Senseless mechanics

[Voxtant]

I have a few humble questions and proposals for Paradox developers as a poor mortal man who played this game too much.
When are we going to have mechanics that actually project how societies worked in the EU4 (or EU5) period instead of adding an unmeasurable amount of "flavour" (aka hard-coded solutions/events) to fix them? Many mechanics and systems in the game simply don't make sense.
-Trade system having fixed routes. Maybe a natural flow of trade goods from nations who produce a certain good to others who lack them. For example exotic goods from indian nations that flow to Europe. At first through the silk road and then through south Africa or America. So as European Powers improve their production and manufactories, the more they can import from Asia or America due to capital accumulation. Not muh triangular trade event.
-Developement in provinces only being increased with mana, instead of a peace/prosperity based system that gives you a chance of improving provinces evry month. You can add a population system instead of the current abstract manpower (what the heck is that). At least a flat population one. Without specifying the different pops like in Victoria.
-Culture system. Are you telling me Catalan or Aragonese aren't at least as culturally similar to Occitan culture as they are to Castilian culture? Occitan is in fact a more similar language. Continuing this example, does it makes sense that a culture like Catalan gets less maluses when automatically conquered by Castilians who were never their overlords, than 300 years of continuous french domination who were in fact their founders (Catalan Counties during reconquista)? What is a culture in eu4 anyway? A common language? A set of common customs? A shared history? An ethnicity? So 90% of the cultures in the game do not pass any of this requirements or any common requirements to be considered a culture by the developers. In many cases it seems to me like arbitrary and balance based decisions, also based in a flawed premise. It would make more sense if it was based more on customs with modifiers like religion customizing in CK III. And as you enfore this customs on new conquered lands, this lands become more integrated in the kingdom. Maybe even estates wanting a new overlord who gives them more privileges (basically a country that simply have more privileges for their estates).
-HRE is the epithome of this. You could perfectly make it a mechanic like some sort of the duchies system in CK III, where you could have more or less integrated/loyal duchies and counts. But no, we get a strangely unique cluster of states in Germany and north Italy where the universe bends to stablish a new set of physical laws just for the HRE emperor.
-Diplomats. Who doesn't now that in 1444 almost every state in the world just had 3 guys to communicate with other sovereign states and to stablish diplomatic relations? The question talks by itself.
-Honorific mention. Diplomatic system being an extension of war instead of war being an extension of diplomatic action. This causes the classical bordergore and historical nonesense we eu4 players are so used to. Bohemia blobbing, Hungary vanishing by Poland in the first years, HRE emperor (Austria) devouring HRE members through wars, Bengal looking for budhist monks' advise by blobbing into the Himalayas and then south China...

Many will say new players will feel overwhelmed by complexity, but, what is easier, learning "simpler" but strange mechanics, or more logical and natural mechanics that have more depth? The second option is more rewarding and satisfactory. Let's not make eu4 and paradox games a CIV 6 2.0.

I hope anyone who reads this post find it interesting or worth considering. I do not own truth, so I hope anyone can expand my vision and everyone's vision about this important topic by commenting or replying to this post. Thanks for reading, God bless you all and Merry Christmas.

 

[Nwaij]

I have a few humble questions and proposals for Paradox developers as a poor mortal man who played this game too much.
When are we going to have mechanics that actually project how societies worked in the EU4 (or EU5) period instead of adding an unmeasurable amount of "flavour" (aka hard-coded solutions/events) to fix them? Many mechanics and systems in the game simply don't make sense.
-Trade system having fixed routes. Maybe a natural flow of trade goods from nations who produce a certain good to others who lack them. For example exotic goods from indian nations that flow to Europe. At first through the silk road and then through south Africa or America. So as European Powers improve their production and manufactories, the more they can import from Asia or America due to capital accumulation. Not muh triangular trade event.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a rework of the trade system. As much as I am annoyed by the static-ness of it, I do know a thing or two about graph theory. One of those things is that you absolutely do not want any loops in a directed graph. Since the trade system is represented by a directed graph there isn't much that could be done. Maybe (read: not gonna happen!) some mission rewards/economic hegemony reward that gives you a one-time-use button to change your trade node into an end node - nodes with no exit can not cause a loop - could happen, but I'm reasonably sure that isn't going to happen.

-Developement in provinces only being increased with mana, instead of a peace/prosperity based system that gives you a chance of improving provinces evry month. You can add a population system instead of the current abstract manpower (what the heck is that). At least a flat population one. Without specifying the different pops like in Victoria.

Development with mana is a weird concept. At its current point in EU4s lifetime, a change to a pop system - no matter how abstract - is extremely unlikely to happen. But rejoyce, @Johan stated elsewhere that he would purge mana with fire, so there is a good chance that we will get a less senseless solution in the next iteration of this game.

-Culture system. Are you telling me Catalan or Aragonese aren't at least as culturally similar to Occitan culture as they are to Castilian culture? Occitan is in fact a more similar language. Continuing this example, does it makes sense that a culture like Catalan gets less maluses when automatically conquered by Castilians who were never their overlords, than 300 years of continuous french domination who were in fact their founders (Catalan Counties during reconquista)? What is a culture in eu4 anyway? A common language? A set of common customs? A shared history? An ethnicity? So 90% of the cultures in the game do not pass any of this requirements or any common requirements to be considered a culture by the developers. In many cases it seems to me like arbitrary and balance based decisions, also based in a flawed premise. It would make more sense if it was based more on customs with modifiers like religion customizing in CK III. And as you enfore this customs on new conquered lands, this lands become more integrated in the kingdom. Maybe even estates wanting a new overlord who gives them more privileges (basically a country that simply have more privileges for their estates).

The definition of "culture" is indeed pretty vague, and you are absolutely right that many of them are arbitrary game balance decessions. As much as I agree with you that a more flexible system would be desireable. Maybe we can get something like Sinicization could be added to other empires than the Celestial Empire as well?

-HRE is the epithome of this. You could perfectly make it a mechanic like some sort of the duchies system in CK III, where you could have more or less integrated/loyal duchies and counts. But no, we get a strangely unique cluster of states in Germany and north Italy where the universe bends to stablish a new set of physical laws just for the HRE emperor.

Uh... what? I'd argue that the duchies already are more (vassal, ally) or less (rival, war enemy) integrated and loyal to the emperor.

-Diplomats. Who doesn't now that in 1444 almost every state in the world just had 3 guys to communicate with other sovereign states and to stablish diplomatic relations? The question talks by itself.

This is another arbitrary game balance decession. It is also a widely inaccurate statement. I'd argue that your local emissaries work tireless all year every year in every foreign country that knows about you to reduce their worries about your recent conquests (passive AE decay...). You just happen to be limited in how much extra funding you can send to them to work more efficiently. Think about it - when you upgrade your country rank from duchy to kingdom you have obviously become richer and can thus afford more funding (represented by the extra diplomat).

-Merchants. Just an example of the kind of content eu4 has but really do not add anything at all. It just exists in the game. Unused potential.

I'll just concede this one.

-Honorific mention. Diplomatic system being an extension of war instead of war being an extension of diplomatic action. This causes the classical bordergore and historical nonesense we eu4 players are so used to. Bohemia blobbing, Hungary vanishing by Poland in the first years, HRE emperor (Austria) devouring HRE members through wars, Bengal looking for budhist monks' advise by blobbing into the Himalayas and then south China...

Many many odd design choices here. Point conceded again.

Many will say new players will feel overwhelmed by complexity, but, what is easier, learning "simpler" but strange mechanics, or more logical and natural mechanics that have more depth? The second option is more rewarding and satisfactory. Let's not make eu4 and paradox games a CIV 6 2.0.

I hope anyone who reads this post find it interesting or worth considering. I do not own truth, so I hope anyone can expand my vision and everyone's vision about this important topic by commenting or replying to this post. Thanks for reading, God bless you all and Merry Christmas.

...man compared to Civ 6 AI, the one we got is downright brilliant!

 

[Voxtant]

I wouldn't hold my breath for a rework of the trade system. As much as I am annoyed by the static-ness of it, I do know a thing or two about graph theory. One of those things is that you absolutely do not want any loops in a directed graph. Since the trade system is represented by a directed graph there isn't much that could be done. Maybe (read: not gonna happen!) some mission rewards/economic hegemony reward that gives you a one-time-use button to change your trade node into an end node - nodes with no exit can not cause a loop - could happen, but I'm reasonably sure that isn't going to happen.

Development with mana is a weird concept. At its current point in EU4s lifetime, a change to a pop system - no matter how abstract - is extremely unlikely to happen. But rejoyce, @Johan stated elsewhere that he would purge mana with fire, so there is a good chance that we will get a less senseless solution in the next iteration of this game.

The definition of "culture" is indeed pretty vague, and you are absolutely right that many of them are arbitrary game balance decessions. As much as I agree with you that a more flexible system would be desireable. Maybe we can get something like Sinicization could be added to other empires than the Celestial Empire as well?

Uh... what? I'd argue that the duchies already are more (vassal, ally) or less (rival, war enemy) integrated and loyal to the emperor.

This is another arbitrary game balance decession. It is also a widely inaccurate statement. I'd argue that your local emissaries work tireless all year every year in every foreign country that knows about you to reduce their worries about your recent conquests (passive AE decay...). You just happen to be limited in how much extra funding you can send to them to work more efficiently. Think about it - when you upgrade your country rank from duchy to kingdom you have obviously become richer and can thus afford more funding (represented by the extra diplomat).

I'll just concede this one.

Many many odd design choices here. Point conceded again.

...man compared to Civ 6 AI, the one we got is downright brilliant!

Fair enough. I didn't mention many aspects of the game because I know there are limits in game developement, and I'm not a game developer so it wouldn't be fair for me to just throw easy vague critics, so the trade thing I agree is something that more or less works so I guess it is not a priority. I do not completely despise the manual developement system for provinces, but I just think it should be expanded. But what I think it should be prioritised are diplomacy and culture system. Thank you for answering btw.

 

[st360]

Most of these suggestions are so vague and unconstructive there is very little to discuss.

"There shouldn't be 3 guys being diplomats, everyone knows nations didn't have just 3 guys doing diplomacy". Um... so whats the alternative? Diplomacy, but make it 20% more fun?

 

[Voxtant]

Most of these suggestions are so vague and unconstructive there is very little to discuss.

"There shouldn't be 3 guys being diplomats, everyone knows nations didn't have just 3 guys doing diplomacy". Um... do you have any point to make with this?

Yes, maybe a constant dip improvement with every country you are not rival. I agree the diplomat critic I made was very vague, but the others I don't think so. I was specific about them. Like, I don't know what you read, but what did you expect from a normal person from the internet, the specific code files for the game? Where is the unconstructiveness?

 

[Vulkandrache]

Where is the unconstructiveness?

What exactly is your problem with Merchants for example?
Why do they add nothing to your game?
Im usualy excited for every single one more i get early on.
Less so once i already have 15+ but hey.

 

[Voxtant]

What exactly is your problem with Merchants for example?
Why do they add nothing to your game?
Im usualy excited for every single one more i get early on.
Less so once i already have 15+ but hey.

Yeah, you are right, I'm going to delete that.

 

[WhiskyGlen]

-Diplomats. Who doesn't now that in 1444 almost every state in the world just had 3 guys to communicate with other sovereign states and to stablish diplomatic relations? The question talks by itself.

That thought crosses my mind every time I play. But if this were the case, you could just claim every single neighboring province in time. Or, you could always have max improved relations with every single nation allowing alliances almost at will. A diplomat for every nation (especially neighbors) is probably more realistic, but is it more fun for a game? I'd say no.

 

[Voxtant]

That thought crosses my mind every time I play. But if this were the case, you could just claim every single neighboring province in time. Or, you could always have max improved relations with every single nation allowing alliances almost at will. A diplomat for every nation (especially neighbors) is probably more realistic, but is it more fun for a game? I'd say no.

It is a question of how did diplomatic relations worked in that time. Keeping some kind of relations limit but having a chance of improving relations, instead of a flat number every month. Having greater chances depending on the diplomatic modifiers of esch country. Changing the criteria for forming alliances based on common interests like common rivalries or the opposite like wanting the same provinces so alliances being imposible to make. Also a diplomatic new system should be made.

 

[annulen]

I wouldn't hold my breath for a rework of the trade system. As much as I am annoyed by the static-ness of it, I do know a thing or two about graph theory. One of those things is that you absolutely do not want any loops in a directed graph. Since the trade system is represented by a directed graph there isn't much that could be done.

Directed graph can easily have loops, but *acyclic* graph cannot. And EU4 trade routes must actually be a DAG, because having trade value walk in cycles would lead to its growth from trade steering multipliers, and would allow collecting countries to take their share again from each turn of the cycle.

However, nothing says this DAG cannot change at runtime without losing its properties. For example, in 1.34 one of DAG's edges (Canton -> Siam) has changed its direction (to Siam -> Canton) without affecting other edges. This means that direction of trade route between Canton and Siam (and other "reversible" edges if they exist or are added) could in theory be controlled by things happening in game. Another possibility is to have some edges initially disabled, and requiring certain trigger to activate (e.g. colonizing certain provinces and/or making investments to establish a new route).

Maybe (read: not gonna happen!) some mission rewards/economic hegemony reward that gives you a one-time-use button to change your trade node into an end node - nodes with no exit can not cause a loop - could happen, but I'm reasonably sure that isn't going to happen.

I don't think it's necessary because you can already make node "quasi-terminal" by taking control of its downstreams.

 

[annulen]

That thought crosses my mind every time I play. But if this were the case, you could just claim every single neighboring province in time. Or, you could always have max improved relations with every single nation allowing alliances almost at will. A diplomat for every nation (especially neighbors) is probably more realistic, but is it more fun for a game? I'd say no.

For comparison, in Victoria 2 there is a separate diplomat for each country, but diplomatic actions require spending diplomatic points, so your diplomatic activity is limited by monthly income of these points. Travel times are still there though, and you have to wait between performing two sequential diplomatic actions with the same country.

 

[TK3600]

Development with mana is a weird concept. At its current point in EU4s lifetime, a change to a pop system - no matter how abstract - is extremely unlikely to happen. But rejoyce, @Johan stated elsewhere that he would purge mana with fire, so there is a good chance that we will get a less senseless solution in the next iteration of this game.

I screamed out of pure joy on this statement. I would say 90% of senseless mechanic is attributable to mana.

 

[TK3600]

That thought crosses my mind every time I play. But if this were the case, you could just claim every single neighboring province in time. Or, you could always have max improved relations with every single nation allowing alliances almost at will. A diplomat for every nation (especially neighbors) is probably more realistic, but is it more fun for a game? I'd say no.

Lets talk about relation slots. This one is a easy fix. Maintain alliances? Lots of work. Maintain a vassal? Lots of work. Military access cost same slot as that. Makes no sense in logic or balance especially when enemy also get access. Hell, you can even just let enemy ask and save you a slot.

I think this is one place mana makes sense. A mil access is cheap. A gaurantee of independence is medium. Alliances are costly. Stuff like that.

 

[Kovax]

I just got this game on GOG a week or so ago, and finally had some time to sit and play it. Right away, I noticed that almost everything is tied to "Ruler mana", which needs to be spent on totally unrelated things like research, administrative improvements, and realm stability. It feels seriously artificial.

This is a sandbox game, but somebody obviously dumped a large number of solid lumps into the sandbox in the form of "missions" and other "steering" events. When I chose to avoid one historical (and highly problematical) default choice and suffer the penalty for it, the game couldn't leave it at that, it had to present the same option again (and another penalty) a couple of months later, and then an event related to the choice, which gave me the option to change my decision, and yet another penalty for not doing what the developers clearly intended for that country.

Another country (allied, with a royal marriage and +200 relations) suddenly broke off our alliance and declared me a rival. I was then asked to choose another rival, because one of my previous ones was no longer considered an appropriate choice, for whatever reason. Problem is, the only 3 names on the list were my 3 allies. Apparently, that was a problem for my former ally as well, so I got dumped in spite of great relations. Once again, this feels arbitrary and artificial.

Playing Normal difficulty for the first try, up to around 1480, just started to figure out what I SHOULD be doing, and I'm already feeling that this is too easy and too railroaded to be enjoyable, if you manage to survive the initial dog-eat-dog scramble at the beginning.

Overall, the amount of detail and depth of the game is a big step up from EUIII, but the interface (all those fiddly little icons cluttering the screen) is overwhelming on first sight, and still annoying after 10-20 hours. I have to go mainly by the location of the info, not by the icons, because most of them are absolutely meaningless to me. EUIII was a MUCH cleaner approach, but someone must have felt that reinventing the wheel from scratch beats improving and expanding on what's already working. There are some excellent mechanics involved here, but a number of other things which are clearly for balance reasons only, and not the least bit historical or plausible. Worse, the emphasis on making everything look "animated" puts a performance hit on the game without doing ANYTHING for playability.

If I weren't totally burned out on EUIII after something on the order of 5K-10K hours of time, I'd probably go back to playing that. As it is, I'll likely put a couple hundred hours in on this before shelving it. It's not bad, but it's not GREAT. I'll take a great game that looks "meh" over a "meh" game with great graphics any day of the week.

 

[I like wars and maps]

I just got this game on GOG a week or so ago, and finally had some time to sit and play it. Right away, I noticed that almost everything is tied to "Ruler mana", which needs to be spent on totally unrelated things like research, administrative improvements, and realm stability. It feels seriously artificial.

This is a sandbox game, but somebody obviously dumped a large number of solid lumps into the sandbox in the form of "missions" and other "steering" events. When I chose to avoid one historical (and highly problematical) default choice and suffer the penalty for it, the game couldn't leave it at that, it had to present the same option again (and another penalty) a couple of months later, and then an event related to the choice, which gave me the option to change my decision, and yet another penalty for not doing what the developers clearly intended for that country.

Never execpted to see someone with just a few hours basically sum up the entirety of EU4s design ever since missions were added to the game.

 

[TK3600]

I just got this game on GOG a week or so ago, and finally had some time to sit and play it. Right away, I noticed that almost everything is tied to "Ruler mana", which needs to be spent on totally unrelated things like research, administrative improvements, and realm stability. It feels seriously artificial.

This is a sandbox game, but somebody obviously dumped a large number of solid lumps into the sandbox in the form of "missions" and other "steering" events. When I chose to avoid one historical (and highly problematical) default choice and suffer the penalty for it, the game couldn't leave it at that, it had to present the same option again (and another penalty) a couple of months later, and then an event related to the choice, which gave me the option to change my decision, and yet another penalty for not doing what the developers clearly intended for that country.

Another country (allied, with a royal marriage and +200 relations) suddenly broke off our alliance and declared me a rival. I was then asked to choose another rival, because one of my previous ones was no longer considered an appropriate choice, for whatever reason. Problem is, the only 3 names on the list were my 3 allies. Apparently, that was a problem for my former ally as well, so I got dumped in spite of great relations. Once again, this feels arbitrary and artificial.

Playing Normal difficulty for the first try, up to around 1480, just started to figure out what I SHOULD be doing, and I'm already feeling that this is too easy and too railroaded to be enjoyable, if you manage to survive the initial dog-eat-dog scramble at the beginning.

Overall, the amount of detail and depth of the game is a big step up from EUIII, but the interface (all those fiddly little icons cluttering the screen) is overwhelming on first sight, and still annoying after 10-20 hours. I have to go mainly by the location of the info, not by the icons, because most of them are absolutely meaningless to me. EUIII was a MUCH cleaner approach, but someone must have felt that reinventing the wheel from scratch beats improving and expanding on what's already working. There are some excellent mechanics involved here, but a number of other things which are clearly for balance reasons only, and not the least bit historical or plausible. Worse, the emphasis on making everything look "animated" puts a performance hit on the game without doing ANYTHING for playability.

If I weren't totally burned out on EUIII after something on the order of 5K-10K hours of time, I'd probably go back to playing that. As it is, I'll likely put a couple hundred hours in on this before shelving it. It's not bad, but it's not GREAT. I'll take a great game that looks "meh" over a "meh" game with great graphics any day of the week.

Play MEIOU and Taxes mod.

 

[Kovax]

Play MEIOU and Taxes mod.

Thanks for the reminder, I remember MEIOU from EUIII, but I'll need to check out the details of its EUIV implementation. Meanwhile, I regard mods as something to install AFTER you've played the base game long enough to understand the reasons WHY you're playing a mod.

 

[brifbates]

Thanks for the reminder, I remember MEIOU from EUIII, but I'll need to check out the details of its EUIV implementation. Meanwhile, I regard mods as something to install AFTER you've played the base game long enough to understand the reasons WHY you're playing a mod.

Be warned, the current iteration is pretty substantially different to EU III's MEIOU (and also base EU IV).

 

[DominusNovus]

Enovys, in general, are a holdover from EU's boardgame roots, and we'd be much better off without them.

 

[cursorhiker]

Extremely underutilized mechanics are autonomy, overextension, and corruption.

Autonomy basically always ticks to 0 unless something interferes, most countries start with autonomy way too low already, and reduction of local autonomy isn't the huge headache it historically was. Your estates don't really feel any sort of way about local autonomy and historic privileges being revoked.

Overextension is only a problem immediately after conquest, before you can click the magic button to core a territory. Once cored, no matter where in the world it is, how many angry locals have to be governed, if you even have a land or sea connection to the province, what heathen or heretic religion they follow, there is never any issue with your administration being unable to properly govern.

Corruption is rarely a factor at all for any country. Even if it is you can just pay money to reduce it (lol), and the factors that do cause it: overextension, wrong-religion provinces, etc. are all very easy to avoid or temporary.

All three of these should tick towards an equilibrium based on your government, reforms, etc.

A mechanic that is utterly ahistorical (and for me, is an admission that EU4 is terrible at macro level country management) is colonial nations. De jure self-governing colonies quite simply did not exist for most of the game's timeline (only at the very end does it start to happen) and no strain is put on the central government for large bodies of overseas territory. Colonies being able to defend themselves is also fairly ahistorical (only big settler colonies were able to do so in any way.) You want to represent the de facto autonomy that many colonies had? If only there were some sort of mechanic to show a central government's limited control over an area...