I'm afraid of EU5

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

I think it is important to remember that Paradox has had nearly 10 years to flesh out EU4.

Inevitably when EU5 comes out, it'll feel a bit bare bones, just as CK3 did compared to CK2.

There will be initial excitement and then people will complain. Regardless, you should go into EU5 thinking it's a game that will last you 10 years and that it'll only get better over time.

 

[Johan]

PDX is not a monolithic entity. Back in the "old days", before CK2 we made games with 7-8 people, with the design done by me and Chris King or Henrik Fåhraeus. Now there are several hundred of people working in at least 7 different studios making GSG's.

 

[Ferdinand_Bardamu]

PDX is not a monolithic entity. Back in the "old days", before CK2 we made games with 7-8 people, with the design done by me and Chris King or Henrik Fåhraeus. Now there are several hundred of people working in at least 7 different studios making GSG's.

I'm sure you'll do an amazing job Johan

It's been a pleasure to follow the development of Paradox as a studio.

 

[Nevars]

I think if the game is having so many trouble with the land combat mechanics, it should focus on diplomacy and maritime combat mechanics. The timeline of the game is one that we saw empires based on land power descending in importance and empires based on maritime power and commerce gaining the upper hand. Greater empires like Russia, Ottomans, China and Mughals, after its expansion phases, have limited power in interfering on nations that hadnt a border with it. On the other hand, Portugal, France, UK, Spain and Netherlands, all, in one time or another, could interfere in lands far far away from home. And they could estabilsh monopolies in trade routes that were never so great, by that time, as it were in the game timeline.

I means if you are only focusing on the trail end of game and only on Europe then sure you could do that.

But I heavily disagree with this approach, EU4 already has tons of this (institution as a mechanic, some trade node disparity value only make sense if you think of them in 17-18th century, etc), the new game need not repeat the same fatal mistake of their predecessor.

If you broadening your horizons a bit, you will find some counter example to the idea that land based empire bad and maritime based empire good.

Like Ayutthaya starting as maritime city-state that focus heavily on trade and raiding all their rival port city (Malacca got raided by Ayutthaya so many time that they had to called China for help for example) that increasing transform into land based empire from interaction and cultural exchange with northern cities and I would say their later iteration aka the one the became land based empire is more powerful.

They became one of the greatest SEA polities, controling more lands, people, becoming richer and overlord of various maritime polities in the south compare to from when they were maritime polity.

Ayutthaya also only got threatened by peer power land based empire such as Burma, no maritime polity ever threatened them (well unless you counted 300 Malacca soldier attempted coup when Ayutthaya was besieged by Burma, but they all got slaughter for their troubles lol)

The first time Ayutthaya fall was from intrigue and power struggle between the northern cities and the southern cities, the second was because hundred years of peace making them neglect military, focusing exclusively on trade and weakening from factionalism (almost every successions were a coup, this the downside of absolutism or at least power concentrate heavily into monarch), well also cuz Burma is plain better at war, see China trying to conquer them and failed.

So at least in SEA, the opposite happened, the land based empire prosper and subjugate the maritime one.

 

[st360]

If you want historical accuracy, read Simon Schama. The only way to maintain historicity in a game is to not make it a game. Gaming is about decisions and challenges and to ensure absolute accuracy over 400 years is to take away the decisions and remove the challenges.

We can all agree that a game where you can conquer the world in 300 years starting as a 1 province tribe is much more unrealistic than a game where you cant.

Nobody ever asked for EU 4 to become a documentary you sit and watch without being able to change it.

But there was ALWAYS a expectation that if you don't touch a continent in your playtrough, it should play out 70-80% historically, with maybe 1 or 2 surprises.

 

[Nevars]

We can all agree that a game where you can conquer the world in 300 years starting as a 1 province tribe is much more unrealistic than a game where you cant.

Nobody ever asked for EU 4 to become a documentary you sit and watch without being able to change it.

But there was ALWAYS a expectation that if you don't touch a continent in your playtrough, it should play out 70-80% historically, with maybe 1 or 2 surprises.

Do you perhap ever heard of butterfly effect?

You don't touching the continent directly doesn't means that your action or any action of other tags won't ever influence it.

Only way to make it play out '70-80% historically' like you want would means that the game need to have more railroading than this or outright being deterministic in nature.

Or it need to simulate literally everything in history accurately enough that ai in control of various tags will come to the same conclusion and doing same thing as historical ruler with exact same result.

And even with all that you need to play tags that specifically never interact with that continent or interact with any tags that ever interact with that continent.

I hope you know how absurd it is to expect that sort of thing from a game.

 

[st360]

Do you perhap ever heard of butterfly effect?

You don't touching the continent directly doesn't means that your action or any action of other tags won't ever influence it.

Only way to make it play out '70-80% historically' like you want would means that the game need to have more railroading than this or outright being deterministic in nature.

Or it need to simulate literally everything in history accurately enough that ai in control of various tags will come to the same conclusion and doing same thing as historical ruler with exact same result.

And even with all that you need to play tags that specifically never interact with that continent or interact with any tags that ever interact with that continent.

I hope you know how absurd it is to expect that sort of thing from a game.

Man, don't pretend this is a discussion about nuclear physics. If Im playing fcking Indonesia and the map in 1750 reveals the Ottomans conquered half of Russia up to the Baltic's, its not because its impossible to make it otherwise due to "the butterfly effect".

 

[Nevars]

Man, don't pretend this is a discussion about nuclear physics. If Im playing fcking Indonesia and the map in 1750 reveals the Ottomans conquered half of Russia up to the Baltic's, its not because its impossible to make it otherwise due to "the butterfly effect".

Entirely possible, perhap with you playing in Indonesia butterfly away Ottoman Empire expedition to Aceh perhap because Western power such as Portugal already got curtailed by your effort or you don't have that much of a good relationship with Ottoman like in history making Ottoman never need to bail you out thus resulting in more manpower and concentration in Europe and lastly Russia.

EDIT

Also the more underlying issue is that the game never able to simulate various cause of thing that happened in history due to several unrealistic mechanic, I don't really know much about other region but in SEA it's quite bad that the game never going to get the same result as history anyway.

 

[moscal]

From some moment EU4 (and later games) is more "funhouse dungeon" than historical/political simulator. Therefore many snowball effects can lead to indestructibility of great empires and repeatability of scenario patterns. Very low element of volatility - eg. almost always France and Turkey will be indestructible opponent for AI. we can compare this with EU3, where Bohemia can be world power in Central-East Europe; Turkey lost with christians and muslim minors; hindu nations conquering the Iranian plateau etc.

Now... Anybody know how this look.

EU5 should need some mechanism about collapse empires by other methods than "destroyed by smarter/greater empire". Some elements of structure of economy, society and problems connected with lack changes or adoptions - eg. too high focus on neofeudal farming in PLC was by some time source of big wealth, but weakened cities lead to de facto to primitivisation of PLC. Management of hunter-gatherers nations should work in other style than feudal nations, nations based on slavery should give other management problems than high-urbanized nations etc.

 

[I like wars and maps]

You and I did not play the same game at all. Nudging those "irrelevant elements" causes immense changes. Austria can take over Germany. France can tear India away from the UK. The German colonial empire can swamp everyone else's. Russia can become the world's greatest industrial power. Etc. etc. etc.

Nice you can do stuff as the strongest 5 countrys and all of it is related to just conquering shit or building factorys. So essentially just EU4 but you can only do it stuff with majors. Let not even talk about the pop mechanic of Vic 2 wich is so railroaded that it ceases to be a real mechanic for everyone who isnt a colony since you will NEVER be able to attract people to immigrate to you and/or assimilate if you are in the old world.

 

[I like wars and maps]

I used to accept this as a fact but lately I am not convinced. You say there is a lot of mechanics in EU4 that would be missed in EU5. I see a lot of mechanics in EU4 indeed but they are all based around a core that is seriously outdated. I'd like a fresh start with EU5 and I'd like the devs to think long and hard about how they add content to the game so as not to end up with another DLC button fest. As to what features I would like to see in the EU5 core:

• Full characters, not just names and modifiers. Also make all characters equal, for example to make it possible for a general to become a ruler through natural game progress, no scripting.

The game is set in the Reinaissance and beyond not Imperial Rome.

 

[moscal]

The game is set in the Reinaissance and beyond not Imperial Rome.

So?

Napoleon Bonaparte is the most known general, who became a leader of nation.

 

[Vicendum]

I really don't know how much of a historical simulation you can get in a game like this. Unless you, the player, do things exactly how it was done in history there's no way for the setting not to see things at that moment that are unique for the time and thus act in a unique way.

Honestly though, I wouldn't even want a historical simulator. That makes things way too predictable and removes some of the challenge to the game. If I knew, say, that in a certain year Country X will start a civil war that makes them vulnerable to attack, then I could, as the player, just wait for that time and then attack Country X and perhaps easily conquer them. If, however, that civil war wasn't pre-programmed to happen, I would never know when- or even if- the event happens, making the calculation concerning attacking Country X that much harder to make.

What I would like- and this is where I would agree with the OP- is for large countries to collapse without needing my intervention to do it. Much of the problem here stems from the fact that, unless the province has a core belonging to a nation that can form in that province, you'll never see countries break apart into smaller pieces because there's no way for them to do so. One possible solution could be ensuring that you can make each state into a country (meaning that, say, in the state of Lazio-Umbria each province would have a core that would belong to a country also named Lazio-Umbria, which can be released via treaty or by separatists). You can also program that each country has the capability to split into "west" and "east" halves, if they have more than one province. Perhaps, also, the only way a country could have a core exclusive to their province is if that core is in their capital state.

I don't know...just spinning my wheels. The main thing is, there's got to be easier ways to break up a country other than someone else takes their provinces, because, in history, countries broke up in many other ways.

 

[ozidnz]

Even back in EU3, the devs talked about creating historically plausible scenarios rather than getting railroaded by actual history. Even the current game railroads a lot of things for the gameplay (especially with the Lucky Nations on).

I wish EU4 was better at things it is supposed to specialize in. It doesn't feel like the game simulates the unique issues of creating a colonial empire. I can just send a 50K stack to mop up the Americas or Western Africa. I don't need to "divide and conquer" or make trade deals with them. I wish EU5 would solve these issues organically. They need to get creative to make an intuitive system but I would accept a bandaid solution too.

 

[Zaddy]

But there was ALWAYS a expectation that if you don't touch a continent in your playtrough, it should play out 70-80% historically, with maybe 1 or 2 surprises.

According to who?

 

[st360]

According to who?

According to the developers advertising EU 4 as such in 20+ developer diaries over the last decade. Go read the rebalanced China dev diary from just a month ago.

 

[Sete]

the timespan of the europa universalis series is far greater than anything hearts of iron tries to model.

Make the timeframe shorter then. After 1700 it should be it's own thing.

 

[agonistes]

I'm worried too. Not based on PDX, but the industry in general. Poor ai, art over gameplay, smaller worlds, less challenging, overly simplified...

Unfortunately, non-strategy gamers have discovered strategy games. And many of them are participation trophy kids.

 

[durbal]

PDX is not a monolithic entity. Back in the "old days", before CK2 we made games with 7-8 people, with the design done by me and Chris King or Henrik Fåhraeus. Now there are several hundred of people working in at least 7 different studios making GSG's.

That's the problem.

 

[deretao]

I means if you are only focusing on the trail end of game and only on Europe then sure you could do that.

But I heavily disagree with this approach, EU4 already has tons of this (institution as a mechanic, some trade node disparity value only make sense if you think of them in 17-18th century, etc), the new game need not repeat the same fatal mistake of their predecessor.

If you broadening your horizons a bit, you will find some counter example to the idea that land based empire bad and maritime based empire good.

Like Ayutthaya starting as maritime city-state that focus heavily on trade and raiding all their rival port city (Malacca got raided by Ayutthaya so many time that they had to called China for help for example) that increasing transform into land based empire from interaction and cultural exchange with northern cities and I would say their later iteration aka the one the became land based empire is more powerful.

They became one of the greatest SEA polities, controling more lands, people, becoming richer and overlord of various maritime polities in the south compare to from when they were maritime polity.

Ayutthaya also only got threatened by peer power land based empire such as Burma, no maritime polity ever threatened them (well unless you counted 300 Malacca soldier attempted coup when Ayutthaya was besieged by Burma, but they all got slaughter for their troubles lol)

The first time Ayutthaya fall was from intrigue and power struggle between the northern cities and the southern cities, the second was because hundred years of peace making them neglect military, focusing exclusively on trade and weakening from factionalism (almost every successions were a coup, this the downside of absolutism or at least power concentrate heavily into monarch), well also cuz Burma is plain better at war, see China trying to conquer them and failed.

So at least in SEA, the opposite happened, the land based empire prosper and subjugate the maritime one.

ok, then, im not affirming that all the experiences and facts of this era were all the same (sea powers beating land powers), and i do not advocate for a game that emulates just that. but are you using one unique example to say that maritime empires of europe werent decisive against land empires (in most of times)? maybe we learnt different histories.