For years now, game developers have been able to program their games to send information about player habits and choices back to the developer. This information is often used to study where or how players get stuck in a campaign, to study how long players usually play, to determine how many users actually finish their games, to determine which modes or choices are popular, etc.
My question is whether Paradox has designed EU4 to collect and analyse any data about who and how people play? It would be fascinating to find out what nations are usually picked when the game is first played, what nations people subsequently pick, what nations are never picked, which OPMs actually have a following that might merit creating more specific content, etc. In a general sense, I think we all know (or at least think we know) that countries like Castile, England, Ottomans, France, Portugal, and Austria are often first picks. What would be interesting to know would be other general habits. Do people usually sample nations for a couple hours each and then pick one for a longer game? Do most people instead play 100 years or more before starting up with a different nation? Do most people pick one of the majors first and then pick a small nation next or do most instead sample multiple "big" nations and never play as small ones? Are there some tiny nations that you wouldn't suspect that are secretly very popular? ,etc.
In my EU3 experience, I remember I played 30-40 years as Portugal to learn the game and interface. Then I started over as Castille to play my first "real" game and played 250 years or so until my massive number of colonies so bogged down my old laptop that I had to stop. Then I wanted more of a challenge and played as Bosnia for several hundred years until I controlled all of the HRE and finally made it through all of the decisions to actually form HRE as a country.
My question is whether Paradox has designed EU4 to collect and analyse any data about who and how people play? It would be fascinating to find out what nations are usually picked when the game is first played, what nations people subsequently pick, what nations are never picked, which OPMs actually have a following that might merit creating more specific content, etc. In a general sense, I think we all know (or at least think we know) that countries like Castile, England, Ottomans, France, Portugal, and Austria are often first picks. What would be interesting to know would be other general habits. Do people usually sample nations for a couple hours each and then pick one for a longer game? Do most people instead play 100 years or more before starting up with a different nation? Do most people pick one of the majors first and then pick a small nation next or do most instead sample multiple "big" nations and never play as small ones? Are there some tiny nations that you wouldn't suspect that are secretly very popular? ,etc.
In my EU3 experience, I remember I played 30-40 years as Portugal to learn the game and interface. Then I started over as Castille to play my first "real" game and played 250 years or so until my massive number of colonies so bogged down my old laptop that I had to stop. Then I wanted more of a challenge and played as Bosnia for several hundred years until I controlled all of the HRE and finally made it through all of the decisions to actually form HRE as a country.
