This thread is meant to do two things; firstly to thank Paradox for the last two full DLC of Mandate of Heaven and Cradle of Civilisation for being the best DLC that have been released since I started playing in mid 2015 and secondly (and more importantly) to explain why I thought they were great and how future DLC can replicate what made them good.
So yes, Mandate and Cradle were pretty swell. Firstly, the amount of new content and by this I mean not necessarily universal new features but rather new countries, new national ideas, new events and so on was really vast, particularly in comparison to most previous dlc (even beyond the fleshing out of the Congo and central Africa back in 2016). This brings me on to my second point; it really fleshed out regions which do have really interesting and important histories but were somewhat lacking in depth. And yes, there's plenty of people who play EU4 who really emphasise the "Europa" and were irritated about non-European content, but I vehemently disagree with them. I feel it's difficult to disagree that content in EU4 has generally been vastly skewed towards Europe throughout its development and lifetime, and these last two dlc have restored the balance somewhat. Moreover, I expect that interest in playing outside of Europe will have gone up substantially because of these DLC. In a sense, the Middle East and East Asia are now 'playable' in a similar way to Europe, so many people who had considered EU4 a 'european' game will discover loads more countries to play. More generally it offsets the euro-centrism of the game, in regards to gameplay, balance and a more abstract historical sense (in whose history is worth telling). In many ways these DLC took elements of Third Rome (which the general view was that it was somewhat mediocre) in the idea of immersion, and combined it with the format of a regular dlc. I think the immersion pack is a format that has the potential to work, as I feel diversity of gameplay between countries is generally a better goal than just more features across the game, but having some universal features is clearly preferable to no universal features, hence the success of a dlc that uses elements of an immersion pack.
So where should EU4 DLC go from here? Well that's a little tricky because at some point you're going to run out of regions to create mechanics for. Clearly India and Central Africa need a little more attention, but more generally they suggest there needs to be greater depth and diversity in gameplay. Though there's a thread of thought that EU4 needs more peacetime mechanics, which I do agree with, I find it somewhat difficult to imagine what that would involve without really fundamentally changing the game at a really basic level. It would be nice to see an emphasis on 'minorities' (for want of a better term); by which I mean ethnic and religious groups who were important on local and national levels but tend to get lost in the current mechanics which emphasise majority culture and religion in provinces. To give examples, Jews (particularly money lenders) are the first example that spring to mind, but Vlachs, Alawites, highland clans, Jesuits, the Qizilbash and extreme calvinists (particularly in England) and so on are all influential/historically important groups that only come through in events (and even, not enough). This would stick to my criteria of depth, diversity and emphasis on the subaltern (hidden voices in history).
Thanks for reading, and thank you (as always) to the developers for continuing to give us great content. I hope this has given everybody some food for thought.
So yes, Mandate and Cradle were pretty swell. Firstly, the amount of new content and by this I mean not necessarily universal new features but rather new countries, new national ideas, new events and so on was really vast, particularly in comparison to most previous dlc (even beyond the fleshing out of the Congo and central Africa back in 2016). This brings me on to my second point; it really fleshed out regions which do have really interesting and important histories but were somewhat lacking in depth. And yes, there's plenty of people who play EU4 who really emphasise the "Europa" and were irritated about non-European content, but I vehemently disagree with them. I feel it's difficult to disagree that content in EU4 has generally been vastly skewed towards Europe throughout its development and lifetime, and these last two dlc have restored the balance somewhat. Moreover, I expect that interest in playing outside of Europe will have gone up substantially because of these DLC. In a sense, the Middle East and East Asia are now 'playable' in a similar way to Europe, so many people who had considered EU4 a 'european' game will discover loads more countries to play. More generally it offsets the euro-centrism of the game, in regards to gameplay, balance and a more abstract historical sense (in whose history is worth telling). In many ways these DLC took elements of Third Rome (which the general view was that it was somewhat mediocre) in the idea of immersion, and combined it with the format of a regular dlc. I think the immersion pack is a format that has the potential to work, as I feel diversity of gameplay between countries is generally a better goal than just more features across the game, but having some universal features is clearly preferable to no universal features, hence the success of a dlc that uses elements of an immersion pack.
So where should EU4 DLC go from here? Well that's a little tricky because at some point you're going to run out of regions to create mechanics for. Clearly India and Central Africa need a little more attention, but more generally they suggest there needs to be greater depth and diversity in gameplay. Though there's a thread of thought that EU4 needs more peacetime mechanics, which I do agree with, I find it somewhat difficult to imagine what that would involve without really fundamentally changing the game at a really basic level. It would be nice to see an emphasis on 'minorities' (for want of a better term); by which I mean ethnic and religious groups who were important on local and national levels but tend to get lost in the current mechanics which emphasise majority culture and religion in provinces. To give examples, Jews (particularly money lenders) are the first example that spring to mind, but Vlachs, Alawites, highland clans, Jesuits, the Qizilbash and extreme calvinists (particularly in England) and so on are all influential/historically important groups that only come through in events (and even, not enough). This would stick to my criteria of depth, diversity and emphasis on the subaltern (hidden voices in history).
Thanks for reading, and thank you (as always) to the developers for continuing to give us great content. I hope this has given everybody some food for thought.
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