What we mean by playing tall and the obstacle to getting it right

[Hrodbert]

After seeing a bit of negative feedback to the three dev diaries dealing with "playing tall" in leviathans its maybe helpful if we talk about the wider issue rather than taking issue with specifics though I will talk a bit about the new features.

So naturally if people have different ideas about what it means please speak up but to get us started I'll give it a go:

Playing tall means it being viable in game to remain competitive without essentially painting the whole map. In mechanical terms this means being able to have a large economy and large military. As we wont see a pop system due to technical limitations this handled through development. The current way this works is that playing tall relies on spending mana in provinces so dev cost and modifiers that centre around the benefits of developing (like goods produced) are central to this playstyle.

The difficulty is that in real terms we don't seem to really agree where the dividing line is between wide and tall. it makes sense that if a wider country is able to develop territory while expanding that the benefits are greater. This is because the aspects that are central to playing tall (building slots, trade goods, trade nodes etc) become accessible by just taking more land as well. playing as an opm the entire game is an even smaller chunk of the community than building up a whole region (say Ireland or the Netherlands as an example).

I think the big obstacle is that dev growth, barring some random events that really don't impact it all that much is a manual process that uses resources you need for other things (mainly tech) or using a colonist which is very inefficient as why wouldn't you just colonize new provinces . There's also the issue of internal politics which I'll discuss below.​

so lets look at the three new features but bearing in mind numbers aren't final

1: infrastructure
solid as it directly costs governing capacity to build up existing areas, reduces the amount of manual developing you need to do to get building slots and with the additional manufactory slot you can boost military capacity with manpower/sailors with out missing out on goods produced. I don't think we've been told yet if its possible to have two goods produces manufactories but if we can that's super strong and even having two soldiers households on a grain or livestock province would be huge for a smaller nations army.

2: concentrating development
the mechanic itself seems good as concentrating development in your capital avoids using governing cost and is zero autonomy so its viable despite losing some dev. the big thing in terms of a stricter playing tall game is the new peace deal option gives you something worth fighting wars for.

3: centralizing state
As it stands this is the weakest of the three by far. its a bit unclear from the diary whether it lowers governing capacity or state maintenance. if its the former then it needs to be tweaked a lot to be a real choice over just spending government reform progress to get more capacity instantly, if its the latter then that's pretty weak other than maybe being useful for keeping the dev cost edict (or maybe institution spread but you could just dev up for that). The suggestion i made in that thread is that maybe the mechanic could be like concentrating development but within a state where you pick a province to be a state capital, dev from the other provinces moves there and the state capital gets a modifier that reduces its governing capacity cost.

I feel its likely this last one will be reworked before release so we will see.

The wider question of things to do while playing tall boils down to staying at peace long term not offering a lot to do, the reason I think this is difficult to resolve is that adding more internal politics like estates is naturally going to give wide players more content than tall (more cultures/religions etc) but while more is maybe not a problem we should avoid systems that become too micro heavy (like how estate land ownership used to be)

Maybe the solution is more options in peace deals. imagine being able to secure monopolies on specific trade goods from defeated enemies. so then as an a tall player you have to take into account how to achieve "trading in" bonuses without taking over every trade node. Other than that when looking at how to use the most of what's in the game and what's doable adding ways for gradual development growth would be the biggest change that could make playing tall a more rewarding style.

Next week we should see what changes they are making to colonial nations which at least for me could change somethings.

What do you think?

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

Playing tall means it being viable in game to remain competitive without essentially painting the whole map.

While viability is an incentive to play tall, i don't consider it is a defining trait of playing tall.

My definition of playing Tall is "refraining from expanding you territory any further, despite having the means and opportunity to do so. And instead looking to improve you country by leveraging the means you already have"

In mechanical terms this means being able to have a large economy and large military.

Not only, for example having a better (not larger) military is also another way of making tall more viable.

this handled through development.

This is one of my main grievances with the current vision of the developers and most of the playerbase.

While development surely plays the main part, there are and should be more ways to improve your strength without expanding further.
Crownland and Autonomy are examples of mechanics that improve your strength without involving developing or conquering, modifiers such as Prestige, Legitimacy, Absolutism, Power Projection, Mercantilism, Naval and Army tradition and Professionalism are other modifiers that can leveraged to make you stronger while not conquering or developing.

i believe the game should focus on making tall more viable by facilitating its maximization of these modifiers and/or adding new ones like "communication efficiency" or logistics which give advantages to have a compact and efficient country over a large and bloated one.

Total development shouldn't be the ultimate defining trait of a nation's strength and potential

The difficulty is that in real terms we don't seem to really agree where the dividing line is between wide and tall

Tall and Wide are not hard divides of playstyles, there isn't a threshold number of provinces that is considered wide or a threshold level of provinces development that is considered tall.

They are mostly descriptive of actions.
If you conquer because you can, you are playing wide.
If you can conquer but choose not to and improve your country instead, you are playing tall.

This means that yes, you can play wide and tall in the same playthrough.

it makes sense that if a wider country is able to develop territory while expanding that the benefits are greater

I agree.

I think the big obstacle is that dev growth, barring some random events that really don't impact it all

The big obstacle, is that most Tall features added are too focused in clicking buttons and playing with development, which is always inevitably benefiting wide more since wide has more buttons to click.

Good Tall mechanics consist in for example, modifiers that exist in relation to your province number, since Tall players usually have fewer provinces, they will usually be able to maximit these effects more easily.

so lets look at the three new features

Not going into it all over again since i discussed it a lot on the DD's.

The wider question of things to do while playing tall boils down to staying at peace long term not offering a lot to do,

That is correct.
Although it's important to differentiate tall play from pacifist play, although usually these go along, they aren't necessarily the same thing.
Tall play can involve constant warfare, it just shouldn't involve large scale conquest.

the reason I think this is difficult to resolve is that adding more internal politics

A lot of people jump to asking for more internal politics, but they say this without actually giving ideas.
What kind of "internal politics" can they possibly add?
If they just add more buttons to click, people will complain about them being more buttons to click.
If they add passive effects, well, its passive, so it won't fix the issue.
If its "organic" the player has little direct agency so it won't fit the boredom issue.
If it requires player attention and micro, then people complain it's too micro-instensive.

It is actually incredibly hard to come up with a solid idea that turns peacetime more interesting.

Maybe the solution is more options in peace deals.

imagine being able to secure monopolies on specific trade goods from defeated enemies

then as an a tall player you have to take into account how to achieve "trading in" bonuses without taking over every trade node

Very good ideas actually, this is definitely an example of a good tall mechanic, although it still doesn't adress the peacetime issue.

Next week we should see what changes they are making to colonial nations which at least for me could change somethings.

Since there were going to be 3 "tall" mechanics, and they have already been revealed, i wouldn't bet the changes to Colonial Nations have much impact on this.

 

[Piotrzeci]

There just isn't anything playing tall does better. As long as you win wars and don't let enemies siege you, you pretty much are as good as if you were at peace all this time. Prosperity goes up, army you need anyway, you make money, you expand and you weaken your enemies in the process. There isn't much a small nation has going for it in EU4. Having full manpower doesn't give you better economy for example.

Another big issue is trade; you can colonize, you can develop land, but as long as there are other nations in the same node, they take your money. There is no peaceful trading in EU4. Sure you can build few manufactures in the same province now, but it's not worth much, if you don't get the majority of the trade income from them.

And finally; it's just boring. I tend to play pretty slowly and not expand much, but it's still fun to expand when I get to and manage new lands. It's not fun to click development button and see a number go up. Estates are really basic, your country doesn't have feudal vassals under you... there just isn't much you can do while at peace.

 

[MW4Merc]

Johan you guys could always just experiment with a new mechanic behind closed doors for a week or so. Test out an idea you may have. if it's proving to cause too many issues with other mechanics axe the idea and try something else. We would rather have more meaty updates and wait longer than getting a couple small buttons to press and forget about. Also I posted it to a previous dev diary but how about something like this to create a more immersive change that should be low risk for you?

I have a couple relatively simple addition suggestion if the focus is on playing tall.

1, attach a bonus and negative based on your manpower. I think of something like goods produced. If you have lets say 100% of your max manpower then you should be getting 10% extra goods produced (As the non conscrited guys would be working on the fields and factories). If you are tapped on manpower then it's minus 10% goods produced as there are not enough hands on the fields. 50% is where you would have no bonuses or penalties.

2, make manpower more spendable during peace. If you are playing tall then you are most likely will be at 100% manpower most of the time. Maybe give some options of spending a % of manpower to dev up or give temporarly bonuses like building cost reduction (it's meant to further demonstrate how nations sometimes uses their military for construction projects besides the events we already have)

3. increase the chance of getting deving up events while at peace. Also create a chance to lose dev in provinces that are occupied (devastation is a good mechanic but it's not really having any trully lasting effect when in history a devastated land could take over a hundred year to recover)

Here's a suggestion from the DD today. I thought that this was a great idea. More mechanics where you are incentivized to play taller, but not completely hurt if you go wide. I think things like this is about as good as we might get in late stage EU4.
I also like the overall idea of concentrating development mainly because of the peace deal.
To me, centralizing a state should increase the Development Efficiency of that state rather than reduce GC. DE is criminally underused and, imo, should be more focused on in tall play ideas.

 

[EUnderhill]

I'm looking at "tall" play as a means for smaller and on paper, weaker, nations to maintain power parity with larger rivals by making the fewer provinces richer relative to those of the blobbing rival.

 

[FrogCrusher]

From DD also.
For me, this dude says it all. Problem with tall is that you don't have any trade-off nor pressure mechanics.

If you want to make playing tall more interesting there are two fundamental principles you need to follow:

1. Progression: goals to achieve and obstacles to overcome.

2. Decisions and consequences: risk vs reward, tradeoffs, short term vs long term gain etc.

I think the main reason playing tall is not interesting is because there are no obstacles. Nothing is actively working against you, trying to prevent you from getting your development up or decreasing autonomy or whatever. You just click buttons and then wait until you can click again. Compare this to playing wide, where you have other countries, rebels, disloyal subjects, aggressive expansion and overextension all getting in your way or actively working to ruin your day. Overcoming them is very satisfying.

It's not enough to simply add more things for the tall player to do. You have to add more things for them to beat.

 

[Zaddy]

The issue with playing tall is that the game was (unintentionally or not) released as a pure war game. If you look at games like Civilization 4, for instance, they have much, much more interesting internal mechanics than EU4 does. All of these attempts to retrofit a tall gameplay shell onto a game that was not made to be played tall isn't working. I do wish the devs would stop with this awkward attempt to please everyone.

If they want to go fresh into EU5 with a redesign of the games systems from the ground up, that would be fine. As is they're just wasting their time, imo.

 

[priamossz]

From DD also.
For me, this dude says it all. Problem with tall is that you don't have any trade-off nor pressure mechanics.

The guy you quoting do raise good points. I would welcome mechanics that cover these points. Although anything that gives an internal challenge to beat is likely also effect wide play. If you want to play tall and want some sort of thing to beat, I would advise to play as Hungary with no allies or vassals (Just integrate croatia as quick as possible) and not allowed to wage offensive wars. You will be between ottoblob, Austria, bohemia venice and plc eyeing you up. The basic goal would be to survive and thrive as a nation. I done it and as a result i learned to appreciate the condotierri system much more.

 

[EUnderhill]

Although my MP experience is limited (and limited to EUII) the advantage to tall play came from being able to utilize all your resources in a concentrated manner. Being able to raise all my troops in fewer clicks, being able to watch all my lands without scrolling, not fussing over wrong religion/culture provinces was a meaningful edge in a world without a pause button.

 

[cuendillar]

As was pointed out earlier, tall play isn't necessarily pacifistic - the difference is in what wars are fought for and which peace treaties are sought.

To me, wide play is to seize territories even if the land isn't that attractive, while tall play is more about demanding resources like money and monarch power and reinvest it into the nation, likely coupled with vassals and trade transfers. Technically, a run to revoke the privilegia while keeping as many princes around or released as possible (for max gain and vassal count) could definitely be considered playing tall.

 

[MW4Merc]

To me, tall play is being able to make a smaller centralized country able to stand up to the world spanning Great Powers, not really equal them but not able to be crushed either. Like a consolidated Ireland. One of my favorite runs was just being a thorn in GB's side and doing whatever I could to thawart them. Focusing on just your economy and seeing how far you can expand your (limited) resources. Now being able to take development from them that would have been fun.

 

[deathbypie]

This thread is just another example of the fact that there is no real good definition of "tall" in this game. Play styles vary a lot, and I think the dividing line between tall and wide is mostly imaginary. Everybody wants something different, and whether a new feature appeals to someone isn't necessarily dependent on whether they think of themselves as a tall or wide player.

This is why I think the survey that Paradox posted a while back seemed pretty useless. It just asked things like "do you prefer tall or wide play", without really defining what it was asking.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

This thread is just another example of the fact that there is no real good definition of "tall" in this game.

Honestly, this supposed "lack of definition" seems an unproductive reduction to semantics and more of a cope-out to the discussion than anything else.

Despite all players having different methods of playing tall, and slightly diverging definitions, there really is a common intuition of what playing tall is and isn't, and they can all pick up the nuances of what is playing tall without having to adhere to a strict definition of the term.
Debates concerning tall mechanics never stem from people having different views on what tall is, but simply due to different opinions on how helpful the specific mechanic is for tall in comparison with wide.

Even looking at this thread, the different definitions given here are all compatible with one another. They don't contradict eachother, they complement and confirm eachother.

Everybody wants something different, and whether a new feature appeals to someone isn't necessarily dependent on whether they think of themselves as a tall or wide player

I also find this line a bit too essentialist, people arent inherently tall players or wide players, people play taller or play wider depending on whatever they feel like at the time.
You make it sound as if there was a lobby of tall players wanting tall features and wide players wanting wide features, instead i believe this is more a case of everyone wanting all playstyles to be viable and interesting, because everyone likes to replay the game and having different experiences.

 

[Josar]

I think there should be more internal development options, but I do not think playing tall should be just as viable as conquering land.

There are examples of smaller nation being powerful, but even the Netherlands grew there territory through overseas colonies.

Honestly I would be happy with more options during peace time to improve your country, and so far the options in the dev diaries have typically been too restrictive.

 

[Militantti Talitintti]

The issue with playing tall is that the game was (unintentionally or not) released as a pure war game. If you look at games like Civilization 4, for instance, they have much, much more interesting internal mechanics than EU4 does. All of these attempts to retrofit a tall gameplay shell onto a game that was not made to be played tall isn't working. I do wish the devs would stop with this awkward attempt to please everyone.

If they want to go fresh into EU5 with a redesign of the games systems from the ground up, that would be fine. As is they're just wasting their time, imo.

Tall in Civ 4 was never a thing. And its "internal mechanics" are pretty much non-existant. Maybe you meant Civ 5 where tall was actually the meta, but then again there's not much going on internally there either. Small off-topic ramble aside, I'm in agreement with you.

 

[Orioniys]

I think the issue is that, playing tall is actually very much a viable playstyle even right now. While some ppl really dislike developing, the amount of dev cost discounts and mana sources in the game reached outrages amount, and continuously grows each expansion. Combination of tall play and limited expansion is probably the most common and successful playstyle in multiplayer.
In my opinion the issue lies not in strictly how it's viable numbers wise, but it's just very boring and micro intensive. There is no point in playing tall in SP. Power creep with futures that are borderline useless, or would be completely broken if the numbers are not right is not the solution.

To make Tall playstyle viable there needs to be something to do in a peace time, and it needs be more entertaining than just pressing one button in a state screen once every 50 years.
I already linked TGE mod in dev diary thread, and can do it one more time. Yes it's clunky and can be done better probably, well it's a mod. But it gives a player creative tasks, incentives to pay attention to trade goods and it also immersive. And most futures in the dev dairies fail in this three categories.

 

[Kimbole]

But it gives a player creative tasks, incentives to pay attention to trade goods and it also immersive.

Vital indeed.

I always think prosperity is ripe for expanding around. It seems so thematically linked to tall play to me (building a prospering nation, not a huge nation). Yet it just hides away in the state tab...

 

[fleetothemoon]

In my opinion, we don't necessarily need more things to do in peace to make tall viable or fun. We just need more war options to strengthen ourselves and weaken our enemies, without taking their land.

This is why I think the pillage capital would be a good feature for tall play. Unfortunately, I don't think it is going to be enough.

I'd welcome even more ways to steal dev, trade power, mana, gold, manpower, etc, than we currently already have. If there is something else worth getting in a peace deal other than land, then maybe people will actually consider it.

 

[Bandua_of_Gallaecia]

In my opinion, we don't necessarily need more things to do in peace to make tall viable or fun. We just need more war options to strengthen ourselves and weaken our enemies, without taking their land.

This is why I think the pillage capital would be a good feature for tall play. Unfortunately, I don't think it is going to be enough.

I'd welcome even more ways to steal dev, trade power, mana, gold, manpower, etc, than we currently already have. If there is something else worth getting in a peace deal other than land, then maybe people will actually consider it.

Consider the following:

 

[Zaddy]

Tall in Civ 4 was never a thing. And its "internal mechanics" are pretty much non-existant. Maybe you meant Civ 5 where tall was actually the meta, but then again there's not much going on internally there either. Small off-topic ramble aside, I'm in agreement with you.

I should have been more clear: I did not mean Civ 4 in particular was a tall-promoting game (indeed, the "meta" outside of stuff like Culture or Diplo victories is to gain a military advantage with a tech beeline/slingshot and steamroll everyone and snowball), but rather that it simply has interesting and fun development mechanics, from tile improvements to buildings. EU4's tri-button development is uh... not that...