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EU4, Power Creep, and Determinism

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The problem I see with power creep is that most of the numbers in the game are abstractions, so its easy to increase them without really thinking about it. Imagine for a minute that instead of Infantry Fire you had values for things like range, rate of fire, and shot dispersion (Obviously you wouldn't want to do that because it would make the game too complicated, but bear with me for a moment). In that case everyone could see if a modifier was OP or not because you could judge it against firearms technology of the period. On the other hand, if we're just talking unit pips you can wave your hand and say "This country won some wars, so give them a bonus". Its like that for most everything in the game and (as others have mentioned) as lot of people want those bonuses for their favorite tags.
 
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FishieFan said:
What about people that like their home countries?
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I'm not dissing patriotism. (At least, not in this thread. It's very tempting, especially for people whose home country was a major power in real history, but it seems a bit off-topic.)

What I'm saying is: I don't really understand people who repeatedly play the same nation; and I especially don't understand people who repeatedly play the same easy nation.

In EU4, European majors really have it easy - the only challenge is to beat the AI so quickly that you form Rome before 1550 (or whatever). Compare this with other nations where it's a major challenge to survive and become a regional power, but you can probably still find a way to WC before 1821.
 
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jonjowett said:
I'm not dissing patriotism. (At least, not in this thread. It's very tempting, especially for people whose home country was a major power in real history, but it seems a bit off-topic.)

What I'm saying is: I don't really understand people who repeatedly play the same nation; and I especially don't understand people who repeatedly play the same easy nation.

In EU4, European majors really have it easy - the only challenge is to beat the AI so quickly that you form Rome before 1550 (or whatever). Compare this with other nations where it's a major challenge to survive and become a regional power, but you can probably still find a way to WC before 1821.
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Maybe you want a more chill game than constant war?
 
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jonjowett said:
In EU4, European majors really have it easy - the only challenge is to beat the AI so quickly that you form Rome before 1550 (or whatever). Compare this with other nations where it's a major challenge to survive and become a regional power, but you can probably still find a way to WC before 1821.
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That depend on the challange as well i like playing as European small nation to unite and for Dutch,German or Italy or playing as Jurchen horde to become Manchu and become Qing are much more fun and rewarding than playing as Ardabil where the challange is dependant on whether Qara Qonyulu like you or not (though to be fair once you pass the rng start challange Ardabil is fun if only because Persia and feudal theocracy is fun)
 
The worst example of EU4 determinism is monuments.
Why does making the Alhambra palace more luxurious make government more efficient?
Why is there no option to build a similar palace in your capital to make government more efficient?
Why is the White House destined to be built along the Potomac River?
 
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jonjowett said:
What I'm saying is: I don't really understand people who repeatedly play the same nation; and I especially don't understand people who repeatedly play the same easy nation.

In EU4, European majors really have it easy - the only challenge is to beat the AI so quickly that you form Rome before 1550 (or whatever). Compare this with other nations where it's a major challenge to survive and become a regional power, but you can probably still find a way to WC before 1821.
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For one thing, easy for you is not necessarily easy for everyone. I, for example, definitely couldn't form Rome before 1550.

For another, not everyone plays games for challenge.
 
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I'm ok with some determinism, when it facilitates unpredictable historical outcomes that would almost never happen with normal game mechanics, such as for example the rise of Prussia, the British conquest of India or the fall of the great Ming.

But at this point, this is not what is happening, what is happening is that the game is looking at about 5-10 of already overpowered multiplayer meta tags (Spain, France, Russia, Ottomans, Mughals...) and futher buffing them to be competitive between eachother in an eternal power-creeping vicious circle.

I'm perfectly fine with giving powerful ideas and missions to tags with weak and hard starts.
But giving them to already strong starting tags or easily exploitable formables is just terrible game design.
(Example: I would be perfectly fine if Granada had OP ideas, AI Granada would still never survive and player Granada would deserve them if he survives such a hard start, however it's "Andalucia" who gets such ideas, meaning that the game isn't rewarding surviving as Granda, but instead rewarding bs cheese such as playing Castile and flipping Suni)
 
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InvisibleBison said:
For one thing, easy for you is not necessarily easy for everyone. I, for example, definitely couldn't form Rome before 1550.
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Me neither, probably. I have a good idea how to do it, but I don't have the temperament. (Eg: I like pretty borders, and I dislike ruining my own nation.)

InvisibleBison said:
For another, not everyone plays games for challenge.
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Agreed.

However, I can't think of any other motivation for playing single-player EU4 that's incompatible with power creep. (Want a chill game? Power creep makes the game easier, ie. more chill, so it's actually really desirable. Want a power trip, crushing your enemies and driving them before you? Power creep makes you even more powerful, so again power creep seems really desirable. Achievement hunting? Again, power creep makes this easier.)

On the other hand, it's quite likely that I've missed several important motivations. If so, I'd be curious to hear about them.
 
Hermerico said:
I'm ok with some determinism, when it facilitates unpredictable historical outcomes that would almost never happen with normal game mechanics, such as for example the rise of Prussia, the British conquest of India or the fall of the great Ming.

But at this point, this is not what is happening, what is happening is that the game is looking at about 5-10 of already overpowered multiplayer meta tags (Spain, France, Russia, Ottomans, Mughals...) and futher buffing them to be competitive between eachother in an eternal power-creeping vicious circle.

I'm perfectly fine with giving powerful ideas and missions to tags with weak and hard starts.
But giving them to already strong starting tags or easily exploitable formables is just terrible game design.
(Example: I would be perfectly fine if Granada had OP ideas, AI Granada would still never survive and player Granada would deserve them if he survives such a hard start, however it's "Andalucia" who gets such ideas, meaning that the game isn't rewarding surviving as Granda, but instead rewarding bs cheese such as playing Castile and flipping Suni)
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Why should granada get good ideas just for surviving vs going toe to toe with both castile and portugal?
 
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jonjowett said:
Me neither, probably. I have a good idea how to do it, but I don't have the temperament. (Eg: I like pretty borders, and I dislike ruining my own nation.)



Agreed.

However, I can't think of any other motivation for playing single-player EU4 that's incompatible with power creep. (Want a chill game? Power creep makes the game easier, ie. more chill, so it's actually really desirable. Want a power trip, crushing your enemies and driving them before you? Power creep makes you even more powerful, so again power creep seems really desirable. Achievement hunting? Again, power creep makes this easier.)

On the other hand, it's quite likely that I've missed several important motivations. If so, I'd be curious to hear about them.
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Bug Hunting...most fun I even had with a game was the HoD beta and biggest acheivement being teasing out the POP-cash bug in the OG Victoria.
 
FishieFan said:
Why should granada get good ideas just for surviving vs going toe to toe with both castile and portugal?
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Because in order to survive as Granada you need to fight and defeat all the Iberian powers before you unlock any hypothetical good ideas.
Whereas Andalucia as a tag can be cheesed with Morocco, Castile or any other much easier start than Granada.

You can make the same comparison with Byzantium and Rome. Why should Rome have better ideas, when it can be simply be formed by France?
I'm not a fan of giving strong ideas to formables as a "reward" (they shouldn't be weaker either as you don't want to hurt yourself by forming it), because almost all of them can be cheesed with easy, already powerful starts. If you want to reward hard starts, then you should give strong ideas to the hard/weak tags to begin with, they will still be destroyed early on, and if you succeed as them, then you deserve the reward far more than if you started with a strong one to begin with.

It's a matter of common sense. Give Ulm +20% discipline and they will still be destroyed by any tag with more than 100 development. Give Russia the same bonus and they become invincible. Some American and Australian natives have insanely powerful ideas, and so what? They still get steamrolled effortlessly.
 
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Hermerico said:
Because in order to survive as Granada you need to fight and defeat all the Iberian powers before you unlock any hypothetical good ideas.
Whereas Andalucia as a tag can be cheesed with Morocco, Castile or any other much easier start than Granada.
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How is it cheesing to play as morocco? Its a regional major but not that grand
 
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Hermerico said:
But at this point, this is not what is happening, what is happening is that the game is looking at about 5-10 of already overpowered multiplayer meta tags (Spain, France, Russia, Ottomans, Mughals...) and futher buffing them to be competitive between eachother in an eternal power-creeping vicious circle.
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If you think this patch / DLC is buffing Russia and the Ottomans you haven't been paying attention at all...
 
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brifbates said:
If you think this patch / DLC is buffing Russia and the Ottomans you haven't been paying attention at all...
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I was not referring exclusively to the next patch/DLC (I mentioned the Mughals for example, who are not included in this DLC as far as we know), but generally this has been a trend for a while now. Russia was buffed VERY hard in third Rome for example.
But from the DD's they did get buffed. Personally i don't think it's anything game-changing, they are probably going to perform about as well as they did before, but still far more buffs than nerfs (i was somehow expecting more nerfs, not just to them but generally to big empires, since there was a lot of talk by the devs about how late game empires are too stable, snowball and don't colapse)
 
Map painter are systematically destroying all PDX games.
They evaluate new content only by how much power creep it has so it allows them to one tag faster and generally make conquest more easy.
Any mechanic that does not serve that goal, or even make conquest harder get complained about.
And because they are so vocal, and sadly numerous, PDX complies, focusing only on obe aspect of the game to power creep it with more modifiers, claims and PU mission while ignoring everything else.
The result ist that the average point when people stop playing because they are so powerful that the game becomes boring comes sooner and sooner and I would even say PDX games have by now stopped being Grand Strategy games and are ibstead just a more fancy version of Risk.
 
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