Tinto Talks #4 - March 20th, 2024

[Erwin Davidson]

There is little mistake in the North Central Anatolia. Tosya region is wrong. It should be Ilgaz because the northern part of the Ilgaz Mountain is Tosya. However, in your map Tosya is shown as at the southern part of Ilgaz Mountains. The province name must be Ilgaz instead of Tosya.

 

[Fehervari]

Btw, if the start date indeed is 1337, then shouldn't the "Makarska" location be part of Croatia instead of Bosnia?

 

[Jespoke]

Almost right, it is location->province->area (and for the full thing) ->region->sub continent->continent.
ngl before double checking i also thought there were states but i guess not.

A State in EU4 is something you can make in an Area where you own land, as opposed to adding it to a trade company or leaving it as territories.

Even the in-game text often forgets that "Area" is the proper term for the group of provinces itself.

 

[GenericType]

I hope that the national ideas of EU5 would be like CK3's cultural traditions instead. We should be able to replace them, and we should be able to set our own national ideas. If I want to play a trader, colonizer Prussia without the stupid military national ideas, I should be able to. Why would a mercantile state have access to goosestepping black-clad idiots? When can't it have a mercenary army instead?

Also, please allow us to create cultural hybrids, divergent cultures, or even forge a new culture. It's ahistorical to see that the French of 1400s is still the same French as the 18th century, when much could've changed their traditions. Maybe they're subsumed by the crown of England instead, or maybe by the Spanish, or the Germans.

And again, Prussia as an example, is already an artificial culture borne out of Germanic settlers in the region, and is not really related at all with the Baltic Prussians of old. Instead of having them there, we should be able to create that culture.

And religions, of course, we should be able to create them ourselves. We should not be railroaded into Protestants/Anglicans/Calvinist split in the 16th century when there could be Ninetyninethesesians/Divorcers/Defenestrators instead.

 

[Lindaegan]

This is what I mean, with respect, about not understanding what the people disagreeing with you are saying at all.

Because:

• they're on the Baltic, and so control of the Oresund is of critical importance.
• they control the Vistula and therefore (playing as a trading state themselves as opposed to a militarist state that just taxes trade on the way past) the grain trade and timber trade from Eastern Europe, giving them a potential stranglehold on the bulk trades upon which urbanisation and naval power in Western Europe depend, so they have a strong diplomatic hand vis-a-vis France, England and the Netherlands.
• they have to make a choice between cheapish galley fleets which do well in the Baltic but rely on hundreds of oarsmen (slaves? Citizen sailors? What does that imply for the structure of power in their state?) or expensive ship-of-the-line fleets which could also dominate the North Sea and strike out into the Atlantic.
• they have to navigate the Reformation as a trading nation, trying to protect their commercial interests from religious conflict, whereas Mediterranean trading states operate in a world of Christians and Muslims.
• they have an expansive hinterland and have to reconcile maintaining order in large territories (traditionally the domain of the nobility) with a powerful merchant class in their urbanised hubs. How do they manage tension between the two classes given that they're unusually reliant on not one but both of them?
• And so on.

Each of those points and more could be a global mechanic, each of which would combine with other global mechanics to make countries in different positions and doing different things and with different situations more or less unique.

Bearing in mind there are only like 90ish countries with unique mission trees in EUIV after seven years of development, I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that between regional mechanics and global mechanics designed to accommodate a variety of potential country-states it would be pretty easy to outpace the rate at which developers can turn out "mission tree grants claims and personal unions" #104. Notably EUIV with a less-expansive interest in global mechanics managed to capture and expand a large audience pre-mission trees, suggesting this is entirely possible.

Agreed.

I think of it like telling a story of a king who defeats a much larger empire in a war of some kind. I could tell you the facts about it - when it started, the battles that happened, the way it ended - and I could wax verbose about the details, like battle plans, the complicated diplomacy, and so on. But throughout all this, I have not given you a single reason to care. You don't care about this king, or these people, or this large empire. I have not told you about the background, such as the mountainous terrain of this people's lands leading to greater diversity and smaller governmental structures (such as in the Caucusus) and making unrest harder to quell. You do not know about the various trials and tribulations this king had had to go through, to unite his disparate peoples under a single banner to rebel against their overlords. Now you could say that these are also cold, hard facts, but it has nothing to do with the event (the war) itself.

My favorite CK2 game (and favorite PDX playthrough of all time) was when I once started as a count in Hungary and became king of Croatia. A progression of marriages and deaths led to me becoming king at age 4, before I was promptly kicked out and sent back to Hungary. Then, thirty years later, I came back for my throne, as was my birth right. It gave me a reason to give a shit; the story flowed fascinatingly through game mechanics.

A story is interesting when it shows you a natural progression of logical (or, internally consistent) events, and gives you a reason to bother listening. Even if you played a certain polity through the game historically (as would be represented by a mission tree), what is really more satisfying: waiting to get some reforms and techs to click buttons and change your name so you can click more buttons and hire soldiers all so in the end you can click another button and get +5% discipline, or actually doing what the buttons are representing? I want to face the same challenges a historical ruler might have faced to get his country's institutions to do something, not gameified versions of them so I can get to a historical outcome. And those challenges are where you'll find your flavor - solving them in different ways every time based on where you are and what you've done and what you want to do is what keeps you coming back to the game.

And I don't see why such a system would prevent you from seeing a different kind of flavor - historical events. Harking back to the trading Prussia example, I see no reason why a dynamic event about a certain choice I need to make in relation to the Baltic trade cannot include a bit of text discussing an analogous event in the history of, say, Lubeck.

The reason I love history - and why I play history games - is not because I want to know the whats of the past, but the why and the how. Me personally, I got into history not because of a bunch of cool facts I read in a book, but genuine stories behind those facts that made me want to care.

 

[viola]

Also, please allow us to create cultural hybrids, divergent cultures, or even forge a new culture. It's ahistorical to see that the French of 1400s is still the same French as the 18th century, when much could've changed their traditions. Maybe they're subsumed by the crown of England instead, or maybe by the Spanish, or the Germans.

And again, Prussia as an example, is already an artificial culture borne out of Germanic settlers in the region, and is not really related at all with the Baltic Prussians of old. Instead of having them there, we should be able to create that culture.

And religions, of course, we should be able to create them ourselves. We should not be railroaded into Protestants/Anglicans/Calvinist split in the 16th century when there could be Ninetyninethesesians/Divorcers/Defenestrators instead.

No, please. CK3 already turns into a mess of hybridized cultures hybridizing with other hybridized cultures, ending with completely unhinged stuff.
I'd rather not have Persia turn into a half Mongolian area most of the games.

 

[Calouro1]

CK3 has no mission trees. CK2 neither. Yet they have been praised for their role paying, writing of your own history, etc.

Sure, that would be sad if Prussia and Saxony got exactly the same gameplay, but after all, in 1337 (or even 1444) there was absolutely nothing to prevent one from doing what the other did. What made Prussia unique was how they maneuvered the geopolitical context to their advantage and unified Germany, not that they were predisposed to do so.

That can perfectly be achieved through some some sort of dynamic events / journal missions or some other type of less static tree.

And thats why CKs are my least played games,the only instances where i played CK3 for extended ammount of times was by reading the bookmarks and thinking "This seems like a cool goal to look towards" like becoming king of france as the kid in Anjou or staying as king of England as the norwegian guy, sure you can have some more goals after that i for example also conquered the rest of the british isles but honestly the game gets severely less interesting after i achieve the goal i set out to do.

I mentioned Saxony and Brandenburg not Saxony and Prussia for good measure,both had different challenges and goals they wanted to work towards,it shouldnt just be a game of "Wow i wonder with wich nation i will form germany today" and instead should be of "Wow Saxony does have a lot of cool historical stuff i can do and goals to achieve". What made Prussia unique was that Brandenburg was March on a hostile and volatile border making it not only predisposed to incresed militarism but it was also led by the Hohenzollerns who's junior branch ended up leading the highly militarized remnant culture of the teuton knights in Prussia after they lost to the Poles,this facilitated the state militarism in the area due to the devastation of the 30 years war.

Saxony as far as im aware did not have ambitions of expanding northwards and was much more unstable with internal wars that split the country in half and trying to keep their union with Thuringia,Saxony's gameplay shouldnt be so much about forming the German Empire or something and more about strenghtening thier standing within the HRE and keeping their own internal situation stable.

Brandenburg on the other hand is in a much better place to go around building a professional military to bully smaller states specially since they are supposed to get a automatic union with Prussia and fighting the polish and dueling Austria for control over Germany because thats just the place they where historically.

Having a generic Brandenburg and Saxony play the exact same with very little difference and little to no goals would be extremely boring like a lot of generic no tree countries in EU4 are right now (At least for me) like why would i play Frankfurt or Thuringia instead of a actual interesting country.

The only legitimate argument i have seen against is that it breaks the balance and honestly,fair i can see why having some MT's be better than others is a bit problematic for game balance. But people who complain about railroading really can just ignore the tree and do their own thing,i dont see why people want generic "dynamic" decisions.

 

[Calouro1]

You're right. Much more fun and sure to have vastly more longevity if the game is designed for us to go through a pre-scripted storyline one single time per country and never play that country again. How could that possibly get stale?

Do you have more fun playing generic MT countries? Like legit?

 

[eva3071]

Do you have more fun playing generic MT countries? Like legit?

As I said in another thread, these guys just want Sid Meier's Civilization, Paradox style. A complete sandbox experience.

 

[Calouro1]

The thing is, the supporters of your position (and opponents of mine) like to say "ah, but you want no flavor". And that's a gross misrepresentation, because I want flavor, but flavor that has to do with what I did with my nation and nothing else. If I form Prussia, but I'm a prosperous and mostly peaceful nation living off trade in the Baltic, then I want to see zero things - events, missions, ideas, nothing - about goosestepping Prussian soldiers. That's not the nation I'm playing. That's a Brandenburg-Prussia that got torn to shreds during the 30YW and decided it would make sure it didn't happen anymore.

If I am at the head of Austria, a warring nation that has come to odds with most of its neighbors, de-facto left the HRE, and is in general a total bother to anyone around them, I don't want to smell even a wiff of "Felix Austria", or HRE bonuses, or K.u.K., or whatever.

If my England is a continental power due to holding onto extensive French holdings, something that distracted it enough that Scotland and the Irish princedoms are still around or at least not directly controlled, there should be no single mention of walls of wood, because I need very real walls of stone and blades instead, and ain't got no money to throw on that when I have potential enemies still on my island anyway.

And so on, and so forth. I don't want to be told "no, you are playing wrong, you see, you must do this instead". Yes, there should be some historical inertia, it goes without saying - France isn't going to turn on a dime and rule the waves - but that should be uniquely about how the situation was as of (we can assume, by now) 1337. I want nothing that didn't happen for like 300 years to influence my game. And when I get to that actual date, I want nothing that tells me "I know you played like this, but it's wrong, see, it's actually like that".

In fact, I will state it out outright: there's more history in my approach than there is in "I know Northern Europe has been developing in an utterly different direction for the last four centuries, but those Prussian soldiers surely look mighty".

By this point might as well click the "Create custom nation" button and go enjoy yourself.

 

[Arizal]

Do you have more fun playing generic MT countries? Like legit?

I have No fun playing any mission tree, legit. They aren't any part of my enjoyment. They are a nuisance. I am not trying to follow them in any kind of logical sense, I have no *fun* trying to delve in them or understand them, and I certainly do not consider them while making my plans.

Oh, once I stacked diplomatic reputation modifiers as Austria in order to make France accept being integrated in the HRE. Those were modifiers only Austria had access to, modifiers which made little sense in the situation, yet I exploited them and they were an integral part of my "strategy" of annexing all of Europe at once.

They were *there*. I would much rather have preferred any mechanic that allowed me to develop my diplomatic reputation more, or simply know from the start I would be forced to annex France because somehow, they still considered me as a rival while I was a sprawling empire controlling almost everything.

There is another time MTs were sadly important : when I played the UK, it was kind of necessary to follow the missions to get the French PU, because the game couldn't give England a comprehensive reason to claim the French throne. I wasn't enjoying the mission tree, I was lamenting the absence of such a mechanic, and the fact that the content creators chose to devote time to represent the Hundred Years war through an ugly panel in the left of my screen rather than to flesh out succession wars for every countries.

 

[harezmi]

As with so many other things in our game, this is not an instant action, but a gradual change over time.

It feels gamey when you click on a button once or multiple times back to back and your dev changes from 3 to 30, or you complete a monument from scratch to L3, or change the stability from -3 to 3, etc.
I very much hope we have that logic applied as much as possible as you said.

 

[eva3071]

By this point might as well click the "Create custom nation" button and go enjoy yourself.

These guys are saying a lot of words to disguise the fact that they want a complete sandbox experience.

 

[Wölfeee]

I absolutely love EU4 it's one of my favourite games. However, it's ridiculous how many DLC that game has to improve important mechanics. I can only dream that somehow this game doesn't follow the monetisation policy paradox has seem to gone down where they ram DLC down peoples throat who want to actually have an amazing experience on all their games. I'm fine with DLC don't get me wrong, but the amount of little content they provide for the pricing recently across their titles is insane. If this has DLC I pray it's actually padded with content at reasonable pricing and not split into several DLC.

 

[Blindbohemian]

And thats why CKs are my least played games,the only instances where i played CK3 for extended ammount of times was by reading the bookmarks and thinking "This seems like a cool goal to look towards" like becoming king of france as the kid in Anjou or staying as king of England as the norwegian guy, sure you can have some more goals after that i for example also conquered the rest of the british isles but honestly the game gets severely less interesting after i achieve the goal i set out to do.

I mentioned Saxony and Brandenburg not Saxony and Prussia for good measure,both had different challenges and goals they wanted to work towards,it shouldnt just be a game of "Wow i wonder with wich nation i will form germany today" and instead should be of "Wow Saxony does have a lot of cool historical stuff i can do and goals to achieve".

With respect, all you’re describing here is a failure of imagination and reliance on Paradox to suggest campaigns for you. That’s okay, but you hardly need mission trees as a mechanic to get that. Paradox could just publish “Suggested fun goals”. Or you could read more history.

Do you have more fun playing generic MT countries? Like legit?

Yes.

Well, let me rephrase: I have exactly the same amount of fun playing generic MT countries, because I never, ever complete missions.

I played through a whole mission tree once, as Florence. Florence has historically been my favourite campaign to play because it has so many possibilities. I found the mission tree added nothing and made the campaign annoying, restrictive and stilted. I downloaded a mod to remove mission trees.

 

[Metroidkirby]

As I said in another thread, these guys just want Sid Meier's Civilization, Paradox style. A complete sandbox experience.

It's not about 'complete sandbox experience'.
I'm so tired of Civilization doing stereotypical content for each and every civilization. That last years of EUIV is exactly doing what made me quit Civ, following it's step isn't a good choice. if I want to play Civ, I play Civ, I don't want EU to be like Civ where every civivilization have some absurd bonus or whatever based on stereotypes.
What happened with MT is that it turns EUIV into a Civ game. Before MT, we had not that impactful flavor (events and national ideas). After the introduction of MT... it's powercreep at everycorner, free PU there, perma claim on this whole region for clicking a button, special unit, special government reform... STOP

Don't give me 'Golf Course' for Scotland. It's not funny, it's stereotypical.

 

[Lakigigar]

I would be surprised if the popular tags have not been taken into consideration when deciding on a start date. Again, the source I'm quoting for those are rather old, so it may have changed over the years:

Well there'll be a lot of new tags too that might be more interesting or in a better position than 1444. I can see several new nations in a top 20 most played in a 1337 start.

As for the older ones:
England & France are about to start their 100 years war and remain major players on the map
Ottomans becoming a great power isn't guaranteed yet but I suspect they'll be in a good position to dominate most of Anatolia and defeat Byz eventually.
Iberia is mostly unchanged so Castille & Portugal remain big players
Brandenburg is arguably stronger than in 1444.
So are the Teutons which owns most of the Baltics
Hungary will definitely be more popular than just 18th
Sweden might even be more picked because it doesn't start under a PU with Denmark
Not much change for Papal States
Not much change for Denmark (aside of that there is no Kalmar Union yet), and they seem to have land in Estonia.
Poland starts with Casimir III and while having less land is in an excellent position to expand early on.
Byzantium is in a much better position than 1444
The ability to form Japan or Netherlands is sort of unchanged (except for that i'm not sure if Holland starts under a PU of Burgundy at game start and it seems to have Hainaut in Wallonia as well (under a PU maybe)).

So what changes
Ming is just replaced by Yuan
Burgundy is in a weaker position but this also means that the forced event/coding of the Burgundian inheritance is less necessary and EU4 already did sort of a good job here, since this usually did happen
Muscovy is in a weaker position with Novgorod maybe in a better position and it being less clear who comes on top of the Russian area, all being tributaries of the Golden Horde, but that doesn't mean Russia will be hard to form at some point.
Austria is a lot weaker, not having Tyrol yet, and with Bavaria, Brandenburg & Bohemia all being stronger players within the HRE (maybe Milan too).

I suspect there are quite a bit of nations not within the 20 that will be more popular this time around: Norway, Serbia, Wallachia, Naples, Bavaria, Bohemia, Ruthenia, Lithuania (because of it being pagan and independent for much longer), The big win is less PU's at game start and the Balkans / Anatolia being more a scramble for all (and so is Persia).

People play way less outside Europe but Vijy, Majapahit, Mamluks all have a lot going for them.

 

[humbleacadie]

Perhaps you can take more depending on the lack of country stability? If there's general unrest, you could take more as the former government has fewer means to exercise legitimacy over the lands. This could also work for problem areas like Hungary in Austria - if unrest is high enough, releasing them could be very cheap. Of course, if you annex lands with considerable discontent, you should also have to deal with said unrest. The latter example could also promote espionage, sowing discontent and all for dismantling unstable multicultural empires.

This should be made possible if
A) the target country is crumbling state
B) there is no nearby great power opposition
The reason why Ottomans could do it in the Mamluk but Austria /Prussia could not do it to revolutionary France, although at some point it’s army was in the same state of collapse, is because Britain wanted to keep France decent enough to not unbalance the whole of Europe.
Whereas when the mamluk collapsed, no regional power cared

 

[Lakigigar]

The thing is, the supporters of your position (and opponents of mine) like to say "ah, but you want no flavor". And that's a gross misrepresentation, because I want flavor, but flavor that has to do with what I did with my nation and nothing else. If I form Prussia, but I'm a prosperous and mostly peaceful nation living off trade in the Baltic, then I want to see zero things - events, missions, ideas, nothing - about goosestepping Prussian soldiers. That's not the nation I'm playing. That's a Brandenburg-Prussia that got torn to shreds during the 30YW and decided it would make sure it didn't happen anymore.

If I am at the head of Austria, a warring nation that has come to odds with most of its neighbors, de-facto left the HRE, and is in general a total bother to anyone around them, I don't want to smell even a wiff of "Felix Austria", or HRE bonuses, or K.u.K., or whatever.

If my England is a continental power due to holding onto extensive French holdings, something that distracted it enough that Scotland and the Irish princedoms are still around or at least not directly controlled, there should be no single mention of walls of wood, because I need very real walls of stone and blades instead, and ain't got no money to throw on that when I have potential enemies still on my island anyway.

And so on, and so forth. I don't want to be told "no, you are playing wrong, you see, you must do this instead". Yes, there should be some historical inertia, it goes without saying - France isn't going to turn on a dime and rule the waves - but that should be uniquely about how the situation was as of (we can assume, by now) 1337. I want nothing that didn't happen for like 300 years to influence my game. And when I get to that actual date, I want nothing that tells me "I know you played like this, but it's wrong, see, it's actually like that".

In fact, I will state it out outright: there's more history in my approach than there is in "I know Northern Europe has been developing in an utterly different direction for the last four centuries, but those Prussian soldiers surely look mighty".

I understand what you say but there are a few issues

1. If you leave the HRE as Austria or expand on the mainland with England, no-one says you need to use the bonuses in your ideas and no-one prevents you from doing what you want to do (hence there is even a decision to form the Angevin Empire instead and get Angevin ideas).

2. This would open the door for meta gameplay and more min-maxing like, like possibly leaving/dismantling the HRE as Austria asap if isn't optimal for expansion gameplay. And you get possibly a game where nobody plays with some of the core mechanics (like what is already sort of the case with the Mandate of Heaven).

3. Eventually, this would lead to more nations feeling exactly the same and eventually less replayability - something some of the recent Paradox games do suffer a bit from: Vicky3 and I:R.

 

[humbleacadie]

So what changes
Ming is just replaced by Yuan
Burgundy is in a weaker position but this also means that the forced event/coding of the Burgundian inheritance is less necessary and EU4 already did sort of a good job here, since this usually did happen
Muscovy is in a weaker position with Novgorod maybe in a better position and it being less clear who comes on top of the Russian area, all being tributaries of the Golden Horde, but that doesn't mean Russia will be hard to form at some point.
Austria is a lot weaker, not having Tyrol yet, and with Bavaria, Brandenburg & Bohemia all being stronger players within the HRE (maybe Milan too).

That’s a huge change.
It means the game starts with Pax Mongolica AND the Black Death.
In 1337 the major trade route was the Silk Road. Maritime roads got reactivated after the Yuan collapse, since it was now unsafe for merchants to travel in Central Asia with all the local conflicts.

- At this point, I guess they will make it so Yuan is also programmed to collapse (not necessarily by events but by the simple complexity of its multicultural empire and the difficulty to maintain cohesion)
- when they do collapse, that will drastically alter the trade routes, leading to the emergence of new dominating powers in South Asia /Arabia
- it will also offer the necessary conditions for a Russian and Lithuanian expansion
- the Black Death happening early game will certainly shake most powers and redistribute the cards. It will certainly be tied to some extent to the yuan crumble
- the HRE is not Habsburg, but Bavarian Wittelsbach at this time.

I’m waiting to see how the mechanics will be able to represent and dynamically alter the beginning of the year to somehow offer the opportunity to future nation states to emerge.
Starting the game with the Yuan fall and the Hundred Years War and the Black Death is going to generate a high level kf randomization early game already.

Notably, I’m a bit worried the Ming / Iran or Austria Hungary might never form, and it could turn into CK border gore again. But we will see

Hear me well, I’m not saying I want railroading for such nations to appear. Definitely not. If it’s not Safavid but Timurid Persia or another, so be it.
I’m just saying that given the early modern era represented the emergence of nation states, I want the context and mechanics to still offer consolidation for a regional Persian power, a regional Arabian power, a regional Russian power, etc.