Come EU5, what would YOU do with mana?

[Jarvin]

I've heard a lot of takes on mana in EU4, whether or not it's bad for the game and how it could be improved(or maybe it should be left alone?)
Now I'm curious to hear yours!

Assume some degree of feasibility(ie. nothing that would require an AAA studio to work overtime for 5 years)

 

[Brynjar]

"Mana" or no "mana", the single most important thing is that whatever system is chosen has fun interactions.

"Mana" got a lot of hate in Imperator for no good reason. A large part of the "mana rework" could have been done with "mana" still in the game. The "mana" removal also did nothing to make the game any more fun.

The lesson I hope Paradox learned from the entire "mana" debacle in Imperator is that it doesn't really matter, so they should focus on designing fun interactions and pick whatever resource system that fits those interactions.

Personally I don't see what is so much more fun about the "build another government administration building or railroad" system in Victoria 3. I usually prefer the ups and downs from RNG generated God/fish tier monarchs. At least those can trigger some temporary emotions beyond, "oh, I have to build another building".

 

[Workiwork]

just the first things that pooped in my mind.

I would keep mana, but would change other systems like development to not use the adm/dip/mil. Small uses for those kinds of points would give it a character that would make it less magical and more in line with what they could represent.

If eu 5 is "just" EU 4,5 you could reduce the randomness from ruler mana with max mana per month and better rulers would just mean cheaper advisors would be viable and bad rulers could be compensated with advisors. (and a stronger advisor could even be something tied in with internal management and estates and so on)

 

[Gunthah]

"Mana" or no "mana", the single most important thing is that whatever system is chosen has fun interactions.

"Mana" got a lot of hate in Imperator for no good reason. A large part of the "mana rework" could have been done with "mana" still in the game. The "mana" removal also did nothing to make the game any more fun.

The lesson I hope Paradox learned from the entire "mana" debacle in Imperator is that it doesn't really matter, so they should focus on designing fun interactions and pick whatever resource system that fits those interactions.

Personally I don't see what is so much more fun about the "build another government administration building or railroad" system in Victoria 3. I usually prefer the ups and downs from RNG generated God/fish tier monarchs. At least those can trigger some temporary emotions beyond, "oh, I have to build another building".

I can't really speak for anyone but myself, but the "mana rework" in Imperator completely turned the game around for me. It gave the game the semblance of being a living world you interact with instead of a boardgame waiting for you to put in every single change.

I think Victoria 3 does a good job of throwing at you changes every now and then that result from the game's systems instead of exclusively the three rng numbers.

 

[ero_sk]

I've never had any strong opinion since the monarch points system was announced for EUIV. I remember back in the day it's causing a lot of controversy in the community. I haven't really shared the pessimism. The game's period involved quite an important influence from the ruler, and their competence or lack thereof did have an impact on nations' internal and external successes.

The system surely can be improved, but in principle I think that it's sound.

 

[Testeria]

I've heard a lot of takes on mana in EU4, whether or not it's bad for the game and how it could be improved(or maybe it should be left alone?)
Now I'm curious to hear yours!

Assume some degree of feasibility(ie. nothing that would require an AAA studio to work overtime for 5 years)

It all depends on how much it would be abstracted and what it will do.

Mana is an abstraction of the government's ability to improve one's nation. So it is generated by the government (ruler + advisors) and spent on improving the country administratively (improve tech, reduce inflation, reduce war exhaustion, integrate land, expand infrastructure).

In my opinion, mana is ok as a concept, but there is a clear problem with the implementation - it should depend more on gov type and be less of a "button spending" thing. More over-time uses, add a negative side of it (for example integrate it with administrative efficiency, absolutism, and governing capability). If mana was generated and spent yearly it would work very differently. There should be a "mana" tab analogous to the money tab with all those incomes, efficiency values, and sliders - and the buttons could then be removed (most of them).

 

[eanske]

It all depends on how much it would be abstracted and what it will do.

Mana is an abstraction of the government's ability to improve one's nation. So it is generated by the government (ruler + advisors) and spent on improving the country administratively (improve tech, reduce inflation, reduce war exhaustion, integrate land, expand infrastructure).

In my opinion, mana is ok as a concept, but there is a clear problem with the implementation - it should depend more on gov type and be less of a "button spending" thing. More over-time uses, add a negative side of it (for example integrate it with administrative efficiency, absolutism, and governing capability). If mana was generated and spent yearly it would work very differently. There should be a "mana" tab analogous to the money tab with all those incomes, efficiency values, and sliders - and the buttons could then be removed (most of them).

Exactly. The Victoria-way already feels more natural than the saving of mana for certain purposes.

I also think mana is overused and it can be transferred too easily. For instance: Additional advisors transfer gold into mana, mana then can be transferred into development, which results in more gold, etc ... I think these loops need to be broken.

 

[Testeria]

Exactly. The Victoria-way already feels more natural than the saving of mana for certain purposes.

I also think mana is overused and it can be transferred too easily. For instance: Additional advisors transfer gold into mana, mana then can be transferred into development, which results in more gold, etc ... I think these loops need to be broken.

Mana into development was the worst game decision in EU4, it broke a lot of systems.

 

[Swirly Mango]

Keep it. EU4 is the map-painting game. I don't see the benefit of reworking the mana system. The core gameplay loop is managing your war capability vs your diplomatic situation. There's more to say about what they should focus on instead, but the question was what to do with mana. Answer: Keep it.

 

[Nostalgium]

I'd like to see it operate more like Vicky 3's systems, but still governed largely by your internal affairs (government and estates being the biggest gain - or drain, if there is internal conflict) and boosted, possibly significantly, by an energetic monarch. A movement away from a currency pool and towards a capacity. The most apt comparison to Vicky's functionality here would be Authority, as it's the most limited resource and the one most impacted by gains/losses - that's essentially how I want to see them function. The diplomatic aparatus of a popular King with a smoothly functioning interplay of Estate and Court behind him may be able to maintain six defensive pacts* and three vassals, say. But if that King dies and his unpopular son causes internal conflict, that same aparatus would creak under the strain, and you'd be forced to either sever some ties, loosen the restrictions on your vassals, or suffer some penalty, like a ticking malus to relations, or slower AE decay, whatever.

I also don't think they should be used for research, but rather influence how much benefit you get out of certain technologies, or how much "momentum" you have in reforms. I don't have concrete ideas for how this could play out, but if the system can simulate something like Peter and Catherine's attempts to reform Russia, which failed to carry on momentum past their deaths, that would be good. It should take a bit longer than the click of a button to make something like an administrative reform really stick, and become an integral part of the "identity" of your national governing bodies, and not just a quirk of that particular ruler's administration. This could also play into the back-and-forth between Estates and Government that my ideal EU5 would have.

*As an addendum, but one that doesn't have anything to do with mana so not one I want to discuss further in this thread, I think Alliances as they exist should be removed from the game and be replaced by defensive pacts. Offensive allies should be invited per-war, similar to Stellaris and Vicky, or be assembled in Leagues for things like Crusades, the Holy League, etc.

 

[Reman]

Monarch points are fine. Getting rid of them would also be fine. They started out pretty bad at the beginning of EU4's lifecycle, but developed into something fairly reasonable over time. They're not some sacred cow though; they're resources to be managed like any others, and it's plausible that there are better alternatives in terms of game design.

When mana was first introduced, it had 3 huge issues:

1. Excessive RNG dependence.
2. Severely limited quantity such that they became overcentralizing, and a lack of them often meant boring waiting instead of interesting tradeoffs or gameplay.
3. Inability to specialize in one type or another.

#1 was solved with disinheriting. #2 was mostly solved with reduced costs, and stuff like lvl 5 advisors, power projection, estates, etc. #3 was mostly solved with the national focus mechanic, and some countries like Prussia getting guaranteed baseline stats.

Other PDX games like HoI4 and Stellaris have de-emphasized monarch points in exchange for a single central bottleneck currency (political power and influence respectively) that varies in importance as the game progresses. This approach works fine.

Imperator's monarch points had a lot of the same problems that EU4's had on release, which was pretty bad considering Johan should have known better by that point. A lot of the community that was left after the first patch or two hated I:R's monarch points because they wanted to morph the game into Victoria 2: Toga Edition.

If EU5 has monarch points that are as important as EU4 or the release version of Imperator, at the very least they need to ensure that they don't repeat the mistakes of early EU4. I actually think Stellaris has the best implementation though: at the beginning of the game influence is extremely valuable, then you can get some modifiers to make it more plentiful by the midgame, and by the endgame it's completely irrelevant once you unlock total wars. This gives a nice sense of progression and means the endgame never becomes boring since you can conquer as fast as your ships can move.

 

[Bohemian_warlord]

Vastly overused for the wrong stuff and at the same time underused for the stuff it should have been used for. As a mechanic, its simply the worst design decision of the game. Both from gameplay and realism/immersion POV.

1. Mana is divided into three separate categories but player is punished for going out in one direction (imbalanced research, ahead of time penalty, caps on development).
2. It provides a guideline to divide random stuff into 3 categories (3 kinds of development, 3+flavour estates, 3 kinds of research, 3 kinds of policies, 3 kinds of ideas) that have to be balanced one against each other which isnt all that fun or immersive
3. Navy stuff should be part of military mana, the fact they had to shove it into diplo mana indicates a shallow system that puts too much gravity on war
4. There isnt really a meaningful connection between military/admin/diplo mana and war/administration/diplomacy, the systems are interwoven together. If you want to wage wars, you need admin mana to core conquered provinces and you need diplo mana for peace deals. Ironically enough wars eat less military mana than the other two kinds.
5. Its supposed to represent skills of TEMPORARY monarch, but instead its main purpose is PROGRESS in technology, which means that statistically it just averages over time and you dont really feel like this period of time was a reign of a bad monarch.
6. It works as currency, "Oh I had some military mana I was saving on new tech, but now I am at war, so I will use it to fire my cannons"
7. The stuff that actually should be part of mana system for some strange reason got its own mechanics (reforms and institutions)
8. Most of the time it is vastly more important than money

Replace research and development with passive systems (which would btw ease up the load on AI) and most of the bad stuff is gone.

In principle I would remove mana as currency and just replace it with slots that can be assigned to either providing buffs (e.g. +10% taxation), fighting internal problems (e.g. -1 noble power/year), but the logic of mana-research should stay in the form of enacting reforms. Fun implementation of mana would be a system where weak monarch will have trouble fighting internal problems, but a strong monarch could handle internal problems and reform the goverment.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Only obvious change to me is to stop tethering things together when it doesn't make sense. Using your cannons more shouldn't result in slower military tech, that cost should be allocated somewhere else. Having too many alliances shouldn't slow down your naval technology progress, again the penalty for doing this should be allocated elsewhere.

Aside from that, monarch points are just resources like other game resources. Right now, we have a few weird interactions, akin to using only lumber to make steel swords in a different type of game. Patch those up and it's mostly fine?

 

[Crazymalian]

Mana into development was the worst game decision in EU4, it broke a lot of systems.

The issue with the previous system, was that you actually had too little to spend your mana on, so you constantly had a mana surplus. Mana on buildings was pretty cheap, and the only big sinks were vassal integration and especially coring. You very often had a big military point surplus, so you just spent all leftover points on supressing rebels and rolling generals, which wasnt as beneficial previously, since this was before professionalism. Devving arose from a wish to build tall, and to spend leftover mana.

 

[nyanmurai123]

I don't mind mana but EU4 uses it for too many things ngl. Development being tied to mana makes no sense so I'd remove that first and foremost.

 

[brifbates]

I don't mind mana but EU4 uses it for too many things ngl. Development being tied to mana makes no sense so I'd remove that first and foremost.

The real issue is how it works more than that it exists. Make it like an investment fund with events that react to it raising (and occasionally lowering) development in a province/area/region (with different monthly costs, probabilities, etc.) and completely remove anything to do with institutions from it and you could make a system that is more realistic, strategic, and engaging than the current joke.

 

[currylambchop]

Remove it, replace it with research points with a more in depth tech tree. Maybe culture points for unlocking ideas which would become their own thing

EDIT: dev could use the ‘expand settlements’ function that colonist can do, but it would be tied to a different ‘job’ rather than colonists

 

[RaccoonCity]

EU5 should use Vic3 Capacities, which is mana but way better implemented.

 

[Nostalgium]

As an addendum to what I wrote above, I think different government forms should lower/heighten the impact of the Monarch. Something like an Absolute Monarchy, where power is divested from the Estates and focused solely on the head of state and perhaps his court should be VERY reliant on the monarch. A more bureaucratic monarchy, or one with more liberal functions, like the Celestial Empire or the UK, should be less reliant on the monarch, as the aparatus functions largely without them. So if you want less monarch RNG, you "pay" for that by investing your governing bodies with more power, lessening the impact of things like Absolutism. But on the other hand, you "pay" for higher absolutism by being more beholden to the ability of your absolute monarch. This way, you get a risk/reward and a strategic choice baked into Absolutism, and gives you a reason to not pursue that path.

 

[brifbates]

Remove it, replace it with research points with a more in depth tech tree. Maybe culture points for unlocking ideas which would become their own thing

EDIT: dev could use the ‘expand settlements’ function that colonist can do, but it would be tied to a different ‘job’ rather than colonists

Both "research points" and "culture points" are "mana", just with different names...