Best Paradox game mechanism/concept/solution/functionality

[Matrim_Cauthon]

Probably POPs in the first place (like I said one time before, my favorite game was as Siam in Vic2, where I was trying to modernize my country by having lots of teachers and educating the population, and then they decided to revolt against me demanding elections and civil rights. I crushed them, just to see a lot of my progress towards modernization, like 2.0% clergyman ratio, go backwards after my soldiers killed the rebellious teachers. So I had to give up and concede rights to the people. Only game where this actually made sense at all, where complete dictatorship from the get go might not be the best option, where it seems you're actually guiding a population with their own needs and wants).

In the second place, diplomacy in EU series. I love that the AI remembers that I helped them, and the more I help them the more loyal they are to me. I love that I can fund rebels and these rebels will not fight my armies and if they set up their own nation, they'll be friendly to me. Also, I love how all that friendship can be lost once a change of regime (let's say, from monarchy to republic) happens. Lots of games are about painting the map your color, but only Paradox games made me care about my allies, joining their useless wars so I could get street cred from them.

 

[Karnak]

And they decided to go the extra mile and completely remove populations from EU4. SHAME.
We clamor for internal management, and are instead given estates.
Really not bad at all.
But it would be better if they introduced some form of internal management that is not immediately put in a rotation repeating every X years.
Click a button, get the rewards. Sometimes an event to spice it up. No real fluidity whatsoever, everything clean-cut and without any sense of immersion. Just like development.
No sense of investing time and care and effort, and watch something grow. Instead, just click a button, fire and forget. Bam! No need to care for any asset, once gotten it's basically there and permanent.

Adding populations by the factions and also being associated with the three kinds of development would be a welcome fix. The taxed poor representing Adm and associated with the clergy, the city-dwellers representing Dip and associated with the burghers, and lastly the landed class representing Mil being associated with the Nobility.
The other factions available for other cultures would have corresponding populations and be related to development in some fashion. Tribal populations would account for all development(or none, should tribes be able to develop at all?), for instance, while other factions' populations might not be associated with any type of development, or with two of them.

There could be an appropriate population prerequisite in a state for developing a province, where populations would migrate away from provinces that can not accommodate them at its current development. Populations would grow or decline based on the success of their estate or from other nation-wide or localized events. Disease and such would obviously be a bummer. As would providing support to a stationed troop, being occupied/sieged etc.
Depleting a population in some manner by abusing the faction, allowing occupation, razing hordes etc would lower the effective development of a province until it can be re-settled. Permanent development reduction would require active razing at the hands of hordes, or significant population losses that do not replenish which in many years time will allow the permanent development to shrink to the current effective development.
There will be no sense of social 'classes', implying that people are mobile, but instead rather a measure of what the current state of the nation does to the power-balance at the local level, as well as the national level when taking estates into account.
Instead of estate loyalties and influences being set in stone, they could change with the tides of their associated populations, and things like province autonomy and revolt risk could be scaled and modified by the proportions of the different populations and the attitude of their' governing estate in a province.

EDIT: Introducing percentage-based cultures and religions etc within a province would be an obvious application of these changes as well.

 

[loup99]

I agree with those who said POPs.

 

[iloathecapcha]

POPs very much so.

 

[Karnak]

Adding 'POPs in EU' as a suggestion in the proper forum, i guess. I always advocated against the removal of EU3 population numbers in EU4, but in fact we might like to see them expanded upon.

 

[208]

I love the trade nodes in EU4. Sure, some aspects of how they work may not be very realistic or historical, but that particular feature does drive some very historical behaviour of European countries chasing trade income, from the beginning to the end of the game.

 

[delra]

It's POPs.

Can close the thread.

 

[qer]

Pops . even with some flaws of the system, this mechanic is clearly the best pdx has created and it was truly new for their titles

the second best would probably be ck2 characters , allowing some really good roleplaying for the game

finally, I think i'm going to really enjoy the mechanic of building and tracking individual equipment for hoi 4

 

[Orko80]

At first thought I would had said POP's.

But thinking about it that is not true.
The concept of CB's combined with warscore is a much stronger mechanic.
It changes the whole war game. Nearly every other game going to war and taking stuff is such a simple nearly non-mechanic thing. It is mostly just a status change, am at peace am at war.
But Paradox strategy games are defined By CB's and fulfilling that goal or exceeding it.
Reason for war is about only to see in PDX games.

Like you insulted me now i murder all your soldiers and maybe take that castle over there. In other games you just click the button for war and beat the snot out the enemy until they are destroyed.


But yea POP's need to be in every game ever.

 

[ahyangyi]

My favourite Paradox mechanism are events. Not sure if they were introduced by Paradox, by they were certainly mastered by them with so many complex options possible. Random flavour events for specific countries were thing that made me play EU2, Vicki, Mods for Hoi2. Then I didn't see them in EU3, HOI3 or CK1/2, so i didn't play those games almost at all. It is great to have them back in EU4.

Events are nice, but they are often used because a more fleshed-out mechanism has not been done. So I really can't say I love it.
For example, if EU4 has a real astronomy or astrology system, who needs to comet sight events? (just kidding...)

 

[elpibeuruguayo]

I love the way techs and ideas are handles in EUIV, they're implemented in a way for a nation to specialize and to actually realistically portray the technological development of the different tech groups, the Westernization stuff is great too.

100% agree. Seriously.

 

[brifbates]

I would probably vote for the monarch point system in EU IV. It has always bothered me in other strategy games that there is really no limiting function on what the player can do. I think there are issues with the balancing aspect of them that still persist and they should be adding more uses, not taking them away (looking at buildings change here) but the basic idea that what you can do is limited by how good your ruler is in that area is something I've wanted to see for a while.

 

[loup99]

I would probably vote for the monarch point system in EU IV. It has always bothered me in other strategy games that there is really no limiting function on what the player can do. I think there are issues with the balancing aspect of them that still persist and they should be adding more uses, not taking them away (looking at buildings change here) but the basic idea that what you can do is limited by how good your ruler is in that area is something I've wanted to see for a while.

Well, I don't really agree with this. I believe the ruler's capacity should be based on characteristics and personality, and that a nation was not limited by a ruler's fix stats, but rather by it's political, economic, military, societal and geographic situation, which the monarch point system does not take into account. Another issue with the point system is that it is tied to too many things that were not really related to it's main functionalities, so preferably less things would be tied to it in the future. It's one of the major design decisions that doesn't appeal to me, and the first thing I would try to replace in an EU5.

 

[GeneralPetrov]

Gonna take a hit here and say, in terms of what it adds in actual gameplay, POPs are really overrated. BUT, they're possibly the most interesting and nice to look at mechanic, with the most potential if paradox can refine it.