What are Your most important wishes for EU5 mechanics?

[Testeria]

Personally - I would love to see more CHOICES integrated into EU5 systems. For example: sure, absolutism may be good for many reasons but let the player CHOSE low absolutism for some other bonus (for example I once proposed that Husaria unit would be much stronger with low absolutism).

Someone else proposed that high manpower means growing unemployment ergo growing unrest.

Make all the absurdly good choices in EU4 break something else and add to trouble.

What kind of new features do you wish for - mechanic wise?

 

[I like wars and maps]

The problem in green numbers is the present asymmetry between the player and the AI in being able to stack them up. Giving Portugal all sorts of buffs to go round the Cape to India and stick to her knitting in Brazil would be great if it kept her out of the danged Carribean.

AI Russia getting serfdom doesnt change the fact that Serfdom giving tech bonuses is just green numbers for the sake of green numbers. There is no historical precedent behind it and actively goes against history. Imagine if they give the US a mission tree and add a "racial segregation" government reform you unlock in the mission tree and it removes all negative modifiers from owning a province of the wrong culture. Thats the level we are at.

 

[EUnderhill]

AI Russia getting serfdom doesnt change the fact that Serfdom giving tech bonuses is just green numbers for the sake of green numbers. There is no historical precedent behind it and actively goes against history. Imagine if they give the US a mission tree and add a "racial segregation" government reform you unlock in the mission tree and it removes all negative modifiers from owning a province of the wrong culture. Thats the level we are at.

It would be better if it involved a meaningful choice from "radical reconstruction" as a GR, and the ability of the AI to make such in an "intelligent" manner will be the sort of thing that determines whether I am a launch customer for EUV or someone who gets it on a Steam sale ten years in.

 

[grommile]

Historical characters need to come back.

That feature deserved to die.

Now, if you can describe a way to make it work well given the existence of the History Ruiner, by all means do so

 

[Blindbohemian]

The problem is - there would be little difference in playing different tags without mission trees, "special" gov reforms, and other tag magic.

Well… EU got along fine for three iterations and most of EUIV’s lifespan without mission trees, lol. The only differences in EU3 were between starting positions, tech groups, and initial sliders, and that game rocked. Everyone yarning about how critical these features are is just status quo bias.

That isn’t to say that differentiating different playthroughs isn’t good. I think it is. Just that tag magic isn’t the only way to do it (and mission trees is a terrible way to do it, because mission trees do nothing good). If tag magic and mission trees is what we rely on for differentiation the developers have done a bad job of the base game.

You can make strong global mechanics with a large number of potential starting conditions and differentiate countries simply by their positions within that framework. What kinds of vassals do you start with? With what rights and privileges? Dynastic or political vassals? How much do you depend on feudal levies versus professional troops versus auxiliaries like Cossacks versus mercenaries? What estates dominate a given country? With what rights, privileges, resources and other relationships? How much autonomy do different regions of your country have? Because they’re far away or different religion and culture, and what options do you have to deal with that?

If that kind of thing was strong and then you layered tag-specific stuff (which should be restricted pretty much to “stuff that was unique in 1444”) on top, I’m all for it.

…but there’s no impetus to design strong mechanics if everyone’s happy to sit on their hands and nod along that braindead design cul-de-sacs like mission trees are great, so instead we get mission trees.

…and furthermore, there’s no way to build strong unique mechanics if the underlying general mechanics are surface-level and weak anyway. Parliaments, to take a single example, could be a deep and interesting new way to interact with estates, autonomy and legitimacy, if those features were well fleshed out and integrated into the game. They could be a way to trade local autonomy for estate influence, so parliamentary countries have more resources than non-parliamentary ones (i.e. parliaments are another way to solve the problems of feudalism), but have to spend more on wrestling with their nobility. But autonomy and estates are one-dimensional and don’t interact, so parliaments are completely disconnected, so parliaments are just a button-click pick’n‘mix of bonuses. Such uniqueness. Such differentiation. Great. Crummy mechanical design is holding us back from interesting and dynamic ways to differentiate playthroughs, let’s put in some mission trees.

 

[Kurfürstin Adelheid]

It doesnt. Its a buzzword like flavor where flavor really just means "more green numbers from missions" even if those green numbers have nothing to do with the history like Serfdom in Russia giving you a tech bonus. Its like me saying "If annexing a nation like Russia in one war isnt possible then the external mechanics of nations are lacking" That means nothing.

Well when I say flavour I certainly don't mean just 'more green numbers'. Same with 'internal mechanics'. I really doubt people are just using them as buzzwords.

 

[Testeria]

Well… EU got along fine for three iterations and most of EUIV’s lifespan without mission trees, lol.

Well... not really, lol. I played EU3 for like 2 years and lost interest in it because everything was repeatable. I returned to EU4 after new more dynamic mission trees, gov reforms, etc. because they at least made things a little spicy. Maybe for one playthrough each, but still.

That isn’t to say that differentiating different playthroughs isn’t good. I think it is. Just that tag magic isn’t the only way to do it (and mission trees is a terrible way to do it, because mission trees do nothing good).

That is obviously not true: it does a lot of good for a lot of players. Maybe not for You - but still.

You can make strong global mechanics with a large number of potential starting conditions and differentiate countries simply by their positions within that framework.

There are not enough variables in the game to make it different enough. For example, Poland's starting conditions allowed it to create hussaria "storm cavalry". Cossacks have similar starting conditions but they formed different ones. Prussia is very close - but it formed mostly infantry, same for Russia. And reasons for this are in history, economy, social structure, and tradition - things mostly outside the scope of the EU series.

What kinds of vassals do you start with? With what rights and privileges? Dynastic or political vassals? How much do you depend on feudal levies versus professional troops versus auxiliaries like Cossacks versus mercenaries? What estates dominate a given country? With what rights, privileges, resources and other relationships? How much autonomy do different regions of your country have? Because they’re far away or different religion and culture, and what options do you have to deal with that?

Most of this is outside the scope of EU series, in my opinion. It will bring cringe meme effects like Russian "prussian infantry" or "turkish hussaria" and not that much replayability. It possibly COULD work if EU5 would have 10 playable tags - but not with 100 or more.

…but there’s no impetus to design strong mechanics if everyone’s happy to sit on their hands and nod along that braindead design cul-de-sacs like mission trees are great, so instead we get mission trees.

We go mission trees because they are manageable by dev team.

…and furthermore, there’s no way to build strong unique mechanics if the underlying general mechanics are surface-level and weak anyway.

With this, I wholeheartedly agree. For EU5 they need to build a strong, deep foundation, not like what they did for CK3 and Vic3.

Parliaments, to take a single example, could be a deep and interesting new way to interact with estates, autonomy and legitimacy, if those features were well fleshed out and integrated into the game. They could be a way to trade local autonomy for estate influence, so parliamentary countries have more resources than non-parliamentary ones (i.e. parliaments are another way to solve the problems of feudalism), but have to spend more on wrestling with their nobility.

Agree.

But autonomy and estates are one-dimensional and don’t interact, so parliaments are completely disconnected, so parliaments are just a button-click pick’n‘mix of bonuses. Such uniqueness. Such differentiation. Great. Crummy mechanical design is holding us back from interesting and dynamic ways to differentiate playthroughs, let’s put in some mission trees.

They were added too late in the development cycle to expect any deep, revolting changes. Let's hope EU5 would go this route and give us something better from the beginning.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Well… EU got along fine for three iterations and most of EUIV’s lifespan without mission trees, lol.

Well... not really, lol. I played EU3 for like 2 years and lost interest in it because everything was repeatable. I returned to EU4 after new more dynamic mission trees, gov reforms, etc. because they at least made things a little spicy. Maybe for one playthrough each, but still.

And yet, somehow, both EU3 and EUIV managed to muddle along fine without you—long enough and successfully enough, in fact, for mission trees to be introduced in EUIV's twenty-fifth major patch.

There are not enough variables in the game to make it different enough.

You've made this assertion vague enough that it's impossible to coherently argue with the premises you presented (what would be "different enough"? By what function do you propose we derive the degree of "difference" from number of variables?). Nonetheless, it's incorrect.

We can assume that "difference" is a function of number of possible conditions (i.e. the number of possible combinations of variables), therefore, as you say, sufficient difference depends on having sufficient variables.

Mathematically speaking, the number of conditions increases exponentially as you add variables, so you don’t need many at all to achieve high diversity. If you have three variables that can each be in three places, you’ve got six conditions. add one more and you’ve got 24. If instead they can each be in seven positions (like stability) you've got 210–840 potential conditions. EUIV has a bewildering array of variables, to the extent that it's beginning to be observed that even the devs lose track of how many there are and implement mission rewards doing or counteracting things that other variables are meant to do—the number of potential conditions stretches easily into the tens of millions. Number of variables is not a relevant factor.

The question is instead about the significance of the variables, therefore the significance of different conditions. 200 potential positions for prestige and 6 potential positions for stability gives us 1400 potential conditions, but prestige is so relatively insignificant a factor, and the difference between levels of stability is so insignificant that only, say, four prestige and two or three stability positions are actually very significant.

(By which I mean that -100 prestige is very different to -20 or +50 or +100, but very few people are on the edge of their seat trying to make the difference between 1 and 3 prestige).

So in reality regardless of number of variables, only about 8–12 prestige-and-stability conditions actually matter. But that's a question of mechanics design, not of number of variables. If there were more ways to gain, spend and otherwise affect and use prestige, there would be more significant conditions. And of course as soon as we introduce a single other variable the number of conditions increases exponentially: if we say that there are three significant power projection positions (0, 25, 50) then suddenly there are some 24-48 significant conditions among these variables. Then we can start thinking about legitimacy, estate influence, pre-picked estate privileges, government types, manpower levels, income and treasury... It doesn't take long before we get to thousands of potential starting conditions without even talking about development, geography, disasters and disaster progress, and diplomacy. How many significant conditions do we need for different starts to be "different enough"? It's all a question of making the mechanics meaningful enough that different positions are significant.

Which brings us to where we agree:

With this, I wholeheartedly agree. For EU5 they need to build a strong, deep foundation, not like what they did for CK3 and Vic3.

Yup. And if we've got a strong, deep foundation then mechanics design is sorted, while we've seen that number of variables is trivial. There's no reason why EU5 shouldn't have sufficient interacting variables to significantly differentiate numerous tags, which can be added to with DLC as time goes on.

Most of this is outside the scope of EU series, in my opinion.

With respect, that cannot possibly be your opinion because it's demonstrably incorrect. It's your misapprehension.

All of the questions you quoted relate to mechanics that are already in EUIV: subject interactions with vassals; personal unions and "place relative on throne"; special units, army professionalism, condottieri and mercenaries; estates and estate privileges; local autonomy and the various syncretism and harmonisation and Mughal/Ming/other cultural shenanigans mechanics. I'm suggesting these mechanics could be made better by iterating on them and bedding them deeper into the game.

They were added too late in the development cycle to expect any deep, revolting changes.

I think perhaps they were added too late in Paradox's commitment to EUIV's particular DLC model (DLCs cannot be interdependent so DLC mechanics cannot talk to each other) to see much change, but even that is not a given: we've seen in cases like development and estates that Paradox is willing, if reluctant, to move mechanics into the main game so that they can be incorporated deeper into other systems. Regardless, the overwhelming majority of what I'm suggesting isn't even DLC-level revisions, just modifier changes and other interactions that even their content designers could mod in, given the impetus.

...But there's no impetus, because everyone acts like mission trees make EUIV good, so instead they make mission trees so you can play the mission tree and let the actual game rot.

...It will bring cringe meme effects like Russian "prussian infantry" or "turkish hussaria" and not that much replayability. It possibly COULD work if EU5 would have 10 playable tags - but not with 100 or more.

...There are not enough variables in the game to make it different enough. For example, Poland's starting conditions allowed it to create hussaria "storm cavalry". Cossacks have similar starting conditions but they formed different ones. Prussia is very close - but it formed mostly infantry, same for Russia. And reasons for this are in history, economy, social structure, and tradition - things mostly outside the scope of the EU series.

I'm afraid I'm not 100% clear on what you mean with these points. To my reading:

1. You don't like the idea of differentiation coming from effects built into the game world, because then countries might bend the game rules to produce ahistorical outcomes ("cringe meme effects") such as 'Turkish hussaria' or Russian 'Prussian infantry'.
2. You don't believe that it's possible for differentiations within the game world to produce the sheer diversity of outcomes we've seen in real history.

I don't really understand (1). Presumably you are aware that as of right now it's entirely possible for the Teutonic Order to reform into a crusading steppe horde, or for a Mongolian khanate to switch to a Burmese culture, migrate to Europe, conquer the Holy Roman Empire and be ruled by the Habsburgs? EUIV produces ahistorical outcomes, more news at 11. The possibility of Russia producing uber-powerful "Prussian infantry" or the Turks raising superb cavalry armies ought to be the least of your worries. Realistically it's already perfectly possible for Russia to combine offensive-defensive-quality-economic-innovative ideas and push for high quality soldiers (not to mention tag-switching shenanigans), or for Turkey to collect cavalry bonuses.

With that being said, it's absolutely possible for simple mechanics to mitigate ahistorical outcomes in historical situations (what you're calling "cringe meme effects"). Prussia had "Prussian infantry" because its army was tiny and depended on drilling and professionalism, something which Russia couldn't afford to support: its troops were too busy patrolling its vast territory, being loyal to far-flung power centres because Moscow couldn't directly control such a vast space, and/or working in the fields because they were essentially feudal levies. If standing armies were made more challenging to maintain (i.e. expensive), feudal levies were cheap but decimated your professionalism and drilling was very effective but expensive then hey presto, you're unlikely to see Russia maintaining elite "Prussian-style infantry" (but you might see it struggling to maintain a small core of professional troops so as to dominate potential rebellious corners of the empire). What's the problem?

With respect to (2), your concern is differentiating Polish hussars and Cossack light cavalry given their similar starting conditions. But the Cossacks' starting conditions are much poorer than that of Poland. It is perfectly organic that they can't afford to produce and outfit heavy professional cavalry like the hussars, and instead rely on cheap light cavalry perhaps with (as you say) a bonus for being a cavalry-oriented people, such that Poland's starting conditions produce superb heavy cavalry, the Cossacks rely on quality light cavalry, and the Prussians (not a steppe people and not able to outfit heavy cavalry) rely on well-drilled infantry. I don't see any reason why very simple mechanics couldn't organically produce these outcomes and differentiations.

 

[grommile]

we've seen in cases like development and estates that Paradox is willing, if reluctant, to move mechanics into the main game so that they can be incorporated deeper into other systems.

Indeed. Just as importantly, we've also seen that in more recent titles, they put the mechanic and a small amount of associated content in the free patch, and the rest of the content in the paid DLC e.g. when Archaeology was added into Stellaris, the mechanic and a couple of token dig sites were put in the base game to advertise the feature, and the bulk of the dig sites were put in the Ancient Relics expansion that came out alongside that patch.

 

[John Smith74]

Indeed. Just as importantly, we've also seen that in more recent titles, they put the mechanic and a small amount of associated content in the free patch, and the rest of the content in the paid DLC e.g. when Archaeology was added into Stellaris, the mechanic and a couple of token dig sites were put in the base game to advertise the feature, and the bulk of the dig sites were put in the Ancient Relics expansion that came out alongside that patch.

I noticed this as well and suspect pdx is going to move its DLC policy toward a more profitable hybrid version. That is, each DLC will have two sets of features: base generic mechanics that are new, independent and modular and 2) immersion based content that requires previous DLC to work. In other words, they’ll release some new generic mechanic, but you’ll have to buy a future DLC to get a deeper and fuller experience of it.

 

[Testeria]

And yet, somehow, both EU3 and EUIV managed to muddle along fine without you—long enough and successfully enough, in fact, for mission trees to be introduced in EUIV's twenty-fifth major patch.

Mission trees are a direct improvement on scripted events and event chains. We had this feature earlier, it was just hidden from the player, You had to search the files or wiki for info.

You've made this assertion vague enough that it's impossible to coherently argue with the premises you presented (what would be "different enough"? By what function do you propose we derive the degree of "difference" from number of variables?). Nonetheless, it's incorrect.

We can assume that "difference" is a function of number of possible conditions (i.e. the number of possible combinations of variables), therefore, as you say, sufficient difference depends on having sufficient variables.

People are excited about hussiaria not because it is a shock cavalry, people are excited about it because it is THE shock cavalry. When You can get hussaria with any tag, the game will start to look like a Civilisation game: a tag name would be just a vague label not connected to whatever is happening in the game. Same with a lot of so-called "tag magic"/scripted events - if Burgundian inheritance, Iberian wedding, Prussian Confederation, Banners, Hussaria, etc. could happen to any tag, it would feel wrong and funny.

Mathematically speaking, the number of conditions increases exponentially as you add variables, so you don’t need many at all to achieve high diversity. If you have three variables that can each be in three places, you’ve got six conditions. add one more and you’ve got 24. If instead they can each be in seven positions (like stability) you've got 210–840 potential conditions. EUIV has a bewildering array of variables, to the extent that it's beginning to be observed that even the devs lose track of how many there are and implement mission rewards doing or counteracting things that other variables are meant to do—the number of potential conditions stretches easily into the tens of millions. Number of variables is not a relevant factor.

Oh yes it is, because You cannot restrict them from other tags. For example, if the variable for strong cavalry is "capital in plains" You can easily just move Your capital, and voila: You are a cavalry superpower. You would need to make deep, impacting systems for culture, vassal relations, and economics that would be more complicated than what we have in CK3 and Vic3 - and this is not even a game about any of this. Maybe they would move some of it from "tag magic" to "culture magic" - but if You want to replace tag magic with something similar to CK3 religion, where any country can become anything, I'm strongly against it.

The question is instead about the significance of the variables, therefore the significance of different conditions. 200 potential positions for prestige and 6 potential positions for stability gives us 1400 potential conditions, but prestige is so relatively insignificant a factor, and the difference between levels of stability is so insignificant that only, say, four prestige and two or three stability positions are actually very significant.

(By which I mean that -100 prestige is very different to -20 or +50 or +100, but very few people are on the edge of their seat trying to make the difference between 1 and 3 prestige). (...) Then we can start thinking about legitimacy, estate influence, pre-picked estate privileges, government types, manpower levels, income and treasury... It doesn't take long before we get to thousands of potential starting conditions without even talking about development, geography, disasters and disaster progress, and diplomacy. How many significant conditions do we need for different starts to be "different enough"? It's all a question of making the mechanics meaningful enough that different positions are significant.

The point it - in reality things like this grow slowly with time. If You for example make a "skill" shock cavalry that would grow by 1% in 5 years, and with 100% it would mean "hussaria level cavalry" - that would probably do the trick because Poland would start with 60% and no other country would have a chance to get to 100%. So it would not be much different from tag magic, except it would look like a generic mechanic. (not sure if this point is clear? I'm not a native english speaker).

All of the questions you quoted relate to mechanics that are already in EUIV: subject interactions with vassals; personal unions and "place relative on throne"; special units, army professionalism, condottieri and mercenaries; estates and estate privileges; local autonomy and the various syncretism and harmonisation and Mughal/Ming/other cultural shenanigans mechanics. I'm suggesting these mechanics could be made better by iterating on them and bedding them deeper into the game.

Again, they cannot be "deeper" exactly because they are not the scope of the game. For example vassal interaction, monarch weddings, relatives, etc. are the main selling point of CK series. EU is not about monarchs, it is about countries. Same with the deep economy: that is Vicky. Maybe we can tinkle a little with cultures, but I REALLY don't want any generic abomination like in CK3 (religion, etc.).

We would probably get better trade, a new unit system with individual unit "skills", probably more flexible cultures, some build-up on mission trees, gov reforms, and estates - but nothing that would move us too much from moving units on the map and painting it to Your favorite color.

I'm afraid I'm not 100% clear on what you mean with these points. To my reading:

1. You don't like the idea of differentiation coming from effects built into the game world, because then countries might bend the game rules to produce ahistorical outcomes ("cringe meme effects") such as 'Turkish hussaria' or Russian 'Prussian infantry'.
2. You don't believe that it's possible for differentiations within the game world to produce the sheer diversity of outcomes we've seen in real history.

Really both.

I don't really understand (1). Presumably you are aware that as of right now it's entirely possible for the Teutonic Order to reform into a crusading steppe horde, or for a Mongolian khanate to switch to a Burmese culture, migrate to Europe, conquer the Holy Roman Empire and be ruled by the Habsburgs?

It is not really about historical outcomes, it is about landmark historical events, units, or monuments. If I could get Copernicus in China it would feel like another cheesy Civilisation game, not EU. I like EU4 because I know that Prussian Confederation happened in history and it HAPPENS in the game! Not a generic confederation, PRUSSIAN CONFEDERATION.

If "Iberian wedding" would be just another generic mechanic like "enforce personal union" it would be WORSE for me, not better. I love that EU world is full of those little special historical events with historical names (that are now moved from scripted events into mission trees and monuments). This is one of the main selling points for me. If not for that I would play "Old World" or "Stellaris" or something similar, not EU.

Btw. I hope for little "mission trees" for monuments for EU5 because upgrading them with flat gold payment is uninspirational and lazy...

With respect to (2), your concern is differentiating Polish hussars and Cossack light cavalry given their similar starting conditions. But the Cossacks' starting conditions are much poorer than that of Poland. It is perfectly organic that they can't afford to produce and outfit heavy professional cavalry like the hussars, and instead rely on cheap light cavalry perhaps with (as you say) a bonus for being a cavalry-oriented people, such that Poland's starting conditions produce superb heavy cavalry, the Cossacks rely on quality light cavalry, and the Prussians (not a steppe people and not able to outfit heavy cavalry) rely on well-drilled infantry. I don't see any reason why very simple mechanics couldn't organically produce these outcomes and differentiations.

Hussaria comes in 1600, by then Cossacks' player would own the whole of Poland and Russia and would be as wealthy as Poland could possibly be. You can differentiate starting positions that way but really not much 100 years into the game.

 

[Testeria]

This is one of the more common arguments for more currencies in the game that is not directly connected to gold.

"Mana" points from EU4 could be actually converted into efficiency that would affect the cost, time, or effect of all other actions.

I always liked the design idea behind "mana" (restrict gov actions by something else than gold), the problem was the way it was used (aka press a button to magically gain something immediately). The efficiency of the court, administration, corruption, and balance of power was vital to the monarch's ability to push his agenda, wage wars, and expand diplomacy. With the addition of estates and gov reforms, this could be done beautifully: every decision and every event should anger someone (for example: start a war - anger aristocracy, high manpower - anger folk people because of high "unemployment", province razed - anger middle class, change trade - anger burgers, increase tech - anger whoever it affects). Every action and every improvement should affect stability somewhere. Most people do not like changes, even the good ones.

Also, "increase development button" delenda est.

Thanks for Your work!

 

[Ninking]

As little as possible scripted content and modifiers hard-locked to specific countries. Aspects such as "cavalry power" or "trade steering" should be tied to dynamic systems which are influenceable by the player instead. Europa Universalis 3 and Hearts of Iron 2 had better systems where each countrys modifiers were tied to a very slow-to-change political sliders system.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Mission trees are a direct improvement on scripted events and event chains. We had this feature earlier, it was just hidden from the player, You had to search the files or wiki for info.

Again, this cannot possibly be your opinion, it’s a misapprehension, because it’s objectively wrong.

Events and event chains are materially different to mission trees. They are both nominally storytelling tools. Some of their features are similar some of the time. That is not sufficient to establish that one is an improvement on the other; they are different things. Significantly, mission trees are linear and controllable where events are typically non-linear and only player-influenceable. You could (kind of) turn events into something a bit like mission trees by perusing the wiki, but it was entirely possible for an event to simply not fire because part of events is their randomness. You could influence but not control them; they are materially different.

People are excited about hussiaria not because it is a shock cavalry, people are excited about it because it is THE shock cavalry. When You can get hussaria with any tag, the game will start to look like a Civilisation game: a tag name would be just a vague label not connected to whatever is happening in the game. Same with a lot of so-called "tag magic"/scripted events - if Burgundian inheritance, Iberian wedding, Prussian Confederation, Banners, Hussaria, etc. could happen to any tag, it would feel wrong and funny.

You’re making a circular argument here. It’s telling that you compare this to “a Civilisation game”. In Civilisation, Poland gets hussars not because its features predispose it to producing superb shock cavalry; Poland might spawn in mountains and forests 120 tiles from the nearest horses. It gets hussars because it’s Poland.

That’s precisely what I mean by “tag magic”. Obviously there aren’t “tags” in Civ, but Poland getting hussars because of its “tag” is the same thing: the game world has magic in it that just says “Poland gets hussars”, “not connected”, as you put it, “to what is happening in the game”.

I submit that if by some chain of events in my playthrough Poland is conquered by Hungary, Bohemia and Crimea and ends up as a rump state controlling three one-province islands in the Baltic, it then getting superb shock cavalry in 1600 just because it’s Poland would be infinitely more “wrong and funny” than a wealthy hypothetical Cossack tag producing great shock cavalry.

The point it - in reality things like this grow slowly with time. If You for example make a "skill" shock cavalry that would grow by 1% in 5 years, and with 100% it would mean "hussaria level cavalry" - that would probably do the trick because Poland would start with 60% and no other country would have a chance to get to 100%. So it would not be much different from tag magic, except it would look like a generic mechanic. (not sure if this point is clear? I'm not a native english speaker).

Your point is definitely clear (and your English is infinitely better than my ability to write any other language!). This conversation feels a bit weird, though, because I feel like we’re agreeing and then you tell me that you disagree with me. I think the key is here: “it would not be much different from tag magic, except it would look like a generic mechanic”.

Exactly. Countries in the past were unique and different, but they were unique and different because of their specific conditions, not because of some kind of magic tied to their country.

I think the goal should always be to design generic mechanics which have enough potential conditions to capture the diversity of countries in the EUIV period. As you say, maybe that means Poland can be at 60% and other powers at 10% and 30% and 80% of a hypothetical “shock cavalry awesomeness” that emerges from having plains provinces and a strong nobility and fighting battles with cavalry armies and having cavalry-oriented neighbours and so on. That means any country which behaves like our historical Poland did can get awesome cavalry. Then, layered on top of that, if Poland earns awesome cavalry in this way it should absolutely get unique historical cosmetic features—winged hussar sprites, a special name for hussaria, etc. But it shouldn’t get material bonuses just for being Poland.

Same with the Burgundian Inheritance, for example. I think any large feudal country split between HRE and non-HRE lands should spark an imperial crisis where the Emperor insists that the HRE lands belong to him, if it falls under a PU by a non-HRE power. Obviously that’s likely to happen to Burgundy, because of its starting position, but it should be a generic mechanic not something that uniquely happens to Burgundy because of Burgundy-magic. Once that generic mechanic exists and is working it should by all means get a special “Burgundian Inheritance” skin emphasising the historical nature of the event. But it should be able to happen to any country in a similar position: Savoy, or Provence if it joins the Empire, or whomever. Similarly, if your burgher estate is really upset with you and has a lot of power in a bunch of contiguous provinces and good relations with a nearby rival, it should be able to confederate and call on that rival for aid as it breaks away from your realm. If that happens in Teutonic Order it should absolutely get all kinds of “Prussian Confederation” flavour: flags, names, units, historical events. But it should be able to happen, given the same circumstances, elsewhere.

I think that’s completely different to tag magic. It’s strong generic mechanics with tag flavour. That’s the dream!

We would probably get better trade, a new unit system with individual unit "skills", probably more flexible cultures, some build-up on mission trees, gov reforms, and estates - but nothing that would move us too much from moving units on the map and painting it to Your favorite color.

I completely agree with you, but I think:

a) we actually don’t need the mechanics to be very complex (i.e lots of things to monitor and control, taking away from moving units on the map) in order for them to be deep. Chess is deep without being complex. I think if anything EUIV should be less complex.
b) this kind of depth would actually improve the moving-units-and-painting-the-map game by shifting the difficulty and complexity from “how fast can I overcome these arbitrary and unrelated mechanics” to “how fast can I overcome these interconnected and ripple-effecting mechanics”, such that your actions in one area produce effects in others.

I love that EU world is full of those little special historical events with historical names

Me too, but as I say there’s no reason good generic mechanics can’t have that too. In fact they could have more of it: if good generic mechanics organically produce historical outcomes in one place they are likely to produce historical outcomes in other places. Just like unique estate names, once you’ve worked out a good generic mechanic for slave soldiers in Turkish states and called them “janissaries”, there’s no reason you can’t call the same mechanic “ghulams” in Persia, “Mamluks” in Egypt, and “cholas” in Mughals. Four for the price of one, instead of waiting ten years for Paradox to give your particular favourite country a mission tree.

Hussaria comes in 1600, by then Cossacks' player would own the whole of Poland and Russia and would be as wealthy as Poland could possibly be. You can differentiate starting positions that way but really not much 100 years into the game.

Sorry, this seems incongruent with the rest of what you’ve said.

Why do you think a hypothetical wealthy and power Cossack state wouldn’t produce superb shock cavalry? Certainly they shouldn’t be called “hussaria” (that would be a cosmetic flavour layered on top of the mechanics for Poland), but if a Cossack state becomes as wealthy as Poland, and presumably also develops a strong landed aristocracy and an experienced cavalry in the process, it fielding powerful shock cavalry is exactly what we might expect. That’s a good outcome, no?

We should be trying to differentiate starting positions in this way, as you say, and 100 years into the game countries should be differentiated by what they’ve done during the game (layered on top of where they started 100 years ago—there was nothing in 1444 saying Brandenburg would produce amazing infantry).

 

[EUnderhill]

Again, this cannot possibly be your opinion, it’s a misapprehension, because it’s objectively wrong.

Events and event chains are materially different to mission trees. They are both nominally storytelling tools. Some of their features are similar some of the time. That is not sufficient to establish that one is an improvement on the other; they are different things. Significantly, mission trees are linear and controllable where events are typically non-linear and only player-influenceable. You could (kind of) turn events into something a bit like mission trees by perusing the wiki, but it was entirely possible for an event to simply not fire because part of events is their randomness. You could influence but not control them; they are materially different.

You’re making a circular argument here. It’s telling that you compare this to “a Civilisation game”. In Civilisation, Poland gets hussars not because its features predispose it to producing superb shock cavalry; Poland might spawn in mountains and forests 120 tiles from the nearest horses. It gets hussars because it’s Poland.

That’s precisely what I mean by “tag magic”. Obviously there aren’t “tags” in Civ, but Poland getting hussars because of its “tag” is the same thing: the game world has magic in it that just says “Poland gets hussars”, “not connected”, as you put it, “to what is happening in the game”.

I submit that if by some chain of events in my playthrough Poland is conquered by Hungary, Bohemia and Crimea and ends up as a rump state controlling three one-province islands in the Baltic, it then getting superb shock cavalry in 1600 just because it’s Poland would be infinitely more “wrong and funny” than a wealthy hypothetical Cossack tag producing great shock cavalry.

Your point is definitely clear (and your English is infinitely better than my ability to write any other language!). This conversation feels a bit weird, though, because I feel like we’re agreeing and then you tell me that you disagree with me. I think the key is here: “it would not be much different from tag magic, except it would look like a generic mechanic”.

Exactly. Countries in the past were unique and different, but they were unique and different because of their specific conditions, not because of some kind of magic tied to their country.

I think the goal should always be to design generic mechanics which have enough potential conditions to capture the diversity of countries in the EUIV period. As you say, maybe that means Poland can be at 60% and other powers at 10% and 30% and 80% of a hypothetical “shock cavalry awesomeness” that emerges from having plains provinces and a strong nobility and fighting battles with cavalry armies and having cavalry-oriented neighbours and so on. That means any country which behaves like our historical Poland did can get awesome cavalry. Then, layered on top of that, if Poland earns awesome cavalry in this way it should absolutely get unique historical cosmetic features—winged hussar sprites, a special name for hussaria, etc. But it shouldn’t get material bonuses just for being Poland.

Same with the Burgundian Inheritance, for example. I think any large feudal country split between HRE and non-HRE lands should spark an imperial crisis where the Emperor insists that the HRE lands belong to him, if it falls under a PU by a non-HRE power. Obviously that’s likely to happen to Burgundy, because of its starting position, but it should be a generic mechanic not something that uniquely happens to Burgundy because of Burgundy-magic. Once that generic mechanic exists and is working it should by all means get a special “Burgundian Inheritance” skin emphasising the historical nature of the event. But it should be able to happen to any country in a similar position: Savoy, or Provence if it joins the Empire, or whomever. Similarly, if your burgher estate is really upset with you and has a lot of power in a bunch of contiguous provinces and good relations with a nearby rival, it should be able to confederate and call on that rival for aid as it breaks away from your realm. If that happens in Teutonic Order it should absolutely get all kinds of “Prussian Confederation” flavour: flags, names, units, historical events. But it should be able to happen, given the same circumstances, elsewhere.

I think that’s completely different to tag magic. It’s strong generic mechanics with tag flavour. That’s the dream!

I completely agree with you, but I think:

a) we actually don’t need the mechanics to be very complex (i.e lots of things to monitor and control, taking away from moving units on the map) in order for them to be deep.
b) this kind of depth would actually improve the moving-units-and-painting-the-map game by shifting the difficulty and complexity from “how fast can I overcome these arbitrary and unrelated mechanics” to “how fast can I overcome these interconnected and ripple-effecting mechanics”, such that your actions in one area produce effects in others.

Me too, but as I say there’s no reason good generic mechanics can’t have that too. In fact they could have more of it: if good generic mechanics organically produce historical outcomes in one place they are likely to produce historical outcomes in other places. Just like unique estate names, once you’ve worked out a good generic mechanic for slave soldiers in Turkish states and called them “janissaries”, there’s no reason you can’t call the same mechanic “ghulams” in Persia, “Mamluks” in Egypt, and “cholas” in Mughals. Four for the price of one, instead of waiting ten years for Paradox to give your particular favourite country a mission tree.

Sorry, this seems incongruent with the rest of what you’ve said.

Why do you think a hypothetical wealthy and power Cossack state wouldn’t produce superb shock cavalry? Certainly they shouldn’t be called “hussaria” (that would be a cosmetic flavour layered on top of the mechanics for Poland), but if a Cossack state becomes as wealthy as Poland, and presumably also develops a strong landed aristocracy and an experienced cavalry in the process, it fielding powerful shock cavalry is exactly what we might expect. That’s a good outcome, no?

We should be trying to differentiate starting positions in this way, as you say, and 100 years into the game countries should be differentiated by what they’ve done during the game (layered on top of where they started 100 years ago—there was nothing in 1444 saying Brandenburg would produce amazing infantry).

"Tag-magic" itself isn't the problem so much as the continuence of the tag when severed from lands to which it would be normally attached. I had a recent Venice game in which I drove Genoa from Europe but leaving her with a healthy chunk of the Tunis region...at that point there should be a tag-shift so the "tag-magic" from Liguria is gone and new acquired fitting to a Christian state in North Africa...Vandals anyone?

 

[Blindbohemian]

"Tag-magic" itself isn't the problem so much as the continuence of the tag when severed from lands to which it would be normally attached. I had a recent Venice game in which I drove Genoa from Europe but leaving her with a healthy chunk of the Tunis region...at that point there should be a tag-shift so the "tag-magic" from Liguria is gone and new acquired fitting to a Christian state in North Africa...Vandals anyone?

I don’t disagree but I think this is a different issue, and applies more to some tags than others (city-states like Genoa most definitely, geographical ideas like France a bit less).

Certainly some kind of dynamic name-shifting would be cool, but hard to get right. How would you account for (for example) the fact that the rump Genoese government in Tunisia would no doubt consider itself to be the legitimate government of the Genoese republic. For example what did Byzantium historically call itself again? Perhaps once it loses its cores and claims on Genoa itself the name could shift?

To speak to the tag magic point, it’s not clear why even in this situation the Genoese “tag magic” should be replaced with magic associated with Christian-in-North-Africa heritage. This state didn’t have heritage in North Africa, it just happened to be in exile there. Its naval, governmental and military traditions probably should have come along with it and should only start adjusting to its new reality when it gets there. Tag magic undermines that possibility.

 

[eanske]

The problem is - there would be little difference in playing different tags without mission trees, "special" gov reforms, and other tag magic.

The difference should be in geography, neighbors, reformation, HRE-mechanics and not mission trees.
Maybe I'm too much of role-player and as DLC-purchases and discussions here and on Reddit show, a lot of people like it, but to me mission trees are an easy cop out to making a more dynamic game.

 

[GrandEurypterid]

I quite like the missions system and national ideas; it's a good way to add a sense of forwards momentum and ensure that you've got an inspiration for your plan through the game (e.g 'hmm if I play Pegu then its arbitrary culture conversion powers mean that I could go Religious Ideas despite the fact that most of my expansion targets in the early game where that CB is best are into same-faith provinces').

However, the thing I don't like about them is that they lock you in too much. Say you're playing Austria, and France happens to consolidate the Netherlands early on while you get a big setback from the Ottomans. Since you don't have the Netherlands, you can't really go colonial/trade-company and remain reasonably-optimal, because you're largely reliant on missions to do that. Or if you're playing a colonial nation with colonial national ideas that hasn't got any reasonable colonisation prospects.

I think the biggest failure with Imperator's mission system was that it was too all-or-nothing, but I think they were on the right track. I always had missions stall out in the early game, because I could only have one going at a time, and they were always locked to a specific region- so if I was an early-game poor tag and I was in a better position to break into two regions partially than one region completely, or if I couldn't afford the buildings to get all the bonuses, then it felt pretty bad to just have the mission tree sitting in the background taunting me when I couldn't really break it off and get something more relevant, either. But I think they were definitely onto something with more flexible mission trees; you're not locked into one area in Imperator just because you have mission trees for it.

My personal ideal version of National Ideas and Mission Trees might be something similar to how Sikh gurus and vassal mission trees work, respectively.

For National Ideas, I'd like every nation (or as many as feasible, anyway) to have a 'primary' national idea set, but also having access to 'secondary' national idea sets, based on location, previous formables and whatnot. So if you're playing as- say- Najd, but you get a soft Mamluks and stone-wall Ethiopia that has you expanding into same-faith provinces in Egypt, then you might replace or supplement your missionary/cavalry-heavy Najd national ideas with an Egyptian/Mediterranean Coastal 'regional' idea set that focuses on trade, ships and defence, or a religious idea set for holding Mecca that focuses on religious-based stability and military rather than conversion.

As for Mission Trees, I'd probably go for 'mission tree slots to pick from', rather than 'a mission tree'. So a lot of nations would have specific mission trees, such as Bohemia having its Hussite mission tree or Byzantium having an anti-Venice mission tree, but you can still go in multiple directions at the same time like the mission trees do presently. This would also address some issues with mission tree UI I have- I don't want to have to scroll down to see start points! This way, if you're playing something like Byzantium and survive via emigration rather than conquering the Ottomans and don't plan on going back for Constantinople within the next two-hundred years, you can still grab missions such as 'generic conquest', 'generic development', 'catch up technologically', or 'regional mission from being an outsider in the steppes/tropics/etc'.

 

[Atacama]

For EU5 I want 2 things.

1) I want more internal management. Something to look at to congratulate myself after the huge blobbing gains of all this map painting. I want to interact with, contemplate and appreciate my realm with detail.

By more internal management, among other things I mean more estate interactions. But I believe the developers already hinted this is something they want to expand on. So I won't focus on that.

Another thing I want are celebration days, like religious holidays depending on your faith, or days commemorating past battles and victories of our campaign, or birthdays of leaders. When a monarch's heir was born it used to also be a common cause of forced celebrations. These holidays would come with events and decissions on how much money we will dedicate to them, followed by some internal rewards on culture, unrest, stability and the like (and maybe a drop in production!).

But mostly I want diversity charts inside each province (or pops, even). So any culture or religion is rarely 100% dominant in a province, and conversions only help a specific group, but with diminishing returns over time. This change is huge.
Immigration from lower dev provinces to high dev provinces should be a thing. It should be a constant fluctuation of demographic flavour.
Minorities should have their events and mechanics. For example, espionage should be more effective if there is a higher proportion of minorities from your culture in the target nation.

Then, this would also lead to religious synchretism over time. When 2 religions or cultures are similarly dominant in a province, as happened in the colonial world, different variants for the state religion can emerge, taking elements from its constituents. Bolivia today mixes Catholic traditions with native traditions and has a flavor of Christianity that would be considered heretic in other Catholic countries, but that helped conquerors to convince the locals to actually adopt it in the first place. Allowing synchretism would make conversion cheaper and faster, but you'll end up with a less pure version of the intended religion or culture than if you choose to prohibite it. And that will result in diplomatic frictions.
That is the sort of thing I'd love to see simulated.

2) I want more external management.
More "alternate history" paths. Not so much through national mission trees, but through global mechanics, like eras and institutions. Because what makes the EU series interesting is its "what if" element.

What if players manage to stop the protestant reformation before it grows large? The game should simply offer a path without protestantism. The Age of Reformation should be called something else and have entirely different mechanics. Maybe a good player can force the Age of Absolutism to start much earlier. Or there is an entirely new age called Age of Democracy. Or Age of Orthodoxy. As long as the triggers make sense, imagination is the limit.
A dynamic, branched system of Ages, where each could also be longer or shorter, depending on if the triggers for their change are present or not. And if you skipped one, it could appear later, with some modifications or extra strength. A late game Age of Reformation could feel very different.

What if you set that one of the conditions for the Age of Discovery is that the Ottomans are blocking the trade routes from Asia to Europe? An unlikely game where Ottomans fail to blob would result in Spain and Portugal not getting enough exploration incentives, modeled as exploration ideas becoming more expensive, and the colonization of the Americas maybe taking an extra century or so to begin. Native American players would have extra time before seeing European colonies in these games. Maybe even the Asians can use the extra time to try starting colonies in America before Europe. A lot of what if potential here.

So what I want is a branched tree for institutions, for ages and for all systems that currently direct the flow of the game in a specific order. This would make the world feel more organic and keep you more engaged with the entire campaign until the end. You are not just trying to change your nation's borders, but simultaneously trying to impact the entire world's destiny with your actions. You could go wild with DLC here because this makes the game turn into many games.

 

[Palpatine34]

Pop system, and increased naval strategicity.

 

[grommile]

What if you set that one of the conditions for the Age of Discovery is that the Ottomans are blocking the trade routes from Asia to Europe?

Henry the Navigator started his quest to find out what was south of Morocco in 1415.

Direct trade between sub-Saharan Africa and Portugal, bypassing the Muslim middlemen in North Africa, began in the 1440s while Constantinople was still in Christian hands.