Take Timur for example. The chance of him becoming a great conqueror before dying was basically 1/100.
Tamerlan was around 16 in 1337. I don't see his coming in power as inevitable by that point. The Mongol successor states were in turmoil and there was a huge instability accross central Asia. That's the historical situation I would like to see depicted in-game, much more than making the battle of Angora inevitable.
There is certain flavour that should affect gameplay quite drastically, especially the government setup - I don't want Switzerland be just like some swabian Prince, but with Elections, but actually deal with a heavily decentralised confederacy
Sure, Switzerland actually being a confederation is a great idea. That's the type of "flavour" I like, but it adresses the situation as it was at game start, it doesn't force ulterior results.
Different playstyles should be equally viable, and different flavour for countries represent the various traditions that led them to different paths.
As another person said, to a point there has to be a meta. Playing a heavily feudal and agrarian society, such as Russia in the era, should definitely has drawbacks. What's funny, though, is that taking this example seriously, Russia ended up being regarded as one of the biggest power of the world at the end of the game, so it gives some credential to what you are saying.
But still, if you neglect trade as the Netherlands, for example, you are probably going to have problems.
And I'm fine with the game portraying the modern era. You can't stop progress, unless you conquer the world and innovation slows to a grind.
There's a good amount of innate flavor that comes from starting situations (diplomatic or otherwise). Other than that, most countries also start with unique privileges, which I consider a welcome addition. The most common kinds of flavor are basically what they call "dynamic historical events" (DHE) and unique advances. I do believe some of these are tag-specific, but others are region-, religion-, situation-specific, the last of which I quite like (from the last TF, for example, Muscovy has an event to trigger war with Novgorod IF they elect another ruler, and this is early-on enough that it makes sense). Other than that, you have your disasters, your reforms, and so on.
I see. I don't like "unique privileges" because I would like everyone to be able to have them, but the idea that countries would start in different positions, as I expressed in another thread, is great.
Overall though fundamentally it encounters the same issues (that is, what I think you or I would consider "issues") as EUIV. Not so much in terms of locking content behind tags, but divorcing game-state from why those things happened historically. Just as an example from the last TF, as Russia you could have the Time of Troubles happen, which is fine, but this has nothing to do with a weak and arguably intellectually disabled ruler dying and resulting in the erasure of the ruling dynasty (along with, of course, the specificities of that time period but those are not exactly all simulated so I will give that a pass). Instead, it pretty much relies on being Russia/Muscovy during one of two ages and having either low stability or legitimacy. So in essence you have a specific historical disaster triggering due to generic in-game factors.
I think we always agreed that "DHE" should be linked more to the situation countries find themselves in than "oh, this happened historically, so even if it has nothing to do with the situation in game, it should happen".
I guess as long as it doesn't permeate the game, I'll still be able to enjoy it. The amount of simulationist mechanics will probably help.
I have to admit that I find the asymmetry that inevitably arises from mission trees, flavors and bonuses etc. to be a unique selling point. Just as it has always been historically.
Those already are games with huge assymetry from just the starting position of everyone. I don't see why unique bonuses would be absolutely necessary if the same result can be achieved by having global mechanics.
I want to stress, here. I said "the same result", meaning that I'm not asking for a blank slate. I'm fine with starting positions being hugely different, with transformative chains of events tied to logical triggers (such as the times of trouble). I don't want to scrap those, but to expand them so that they aren't limited to happen only in situations forcefully restricted to what happened historically. And I believe it would be possible for the content designers to take inspiration from history without trying to mimic it.
