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I think most people who've played EU4 with an expansionist strategy since 1.1 have perceived a situation where a "conspiracy" by a few game mechanics to inhibit further expansion fails to inhibit it in any risk-management sense, but simply makes further expansion too much of a bore to continue with. In many cases, this results in abandoned games, since there is not much to do for a dominant empire beyond expanding more. Hence, this thread.
Scope
I want to be very clear about the restricted scope of this thread: it is limited entirely to discussion of how to, hypothetically, maintain the level of agency and difficulty in the early game throughout the late game. It is decidedly off-topic to discuss whether or not this should be done; I will liberally report straying outside this clearly defined scope for off-topic posting. Furthermore, a non-exhaustive list of off-topic discussion topics I can produce off the top of my head include world conquest viability, difficulty of expansion by conquest, general game difficulty, difficulty settings, and mods (though I may turn the fruit of this thread into a mod, it is not on topic for the thread itself).
An additional constraint on the scope of this thread will be the form of argument, namely that you must actually make one rather than flatly stating your opinion. You must ground your argument in striking a balance between historical plausibility, risk/reward structure and the aforementioned goal. In particular, suggestions must include a plausible narrative, and must keep risks proportional to rewards. This will be on the honor rule, but I will still report anyone who simply states their opinion for off-topic posting.
Finally, be specific, and don't confound mechanics with narrative. I don't want to read how culture conversion is broken because you couldn't convert culture that way in real life, I want to read a more plausible narrative. I don't want to read generics about how coalitions made you quit the game, I want to read suggestions for the underlying mechanics that make coalitions problematic.
With that out of the way, I'm going to propose a list of mechanics that participate in this conspiracy, and I will try to outline the part they play. If you disagree with this analysis, please make it clear what you are disagreeing with.
Offending mechanics (non-exhaustive)
Proposed solutions (non-exhaustive)
Final remarks
I think that's long enough for now. I tried to keep this concise while still hitting some different areas, so it's by no means exhaustive, but hopefully you get the idea. I would very much like to make a mod out of this and see if we can't come up with a good late-game dynamic, notably without making the game easier.
Do note that not all the offending mechanics I listed are necessarily offenders independently. AE scaling, for instance, would not be a problem if the war score equation was changed, since fighting a global coalition would become more rewarding. The items on the list are simply potential contributors to this problem under current mechanics, and would not necessarily contribute under a different set of mechanics.
Scope
I want to be very clear about the restricted scope of this thread: it is limited entirely to discussion of how to, hypothetically, maintain the level of agency and difficulty in the early game throughout the late game. It is decidedly off-topic to discuss whether or not this should be done; I will liberally report straying outside this clearly defined scope for off-topic posting. Furthermore, a non-exhaustive list of off-topic discussion topics I can produce off the top of my head include world conquest viability, difficulty of expansion by conquest, general game difficulty, difficulty settings, and mods (though I may turn the fruit of this thread into a mod, it is not on topic for the thread itself).
An additional constraint on the scope of this thread will be the form of argument, namely that you must actually make one rather than flatly stating your opinion. You must ground your argument in striking a balance between historical plausibility, risk/reward structure and the aforementioned goal. In particular, suggestions must include a plausible narrative, and must keep risks proportional to rewards. This will be on the honor rule, but I will still report anyone who simply states their opinion for off-topic posting.
Finally, be specific, and don't confound mechanics with narrative. I don't want to read how culture conversion is broken because you couldn't convert culture that way in real life, I want to read a more plausible narrative. I don't want to read generics about how coalitions made you quit the game, I want to read suggestions for the underlying mechanics that make coalitions problematic.
With that out of the way, I'm going to propose a list of mechanics that participate in this conspiracy, and I will try to outline the part they play. If you disagree with this analysis, please make it clear what you are disagreeing with.
Offending mechanics (non-exhaustive)
- War score equation favors total war: As eloquently argued elsewhere, the current war score equation where a reward of X costs Y, and X*2 costs Y*2, favors crushing the enemy completely and sieging them to 100%. This is inherently problematic, but is further compounded by the fact that reaching X warscore is much harder than reaching X*2, since you will have more freedom to siege after the initial victory.
- War score cost does not scale to coalition size: Waging war on a coalition is not necessarily difficult, but it is always tedious when the war leader is not identical to your war target, and/or the war leader is not large. This is because coalition wars scale costs to the war member, which means that you can siege 150-province Spain to 99 or 100% but still only be able to take 2-3 provinces from your actual war target.
- AE scales up with empire size: A major factor in coalitions is that AE scales with empire size. It's no coincidence that 1650-1700 is when successful player empires hit 100 provinces AND the time that coalitions really start bogging the game down.
- Core decay causes stagnation: Current core decay mechanics means that there are no ways to directly influence the balance of power without taking on substantial AE, and usually OE, forcing the player to choose between a downward AE spiral and inaction.
- Coalitions are global and binary: Coalitions form in response to threats, but it's a simple on/off "is/is not in coalition against X." Besides not making any narrative sense that Delhi would join a coalition against Great Britain with the Mughals and non-colonial France, this conspires with the war score mechanics to create true tedium.
- Empires are too stable: Whether under player or AI control, rebel mechanics do not pose a serious threat to anyone, except maybe Russia and Timurids. Large, heterogeneous empires rarely see revolts in many provinces, nor do revolts tend to spread. This means that large countries tend to exert gravity and gradually pull in smaller countries, growing perpetually throughout the game with few setbacks. This goes triple for player empires.
Proposed solutions (non-exhaustive)
- Large-scale revolts: If your culture contains 4 or more non-accepted culture groups, a chance to activate large-scale rebellions should take place. These would increase revolt risk by +15 in all provinces with that culture, and would continue until a subsequent event spawned a revolution leader (MTTH = 24 months). Killing this leader would end the revolution and reduce revolt risk again, but the country would be forced to commit serious forces to do so over those two years. It would also give other countries a chance to jump the country in question.
- Coalitions are targeted: Countries should join coalitions for some specific purpose, e.g. "Prevent X from expanding further in Europe." Allies could still be called in as normal, but it would take actual diplomatic effort to maintain a global coalition.
- No capital core decay: Capital cores should never decay, so that an annexed country always retains one releasable core. Furthermore, if that country is released, all provinces which has its primary culture should regain a core. This would ensure that there would always be one country left per primary culture, but that these countries would over time have few cores left.
Final remarks
I think that's long enough for now. I tried to keep this concise while still hitting some different areas, so it's by no means exhaustive, but hopefully you get the idea. I would very much like to make a mod out of this and see if we can't come up with a good late-game dynamic, notably without making the game easier.
Do note that not all the offending mechanics I listed are necessarily offenders independently. AE scaling, for instance, would not be a problem if the war score equation was changed, since fighting a global coalition would become more rewarding. The items on the list are simply potential contributors to this problem under current mechanics, and would not necessarily contribute under a different set of mechanics.
