I have been watching and playing to many grand strategy games to count now. The more I play the more I get frustrated by the snowballing effect or that end game where everything is going to well and resources are plenty.
Almost every game feels like have fun until the half way point then you are going to have to make your own fun or stop playing mid way through.
For me this happened for Dwarf Fortress, EU4 (Like everyone else), X4: Foundations, Manor Lords, Stellaris, Rimworld, and so many more...
I feel the main issue is that internal mechanics of your colony/empire don't degrade, you have unlimited resource generation, or everyone in your society gets along way to well that nothing bad will ever happen. The feeling of this just is way to bland and dull. It mostly is around player enjoyment but I'd like to say that it stagnates enjoyment and my solution would give a new birth to ideas to help keep people from going mad and making a house rule for no army's no boats, EU4 run just to keep things difficult.
My proposal is an idea that isn't fully fleshed out but is centered around the three things in the title, Stagnation, Decay, and Blunders.
Stagnation : Old guard enjoy how things are and don't want things to change
Decay : Systems and understanding degrades and withers away over time
Blunders : The possibility of picking a wrong option, person or path in life
These things create the core idea behind keeping gameplay fresh for players and even for AI interactions.
TLDR is at the bottom.
Stagnation
Stagnation is my most desired topic to implement by far, it is the cornerstone of the reasons why all great empires fall. Rome, Mongols, France, Great Britain, all Chinese empires and even today it feels like all great western nations are following this similar path. Here is a video I recently watched that finally pushed me to make this. It diagnoses the game of money perfectly and how I feel EU5 isn't really portraying it.
Those with power want to keep it, that on it's own isn't a big deal, its because most of not all want to grow it, or when the next generation becomes complacent and spoils their lead of wealth on all sorts of none wealth growing activities. It becomes the rot of society. I know there is a system in place for corruption but I feel like it should be a bigger issue the bigger you are. Administration is harder and harder to produce and is why countries fracture from being unmanaged and left to those with greed to rot and fester without proper management.
Laws should be harder to break and should be ingrained in society the longer they are enacted. A 200 year old law should be almost imposable to remove without a revolt or making everyone mad at the one who removed it. Also it should be harder to start wars and win without giving concessions to your nobles who own most of the lands in your empires. It doesn't feel like AI or players are incentivized much to give away privilege's to survive/win wars. The reason why everything was so fractured was because kings didn't own a large chunk of their lands they ruled and couldn't call levies because they would have to ask the noble estates to send them people to fight. Some nobles just refused outright and said no. I don't want to this to be anti fun but finding a way to have a player be forced to give land, money, or power away to the nobles to win wars should be a more focused point.
Decay
Decay, knowledge even today decays every moment even though we have the biggest vault of information in the world, the Internet. But things still go missing, records, data, procedures. They all can vanish over time, even more so in this current age. I feel like the current game doesn't look to have enough ways to lose things in a substantial way.
This is more of a feeling that buildings and other structures should cost more to upkeep. The reason why many structures of the old age of Rome were dismantled and left to rot was because the upkeep for it was to much. The reason why countries didn't expand building so rapidly was because of lack of resources all the time. Resources seem to abundant but I haven't played so this is just speculation.
Blunders
The art of not giving the player all of the information and keeping critical things obscure doesn't seem to be going far enough. Examples like seeing the exact date that a province in India flipped even though you are in the HRE. Knowing the exact stats of a character where really should be getting info over time of how effective they are and who had "hired" them in the past. Lack of knowledge done correctly leads to players messing up in ways that are fun and present new challenges. If done poorly though it leads to the most frustration in a video game.
I think that this game already is hitting the mark on all the great things but I feel like obscuring data so that players can't play the optimal play style every time by optimizing the fun out of the game is the best way to keep people enjoying playing the game. But these are just my thoughts and I really would just like to start a discussion on this idea to bounce it around the community.
TLDR :
- Stagnation should be harsher and ramp over time if rebellion's or major class changes are not made. Laws should be more engrained into society and harder to remove. Along with nobles dictating how many levies you get and even out right saying no to a levies request because they are to upset and you have to give money, power or land to appease them.
- Decay structures should be harder to upkeep without the correct tech. There is a reason why even today we have large building projects and even core structures of our society are being left to rot until they break.
- Blunders obscured data should be more prevalent. Map info shouldn't update for you right away if you are far away. Character states kind of should be obscured and maybe further changes but I like the current state of the game but it should leave the player and AI up to being able to mess up more instead of optimize the fun out of the game.
Almost every game feels like have fun until the half way point then you are going to have to make your own fun or stop playing mid way through.
For me this happened for Dwarf Fortress, EU4 (Like everyone else), X4: Foundations, Manor Lords, Stellaris, Rimworld, and so many more...
I feel the main issue is that internal mechanics of your colony/empire don't degrade, you have unlimited resource generation, or everyone in your society gets along way to well that nothing bad will ever happen. The feeling of this just is way to bland and dull. It mostly is around player enjoyment but I'd like to say that it stagnates enjoyment and my solution would give a new birth to ideas to help keep people from going mad and making a house rule for no army's no boats, EU4 run just to keep things difficult.
My proposal is an idea that isn't fully fleshed out but is centered around the three things in the title, Stagnation, Decay, and Blunders.
Stagnation : Old guard enjoy how things are and don't want things to change
Decay : Systems and understanding degrades and withers away over time
Blunders : The possibility of picking a wrong option, person or path in life
These things create the core idea behind keeping gameplay fresh for players and even for AI interactions.
TLDR is at the bottom.
Stagnation
Stagnation is my most desired topic to implement by far, it is the cornerstone of the reasons why all great empires fall. Rome, Mongols, France, Great Britain, all Chinese empires and even today it feels like all great western nations are following this similar path. Here is a video I recently watched that finally pushed me to make this. It diagnoses the game of money perfectly and how I feel EU5 isn't really portraying it.
Those with power want to keep it, that on it's own isn't a big deal, its because most of not all want to grow it, or when the next generation becomes complacent and spoils their lead of wealth on all sorts of none wealth growing activities. It becomes the rot of society. I know there is a system in place for corruption but I feel like it should be a bigger issue the bigger you are. Administration is harder and harder to produce and is why countries fracture from being unmanaged and left to those with greed to rot and fester without proper management.
Laws should be harder to break and should be ingrained in society the longer they are enacted. A 200 year old law should be almost imposable to remove without a revolt or making everyone mad at the one who removed it. Also it should be harder to start wars and win without giving concessions to your nobles who own most of the lands in your empires. It doesn't feel like AI or players are incentivized much to give away privilege's to survive/win wars. The reason why everything was so fractured was because kings didn't own a large chunk of their lands they ruled and couldn't call levies because they would have to ask the noble estates to send them people to fight. Some nobles just refused outright and said no. I don't want to this to be anti fun but finding a way to have a player be forced to give land, money, or power away to the nobles to win wars should be a more focused point.
Decay
Decay, knowledge even today decays every moment even though we have the biggest vault of information in the world, the Internet. But things still go missing, records, data, procedures. They all can vanish over time, even more so in this current age. I feel like the current game doesn't look to have enough ways to lose things in a substantial way.
This is more of a feeling that buildings and other structures should cost more to upkeep. The reason why many structures of the old age of Rome were dismantled and left to rot was because the upkeep for it was to much. The reason why countries didn't expand building so rapidly was because of lack of resources all the time. Resources seem to abundant but I haven't played so this is just speculation.
Blunders
The art of not giving the player all of the information and keeping critical things obscure doesn't seem to be going far enough. Examples like seeing the exact date that a province in India flipped even though you are in the HRE. Knowing the exact stats of a character where really should be getting info over time of how effective they are and who had "hired" them in the past. Lack of knowledge done correctly leads to players messing up in ways that are fun and present new challenges. If done poorly though it leads to the most frustration in a video game.
I think that this game already is hitting the mark on all the great things but I feel like obscuring data so that players can't play the optimal play style every time by optimizing the fun out of the game is the best way to keep people enjoying playing the game. But these are just my thoughts and I really would just like to start a discussion on this idea to bounce it around the community.
TLDR :
- Stagnation should be harsher and ramp over time if rebellion's or major class changes are not made. Laws should be more engrained into society and harder to remove. Along with nobles dictating how many levies you get and even out right saying no to a levies request because they are to upset and you have to give money, power or land to appease them.
- Decay structures should be harder to upkeep without the correct tech. There is a reason why even today we have large building projects and even core structures of our society are being left to rot until they break.
- Blunders obscured data should be more prevalent. Map info shouldn't update for you right away if you are far away. Character states kind of should be obscured and maybe further changes but I like the current state of the game but it should leave the player and AI up to being able to mess up more instead of optimize the fun out of the game.
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