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The future of EU4 and Paradox games, a schism?
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Might be. I don't read mod threads, because like majority of the players (and members of this community) I don't use mods.
I haven't played SotS, but I seem to recall that MoO and Civ and GalCiv and Endless Space and suchlike all seem to provide mostly worldgen parameters (world size, composition, etc.) rather than day-to-day parameters.
EU4 only offers one worldgen parameter: is the New World procedurally generated or historical?
The question I was answering was "why don't game companies provide boatloads of options?" - and yes, the effect of combinatorial explosion on testing costs is a factor in that.
But truces don't prevent you from starting wars, they only cause a stability hit if you break them. That sure sounds like a limitation which makes starting wars "not beneficial" to me, rather than outright preventing you from clicking the button.
I don't think you'll get people to unite under that cause, but you'd probably lack significant opposition to it.
Presence of barbarians throughout the game (they are not generated along with the map), victory conditions, being able to permanently ally other nations or not, being able to vassal other nations, choosing religions you found, altering when war can be declared, altering the functionality of fog of war, disabling espionage, and disabling events are not "worldgen" parameters, and that's just off the top of my head
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First time I'm chiming in on this thread, but I feel like zodium has the right of this about the options and the parameters. If Paradox were to add various levels of AE, OE, force limits, different bases for monarch points, variable truce timers, etc. as options which would be chose-able upon each game start, it would be virtually impossible for them to test every combination of variables and even release a game. Not only that, but each individual would essentially be playing an entirely different game because of the changes to such variable factors. Games like Civ you do have a lot of leeway with which to choose the kind of world you'll be given, but you cannot change a lot of what I would call game mechanics just by clicking a few boxes.
Presence of barbarians throughout the game (they are not generated along with the map), victory conditions, being able to permanently ally other nations or not, being able to vassal other nations, choosing religions you found, altering when war can be declared, altering the functionality of fog of war, disabling espionage, and disabling events are not "worldgen" parameters, and that's just off the top of my head
None of them are. What you have enumerated does not represent the generation of entities and the environment they exist in, rather the evolution of interactions between said entities (which compose another layer altogether), entities which are statically initialized - ie known quantities.
Some of the things I cited in the previous post are direct game mechanic alterations at the click of a box. Completely wiping out events or allowing nations to combine forever and share victory (or not allowing it) are a big deal. Permanent war or peace completely alters the declaration of war mechanic. Having or disallowing vassals alters the game in a number of ways, as vassals are a critical part of that game's play.
You are correct that this would make games less comparable. Civ's HoF setup specifically mods the game to allow games played to be more comparable, and even then it's a struggle (bringing back some fond and not-so-fond memories about settings allowed vs not discussion I've had there and how HoF too-often did things that encouraged #attempts > play ability unnecessarily to the point where it was par for the course to re-roll spam maps or even starts until you got a lucky early tech or just a great starting position). I do not think this functionality would translate particularly well into this game, or that adding it would necessarily make EU better. I do believe, however, that adding it would cause more problems/issues with bugs than its utility could merit, considering the state of EU in that regard already.
Point being that disabling vassals in Civ IV is not unlike disabling coalitions in EU IV at the theoretical level...I think.
lolwut
1) If you think American natives were playable in EUIII, then you haven't played them in EUIII.
2) The nations you mentioned are already playable in vanilla EUIV. They in fact have significantly more flavour and gameplay possibilities in vanilla EUIV (there's a lot more nations in North American than EUIII had, several of them have unique idea sets, and the non-Mesoamerican North American natives have their own Totemism religion rather than generic 'Animism' and 'Shamanism') than they ever had in EUIII even if you bought every single expansion.
It's hard to think of an example that more efficiently demolishes the point you were trying to make.
"Their own Totemism", with identical benefits to the other pagan faiths in every single way lol. Totemism is more generic than Shamanism, because there is only one start in the entire world in the 1444 bookmark that has the latter.
Though the NA natives are indeed certainly playable in vanilla. Arguably, they're more broken in terms of advantage in vanilla, because while they don't have unique native mechanics, they can fabricate claims, build normal buildings, and westernize without having to reform their government, which while lacking native ideas still gives -33% stab cost (!) and -50% maintenance cost (!!!).
Which is still more uniqueness than they got in EUIII, lol, when they were the exact same religion as Ryukyu and the Oirat Horde, lol, which was kind of the point I was making, lol, not an argument that they're immensely rich in flavour but that without spending a cent on DLC there's still considerably more work put into them than there was in EUIII, lol, so the poster was making a demonstrably untrue argument, lol.
Fair enough. They were considerably more bland on release in EU IV than now though. The updates were applied to vanilla as well. Previously, all you got was Cherokee, Creek, Shawnee, and Huron (which started apart from the others) in a tribal democracy...all shamanist or animist IIRC. Of course, those patches also had "Swahili" as a playable nation, with was amusingly absurd.
I'd go with "CoP/WoN patches weren't properly tested" if I was looking for something the forumites pretty much all agreed on. (If you wish you can add in RoI and expand it to the CK forums)
Beyond points as blatantly obvious as that there's not likely to be any consensus.
good postI 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.
Ive played natives in EU3 and I think they are extremely playable. Just because it actually takes some time to annex the entirety of Europe does not mean it is unplayable - unless you are a bad player of course, but very easy difficulty can fix that.
Yes this always seems to happen. Eu4 is the game that for me, has highlighted the dumb decisions of Paradox. I've decided I'm not going to buy HOI4 after all, not Victoria 3 either when that comes because Paradox is on a bad path. They based EU4 on office multiplayer, when their player base play single player.
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 agree with your comments about the silliness of, say, building town halls reducing your administrative capabilities.
I also like the changes you propose to distinguish between different forms of government.
Perhaps you might want to post it in the tech support forum (sic) or send it as a PM to a developer?
I like the DLC system.. but god do I miss the infamy (at least it worked just fine) and snowballing but at least a bit immersive empire building. >.>
As others, most notably Wiz have pointed out the "balancing around multiplayer" catchphrase is ludicrously overblown. At this point I'm beginning to automatically dismiss people that parrot this line ad nauseum.
I'd also dispute the idea that the EU franchise is being "dumbed down" or "streamlined," if anything EU4 suffers from being more complex than it's predecessors. AE over simple badboy, MP and branching ideas vs the simple tech and idea system, the new trade system, and the order of magnitude increase to the complexity of diplomatic relations. A good chunk of the complaints every patch stem from the unintended consequences whenever the devs tweak them.
EU4 isn't perfect, but as others have said it's still overall an improvement over what came before. The big problems with it right now are the underwhelming DLC and poor maintenance of them (The American Dream is still broken from CoP with no plans to fix it, which is simply reprehensible), and the way balance jumps around each patch. For example, aside from AE jumping around, the rebels in 1.6 were practically the same as the rebels in the version at release which had previously been patched out.
The only major design decision in EU4 which I dislike in theory and in implementation are how Monarch Points are used for tech. Others again have pointed out their particular faults much better than I could, but overall I dislike it compared to EU3's tech system as it changes technological advancement from a system that depended mainly on the strength of your country's economy to something that you advanced from the "top down" with a simple click of a button. I would actually prefer to see technology advance more organically with less direct player control than it does now, i.e. rather than directly advancing technology, the player should create conditions in the nation which then lead to technological advancement.
I'd also dispute the idea that the EU franchise is being "dumbed down" or "streamlined," if anything EU4 suffers from being more complex than it's predecessors. AE over simple badboy, MP and branching ideas vs the simple tech and idea system, the new trade system, and the order of magnitude increase to the complexity of diplomatic relations. A good chunk of the complaints every patch stem from the unintended consequences whenever the devs tweak them.
EU4 isn't perfect, but as others have said it's still overall an improvement over what came before. The big problems with it right now are the underwhelming DLC and poor maintenance of them (The American Dream is still broken from CoP with no plans to fix it, which is simply reprehensible), and the way balance jumps around each patch. For example, aside from AE jumping around, the rebels in 1.6 were practically the same as the rebels in the version at release which had previously been patched out.
The only major design decision in EU4 which I dislike in theory and in implementation are how Monarch Points are used for tech. Others again have pointed out their particular faults much better than I could, but overall I dislike it compared to EU3's tech system as it changes technological advancement from a system that depended mainly on the strength of your country's economy to something that you advanced from the "top down" with a simple click of a button. I would actually prefer to see technology advance more organically with less direct player control than it does now, i.e. rather than directly advancing technology, the player should create conditions in the nation which then lead to technological advancement.
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