What should be the core concepts of future EU5

[Aloraand]

most dlc material is just extremely powerful buffs to the selected nation. Majaphit, colossus of the earth! Able to force vassalize France in a single war!

What I mean by my initial post is this: there is currrently a growing congruence between how a castile to spain game plays and how an england to britain game plays after the first 50 years or so. When you think you want more generalized, sandboxy approach you are imagining a game that has wonderful responsivity and infinite permutations; in reality, you are going to get the same game with a different flag. National Ideas and the like means there is something distinctive about an English playthrough or a Holland playthrough that is distinct from a Kilwa playthrough. You know what game actually gives you what you think you want, with complete customization? Stellaris, where at the end of the day whether you are playing as a egalitarian StarShip Troopers bird in a space suit or an ancient hive mind fungus in a space suit amounts to +10% minerals produced.

The point of generalisation leading to homogenization is an excellent one. However, I disagree with the conclusion. The flavour and differences should also emerge out of the simulation:

1. The geography of a country should provide some basis for differentiation. E.g. France has long exposed border to the east, which should motivate it to focus on European wars. Portugal is safe with nowhere to expand, so it has to focus abroad.

2. If a sufficiently granular optic is chosen (pops/estates per province etc. ) as the entry point, and not vaguely defined ahistoric westfalian states in 1444, the historic outcomes, which constitute most of the flavour, should become most likely.

It seems like they will be able to accomplish this with Victoria 3, so fingers crossed for EU5.

Personally, what I would like to see is making the struggle not how much and how fast I can conquer, but how well I can hold and improve what I already have. If the latter is a real challenge, the devastation that wars bring could finally be a real consideration, which could also result in the removal of cap on conquest. (Basically, make wc nigh impossible because of internal collapse, not because of insufficient "admin efficiency" stacking).

 

[arosenberger14]

I really, really, really, really, really, really, really do not want to see pops in the Europa Universalis series.

Victoria III is a society sim that's interested in economy at the point in history when consumerism, resource management and mass politics became a powerful global force. Without all three of those ingredients I don't think pops are necessary or useful (and they are inescapably a huge drain); even with all three of those ingredients I don't think pops are the only or necessarily the best way to model the things Victoria is interested in.

Europa Universalis is not a society sim, is not terribly interested in the economy, and is not set amid the industrial revolution. Pops would add nothing useful to Europa Universalis that couldn't be achieved with less complexity and computational overhead in some other way.

I think it's reasonably well-accepted that each of Paradox's major grand strategy games has a central "offering" based on the historical period it represents: Crusader Kings is a grand strategy game, but more than that it's a game about feudal lineage and internecine dynastic politicking. Victoria is a grand strategy game but more than that it's a game about mass politics and industrialisation. Hearts of Iron... something something warfare. It's fairly well-accepted that by comparison Europa Universalis lacks a key central identity and is kind of just a game about painting the map.

This means two things, to my mind:

1. Europa Universalis could (probably) be improved by having a central identity for the design philosophy to be built around; from movies to architecture to cookery, things are better when there's a central pillar to bring it all together, and;
2. Europa Universalis's hypothetical core identity needs to be formulated and implemented in such a way that it doesn't ruin the game for the audience its built who like it because they can paint the map.

Europa Universalis begins with the final collapse of the Roman Empire, the unravelling of ecclesiastical absolutism in Europe, the acrimonious end of perhaps the most famous feudal conflict in the Hundred Years War and the dismantling of the über-feudal entity in Burgundy. From those beginnings in the late medieval period Europa Universalis spans the breadth of the early modern period, charting the fracturing of supranational ecclesiastical orders, the centralisation of feudal realms, the unification and calcification of rough natural borders between "culture groups" and concluding with the first total wars seeing massive armies of conscripted citizens fighting on behalf of centralised Westphalian nation-states. The shifts in the structure and organisation of political entities across the Europa Universalis period are absolutely enormous, and a lot of them (unlike the shifts in the Crusader Kings period, often driven by climate and technology) are discernible and even influence-able at the macro scale where we sit as players.

So I think the key central identity that Europa Universalis is built around should be a world that's changing underfoot even as you work to dominate it.

I think every mechanic in Europa Universalis V, so far as is reasonably practicable, should be designed so that the incentives and the ways you engage with it change over the course of the game. Things that were a good idea in the early game should be a really bad idea in the late game; things that are a great idea in the end-game might be a huge gamble in the middle, and so on.

With that in mind, I think a key mechanic that needs to underpin the above is centralisation. Europa Universalis should in large part be a game about balancing the amount of control you want to have over your lands and resources against the costs and difficulties of managing all that land and resource. And how do we make that fun? By organising the game not around pops, which represent individuals who were largely irrelevant from the beginning to the end of the time period, but around estates and subjects.

So that's what I think should be the core concept of a future EU5: it should be relentlessly focused on making the game-world and the "rules" change over time. It should achieve that primarily by making the key concern of countries, alongside warfare, be centralisation, and the player should be able to implement their strategy for centralisation (or decentralisation) and mess with their enemy's strategies, through a massively expanded system for estates and subjects.

I think on the one hand this would make Europa Universalis a vastly better "history game" in that it would actually reflect history rather than forcing you to play as an idealised Westphalian state the like of which barely existed by 1821, let alone 1444 and would satisfy the map-painter crowd by allowing them to paint maps to their hearts' content with the added ability to adjust and collect modifiers by playing with estates.

Things I would like to see redesigned around this core concept
There are four major game elements that I think need to be completely overhauled and rebuilt around the core concept of "change" and "centralisation".

1. I think internal politics need to be completely removed from EUIV (which won't be hard given they barely exist) and carefully reassessed bit by bit to ensure they interconnect, create interesting strategic choices and change over time.
2. Trade and wealth needs to be reassessed to a) ensure that it's not just an inflow of money bolted on to the side of your economy like it currently is in EUIV, b) that the wealth of your country and people rather than just your treasury is a strategic concern, and c) that the important types and sources of trade and wealth change over time.
3. Technology, "ideas" and government reforms need to be removed and completely reexamined.
4. Unit types and recruitment need to be redesigned from the ground up.

I have specific proposals for each game element, but this is a really long post already and no one actually likes reading other people's ideas for game design philosophies, so I'll leave it here.

I think what you're saying is boils down to this: The central pillar of EU4 should be The State.

While you're right that we don't necessarily need pops in EU5, but there needs to be some level of improvement in the abstraction of the economy of the period. It's difficult, because the scope of the game covers everything from stone-age hunter gatherer societies in the Americas at the beginning to early industrial societies like England at the end. Perhaps they should remove the rather nonsensical "tax, production, and military" development entirely and replace it with some sort of "agrarian, urban, and manufacturing" development that interact more heavily with both a revamped trade system for food and goods as well as the state... and are also more strongly affected by disease and wars. I think the military also needs a major re-work that does away with the artificial and unchanging dichotomy between regular and mercenary troops and ties the method of raising armies into the state (and state capacity) such that building a centralized, professional military is a major institutional challenge beyond just having the cash and manpower to pay for one.

 

[hitchens]

(When I write "should" I really mean I wish)


EU5 should revert back to the hoard mechanics in EU3.
EU5 should revert back to the badboy points system of EU3
EU5 should have music more like EU3
EU5 should have a mix between sliders (like EU3) and investment points like EU4
EU5 should abandon the idiotic fleet merge that the devs implemented in EU4 some years back. It was the worst feature with the worst possibly reasoning behind it. (a player making a video stating "it doesnt makes sense" was reason enough obviously)


Africa should be larger. A lot larger. Sending an army on foot from Morocco to Egypt should take forever compared with marching an army from southern to northern Italy.

 

[grommile]

EU5 should revert back to the hoard mechanics in EU3.

Something like them, perhaps, but the divine wind horde mechanic earned its place in the trash can.

EU5 should revert back to the badboy points system of EU3

Nah. Not enough nuance or logical coherence.

EU5 should have music more like EU3

I can't remember what was special about EU3's; remind me.

Also what was the "idiotic fleet merge" thing you're complaining about?

 

[hitchens]

Something like them, perhaps, but the divine wind horde mechanic earned its place in the trash can.

Nah. Not enough nuance or logical coherence.

I can't remember what was special about EU3's; remind me.

Also what was the "idiotic fleet merge" thing you're complaining about?

Perhaps.

The aggressive expansion system in EU4 was a disaster. After launch, devs were posting their vassal fed empires, and then they nerfed that as well. On top of that, one dev used Muscovy (out of all nations) that AE and the countdown timer was ok. As Muscovy you can be at constant war and eat as many provinces as you would like. Be a German or Italian OPM and you will get coalitions after taking a single province.

The music in EU4 is all over the place. A lot of it sounds like its from the Baroque period.

Before the idiotic fleet merger you could send multiple fleets on patrol. But now fleets will automatically merge. It was a serious nerf to fleet scouting.

 

[grommile]

The aggressive expansion system in EU4 was a disaster.

Mostly because coalitions have always been broken-as-designed.

If coalitions weren't so terribly designed, AE would be much less problematic.

 

[hitchens]

Mostly because coalitions have always been broken-as-designed.

If coalitions weren't so terribly designed, AE would be much less problematic.

Did you just shill?

 

[grommile]

Did you just shill?

Er, no?

I'm not even sure why you're asking the question.

 

[hitchens]

Er, no?

I'm not even sure why you're asking the question.

I pointed out that AE was a terrible mess and then you said it was as intended, and then shifted the blame away from the design to whatever. I wrote that AE was a mess and you disagreed by.....whatever jedi mind trick you tried to do didn't work.

You could simply have replied "yes AE in EU4 was a disaster".

 

[grommile]

I pointed out that AE was a terrible mess and then you said it was as intended

Point out the place where I say that it was as intended.

 

[Ixal]

Another thing, but it connects to my previous point, there must be much smaller snowballs, if any at all.

Large nations in EU4 are much too strong. They have infinite money because of how overpowered trade is and how owning provinces affects your control of trade, and with infinite money also infinite manpower as you can still buy millions of mercenaries you can throw at your enemies. Especially in MP wars become a boring slog, esoecially when everywhere is full of lvl 8 forts.

Large nations are simply no fun both in SP (unless you are a mappainter who thinks the point of the game is world conquest and that they deserve to be able to do it) and MP.
Which is also a reason why most players stop around the middle of EU4s timeframe.

 

[please add multithreading]

Perhaps.

The aggressive expansion system in EU4 was a disaster. After launch, devs were posting their vassal fed empires, and then they nerfed that as well. On top of that, one dev used Muscovy (out of all nations) that AE and the countdown timer was ok. As Muscovy you can be at constant war and eat as many provinces as you would like. Be a German or Italian OPM and you will get coalitions after taking a single province.

The music in EU4 is all over the place. A lot of it sounds like its from the Baroque period.

Before the idiotic fleet merger you could send multiple fleets on patrol. But now fleets will automatically merge. It was a serious nerf to fleet scouting.

You really see everything when people call the best anti expension system paradox ever made a disaster.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

From a broad design philosophy perspective, the game should be less linear. Largely this comes down to adding some type of internal opponent for the player to face. One of the central themes of this era is statebuilding. Moving from loosely held together kingdoms with personal loyalties from the lords, to a centralized state. We know however that not all states managed to successfully centralize, and the ones that did not centralize ended up being weaker and even outright annexed.

One of the major problems here is the press button, accumulate mana (that is wait), press button, repeat. One of the best mechanics in the game that I think is wildly underutilized is the disaster mechanic. It exists largely as a punishment for poor play instead of as a path for change. The single exception I know of is the Absolutism disaster, which is something many players try to encourage because they come out stronger. Unlike other disasters, I'm rewarded for winning that disaster with not only short term benefits but long term. The Court and Country disaster, on its general design, is one of the best mechanics in the game. The player is making the choice to temporarily weaken themselves and leave themselves open to depredations of their neighbors, risking losing the civil war and being significantly weakened in both the short and long term, in order to take a chance at becoming stronger should they win. And while the mechanics through which this occurs, that is rebels and events, is not the most engaging, the overall design is engaging for the player, and is vastly superior to "push button, accumulate mana, push button." Imagine if changing to a Republic wasn't as simple as "accumulate mana, press button" but instead involved a disaster in which the player now has to take control of the republican faction and defeat the monarchists.

Additionally, internal administration should change. One thing I'd like to see is an adoption of HOI4s subject system. In HOI4 there are layers to how integrates a subject is.

Similar to CKII, I'd like to see pretenders and separatists represented as states. Use the old Annexation Casus Belli for unification. Additionally, all rebels should have the ability to form a state should they not be dealt with. If the player takes land in Britain, which then spawns peasants or noble rebellions, and for whatever reason, I am no longer able to defend these lands, those territories are de facto independent and the game should recognize this. Make potential peace in this scenario not just win or lose but use the above subject system. Maybe your pretender or noble rebels remain a most integrated vassal to represent a frozen conflict while your separatists became the looses subject.

 

[grommile]

the Absolutism disaster, which is something many players try to encourage because they come out stronger.

And I find that design utterly terrible, and refuse point blank to lean into it.

 

[Loganplayseu4]

Additionally, internal administration should change. One thing I'd like to see is an adoption of HOI4s subject system. In HOI4 there are layers to how integrates a subject is.

This part is interesting to me in particular, as I feel like, in the current game, vassals are too static, primarily as a result of a one-fits-all model.

Instead, I'd prefer if subjects worked more like the following:
- Had levels of autonomy (I've actually added this into a mod I am working on, with 6 total levels, equating to 100% autonomy (such as Provence and Burgundy under France in 1444) to effectively being a core part of the realm but just not annexed yet)
- Instead of varying subject "types", subjects instead had "privileges" or "reforms". Some may be revokable, but special ones (such as daimyos) or specific ones (such as personal unions) are not.
- For example, a march would be a privilege that increases autonomy all the way to 100% but gives increased military capabilities.

 

[arosenberger14]

I wonder if it's time to re-think the whole CB/claims/badboy system entirely from the ground up to achieve more dynamic and realistic outcomes of wars. Back in the EU3 and earlier days CB's and cores really set Paradox games apart from stuff like Civ and Total War as wars were something you had to justify or face internal repercussions; diplomacy wasn't just about finding allies or peace treaties, but finding justifications for war. Since claim fabrication became a thing though they've effectively changed to a (gradually weakened) rate-limiting factor that paces how quickly you can conquer. On the other hand, Aggressive Expansion has been a big improvement in the badboy system, but it still feels like an artificial gating mechanism to force to player to conquer at a certain rate.

If EU5 does successfully make maintaining a stable blob more difficult and making strength scale less linearly with size, perhaps it would be a good thing to do away with claims as a method of reducing badboy/coring costs entirely and instead design an AI and diplomatic system that will judge relationships and actions more holistically. Could make the game less an excercise in numerical optimization and (hopefully) more dynamic and fun. Victoria 3 appears to be making some great strides in this respect, so hopefully EU5 will build on that work.

 

[Sete]

Needs pops.
Better colonization.
Better exploration.
Better combat.

 

[durbal]

if so every nation is the same game experience

Not when the simulation is adequate enough to handle different outcomes based on different starting states (technology, culture and religious makeup, geography, existing politics, etc.). That's the kind of stuff that realistically makes EU4 in any way good. Mission trees, homogenized technology levels, etc. unfortunately take that away.

 

[Stratagyfan101]

This part is interesting to me in particular, as I feel like, in the current game, vassals are too static, primarily as a result of a one-fits-all model.

Instead, I'd prefer if subjects worked more like the following:
- Had levels of autonomy (I've actually added this into a mod I am working on, with 6 total levels, equating to 100% autonomy (such as Provence and Burgundy under France in 1444) to effectively being a core part of the realm but just not annexed yet)
- Instead of varying subject "types", subjects instead had "privileges" or "reforms". Some may be revokable, but special ones (such as daimyos) or specific ones (such as personal unions) are not.
- For example, a march would be a privilege that increases autonomy all the way to 100% but gives increased military capabilities.

Yes, generalize the mechanic and then have customization of that general mechanic.

 

[cursorhiker]

On making wars shorter and more decisive, both interest groups and the populace as a whole should have "war enthusiasm" that is greatly affected by blockades, loss of battles, etc. In the beginning of the game, you have to pay more attention to the former (getting the nobles to bring their forces to join your war, getting the burghers to fund it) but as the game progresses the general opinion of the populace starts to matter more especially in more advanced states.

Let's say you're playing as Spain and own the Netherlands, and decide to fight a war with France over some petty issue of trade or New World colonies (i.e., not a war that'll have huge support from the word "go"). The Dutch interest groups weren't happy with you to begin with, and now are getting blockaded by France, ruining their overseas trade. While your war support as a whole may be okay, the angry Dutch elites might demand that you end the war, grant them rights and autonomy, or even rise up if you ignore their concerns for too long. If the war drags on too long, even your local interest groups might demand you end the war. This would make going to war a dicey prospect in large, advanced, multicultural and multi-religion states in particular.

Also, the loss of major battles or capture of major cities would apply a massive temporary hit to war support, as well as a smaller permanent modifier. Thus, a decisive victory like Agincourt or Austerlitz might be sufficient to get a nation to sue for peace then and there.