This sums up why something like coaltions in the game should be applauded. There is always modding for those who don't want to play a relatively more historical EU4.
Should we have an "historical" option at game start?
- Thread starter lucaluca
- Start date
-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
This sums up why something like coaltions in the game should be applauded. There is always modding for those who don't want to play a relatively more historical EU4.
Just because something did not happen does not make it "ahistorical" (Definition being used: lacking historical perspective or context.) Countries historically did not behave perfectly, nor did they have a unified goal for hundreds of years. It is entirely reasonable to believe that a country that never lost a single war for 300 years who provided a better quality of living and economic growth than anywhere else in the world, gave local authority and minimal taxes while providing safety and security unprecedented throughout the history of the world could have united at least a majority of the world, and it is completely possible that the combined forces of most of the world could militarily conquer the rest of the world.
If anything conquering large swathes of land should be much easier, and keeping them happy should be far harder, but I try to avoid recommendations to make EU4 more like CK2 mechanics-wise because at the end of the day I'd rather they be distinct games than just a different size of map.
Fair enough. But lets not forget that seeking more power/reward for self, or one's "country" seems to be one of the few generalizations that holds nearly universally across human natural history. Indeed, seems pretty common to mammals, probably even to all animals.
I think this is all we need to remember to understand why WC never happened, and indeed, why most efforts to head in that direction were generally halted after only a few steps.
And that´s why this thread is made, to suggest that the game should have a mode A for mode A players, and mode B for mode B players, as people give different values to variables (notably, if techonology can advance fast, or can´t in the case of backwards cultures, of if coalitions are BS)
If player A thinks Cherokee/Aztecs/Kongo should lose in every game and player B thinks they should survive, you can only please both with different sets of mechanic values (more monarch points, less tech malus etc etc). If it´s WORTH doing that, well that depends on people opinion, but it´s the only way.
You're ignoring how historically every empire that's grown even remotely large enough to be considered a possible world conqueror has fallen, which seems like a very systematic trend that is a testament to there being an optimal equilibrium for the size of a state. Sure, we can always say that world conquest is physically possible, but based on what we understand about the dynamics of states and societies it remains seemingly implausible.
Sorry buddy, but I'm going to have to heavily disagree with you here. For a game so centered on emergent systems and player-designated victory conditions, the only thing that separates mechanics and narrative is the player's mind. While that distinction works alright for many more traditional games, it breaks down for EU. Since there's no non-interactive narrative cutscenes, it's all just one big mechanical system, and the player decides which mechanics they wish to incorporate into their internal narrative; this can vary between players. Some players, like myself, might choose to utilize historical plausibility as what decides whether a mechanic qualifies as making a narrative contribution, and I'm sure other people have their own criteria. This is a much more robust way of seeing a game like EU than the artificial distinction between mechanics and narrative as separate parts of the game.
I think it's more of a question of levels of abstraction and simulation, at least when I personally use "historical" (or more ideally "plausible") to justify certain mechanics over others. Take base tax vs. simulating population growth/decline in a province: the latter is indisputably more historical because base tax is an abstraction that did not exist historically, and I happen to feel that higher historical fidelity improves the experience (because my play style centers on creating a plausible narrative rather than optimizing mechanics). I feel that history was a perfect system in which everything was balanced in one way or another, and we already have a wealthy understanding of general historical processes, so I don't see the need to create novel, gamey abstractions that comprise potentially-less-plausible systems. Yes, the game has a limited scope and we'll have to leave stuff out, but we can do that and still retain the system's core elements instead of abstracting everything beyond recognition.
So you would conclude that the study of history as a rule-based system is meaningless? Well, you're entitled to your own opinion, but there are many prominent historians who would disagree with you. To me, all the great men and the exceptional incidents of seeming arbitrariness ("things almost happened X other way if not for Y") get a disproportionate amount of attention because they are just that: exceptional and phenomenal. The vast majority of history on the other hand does follow a causal pattern akin to a rule-based system.
At the very least, even if historicism has no impact on the performance of game mechanics in a strictly gamist sense, what about the narrative you always distinguish? Surely most people here can agree that historically plausible mechanics are preferable in this regard, and is this not equally valid grounds for judging mechanics? It seems you operate in a hyper-gamist manner, which is fine, but you've got to understand that there are other ways of approaching the game. A game, especially one like EU4, is so much more than just a game, and really the main reason we call it a game is for me because terms like "interactive play system" are a lot more unwieldy. There are multiple ways of interpreting the same element of a system; is it a game mechanic, a narrative point, a simulation rule, etc.? You seem to think that you have the authority to distinguish the boundaries between such aspects of the "game", when in reality this can and will differ from player to player; just because you consider something purely a mechanic and thus it should only be evaluated in a gamist light doesn't mean that other people must see that thing in the same manner. It's subjective.
There is a very big difference (very big, not to be understated) between arguments about "historical" cases, and arguments about historical processes. I personally agree fully that the former are completely biased and worthless at the end of the day (and if they're all you mean to dismiss then I'm sorry for misinterpreting you). But I feel that we do have enough of a system-based understanding of history to decide which mechanics better approximate particular historical processes better than other mechanics do, in a generalized sense. Citing historical cases is like trying to reverse engineer an equation from a series of points, and to me that's not productive. It's better off to approach things from a top-down perspective, and while there will always be exception, at least that way you will capture the majority of cases.
So please everyone, stop bringing up historical cases, and focus more on the historical processes. The way I see it, cases are the grounds for in-game events, and processes are the domain of mechanics. Do not conflate the two.
I think I've mostly addressed this in the above paragraphs, but what would you advocate instead? What is your productive framework of discussion that you prefer? Something to deal with maximizing "strategy", I'm sure... but is not an impossibly complex and balanced system a la history the pinnacle of strategy? It seems to me that the historical agents who actually dealt with those systems were far keener strategists than we'll ever be with our incredible abstractions. So then what is it? Accessibility, ease of use? I say to leave that to other strategy games. I don't know what else you're advocating.
...
All of this said, I don't believe the OP's suggestion is particularly "historical" or anything, as I have stated in a previous post in this thread.
Last edited:
Ignoring the fact that it is mathematically certain that at minimum all but one WCing empire would have to fall, this argument assumes that every empire that fell had to fall and that it was not preventable given X, Y, and Z, there are certainly many mechanics that can cause you to fail a WC currently, the "pro WC" crowd want it to be possible to have the alternative.
Implausible is an excellent word to describe WC, and I don't mind it being implausibly difficult to do. .03% success rate given do-overs and the ability to learn from history that hasn't even happened yet sounds implausible to me.
.png){kind=avatar}
Figures you'd show up.
I don't think the special snowflake premise holds up. However great and however unique, EU4 is still a game of strategy like any other game of strategy. It's a system of rules, or game mechanics, and as the game plays out over time, you get the game dynamics. When humans are playing the game, they attach a narrative to give the game personal meaning, but this is incidental to the mechanics (an AI playing chess plays the same way regardless of whether the pieces are named pawns and queens or x1 and x2, obviously). It's the same for EU4. It doesn't matter whether we call the snowball inhibition rule(s) coalitions or rebels or the anti-expansion fairy. What matters is what the rule does, and once we are satisfied with what the rule does, we can call it whatever we find most historical, if that's our goal. Or whatever we find most hilarious. Or anything, really, because it's just a narrative we superimpose on the mechanics to facilitate the construction of personal meaning out of a system of rules playing out over time.
I think that's a great example of why narrative and mechanics are independent. It's certainly a more historical narrative, but so what? I'm not arguing that we shouldn't implement the more plausible narrative, after all, but that trying to determine the best mechanics by examining the possible narratives is a doomed effort. It seems to me that we could easily change "base tax" into "population" (narrative) without changing the mechanics, or we could make base tax increase and decrease over time (mechanics/dynamics) without changing the narrative. Or both, why not, though then we'd obviously be changing both.
As I believe I've shown, narrative has no effect on game mechanics. "Historically plausible narratives are preferable to historically implausible narratives" is a position I strongly agree with, while "Historically plausible mechanics are preferable to historically implausible mechanics" is nonsense. We call EU4 a game because ... it is a game? I mean, I get that defining what exactly constitutes a game is tricky business, but it's commonly understood to be a game, it's marketed as a game by the product's creators, and it's well understood by traditional means of understanding strategy games such as game theory. I can't do better than the duck test here, though, so if you dispute that EU4 is a game, then I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. In any case, I don't claim to have "authority to define the boundaries," but I certainly have the "authority" to present a reasoned analysis and conclusion for why the boundaries should be in a particular place.
Stop confusing narrative and mechanics! There can be reasoned debate about narrative, and there can be reasoned debate about mechanics, and even about the interaction between them, but only if we keep straight when we're talking about what. To make it perfectly clear what I mean:
- 1: Discuss how to balance the mechanics in terms of their effect on game dynamics. If we want to limit expansion, how do we do that? What are the implications on game dynamics if we do it in this particular way?
- 2: Discuss the most suitable narrative for these mechanics. What's an intuitive and historically plausible means of achieving this effect?
Edit: In the case of adding entirely new game systems, it would probably be reversed to narrative first, though.
Last edited:
Man, your post is like a XVI century book, full of erudition, and devoid of real content...
If seen under scrutiny of historical examples many stuff Paradox made make sense, and others not as much (cardinals reducing tech cost derp derp), and the ones that make sense their potency often isn´t agreed between players (coalition is the classic example, but there are others).
If a game is set in a historical period you have to use examples of war and society to determine what is aceptable or not in the mechanics, just as a game about physics would use physics as a basis. Silly example - if in Angry Birds gravity didn´t exist, everyone would think that is BS, just like if overextension wasn´t used in EU 4 everyone with historical knowledge would think it´s BS as well, as the difficulty in managing and controlling populations of different cultures and religions was VERY real. Likewise, agressive moves of conquest that affected status quo also were frowned upon, and that´s why we have coalitions versus agressive countries. Etc Etc.
If seen under scrutiny of historical examples many stuff Paradox made make sense, and others not as much (cardinals reducing tech cost derp derp), and the ones that make sense their potency often isn´t agreed between players (coalition is the classic example, but there are others).
If a game is set in a historical period you have to use examples of war and society to determine what is aceptable or not in the mechanics, just as a game about physics would use physics as a basis. Silly example - if in Angry Birds gravity didn´t exist, everyone would think that is BS, just like if overextension wasn´t used in EU 4 everyone with historical knowledge would think it´s BS as well, as the difficulty in managing and controlling populations of different cultures and religions was VERY real. Likewise, agressive moves of conquest that affected status quo also were frowned upon, and that´s why we have coalitions versus agressive countries. Etc Etc.
Last edited:
Figures you'd show up.
For the record I don't think EU4 is the only "special snowflake" example; Minecraft belongs to a completely different genre but I think the relationship between its mechanics and narrative is comparable. The same goes for any open-ended "sandbox"-esque game. It seems that we agree on how narrative arises from a mechanical rule-based game (it's all code at the end of the day).
But yes, historicism is what I choose to go by. That said, there are weak and strong arguments for historicism. Historical casuistry is weak; analysis of deeper processes is strong. We must also be careful not to focus too much on historical outcomes, because after all if that is all that mattered it wouldn't be very interactive. What we must do is see history in terms of a "game", and try to model the various strategic choices that the various agents had along with those choices' respective consequences. History remains our basis, but we do not sacrifice agency or strategy this way.
In line with mechanics and narrative being interconnected, I could only ever imagine changing both. In fact, what we really change is the mechanics, and this in turn leads to changes in narrative perceptions. Changing a word does not equal changing narrative; narrative change can only accompany mechanical change. Along these lines, having base tax increase or decrease (but still calling it that) would change some (but not all, as again it's subjective which mechanics contribute to narrative) players' narrative as they incorporate such fluctuations into their internal narrative. Personally, I think "population" is more conducive to narrative than "base tax", so I'd rather call it that and model it accordingly, but that's just a change meant to facilitate narrative, not a change to narrative itself, which can really only change (at least, in any significant capacity) as a result of change in mechanics.
Yes, the casual relationship between mechanics and narrative is one-way, but that doesn't mean that narrative is less important. In fact, "narrative" describes the experiences which are the entire point of engaging with the mechanical system, so it makes sense that you should alter the mechanics to tune the narrative. Historically plausible mechanics are more conducive to historically plausible narrative than historically implausible mechanics, and that right there is enough reason to prefer the former, particularly given that there's no inevitable down-side to using historically plausible mechanics (it's just a matter of implementation).
I'm not arguing that EU4 is not a game; I'm arguing that "game" does not describe all of what EU4 is. Game is a subset of a EU4 centered around its systems as a purely mechanical affair, but story is another valid subset, as is historical simulation, etc. Thus we should not view every component of EU4 purely through the lens of "game", because this viewpoint does not capture the big picture.
Please clarify where I "confused narrative and mechanics" in the quote you are responding to, because I'm not sure how to respond.
I don't think processes are any more convincing than are outcomes with respect to mechanics. They are more convincing with respect to narrative, but like I said, there's no reason other than a desire for a historically plausible narrative keeping Paradox from implementing a literal Anti-Expansion Fairy mechanic to replace coalitions. Please forgive me for not responding to the Minecraft point, but I've never played it and can't say whether it's comparable or not.
Changing the words "base tax" to "population" does exactly equal to changing the narrative without changing the mechanics. It might be a narrative that is not as historically plausible without additional fine-tuning of values, but that goes without saying for any change. So you're right in the sense that changing names can make the narrative more or less plausible, but changing "base tax" to "population" would certainly be a clean narrative change.
It's not one-way, it's no-way. Mechanics don't cause narrative, and narrative doesn't cause mechanics, though one combination of mechanics and narrative can produce more plausible game dynamics (or processes, if you prefer) than another combination.
Sorry, you didn't, I was trying to be clever. That was the first line of the post you responded to, and it is the basis for my proposed "productive framework."
I do lol XD This is precisely why I can never play as Venice. Game is over almost from the start haha
No! That's just it!! I'm not even saying "this game is not a full simulation of history."
I'm saying that ANY game where there is, for example, a "France" that is a decisionmaker, where the player represents a "nation," is itself not historical. The entire fundamental basis of the game is NOT HISTORY. It is more like Risk than it is like a history book.
Even if every aspect of the game were 1000% more historical... it would still be a 0% historical game.
As to processes vs. outcomes in terms of mechanics, the former is clearly more relevant because outcomes are not a basis for mechanics. Outcomes are created by processes in history, and by mechanics in a game. To create mechanics from outcomes (as with historical cases) is circular reasoning of the finest variety. And my point is that "narrative" is so much more than naming stuff though, and given that modifying mechanics also modifies narrative, we can modify mechanics on the basis of what narrative we want.
It's not really a significant narrative change though, in much the same way that renaming one of the character in a story is not a significant change in narrative. To really change the essence of narrative you must change mechanics, whether those are the rules of a game or the dynamics of a story. If we really separate mechanics and narrative by system and experience, even renaming a mechanic is technically changing a mechanic in a minor way.
One does not cause the existence of the other, but changes in one does cause changes in the other. It's almost like supervenience, if you're familiar with that notion. Please clarify how dynamics constitute a combination of mechanics and narrative in the context of an emergent game system. As far as I know, dynamics are just the behavior of interaction between the rules of a system, but what is their nature as something that can be observed and judged? While some games have separate systems for narrative and mechanics, this isn't the case for EU4; the real distinction to be drawn is between system and experience, which is what I'm describing with mechanics and narrative.
Ah, it seems the joke flew over my head. I guess I feel that your framework is dated and inflexible (while separating mechanics and narrative is definitely the traditional view), and it's time for a paradigm shift to facilitate understanding emergent systems-based games.
I'm just going to address this as a whole, if you don't mind. First off, I'm chuckling it up a bit here, since usually I'm the one arguing that the "traditional" view of something should be replaced by a complex dynamic systems-based paradigm emphasizing emergence. Do you work with complex dynamics systems research as well, out of curiosity? In any case, I sympathize with the view that EU can productively be viewed as a complex dynamic system, and for participants in a discussion with a firm grounding in math and complex systems theory, it's certainly a very productive framework.
Second, I can agree that what we should really do is go beyond "stop confusing mechanics and narrative" and go to complex dynamic systems. However, even if we do so, we still need to keep mechanics and narrative as separate dimensions, since they are then not dependent, but interdependent. Not confusing mechanics and narrative is a prerequisite for moving on to an understanding of EU4 as a complex dynamic system. The best example for why this is is that non-human players aren't influenced by what I'm calling the narrative components, and that's my criterion for discriminating between the two: that which affects human and non-human players alike are mechanical components (rules), those components which only apply to human players are narrative components (narrative). We can maybe talk about how the game dynamic for human players emerges from a unified mechanics-narrative system, but not for non-human players.
What emerges is not something programmed into the game (it wouldn't really be emergence then, eh?), but behavior, which is where the interaction between the two comes in, and this is why you always see me talking about "maximizing the strategic space," as you put it. When I speak of maximizing the strategic space, I am really talking about maximizing the space of possible behaviors that emerge from the interaction between narrative and mechanics. In the complex dynamic systems sense, I object to coalitions because they restrict the strategic space to the set of behaviors that minimize coalition formation, and given the nature of coalitions, it also restricts the perceptual array to a single variable (AE). This is what makes coalitions as-is a boring mechanic, but it has nothing to do with the narrative: it would be just as boring if we removed coalitions and replaced it with a "rebels" mechanic, or an Anti-Expansion Fairy mechanic, which had the same effect. Hence, pure appeals to narrative will always be doomed to produce poor mechanical changes. Even if it gets it right for humans, it almost can't help but get it wrong for non-human players.
So, okay, we can either have a full-context understanding of the game system's nonlinearly-coupled, dynamical, self-organized critical, synergistic, scale-free, exquisitely context-sensitive, interaction-dominant, multifractal, interdependent nature, or we can just deal with mechanics and narrative as separate entities that interact. Given a certain level of mutual understanding of complex dynamic systems, the former is obviously preferable, but I wish you godspeed in spreading the good word to the rest of the forum denizens.
I studied history and psychology undergraduate, but I'm trying to learn a bit of programming and go into either cognitive science or game design. I remember you mentioning you did research in something rather related to such things, and thus I had a chuckle as well writing that part.
Okay, I think we're making progress. However, I would insist that EU4's narrative is largely decided by the player, not only in the sense that you can decide its trajectory, but also that you can decide what constitutes narrative and what doesn't. Given the lack of authorial narrative, you could say EU4 offloads the narrative burden to the player, and thus there's no need for a narrative "module" within the game. Let's look at the building blocks of narrative in EU4. For my play style, alliances, wars, peace treaties, etc. are all- while on a basic level entirely mechanical in nature- points in the narrative, and it's my job to connect the dots. I'm not sure how you can see narrative elements as separate from such mechanical events unless your internal narrative is based solely on random event text (and even that is often tied to a mechanical development). Thus I'm not sure where you begin identifying certain elements as "narrative" and others as "mechanical"; certainly the name of the mechanics impacts narrative, but narrative is a lot more than nomenclature.
That said, I do think it's an important thing to keep in mind that AI are not affected by narrative, given that human minds are what construct narrative in the first place. I think you may be onto a useful distinction, but after all a particular country's AI hardly takes into account all mechanical happenings in the game, so do they then become narrative? And aren't the AI special subsets of mechanics themselves, which contribute to the player's narrative in their respective way? What aspect of an AI opponent and what aspect is narrative?
I just don't see how you can hold that mechanics and narrative are two separate interacting components of the game's system when there's no basis for this in the way that game programs are actually structured. The only possible criterion for narrative that I can imagine is the player's interpretation.
Alright, I can acknowledge that you can oppose a mechanic on those grounds that it takes choice/agency away from the player, but of course you can equally oppose coalitions from a narrative perspective if they force you to adopt meta-gaming tactics to avoid ahistorical outcomes.
You still seem to take a very limited view of narrative though. Narrative is just as much about behavior and dynamics as gameplay is. Sure, you can rename something and that will evoke a nominally different construct, but overhauling a mechanic will always produce more profound changes to narrative. For me, narrative is simply the player's interpretation of the system
Well, I have yet to see mechanics and narrative interact in EU4, or in any game for that matter. In most games the system just delivers a prefabricated narrative, whereas in a game like EU4 the behavior/dynamics of the system's mechanics facilitate the player creating an internal narrative. Still, the only causal relationship I can see between the two is that if you change mechanics you will change narrative (which is not to say changing mechanics is the only way to change narrative, as you hopefully recognize). I'm curious how you would substantiate your view of the causal relationship between the two (if you believe there is one).So, okay, we can either have a full-context understanding of the game system's nonlinearly-coupled, dynamical, self-organized critical, synergistic, scale-free, exquisitely context-sensitive, interaction-dominant, multifractal, interdependent nature, or we can just deal with mechanics and narrative as separate entities that interact. Given a certain level of mutual understanding of complex dynamic systems, the former is obviously preferable, but I wish you godspeed in spreading the good word to the rest of the forum denizens.
Last edited:
It's probably more accurate to say that I take a strict view of narrative than a limited view, in the sense that it's something clearly defined and distinct from its mechanics counterpart. I also think you're underestimating the degree to which the narrative you create is baked into the game. The semantic context, the choice of artistic style, what information the interface exposes and hides, etc., are all enormously important determinants of the narrative the player ultimately ends up creating, and hence the behaviors they ultimately engage in. If the semantic context was more sci-fi, you wouldn't create the same narrative, and if coalitions were instead rebels, you wouldn't create the same narrative, etc. These factors, however, are entirely irrelevant to how a non-human player behaves in the game: an AI plays the same whether the representation is coalitions or rebels, or whether the semantic context is medieval or sci-fi, and hence there is a necessary distinction to be made between mechanics (the rules of the game) and the narrative (how the rules are represented to the human player).
I've been arguing that mechanics and narrative are causally independent (no-way relationship). Neither causes the other, and any narrative can in principle be coupled to any mechanics. Good mechanics and bad narrative results in a fun but non-immersive game, while bad mechanics and good narrative results in boring gameplay you stick with for the good story. Angry Pigs has good mechanics, but it's hardly immersive. Planescape: Torment has godawful mechanics, but is one of the most celebrated games of all times because of the story.
I've been arguing that mechanics and narrative are causally independent (no-way relationship). Neither causes the other, and any narrative can in principle be coupled to any mechanics. Good mechanics and bad narrative results in a fun but non-immersive game, while bad mechanics and good narrative results in boring gameplay you stick with for the good story. Angry Pigs has good mechanics, but it's hardly immersive. Planescape: Torment has godawful mechanics, but is one of the most celebrated games of all times because of the story.
Last edited:
You seem to take a rather reductionist view of narrative as well, if your examples of changing narrative are simply changing the names of things.
Okay, I think we've gotten to the core of the matter. While all those things you mention definitely impact narrative and are aspects of the game, I don't think they are components of the game's system. I think it would be more accurate to describe them as the narrative qualities of various mechanical system components. For a game like EU, while the components of its system certainly have narrative properties (such as their names), they remain mechanical by nature given that they are part of the game's system. Given that there are no system components that provide narrative in a manner independent of mechanics (as they exist in some more traditional games), the game's whole system is mechanical by definition. While you've identified some properties of mechanics that contribute to narrative, I don't think you've identified any components of the game that are narrative in nature. There are no cutscenes or lore text dumps in EU; the closest part of the system is random events and those are mechanical as well.
Again, an AI player might also behave the same if you alter your mechanical decisions slightly, because the game's AI does not have access to all mechanical information (in some respects they "see" more than a human, and in some respects they "see" less), so the AI's awareness of something is a tricky criterion for its being mechanics.
Just because "good" mechanics and "good" narrative aren't necessarily related (though I think they are to some limited extent), doesn't mean that there is no causal relationship. Do you disagree that changing the working of a particular transparent mechanic would change the player's narrative? That fleshing out a mechanic in a transparent manner would add to the depth of narrative? Yes, a game in which the narrative is in fact segregated from the mechanics can theoretically have any narrative tacked on to its system, but I've established this isn't the case for EU because there aren't any actual components of the game that can be accurately described as narrative in nature, only mechanical components with narrative-conducive properties.