People shouldn't have opinions? I prefer that people who don't want mission trees make their case than just sit on their hands.
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Maybe you can give something new a go first?
Maybe its not as bad as you think?
As long as it doesn't mean that every effort is put in creating "historical" focuses that I would then disable because I hate them, I'm fine with such a toggle.
Actually, this is an idea that would be compatible with making historical events be replicable. Maybe you would have more chances to have Burgundy split between France and the Empire in 1477, but you could just as well see Prussia or Austria get the same fate (since they also are split between the Empire and other polities).
I think we had a misunderstanding. I'm not against the notion that we play the country, not the ruler. I was personalizing everything, but you could also say that the Byzantine Empire, or France, or whichever other country didn't know what would happen in 1337. The core of my argument isn't about characters, but about indeterminacy.
But about immaterial rewards, if the a country is a system, I would like the game to make rewards come from it. I agree that some of them can be immaterial. A claim can be the intellectual production of your country arguing that, "of course", this land should belong to us, because of history, geography or whatever else. So I agree with you that nationalism can be represented in-game. This isn't something I would scrap because of blind materialism.
As for monuments, I also know some religion and cultures had in 1337 a particular link to certain places, and others developped links during the span of the game. But I don't see why this makes it so that Köln should be the only place where a certain Cathedral can be built, or why Versailles can only be built in Versailles (outside the obvious fact that it wouldn't be named Versailles if it were built elsewhere).
In EUV, countries will have societal values, so the relationship to land/sea will be represented. In those thought experiments, of course transplanting venetians to inland Poland wouldn't work very well.
I can see how historical determinism could say that Castille/Spain was in a way predestined to go in South America, or England was well situated to get North America. But this isn't an argument for mission trees. It's an argument to have the initial situation well built, so that countries "naturally" go in those directions. England doesn't need a mission tree to become a coloniser if France closed its gates to it and its only path of expansion IS the colonial route.
I'm trying to find a middle ground with you.
A conversation I had with a friend a while ago convinced me, at least, that missions made some sense when they were linked to a situation in progress at the start of the game. But the more you go in the future, and in EUV there is a lot of future, the less you'll have that (an ongoing situation).
One common criticism of EUIV is that the late game looks more blanc, and I think it doesn't only comes from people having conquered good chunks of the world by the XVIIIth century or earlier. It comes from having the narrative content naturally being more prevalent at the start. You think having dynamic narrative content is impossible. I think we could repurpose the existing narrative content in order to make use of it elsewhere in the game.
This would solve the blandness of late game and still allow you to have your historical content. Maybe there would be a little less because of the amount of work needed to generalize content, but I think it would be definitely worth it.
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Wild, the freedom to do whatever, free of mission tree coercion, is what I liked the most about the game.
Certainly not. But my conception of good mechanics are ones that can be generalized. For example, EU4 Prussian militarization. Certainly Prussia should get it because they are Prussia. But opening up access to that mechanic to other nations that meet certain criteria (e.g. 2 of quality/offense/defensive ideas + high army tradition) would only be a good thing in my opinion.
I didn't think so? But lots of things have been said in this thread, it's hard to keep them all straight.
I should hope that Ulm and Spain play differently, if only because of their different starting situations. But where we likely differ is that I don't mind if Saxony and Brandenburg are basically interchangeable. They are both electors, both neighbors, and they have the same culture. Why should one get flavor and the other not? Just because Brandenburg eventually formed Prussia? It feels artificial.
In EU4 you blob because playing tall is both boring and less effective. We'll have to see if EU5 can improve that balance. If playing tall is still boring and worse than blobbing, no amount of mission trees will make people do it.
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Just because they didn't know something would happen, didn't mean it wouldn't happen.
On the topic of Byzantium, there was a very productive thread on making the early-game civil-war in Byzantium 'dynamic'. Wherein they make a system where if the leader fights aggressive wars early on it increases the likelihood they die and trigger a civil-war. This incentivizes against early expansionism to snowball, and acts as a soft buff to the Ottomans who don't have that issue. In this way history can still play out- especially as an early invasion by Serbia seems likely, but it also has a reasonable chance of playing out the other way.
In this way, BOTH history and alt-history can be accomadated. This is the approach we should be taking.
Because Versailles is a uniquely french expression of aristocratic excess that's why. That's kind of obvious. To make it generic is to remove it's frenchness and it's important role in the French identity. It's like saying 'well why doesn't Kazakhstan just build their own freedom lady statue?' You see why this comes across as an absurd idea, right?
Anyway I'm not opposed to creating alternate history content, or creating dynamic scenarios. What I oppose is the idea that historical content has to be ditched or made generic for this to work. What I argue is this is a case-by-case basis thing.
As an example- it makes sense that the Mandate of Heaven system is a 'generic' one, in that any nation can theoretically conquer China and claim it. Because this happened wh
*Geographic determinism I said. Europe has a ton of rivers that sponsors the growth of civilizations in a way that Africa doesn't. It has an extensive series of coastlines from its peninsula's and inland seas, unlike China, that fosters a strong maritime tradition. Spain and Portugal as kingdoms furthest removed from the Near-East had the strongest incentives to sponsor expeditions to find alternate sea-routes to Asia. Likewise they had limited expansion oppurtunities, either south into North Africa (which were rebuffed) or north into a centralized France- making investing in colonization the most attractive expansion route.
But- you can't perfectly simulate this. No matter how hard you try. And if you did, it'd be a history textbook. You can sympathize with why I want to play a campaign where not only is there a Spanish Empire, it's uniquely Spanish in how it manifests right? I don't want a country with a rich a history as Spain to be reduced down to a number of different numbers on a spreadsheet and a bunch of different values on a slider.
I think what we're getting at is the immaterialness, the romantic notion, of nationhood, and how it should be represented. You seem to have a very materialist mindset that everything should be able to be simulated down to numbers that are equally accessible to all tags, while I'm arguing that loses practically all the character of nationhood, and ironically, ends up incredibly abstracting most of the idea of national character. Such things are abstracted in EUIV, but that is because it's an abstract concept, just as morale is in armies.
Can ongoing situations not be created? Such as colonization of the new world? The War of the Roses? Wars of Religion? Could mission trees not be used to help create these ongoing situations?
Just because they didn't know something would happen, didn't mean it wouldn't happen.
On the topic of Byzantium, there was a very productive thread on making the early-game civil-war in Byzantium 'dynamic'. Wherein they make a system where if the leader fights aggressive wars early on it increases the likelihood they die and trigger a civil-war. This incentivizes against early expansionism to snowball, and acts as a soft buff to the Ottomans who don't have that issue. In this way history can still play out- especially as an early invasion by Serbia seems likely, but it also has a reasonable chance of playing out the other way.
In this way, BOTH history and alt-history can be accomadated. This is the approach we should be taking.
I'm not opposed to creating alternate history content, or creating dynamic scenarios. What I oppose is the idea that historical content has to be ditched or made generic for this to work. What I argue is this is a case-by-case basis thing.
As an example- it makes sense that the Mandate of Heaven system is a 'generic' one, in that any nation can theoretically conquer China and claim it. Because this happened when the Mongols rolled up. So it makes sense that another culture could come along and adopt the institutions of China, and in essence become the new China.
What it wouldn't make sense for is say Byzantium's claims to the Roman Empire, like the Aztecs can't just roll up and declare themselves the inheritors of Romes legacy just because they conquered Constantinople. That is something that should uniquely belong to Byzantium. Likewise the formation of the Mughals and Ottomans shouldn't be something that every nation should have access to.
There are certain things that should be gatekept to certain tags. This is already a policy for the devs far as I can see- nobody is saying the unique advances should be made available to every tag, so I don't see why unique mission trees are therefore a sticking point. There clearly has to be some other factor than missions would be tag specific to a degree (even in EUIV there was still a large degree of overlap).
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So why should I play Prussia then?
You are correct, we do differ there. What does the audience gain from having those nations be interchangeable with zero identity to differentiate them? Why would giving them unique identities make the game worse for you?
Let me ask you a question- how do you play the game? Like which nations do you play the most and why? Do you favor certain continents? I try to play a bunch of different nations to get different feels for different regions. Kongo, Uganda, Mali, Delhi, Bengal, Ming, Ashikaga, Oda, England, Scotland, France, Castille, Portugal, Morrocco, Onondega, Aztecs, Cuzco, you get the idea.
As an example- I would like to play more Native-American tribes. A good option would be one of the Iroquois nation tags, as they start in a federation in a good position. However, they don't have all that much content- they do have a unique mission tree, but without too much content beyond forming their federation, there isn't even too much with their legendary rivalry with the Huron, and not much on how to respond to colonization other than some westernization. But that's still more content than say Powhatan, a rather strong tribe in Virginia. But why would I play with Powhatan when they have less content and start off weaker? Why would I play say as the Apache when there isn't anything that really reflects their transition to steppe warriors? It's possible since game-mechanics let tribes reform into hordes. But once I've done that, my options are a. blob out, and b. blob out. I'd like to play there more, but you explain to me why that campaign would play any differently.
And you can't think of ANY way for mission trees to possibly ameliorate this?
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Because you want to? Is the only reason you play Prussia because they have a unique government reform? Were you disappointed when Zulu and Livonians got it as well? Or when Non-British nations got access to Parliament?
I mostly play the same set of nations, Brandenburg into Prussia/Germany (HRE conquest), the Netherlands (colonial), Japan (colonial/sengoku jidai), and Florence/North Italian minor into Italy. I'll also occasionally play Ethiopia or Iroquois.
I occasionally play other nations but I generally don't find them enjoyable and I'll often quit after playing like 40 years. I used to like playing Persia, but the new mission tree ruined it and I don't think it's fun anymore.
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got into this topic after that now deleted(?) yt poll on missions and after reading through this a bit and watching a couple videos
EU4 missions:
- a path to follow for the ai
- a tutorial for new players
- historical context for actions
- rewards for achieving goals
- events so that goals can be achieved more easily (e.g. generating claims)
VIC3 journal entries provide
- a set of conditions that when achieved trigger some sort of event
- a specific goal for the ai
- a small scope of mechanics for new players to learn through
- (less) historical context and events for achieving goals
IR dynamic missions provide:
- a short plan to follow to achieve a specific goal
- helps the ai good new player tutorial
- very little historical context
- few if any rewards other than claims maybe
(i dont play HOI4 and its very likely there are points to these mechanics in these games ive missed sorry)
EU4 missions are built to encompass the entire timespan of the game and provide very strong modifiers including permanent modifiers often to historically powerful/interesting countries. This means those countries become the meta and the player is often strongly encoraged along the path that makes them the strongest for the longest amount of time if they arent trying to roleplay.
Vic3 journal entries i think have 2 types, generic entries and historical entries. generic entries spawn when certain conditions are met and provide a set of conditions to meet either in order to fix the issue that spawned it or take advantage of those conditions. historical entries (unification/political) usually spawn at the start of the game and provide a set of conditions to meet in order to achieve something that happened historically potentially with alternate outcomes. these allow situations that are in place at the start date as well as some situations that were mostly unavoidable later into the game to be resolved and for the player to overcome challenges or gain bonuses, this does mean the player is very free to do almost anything but imo the option to deny these inevitable/canon events of unification should also be allowed and politically the player is very railroaded towards socialism in that game
IR Missions are small plans for achieving a specific goal with few modifiers but as someone who often played smaller countries that didnt get many unique mission trees in that game they quickly became generic and repetetive and the few unique ones i did get felt very much like those generic ones in a lot of ways. my main gripe with IRs system is that you couldnt control what trees spawned and there was basicaly 2 types that i saw, expand and control a specific area or build some buildings in a couple specific states whic for me made it so i wasnt very interested in continuing a game after the first few trees.
SO... EU5 i do like the ideas of both Vic3 and IRs goals for different reasons, journal entries are very adaptable and are kinda like individual missions that are important enough to just be off on their own, IRs dynamic trees are granular plans to specific goals and i think both of these could have their place in EU5 and that lessons should be learnt from EU4s missions for the philosophy behind these systems.
Every tag should have the same potential and be as equally valid if played well and so historical and ahistorical tags should be able to reach the same potentials, to me this mostly means no permanent modifiers, sure unique units but not forever, peaceful diplomatic interactions should be handled carefully
so journal entries and dynamic trees
journal entries would be representations of internal situations, disasters, estate demands etc i dont think this needs to be very complicated, maybe this is already here with the existing situations mechanic not sure
dynamic trees would be mostly aquired through the "parliment"/whatever replaces the parliment/estate interaction/ruler interaction and should generate a plan according to the players intentions, i dont think these should look like a tutorial by default, i do think they could have variants that can be a tutorial but those should be through an opt in game rule.
certain things (mostly internal interactions and development) shouldnt have trees that arent tutorials, yes have tutorial trees for developing your states/improving trade/managing estates but trust experienced players to manage those things themselves or turn on automation. Trees as plans for expansion like managing or integrating subjects/actual wars for territory/colonialism and maybe exploration are useful however.
Trees for managing subjects can provide avenues for adjusting border gore, aquiring parts of their territory that you feel would be more benefitial to control directly without full integration, installing friendlier puppet rulers and probably many other things. Trees for territorial wars would be generated for a very high cost and upon selection would generate claims as well as a lot of antagonism before its even acted upon, but this could be useful for planning conquests of multiple countries in an area that you want at once, even if that area doesnt conform to the games predefined areas. and trees for establishing colonies could allow buffs to migration maybe even from specific areas so you could say, i want the population in this area around paris to be moved to these areas in my colony in australia starting with this area, maybe that examples a bit much but u get the idea more granular control over the mechanic. and i guess thats the theme for all of these, more granular control over the mechanic so that the tree isnt a repetetive set of tasks to complete but a dynamic player defined plan or story.
EDIT:
you should be able to persue multiple mission trees at once at a higher cost, journal entries are more passive and are seperate
trees would be aquired through the estates and or whatever replaces the parliment mechanic
EU4 missions:
- a path to follow for the ai
- a tutorial for new players
- historical context for actions
- rewards for achieving goals
- events so that goals can be achieved more easily (e.g. generating claims)
VIC3 journal entries provide
- a set of conditions that when achieved trigger some sort of event
- a specific goal for the ai
- a small scope of mechanics for new players to learn through
- (less) historical context and events for achieving goals
IR dynamic missions provide:
- a short plan to follow to achieve a specific goal
- helps the ai good new player tutorial
- very little historical context
- few if any rewards other than claims maybe
(i dont play HOI4 and its very likely there are points to these mechanics in these games ive missed sorry)
EU4 missions are built to encompass the entire timespan of the game and provide very strong modifiers including permanent modifiers often to historically powerful/interesting countries. This means those countries become the meta and the player is often strongly encoraged along the path that makes them the strongest for the longest amount of time if they arent trying to roleplay.
Vic3 journal entries i think have 2 types, generic entries and historical entries. generic entries spawn when certain conditions are met and provide a set of conditions to meet either in order to fix the issue that spawned it or take advantage of those conditions. historical entries (unification/political) usually spawn at the start of the game and provide a set of conditions to meet in order to achieve something that happened historically potentially with alternate outcomes. these allow situations that are in place at the start date as well as some situations that were mostly unavoidable later into the game to be resolved and for the player to overcome challenges or gain bonuses, this does mean the player is very free to do almost anything but imo the option to deny these inevitable/canon events of unification should also be allowed and politically the player is very railroaded towards socialism in that game
IR Missions are small plans for achieving a specific goal with few modifiers but as someone who often played smaller countries that didnt get many unique mission trees in that game they quickly became generic and repetetive and the few unique ones i did get felt very much like those generic ones in a lot of ways. my main gripe with IRs system is that you couldnt control what trees spawned and there was basicaly 2 types that i saw, expand and control a specific area or build some buildings in a couple specific states whic for me made it so i wasnt very interested in continuing a game after the first few trees.
SO... EU5 i do like the ideas of both Vic3 and IRs goals for different reasons, journal entries are very adaptable and are kinda like individual missions that are important enough to just be off on their own, IRs dynamic trees are granular plans to specific goals and i think both of these could have their place in EU5 and that lessons should be learnt from EU4s missions for the philosophy behind these systems.
Every tag should have the same potential and be as equally valid if played well and so historical and ahistorical tags should be able to reach the same potentials, to me this mostly means no permanent modifiers, sure unique units but not forever, peaceful diplomatic interactions should be handled carefully
so journal entries and dynamic trees
journal entries would be representations of internal situations, disasters, estate demands etc i dont think this needs to be very complicated, maybe this is already here with the existing situations mechanic not sure
dynamic trees would be mostly aquired through the "parliment"/whatever replaces the parliment/estate interaction/ruler interaction and should generate a plan according to the players intentions, i dont think these should look like a tutorial by default, i do think they could have variants that can be a tutorial but those should be through an opt in game rule.
certain things (mostly internal interactions and development) shouldnt have trees that arent tutorials, yes have tutorial trees for developing your states/improving trade/managing estates but trust experienced players to manage those things themselves or turn on automation. Trees as plans for expansion like managing or integrating subjects/actual wars for territory/colonialism and maybe exploration are useful however.
Trees for managing subjects can provide avenues for adjusting border gore, aquiring parts of their territory that you feel would be more benefitial to control directly without full integration, installing friendlier puppet rulers and probably many other things. Trees for territorial wars would be generated for a very high cost and upon selection would generate claims as well as a lot of antagonism before its even acted upon, but this could be useful for planning conquests of multiple countries in an area that you want at once, even if that area doesnt conform to the games predefined areas. and trees for establishing colonies could allow buffs to migration maybe even from specific areas so you could say, i want the population in this area around paris to be moved to these areas in my colony in australia starting with this area, maybe that examples a bit much but u get the idea more granular control over the mechanic. and i guess thats the theme for all of these, more granular control over the mechanic so that the tree isnt a repetetive set of tasks to complete but a dynamic player defined plan or story.
EDIT:
you should be able to persue multiple mission trees at once at a higher cost, journal entries are more passive and are seperate
trees would be aquired through the estates and or whatever replaces the parliment mechanic
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Am I not allowed to want to play nations because of their unique mission trees? It sounds like your answer is no.
I thought the Zulu getting it was fine, because it was a reward for the complicated way that you'd have to form the Zulu in the first place. I also think the Zulu have a uniquely militarized history that warrants them getting a mechanic like that. But I don't think it should be available to everyone.
Anyway it sounds to me like your play ideology has you playing the same set of nations over and over again- whereas I want to be able to open the game and play something fresh. Hence, I don't like the idea that all mechanics should be available to all tags, tags should not be created equally.
HOI4 they're integral to progressing your campaign in its entirety. While you can play after you've completed your mission tree, most don't, and 'post focus-tree content' relies on what you've set up with the focus tree. Generally they are also split between Political, army, air force, navy, expansion, economy, and sometimes research sub-trees. The main point of contention is by default most take 70 days to finish, while some events need faster response times and a 35 day focus works better (for instance they shorted focuses for dealing with intervening in the Spanish Civil War).
Imperator Rome also has the problem where if you pick a try, you are locking yourself to that tree. This was the worst for Egypt, where EITHER you expand OR you develop, you can't go down both trees at the same time.
We're gonna get unique units, and those are gonna be expanded on, they're just now tied to culture more than previously. I also don't oppose (balanced) permanent modifiers, I think some nations SHOULD be stronger and easier to play. Cambodia vs. China should not be an even 50-50 fight- it should be weighted so taking on a major nation is difficult.
If trees are going to be 'dynamic' (I prefer the word modular) they should not be tied to your parliament, they're already doing that with Casus Belli, and it seems like the most controversial decision yet. I don't see why a parliament should be voting on this in the first place. I say if requirements are fulfilled to unlock a tree, you get a pop-up on the 'missions tab' to let you know you can unlock a new tree.
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yeah i guess in a way HOI4 was kinda their first attempt at dynamic mission trees
an idea i forgot to mention was mission tree slots/capacity so you could persue multiple things at once
yes cambodia vs china shouldnt be even but not because its china, maybe the mandate of heaven would give a morale/discipline boost and empire rank also gives a boost to that but imo there shouldnt be something specific to the china tag that gives them an advantage
the idea of dynamic player defined missions was based on the idea that it would be a replacement for the parliments cb creation mechanic and would be through whatever replaces the parliment cus i also agree that not every tag should have a parliment
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If Cambodia and China were equally sized (pops, economy, etc) why shouldn't it be an even fight? Why should China be stronger just because they are China?
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Bruh how have you all not come to an agreement after 14 pages of discussion
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...yes? i agree thats what i said china shouldnt be stronger because they are the china
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its mostly @SAmaster vs a couple others, he very desperately craves attention and I guess likes to argue for argue sake.Bruh how have you all not come to an agreement after 14 pages of discussion
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I enjoy debate, I don't crave attention.
What I don't get is why that's somehow a bad thing.
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EU5 already fixed biggest problem of Mission trees in EU4, stacking modifiers. Mission trees in EU5 will be a net positive. People should stop still thinking from EU4 perspective. Just give people choice to have mission trees, if you dont like it dont use it. Biggest downside of mission trees literally doesnt exist anymore.
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What is there to agree about? The two sides want diametrically opposing things and have goals that are mutually exclusive.Bruh how have you all not come to an agreement after 14 pages of discussion
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Because the missions are a pretty major part of the game, at the very least in the time the devs give to it. It's not like "ignoring the Reformation" as a choice is, since you still engage with the Catholic mechanics in that case. Most choices in the game have alternatives, missions don't
Ofcourse the devs are going include more tailor made flavour/content/mechanics for certain expected outcomes. But with advances chosing the non-expected outcome is not met with nothing. England, France and the Angevin Empire will all probably have their own advances. Or maybe the Angevin Empire gets acces to both English and French advances. It doesn't matter. You just "research" advances and you chose if those advances are the historical ones, which are nation specific ones for the countries that have them. It'd be like if in EU4, you didn't get your national ideas by unlocking other ideas, but they were a idea group in their own right. Which I think is a pretty good choice on PDX and a good compromise between tailored content and generic content. We both effectively get what we want.
I don't understand what you are saying here. Go read up on the advances TT again. Advances are split in three categories (admin, diplomatic and military) and per age you can only chose to advance down one. It'd be like you have only 5 (I think EU5 has 5 ages but not certain on it) ideagroups slots in a game, there's no limit about having to have a balanced setup, the generic ideagroups themselves have your national ideas included if you have them and each age has 3 unique generic ideagroups to choose from. There really is no hoopjumping involved here, it's playing the game normally
By this point you yourself are doing it again. After I took concrete examples of ways you can better depict historical events through other systems. "Mission trees have no alternative, you need to distance yourself from a part of the game instead of merely picking a generic option that's available to every country. They limit player agency that way." Happy?
You're wrong here. It's not mission trees that do that, it's scripting that does that. And the scripting can be hung under other mechanics. They can be hung under decisions or events, which do not suffer from the specific limitations that mission trees have.
Perhaps then PDX should've just called it good enough at a certain moment? If both options lead to bloat and distatisfaction with the game, why does it need continued devellopment?
Would it not be better for you if you got a Seven Years War startdate instead? This is just a general worry I have with EU5. The game is expanded in scope but EU4 has a problem of most players not really even getting far into the midgame in their games. I much enjoyed playing the 80 Years War startdate in EU4 despite the whack associated with it because of it being a later startdate. Yeah, the "Mamlukean Australia" stuff in general is prevented by the AI being nudged to making general historical choices, but that never makes sure that outcomes "make sense" enough for a specific 7 Years War North American related mission for England/Great Britain. Especially if the player by his actions starts influencing those outcomes.
What have you offered except "just ignore it"? Especially when the topic of develloper time and effort is brought up in its context as well, not to forget mission trees being included in DLC's with mechanics and being used to justify a certain price? The choice PDX made in including a option turning them off is good, but it must then be followed by a additional attitude change on their part for it to be worthwhile and a pro-consumer change. Otherwise the only thing they are offering is money for nothing (and your chicks for free)
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That's an argument that makes sense until you remember the alternative people want is 'no missions at all'. Which is the exact same as ignoring it.
My issue with them serving as a replacement is the randomness- we can't be certain AI will select them, or when because it'll be based on research speed and positions in the tree, and they wouldn't be present at the start. Since you had traditions unlocked by default for every tag, it meant that every tag started with at least some small modifier for them to differentiate them from everyone else. Likewise, not every tag is going to get, or deserve, unique advances in the tech tree. So you see why I don't think it's a clean swap right?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the advances are unique techs in the tech tree for certain nations right? I'm pretty sure I saw in the Serbian dev talk that they showcased a picture of the tech tree with one of serbia's unique advancements.
Yes, that's a more specific argument we can address. First lets dissect the world alternative- why do you want alternatives? By which I mean, I can't think of many mechanics that have 'alternatives' to them, like there's no alternative to the stability mechanic or corruption mechanic. Based on your earlier comments, I think maybe you mean the mission trees feel too obtrusive? And you feel there isn't a way to not engage with them and make them less obtrusive. Now- lets address 'limit player agency', well I think in certain ways they should. I don't think it is good for the player to be able to play every playstyle, or at least do so optimally, with every tag. Otherwise the tags all lose their identity.
As an example- Austria can't be a conquest focused tag. Because for Austria to be as interesting as it is, it needs its unique diplo focused strategy built around it- as both leader of the HRE, and as the master of PU's. There's limited conquering pathways since the HRE is to your north and west, the east has Hungary which you can easily PU, and Venice to the south is possible, but tricky for several reasons. Thanks to the historical setup, conquest doesn't offer a lot of opportunities, but diplomacy does. Ergo, Austria plays very uniquely compared to every other nation. Now you COULD remove everything unique about Austria, and make it so they can have just as militarized a state as Prussia did, and invade all of the HRE militarily like Prussia did, but then I have to ask what's the point of playing Austria vs. playing Prussia? Should I have the 'freedom' to play every tag in the exact same way do the exact same things? Or should the game encourage me to engage with other mechanics?
I argue that Mission Trees have the ability, along with several other game mechanics, to encourage alternate playstyles for players, and by having several dozen semi-crafted experiences, this offers much more variety than a truly open-ended dynamic sandbox.
Yes, which is why I'm not arguing that they should be scrapped as a mechanic. However, they have their drawbacks. Events are random- you can't predict when they'll show up. Sometimes they show up pretty reliably, other they don't, but unless you've played through a nation several times it's hard to predict when they're going to show up and plan around them.
Decisions are all well and good- but mission trees are essentially decisions with several quality of life features. The art is nice to look at for one, but you are able to get an overview at a glance at the different ones, and you can see how they relate to each-other. As an example- this would be like having a 'form saxony' decision, and you see that after forming Saxony you can form Germany, see the requirements for both, and then plan around both forming saxony and germany without having to take one decision to be able to see the next.
Now apparantly you don't find decisions too gamey, and don't want them removed. So lets build on that- do you oppose the idea of decisions getting the mission tree art? Do you oppose seeing them grouped together based on theme? Say a group of decisions grouped under a 'Colonial tree'? Do you oppose them being organized visually like a Mission tree is? Do you oppose having them linked together so some missions act as prerequisites for others?Would it not be better for you if you got a Seven Years War startdate instead? This is just a general worry I have with EU5. The game is expanded in scope but EU4 has a problem of most players not really even getting far into the midgame in their games. I much enjoyed playing the 80 Years War startdate in EU4 despite the whack associated with it because of it being a later startdate. Yeah, the "Mamlukean Australia" stuff in general is prevented by the AI being nudged to making general historical choices, but that never makes sure that outcomes "make sense" enough for a specific 7 Years War North American related mission for England/Great Britain. Especially if the player by his actions starts influencing those outcomes.
Ideally I want both, but I mentioned before I sympathize with the devs saying nobody played the later start dates and they weren't worth the effort to update. So that's an issue I'm willing to take the L on. But even if we did get alternate start dates, I don't want the starting pistol to go off, and every runner goes off in a random direction either- true randomness isn't really compelling on a gameplay level, which it seems to be what some people are arguing for. I'd still want the game to feel guided to a degree to achieve something similar to a historical outcome, within reason. Or put another way, I wouldn't want to start a 'French and Indian Wars' start date, and have everything be so unrecognizable in a hundred years that the French Revolution (or at least foreseeable alt-history variations) never kick off.
Well if you're just going to ignore the several suggestions I've made in dozens of these posts, then I'm not going to bother repeating mysel.
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Yes. The way that mission trees have prerequisites and forced order is one of the many things I dislike about them. As an example. I was recently playing Italy. Since I was allied with Hungary, I didn't want to complete the part of the mission tree that required breaking said alliance and and taking their land. However, this was one of the earlier missions so it basically totally blocked an entire portion of the tree. Independent decisions would not have had this problem. Italy would have had several decisions for "Reclaim Greece" and "Reclaim Anatolia" (among the other Roman territories). I'd have been able to conquer Greece/Anatolia and just ignored the stuff I didn't want to do (yet).
Go ahead and group them together and give them art. But don't force me to do things in a particular order.
Yes. If that's what you want to do. If your idea of fun is stacking military modifiers and dominating the AI nations, you should be able to do that anywhere in the world. Similarly, you shouldn't be forced to play Austria to focus on diplomacy and marriage. Or be forced to play specific nations in specific ways. Some nations may start further along one path or another, but you as the player or the AI should always have the ability to shift paths depending on the way the game progresses or your own preferences. Maybe you won't have enough time to fully shift, but you shouldn't be prohibited from trying.
EU shouldn't be like Overwatch or LoL where each nation is given a defined role that can't be deviated from.
Because you like Austria more than Prussia? You hate the color blue? You want to directly fight the Ottomans earlier? You think their starting position is more fun? There's lots of reasons to play any particular nation.
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