missionaries, spy defense, faster troops on the roads, etc.).

So in short, to a very large degree, you have a finite number of AMP, you figure out the most cost efficient use of them and it is a fairly trivial optimization problem (how much will go into coring, how much will go into ideas, how much will go into tech, and how much will go into stab - rejigger the ideas and run with it). It doesn't matter if you have godlike administrations or lobotomized ones - the optimal AMP spend is pretty much static for any given set of goals, all the dice rolls do is allow you to pursue the same course faster or slower. There just aren't that many viable deviations. Everything in EUIV pretty much sits inside a vertically integrated silo that is controlled by just one type of resource: gold determines how big a mercenary horde you can manage, AMP determines how many bits of land you can core, and your military effectiveness is determined my how much MMP you can effectively dump into tech/rerolling generals/using forced march and the other MMP abilities.

Contrast with, well real strategy. Take WWII. You want more airplanes. Well great, that means you need to devote more of your refining capacity to aviation fuel - less gas for industry and that might even impact something like food supplies or in theater logistics. Of course you also need more manpower on the assembly line, so that comes out of the infantry or the farming sector or somewhere else. Likewise, you may need to retool some factories towards aviation production - so fewer tanks or trucks or what have you ... unless of course you build new factories, but that may limit your construction of other things like airfields and drydocks. You had as basic inputs: manpower, oil, agricultural land, mining resources, machine stock, construction capacity, and money. Doing something in one area necesssarily meant doing less in another. If you needed to, you could effectively increase any one of these, but only at the expense of the others.

EUIV is utterly unlike real strategy in this way. Your monarch points are just about utterly independent of your policy. Sure you can nibble around the edges and idea slots are very competitive ... but without strong interplay, it becomes too easy to say "That option is less cost effective than this one". So once you've made your choice, there is precious little that remains a strategic trade-off. Oooh random event where I lost stab or I lose gold - hmm well my limiting factor is AMP, not gold, so pick the gold. Hmm, my heir is crappy at ADM, so do I slow down my conquest, let my admin tech stagnate, or not purchase the idea set now? Tech stagnating is the most cost effective, let's roll with that. It is so easy to see the cost effective expenditures that most decisions aren't strategic at all. All a penalty does is force you to wait, it doesn't suggest a real change in plan.

What works much better are mixed interplays. For instance the piety system for Muslims has a lot more real trade offs, hey I want this bonus - so I need to do this in this order - crap declaring on the Shi'ites is really tempting now ... but then I lose a bonus on tech now I need to see which is better and make situational trade offs. As it is right now, the dice say what is possible and you just run down the list with whatever your MP supports ... and then wait out the artificial boring hard caps whenever you hit them.

What EUIV really needs are ways to min/max things so you have some real strategic tradeoffs. Like say, allow you to spend a bunch of MP for a higher OExt cap or spend MP to mute AE. Right now, you just go full tilt until some hard cap cuts and to say stop, then you wait until you have the time/MP to overcome that cap. EUIV is very good at the Grand part of grand strategy - I love the world it creates - however as strategy goes, at is fundemental level it is pretty shallow and lacks a lot of interesting strategic tradeoffs.

If the developers wanted to make a simulation of Europe in the time frame, they've succeeded beautifully.
If the developers wanted to make an alternate history strategy game, they've made a poor decision with MP. Player choice is the soul of strategy, and MP just makes the decisions for you.

I stand by my previous statement in another thread:
Games (especially strategy) should reward players for good decisions, and punish them for poor decisions. I don't get to make decisions with MP.

I could understand the rolling with the punches argument if it was possible to make up for the deficiency in MP, at least trade one problem for another (I have low Diplo points but tons of military, I should be able to exchange them - I trade diplomatic problems for military ones because I think diplomacy is more important for me right now). But it isn't. The moment your heir is born, your play-style is determined for the next quarter century and all that's left for the player to do is go through the motions.

MP resulted in technology being almost independent of economy, which is bizarre from both a historical and gameplay viewpoint. In fact, investing in your economy slows your technological progress, and vice versa.

The more complaints I see on this forum the more I begin to think MP is at the root of EUIV's problems, from coring/OE, to the lack of peacetime mechanics.

MP overall are a good concept, but there are at least 2 things which should be changed IMO:

1. I'm so rich I can afford anything. Actually I cannot because buildings cost quite a bit of MP.
If you somehow get the money to build everything - you should be able to do it. If it's too easy to make money in this game (I don't think it is unless you start off with a very strong nation; 80% of the nations will be struggling with cash considering adviser and army expenses) then that should be nerfed.
Right now if I do get that much money I can get more +3 advisers (and I might already have them), ships (for more money from trade = not interesting), troops (for wars = not interesting, we've already decided we want peace time options) or colonize more (interesting, probably the only real option most of the time).

2. I need a specific adviser for a specific mission. Tough luck, it might take 100 years to get him.
At least make all the adviser types available. Provide all the adviser types, but spread them throughout the +1/+2/+3 categories. So I have a +3 ADM+10 Production Increase one but I need an Inquisitor. Ok, I'll bite the bullet and get that +1 Adm Inquisitor for 10 years, just so I can convert a province. Notice the tradeoff - I get a lot less MP just so I can do something I really want -> strategic choice = good.

 

[matthobbit]

Didn't read all of it but I agree with general point. It might be good to de-emphasize the MPs in some cases, like reducing MP costs for buildings, since gold pretty much keeps me in check unless I get uber-large

 

[praguepride]

I think the MP mechanics were an improvement, personally.

 

[BigPoppa1111]

Disagree. I love the MP concept. In contrast to a fair amount of people, I rather enjoy having to roll with the punches, so to speak on what I am able to do based on what skill monarch I get. Yes, it is out of my control, but it adds a level of dynamicism to the game that I enjoy. Chance favors the prepared mind.

That being said, there are a few tweaks that could be done to improve things. However, there seem to be too many control freaks on this board that think they should be able to assert 100% control over every facet of their country. I find no joy in that. Most everything in life, game, sports, love, work, etc. has elements of chance that provide major factors to the outcomes of of these events. Success is usually not based on how well we centralize everything into our control, but how effectively we exploit that which isn't.

 

[Saintrl]

Disagree. I love the MP concept. In contrast to a fair amount of people, I rather enjoy having to roll with the punches, so to speak on what I am able to do based on what skill monarch I get. Yes, it is out of my control, but it adds a level of dynamicism to the game that I enjoy. Chance favors the prepared mind.

That being said, there are a few tweaks that could be done to improve things. However, there seem to be too many control freaks on this board that think they should be able to assert 100% control over every facet of their country. I find no joy in that. Most everything in life, game, sports, love, work, etc. has elements of chance that provide major factors to the outcomes of of these events. Success is usually not based on how well we centralize everything into our control, but how effectively we exploit that which isn't.

Well said.

 

[hitchens]

Im not sure. Im negative towards it but could be pisitive if the advisor pool from Eu3 returned. Advisors in EU4 is pretty bad.

 

[ARASHI]

Disagree. I love the MP concept. In contrast to a fair amount of people, I rather enjoy having to roll with the punches, so to speak on what I am able to do based on what skill monarch I get. Yes, it is out of my control, but it adds a level of dynamicism to the game that I enjoy. Chance favors the prepared mind.

That being said, there are a few tweaks that could be done to improve things. However, there seem to be too many control freaks on this board that think they should be able to assert 100% control over every facet of their country. I find no joy in that. Most everything in life, game, sports, love, work, etc. has elements of chance that provide major factors to the outcomes of of these events. Success is usually not based on how well we centralize everything into our control, but how effectively we exploit that which isn't.

I appreciated your reply and agree with your opinion that total control makes the game boring and randomness could spice things up. However I would argure that there are already an abundance of RNG mechanics within the game that more than enough satisfies your desire for challenges and putting MP on the RNG as well brings nothing to the table and takes away the strategic component away from a strategy game, at least for the resource part. The game as it stands now also lack any kind of resource competition amongst nations due to how the resource system is designed.

 

[FabiusBile]

I disagree with the conclusions of your analysis.

While the generation of MP may be slightly off balance (especially given how conquest does not really need MIL points, but ADM for the most part), what EU3 has shown us, if anything, is that you need arbitrary limits in order to have a challenging game worth playing after a few years. While EU4 is still easy in the late game (unless you're doing a WC), it at least has some concept of going wide vs tall. EU3 tried to to this via Magistrates, but in the end the only resource that really mattered was money and manpower. Despite players trying to stress the importance of ADM Points, having a huge bank and spamming mercenaries is still very effective in EU, it is just that most players don't even try this. Falling behind in ADM tech is actually not really that painful. If we allow MP Generation to be tied to "skill" the player (like by tutoring your heir, i.e. CK2) all you'll end up with is a significant nerf for the AI.

 

[airpirate]

Disagree. I love the MP concept. In contrast to a fair amount of people, I rather enjoy having to roll with the punches, so to speak on what I am able to do based on what skill monarch I get. Yes, it is out of my control, but it adds a level of dynamicism to the game that I enjoy. Chance favors the prepared mind.

That being said, there are a few tweaks that could be done to improve things. However, there seem to be too many control freaks on this board that think they should be able to assert 100% control over every facet of their country. I find no joy in that. Most everything in life, game, sports, love, work, etc. has elements of chance that provide major factors to the outcomes of of these events. Success is usually not based on how well we centralize everything into our control, but how effectively we exploit that which isn't.

Agreed, though I would appreciate some variation in how monarch points are generated depending on government type. Basically, if the king has less power (like in a constitutional monarchy), then their stats should matter less and the quality of either a parliament (more points from advisers?) or a prime minister should matter a bit more. Some way to slightly increase my monarchs stats (no more than one in each category, if even that) would also be nice. If a king is waging wars across the continent, then he would probably learn something about the military even if he wasn't terribly good at waging war before. Being stuck with a terrible monarch for 50 years sucks quite a bit, and having some way to partially mitigate the effects of bad monarchs would really make said periods feel less like you're waiting for the monarch to die while still making you adapt to having less monarch points.

 

[Tub]

The problem isn't the MP system itself, it's the lack of control over rulers. We've all had the feeling when we get a 1/2/0 ruler, with no way to get rid of him, or choose another one. We've all felt the sting of the RNG when our 6/4/5 monarch dies 'a little too early', at the age of 16. The problem with MP is that such a huge portion of the game's mechanics, right up to 1821, rely on a single person's personal, supposedly immutable ability, in a game which is supposed to model nations, rather than individuals. It's like CK2, except where the punishment you get from having a bad ruler is increased by orders of magnitude - instead of having reduced income, or reduced morale in your troops, your nation's technological progress is crippled for decades because your ruler, apparently, has been terrible at administration from birth, and not even 16 years of the finest education money can buy can change that fact. At all.

The entire problem would be solved by the implementation of an education system or something, or another source of points.

 

[Zander]

I somewhat agree with your points, but I think a fundamental overhaul of MP is not in the cards. Realistically, the MP system is here to stay (until EU 5). However, I do think things could be done to tweak it usefully: making ADM points slightly less essential, making MIL points more needed, adding more balance between them (they did a little of this last one in 1.4 by making ideas reduce the cost of corresponding techs).

 

[Musthavename]

Agreed completely. When the game came out I couldn't stomach playing it initially because of the very reasons you're indicating. Once I learned of the vassal feeding tactic, which to me was a method of circumventing points limitations, I finally got into the game and saw the improvements the game had made in other areas.

In fact though, I'd argue that the points system is actually worse than what you're indicating. Claiming the player controlled advisors account for 25% of the total points is a nonsense for the following reasons. The biggest of which is this, the advisors themselves are drawn from a random pool. You might be in a position to only afford 1* advisors, yet you don't get any. Or you might be in a position where you desperately want a 3* advisor to boost a particular area, but you only have 1-2* advisors. Quite often, I don't feel as though I have a lot of choice when picking my advisors, and my choice is likely only changing what I could actually accomplish by 1 point, and on a very rare occasion 2. The way advisors costs are done, where they seem to grow exponentially once you hit the 3* level, means it's far more economical to have a 1* advisor in everything than a single 3* advisor in the skill you really want.

First and foremost, I'd love to see the tech system separated off entirely. For me, it absolutely should not correlate to to your monarch in any way and should use a separate resource of some kind. It creates a strange scenario where a nation that prioritises military ideas will find himself behind in military technology.

There's then a couple other things I would do, but arguably one alone would likely be sufficient. One would be an exchange system of some sort, allowing a player to choose to exchange one monarch point for another at a lower exchange value (e.g. 100 Admin Points for 50 Diplomatic Points). It brings in a feature to the system that you've stated is clearly lacking, player choice. The other thing I would do on a more simple note is simply to increase the amount of points advisors can give, along with a method of generating advisors (or at the very least, guaranteeing that I can always recruit an advisor at the skill level I want). Again, this would also put a huge emphasis back on player choice.

Edit: The other thing is it would be nice if the balance between points contributed by your monarch and points by your advisors shifted as the game went on (likely using Government Types), to signify the shift in governance from despotism to more parliamentary models in many nations.

 

[Queequeg]

I think the OP has made an excellent point. It ties in with the complaint of lack of interesting things to do in peace time, which is why I like to play colonizing nations (at least you can colonize).

IMO EU4 lacks a way of increasing your monach points income that does not simply involve spending money, but is a fun game mechanic in itself and that is actually effective (as in it does not take your whole money income for a less-than-20% increase). Ideas for a parliament mechanic that involves characters like ministers, portraits, traits and opinions have come up in at least one thread, but it was found to be too complicated to implement especially given that EU4 features different government systems.

I would love to see something like that released as a DLC, but it will never happen, as this is a feature they simply could not leave out of the base game because it would change the core mechanics.

Also the republics are already more interesting in that regard, but the core mechanic (trade Monarch Points for Republican Tradition) is too simple to keep a player entertained on its own. A mechanic where you actually had to prepare for an election with missions and events that could involve spending money, accomplishing goals like getting alliances, getting claims, even starting (and winning) wars to improve your favorite candidates chances would be so awesome.

 

[roman566]

We had this discussion when EUIV was first published, half of the player base hated Monarch Points, second half thought them to be the best thing since the sliced bread. In the end everyone agreed to disagree. Restarting this discussion is pointless. Paradox won't change the system in EUIV as it would probably require rebuilding the game from scratch. They might modify it, change MP generation and it's effects but the bottom line is that MP will stay with us in EUIV. I can only hope that Paradox notices that MP are rather boring and removes them in EUV.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

The problem is the lack of patience and temperance of the people. And the fact that is not accepted that you can rule the world also being the hegemon istead to conquer directly

 

[Saintrl]

The problem isn't the MP system itself, it's the lack of control over rulers. We've all had the feeling when we get a 1/2/0 ruler, with no way to get rid of him, or choose another one. We've all felt the sting of the RNG when our 6/4/5 monarch dies 'a little too early', at the age of 16. The problem with MP is that such a huge portion of the game's mechanics, right up to 1821, rely on a single person's personal, supposedly immutable ability, in a game which is supposed to model nations, rather than individuals. It's like CK2, except where the punishment you get from having a bad ruler is increased by orders of magnitude - instead of having reduced income, or reduced morale in your troops, your nation's technological progress is crippled for decades because your ruler, apparently, has been terrible at administration from birth, and not even 16 years of the finest education money can buy can change that fact. At all.

The entire problem would be solved by the implementation of an education system or something, or another source of points.

More flexible ruler stats would be nice. Change in ruler stats by random event would be a very nice change of pace.

 

[1alexey]

I like the MP concept.

Looking at the examples the OP provided, it shows his preference for the type of games he likes. Other games rely extensively on random allocation of resources, and build up game play around having to deal with resources shortage.
To take his own example of Civilization, the place where civilization is placed, is random. The potential for having food, production, money or science/faith/culture of every starting location is very different, and the amount of strategic resources is also different. Yes player has some impact, but the map is randomly generated and player can only pick the site of the city, and huge part of CIV game play is centered around not having all the resources, and having to get around not having some. Also the way your CIV plays is hugely dependent on the resources you have around, your teching strategy can often depend on having certain terrain feature(river, desert tiles, luxuries, ex).

The need for not having randomly allocated resources comes mostly in very competitive games, such as SC2. But even then, there is for example DOTA2 where there are random runes, which can make huge difference.

In EU4, random monarch stats make countries develop in certain fashion. I don`t usually have a shortage of Admin. In fact, outside of playing as colonizer I`m always short on military points, as i need those military ideas, and I build a lot of manpower buildings.

There is certain problem of how Ideas are made, but EU4 is actually fine, and properly done vassal feeding is far better game play mechanics then just plain conquering. MP also fixed the "rich getting richer" problem nicely.

 

[roman566]

I like the MP concept.

The concept is nice, it's the execution that sucks.

 

[Valynor]

It creates a strange scenario where a nation that prioritises military ideas will find himself behind in military technology.

I know this discussion is pointless and I think that, even if MPs aren't the best thing ever they aren't the cause of any evil and EUIV is still a great game (if anyone could choose its preferred patch )
Still this argument is a really difficult one to dismiss, IMHO.

 

[ARASHI]

I disagree with the conclusions of your analysis.

While the generation of MP may be slightly off balance (especially given how conquest does not really need MIL points, but ADM for the most part), what EU3 has shown us, if anything, is that you need arbitrary limits in order to have a challenging game worth playing after a few years. While EU4 is still easy in the late game (unless you're doing a WC), it at least has some concept of going wide vs tall. EU3 tried to to this via Magistrates, but in the end the only resource that really mattered was money and manpower. Despite players trying to stress the importance of ADM Points, having a huge bank and spamming mercenaries is still very effective in EU, it is just that most players don't even try this. Falling behind in ADM tech is actually not really that painful. If we allow MP Generation to be tied to "skill" the player (like by tutoring your heir, i.e. CK2) all you'll end up with is a significant nerf for the AI.

Thank you for your reply. Although I don't view players as having troubles with winning wars, be it through regular troop raising or employment of mercs. The underlying problem is that the game is centered around building artificial barriers to prevent players from expanding and players are forced to fast forward while they wait for the barriers to wear out for more action. Historically there are numerous vast empires that formed in a relatively short period of time but fell apart as quickly as how they were formed. The best example being the mongolian empire spanning from the coast of china to the black sea bordering hungary. They did it in less than 50 years, but with problems where EUIV expressed as over-extension and the like, the empire vanished within a blink of an eye. I agree artificial limits are required, but not in a form such that to prevent players from waging wars, rather the challenge should be how to prevent your vast empire from dismantling like all historical empires did. CKII did a great job in the sense that it successfully simulates the difficulty to keep a vast empire from falling apart. Granted EUIV is a different franchise, as it stands a vast empire is easy to manage as long as you have a core in your provinces. The relative ease to conquer is a problem, but starving players with ADM didn't solve it, it only serves to slow down the pace of player advancement and does not add any difficulty to the game. And players end up resolving to methods all known as vassal feeding.