What are Your most important wishes for EU5 mechanics?

[Testeria]

Personally - I would love to see more CHOICES integrated into EU5 systems. For example: sure, absolutism may be good for many reasons but let the player CHOSE low absolutism for some other bonus (for example I once proposed that Husaria unit would be much stronger with low absolutism).

Someone else proposed that high manpower means growing unemployment ergo growing unrest.

Make all the absurdly good choices in EU4 break something else and add to trouble.

What kind of new features do you wish for - mechanic wise?

 

[Arizal]

No country specific mission trees. No national ideas.

 

[Jarvin]

No national ideas.

Care to elaborate on the whys?
I agree with MTs being an insanely dumb system, but NIs seem.. fine-ish? especially since you have some agency over changing them over the course of the game and while impactful, they aren't game-deciding.
If you want them gone, do you have some ideas for an alternative system of adding country-specific flavor?

 

[Terixis]

Have estates play a central role.

 

[Brynjar]

No mission trees and a fairly well working AI at release.

 

[Reman]

I'd make it like EU4, but with the following major changes:

• Rebels are now automated like HoI4's partisan system, where they deduct money + manpower automatically instead of becoming a clickety click click micromanagement spamfest. Rebels can still rise if there's a disaster in progress or if the nation is out of money/manpower.
• Rework lucky nations by changing it to give purely AI vs AI bonuses to things like dice rolls, surrender acceptance, siege RNG, etc. The bonuses are only active when the player is not involved in the war in any way. Then crank the bonuses up significantly so there are some end game "boss" nations the player can fight against. A mod for Rome Total War 2 did this, and it worked very well.
• Let hegemons have a "Total War" CB that instantly annexes a province when it's occupied and not in fort ZoC. Essentially the same thing that Stellaris and Imperator have. Hegemons can use it against anyone, and anyone can use it against hegemons, similar to how the Colossi perk from Stellaris functions.
• Disable the requirement of using ironman to get achievements like they did with Vic3. Let us use mods so the next time it takes the devs 2+ years to add something extremely obviously needed like courthouses having +1 build slot we can just download a QoL fix ourselves.
• Reduce the overcentralizing nature of core cost reduction as the end-all, be-all modifier in 99% of cases. This could be done through some combination of 1) splitting the effects of "core cost" and "core time", then being more generous about giving them in larger amounts now that they have half their original effect. 2) Diversify the sources of CCR away from religions + national ideas so it doesn't feel terrible to play as something like Orthodox Novgorod. 3) Reduce the severe impact of overextension down to something more sane like it is in every other Paradox game, with perhaps the RoI of conquest being reduced in other ways to compensate.

And the big, controversial one:

• Understand that the Europa Universalis series has always functioned best as a strategy game when the central gameplay loop of conquest, diplomacy, and stabilization is embraced. Redirect all failed attempts trying to make tall play fun into focusing on what already works. Conquest through vassals could be expanded beyond the HRE and Daimyo gimmicks that currently exist into fully-fledged and competitive playstyles. Perhaps economic + trade domination could be a viable expansion path as well. Beyond new features, this would also extend to the game's balancing. The fact that Admin and Diplo are almost always early picks in serious games should be seen as a problem, hopefully to be fixed by buffing other idea groups up to that level.

 

[Bohemian_warlord]

Personally - I would love to see more CHOICES integrated into EU5 systems. For example: sure, absolutism may be good for many reasons but let the player CHOSE low absolutism for some other bonus (for example I once proposed that Husaria unit would be much stronger with low absolutism).

The game already has a lot of choices, but they are too shallow and "modular". Like here You already have a special unit thats tied to absolutism mechanic, its the cossacks. More cossack units, less max absolutism. Its pretty "meh", the problem with shallow choices like that is that you can easily look up under the hood and calculate what is the meta and suddenly "CHOICES" became optimal and suboptimal choices across the board. Oh and of cource the mechanics cant be that important to the game, they must be modular, because they are available only to the players with DLCs.

EU4 has plenty of stuff that reward you for having low absolutism in the form of priviliges, but its shallow, meaningless and it gets drowned in million other random green numbers (oh, you have folwarks? This incredibly important economic institution? That would be +10 in...*thows a dart*...production efficiency!). Just adding buffs without thinking damages the game more than it helps. Your suggestion is not bad, its on the right track but difference between absolutist rule and oligarchic one is too important to be summed up by a single number that isnt even properly correlated with the influence of the estates. And the declining influence of heavy cavalry or efficiency of cavalry in different geography is not very pronounced either. So you would end up with a choice that weights admin eff against Polish special unit, that will most likely have a meta applicable to 95% cases.​

If you have choices, it is important to look at why did some states chose certain routes and why did some states chose the other route. Then make that choice significant with good and bad things for both directions, with a reasonable incentives to choose one or the other depending on your situation.

Why did Poland choose the route of "golden freedom" IRL and why did it eventually failed in competition against absolutist regimes in (P)Russia? Here the answer can be relatively simple. Nobility made up the best heavy cavalry in this period, but there were social problems associated with strong nobility; the nobles were not fully obedient to the crown and thus the state faced internal competition. Heavy cavalry progressively lost its importance on the battlefield with better and better firearms. On the plains of eastern Europe heavy cavalry remained the best fighting force much longer, to the late 17th century. Prussia and Russia on the other hand were more into absolutism and subjugated their respective nobility, so while they couldnt match the melee prowess of Polish nobles, they formed stronger societies that eventually prevailed. Of course things were much more complex in reality, because Poles suffered from Swedish deluge, but most of their problems (deluge largely included) can be tracked to the nobility acting in their individual interests instead of collective interest of the state. Adopting an absolutist rule of course is not without problems, nobility is actively working against you, you will lose the advantages that made aristocrats a thing in the first place; but its an investment that pays off in the late game. And this story applies only to continental Europe, Britain has its own story why parliamentarism won against absolutism.

BTW there are already very good mechanics for modelling low/high absolutism in EU4, its the MEIOU and Taxes mod. Paradox can easily just adopt those into the basegame.​

 

[Testeria]

Care to elaborate on the whys?
I agree with MTs being an insanely dumb system, but NIs seem.. fine-ish? especially since you have some agency over changing them over the course of the game and while impactful, they aren't game-deciding.
If you want them gone, do you have some ideas for an alternative system of adding country-specific flavor?

There are a lot of people who believe that a nation should be a blackbox that entirely depends on generic rules of the game. Fe. You only get +20 morale when You implement some reform, not because of french culture (or tag).

 

[Testeria]

The game already has a lot of choices, but they are too shallow and "modular". Like here You already have a special unit thats tied to absolutism mechanic, its the cossacks. More cossack units, less max absolutism. Its pretty "meh", the problem with shallow choices like that is that you can easily look up under the hood and calculate what is the meta and suddenly "CHOICES" became optimal and suboptimal choices across the board. Oh and of cource the mechanics cant be that important to the game, they must be modular, because they are available only to the players with DLCs.

EU4 has plenty of stuff that reward you for having low absolutism in the form of priviliges, but its shallow, meaningless and it gets drowned in million other random green numbers (oh, you have folwarks? This incredibly important economic institution? That would be +10 in...*thows a dart*...production efficiency!). Just adding buffs without thinking damages the game more than it helps. Your suggestion is not bad, its on the right track but difference between absolutist rule and oligarchic one is too important to be summed up by a single number that isnt even properly correlated with the influence of the estates. And the declining influence of heavy cavalry or efficiency of cavalry in different geography is not very pronounced either. So you would end up with a choice that weights admin eff against Polish special unit, that will most likely have a meta applicable to 95% cases.​

If you have choices, it is important to look at why did some states chose certain routes and why did some states chose the other route. Then make that choice significant with good and bad things for both directions, with a reasonable incentives to choose one or the other depending on your situation.

Why did Poland choose the route of "golden freedom" IRL and why did it eventually failed in competition against absolutist regimes in (P)Russia? Here the answer can be relatively simple. Nobility made up the best heavy cavalry in this period, but there were social problems associated with strong nobility; the nobles were not fully obedient to the crown and thus the state faced internal competition. Heavy cavalry progressively lost its importance on the battlefield with better and better firearms. On the plains of eastern Europe heavy cavalry remained the best fighting force much longer, to the late 17th century. Prussia and Russia on the other hand were more into absolutism and subjugated their respective nobility, so while they couldnt match the melee prowess of Polish nobles, they formed stronger societies that eventually prevailed. Of course things were much more complex in reality, because Poles suffered from Swedish deluge, but most of their problems (deluge largely included) can be tracked to the nobility acting in their individual interests instead of collective interest of the state. Adopting an absolutist rule of course is not without problems, nobility is actively working against you, you will lose the advantages that made aristocrats a thing in the first place; but its an investment that pays off in the late game. And this story applies only to continental Europe, Britain has its own story why parliamentarism won against absolutism.

BTW there are already very good mechanics for modelling low/high absolutism in EU4, its the MEIOU and Taxes mod. Paradox can easily just adopt those into the basegame.​

Poland is a specific example. Poland was mostly an arena of lower nobility and aristocracy clash, and because of the lower nobility decline, it lost its edge against absolutist powers. Still - it was an economic powerhouse and with some other turn of history, we could imagine it could stand as strong as England. At least I suppose it would be good for the game if a player could choose from two different strategies with different strengths... Btw. I would love to have TWO nobility estates for Poland in EU5!

And Hussaria was just medium cavalry with partial armor, thanks to its superior training and equipment used mostly as shock troops against unfortified infantry - it could keep that role with some modifications up to the XIX century.

 

[I like wars and maps]

Hegemons would really make the lategame alot more bearable for cleanup and to the people who dislike blobbing they can just go and do a 1921 WC in Vic 3 if they dont like it. Allowing achievenments with mods is just a obvious one. No comment on rebels since that would depend alot on numbers. But fully agree on CCR. CCR is a really overbearing mechanic wich just completely warps game balance around tag switching to get as much as possible. Espacially the last suggestion hits the hat on the nail. Really alot of great suggestions.

 

[Arizal]

Care to elaborate on the whys?
I agree with MTs being an insanely dumb system, but NIs seem.. fine-ish? especially since you have some agency over changing them over the course of the game and while impactful, they aren't game-deciding.
If you want them gone, do you have some ideas for an alternative system of adding country-specific flavor?

This is just the latest thread I visit where this argument is brought. I honestly felt almost like I were trolling, by leaving this short answer, since there are so many people here who like those mechanics (MTs and NIs and believe they are good for the game.

@Testeria got it right : I believe countries should be different, sometimes heavily, at start, but should be able, with enough efforts, to go in the direction of the player’s choosing, and ones that makes sense given their evolution and the evolution of the world around them.

I’m not saying Venice shouldn’t start as a naval power, I’m saying it should be possible to turn it into Prussia in a few generations, while losing perks that the previous situation allowed it to have.

Instead of national ideas, countries should be more detailed in their fundamental differences and those differences should be what gives them different modifiers. If you want to keep NIs around, make it so that the countries start with them and they can be changed by tracking the player’s actions, that they reflect what happened.

I’m currently no longer playing EUIV because I dislike how it evolved, but if EUV were more open ended, while keeping the realism I though EU had until Leviathan, and if you could at least have options for the most offensive settings (like in Vic3 they made it so that monuments can be turned off), I would be willing to try it.

 

[Testeria]

This is just the latest thread I visit where this argument is brought. I honestly felt almost like I were trolling, by leaving this short answer, since there are so many people here who like those mechanics (MTs and NIs and believe they are good for the game.

@Testeria got it right : I believe countries should be different, sometimes heavily, at start, but should be able, with enough efforts, to go in the direction of the player’s choosing, and ones that makes sense given their evolution and the evolution of the world around them.

I’m not saying Venice shouldn’t start as a naval power, I’m saying it should be possible to turn it into Prussia in a few generations, while losing perks that the previous situation allowed it to have.

Instead of national ideas, countries should be more detailed in their fundamental differences and those differences should be what gives them different modifiers. If you want to keep NIs around, make it so that the countries start with them and they can be changed by tracking the player’s actions, that they reflect what happened.

I’m currently no longer playing EUIV because I dislike how it evolved, but if EUV were more open ended, while keeping the realism I though EU had until Leviathan, and if you could at least have options for the most offensive settings (like in Vic3 they made it so that monuments can be turned off), I would be willing to try it.

I'm only afraid it would look like CK3: generic countries that You play 3 times the same way and that is it - because there is not enough mechanics to make gameplay different (without MTs and NIs).

So if gameplay would be deep with many interesting choices, I'm with You - but if it would be like CK3, I at least want my MTs and NIs

 

[Bohemian_warlord]

Poland is a specific example. Poland was mostly an arena of lower nobility and aristocracy clash, and because of the lower nobility decline, it lost its edge against absolutist powers. Still - it was an economic powerhouse and with some other turn of history, we could imagine it could stand as strong as England. At least I suppose it would be good for the game if a player could choose from two different strategies with different strengths... Btw. I would love to have TWO nobility estates for Poland in EU5!

And Hussaria was just medium cavalry with partial armor, thanks to its superior training and equipment used mostly as shock troops against unfortified infantry - it could keep that role with some modifications up to the XIX century.

What I am saying that just the choice between two different buffs rarely makes an interesting choice between two different strategies. You already have plenty of options in the form of priviliges that cost absolutism. What you seem to suggest is that every country should have a choice if they want to PURSUE high or low absolutism and both should have roughly equal bonuses for low and high absolutism. But Absolutism is really something the player should pursue for vast majority of cases, but as a long-term goal that comes at short-term costs so the strategy mostly comes in the form "do I want stuff right now, or do I want to have high absolutism later?" not "Do I want high absolutism or do I want low absolutism?" The key to better gameplay regarding absolutism is to improve the ways player gains absolutism (fighting against nobility). Then you would also have more fun gameplay regarding low-absolutism strategy. e.g. "I am surrounded by enemies, better play it nice with the nobles so they will not stab me in the back" contrasted to "OK, Its safe out there, time to go North Korea on those pampered a$$es".

Speaking in general. A choice in a game will always be either OPTIMAL or SUBOPTIMAL. If you implement a choice that is always and globally OPTIMAL, then its not really a choice is it? It becomes the "Meta" and thats bad game-design. One which unfortunaly plagues paradox games due to their complexity (not hating on the devs here, its really just hard to make complex games like this). Therefore you need choices that are good or bad depending on situation. If you are designing the choice, you need not only think of what buffs and debuffs to add there, but also WHEN and WHERE will the choices be OPTIMAL or SUBOPTIMAL. If the optimal strategies dont agree with what was the way historically, then thats still a bad game design because most of your players are history buffs, so should iterate until you roughly get sane or better, plausible results. Btw, one thing which I see underestimated is how much having this kind of soft geographic/materialist determinism or historical authenticity makes these games more accessible to the "normies", who generally speaking try to act like the countries acted historically instead of acting according "meta" knowledge acquired by studying paradox games.

In short, when designing choices, its important to think "in which situation will player choose which option" else you risk further bloating a bloated game. EU4 has plenty of choices, but not that many meaningful choices.

Husaria in the game are the "winged hussars" from Lions of the North DLC, those declined as a military units at the end of 17th century. 18th century cuirissers were still an effective fighting force, but no longer relevant enough to legitimize a social class.

 

[Hussar1612]

Culture and religion rework. I personally find converting culture or religion too simplified. And accepting culture is really funny if you think about it.

 

[Testeria]

But Absolutism is really something the player should pursue for vast majority of cases, but as a long-term goal that comes at short-term costs so the strategy mostly comes in the form "do I want stuff right now, or do I want to have high absolutism later?" not "Do I want high absolutism or do I want low absolutism?"

Yes, it is - and I don't like it at all. It makes the game shallow: players just pursue 100% absolutism as fast as they can and forgot. It also makes any customization through estates nonexistent for the rest of the game. It is one of the things that makes late-game tedious and annoying.

We may discuss if low absolutism was bad for PLC and other countries in history - but this is a game and devs should make low absolutism a meaningful choice at least for countries with republican traditions like Novogorod, PLC, or England. Countries with low absolutism should be better off economically, they should have a cultural impact on neighbors, and much faster incorporation of institutions - and countries with high absolutism should always be at risk of collapse, especially with a really bad monarch or during a tedious war or when losing a war.

EU4 mechanics is based on random events and opportunity cost - and in my opinion, that means that things like high absolutism or even high administrative efficiency should sometimes be a suboptimal choice for the player. This could be easily achieved if every positive modifier or currency like AE or Manpower always had a cumulative bad side to it - and local traditions also have a meaningful and lasting effect. Not sure if this design concept is compatible with the current PDX design philosophy.

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

A front system to cut down on army micromanagement and more types of mana!

Just kidding.
I'd like the different game mechanics to be tied together into a cohesive whole a bit more, rather than just tacked on. I understand that the tacking on is a result of EU4's long lifetime, but for a fresh start into EU5 these mechanics could be made to interact more with each other, and maybe with an expanded internal politics system.

One example would be army tradition vs. professionalism. In EU4, these mechanics largely coexist with little interaction, but in EU5, it could be expanded into an army system representing a struggle between armies led by hereditary nobles with the rank-and-file mostly represented by medieval style levies (in EU4 terms, high tradition, low professionalism) and a well-equipped and trained army with meritocratic leadership (in EU4 terms, high professionalism, medium-ish tradition). This system would tie into an internal faction system in which the nobility prefers the first option and the proto-liberals the second.
In EU4, the first option always generates the better generals, because (bonus pips nonwithstanding) general quality is decided by army tradition to the exclusion of professionalism. In my proposed EU5 system, the second option could generate equally good or even better generals - the nobles would just hate their guts for having the audacity to eclipse them in terms of leadership quality while being lowborn.

 

[Workiwork]

ignoring what i wish for, or anyone for that matter. i can already see a split on a few issues, NI, Ideas, Mana for example.

so i can foresee a future where some people will complain loudly about the direction of EU 5 and it does not matter what the direction will be... we can look forward to that... yay

 

[namewhichisnottakenyet]

Ooooh I just had another idea!
Get rid of the "binary" claims of EU4 and replace them with a floating point value between 0 and 1, with 0 being no claim whatsoever and 1 similar to a permanent claim in EU4 in terms of claim strength.
This claim value for a given natio would depend on several variables, e.g.:

Province has the same culture as the nation: +0.3
Province has the same culture group, but not the same culture, as the nation: +0.1
Province has the same religion as the nation and the nation is the caliphate: +0.2
Province directly borders the nation: +0.1
Government legitimacy: +0.001 per point if legitimacy
Culture is accepted in nation: +0.1
Nation has fabricated a claim on this province: +0.5

Each nation has a, mostly tech based, claim threshold at which the claim becomes pressable as a CB - e.g. if a nation has a claim threshold of 0.6, the nation has a cb on all provinces in which it has a claim strength of 0.6 or higher. When conquering a province, the AE generated by it is reduced by a factor of 0.5 times claim strength on the province, and CB cost reductions apply if the claim strength on the province at least matches the nation's claim threshold.

 

[Bohemian_warlord]

Yes, it is - and I don't like it at all. It makes the game shallow: players just pursue 100% absolutism as fast as they can and forgot. It also makes any customization through estates nonexistent for the rest of the game. It is one of the things that makes late-game tedious and annoying.

We may discuss if low absolutism was bad for PLC and other countries in history - but this is a game and devs should make low absolutism a meaningful choice at least for countries with republican traditions like Novogorod, PLC, or England. Countries with low absolutism should be better off economically, they should have a cultural impact on neighbors, and much faster incorporation of institutions - and countries with high absolutism should always be at risk of collapse, especially with a really bad monarch or during a tedious war or when losing a war.

EU4 mechanics is based on random events and opportunity cost - and in my opinion, that means that things like high absolutism or even high administrative efficiency should sometimes be a suboptimal choice for the player. This could be easily achieved if every positive modifier or currency like AE or Manpower always had a cumulative bad side to it - and local traditions also have a meaningful and lasting effect. Not sure if this design concept is compatible with the current PDX design philosophy.

That is not correct. Player will trade absolutism for priviliges, that provide plenty of tasty bonuses, like +1 mana monthly.

But pursuing low absolutism should not be a meaningful choice for vast majority of time. This is a period of centralization, a time when crown was crushing down on nobles and regional autonomies. If player that does put effort into centralizing his state is not rewarded with proper advantage over state that did not put in the effort then that aint a good design. Good design is making the part where you gain absolutism interesting, like giving your estates AI that will try to preserve their rights so you start with the game with your realm being split into angry bickering children you have to manage and then you progress into a modern centralized state where people respect your authority. As I said, there is already a good system in MEIOU, where absolutism is removed and instead you just get to progressively disempower the nobles while developing your beaurocracy.

Its precisely this, the turning of complex historical developments into one or two green numbers that are supposed to be balanced, which does make the game shallow. Its like asking to have armored knights be a meaningful choice during 18th century just because you want choice on the battlefield and you like lances. Sure its possible to go for low absolutism, but you better have some geographic protection from those who have centralized states, like the english channel or Swiss mountains. But if you try that stuff in Eastern Europe, bad things happen and they should happen. That should be the baseline gameplay; then you can add cool things on the baseline like the French Revolution, American revolution, Napoleon or English Parliamentarism. Absolutism saw rise throughout the period of EU with very few exceptions and peaked during the late 18th century, but the real systematic decline of absolutist monarchies is a thing for Vicky timeline.​

BTW Low absolutism does not mean that your people have freedom, it means that your oligarchs have power and they will often use that power to opress peasants and put restriction and taxes on the "free market". The peasants and burghers in Poland had far more rights and freedoms under Absolutist Austria than under golden freedom of PLC. It took a monarch with high authority to cancel things like serfdom.

 

[arosenberger14]

Perhaps the most important thing EU5 should have IMO are mechanics that completely overhaul how the state raises money (i.e. taxation). This was a huge part of the time period that's practically completely missing. You had everything from centralized tax regimes with censuses in China to decentralized aristocrats taxing their own lands in return for maintaining military forces, tax farmers, church tithes, tariffs, taxes on goods, to "in kind" taxation of goods directly. All should have their own advantages and disadvantages, and tie directly into the nation's internal political and economic situation. It'd also help a lot with power scaling by pitting things the player wants, money, control, and political stability, more directly against each other and enabling situations like OTL England vs. France, where the smaller England could punch above its weight thanks to its greater ability to raise money.

Overall I'd like to see EU5 embrace the state-building aspect of the game more, and have mechanics that let you customize your state in ways that actually impact gameplay. Player actions should affect things like stability and legitimacy; if you're an absolutist catholic monarch doing things like conquering or converting heathens should boost your legitimacy, while other actions like fighting other Catholics or taxing the Church reduce it. Likewise, if you're a Republic, legitimacy should come from following the wishes of the ruling estates of the nation. Large centralized nations like China would play completely differently from feudal realms or nomadic hordes, and different combinations of state mechanics would enable different strategies and gameplay mechanics. For instance, maybe we could have Portugal or Spain take inspiration from the Ottomans and import African slaves to Europe as a military/bureaucratic caste instead of sending them to plantations, or a hegemonic Indian empire that maintains its internal legitimacy by keeping taxes low and surrounding itself with tributary states like Imperial China did.