Declining Powers

[Secret Master]

That's not just a problem for EU3. Vic2 has a similar issue. Even if certain province effects do not fire in the colonies, getting Combustion Engine raises the output of 75 million POPs in Italian China instantly. That has some real consequences because it makes conquest more attractive than it might otherwise be.

 

[1alexey]

As for the issue of country power, i do not see WC as a nececery feature, mostly since it becomes uninteresting mechanical grind as soon as you crush the last decent opposition.

The country, picked by player, should, in generall, be capable of developing into larger and stronger state, but in terms of world domination, if player will pick the major powerhouse at the game start, he should be capable of dominating the world same way British empire or USA did/do, but hardly any more, since it will not be interesting, anyway.

 

[ANO1453]

Well, i do not dispute that the kings could, and often would think, that they act for the benefit of the state, but in game it happens way, way more often and in way more competent manner than IRL, which leads to the "golden age" that countries had with very good monarchs/leaders to pretty much always, uniform and for eveyone at the same time, in game..

Another question comes to my mind: the AI can be persuaded to act accordingly to the capacities of the rulers, the player cannot. The all-seeing player knows how much troops his enemy has and it will not make the mistake of invading a country that, turns out, it has twice the man he has.

 

[Andy_Dandy]

As for the issue of country power, i do not see WC as a nececery feature, mostly since it becomes uninteresting mechanical grind as soon as you crush the last decent opposition.

The country, picked by player, should, in generall, be capable of developing into larger and stronger state, but in terms of world domination, if player will pick the major powerhouse at the game start, he should be capable of dominating the world same way British empire or USA did/do, but hardly any more, since it will not be interesting, anyway.

So true, so tue. Securing this in the game design will make for an interesting game from start to end.

 

[1alexey]

Another question comes to my mind: the AI can be persuaded to act accordingly to the capacities of the rulers, the player cannot. The all-seeing player knows how much troops his enemy has and it will not make the mistake of invading a country that, turns out, it has twice the man he has.

Yeah, ledger is a perfect supplier of inteligence. You know how much troops, you know their techs, their NIs, their literally everthing, on the whim, and clear, which is another "obstacle" on the historicity aspect, since player(ad AI, if it is good) can almost always cherry pick his wars, to only fight them when they are already pretty much won anyway, and thus, more blobbing.

 

[Cybvep]

Great thread.

Concerning major disasters and their effects, I will quote one of the users who posted in this thread:

Not every opportunity is seized. Not every road taken. Not every defeated nation will rise again, after all if we are to have winners we also have to have some losers in the end. The point is that sometimes great opportunities will present themselves, following crushing defeats, and this will motivate players to hang on.

This captures the essence of it, I think. Make sure that you can turn a defeat into an opportunity, but don't make it a sure thing. Victories will be much sweeter then.

I think that one thing which most players despise are random penalties kicking in just because you became too successful. They are the worst when they come in form of events, as then they seem very randomish (even if they really weren't) and clunky (standard game mechanics and the AI couldn't deal with your blob, so you got a -3 stability hit by event instead). IMO potential problems should be a bit more apparent and "visible" to the the player, but their should also have limited access to information. We should know that constant REXing may give us bad effects in the long term (administrative costs, enemy coalitions, complacency etc.), but we shouldn't know when exactly that will that happen. If potential problems are foreshadowed, the players will think that the game is more "fair" and long-term planning will become more rewarding. It's a bit like in case of novels - nobody likes as* pulls, but good foreshadowing can help you to avoid them.

 

[flame7926]

(I know this a bit deep in this thread now, I kind of forgot that I made the comment)





"Realism>Gameplay" Kind of says differently, doesn't it?






I think all of you missed my point. The concept of "realism>gameplay" is so inherently against the point of making your medium a video game instead of a book/movie/what have you (which, even then, realism really shouldn't take first place unless it's a documentary). Gameplay should always trump realism in a video game. The comment about just going out to the real world was simply a way of saying that realism needs to have its boundaries in something like a video game, otherwise, it'd be real life. I'm all for wanting this to be as historically accurate as possible, but *never* at the sacrifice of making the game play well.

I know I wasn't involved in this, but I think how I feel, and probably they do too, is that realism is gameplay to them. Gameplay would be how fun and enjoyable the game is. Realism is, to me, what makes the game fun and enjoyable. So instead of greater than or less than, it is equals.

 

[xcrissxcrossx]

I feel like the best way to limit the player would be to make it very hard for provinces to convert, and impossible for province cultures to change. Then give very large penalties for expanding outside of the culture group. Maybe include something like a NI that allows you to expand in a single other culture group for the Turks and Russia (and the player.) As the game goes on this penalty would be reduced to allow for Napoleonic situations.

 

[1alexey]

I feel like the best way to limit the player would be to make it very hard for provinces to convert, and impossible for province cultures to change. Then give very large penalties for expanding outside of the culture group. Maybe include something like a NI that allows you to expand in a single other culture group for the Turks and Russia (and the player.) As the game goes on this penalty would be reduced to allow for Napoleonic situations.

Great. Expand to every province of you culture grop, than exit the game, since there is nothing left to do.

 

[Secret Master]

I feel like the best way to limit the player would be to make it very hard for provinces to convert, and impossible for province cultures to change. Then give very large penalties for expanding outside of the culture group. Maybe include something like a NI that allows you to expand in a single other culture group for the Turks and Russia (and the player.) As the game goes on this penalty would be reduced to allow for Napoleonic situations.

That means there's no way for Spanish culture to spread among the Mesoamerican conquests. If you let some countries and not others expand in another culture group, then you start down the path of "Why does Russia get bonus X and I don't when I conquered all the Russian princes 200 years ago and I've been expanding the same area."

Based on an interview I read, it looks like religion is getting an overhaul anyway (something about religious unity in the interview). So maybe sending missionaries to convert your provinces is out and some kind of percentage system is in. That might end the problem on that front.

Aside from these considerations, I don't think culture is the key to limiting conquest anyway. EU2 exemplified this well with its simulation of the Dutch revolt. If France, Austria, or Spain owned the Netherlands, you got around 50 or more years of harsh revolts at the historical time of Dutch independence (we're talking 22% or more RR) even when you converted them to your religion. This practically never stopped any player from abusing the Netherlands for fun and profit. You just dropped 100,000 troops up there and kept killing anyone who rose in revolt. The penalties were an annoyance, not a problem since you owned an important COT and could fill it with merchants.

In fact, since trade is important in EU3 (and presumably 4), even if you got a big fat nothing from certain conquests, as long as it helped you gain a foothold for trade, it's still a win. I'll trade 100% of all manpower and tariff income from the entirety of India just for the ability to trade in a 14-deep monopoly in the relevant COTs (mercantilism in this case; if I go free trade, conquest means a permanent end to embargoes even if I don't compete everyone away). That income makes the conquest worth it, even with garrisons killing rebels every month. Trade income isn't everything, but it's practically what this series is built around in the middle and late game.

I think it was Johan who said (in regards to EU2) that anyone not trying to maximize their trade income was playing the game badly. Making conquests expensive in terms of tax income and manpower won't change any of this.

 

[Cybvep]

I remembered sth which I wanted to write while reading Secret Master's post - please, DO NOT rely on whack-a-mole rebels to contain blobbing. That simply never works and is not fun - the rebels are always defeated by the player and are more of an annoyance than a real obstacle. In fact, rebels abstracted into negative modifiers (tax/trade/manpower/whatever) are often more threatening, since dealing with them isn't just a question of defeating weak rebel armies over and over again.

 

[fenwayb]

I know I wasn't involved in this, but I think how I feel, and probably they do too, is that realism is gameplay to them. Gameplay would be how fun and enjoyable the game is. Realism is, to me, what makes the game fun and enjoyable. So instead of greater than or less than, it is equals.

I personally feel like you're confusing gameplay with the game being fun. To me, gameplay is the actual mechanics of the game, and the way they're implemented. Now, the best (at least in this genre) games are the ones that have solid gameplay and yet still manage to hold onto realism. This is the way I would describe most Paradox games I've played, and no doubt what I expect of this, but ultimately, if I had to chose one or the other, I would say that gameplay would always be more important. I mean, if they were going for straight up "realism", then each day would take 24 hours, and the game would literally become a second life, one in which 90% of the time you sat there and did basically nothing.

 

[Niptium]

Great. Expand to every province of you culture grop, than exit the game, since there is nothing left to do.

So your only goal in a game is to absorb more provinces ?

 

[1alexey]

So your only goal in a game is to absorb more provinces ?

If you can not profitably expand outside certain pre-defined limit, after you achieve that limit, you pretty much do not care about most game features, exept for buildings and trade. EU3 is a game about expansion and empires, after all.

If there is such unsmart, artificial and absolutely ahistorical limit on expanding borders, as culture group, it makes the game really bad, unless the PI wants to introduce more etnical correction stuff into the game, which they obviously don`t. I mean, ability to slaughter the natives on the whim, and things like forced conversion and death of half of province population in the proces are more than enough.

It is not a binary thing. Not just the two oposites of "accept whatever limitation the game gives on expancion, no metter how little sence and fun it makes" or
"do not accept whatever limitation the game gives on your expancion, in principle, no metter how much sence and fun gameplay it makes".

Most people, are generally somewhere in between.

 

[Niptium]

It is not a binary thing

Funny that you'd say that. The previous comment let us believe that it was the way you saw things : World Conquest or nothing.

 

[1alexey]

Funny that you'd say that. The previous comment let us believe that it was the way you saw things : World Conquest or nothing.

World conquest of provinces of you culture group? :rofl:

That is the problem of you not reading the quote, that quite comprehencivly tried to create an idea of how to limit the expancion. If you just want to do a word picking, at least make sure you understand the idea of a post.

 

[unmerged(101730)]

I personally feel like you're confusing gameplay with the game being fun. To me, gameplay is the actual mechanics of the game, and the way they're implemented. Now, the best (at least in this genre) games are the ones that have solid gameplay and yet still manage to hold onto realism. This is the way I would describe most Paradox games I've played, and no doubt what I expect of this, but ultimately, if I had to chose one or the other, I would say that gameplay would always be more important. I mean, if they were going for straight up "realism", then each day would take 24 hours, and the game would literally become a second life, one in which 90% of the time you sat there and did basically nothing.

I don't speak for flame7926, but as for myself, there is no confusion. For games based in history and present time (or similar fantasy or alt-history versions thereof), I like game mechanics more when they represent reality better. It's not a binary "either/or", but a sliding scale: The more "real" the game mechanics are within the confines of the game genre, the more fun it is for me.

Thus, I play Paradox strategy games and not Total War.

Thus I play ArmA II and not Modern Warfare.

Thus I play GURPS and not D&D.

... and so on.

 

[fenwayb]

I don't speak for flame7926, but as for myself, there is no confusion. For games based in history and present time (or similar fantasy or alt-history versions thereof), I like game mechanics more when they represent reality better. It's not a binary "either/or", but a sliding scale: The more "real" the game mechanics are within the confines of the game genre, the more fun it is for me.

Thus, I play Paradox strategy games and not Total War.

Thus I play ArmA II and not Modern Warfare.

Thus I play GURPS and not D&D.

... and so on.

To be honest, I agree with all of this. I wasn't saying it was a either/or, simply that when a decision has to be made between the two, gameplay trumps realism.

 

[unmerged(101730)]

To be honest, I agree with all of this. I wasn't saying it was a either/or, simply that when a decision has to be made between the two, gameplay trumps realism.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that all too often, both game designers and players/fans fail to recognise that this is a false dichotomy. There often is an option which is both a good game mechanic and more realistic - it's just more complicated to design and implement.

 

[fenwayb]

The problem with this line of reasoning is that all too often, both game designers and players/fans fail to recognise that this is a false dichotomy. There often is an option which is both a good game mechanic and more realistic - it's just more complicated to design and implement.

That's fine and all, but when it comes down to it, there are times where a choice has to be made. As I brought up earlier, you can't represent timescale, for instance, realistically and yet have it work in terms of gameplay as well.