Please Expand Rulers, Leaders, Advisors and Dynasties (A Petition)

[Grand Historian]

Well, been away for a while, and I'm amazed to see everything that's happened.

In recent news regarding this, taken from the 1.17 patchnotes:

- Influence gained "Establish Cadet Branches", giving +25% heir chance and +0.5 prestige. Monarchies ftw!

I suppose this is a good sign that the devs are paying monarchies some attention, but unfortunately this isn't so much a buff to monarchies as it is a nerf to Influence since everyone can get prestige and heir chance is not exactly that useful (especially considering it doesn't quite address the issue of still being stuck with bad rulers for decades while Republics can easily flip as the situation demands). Still, if this is a sign of things to come, I look forward to it.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I have yet to see evidence that heir chance provides any utility whatsoever in practice. It was a straight nerf to influence, nothing significant for monarchies.

"Lack of agency ftw" does not strike me as responsibly addressing complaints about lack of agency.

 

[Grand Historian]

I have yet to see evidence that heir chance provides any utility whatsoever in practice. It was a straight nerf to influence, nothing significant for monarchies.

"Lack of agency ftw" does not strike me as responsibly addressing complaints about lack of agency.

In all fairness, I'm not expecting them to release new agency mechanics in a free patch.

Now, if Heir Chance could also effect the chance of getting an Heir of your Dynasty on the throne of another nation, then it might be more useful.

 

[atwix]

In all fairness, I'm not expecting them to release new agency mechanics in a free patch.

Now, if Heir Chance could also effect the chance of getting an Heir of your Dynasty on the throne of another nation, then it might be more useful.

this modifier would be more historically correct also I guess. After all, dynasties, nobles and nations didn't wed one another to try the food and drink at each other's wedding parties.

Well maybe they did, but the main reason for royal marriages was influence and politics.

And... if you don't know anything about how it worked, then getting increased heir spawn chance from doing royal marriages might sound weird.

Its as if those new family in law gives groom/bride some eh...lessons on how to get an heir to spawn... ehh.. faster.

In reality a distant cousin Vinny from another nation, who is family in third degree, could get throne of heirless dying ruler.. Just because of past marriages.

Common folk might wonder HOW royal marriages increase 'heir chance' and make jokes on it.

'stepmom Elisabeth told the king's sister some nice tricks to get a bread in the oven faster!' and whatnot.

 

[Dakka]

I would put this right at the top with adding expanded mechanics for the Japanese, Chinese, and Indian regions.

 

[Maq]

In all fairness, I'm not expecting them to release new agency mechanics in a free patch.

This is one of the questions I'd like to get more enlightened in. I'm not an IT man, know nothing about programming. I can only guess. And such a guess of mine is that "new agency mechanics" of all kind seldom appear precisely because it's impossible to implement them as paid DLC feature while maintaining the game without it still playable. I believe that this is one of the reasons why most additions remain somehow on surface only and don't change essential features of the game. As if you wear earrings, gloves, necklaces, or don't wear them, but the body must always remain the same.
I'm afraid that advanced dynastic policies belong among such substantial changes, and you'll end disappointed by getting some sort of 'earrings' - for money, of course.
I don't like this ever-pay-for-next-DLC policy. I quite understand why it has to be like that, but from consistency point of view, dichotomy has its limits. A kind of compromise could look like that: EU IV v. 2.0.0 could unite all paid and unpaid features, developing and deepening the more successful ones (and perhaps abandoning others), and overhauling some selected mechanics. This upGRADE (in contrast to upDATES) would not be offered for free, of course. I would not mind paying for such an upgrade, especially if targeted issues somehow mirrored community opinion. Enhanced dynastic policies would certainly rank high in the list (though personally I'd like even more completely reworked trade mechanics).
And then, patches 2.1, 2.2, ... could follow as usual, that is, until 3.0.

 

[Grand Historian]

This is one of the questions I'd like to get more enlightened in. I'm not an IT man, know nothing about programming. I can only guess. And such a guess of mine is that "new agency mechanics" of all kind seldom appear precisely because it's impossible to implement them as paid DLC feature while maintaining the game without it still playable. I believe that this is one of the reasons why most additions remain somehow on surface only and don't change essential features of the game. As if you wear earrings, gloves, necklaces, or don't wear them, but the body must always remain the same.

Earrings are better than no jewelry.

 

[Thaif]

While I do appreciate the sweeping nature of EU4 as a "nation simulator/sandbox" it is as that paranoid butcher Stalin once remarked; "If you kill one, it is a tragedy. If you kill one million, it is a statistic."

It's much more gripping and "immersive" if your rulers, advisors and generals(the big players, so to speak) have some personality to them beyond the statistics. While we may remember history as a series of this-nation-did-that(well in EU4 at least) a significant focus is always on the people behind that nation; their biases, ambitions, hopes and gambles.

The nations that shaped history often resembled their leaders as much as their people. When a new monarch took the throne the changes were at times sweeping(Peter the Great, Gustav II Adolf, etc) or more gradual but impactful on the long run.

Grand Historians suggestion/petition is to me a perfectly reasonable extension to the game considering how much people gush about important people in history and the impact they had.

 

[atwix]

its kind of funny/sad that this petition has 179 'agrees' and no dev response..

 

[Quaade]

Apart from portraits (due to not seeing it as essentially breaking my game), the other reasons I can stand behind and won´t argue against portraits if added since it´s flavour... For a long time I thought it odd that leaders didn´t have age, that leaders and rulers didn´t evolve and devolve... I mean, had a 2 star general fight France and win a number of times, yet I have to replace him instead of honouring his great effort...

I know PDX mentioned that they felt it would clutter it up too much, but I really would like the to add a new tab just for the "government", that would work both for republics and monarchies and show candidates and next in line, see their gains and drawbacks... Electing a cousin that´s slightly better but with lower legitimacy might be viable, but could trigger a civil war in support of the imbecile son.

This lead me to your mentioned traits, that I have suggested earlier as well... It doesn´t need to be CK-style, just a few traits that suggest health and personality (as you put it), so you could see your son is an imbecile, or that he is a master builder...

 

[gronak]

its kind of funny/sad that this petition has 179 'agrees' and no dev response..

Hopefully they are going ahead with it and wanting to surprise us. If not, I would much rather some have conformation that it is not happening than waiting for weeks hoping it is added

 

[Noah11101]

Agreed 100%.

 

[Grand Historian]

Hopefully they are going ahead with it and wanting to surprise us. If not, I would much rather some have conformation that it is not happening than waiting for weeks hoping it is added

Well, at this point, it's 184+ possible customers for an expansion/patch that they won't get if such never comes to pass (and considering the forums are only a minority of players...). I really do hope money talks in this case.

 

[Grand Historian]

I would put this right at the top with adding expanded mechanics for the Japanese, Chinese, and Indian regions.

Now that I think about it, Japan in particular would greatly benefit from a mechanic like this, and it could definitely be incorporated into the Mandate of Heaven - perhaps expanded personnel mechanics could come along with an East Asia DLC?

 

[gronak]

Words cannot describe how much I want to see this added still. It would vastly improve gameplay across the entire EU4 world.

 

[Grand Historian]

Apart from portraits (due to not seeing it as essentially breaking my game), the other reasons I can stand behind and won´t argue against portraits if added since it´s flavour... For a long time I thought it odd that leaders didn´t have age, that leaders and rulers didn´t evolve and devolve... I mean, had a 2 star general fight France and win a number of times, yet I have to replace him instead of honouring his great effort...

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this, but are you saying that we should get portraits that also reflect ruler's age? That would be incredible, but I think it might be asking a bit too much.

I know PDX mentioned that they felt it would clutter it up too much, but I really would like the to add a new tab just for the "government", that would work both for republics and monarchies and show candidates and next in line, see their gains and drawbacks... Electing a cousin that´s slightly better but with lower legitimacy might be viable, but could trigger a civil war in support of the imbecile son.

This lead me to your mentioned traits, that I have suggested earlier as well... It doesn´t need to be CK-style, just a few traits that suggest health and personality (as you put it), so you could see your son is an imbecile, or that he is a master builder...

Definitely. At least something to tell us why this person is good or bad at x, and maybe add a bit more flavor for leaders (for example, two leaders might have 4 adm, but one leader has 4 adm because he has a base 3 and a trait that gives him +1 and something else, while another has 2 and a trait with +2 and a better bonus).

 

[Nagassh]

I'd pay £10 just for them to do SOMETHING about regencies.

Estates seemed to lay fantastic groundwork for making something out of the complete void of gameplay that regencies currently makes - having to watch the world roll by at speed 5 because you got a regency out of the blue or being screwed out of an achievment because you got a 13 year regency with 7 years of game left is obnoxious as hell.

I'd love for them to make more things possibly under a regency but had the potential for estates to gain too much influence or other nastiness and plunge you into a disaster etc. The ability to do something and suffer ingame consequences seems significantly better than just having UI elements greyed out.

I really enjoyed the implimentation of estates, it's one of the expansion features that has felt both useful and pretty intigrated with how they want through and tied it into a lot of older events that used to just be bland mana gains but not work as a balancing act between estates. Seems like a system that could easily be tied into regencies to allow for players to actually do something beyond skipping 10 years of gameplay due to bad luck.

I'd hope having a Rulers focused expansion could do something to intigrate the estates system more with the governing of the country, probably the expansion I'd be interested in the most. The only other thing I'd like to see is fleshing out Asia a bit more mechanically, but considering how important the dynasties, daimyo's and governing of China / Japan were, I imagine they'd tie into this fairly well.

 

[PedroLuiz]

201 agrees

 

[BrokenSky]

201 agrees

yeah but if you subtract the 3 disagrees, that's only 198. Obviously not enough.

 

[Grand Historian]

yeah but if you subtract the 3 disagrees, that's only 198. Obviously not enough.

202 now, not counting my own (which would obviously be for it, so technically 200). That, and I don't really know where the helpfuls stand.