Sup people. Here's a long ass post. For maximum readability, limit your browser width to 20 cm or so. Pocket book width is what you want. Full width forums are a nightmare to read on wide-screen monitors. 
I've started keeping a list of things and features for EU4. Issues, annoyances, some more or less concrete suggestions mixed in with some general thoughts about the game. A consumer voicing his concerns. By no means is it a list of definitive fixes.
A list of things I want to see improved or reworked.
This is not me saying: "Here's a bunch of stuff for you to implement."
This is me saying: "Here's a bunch of stuff I'd like to see you improve upon. If it were to be included in future patches and expansions, I would be a happy consumer."
So, without further ado, in no particular order, here's a long ass list of stuff. Enjoy.
1. Peace deals.
The Peace deal interface is notorious for giving you false information. The three different parts of the interface will tell you three different things. The list of items to pick will tell you one cost. The summary on the left will tell you another cost. And the summary in the bottom right will tell you a third amount. Only very experienced players will know what the peace deal will actually cost. Things like being told your vassal will pay DIP, to being told you will pay 50 dip/province and ending up paying 0. Or being told you will pay 0 and ending up paying 200. It goes both ways and is very annoying. Unclear CB's, separate peace deals and vassal feeding all play a part in this. An overhaul/update/fix is needed.
2. Claims expiring.
Claims are set to expire after 25 years or after your current truce. However, if you conquer territory and the claims are to expire mid war, the claims will expire at the end of the month after you peace out. I find it strange that if I take my claims from France, and I have a truce with France; then the claim should stay on the land I annexed. Giving me a chance to delay coring, while still keeping the discount from having claims. Why the claims stay on France's land for the duration of the truce, and not on the provinces I annexed, is beyond me. For all I care, the claims on his retained cores can expire when I peace out. The claims I do want for the duration of the truce is on the land I did annex in the war.
3. Defender of the faith CTA.
There's nothing in the game to indicate when they will actually get a CTA. I believe there's a same continent rule, but it's relevant information never presented to the player. Very confusing when attacking Muslims in SEA, Africa and India. Will Ottoderp help them? Or will they not?
4. Regencies.
Oh the humanity. There's nothing worse than sitting on your arse for 15 years only to have you new king die after 2 months. A big revamp of the mechanic, or just opportunities to wage war during regencies, with or without penalties.
Having regency specific events or event chains for "regency countries" at war seems like an easy solution. Like running the risk of having internal struggles due to poor regencies, but also positive events to reflect good advisors within the regency council.
5. PU mechanics.
A proper rundown of the the mechanics and concrete numbers for the calculations on the wiki would go a long way. It's a big part of the game as demonstrated by the "game of thrones WC AAR" here on the forums. Yet most people don't know anything about this aspect of the game. PU's - How do they work? In mysterious ways.
6. Nextsong
Nextsong command in Ironman. Pretty straight forward. A fancy way of implementing this would be to add a jukebox GUI, like old-school titles used to have, think OpenTTD, Theme Hospital and the like. The man-hour friendly way is to just allow the console command.
7. Attach to friendly army button working for own armies.
I'd like to have this functionality in order to be able to organize my mercs in a better way. I would use it to have all my outdated mercs in their own stack attached to my main battle army. The separate merc button only does half the job as it detaches both outdated and current mercs. This functionality could be done in a more fancy way, with its own button, but I think allowing for attaching to your own armies is the quickest way to let me organize my armies the way I want. Allowing me to quickly disband and merge the outdated units, without constant reorganizing. Minimum dev time spent being my second consideration.
8. Adjustments to detach siege.
I disagree with the amount of infantry left behind by the game when you use the detach siege button. I believe it currently leaves behind infantry to match the level of the fort. 1k inf for lvl 1 fort, 2k inf for lvl 2 for, etc. If I have a 20 inf, 20 art army, and I use detach for siege. I would want the game to leave 1 inf 1 art for a lvl 2 fort.
An argument against this would be the new sortie button, as a 1/0/1 stack would be risky against a lvl 2 fort. But I would prefer that behavior above what we have atm. If I were playing against a player, I would simply detach twice to leave behind a 2/0/2 stack on lvl 2 forts.
Furthermore, the current detach siege never detaches cav, since it's not used in the eyes of the game. But you can still siege with 2 cav, even if you can't assault. Incorporating cav when detaching for sieges could be an improvement. The optimal implementation deserves a discussion. I for one argue that the current implementation is not optimal.
9. CB's.
A more clear declaration of what a CB allows you to take without penalty. Which parts are DIP free and which parts are AE-discounted? Added complexity due to vassal CB's. Vassal Reconquest is a confusing one. You can give provinces to your vassal for free, but it will be AE hell. Using "return core" will cost DIP, but not give AE. Things like this needs clarification. It makes no sense that two different options for the same goal have such different results in terms of AE & MP cost.
10. Vassal CB's
Not being able to use special vassal CB's like Holy War is just an inconvenience. There's nothing stopping me from taking a single low BT province adjacent to my vassal and enemy to let me use the Holy War CB. This is not a real hindrance, only an annoyance at best. If my vassal has access to Holy War, I should be able to use theirs instead of taking a single province for myself next to my intended target.
If this makes the game too easy, then maybe it's the CB that is the problem? As it stands, holy war is a ludicrously strong early game CB, unrivaled in its usability. And the only requirement is adjacency and religious difference.
11. Separate War/Specified CTA.
A lot of reasons as to why extended level of control would be nice. Eating a defenseless OPM will stop you from using an aggressive CTA vs France, as your allies will cite the multiple war malus. Passively participating in a defensive war will hinder you from an offensive DOW & CTA due to the same malus.
Sometimes your ally will be locked out of a war due to already being in a war with/against one or more of your attackers. But at the same time you have a second war which they, in theory could participate in. You cannot call them due to the "multiple war" malus. There's a lot of situations where the game currently stops you from using a CTA.
Each war having its own CTA button in the diplo screen would be a huge improvement.
12. Fleet auto transport option.
I don't trust my navy to not get killed when they auto-transport troops. I'd love for an option to have all navies start with auto transport disabled.
13. Ledger overhaul.
In general I would like to say this; the ledger is out of date and in dire need of some love. Cleaning up no longer relevant information.
Specifically, I would love to see better options in the building interface. More often than not, I only want to build manpower buildings in accepted culture provinces, just like I'm most interested to build trade buildings in estuary & center of trade provinces. Better filters & search functionality would facilitate this. Functionality to sort results in multiple columns, like tax & production. Separation of basic and advanced buildings.
Side note – This is probably very man-hour expensive work, but the ledger needs some love. Pretty please.
14. Privateers and PP.
Stay at home privateering fleets should not give PP. Just like stay at home trade fleets do not give trade power.
15. "Split in half" behavior
A few patches ago the "split in half"functionality changed. The game now considers each category individually. Splitting a 1/1/0 previously resulted in 1/0/0 + 0/1/0, it now stays 1/1/0. I preferred the old functionality. If I try to split a 1/1/0 stack, it's because I want to split it, not because I'm confused about the size or composition of my army.
That being said, preferably a 3/0/3 stack would split into 1/0/1 + 2/0/2, not 2/0/1 + 1/0/2.
The optimal behavior could be discussed at length, each system has its drawbacks. But I prefer the previous system over the current one.
16. Expanded Army template control
I wish I could designate specific provinces that will build stuff. Having a disconnected coastline will yield problems. Venice for example can't have a template that builds stuff from all provinces, as a lot of them are isolated. Having a connected east & west coast also gives rise to problems. See Mesoamerica. As the Aztecs, you probably only want to build on your east coast. To do this, you have to be very specific from which province you start building your navy template. Being able to specify which provinces that build a template would be a massive improvement. There's also the added aspect of having certain provinces with buildings. I for one plan out which provinces will have the 20% discount buildings. As is, I go for a 10 province template and then check which 10 provinces it builds from, building the buildings there. As a player I want the control, rather than the template controlling where I put my buildings.
17. Cut down to size peace deal option.
Having the option much like war reparations, but limiting the force limit of the target country. Giving said country AE if they break this treaty. An example would be beating France, you could them force them to only build up to X% of their FL without penalty. Going above that point would mean that they accrue AE with neighboring countries. Ahistorical, not fitting for the era would be arguments against it. A fun way to force AE on your opponent more like! Fits peace deal options like humiliate and war reparations imo.
18. Looting, I would love to see a new marching mode for armies.
Having them loot a province as they move through it. Increasing travel time (?) and/or forcing a tick of attrition in each province looted?
This is currently micro intensive if you want to avoid attrition.
There's ofc a balance aspect in here. If it's too easy to loot, it could have an implication on game balance. An argument against automatic looting would obviously be that the current micro raises the skill cap for more interesting MP games.
Making the rules for this mechanic more transparent for new players is also something that could use a discussion or two. Most people never find out exactly how looting works or why they suddenly get a yellow number flying across the screen as they start a siege in the middle of enemy territory.
19. Rework of enforced demands
If you ever find yourself in an epic war, that you manage to turn around against all odds. There's nothing worse than having your opponent enforce demands due to your negative warscore. You can have your opponent carpeted, but having had vassals, allies or yourself lost a lot of battles in the initial stage, you will be at a severely negative warscore.
Adding a modifier akin to "making gains" to prevent enforced demands would be really nice, at the risk of making the game too easy.
One could argue that if you get yourself into a situation where you can only win a war after separate peacing out most of the participants, maybe you deserved to have those demands enforced upon you. A valid point.
At the very least, I would like to see a big red flag "Your enemy can enforce demands". That would be nice. It would allow players to send their own concessions to the AI, instead of having demands enforced upon them.
If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to give it a read through.
Suggestions already posted elsewhere that have my seal of approval; that would be a part of my list:
Alliance trees for co-belligerents on DOW screen.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...t-allies-and-see-if-they-would-accept-the-CTA.
Total combat width in military tab.
Modified combat width in province tool tip.
More information on supported rebels in outliner.
Clickable map stuff removed while in macro builder.
Fleet auto transport optimizations – they should enter a friendly port if they have access when picking up and leaving troops.
Trade fleets detaching damaged ships for repairs. Same goes for Privateers.
Merc macro builder option to build all merc inf.
Previously having had a "can't be bothered" approach to EU4 feedback, there's bound to be a lot of stuff I've grown used to and as such, forgotten about for this list, it is by no means complete. Depending on the response for this long winded form of feedback, I may or may not post another one as more things come to mind. Only time will tell.
I've started keeping a list of things and features for EU4. Issues, annoyances, some more or less concrete suggestions mixed in with some general thoughts about the game. A consumer voicing his concerns. By no means is it a list of definitive fixes.
A list of things I want to see improved or reworked.
This is not me saying: "Here's a bunch of stuff for you to implement."
This is me saying: "Here's a bunch of stuff I'd like to see you improve upon. If it were to be included in future patches and expansions, I would be a happy consumer."
So, without further ado, in no particular order, here's a long ass list of stuff. Enjoy.
1. Peace deals.
The Peace deal interface is notorious for giving you false information. The three different parts of the interface will tell you three different things. The list of items to pick will tell you one cost. The summary on the left will tell you another cost. And the summary in the bottom right will tell you a third amount. Only very experienced players will know what the peace deal will actually cost. Things like being told your vassal will pay DIP, to being told you will pay 50 dip/province and ending up paying 0. Or being told you will pay 0 and ending up paying 200. It goes both ways and is very annoying. Unclear CB's, separate peace deals and vassal feeding all play a part in this. An overhaul/update/fix is needed.
2. Claims expiring.
Claims are set to expire after 25 years or after your current truce. However, if you conquer territory and the claims are to expire mid war, the claims will expire at the end of the month after you peace out. I find it strange that if I take my claims from France, and I have a truce with France; then the claim should stay on the land I annexed. Giving me a chance to delay coring, while still keeping the discount from having claims. Why the claims stay on France's land for the duration of the truce, and not on the provinces I annexed, is beyond me. For all I care, the claims on his retained cores can expire when I peace out. The claims I do want for the duration of the truce is on the land I did annex in the war.
3. Defender of the faith CTA.
There's nothing in the game to indicate when they will actually get a CTA. I believe there's a same continent rule, but it's relevant information never presented to the player. Very confusing when attacking Muslims in SEA, Africa and India. Will Ottoderp help them? Or will they not?
4. Regencies.
Oh the humanity. There's nothing worse than sitting on your arse for 15 years only to have you new king die after 2 months. A big revamp of the mechanic, or just opportunities to wage war during regencies, with or without penalties.
Having regency specific events or event chains for "regency countries" at war seems like an easy solution. Like running the risk of having internal struggles due to poor regencies, but also positive events to reflect good advisors within the regency council.
5. PU mechanics.
A proper rundown of the the mechanics and concrete numbers for the calculations on the wiki would go a long way. It's a big part of the game as demonstrated by the "game of thrones WC AAR" here on the forums. Yet most people don't know anything about this aspect of the game. PU's - How do they work? In mysterious ways.
6. Nextsong
Nextsong command in Ironman. Pretty straight forward. A fancy way of implementing this would be to add a jukebox GUI, like old-school titles used to have, think OpenTTD, Theme Hospital and the like. The man-hour friendly way is to just allow the console command.
7. Attach to friendly army button working for own armies.
I'd like to have this functionality in order to be able to organize my mercs in a better way. I would use it to have all my outdated mercs in their own stack attached to my main battle army. The separate merc button only does half the job as it detaches both outdated and current mercs. This functionality could be done in a more fancy way, with its own button, but I think allowing for attaching to your own armies is the quickest way to let me organize my armies the way I want. Allowing me to quickly disband and merge the outdated units, without constant reorganizing. Minimum dev time spent being my second consideration.
8. Adjustments to detach siege.
I disagree with the amount of infantry left behind by the game when you use the detach siege button. I believe it currently leaves behind infantry to match the level of the fort. 1k inf for lvl 1 fort, 2k inf for lvl 2 for, etc. If I have a 20 inf, 20 art army, and I use detach for siege. I would want the game to leave 1 inf 1 art for a lvl 2 fort.
An argument against this would be the new sortie button, as a 1/0/1 stack would be risky against a lvl 2 fort. But I would prefer that behavior above what we have atm. If I were playing against a player, I would simply detach twice to leave behind a 2/0/2 stack on lvl 2 forts.
Furthermore, the current detach siege never detaches cav, since it's not used in the eyes of the game. But you can still siege with 2 cav, even if you can't assault. Incorporating cav when detaching for sieges could be an improvement. The optimal implementation deserves a discussion. I for one argue that the current implementation is not optimal.
9. CB's.
A more clear declaration of what a CB allows you to take without penalty. Which parts are DIP free and which parts are AE-discounted? Added complexity due to vassal CB's. Vassal Reconquest is a confusing one. You can give provinces to your vassal for free, but it will be AE hell. Using "return core" will cost DIP, but not give AE. Things like this needs clarification. It makes no sense that two different options for the same goal have such different results in terms of AE & MP cost.
10. Vassal CB's
Not being able to use special vassal CB's like Holy War is just an inconvenience. There's nothing stopping me from taking a single low BT province adjacent to my vassal and enemy to let me use the Holy War CB. This is not a real hindrance, only an annoyance at best. If my vassal has access to Holy War, I should be able to use theirs instead of taking a single province for myself next to my intended target.
If this makes the game too easy, then maybe it's the CB that is the problem? As it stands, holy war is a ludicrously strong early game CB, unrivaled in its usability. And the only requirement is adjacency and religious difference.
11. Separate War/Specified CTA.
A lot of reasons as to why extended level of control would be nice. Eating a defenseless OPM will stop you from using an aggressive CTA vs France, as your allies will cite the multiple war malus. Passively participating in a defensive war will hinder you from an offensive DOW & CTA due to the same malus.
Sometimes your ally will be locked out of a war due to already being in a war with/against one or more of your attackers. But at the same time you have a second war which they, in theory could participate in. You cannot call them due to the "multiple war" malus. There's a lot of situations where the game currently stops you from using a CTA.
Each war having its own CTA button in the diplo screen would be a huge improvement.
12. Fleet auto transport option.
I don't trust my navy to not get killed when they auto-transport troops. I'd love for an option to have all navies start with auto transport disabled.
13. Ledger overhaul.
In general I would like to say this; the ledger is out of date and in dire need of some love. Cleaning up no longer relevant information.
Specifically, I would love to see better options in the building interface. More often than not, I only want to build manpower buildings in accepted culture provinces, just like I'm most interested to build trade buildings in estuary & center of trade provinces. Better filters & search functionality would facilitate this. Functionality to sort results in multiple columns, like tax & production. Separation of basic and advanced buildings.
Side note – This is probably very man-hour expensive work, but the ledger needs some love. Pretty please.
14. Privateers and PP.
Stay at home privateering fleets should not give PP. Just like stay at home trade fleets do not give trade power.
15. "Split in half" behavior
A few patches ago the "split in half"functionality changed. The game now considers each category individually. Splitting a 1/1/0 previously resulted in 1/0/0 + 0/1/0, it now stays 1/1/0. I preferred the old functionality. If I try to split a 1/1/0 stack, it's because I want to split it, not because I'm confused about the size or composition of my army.
That being said, preferably a 3/0/3 stack would split into 1/0/1 + 2/0/2, not 2/0/1 + 1/0/2.
The optimal behavior could be discussed at length, each system has its drawbacks. But I prefer the previous system over the current one.
16. Expanded Army template control
I wish I could designate specific provinces that will build stuff. Having a disconnected coastline will yield problems. Venice for example can't have a template that builds stuff from all provinces, as a lot of them are isolated. Having a connected east & west coast also gives rise to problems. See Mesoamerica. As the Aztecs, you probably only want to build on your east coast. To do this, you have to be very specific from which province you start building your navy template. Being able to specify which provinces that build a template would be a massive improvement. There's also the added aspect of having certain provinces with buildings. I for one plan out which provinces will have the 20% discount buildings. As is, I go for a 10 province template and then check which 10 provinces it builds from, building the buildings there. As a player I want the control, rather than the template controlling where I put my buildings.
17. Cut down to size peace deal option.
Having the option much like war reparations, but limiting the force limit of the target country. Giving said country AE if they break this treaty. An example would be beating France, you could them force them to only build up to X% of their FL without penalty. Going above that point would mean that they accrue AE with neighboring countries. Ahistorical, not fitting for the era would be arguments against it. A fun way to force AE on your opponent more like! Fits peace deal options like humiliate and war reparations imo.
18. Looting, I would love to see a new marching mode for armies.
Having them loot a province as they move through it. Increasing travel time (?) and/or forcing a tick of attrition in each province looted?
This is currently micro intensive if you want to avoid attrition.
There's ofc a balance aspect in here. If it's too easy to loot, it could have an implication on game balance. An argument against automatic looting would obviously be that the current micro raises the skill cap for more interesting MP games.
Making the rules for this mechanic more transparent for new players is also something that could use a discussion or two. Most people never find out exactly how looting works or why they suddenly get a yellow number flying across the screen as they start a siege in the middle of enemy territory.
19. Rework of enforced demands
If you ever find yourself in an epic war, that you manage to turn around against all odds. There's nothing worse than having your opponent enforce demands due to your negative warscore. You can have your opponent carpeted, but having had vassals, allies or yourself lost a lot of battles in the initial stage, you will be at a severely negative warscore.
Adding a modifier akin to "making gains" to prevent enforced demands would be really nice, at the risk of making the game too easy.
One could argue that if you get yourself into a situation where you can only win a war after separate peacing out most of the participants, maybe you deserved to have those demands enforced upon you. A valid point.
At the very least, I would like to see a big red flag "Your enemy can enforce demands". That would be nice. It would allow players to send their own concessions to the AI, instead of having demands enforced upon them.
If you made it this far, thanks for taking the time to give it a read through.
Suggestions already posted elsewhere that have my seal of approval; that would be a part of my list:
Alliance trees for co-belligerents on DOW screen.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...t-allies-and-see-if-they-would-accept-the-CTA.
Total combat width in military tab.
Modified combat width in province tool tip.
More information on supported rebels in outliner.
Clickable map stuff removed while in macro builder.
Fleet auto transport optimizations – they should enter a friendly port if they have access when picking up and leaving troops.
Trade fleets detaching damaged ships for repairs. Same goes for Privateers.
Merc macro builder option to build all merc inf.
Previously having had a "can't be bothered" approach to EU4 feedback, there's bound to be a lot of stuff I've grown used to and as such, forgotten about for this list, it is by no means complete. Depending on the response for this long winded form of feedback, I may or may not post another one as more things come to mind. Only time will tell.
Upvote
0
