A shorter Enddate would help

[Jespoke]

Just because most of my games of EU4 end at some point between 1600 and 1700, that is not to say that I haven't reached 1821 a few times. And I would have played past 1700 more often too if I didn't hit a noticable performance wall for my current PC at that point.

The effect of seeing the end date coming is also very real. Working on making an achievement in time is one thing, but if you are setting personal goals, the thought that you might not have the time to reach it is discouraging towards setting new goals deep into a run instead of starting a new one.

There is also just not much reason to move the end date earlier. Sure it may not be the best at modeling the era, and it may not get much content. But what does that actually matter? And what if they maybe plan on making MotE 2 one day. What does it actually matter that the EU games stretch over that era too? MotE 2 would have to be a drastically different game than EU5 either way.

 

[Arizal]

There is also just not much reason to move the end date earlier. Sure it may not be the best at modeling the era, and it may not get much content. But what does that actually matter? And what if they maybe plan on making MotE 2 one day. What does it actually matter that the EU games stretch over that era too? MotE 2 would have to be a drastically different game than EU5 either way.

With EU5 starting in 1337, overlapping CK3 by one than a century, the argument that MotE2 couldn't be made is difficult to follow indeed. Nothing prevents it from overlapping EU5.

 

[Stami]

With EU5 starting in 1337, overlapping CK3 by one than a century, the argument that MotE2 couldn't be made is difficult to follow indeed. Nothing prevents it from overlapping EU5.

I am okay with overlapping as long as it is not TOTAL overlap.

 

[Testerian2]

Just because most of my games of EU4 end at some point between 1600 and 1700, that is not to say that I haven't reached 1821 a few times. And I would have played past 1700 more often too if I didn't hit a noticable performance wall for my current PC at that point.

The effect of seeing the end date coming is also very real. Working on making an achievement in time is one thing, but if you are setting personal goals, the thought that you might not have the time to reach it is discouraging towards setting new goals deep into a run instead of starting a new one.

Just allow players to play after the end date and Your problems are solved.

 

[endersaim]

The Roman Imperial Army peaked at a size 400-500k soldiers in the second century with a population of maybe 75 Million.
France with a population of 38 Million was able to raise 600k and was able to recruit 2 million soldiers through the Napeolonic wars.

You are comparing two very unalike statistics. The Roman Army was a peacetime army for most of the 2nd century, while the French were a crisis /wartime army. The population of Rome isn’t well known either and the nature of the population is different too. There are more Frenchmen than actual Romans in the period, but both were effective at conscripting from various allies and subjects peoples.

The 2.137 million conscripts you refer to are from 1805 to 1813 and aren’t a strength figure like the Roman 450k are. Meanwhile, nearly half the 600k figure aren’t Frenchmen but are Germans, Poles, and Italians organized and equipped by foreign states/clients.

A better comparison for Rome is the Second Punic War where from an Italian population of ~4-5 million, the Romans put about 150k-250k men into the field per year (several times after taking 50k-80k in losses the previous year) for 20 years. Thus Rome in 200 bc could field a larger share of its population than France in 1800 AD.

 

[Lightwell]

You send 5000 people to new world and suddenly new country is born.

A colony is not a country. It can technically be a breakaway state—however small—but most breakaway states of note during this time had significant populations, and were enabled to secede because of that.

 

[InsidiousMage]

True, but the game has a set of mechanics that only work during a specific era. Project Caesar is supposed to cover the early modern era, with the transition from levies to a standard army, exploration and colonization, etc. This does not work in 20th century and thus should not include these dates.

Best example I can give is the Extended Timeline mod for EU4. Despite a tremendous amount of work being put in it, and despite being the most subscribed mod in the workshop, it's a mod I dislike because EU4 mechanics do not work properly if you go too early or too late.

So, one, this is kind of ironic as this is the exact argument people are making for bringing the end date forward since they don't think the game can accurately represent both early and later phases on a mechanical level, and some people think EU4 itself already does a bad job mechanically representing its late game. And two, if the argument is "play till you don't feel like playing anymore" then end dates don't matter. If you don't think the mechanics work with a later date then you can just stop playing! You've found the point at which you no longer feel the need to play. If end dates are going to be in a game, then they need to, in some sense, be meaningful.

The "official" end date both provides a final date after which there is no achievements anymore and a date at which technological progression stops.

I'm not sure that achievements are relevant to the current argument* but, either way, you can put time limits on some achievements, like complete it in 100 years. And for the second part, repeatable techs are a thing (Civ6 and Stellaris) or you could just do what CK3 and Vicky3 does and have X techs you unlock and then just don't care after that.

There is also just not much reason to move the end date earlier. Sure it may not be the best at modeling the era, and it may not get much content. But what does that actually matter?

A game that can't really model its the later part of the time period and doesn't even have a lot of content for that period either is a very, very good argument for bringing the end date forward. It would also open up some space for a new game to better represent that now missing time frame.

*Move the end date forward for gameplay reasons vs just play till you get bored.

 

[Prince Ire]

I'd be in favor of splitting the period into two games, the first ending in the mid 17th century and the second continuing into the early 19th.

 

[pheonicia]

Just move the end date up to 1750ish and allow players to continue past and keep getting achievements like in hoi4. I would be highly skeptical of there actually being real, interesting content to play past that point anyways, and paradox would have to work really, really hard to convince me otherwise.

 

[echet24]

There is also just not much reason to move the end date earlier. Sure it may not be the best at modeling the era, and it may not get much content. But what does that actually matter? And what if they maybe plan on making MotE 2 one day. What does it actually matter that the EU games stretch over that era too? MotE 2 would have to be a drastically different game than EU5 either way.

Hard disagree - it matters very much. Making a game which has a time period encompassing 1337-1821 makes the implication that the changes, movements, and key events of the time will be modeled in game. This is part of the reason Vic 3 has gotten tons of vitriol, a game claimed to encompass 1836-1936 but completely failed to implement a system meant to model what was likely the most influential conflict in world history at the time. It was optimized for pre-20th century play and the supposed simulation of the early 20th century suffered.

It is entirely reasonable for a customer to view the time period and say; "Hey up to 1821, wow I can experience everything from plague mechanics to the Enlightenment and Napoleonic Europe!" But if you don't develop mechanics for each era the game supposedly covers, people are going to be disappointed.

End of the day it is a PDX game -- Johan is probably the last dev at the company I have full faith in, but still it seems unlikely most of the major events of the game's time period will have fleshed out mechanics. The period after release, filling in the gaps, will be essential

 

[Stami]

So, one, this is kind of ironic as this is the exact argument people are making for bringing the end date forward since they don't think the game can accurately represent both early and later phases on a mechanical level, and some people think EU4 itself already does a bad job mechanically representing its late game.

For one, this is not EU4. And I think they will be able to do a fine job at that in Project Caesar, so I'm not worried.

And two, if the argument is "play till you don't feel like playing anymore" then end dates don't matter.

If end dates are going to be in a game, then they need to, in some sense, be meaningful.

The end date is there because the end of the portrayable period of the game has come. That is what is meaningful about it. I am very confident that it will be early 1800s as all previous iterations of Europa Universalis have ended then (I am of course assuming this to be EU5).

Having the game end in the mid 1600s will always feel incomplete because colonization of the new world is still far from over, without any nation there even achieving independence, which happens in the end game of Europa Universalis.

 

[Lamartine]

Based on the image of Louis XIV in Dev Diary 5, the end date is probably after his death in 1715