Tinto Talks #1 - February 28th 2024

[bokorthedust]

As a longtime developer of a CK3 mod that doesn't exist... yet...

I've been conspiring for YEARS to create a mod that meaningfully represents:
1) works of art
2) propaganda
3) cultural evolution
4) soft power

The start of my project began with this thought:

Venice and Florence were two of the most interesting places in the WORLD for several hundred years. But they were small! Florence basically didn't even bother expand. So what made them interesting? IT'S NOT JUST MONEY. IT'S NOT JUST MONEY = POWER.
They were:
- vibrant
- socially-and-legally complex
- diplomatically-connected
- institutionally-integrated
- artistically-original
- commercially-innovative

Internally
- Venice had its islands, beauty, glassworks, silk works
- Florence had literal "towers" WITHIN the city, built by paranoid families to guard themselves against hostile factions

So to conclude my "initial thought": How do you build a game such that Venice, Florence, Milan, Rome can be just exciting as a large power even if they never expand their borders ONCE?!

The answer I believe goes back to the things I listed at the top.

I just searched all 9 pages of comments so far (for the words art, culture, and "soft"). Only 1 comment seems to be on the page:

While I have nothing against what you wrote as a concept, the truth is Paradox games always have operated on a much larger scale then what you portrayed here. I can totally see it as a character driven urban simulation mod for CK3, or even as a standalone game on its own right, but it's a too small a concept in scale of the GSG genre Paradox has become famous for.

 

[Diskianterezh]

I can't wait to see what you have in store for us,

I have to say that, whatever the turbulence and sporadic errors on some of the DLC and updates, you've always been ready to listen and deliver quality work that's quick to make us forget the few mistakes, which always encourages me to share my feedbacks.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to express my confidence in Johan, whose posts show a deep interest and passion for his work, and who manages to take his games in some very interesting directions by learning from past unfortunate attempts.

My feedback will be based on my experiences of all the 'classic' Paradox games.

Replayability and Immersion:
One point on which I think attention needs to be paid is the development of the gameplay beyond the beginning of the game: I have every confidence that the first part of the gameplay will be gripping and high in dopamine, but that quickly the domination of one side will reverse the fragile balance and transform the gameplay, nullifying the mechanics of an early game in favour of a map-painting apathy in most cases.

Imperator suffers from this in particular, being very focused on conquest and expansion, with an 'internal management' aspect that didn't have time to develop before development was halted. HOI4 also has an experience that comes to a halt very quickly - but I think the length of a game is intended to be much shorter - as conquest quickly turns into a snowball effect.

The games that have come out on top have done so by allowing the mechanics to be adapted to the player's development:
- EU4, despite its blobbing nature, allows the "rules of the game" to evolve over the course of the game via the eras: new rules, new systems, making the gameplay evolve. Experienced players will know everything inside out, eventually removing the "surprise, it's changing, you have to adapt" aspect, but at least there's something there, it's a good attempt.
- CK has a dynamic system: the bigger I get, the more I have to adapt my system of government, my external enemies diminish in threat while my internal enemies multiply. The second opus even had a decentralisation system that forced the player to lose personal domain in order to increase the number of vassals. With events and luck doing the rest, it's a game that leaves the player feeling challenged right up to the end. CK3 is unfortunately much easier in this respect, but I think it's a point that will improve.
- Victoria 3 may have a lot of faults, but the magnificent entropy of its political system is an example to me: I could play for hours just with the politics of this game. No two games are the same, and as the country evolves, so does the danger: my population is better educated? They want more rights. My industrial base is powerful? My capitalists have just appointed a fascist as their leader. Nothing is predictable, and solving yesterday's problems paves the way for tomorrow's.

So that's my feedback on what a "Believable world" should also be, something where whatever our expertise, our action has an effect, and a reaction. Whether it's the formation of a faction to oppose a player's military ambitions, or the administrative weight of an empire that has spread to the farthest reaches of the known world.

 

[Lightwell]

I'd like it if we could shift away from the "trade node competition" model, and integrate administration into both military and production. I think modern processors are better able to handle regional prices, so producers and traders working together to supply the world's markets should be feasible to model.

 

[lucidit]

I have seen other people mention a shortening of the time frame that a future EU game might cover and I really like the idea. Not only in there being a tighter focus for EU5 and alleviating issues with the late game, but also how it would create enough space between the end date of EU5 and the start date of Vic3 to create a new Paradox game with a start as early as the Peace of Westphalia or as Late as the Peace of Rastatt.

 

[Jordedude1234]

A problem with many PDX games (Stellaris and EU4 for example) is that with proper min-maxing, it is always the most optimal to rapidly expand, more and more, until the world is your oyster. A way to solve this would be internal pressure accruing over time from more conquest, eventually requiring all of your resources just to maintain control of what you have. This will naturally limit expansion, and will organically cause the fall of large empires if they overextend themselves. You could make this internal pressure be represented by a grand internal political simulation (I would love that), but it doesn't have to be that complicated. A good game that has accomplished something like what I said is Civ V.

The Happiness system in Civ V isn't exactly immersive, but it serves very well as a mechanic that limits expansion. Expansion adds more unhappiness over time, eventually preventing city growth and adding increasing penalties as you accrue more (eventually leading up to large rebellions). However, the more cities you have, the more happiness buildings you can build (and more luxury resources you can get), so it is still optimal to expand in the long run.

Additionally, something somewhat unique about Civ V is how you can heavily struggle to manage simple population growth. Imagine France struggling to maintain control of their country because of population growth and economic development, thus their rivals invade in their time of weakness, causing widespread devastation. Your people stop causing as many issues and rally together, and there simply aren't as many people to manage. France has less dragging them down, making them indirectly stronger, giving them the ability to eventually repel their rivals.

In a way, France actually benefitted from the situation. They're militarily stronger than before, but their devastated economy prevents them from launching any offensives, so eventually peace reigns. I believe the ideal system would naturally balance itself out like this. Too much expansion, and eventually your people ignore your rule or rebel, and you fall apart. Too much internal growth that you struggle to control, so your rivals invade, fixing the problem. Struggling with an invasion leaves you united while your rivals struggle to control what they gained from you, giving you the chance to fight back.

 

[Sighfer]

I hope you all know, if these kind of bad releases are continuing, one lovely day a new competitior will grab his chance of getting in, as colossal order did it with CS1.

Yeah, Paradox, watch out! Slitherine is coming for you! Any day now!

 

[Gaen1]

If I'm to guess, this "Caesar" would be something similar to a alternative history mod of EU4 like Ante Bellum or something more wild like a Freemasonry controls Europe thing.

 

[ponpon8623]

Believable World

You should be able to play the game and feel like you are in a world that makes sense, and feels rich and realistic. While not making the gaming less accessible, features should be believable and plausible, and avoid abstraction unless necessary.

Unfortunately, I don't know of any game that truly achieves this.
When I play a grand strategy game, my reaction is always, "It's great that X is simulated, but why isn't Y?"
Therefore, I think you should pack in as many elements and functions as you can.
(Of course, as you say, it shouldn't prevent you from accessing the game.)

Setting Immersion

Our games thrive on player imagination and “what if” scenarios. We ensure both a high degree of faithfulness to the setting which will give a “special feel” to the game. We will strive to give this game the most in-depth feeling of flavor possible.

Replayability

There should be many ways to play different starts and reasons to replay them. Different mechanics in different parts of the world create a unique experience depending on what you choose to play. With a deep and complex game, there should be so many choices and paths that the player should feel they can always come back to get a new story with the same start.

I have an idea to make this happen.
That is, to create a bifurcation of history as you are trying to achieve in Millenia.
You have a much larger and seamless transition of Millenia's system into this game.
By doing so, you will be able to play in a variety of alternative realities, from reality or something close to it, to science fiction and fantasy.

 

[Brynjar]

While the announcement of EU5 has been expected for quite a while by now it is a pleasant surprise to see that you are now announcing a game at what appears to be an earlier stage than Imperator and Vic 3.

I think games like Imperator might have looked different if we had involved the community earlier and listened to the feedback.

While there is no denying that there were some feedback which should have been implemented prior to release of Imperator, I have always felt that the biggest issues with Imperator were more related to simply releasing the game in an unfinished state rather than the features a loud portion of the community kept going on about.

The passive AI and pretty much all of Europe outside of Italy and Greece feeling the same remains are the two issues that will likely prevent me from ever clocking in over 100 (possibly even 50) hours in Imperator. On top of that there were obvious issues at launch such as a lot of people simply getting horrible performance, and the soundtrack issues which caused the music to be much more bland in game than what were in the game files. To this day I think Imperator is also the only game I have had to manually force to use the dedicated gpu rather than the integrated one on a laptop ever since I got a laptop with GTX 700(?) series GPU many, many years ago (there may be some forgotten, but it is certainly the only one while using windows 10, and at the time it was so long ago I had done it that it didn't even occur to me at first that it was something one might have to do).

In other words, there were clear indications of the game simply beeing released earlier than it should have from a quality point of view. Considering the state of Paradox releases in the past, my biggest worry for whatever title project Caesar turns out to be is that it will release too soon.

However, talking about a game for a long long time is not great for building hype either, and to be able to make proper huge announcements is an important part as well.

Has anything good ever come out of building hype for a game intended to be supported for years after release? I can't think of any, with the possible exception of WoW (which ended up being sold out back when physical copies of games were the only option available). Personally I hope the goal for project Caesar will be to build realistic, but high expectations.

Yeah, sounds ambitious right?

Yes, but high ambitions are good as long as you intend to fulfill them!

Which games do YOU think represent these pillars well?

Vanilla WoW was in my opinion the game which excelled the most at this of any game I have ever played, but without knowing exactly what kind of game you are making it is difficult to pinpoint what lessons, if any, to learn from that. Assuming you intend to make a strategy game, iIt is however much easier to think of features in games which contributes to those things, and features which contributes to tearing them down.

Believable World

You should be able to play the game and feel like you are in a world that makes sense, and feels rich and realistic. While not making the gaming less accessible, features should be believable and plausible, and avoid abstraction unless necessary.

While I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly why, I feel like HoI4 is the Paradox game doing the best job of this in recent years, despite trade and peace conferences being big detractors (trade in HoI4 was pretty much non existant last time I played, and peace conferences was, well bad). It could be as simple as me having to design the units myself giveing a better feeling of what a unit actually represents, or simply being a result of it being set in more recent history. For me at least it is simply easier to relate to the USA and the Soviet Union existing than to the Roman empire, viking raids, the HRE or an colonial empire. I also generally like the power dynamics and diplomacy of EU4 feels believable, but the game also has some commonly discussed features which makes it hard to find the EU4 world as a whole believable.

CK3 (and 2) has too many fantasy/alt history elements to make sense or feeling believable, but I also feel that isn't necessary the goal of those games.

Vic3 on the other hand seems to be trying quite hard at presenting a believable world, but fails quite badly at it. One big contributor to this for me is the change between the paper map and 3D-map. Whenever I zoom out to the paper map with all the 3D fluff along the edges I am reminded that I am in fact playing a game, and that it is all just a mash of more or less good abstractions. The Vic3 diplomatic system also has too many artificial rules. Hard blocks such as not being able to start a war against someone suffering from rebellions makes the world completely unbelievable to me. Harsh penalties are fine, hard blocks are generally not.

Setting Immersion

Our games thrive on player imagination and “what if” scenarios. We ensure both a high degree of faithfulness to the setting which will give a “special feel” to the game. We will strive to give this game the most in-depth feeling of flavor possible.

EU4 generally did a good job of this early on, then the so called immersion packs and mission trees started creeping into the game. Those may be good at encouraging specific "what if" scenarios, but they strongly discourage player imagination. One of the last EU4 campaigns I played was as Novgorod. I wanted to stick to being Novgorod while keeping the veche republic government form, but the game simply does not want me to do that. That wish hard locked me from upgrading to a great veche republic, which would give me the following additional bonuses:
+10 max aboslutims (doesn't really matter)
+20% national manpower modifier
+250 governing capacity (+ modifiers)
+10% streltsy force limit

Keep in mind that these come in addition to the vastly expanded mission tree I would get access to by simply clicking the form Russia button.

Dynamic systems and minimal amounts of non-sense is the best way to encourage immersion in my opinion, and mission trees simply are not dynamic. Regardless of how many pre-determined paths it has.

CK3 primarily breaks immersion by having too much (or too frequent) nonsense for proper immersion in my opinion. The wacky events and cringe jokes simply occurs too often.

One aspect of EU4 which I wish was more achievement focused only rather than game mechanics would be many of the tag formations. Sure, some tag formations are nice, but over time EU4 has gone way too far. Vic 3 has some great examples of tags I wish were kept away from the game mechanics, and simply represented through "recreate the border" style achievements. I don't want to be able to form Rome, Byzantium or Scandinavia in every game, but I do welcome having achievements which encouraging "recreating" lost empires.

Replayability

There should be many ways to play different starts and reasons to replay them. Different mechanics in different parts of the world create a unique experience depending on what you choose to play. With a deep and complex game, there should be so many choices and paths that the player should feel they can always come back to get a new story with the same start.

For a Paradox grand strategy game to feel playable it is crucial for me to feel some degree of challenge from the AI. Imperator was, and still is, completely lacking in that regard. When I'm neighbouring a large/more powerful country I want to feel that there is an ever present risk of that neighbour deciding that it either wants to stop me from expanding, or to have my land. EU4 has always done that quite well. That feeling was completely absent in Imperator with a possible exception of starting as a neighbour of Rome. Starting as an OPM in southern Hispania in Imperator I never saw Carthage do anything worth worrying about, nor did defensive pacts work properly. 50 years into the game I had pretty much given up any hope of seeing the AI pose any challenge at all. My second attempt at a playthrough in Greece just reinforced that feeling. In EU4 on the other hand, starting as tags near the very powerful AI tags always felt somewhat dangerous, particualrly tags near the Ottomans which can remain such a threat for a long time if I as a player choose not to kill it off early on.

In addition to the passive AI in Imperator, I feel that the lack of local variety in tag sizes was a significant problem. Especially tribal Europe in Imperator ended up having too little variety in how powerful the starting tags were. This seemed to result in a world where noone ate anyone. Except the player who could eat everyone. The AI in EU4 also don't handle similarly sized enemies very well. This has become especially clear in recent years as countries has become "better" at blobbing. To me it seems that this "improvement" is caused by the AI being more hesitant to fight similarly sized enemies. This is great for creating more of a mid- to late-game challenge, but it also makes the world less dynamic. Balancing the AI between being good at blobbing, and making it contribute to a dynamic game is probably not easy, but personally I would prefer to see you err on the dynamic side of things rather than making AIs too passive.

It is also not necessarily different mechanics which makes different starting locations feel different. Global mechanics such as colonial range, naval range, diplomatic range, coring range etc. can make a huge difference in how it feels to play a colonizing game as Portugal, Norway, Southeast Asian or a Middle Eastern colonizer in EU4. The simple fact that you cannot reach the same provinces from the get go encourages somewhat different approaches even when playing the fairly limited colonizing game in EU4, and therefore naturally makes them evolve in different directions. Vic 2 also handled colonial range quite well, while Vic 3 seemingly threw away the whole concept of colonial range, resulting in colonization simply being a matter of cherry picking where in the world you want to colonize rather than having to create outposts along the way to reach that place.

Personally I tend to have a very opportunisitc playstyle in strategy games. EU4 was for a long time generally great at supporting an opportunisitc playstyle, but the above mentioned AI blobbing changes and mission trees has contributed to make such a playstyle feel less rewarding. There are however very few things which are straight up forbidden. I can declare wars on pretty much anyone whenever I want, as long as I'm willing to pay the price of breaking truce etc. This is in stark contrast to Vic 3 which goes out of its way to forbid you from playing the way you want.

Another issue, while not strictly about replayability, is the UI. If a game feels ok-ish, but I feel I have to fight the UI at pretty much all times to find the information I'm interested in, chances are I'm not going to bother to give the game a second playthrough. I play a variety of games, so despite having thousands of hours played in Paradox games I'm simply not going to try to force myself to like a game if that process isn't enjoyable. Last year there was over 14000 games released on Steam alone. The vast majority of people are going to be able to find something else to play if they aren't having enough fun in the first playthrough. Elaborating on the details on the many issues with the UI/UX in recent paradox games are probably better discussed in a separate thread.

Finally, achievements are a great tool to help players get ideas for things to do in games, but it must not come at the cost at other content. And while I think achievements is a great place to keep meme references and witty wordplays instead of overdoing those in the gameplay itself, I do hope that there will be a good mix of no nonesense achievements as well.

events interrupt tracks and I hate the holy war songs repeating at all time

This. I can't think of any more efficient way to ruin a great soundtrack than those extremely abrupt changes mid track. Blizzard did the same thing in WoW back in Battle for Azeroth. Boralus had a great (and rather loud) soundtrack, but the moment you moved into a tavern it just ended extremely abruptly to start another track, completely breaking "muh immersion".

Finally, to encourage people to provide feedback to future dev diaries, please bring back the partial quote functionality for dev diaries that we had prior to the new dev diary format. Having to either quote the whole dev diary and remove the irrellevant parts, or copy/pasting and adding BB code without hyperlinking to the relevant part of the dev diary is a lot of hassle compared to simply highlighting the relevant text and hitting quote. As this has been suggested several times, including in the appropriate thread for ideas to improve the forums, you may want to consider adding the whole dev diary as a forum post below the dev diaries themselves, as normal forum posts can be partially quoted very easily, making the bar for people to provide constructive feedback lower:

P.S. Thank you for choosing a pleasant subforum background colour! I'm looking forward to following the development of project Caesar.

 

[MyLordFellington]

Can't wait to see what you make Johan and your team. I actually like Imperator in it's end state right now.

 

[Fizbun]

I hope for a future EU5 project, a lot of Imperator mechanics will be considered (levies, pops, characters)

 

[Arizal]

Say, for example, you start with a few basic mission trees for nations without custom missions (which might be something built into the custom mission trees, or which might be separate), or alternatively as a supplement, like a Diet versus a Mission Tree. Perhaps a 'Development' mission where you already have provinces, a 'Conquest' mission where you take things, or a 'Diplomatic' mission to stymy rivals, make powerful friends, or deal with overlord-vassal relationships. You pick 'Conquest', and you decide if your goal is 'natural borders', 'land' or 'trade posts', and you get to place down 'Provinces of Interest' in accordance with your goals. (As an aside, I think this sort of system- where you decide on your strategic goals- feels a lot more intuitive than Fabricate Claims as the 'main' method of getting a casus belli.) Then you go through with your goals on the strategic level, and see what works- I'd lean towards a shorter, repeating cycle in many cases so you don't feel obligated not to develop too much for a long stretch of time while you have conquest missions or vice versa, perhaps with certain nations (via ideas, government forms, etc) varying in which missions they're particularly competent at.

I mentioned earlier my opposition to -or, rather, my hatred towards- mission trees. But what you propose here seems very interesting. I see it as a sort of "throne adress", where the player could state his objectives, and then obtain rewards linked with how realistic those objectives appear to the game at a certain point in time.

The reward, which would then come from inside your country, in the form of an estate being more happy, giving you ressources, would have to be proportional with the undertaking you proposed. Meaning if it's a very easy thing to do, the reward would be small, but if it involves a very difficult and long-winded approach, then it could have more consequences for your country.

However, my impression is that what I'm talking about here is more akin to a revamped "Diet" than missions.

For missions, I once thought about something that would actually reconcile the existence of mission trees with my non-tag specific bonuses mantra : having them dynamic, in the sense that you would receive missions linked instead to the culture and religions your country has, be it to take over the land inhabited by your culture/religion, increase their wealth, curbing the minorities or making them more accepted... You could also have them relative to your government, and in a more interesting way linked to your situation in the game at certain moments.

This approach would, however evacuate all those missions that people seem to like and be "immersive".

Which games do YOU think represent these pillars well?

Allow me to come back to the question, since I feel like my semi-rant inadvertently glossed over it.

Believability is closely linked to what I say in my signature : realism. For me to find something believable, it needs to have causes and effects and be rooted in a simulation that is grounded in history and has moving pieces I could believe would have acted differently. That is my immersion, and therefore why I can replay a game.

History is full of inflexion points. Even if the world is deterministic, it is impossible to know every single detail that weighted in a decision. When it comes to political history, you can cite countless of examples where things could have gone south, or miraculous recoveries could have happened. Would we be talking about Prussia today if Elizabeth didn't die in 1762, leaving the throne to Frederik II fanboy?

If I go by elimination, though, the least believable game in Paradox library is HoI4, because of its numerous focus trees, which are completely disjointed from what happens with the rest of the mechanics. EUIV used to feel far more believable, but from 2021 onwards I don't recognize the game anymore, and have to play it despite mission trees. There is also the constant fact that in terms of internal mechanics, it seems very shallow.

Victoria 3, then, would be the most believable one, despite its flaws, youth, and the presence of Journals (which are like missions and monuments). From the little I saw of Imperator (2.0), I think it was also (finally) on a good start when it was abandoned.

I also wish to add that for me, a good GSG needs to take seriously two main things : internal politics and diplomacy.

Starting with politics, from the very beginning, I have been extatic each time a new feature was announced that gave me the impression I would be managing a country, instead of riding a docile horse to battle. When we expand, we need to have internal divisions, people inside our country who slow us down, have different goals, even betray us. And it would be nice if those weren't simply disasters or events, but real mechanics with which we can engage.

I remember all the way back to EU3, when the concept of rebels with a cause was introduced, that was one of the time when I thought we were in sync. Here was a possibility to interact with an agent in our country. Sadly, this was never expanded upon satisfactorily. The mechanic of autonomy got the same treatment, and I would say corruption too. They were all reduced to buttons to push from time to time. Of course anything in a game is a button to push, but you aren't really engaged by such mechanics.

If we go outside our countries, we need balance of power, and in my eye... hegemony. What I mean by that is that the very goal of the game should be to break the statu quo, to break the balance of powers, by diplomacy and force. As long as you are in a state where there is no clear dominant power, countries should check each other, be ready to ally rivals and act in opportunistic ways. Especially, I would envision that diplomacy, not warscore, exhaustion and certainly not "overextension" should limit how far a country can go in one war. The Ottomans annexed the Mamluks in one fell swoop, took 3/4 of Hungary too. They were stopped because other countries would have opposed them going further, or for logistical reasons.

And about hegemony, I do not mean at all what was implemented in EUIV. Once you are a Napoleon riding forth from victory to victory (except for Russia and Spain), you are done. There is nothing more to do. That's why, absent internal constraints that should absolutely be there, the game should accelerate when you reach the stage of a big hegemon. What I mean by that is that Napoleon didn't spend 15 years sieging every small fort in the HRE. He beat the Prussians and the Austrians and submitted the whole thing. If anything, most of the relevant powers should crawl to your feet, if you become powerful enough... while plotting your demise.

 

[Irishman845]

Sorry for the rambling. I started typing and it got out of hand.

There is no game that does those pillars justice. There are games that represent certain aspects well but then they fail on others because they focused on one area and let the others fall off. They sacrifice complexity for simplicity and that leads to button clicking for instant gratification which doesn't really happen so it destroys any immersion. For simplicity, the development of a province is really just the population and then how it is represented. In HOI4 it is just a number, Vicky and Imperator it is Pops and EU4 it is mana. That driver then drives all other systems in the game with the exception of HOI4 which is mainly driven by Civ's. Those then drive all other actions in the game. The next issue is technology/research which is always linear rather than a web or a network in which you must follow a specific path when in reality technological advances in certain areas were a result of research in another area. An abstract example might be that you are playing a game with naval military research and naval trade research. In a linear research you must research certain military techs or certain trade research in order to get long range ships. If it was a network and that ship design could be accomplished going down many different paths. You should always have more technology than you can research and you should have to make tradeoffs. The more tradeoffs you have the harder it is to have a meta but that means more complexity and the more counter balances. Pikes vs calvary, infantry vs archer calvary, light calvary vs archer calvary.

The biggest issue is rather than thinking about the endgame the developers think about a base game and how to build off of it. This allows them to start at a base game then build off of it with DLC's. Rather than building off of it you should be building towards something. All the systems you want in the game should be there with the base game. You should then expand those systems rather than add those systems in later. An example would be HOI4. You can tell they added in Espionage stuff because it took stuff from the diplomatic window rather than having it from the very beginning. I don't mind a game that has 10 very shallow systems that are interconnected when it first comes out but then builds or expands out those systems vs a game that has 5 well thought out systems but then adds 5 new systems that they can't seem to figure out how they are interconnected.

For immersion and replayability, I want to see some well thought out systems. I want to see things that make sense. I don't want to see a ship building queue where all my ports are occupied and I have a ship 99% complete and it doesn't matter which port I free first it magically appears there. I don't want to see that I can build every type of ship just because I have a coastal province. I don't want to push a button for a loan where money magically appears and all that happens is a little inflation and rise in interest. I don't want to have 5,000 ducats in my treasury and all my provinces are occupied but somehow I still have all the money. In EU4 if I am France and I am pushing into Russia in the dead of winter with 100,000 troops thousands of miles away from my provinces I don't magically get replacement troops just because the month ticked over. I want to see larger armies moving slower then smaller armies. I want to see infantry being massacred by calvary archers on grasslands. I want to see provinces starved into submission by blockades. I want to see my merchants/privateers making money raiding trading routes or running blockades. Smaller well funded and trained armies beating larger untrained armies. I want my Swiss mountain army having trouble adapting and fighting in a desert because they have never been there before and don't know how to fight in the desert. I want my army doctrine and army to reflect the choices I made in the building of my army and the training I did. An example would be living off of the land vs supply lines. Each should have a benefit and each should have a drawback. I want my spy networks to assassinate another ruler that has no heirs leading to a succession war between all possible claimants not just two.

More than anything I want to see a game where you slowly master technologies/build experience over time getting small buffs and then a new technology comes out and then everything changes. An example, I have an army that has researched certain techs and my heavy infantry are amazing, I have focused my doctrines on heavy infantry and added small buffs to them the army tradition is high as well as institutional knowledge. I have made all the right choices for them to be the best but then a new technology comes along and changes the game. I have two neighbors one who focused on this new technology and one that wasn't as military oriented as me. Depending on the time span of the game a few thing might happen. The neighbor who focused on the new technology easily beats the other neighbor that didn't but because I invested so much resources into my army I can still beat the neighbors new technology for a while because they haven't adapted and become proficient in it. The longer they use this new technology the more tradition and tactics they have. They also start creating a new army doctrine. Eventually their troops start beating my highly trained troops and now I have to adjust my army to this new technology but by switching over my army tradition, tactics morale all take a hit because I am now using new things and my troops will take time to become proficient in it. I want to see people stuck in the old way of doing things but because they are in a position of power they refuse to adapt to a new system.

I want to see a game where if I increase taxes in a province autonomy lowers, more money comes in during the short term but population growth slows but if I decrease taxes the opposite happens. I want different areas to be a balancing act where if I am focusing on trade by creating trade routes or trade posts and have high tariffs that should lower my imports but increase production of my goods but if I lower them my production declines because of imports but my trade profits go up but population growth declines. Every action should provide a buff and a debuff. If I research bonds, then I use those to raise funds in my country there should be a decline in production, population growth or goods produced to show that citizens took money away from those things to invest into the country via bonds. Over time those should go away because those groups are getting the interest payments and investing them in the country or spending them on goods. Any money I borrow should come from somewhere and have positive and negative effects.

Influence and control. I think population should drive province development and you shouldn't be able to control the population but you should be able to influence it. The things I think you should control should be how money is invested whether it is into the treasury or different areas. Those investments should lead to your national ideas and what you focus on rather than what the game thinks you should. Everything should have a tradeoff and every unit should have a counter balance. This way you really need to plan out in advance what you want to do. If you are going to attack a desert nation you should train in the desert. There should be a variety of troops to choose from which has buffs in certain areas and debuffs in others. Not click this this and this or follow this linear path and become so big that no one can stop you at mid game and then it is just a grind until the end. Just like the Roman Empire, there were times of expansion and times of consolidation. The wealthier your provinces become the more desirable they become, the more resources you need to maintain them and the more troops you need to protect them. It should be a constant juggle between expanding your empire and administering it. Every system in place should benefit your empire in some ways and hinder it in others. The more choices and counter balances you have the more replayability, immersion and choices. Not I upgraded this and after a month everyone is entirely proficient in this new technology, tactic or weapon. I want to see tradeoffs that affect the game and make the player actually use a grand strategy encompassing all areas rather than just I am going to expand quickly in this one area and grow so large that no one can beat me. I want to see those strategies have to change over time at a cost. I want to see provinces lose their center of trade because it was pillaged and the province next door wasn't so the population naturally migrated to the more prosperous city. There needs to be an ebb and flow of the game. My kingdom dominated for so long but we were stuck in our old way and now a new up and comer changes our whole perspective and we have to change but that process should take time and make us vulnerable. Not I dominate and will always be awesome because I reached 2,000 development by clicking buttons and faced no major setbacks because only a few of the systems are fully developed and I followed a linear path to success.

 

[GrandEurypterid]

I mentioned earlier my opposition to -or, rather, my hatred towards- mission trees. But what you propose here seems very interesting. I see it as a sort of "throne adress", where the player could state his objectives, and then obtain rewards linked with how realistic those objectives appear to the game at a certain point in time.

The reward, which would then come from inside your country, in the form of an estate being more happy, giving you ressources, would have to be proportional with the undertaking you proposed. Meaning if it's a very easy thing to do, the reward would be small, but if it involves a very difficult and long-winded approach, then it could have more consequences for your country.

However, my impression is that what I'm talking about here is more akin to a revamped "Diet" than missions.

For missions, I once thought about something that would actually reconcile the existence of mission trees with my non-tag specific bonuses mantra : having them dynamic, in the sense that you would receive missions linked instead to the culture and religions your country has, be it to take over the land inhabited by your culture/religion, increase their wealth, curbing the minorities or making them more accepted... You could also have them relative to your government, and in a more interesting way linked to your situation in the game at certain moments.

This approach would, however evacuate all those missions that people seem to like and be "immersive".

I think this is also a good point- in real life, domestic political concerns often overtake foreign policy concerns (e.g the Iraq War switching from status-quo management to... well, the Iraq War), so integrating 'I would like to decide my current strategic policy' into domestic politics sounds like a very good idea. I think the idea of integrating innate features like culture and religion and government type into such a system is also a very good one. One of the problems with the Estates in EU4, and interest groups in Vicky 3, is that they always have very consistent desires- privileges in EU4, ideologies in Vicky 3- and, outside of single-choice actions in EU4, or law change requests and retiring from government in Vicky 3, their only means of causing problems is if you have enough long-term mismanagement for them to create unrest (or if they're blocking a law change you want, in Vicky 3).

Having 'this is how I decide my strategic interests right now' being integrated into 'this is what people in my country want' is a pretty interesting way to implement it- having an out-of-control Estate or Interest Group making you walk a knife's edge of 'how do I satisfy them' versus 'what if their demands aren't in my best interests' would be a very interesting way to balance them. Additionally, it's fairly frequent that empowering one group can become a big problem if their interests change; for example, the empowered aristocracy of Ancien Regime France was very useful for bypassing the Estates General to get income via loans and sales of titles, but resulted in the wealthiest people being the least taxable, which led to the Revolution. The Eunuchs and Janissaries Estates in EU4 function on a similar principle, but they only do it by tacked-on modifiers instead of actually changing your priorities; I feel like this sort of intertwining of strategy and domestic politics would be a great way to turn that into an integrated system that's fun and interesting in a variety of situations.

In regards to 'missions', I think they could still function with such a system. In fact, in many ways, they might improve a lot of flaws with missions. Say you're playing as Prussia, but don't want to blob; if 'missions' are integrated as- say- 'special requests' in your strategic or estate missions, you could cut out a lot of the 'unfulfilled request' aspects that keep people from wanting to play other ways when they have missions. Say you're Prussia; if you want to become mercantile or develop your lands, then by empowering the Burghers and Clergy and disempowering the Junkers, or by having a political struggle with the Junkers, you might be able to ignore, slash or skip the missions you don't want to do in return for a more stable country focused on absolutism or other power centres. That way, you'd still be able to- say- work with the Burghers to get a Baltic fleet to compete with Denmark via special Prussia content, but you'd be able to take German/Holy Roman Hegemony out of your to-do list because the Aristocrats aren't in a position to demand it any more.

 

[Komandor353]

I really hope that this part of the game related to the global map of the Earth will be built not on a flat world map, but on a globe model. This will give many times more realism to the world, add the South and North Poles, and also remove inconsistencies and disadvantages of a flat world map (For example, Russia and Canada on a flat map will be many times larger than their real sizes)

 

[John Buford]

Cheers Johan and good luck for you and the Tinto Team!

Hm..regarding the immersion pillar for me the visual map presentation is one of the most important issue here. I rember playing well over 1000 hours of HOI4 after release then suddenly stoped - i could not go on, as i felt really disctracted by the visual representation of the map in the HOI4 engine. It is of course highly subjective - so no offense intended - but the map design gives me the impression of an oversimplified comic book. So i went back to HOI3, which of course lacks many of the good features of HOI4, but i could much more immerse and dive in the game, and hence have more fun.

I had the same effect with Crusader Kings III and - to a lesser degree - with Vicky3.

Cheers, JB

 

[iClipse]

Believable World

If looking at games in general, believable can take many forms. But important is that the game follows its own rules. Like Horizon Zero Dawn is completely unrealistic with its machines, but it still works, since everything follows the rules of the world. Doesn't matter if it's realistic or fantasy. Magic for example can perfectly be done well, but you'd have to put rules into place and make a framework around it. Like if magic exists, doesn't that mean I can turn stone into silver with a spell? So money isn't an issue? If it's still supposed to be an issue, I'd like to see it addressed. Just like having something return from the dead. Are spells based on knowledge? Mana?
It kind of depends on what you want to simulate. If we're doing some kind of grand strategy game, I feel like believable is when actions have consequences. Especially if these consequences can't be foreseen completely, just as in real life. Like you can have a general idea that people won't like it when you conquer everything you can touch and burn it to the ground, but it's not always easy to gauge what will happen afterwards.

Setting Immersion

Maybe a bit out of the box, but immersion for me is when stuff changes depending on who I play with. Especially art styles like architecture and how it's different when playing an Arabic nation as opposed to something in the new world. Music also is a big factor on this. When you can roleplay well enough and pursue the goals you've set out for this specific campaign, that helps in immersion. If I want to play 'tall', I really want to feel it that my cities are becoming bigger. While I'm not a big fan of Victoria 3, this it does quite well.

Replayability

Replayability happens when the answer to "would it be possible to do x?" is usually answered with "yes". If I want to unite Egypt as an Italian republic following coptic religion, shouldn't I be able to? I'm not saying it should be easy though. But that's why EU4 is so replayable. There are many things you can do and set goals/restrictions for yourself from the start.
Replayability also happens when you have to make choices where you can't have it all. If you have 5 options and can take only 1 with a permanent effect (like government reforms in EU4), you can start your next run with the 'I'll take the other option this run' in mind. Idea groups same thing. Frostpunk for example could have been better (imo) if you weren't able to take all techs by the end of the game. The initial choice is interesting. But since you get most techs eventually anyway, your choices are limited to 'in which order will I do stuff', rather than 'this game I'll do X, next game I'll do Y'.

In general, if we're talking about EU5, it'd be good to see what EU4 does well and where it doesn't. What it does well, without going too in to depth:
1) Diplomacy. Sure, it can be improved, but it's still the best at diplomacy from all Paradox games. It's very clear and you have immediate feedback on what others think of you and what they'd accept and what not. I only played Victoria 3 in its first incarnation, but I hated how unclear the diplomatic system was. I could attack a neighbour as Nejd for example, but then it was a coinflip on whether Egypt or the Ottomans would join on the opponent's side. Sometimes they would, sometimes they wouldn't. But if they would, you couldn't really just back down, often ending the run there. Just based on that coinflip.
2) Warfare. Again, could be improved obviously, but I still feel it does it reasonably well. It also has multiple paths towards a strong army. You can focus on Morale. You can focus on Discipline. You can focus on just quantity and drowning your enemy in troops. You can focus on having a professional army. Or you can focus a bit on all fronts.
3) Having different options. All religions have special mechanics. All regions have specific government reforms/missions/mechanics. The reason I've played Japan at least 20 times is because you have so many options in shaping your nation. You can play Shinto, Catholic, Confucian or Mahayana through the Shinto incidents. But then you have access to animism as well, so I've done an Orthodox and Coptic Japan as well since it requires only one province to convert. That's just religions, but then you can go wide with world conquest, go colonial, be emperor of china, but it also has plenty of options to play tall.
4) Idea groups. Maybe not to be ported over without changes, but the fact that you have 21-24 idea groups and you can only every take 8 of those over a game gives massive amount of options. I remember when Dharma arrived and gave you access to a free policy, I just had to replay it all over again, because one change in your choice of ideagroups now gives you access to many other policies. I might be in the minority here, but I also liked national ideas. If not used in its current form however, I do feel like there should be a difference between nations. Why would I play Germanic OPM X as opposed to Germanic OPM Y right next to it? And if I conquer nation X as Y, is your result the same as when Y conquered X? You can solve this with other government reforms, trade goods, leaders or other stuff, but it needs to be profound enough of a difference. National ideas at least made nations feel different, even though their political situation might be the same.

Where it can be better
1) Trade. The fixed trade routes need to go. If I make Ireland the most developed part of the world, it just makes sense that the English channel flows towards the North Sea and not the other way around, especially if I burned London to the ground. I'm also of the mind that total trade should drop when everything is owned by one nation. Currently it's way too effective to just conquer everything. If you want to be rich, proper trade should be the solution. More nations competing = more innovation and thus more profitable trade.
2) Diplomacy. Yes, I know it's one of EU4's strengths, but it also can use many improvements. Some form of diplomatic capacity. A guarantee on a 3 dev OPM and an alliance between the number 1 and 2 GP shouldn't really be the same thing, but they are. Defensive alliances could be a thing. Diplomacy can also be an incredible tool as anti blobbing mechanic. Sure, aggressive expansion exists, but if I stack enough improved relations or aggressive expansion reduction it just doesn't matter anymore. If I'm this mega 5000 development blob with triple as many army as the next great power people should try to band together against me. Balance of powers as a mechanic can probably help a lot. Diplomacy, as long as it can still be interacted with, is probably a lot more fun rather than slapping a 1000 negative events onto someone who blobbed a bit too quickly. Also stuff like distance should be made with not only Europe in mind. Korea and Vietnam are far from each other, even though in practice it's only one military access from each other.
3) Ships. I don't have a solution here, but navy should be more important. Both for trade as for warfare. Maybe make navy abstract as you did in Victoria 3, but at least make everything clear.

Some other thoughts:
1) Population. If it's EU5 we're talking about, it could really use a population system. And pops =/= population. I just want some sort of realism of where my troops come from. If I 'develop' a province, shouldn't it also have a higher population? I certainly don't want to micromanage individual pops, but some sort of '% religion','% culture', productivity level and so forth. If I have a very costly war and all able bodied men died, why is my economy doing well? Do these men come from my workforce or are they a professional army and fully funded and trained?
2) Some sort of limited war. France and English should be able to fight a war over some colony in South Africa without it devolving into a world war.
3) A bit related to 1, but province should be able to be divided or partly conquered/colonised. A common occurence of the time period were trade posts over key points in the world. In EU4 it's only possible by conquering an entire province. And you'd rather conquer the entire trade node, so you can steer it better towards you.

Anyway, I'll be looking forward to the next weeks and the next Tinto talks.

 

[joaofrancisco25]

One thing that i think is really underused in paradox games is geography. This ties to the "believable world" point. A well modeled geography gives both flavor and bealievability. Arable land, resources and state traits in Vic 3 are some examples of that, and while nice ideas that could still be improved, do not yet accomplish the flavor side, in my opinion they feel very empty. Perhaps it is a fundamental flaw of the state-wide logic the game uses, ignoring provinces as an interactive unit and making geography less granular, and by extension, bealivable.

In Eu4, however, we have a made-up geographical feature that really changes how you play: Trade nodes.

I'm not advocating for unchangeable trade directions and english predestination, but I really do believe that most of my enjoyment in EU4 was understanding what i had to conquer based on my geographical position. The trade hubs system just expanded that feeling.

The colonial system, with all its problems, also answered to certain geographical logics, and i loved that. Colonial range gave importance to little islands and strategical thinking. It gave a lot of sense to how the world around us worked, and it made it feel real

Terrain, of course, has an importance that should go without saying. I want it to feel different playing in the Netherlands and Nepal. And not because you threw at me 7 different modifiers, but because its position in the world asks for different play. Coming back to Vic3, i guess they tried this approach, but in the end, the poorly implemented geography, made it feel pretty much the same playing Guatemala or Norway.

TL: DR: The idea that i want to pass is that geography is also flavor, visualy and mechanically, and Eu4 is the game that gets it better. If done correctly, a well designed geographical system can build a very solid foundation for this entry, it is flavor without expansions.

 

[Arizal]

In regards to 'missions', I think they could still function with such a system. In fact, in many ways, they might improve a lot of flaws with missions. Say you're playing as Prussia, but don't want to blob; if 'missions' are integrated as- say- 'special requests' in your strategic or estate missions, you could cut out a lot of the 'unfulfilled request' aspects that keep people from wanting to play other ways when they have missions. Say you're Prussia; if you want to become mercantile or develop your lands, then by empowering the Burghers and Clergy and disempowering the Junkers, or by having a political struggle with the Junkers, you might be able to ignore, slash or skip the missions you don't want to do in return for a more stable country focused on absolutism or other power centres. That way, you'd still be able to- say- work with the Burghers to get a Baltic fleet to compete with Denmark via special Prussia content, but you'd be able to take German/Holy Roman Hegemony out of your to-do list because the Aristocrats aren't in a position to demand it any more.

I guess my problem with that approach is that Prussia would still have its "special path" written in the game. For it to work as I envision it, ANY country should be able to go the Prussian way, with sufficient preconditions met.

I'm not against "flavour" in the sense of a country having some events named and described differently because in that country, there is a specific historical name or event that happened, but this content should be available for others. I am also against exeptionalism in the sense that if a country achieves the "Prussian government", for example, it shouldn't be a watered down version of the same conditions met in Prussia. That's what it means to be against TAG-specific bonuses.

Just as the French revolution eventually became a mechanic about "revolutions", Burgundian inheritance should be something that could happen to other countries, with the right conditions met (meaning a duchy split between the HRE and the outside world should be split on inheritance). The Netherlands becoming independant should inspire a mechanic about split countries being more unruly, and so on.

Historical events should inspire mechanics, they shouldn't be tacked on the game as foreign bodies, be it in the form of events or mission trees.

 

[Pyoro]

One thing that i think is really underused in paradox games is geography.

Generally, when you think of the basic structure of history, you think Time, Place, Person/People. A series of events that happen somewhere, at some time, and involves some people (armies, cities, states, peoples, whatever). With PDX it often feels as if it's only the last bit that matters.

There are some aspect that take time/place into account, but often, whether you do X in 1539 somewhere in Central Europe isn't really that different from doing it two hundred years later halfway across the globe.

Sometimes, with for example CK2, it doesn't even matter whether people are physically in that place (sure, the crusading king got his wife pregnant while she's in England and he's in Jerusalem). Often, actions and orders and everything can be perfectly instantaneous, or take an arbitrary minimum time for no reason.

I would indeed agree that this is an area where systems could and possibly should be improved, and examined for a more consistent, more weighty experience.

It'd imo also almost automatically help with the map painting problem. Because right now a lot of empire management in all PDX games is instant and global, expansion has no logical limit. The reality for empires was basically always that fringes are difficult to control because they are by definition far away. You don't need artificial "decadence/corruption" mechanics when "being far away" actually matters on its own. But it won't when everything's just a global resource, instantly deployable across your empire.