Why Common Sense lacks, well, common sense!

[LemonMonk]

Sorry to be demanding but while you are here anyway would you mind explaining the point/the reason for "Defender of the Faith"? It seems like it is just a purely fantasy concept that is designed to place you against the leading catholic power early in the game.

DotF is not "a purely fantasy concept". Some Pope (one of the Popes called Leo) declared Henry VIII Defender of the Faith before his conversion to Protestantism, and ever since Defender of the Faith is written in Latin on British coinage.

 

[Koivin]

So it seems in general Paradox's design vision is mostly simplicity, transparency and abstraction as a means for a fun experience. This is probably to keep the game streamlined and easily accessible, thus opening the market for more players. While it personally isn't what I like, apparently the metrics indicate that this business model of paradox works. I think all future suggestions should be among those three main lines (S,T,A). It's like Wiz said, they don't want it to be too complex. Anyone want to cook up a significant but easily understandable logistics system boyzzz?

 

[Wizzington]

'Simple to use, complex to master' is pretty much my definition of an ideal feature.

 

[doktorstick]

What I dislike most about the fort system, besides the sometimes incomprehensible pathing logic is that:
a) Rebels spawn and can take the province before you can respond;
b) Rebels spawn and if one spawns on a fort, rebels adjacent to the fort pile on it making it a doomstack of rebels.

 

[grommile]

'Simple to use, complex to master' is pretty much my definition of an ideal feature.

Which gets back to "why can't regency councils declare war?"

 

[Chaos_TLW]

Well, to be honest... I'd actually like to have supply lines and logistics that would allow half my stack dying of dysentery. With a special sound effect and all

 

[FrigidSoul]

What people need to understand is that the fort is not really blocking the movement, but it blocks you from setting up lines of suplies, you can't safely do that without actualy conquering the lands, so your units would all die in enemy territory... It's like in HoI, where you CAN actualy go balls deep behind enemy lines, but then if you lose a battle you get auto stack whiped, because you can't retreat, etc... (also, your units start to lose all organization (morale) because of no supplies).

So, except if they totaly change the entire way armies/units/supplies, etc work, this is imho the most realistic alternative.

Supply lines are a modern problem. Most armies of the EU4 era lived off the land; they were actually better off in enemy territory most of the time because at least they could loot someone else's peasants.

That's not to say that there wouldn't have been massive attrition moving through enemy territory (particularly away from rivers); it's also not to say that the current fort system needs to change. Wiz is right; the realism talk gets out of hand. Half the time it isn't even accurate. But accurate or not, the main sin of realism talk on this forum is that it's so often divorced from any notion of how the realism in question relates to game play.

 

[Beagá]

Which gets back to "why can't regency councils declare war?"

Don´t know man, I´m fine with it nowadays. Regencies were times of trouble in any country, fighting offensive war is crazy. Is there any example from history? Shouldn´t it cause -1 stability? At least?

Also as I said, you can fight wars - just join warleaders of defensive wars by allying with them.

 

[Bavarian Steve]

Supply lines are a modern problem. Most armies of the EU4 era lived off the land; they were actually better off in enemy territory most of the time because at least they could loot someone else's peasants.

That's not to say that there wouldn't have been massive attrition moving through enemy territory (particularly away from rivers); it's also not to say that the current fort system needs to change. Wiz is right; the realism talk gets out of hand. Half the time it isn't even accurate. But accurate or not, the main sin of realism talk on this forum is that it's so often divorced from any notion of how the realism in question relates to game play.

This is only partially true. Ammo, new recruits, new weapons, orders from generals had to have well maintained supply lines. Food, and clothing could be gained from the surrounding area.

 

[wingzero890]

Don´t know man, I´m fine with it nowadays. Regencies were times of trouble in any country, fighting offensive war is crazy. Is there any example from history? Shouldn´t it cause -1 stability? At least?

Also as I said, you can fight wars - just join warleaders of defensive wars by allying with them.

Well, England started a war against Scotland during the reign of Edward the 6th, for one. It was started by the child's uncle and lord protector Edward Seymour.

'realism is not a good argument' according to some though

 

[Beagá]

I´m not necessarily against change, but it should cause at least one ill effect. Stability the most obvious one.

 

[Promanco]

Which gets back to "why can't regency councils declare war?"

You do know you can mod this right?

 

[WSnova]

Speaking as someone who's historically been a Wiz fan, I'm not delighted to see him now spamming the forum with this phrase. It adds nothing to discussion, and I for one don't play EU because I hope to see were-bunny samurai casting ice magic.

If you are playing it because you somehow think its a scholarly simulator of some sort you are really overestimating how much control the state really had over stuff. Game has never been realistic (and no, not even Victoria 2 or HOI are realistic)

 

[FrigidSoul]

This is only partially true. Ammo, new recruits, new weapons, orders from generals had to have well maintained supply lines. Food, and clothing could be gained from the surrounding area.

Most things in life are only partially true, but I believe you're overstating it -- particularly the bit about new recruits in an era before nationalism. Instead of typing up a long rebuttal, I'll just leave you with a snippet from forum MVP Jomini, who generally says it better anyway:

Okay so from the top:
Weapons: lasted literally centuries and were carried on the backs of the men. The logistical burden of weaponry is identical in home territory or overseas.
Ammunition: this is an era of cast lead shot (in the early eras you had stone shot, arrows, and bolts). All of this was reusable. As long as you won, you go find the spent shots, heat up a crucible, and pour the lead into a mold (which could be little more than a hole in sand). The logistical burden of ammunition was virtually identical in home territory or overseas. You could march a little bit faster if you could rely of magazine stored munitions, but this was a convenience, not a necessity.
Powder: This had a real logistical burden - but only if you fought. Armies (and navies for that matter) did not do so much in the way of live fire training. Yes it was hard to replace powder once expanded at the far side of the world ... but that is why everyone freaking set up powder mills in the early Caribbean colonies.
Clothing: could be looted from the peasants, everywhere
Food: could be looted from the peasants, everywhere
Water: only an issue for extreme length voyages (e.g. crossing the Pacific) or in desert terrain. Even in the later, you normally could get enough to get buy without too much trouble.
Pay: could be looted from the peasants, everywhere (most armies of the era were not paid wages and instead signed on for the privilege of looting peasants).

As long as you were fighting on land with lots of peasants that hadn't been pillaged recently, infantry were arguably cheaper to maintain in the New World than the old (at least that is what the actual surviving records indicate). In every single war, it was always cheaper to fight on someone else's land than on your own (peasants being easier to pillage then).

This one's also good.

Point being that yes, there are any number of things you could do to the game to make it more realistic with respect to supply and logistics, but almost any singular change ignores the wider context. For example, it's unrealistic on its face that we can ship tens of thousands of troops overseas, right? But in real life, various countries didn't need to ship tens of thousands of troops overseas to conquer vast swathes of land. They used a combination of local mercenary talent, local political schemes, skullduggery, disease, etc.

So which is better? The game's current, oversimplified-but-self-consistent model whereby countries conquer through the direct conflict of massed armies? Or is it better to try to intstitute a model that tries, and most likely fails hilariously, to incorporate all of the difficulties of overseas/inland transport, local politics, guerrilla warfare, etc etc? At what point do we decide that rendering the game unrecognizable for questionable game play benefit isn't a worthy goal?

 

[grommile]

You do know you can mod this right?

Sure - and if I could play Ironman-without-achievements (I like not having to think about the tedious mechanical task of saving the game) while using gameplay-affecting mods, I would consider doing so.

This would not, however, stop me continuing to publicly state that I think the design decision is wrong from both a historicist (milhist buffs go "whiskey tango foxtrot" when I tell them EU4 prohibits regency councils from declaring war) and gameist (through no fault of my own I am arbitrarily denied gameplay agency for up to fifteen years, and most countries have no sane means of defeating this arbitrary agency denial) perspective.

I want to play the default game. I want the default game to not cause critical breaches of least-astonishment.

 

[BFTeixeira]

Supply lines are a modern problem. Most armies of the EU4 era lived off the land; they were actually better off in enemy territory most of the time because at least they could loot someone else's peasants.

That's not to say that there wouldn't have been massive attrition moving through enemy territory (particularly away from rivers); it's also not to say that the current fort system needs to change. Wiz is right; the realism talk gets out of hand. Half the time it isn't even accurate. But accurate or not, the main sin of realism talk on this forum is that it's so often divorced from any notion of how the realism in question relates to game play.

Where do you think the army reinforcements come from?

 

[FrigidSoul]

Well, England started a war against Scotland during the reign of Edward the 6th, for one. It was started by the child's uncle and lord protector Edward Seymour.

'realism is not a good argument' according to some though

The regency thing isn't just a realism argument though; it's primarily a game play argument, no matter which side of the fence you're on.

 

[wingzero890]

The regency thing isn't just a realism argument though; it's primarily a game play argument, no matter which side of the fence you're on.

Yep. Not only is it unrealistic, it is completely reliant on RNG (like all the mechanics tied to monarchies), so there's nothing the player can do about it. Which makes it a bad game mechanic.

 

[FrigidSoul]

Where do you think the army reinforcements come from?

Just like most everything else in the game, reinforcements are an abstraction. So depending on the context, they could come from local populations or your own; hiring locals was a pretty popular and effective strategy back then.

"B-But they come from my manpower!" Abstraction.

 

[Beagá]

Sure - and if I could play Ironman-without-achievements (I like not having to think about the tedious mechanical task of saving the game) while using gameplay-affecting mods, I would consider doing so.

This would not, however, stop me continuing to publicly state that I think the design decision is wrong from both a historicist (milhist buffs go "whiskey tango foxtrot" when I tell them EU4 prohibits regency councils from declaring war) and gameist (through no fault of my own I am arbitrarily denied gameplay agency for up to fifteen years, and most countries have no sane means of defeating this arbitrary agency denial) perspective.

I want to play the default game. I want the default game to not cause critical breaches of least-astonishment.

Yes I know, but the correct way of doing it would be having some kind of simple dinasty system. So that pure regencies are more rare.

The game is based on history, so yes, it uses history as examples, even if not for 100% situations.

What exactly you propose? Because regency fighting war with no malus is not solution.