Such modding takes hours to prepare to play a video game. Streamlining the system means people who aren't modders can make their own mods, and simple things could be changed without writing a mountain of code. No need for a game converter; do it yourself! Such simplified modding is so "old school"; even Age of Empires had a basic game editor. By that I mean, its pretty much expected. The real point, though, is that it would make the game more fun to mess with. If you try to setup scenarios, wars, and alliances by just using tag swapping, you'll spend hours, just to see that it doesn't work out.
I already mostly agreed with you on this one
I'd misunderstood you initially when you talked about moving provinces and countries.
I'm just not sure how much quicker it'll be changing culture, religions and cores in a graphic interface with the inevitable menus than to use cut and paste in notepad once you've made a note of which provinces to change.
CKII has barons, counts, dukes, kings, and emperors, all with families and courtiers. EUIII represents a significantly smaller amount of nations altogether, and many of these are not monarchies. I'm assuming EU4 will be similar. Representing monarchs and their immediate families should be no problem. Besides that, modders for CKII have made working maps of all of Europe, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Mmm. My point here is that you will be simulating the relations of the characters in addition to the other necessary parts of the game. The detail of the "royal families", and the extent of this should be deliberately limited. After all, slightly over 5 people per province leads to about 10000 people to keep track of.
Yes. It would look nicer. All the things you can see with your eyes can be represented numerically. Personally, I'd rather have eyes than a graph. Hmm, not sure about changing mechanics. However, the timeline does cover several time periods where people drastically changed the way they fought, traveled, experienced art, etc. It would make sense if things felt or behaved differently over time.
I'm not saying anything about changing things to a graph. I'm just saying that (mechanically, and as far as game control goes) it doesn't make any real difference if you're sending a unit sprite that is a man in uniform, a flag on a stick, a tactical tile with the flag/coa of the country, or a flying starfish. It's still "send graphic X to location Y". As far as the control goes, you're doing the exact same thing with it, regardless of what the unit place holder is.
Changes in mechanics in the middle of the game would be disasterous. You'd need to have everyone change mechanics at the same point -
Do you choose a set date?
Do you choose when one nation hits a key tech?
Do you choose when a majority of nations hit a key tech?
However you do it, you risk confusion as to why a mechanic has changed, and why controlling a country in a certain way no longer works. Imagine suddenly switching from CKII combat mechanics (Levies don't refresh until you disband them, mercenaries do refresh, manpower is effectively/province, there are only set mercenary companies available, troops can be withheld by your vassals within your country) to EUIII ones (no levies, but you have a standing army that refreshes when standing around, mercenaries don't refresh, manpower is per nation, mercenaries can be hired as individual units, troops can't be withheld as there aren't any vassals within the nation, but rather you have vassal nations outside your country who either answer with all their troops or don't answer - and allied vassals always answer), and then to Victoria 2 (troops mostly seem to behave as EUIII, but now have to keep track of culture and religion (even if it was never relevant or tracked before), and I haven't yet seen any mercenaries... Also, troops hire as blocks of 3K instead of 1K). Now imagine the research system switching between those three games. Or the politics switching from character based to nation based (but everyone has all the options - in theory at least) to a Great Power system (only the top 8 countries get all the options, the next 8 get a cut down list, and then the remaining "civilised" countries get an even more cut down list, and then the uncivilised get an even more reduced list). It would quite rightly be several different games. It would be confusing if it happened in game, and it would probably screw the AI up even more than usual.
Why would culture always change with technology that doesn't necessarily relate to it? Most games have a lot more than 20 sprites, and they're usually highly detailed. I think the art team would survive.
I might be in a minority here, but I rarely play at a zoom level where I can see the sprites. I'm usually playing at a level where I can only see the unit tiles/flags.
I could still do with an answer to how you'd do the changes in available music or artwork though - /when/ does it change - year or tech?
Physically represented factions physically attacking another nation or faction. Not modifiers. Rebels, maybe, but rebels with personality who you can interact with. Rebels 2.0!
So yeah, yet more rebelscum to have to physically beat into submission. Yet more micromanagement and panic as yet another group of rebels turn up and start trying to break your nation, destroy your manpower pool or burn the buildings you are working on. How to make tribal nations even more useless v 2.0!
How do you intend to interact with them anyway? If there's more than the current demands list, then they need treating like a slimmed down nation, and thus need a tag per revolt... They can be reused after the rebellion is ended, but if there's 50 revolts going on at any one time (globally), then that's another 50 tags at a time.
It gives you the ability to choose and add your own personality to your nation, rather than the personality being assigned to you. Especially if the effects of the event had lasting side effects, changed something about your nation.
Again, much like the decisions that already exist in EUIII?
Or do you mean the changes would be something more than "Gains flag X until XX.XX.XXXX" or "Gains modifier Y until YY.YY.YYYY"? Perhaps a hidden flag like you get with the National Ideas that allow decisions (Church Attendance Duty > Gilded Iconography; the various NI's that increase/reduce your interaction with the reformation).
Besides, the personality of the nation is what you make of it already. Nothing forces you to be warlike or peaceful; nothing forces you down a particular trading route; nothing forces you to stay monarchic or republican (or theocratic if you really feel the need to go down that route). Yes you can only make logical changes, but you'd be restricted similarly when it comes to those triggered events.
If you really want, you can change the "Click on your government type to change it" banner for a menu with little clickable ticks to change to the new forms of government you have available. That's just a GUI choice. The same options are there.
Well, considering that the game runs pretty well on a single core processor, maybe adding more complexity.. people with mac books will need to upgrade? Besides, the graphical improvements are going to bump the requirements up passed single-core compatibility.
Yeah, that was really poorly implemented.
I've already had to junk one computer for Paradox games. I'd rather not have to junk my new(ish) one because they make graphical tweaks which aren't necessary, adding in pointless little twiddles that I'm unlike to see - like vast quantities more sprites, or radically changing my interface, and thus where, and what my buttons are just because I've hit some pre-defined epoch that is irrelevant to how my nation has developed. I'd prefer the graphics team worked on things that I'll actually see at any zoom. - Borders, provinces, having the single interface being logical and usable as the first priority. I'd prefer that there were thoughts to what colour (for example) the German minors are, so they don't look like unoccupied provinces in a political view, or so that countries that are like to border each other don't look similar. I'd prefer that there was a better way to show occupation - Castille versus Scotland is not easy to see at first glance if something is occupied, similarly for France/Sweden.
