Pops - Why the opposition?

[Zhetone]

I would think they've learned their lesson. Imperator had micromanagement pops at first, but then they were changed to move, promote, assimilate automatically - with the only player control being to move them around, as far as I know.

And of course the reason they changed it is that no one liked it. I don't know whether Stellaris' devs think people like micromanaging pops, but Paradox can at least know it had to be removed once because of how awful it is.

 

[alexti]

I don't know whether Stellaris' devs think people like micromanaging pops, but Paradox can at least know it had to be removed once because of how awful it is.

Curiously, initially Stellaris had worker micromanagement very similar to Civ and when it was removed there was a considerable amount of players asking to get it back. So there is at least non-negligible segment of audience that likes the micromanagement. Similarly, when abstracting warfare in EU4 is discussed there are people who want to keep the micromanagement.

 

[JaxElite]

There is a player type especially in this forum that opposed to the very idea that this game should be more on the simulation side. Adding pops is the core idea of that simulation aspect. They are actually more of a minority considering the whole player base but they are more vocal at the same time.

I have no idea why anyone would claim that pops are "the core idea" of simulation. A provinve having 7 different people is hardly less abstract than just avoiding population at all in favour of development. One might even argue that pops are a more gamey version than development.
But often people argue that having minority religions and cultures represented is inseparable from pops, while a simple percentage pie chart would do that job strictly better. Pops and dev are in no way related to simulation/game.

 

[EarlKonrad]

Curiously, initially Stellaris had worker micromanagement very similar to Civ and when it was removed there was a considerable amount of players asking to get it back. So there is at least non-negligible segment of audience that likes the micromanagement. Similarly, when abstracting warfare in EU4 is discussed there are people who want to keep the micromanagement.

I wonder if those clamouring for its return were also the ones who strived for optimization. The more you understand a system, the more you try to optimise it and, consequently, the more you engage with the micro. The reverse is also true and I'd bet money that the vast majority of those that "like" the micromanagement or don't mind it are playing at a casual level and not trying to do any sort of optimization.

 

[Meglok]

I don't care if it's pops or no pops, so long as it's EU5.
By now EU4 is a Frankenstein's monster with a dozen hands, a dozen legs and only one head, barely visible under all the extra ears and noses sewn onto it.

Every new dlc is another appendage grafted onto a creature that is only held alive by attaching a new lung or kidney whenever the old ones fail.


Let it die.

Just a reality check. You do realize once EU5 leaves the dev starting gate there will be about a year before it is released, another 2 years before it is anything besides bare bones, and probably another 2 to 4 years before it has the depth of EU4. All the while you are either paying $20 per DLC or a monthly sub payment. This timeline is not a knock on PDS, it is based upon every other game release from them over the past ten years. That is their business model.

So EU5 might be worth playing in say, 2025? I wouldn't be so ready to bury EU4 in it's grave just yet.

 

[Zhetone]

I have no idea why anyone would claim that pops are "the core idea" of simulation. A provinve having 7 different people is hardly less abstract than just avoiding population at all in favour of development. One might even argue that pops are a more gamey version than development.
But often people argue that having minority religions and cultures represented is inseparable from pops, while a simple percentage pie chart would do that job strictly better. Pops and dev are in no way related to simulation/game.

A "percentage pie chart" that has no implications achieves nothing. There is a "percentage pie chart" currently for national culture distribution in terms of development in EU4 and yet it does nothing.

The point of pops is that you can have those minorities not just existing, but moving around, growing, shrinking, changing in an organic fashion. It isn't just about having numbers on the screen or "representation" in a literal sense, but rather to have deeper mechanics and systems that can be vehicles for simulation of socioeconomic changes, which is currently entirely non-existent in EU4.

And sure, you can do that in different ways than pops. The point is that there is currently absolutely nothing, and pops work because what we're dealing with at the end of the day is people. Pops are people, numbers on a pie chart aren't. If you prefer pie charts, though, I guess that's just what appeals to you.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

That sort of implementation would be the exact same garbage that EU4 development is, something that lacks any sort of organic dynamism and instead would rely upon player intervention to represent things that should happen naturally (i.e. a nation/county/city's growth, movement of people, etc.)

In Vicky, some countries can be tanked low-industry hellholes while others are significantly better than history, and immigration will still favor the hellholes because of where they are. Every Pdox game I've played or seen routinely starts with and adds mechanics that lack historical dynamism, despite often adding them on the pretext of history. It's not a guarantee in future games, but it's an odds-on bet. Impact on performance is also odds-on.

 

[EquilinT]

I favor pops for 2 reasons
1. So that province development is dynamically changed throughout the game. currently in EU4 development will only change when player (including AI players) press the button to increase it. Pops should allow for it to go up without such intervention. the mentioned forced migration of people (slave trade for example) would also be very nice to see
2. So that manpower and economy are linked. Battleground provinces should be set back permanently in terms of economic profit they give. Levying more men into the army should also reduce the money your provinces are making.

 

[Zhetone]

In Vicky, some countries can be tanked low-industry hellholes while others are significantly better than history, and immigration will still favor the hellholes because of where they are. Every Pdox game I've played or seen routinely starts with and adds mechanics that lack historical dynamism, despite often adding them on the pretext of history. It's not a guarantee in future games, but it's an odds-on bet. Impact on performance is also odds-on.

that's true, but you can always have improvement. I would take some adapted form of victoria 2's pops over EU4's development any day considering some of the disgusting results it creates (like metropolises all over the HRE while cities outside europe basically don't develop from what I've seen)

you're right about industry in victoria and the hardcoded bonuses to immigration, neither of which should be a problem in an EU game, besides maybe colonial migration being weird. it's part of the debate about what the end goal of the games should be I guess, whether you want to see historical outcomes or probable in-game results that will never be the same in multiple playthroughs. everyone says they want things to be organic, but then the US ends up with fewer immigrants than they had IRL and it's a problem for some reason

 

[MagentaPhoenix]

The question seems less "Should pops be added?" and more "Can pops be added in such a way that maintains the integrity of an EU game?". We already have a very rudimentary pop-style system, and it's called development. While it is true that development =/= population, it is an abstract representation of the human presence in a province. Obscure Siberian wastelands have the minimum, while large urban centers such as Milan, Paris or Delhi have a large amount. It's thus inarguable that on some level, development is a partial representation of population.

With this in mind, I really cannot see how an improvement of that existing mechanic, whilst keeping to the skeleton of an EU game, is anything but ideal. EU5 should be, in many ways, an improved and streamlined version of its predecessor, revised by a new set of eyes and minds and also making use of modern capabilities. Considering that EU4 already flirts with the idea of population at constant intervals (look at how events interact with it, for example), what's wrong with going a step further and outright implementing it? There is nothing in the base concept of pops that necessitates micromanagement or over-complexity (never mind the fact that EU4 is a game practically defined by those things). Sure, if a bungled and poorly-conceptualized version of that feature is implemented, it's detrimental. The same goes for any other base mechanic in a grand strategy game. If we have faith that Paradox can continue to develop EU4 in such a way that it remains enjoyable (as apparently many anti-EU5'ers do), then surely we also have faith that they can implement a pops system, which they've done several times already in other titles, in a satisfactory way?

The arguments opposing it also seem to be from the perspective either of "This specific pops system in this specific game is bad" or "It sounds too complicated". Neither of those are valid, especially in a game that, like I mentioned earlier, is built upon complexity. While us experienced players may now look at EU4 as a rudimentary sandbox, it is in truth an extremely complicated game, so much so that it often intimidates many new players into seeking out the Civilization or Total War franchises instead. A little more complication, especially when replacing a very unintuitive and arbitrary system (development and mana), is not going to kill anyone.

Pops seem like a necessary step forward so that the EU title as a whole can grow into its own. EU4 is currently a game that represents some of the most pivotal turning points in human history, which exists practically during the entire age of colonization, which deals with advent of modern warfare, the transfer from feudal and estate-based governments into centralized government, sets the stage for the industrial revolution and deals with everything from schismatic religious warfare to pre-communist people's revolution and so much more, while also not even acknowledging the idea of human population. You can play an entire playthrough of EU4, conquer your entire continent and forge the most powerful military on the face of the earth, all while your capitol city doesn't grow by one single infant's worth of human life (hypothetically). Trade remains static and entirely based upon which country has the most manufacturies and who controls the best per-determined river estuaries, armies appear out of thin air based on arbitrary 'force limits' and how much money you have to throw around and economies are built entirely off of either the aforementioned static trade, static production or a static tax presence that, once again, remains unchanging for potentially hundreds of years unless you actively choose to develop or an event occurs for that specific place. This is a fundamental and glaring weakness that brings the entire game's potential down with absolutely zero reward, and yet this should be sacrificed in favor of... what? The devs continuing to build mission trees for gods-forsaken tags that a total of five people have played? So that EU5 can be a rehashed clone of EU4 but with better graphics? I'm not seeing a trade off, I'm just seeing a resilience to change from people who have apparently forgotten that once EU5 is published, EU4 will still exist and will still be able to be played. It is not written anywhere that EU4's strengths, diplomacy and war, have to be done-away-with or indeed at all diminished in favor of pops. In fact, especially regarding warfare, pops would be a net benefit by incredible margins.

TL;DR: Pops, if done right, have the potential to set EU5 up above its peers and remedy many of EU4's weaknesses, whilst also preserving and reinforcing its strengths. The argument against it boils down to "Stellaris's pop system is bad, therefor all pops systems are bad and should not even be considered", "It sounds hard, so we shouldn't bother" or "I want more provinces in Zimbabwe and some obscure Polynesian tag doesn't have a mission tree, therefor the entire next game should be delayed". In other words, there practically isn't an argument against it, at least not one that is being held in good faith.

 

[alexti]

I wonder if those clamouring for its return were also the ones who strived for optimization. The more you understand a system, the more you try to optimise it and, consequently, the more you engage with the micro.

It seems unlikely to me. The old system was very simple. The new one added more complexity, and replaced one kind of micro with another.

The reverse is also true and I'd bet money that the vast majority of those that "like" the micromanagement or don't mind it are playing at a casual level and not trying to do any sort of optimization.

It's possible. If you play casually and don't grow beyond 3-5 planets the micromanagement isn't bad. But I am not sure how many casual players participate in forum discussions.

 

[Vulkandrache]

things that should happen naturally

Thats exactly what i dont want.
Its my country. Whatever i say goes. Everything else can go.

I recently discovered that CN's no longer spawn with your stats.
They instead spawn with some random ass religion and random ass culture that just happenes to be the majority
of their land.
Luckily i no longer play on ironman so i can just console corect this nonsense.

 

[TeutonicTortoise]

I'd say they can probably go either way and make the game fine but I think Pops is already a Vicky & IR thing and in both instances it's not the best from what people expected. Also I think the development aspect is cool being unique to the EU series depending on how its interpreted. Realistically pre 1700s a country didnt have the capacity to call on their full populations compared to Vicky's 19th century but I think EU let's you make a centralised efficient country from an area that would otherwise be impossible to compete vs the big players of the world. Historically France as a country was the most populous country in Europe till something like the partition of Poland (Russia) and it's why in the 17th century-Revolution you see them 1v3, 1v4 other majors. Taking on Austria, Spain, Netherlands and GB on several occasions. This doesn't translate well into a game balance scenario without massive overhauls and debuffs applied and deficiencies placed on higher Pops which is just messy.

 

[Me_]

I don't think anyone wants micromanagement pops you would have to shuffle and promote or whatever manually, the only people I've seen mentioning that as a possible mechanic are people who don't want pops.

That sort of implementation would be the exact same garbage that EU4 development is, something that lacks any sort of organic dynamism and instead would rely upon player intervention to represent things that should happen naturally (i.e. a nation/county/city's growth, movement of people, etc.)

Ultimately, the best way to introduce pops would be to give the players relatively little options of interacting with them directly. Pops should be the canvass upon which the players paint the story, not the paint itself.

Thats exactly what i dont want.
Its my country. Whatever i say goes. Everything else can go.

I recently discovered that CN's no longer spawn with your stats.
They instead spawn with some random ass religion and random ass culture that just happenes to be the majority
of their land.
Luckily i no longer play on ironman so i can just console corect this nonsense.

This idea is so againt the historic reality of the game, I would go so far as yo say it's toxic.

I have forever ingraind in my head the words of one of my university lecturer: for all that was said of absolute monarchy, The Sun King had less power to change the traditional laws of the land than the modern democratic monarchies.
The stories of nations are the stories of constraints and limitation. My country, my choice belongs to Minecraft not Grand Strategy.

 

[Ivashanko]

I have no idea why anyone would claim that pops are "the core idea" of simulation. A provinve having 7 different people is hardly less abstract than just avoiding population at all in favour of development. One might even argue that pops are a more gamey version than development.
But often people argue that having minority religions and cultures represented is inseparable from pops, while a simple percentage pie chart would do that job strictly better. Pops and dev are in no way related to simulation/game.

When most people here talk about pops they are talking about Victoria's system, not Imperator's/Stellaris'.

 

[Willem IV]

My vision would be an enhanced 'pie chart' version of Pops. Let's start with convert a development into a Pop. Each pop has his own religion and culture. So in 1444 the province of Lund would contain 20 Danish Catholics while Halland has only 8 Danish Catholics. At the moment Sweden conquers Skåne, they will be produce less tax, goods and provide less manpower. Sweden then has the choice to do nothing, convert them into proper Swedes or accept Danish culture at a cost. As Halland borders Swedish cultured provinces it should be easier/quicker to convert them. While Lund would be more difficult. While the Swedish purge is going on, there an event can happen that transfers one of the Danish pops away from Lund (or Halland) to a free 'closeby' Danish province (Sjælland) or a colonial nation. Also when Sweden turns Protestant and Denmark stays Catholic it should become more difficult to convert them. A proper Dane is a Catholic, and a proper Catholic isn't a Swede.
Each culture has a majority religion, and there should be a base movement for pops to join that majority religion. Once the majority of all Danes turns to Protestant the movement turns around. Of course religion groups and culture groups do have their own factor in this. A Dane can become more easily a Swede than a Pomeranian.
Also the state of the province and country make it more likely to gain/lose a Pop. And with lower stability you get more chance of a revolt, which should lower your stability further and thus potentialy blow up your country into pieces. When the Pomeranians revolt, the Danes and Norwegians should be come more likely to revolt as well, as they know that the army is busy somewhere else.

Hopefully this would remove the instant conversion that we have now for culture and religion. It will be a slower process with even the loss of Pops (or gain) than it's in EU4. I don't want to manually move pops around, you choice some edicts to tweak the chances of conversion.

 

[By_Science!]

I don't think pops are strictly necessary, but I would like to know the actual population of a province, like in EU3 (except it would be nice if it went over 999,999).

Plus, the idea of having religions as a 'pie chart' on each province seems pretty cool.

Basically, it doesn't take much to make me see the depth in a game. I don't need a new mechanic, all I need is a better way of presenting interesting data. Call it an 'immersive data experience'

 

[Spartakus]

I wonder if those clamouring for its return were also the ones who strived for optimization. The more you understand a system, the more you try to optimise it and, consequently, the more you engage with the micro. The reverse is also true and I'd bet money that the vast majority of those that "like" the micromanagement or don't mind it are playing at a casual level and not trying to do any sort of optimization.

I would accept that bet.
Stellaris and what happened after 2.2 is precisely the reason why I'm opposed to pops in EU4/EU5. I'm a bit of a burned child here, but there's also more to my reasoning. First of all:

I don't think anyone wants micromanagement pops you would have to shuffle and promote or whatever manually, the only people I've seen mentioning that as a possible mechanic are people who don't want pops.

This makes absolutely no sense to me. I you want to have pops, surely there is something you would want to do with them, right? Some sort of mechanic directly interacting with them? If not, why would you have this mechanic in a game in the first place? This is why I want tiles back in Stellaris, sure the pop management microgame wasn't the most engaging one ever, but it's fun enough in the early game to squeeze out that tiny bit of advantage that snowballs into a great empire later but not important enough that you have to keep playing it past mid-game unless you really want to. More importantly, you could only ever screw up so badly that it wouldn't be a huge disadvantage - and thus there was really no nead for a sophisticated AI on this.
Cut to late 2018 when the tiles were removed and the new systemhad more pops but no direct control over them - only an indirect one - by creating jobs for the pops and the micromanagement and performance became unbearable. Also:

And for those who don't want to try to micromanage do something like in Stellaris where you can focus a sector for food/minerals/energy and make the AI balance it for you enough so your people don't starve. But those who do micro would be able outperform the AI balancing.

This is no longer an option. Leave your planets to the AI and the AI will wreck your entire economy. I wish this was hyperbole, but it's not.

Now OK, I get that you could implement Pops differently, and I sadly can't comment on Vic2 pops as I've never played that game. But no matter the actual implementation, having pops always comes with a cost. This cost comes in tow forms:

1. You need an AI that can handle the associated mechanics to at least some degree.
2. The CPU needs to cycle through the pops with some frequency.

There is no way around those 2, period. You can do some cool programmers voodoo to ease the burden on the CPU but at some point a rising number of pops and added complexity will take it's toll on the performance. And since the aforementioned programmers voodoo is hidden deep in the game's engine you have some built-in limitations on how much you can change what pops do years later - well within the lifetime of a PDX-game.
The AI is particularly noteworthy, as PDX does not have the best track record on AIs - the debt problem that's around since Emperor's release comes to mind. Imagine this, but every time someone adjusts how pops work.

tl;dr: Pops come with a high cost for a questionable benefit.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

you're right about industry in victoria and the hardcoded bonuses to immigration, neither of which should be a problem in an EU game, besides maybe colonial migration being weird. it's part of the debate about what the end goal of the games should be I guess, whether you want to see historical outcomes or probable in-game results that will never be the same in multiple playthroughs. everyone says they want things to be organic, but then the US ends up with fewer immigrants than they had IRL and it's a problem for some reason

I know people say it because I see it often, but I can't accept that historical outcomes should happen without their historical context/causes. I also hold that forcing historical outcomes without their causes on the basis of "realism" or "historical accuracy" is objectively incorrect, enough to self-refute the argument when it's made.

I do want things to be organic. That holds true regardless of pops, development, or something else. I get that this means absent later start dates, things like Iberian wedding or Burgundian success almost never happen. But perhaps it would be a good time to bring vanilla mechanics to par so that "similar" events can happen. Or if it isn't feasible, accept that it isn't and move on.

All that aside, prior attempts at pops should give pause. What is possible in principle isn't necessarily what Pdox/other companies can deliver at any given time period. What we have actually observed, when it comes to actual outputs/decision making by players based on Pdox mechanics and game performance, makes the utility of pops in the EU 4 model (or potential EU 5 model) seriously questionable.

This idea is so againt the historic reality of the game, I would go so far as yo say it's toxic.

On the contrary, given the premise of the game and what the rules allow, he is exactly correct. This is a game where you can intentionally allow a small band of rebels to convert France to Islam...or even Buddhist...over the course of a single generation. Or have France decide it's actually Austria...then Great Britain. And this control persists over the lives of dozens of rulers.

Those are the rules of EU 4 as defined. That IS the game, and as a result that is a driving causal force in the way the EU 4 world progresses. It is not coherent, not functional, to accept the above as a fact of the game and then expect it to produce results consistent with real history. That's not how reality works. Not the game's model of reality, and not actual causal reality. One of the most toxic things that recurs on this forum is the recurrence of the cognitive dissonance arising from wanting "historical outcomes" with wildly ahistorical prior situations and laws of reality.

The stories of nations are the stories of constraints and limitation. My country, my choice belongs to Minecraft not Grand Strategy.

Strategy games imply agency, and your argument is contradicted by the rules of the Pdox titles in question.

The argument against it boils down to

You seem to have glossed over the argument implied earlier:

At the scope of EU 4, pops are computationally expensive and don't fit the level of abstraction done with the rest of the game. This is a game that intentionally leaves all but the most basic aspects of rulers/heirs to abstraction, and yet somehow subject population are going to be modeled at the level of grouping types of workers? In a game with one directional trade where technology for ships doubles with the resources used to annex subjects? Really?

Each culture has a majority religion, and there should be a base movement for pops to join that majority religion

That's not even how reality works, much less how a game works.

In EU 4's context, you can make pie charts at province levels and alongside development more or less mimic any decision-making utility offered by pops without lagging the game to heck.

 

[riadach]

The advantage of pops as I see it is the idea of overpopulation which lead to many significant developments during this period. Some states managed that population and created highly dense "tall" countries whereas others used that excess population to colonise and expand their domains. I'm not sure the true division between tall and wide can be achieved in EU's current iteration.