My Suggestions

[Elderin]

Characters
Problem:
Characters die too quickly and lack interactivity. There is no strong player connection with characters. The new monarch point system may help a bit with this, but its ruler specific and stilll suffers from a fast ruler turnover rate.

Suggestion:
Use houses or families instead of individuals. By using families, you can have effectively "immortal" characters, elminiating the turnover rate problem. Family stats should be fairly static across generations. For example, the house of Osorio could be a family of bankers and would be very good at economic activities.

Suggestion:
Instead of anonymous agents, all tasks must be performed using characters/families. The amount of time to complete, success chance, and effectiveness can be based on the character/family's stats.

Suggestion:
Have a large number of pre-made characters/families that a player can searching out and covet. Mix in a few randomly generated character/families. Allow rulers to recruit disloyal characters/families from other realms. This also allows for some additional spying options, e.g. ask character/family x to defect and join you or forge documents to reduce character/family loyalty. Additional events/domestic options could include searching out a local gifted individual.


Diplomacy
Problem:
Too difficult to maintain alliances due to treaties being annulled when refusing call to arms.

Suggestion:
Give an option to answer a call to arms without using military combat. For example, you could provide some war funds without officially going to war. You may take a small hit to your relationship but the alliance would remain.


UI
Suggestion:
Auto follow/chase an enemy unit. Would help reduce army chasing micromanagement.

Suggestion:
Hotkey unit control groups. Similar to Starcraft 2 for those whove played that.

Suggestion:
Ability to "pin" certain countries or provinces to the top of the ledger for comparison.

Suggestion:
Ability to search by nation/province name in the ledger.

Suggestion:
An easier/faster method of raising armies. Clicking on each province, then clicking on the unit type is very tedious. This needs another screen or at least hotkeys

Suggestion:
More hotkeys! Have them configurable from in-game. When you hover over something that is hotkeyed, it should show the hotkey in a tooltip.

Suggestion:
Show relevant information about what really matters. For example, if I choose an advisor that increases production efficiency by 6%, it should tell me what this equates to in added revenue.

Suggestion:
A quick load option without having to resign.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Characters
Problem:
Characters die too quickly and lack interactivity. There is no strong player connection with characters. The new monarch point system may help a bit with this, but its ruler specific and stilll suffers from a fast ruler turnover rate.

Suggestion:
Use houses or families instead of individuals. By using families, you can have effectively "immortal" characters, elminiating the turnover rate problem. Family stats should be fairly static across generations. For example, the house of Osorio could be a family of bankers and would be very good at economic activities.

You're meant to see the rise and fall of national leaders during the game. Besides, this would mean that you'd have countries with "poor" leaders who were shortlived, or failed to create a dynasty stuck with them. You'd not have the chance for brilliant, dynamic leaders to arise out of sluggish and poor quality lines, or for brilliant lines to stagnate with a poor leader.

Suggestion:
Instead of anonymous agents, all tasks must be performed using characters/families. The amount of time to complete, success chance, and effectiveness can be based on the character/family's stats.

With the changes being made to agents, I think this is partially done, but based on the agent, not the family, and without them being quite as faceless as before. I may be wrong, and the agents may still be faceless though.

Suggestion:
Have a large number of pre-made characters/families that a player can searching out and covet. Mix in a few randomly generated character/families. Allow rulers to recruit disloyal characters/families from other realms. This also allows for some additional spying options, e.g. ask character/family x to defect and join you or forge documents to reduce character/family loyalty. Additional events/domestic options could include searching out a local gifted individual.

Let's just stick to being able to try to recruit unemployed "Great Men" as in EUIII. Let's not have entire families defecting, or forcing the only families relevant to the game be ones that exist at game start. Let's allow for random advisors and agents to arise.

Diplomacy
Problem:
Too difficult to maintain alliances due to treaties being annulled when refusing call to arms.

Suggestion:
Give an option to answer a call to arms without using military combat. For example, you could provide some war funds without officially going to war. You may take a small hit to your relationship but the alliance would remain.

Or we have the system in EUIII where you can join the war and not send troops.
The alliances are meant to be pacts of military assistance. If you don't want to join someone's wars, don't ally to them.
You can keep relations good in other ways and support them in their wars with war loans.

In addition, think how little use pure money can be in a war, especially if you are already at, or close to, your force limit. Mercenaries are OK, but pushing over the forcelimit can be painful.

UI
Suggestion:
Auto follow/chase an enemy unit. Would help reduce army chasing micromanagement.

Seems not unreasonable. However, what happens if the army you are chasing splits, or merges with another stack? What happens if they move somewhere you can't follow (e.g. onto a boat or across a strait that is blocked to you)?

Suggestion:
Hotkey unit control groups. Similar to Starcraft 2 for those whove played that.

Do you have enough armies moving around that you need this, and can't keep track with the ledger?

Suggestion:
Ability to "pin" certain countries or provinces to the top of the ledger for comparison.

This would be handy.

Suggestion:
Ability to search by nation/province name in the ledger.

Again, a reasonable concept.

Suggestion:
An easier/faster method of raising armies. Clicking on each province, then clicking on the unit type is very tedious. This needs another screen or at least hotkeys

The existing right-click & select unit type?
How would you suggest to improve this, since you need to be able to control what you build and where?

Suggestion:
More hotkeys! Have them configurable from in-game. When you hover over something that is hotkeyed, it should show the hotkey in a tooltip.

In EUIII I seem to remember we have most of the first two rows of letters bound to map modes already. This doesn't leave many to have as meaningful hotkeys.

Suggestion:
Show relevant information about what really matters. For example, if I choose an advisor that increases production efficiency by 6%, it should tell me what this equates to in added revenue.

One minor issue is that these values change fast, and dynamically based on what else is happening.

Suggestion:
A quick load option without having to resign.

Perhaps helpful. It would encourage save-scumming though, having quick save/quick load more easily available.
I'd almost support only having save on quit, and the periodic autosaves.

 

[Baneslave]

Perhaps helpful. It would encourage save-scumming though, having quick save/quick load more easily available.
I'd almost support only having save on quit, and the periodic autosaves.

I don't think that Paradox (or any other developer) should meddle with saving like this. There is perfectly valid reasons to save at any moment.

And if you can't deal with lure of savescumming, you would just do any other cheating then.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Saving at a given moment, I can see as valid.

Quick load though? I can't see much use other than "trying out" a strategy and reloading when you make a mistake.

 

[Baneslave]

Saving at a given moment, I can see as valid.

Quick load though? I can't see much use other than "trying out" a strategy and reloading when you make a mistake.

And why would you remove the easyness of trying out strategies?

 

[Duke Von Hannover]

And why would you remove the easyness of trying out strategies?

Because it's much more fun to try and work with your mistakes, and try to live with them. Its a grand strategy game and mistakes happen but I tend to like to have to live with them and find a way to improve the situation after I screwed it up, than quick load in and out when a bad roll lost me a battle.

 

[grommile]

Use houses or families instead of individuals. By using families, you can have effectively "immortal" characters, elminiating the turnover rate problem. Family stats should be fairly static across generations.

Violently antihistorical. Compare Charles VI of France to his patrilineal grandson Louis XI. (Or, for that matter, Henry V of England to his son Henry VI.)

 

[Baneslave]

Because it's much more fun to try and work with your mistakes, and try to live with them. Its a grand strategy game and mistakes happen but I tend to like to have to live with them and find a way to improve the situation after I screwed it up, than quick load in and out when a bad roll lost me a battle.

You always have option not to load the save. Someone else might want to use quick-load.