I think my problems with monarch points are as followed. The first is that they create strategic decisions that don't make much sense/are overly abstracted. An example of this is the fact that it costs the same resource to improve docks and to research new ship types, which means that building more docks around your nation means you are less able to develop new types of ships. This is very counter-intuitive. Their are other examples of this - building training grounds makes you less able to develop new types of soldiers. It's not just buildings, though, this extends to ideas. If I choose a lot of military ideas, which I think are supposed to represent the national spirit or driving Zeitgeist of a nation, then the extent to which I actually improve my army is limited, because setting my Zeitgeist to military slows down the rate at which I unlock new forms of military.
The second is that they engender severe short-termism. A -5 stability hit in previous Europa Universalis 3 titles was terrifying, because you couldn't ameliorate the problem easily - you could speed up or slow down the process by which you regained stability, but you still had to live with the consequences for some time. Under the current system, a nation can descend into terrible instability, then have it be cured within days. This doesn't really seem to match the experience of real early modern European nations, and hurts game-play. This extends to other areas - inflation? Gone instantly. War exhaustion? Gone instantly. I'm not really scared of the consequences of any of my actions any more, other than how much they hurt my ability to core or annex diplomatically. I don't fear stability loss because it means revolts, I fear stability loss because it means I can't core as many provinces.
The third is that mechanics seem very odd when it comes to certain types of government. For example, why would the quality of a monarch affect the ability of a constitutional monarchy to centralize the state/pursue military reforms/advance new diplomatic policies? George III was literally insane, and it didn't prevent Great Britain from going on to triumph in the Napoleonic wars. It seems like monarch points would be better off being 'government points' or 'state points' instead, and have a generation that was dependent on your government type. Another example of where the leader being all-important in generating monarch points is somewhat odd is republics. Why does re-electing my leader make them better at pursuing reforms? Is it because they're now older and more experienced? If that were the case, ordinary monarchs should see slow points increases over time. Is it because they now have more political capital? This may not be the case - they may have gone from a crushing landslide to a marginal victory, in which case you'd expect a monarch point decrease. It seems like a very arbitrary mechanic which exists solely to make republics feel 'different' from monarchies.
The fourth is that monarch point value is not distributed equally at all. Military points are near useless. Seize colony/burn colony are extremely situational, there's no point in using Harsh Treatment when you can simply Accept Demands, and so on. They're only useful for techs and ideas. Meanwhile, administrative is tied to all of the most important stuff in the game - stability, coring, inflation, you name it.
The fifth is that they're too strongly random. The difference between a monarch with 1 in a given stat and a monarch with 5 in a given stat over 20 years, which I think is roughly the average monarch life-span, is 960 points, or enough to purchase an extra technology and almost an extra idea. That's a very large difference, and it's not satisfying to the player when they have so little control over this resource.
The sixth is that they reduce the amount of strategic choice about advisors. In previous EU titles, choosing which advisor you picked was a difficult choice over which you'd spend some time mulling. In EU4, I always want the +3 advisor. Always. If I had a choice between +3 ADM -25% forcelimits (yes, minus forcelimits) and +1 ADM +10% discipline advisor, I'd almost always pick the +3 advisor. You can make the malus associated with the +3 and the bonus associated with the +1 leagues apart, and it will still be a long time before I select the +1 advisor because of just how good having an extra 2 monarch points each month is. It deeply reduces the strategic choice around advisors.
I don't think the monarch point system is inherently bad, but I think it needs some improvements. My suggestions would be that;
- They are renamed "resource points", to emphasize the fact they're the resources available to the state, rather than simple attributes of the monarch.
- How many "resource points" are generated depends on the government type mostly, with modifiers depending on the monarch and on advisors. For example, a feudal monarchy might generate a base of 5 research points each month, with monarchs adding a random amount between +0% and +50% depending on how good they are, and advisors adding a random amount between +0% and +10% depending on how good they are. A constitutional monarchy, on the other hand, might generate a base of 7 research points each month, with monarchs adding a random amount between +0% and +15% depending on how good they are, and advisors a random amount between +0% and +15% depending on how good they are. This both makes the mechanic make more sense and allows players to influence their fate by aiming for a specific government type.
- They are split into more types. For example, there should definitely be a separate naval tree. Why does building more docks make me worse at annexing vassals? Administrative probably needs to be split up too - it just encompasses far too many different aspects of the game.
- "resource points" cannot be spent, only invested - you can choose to spend a certain amount of resources each month in improving stability, but stability will not improve until enough have been invested and this takes time.
- Idea groups require resources not of their type to purchase. That is, a Military idea (like, say, +5% discipline), costs 2 Naval Resources and 2 Diplomatic Resources, and a Naval idea costs 2 Military Resources and 2 Diplomatic Resources, and so on. This means that ideas allow you to supercharge a particular category at the cost of making you worse at other categories, which is not what they do now.
- The different types of resources need to be heavily balanced against each other, and not have one being totally dominant.
- The prevalence of them is reduced - they don't need to be shoe-horned in to every mechanic. Buildings should probably only cost ducats, because it makes little sense buildings docks give you worse ships. Peace deals should probably not require a resource, because it makes no sense that you should have to prolong a 100% war artificially because apparently you're not persuasive enough to get what you want despite having a total occupation.
I think with these basic changes, the monarch point system could work very well. However, right now I feel it does not work at all, and makes a key element of Europa Universalis 4 worse than it's predecessor. In many other areas it is better - aggressive expansion is a better system than infamy, even if it does need a few tweaks, trade is much better than it was in EU3, even if it would be nice if it worked in loops and bi-directionally - but I feel the monarch point system under the status quo simply does not work. I hope this made for interesting reading and maybe provokes some thoughts in the dev team.
Reposting for next page as it got stuck at bottom.
