New year, New Expansions!

[Dingens]

In terms of content: probably improved colonial nations interaction, and a proper integration of culture into the game (make it matter, and make it a mechanism that really puts strain on blobbing empires).

In terms of gameplay: Smoother warfare AI, by far.

• The Guerilla running around the entire world tactic if AI countries think they cannot win a confrontation is way too prominent and annoying as fuck. No nation should completely give up their capital and every core province without at least trying to fight.
• There should be a range limit on where an AI country is willing to send their army for detraction, limiting it to a region where it logically makes sense for that army to be in. A native tribe under siege showing up a few provinces away, attacking my colonies? Sounds good. Some Arabian country sending their forces through the entirety of Africa to siege the Ivory Coast while losing every single province at home? Feels like it should never happen.
• If a country AI sees zero chance to fight and zero chance to reach a reasonable objective it should instantly bump war score to the point where (almost) no sieging is necessary. Those dragged out goose chase wars against countries that should try to peace out as soon as they get declared upon and a huge army shows up at their border are terrible, and not fun at all.
• Military access should be a rare privilege, not the norm. Letting a foreign army march through your country required either a lot of trust or a lot of fear, considering that armies in these days were not known to be all too considerate with private property or locals. Fixing this alone may also kill the most annoying occurrences of Guerilla tactics.
• If the Guerilla tactics remain, then the AI at least needs to learn how to deal with them. Regularly a nation that should completely stomp an opponent loses a war because it's too stupid to chase down the enemy run-away armies that siege his land.

Edit: And something to fix the cash overflow occurring in player and large AI countries from around halftime onwards. In the second half of the game it more or less feels like economic decisions don't matter anymore, if you didn't screw up or start incredibly poor, you are swimming in more money than you can ever reasonably spend by 1650. That feels like a complete flip compared to the first years, where you have to optimize everything to the second digit. A simple solution would probably be to add a constant yearly inflation using the existing mechanism, otherwise a full overhaul might be necessary.

 

[Krebsig]

I was going to say Indonesia and Oceania, but we already got some focus there. India is also often requested, but we focussed quite a bit on Asia last year.

Anyway, here is my list sorted by tiers:

Tier 1:
- HRE + Italy expansion focussed on internal politics. Policies, edicts, decisions, missions, estates and other internal factions need to intertwine a lot more. The problem of handling and sustaining a large empire from within as well as the rise of the populus as a political player in the late game should slowly transition the game towards a Vicky focussed gameplay style. Ages could very well fit into such a concept and with a Eurocentric expansion we could also have a long overdue HRE and Catholicism revamp.

Tier 2:
- France/Iberia/British Isles immersion pack. All the regions feel a bit outdated and could use some more flavour. If you want to include a global mechanic, you could go for some colonizer features here as well along with typical regional stuff.
- India revamp immersion pack. The region that got the least love in Asia by now, focussing on religious mechanics as well as culture could be a focus here.

Tier 3:
- North Africa. Some berber love would be appreciated, but this would most likely happen in the form of an expansion pack as well. I'd certainly like some more involved slavery mechanics not only for the Berbers, but also for the Europeans, West Africans, etc. that also details the problems of slave economy and ties into the things I said about the people as emergent political individuals detailed in my HRE/Italy point, but I guess that topic is a bit too loaded to be ever tackled :/
- Indonesia/Oceania. Immersion PAck size would fit this best, but we already got the Phillies in December and outside of a few more native tags I can't see them adding that much. Would be cool to have though, maybe as a free patch in between.
- Americas region. Totemism could use some mechanics, but the region is so dull overall that I struggle to actually think of ways to make it less of a waiting simulator.

 

[Sylas]

I vote for a HRE expansion with austrian and hungarian unit pack + 2 immersion pack for Indonesia and India. (We got indian event pictures but no advisors )

 

[schondetta]

A lot of old and outdated features of the game need to be brought up to pace. Plenty of options mentioned.im going to toss in the horrendous Dutch revolt events and advisor system as a couple examples

 

[Dakka]

Well, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the next immersion pack that is coming out will be about Spain, considering it is one of the more commonly played starter nations. It also gives them an opportunity to improve on the colonial mechanics, providing a wider usage of the hypothetical pack, as they wanted

 

[Mingmung]

My personal hope is France, although I'm more than happy if other popular regions in Europe get some love in this new Immersion Pack that will come.

 

[Dakka]

My personal hope is France, although I'm more than happy if other popular regions in Europe get some love in this new Immersion Pack that will come.

France would be a good one too. It’s my number two pick after Iberia. But I feel Iberia is in more need of attention so Spain can become the super power it was historically.

 

[Steel_atlas]

All of Europe minus Russia and Hungary needs a facelift, and maybe the Netherlands and Venice needs a face lift.

I think either the Iberian peninsula or the British isles would have the most impact globally with the hre nations being behind.

I love Venice and would like to see some new missions at least added for them but doubt it’s a priority .

I’d also like to see the reformation mechanics changed like either a really good papacy player or hre emperor should be able to stop it

 

[Atilla 'The Hun']

A DLC purely aimed at expanding HRE mechanics and the role of Italy and any possible future HRE candidates