EU4, Power Creep, and Determinism

[Zaddy]

Ah yes the usual trick.
Demanding that PDX makes peacetime more fun first but at the same time being against any mechanic that would distract from constant war and mappainting in order to enhance peacetime.

Nice try.

I don't really see how that was your take away from my post, but alright! I'm not pulling some "trick" or trying to be nefarious (again, I don't understand the insistence on trying to make this adversarial), I'm sharing my view of what the game is about. They could turn EU5 into a complete opposite game from EU4, and as long as it was fun, I would buy it and be happy. I just don't think it's sensical to gut the primary "gameplay loop" (I hate this term but a better one escapes me atm) without any plan to supplement it. And from what I've read and observed, the devs are unwilling/unable to make the necessary changes to make EU4 less hyper-focused on war. I think that could be a great idea for EU5! I just think it makes little sense for EU4. Hope this clarifies.

 

[EUnderhill]

Your post seems to imply that the AI is bad on purpose to appease map painters which just isn't the case. Making an AI that plays on the level of an MP opponent with no cheats is just not plausible.

It's unfortunate that you continue to possess this "us vs. them" mentality of the community. Pushing a cartoonishly evil view of people who play the game in a different manner than you is just not helpful discourse.

In one case the AI would be coded to challenge the player itself, perhaps at increasing levels of competence, in the other playing independently to win.

 

[EUnderhill]

Not 100% true. CK3 is an absolute pain to keep your even relatively small nation stable, at least it was in the early days of the game. I went to form Rome with Byzantium, and man I was having revolts every single month. It was unbearably tedious to try and keep your empire together. I managed it, but it was not a very rewarding or fun experience. It was like the game was almost forcing your nation to collapse, which is not rewarding in the slightest to the player.

Imagine playing a game where you have a somewhat decent starting point, then over the course of that game, the game takes away the starting point you had bit by bit, and by the end of the game you have nothing that you started with and are signficantly smaller and weaker. That's not a rewarding experience, regardless of whether it's harder or realistic. PDX have to make it somewhat feasible for you to expand and deceliop in their games as otherwise many are just going to turn and run, take Vic3 for example, one big downside of that is the inability to expand properly. It's not exactly a fun or rewarding playthrough being sat looking at your nation for 200+ years with no expansion or changes. CK3 can sort of get away with it because of it's focus on the players character but Eu4, Hoi4 and Vic3 need that gameplay loop to make them enjoyable.

Dunno about V3 yet, but I had great times with V2 just running an economy with no (or at least the historical minimum) expansion.

 

[Zaddy]

In one case the AI would be coded to challenge the player itself, perhaps at increasing levels of competence, in the other playing independently to win.

I understand what you were proposing, I'm saying that making an AI that challenges a competent human player without straight up cheats is not feasible. At least, not in EU4.

 

[EUnderhill]

I understand what you were proposing, I'm saying that making an AI that challenges a competent human player without straight up cheats is not feasible. At least, not in EU4.

Agreed...it is taking it a level up the next go-round that is the surest way to shake money out of my accounts.

 

[Blindbohemian]

In one case the AI would be coded to challenge the player itself, perhaps at increasing levels of competence, in the other playing independently to win.

Part of the difficulty is defining “playing to win”. What exactly do you want the AI to aim to do, and how is that goal likely to ramify on the wider game? Do you want to arrive in Europe as 1600 (or whenever) Aztecs and find it’s been entirely cored by a PU-happy Austria AI bent on world conquest?

 

[EUnderhill]

Part of the difficulty is defining “playing to win”. What exactly do you want the AI to aim to do, and how is that goal likely to ramify on the wider game? Do you want to arrive in Europe as 1600 (or whenever) Aztecs and find it’s been entirely cored by a PU-happy Austria AI bent on world conquest?

Finish with the highest score. Mission trees should play a large part in this, with points also for winning battles, keeping vassals loyal, good stability, maxing out prestige etc and deductions for breaking truces, no-cb wars, some ahistoric choices and losing lots of troops in offensive wars etc. As for Aztecs and other ROTW nations I would suggest scenarios in which they compete in their own regions to be the local champion. In all cases over time handicapping (a point-spread of sorts) will work out so weaker nations can compete with stronger nations.

 

[Ixalmaris]

I don't really see how that was your take away from my post, but alright! I'm not pulling some "trick" or trying to be nefarious (again, I don't understand the insistence on trying to make this adversarial), I'm sharing my view of what the game is about. They could turn EU5 into a complete opposite game from EU4, and as long as it was fun, I would buy it and be happy. I just don't think it's sensical to gut the primary "gameplay loop" (I hate this term but a better one escapes me atm) without any plan to supplement it. And from what I've read and observed, the devs are unwilling/unable to make the necessary changes to make EU4 less hyper-focused on war. I think that could be a great idea for EU5! I just think it makes little sense for EU4. Hope this clarifies.

The reason its too late for EU4 now is because mappainter have screamed and rallied against peace time mechanics for decades.

And you are by far not the first mappainter the pulls the trick of pretending to be open about peace time gameplay and only taking a stand against it because currently its not "fun" (with fun being of course mappainting) but at the same time being against anything that would make peace fun (or at least give it some more content) as it would by necessity detract from war and one tag world conquest as if it wouldnt it would be of no consequences and thus useless.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

The reason its too late for EU4 now is because mappainter have screamed and rallied against peace time mechanics for decades.

And you are by far not the first mappainter the pulls the trick of pretending to be open about peace time gameplay and only taking a stand against it because currently its not "fun" (with fun being of course mappainting) but at the same time being against anything that would make peace fun (or at least give it some more content) as it would by necessity detract from war and one tag world conquest as if it wouldnt it would be of no consequences and thus useless.

Funny conspiracy theory you have going on there. Can you actually point to people prefearble the people you are currently arguing with advocating for map painting mechanics? You know like the whole evidence thing. While you are looking you might also find these screams against peace time mechanics.

Because Zaddy is right. Peace time currently is mostly wait for X resource to click a button to gain 0.X resource more in the future. Yes you can also go for diplomacy play to break up alliance systems, but that just extension for future wars or protection from possible wars. Striving for obtaining PUs is reallly only possible in Europe and also often requires wars if you don't want to wait for RNG deaths. Eu4 doesn't really have peaceful expansion like Stellaris and the building system is limited compared to other games like V3.
So having more and meaningful things to do for peacetime and it also providing a avenue for growth is a completly valid call.

 

[Cuke]

Ah yes the usual trick.
Demanding that PDX makes peacetime more fun first but at the same time being against any mechanic that would distract from constant war and mappainting in order to enhance peacetime.

Nice try.

What an easy suggestion from someone who proposed nothing themself.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Finish with the highest score. Mission trees should play a large part in this, with points also for winning battles, keeping vassals loyal, good stability, maxing out prestige etc and deductions for breaking truces, no-cb wars, some ahistoric choices and losing lots of troops in offensive wars etc. As for Aztecs and other ROTW nations I would suggest scenarios in which they compete in their own regions to be the local champion. In all cases over time handicapping (a point-spread of sorts) will work out so weaker nations can compete with stronger nations.

So… quantify good behaviour, and if you manage that, arbitrarily instruct the AI to pursue good-behaviour points? What happens when the player complains that they aren’t getting good-behaviour points for their WC so the game is “unfun”? This is a terrible suggestion, demonstrating why it’s so hard to even decide what to train the AI to do. Leaving aside that it’s extraordinarily hard to train the AI to do things well in general.

 

[grommile]

Also, the kind of AI that is "trained" is horribly computationally expensive and you probably don't want hundreds of copies of it running on your PC. (Except maybe in winter.)

 

[EUnderhill]

Also, the kind of AI that is "trained" is horribly computationally expensive and you probably don't want hundreds of copies of it running on your PC. (Except maybe in winter.)

Winter is when I play...that time of year when it is too cold for fishing, but not cold enough for ice fishing.

 

[EUnderhill]

So… quantify good behaviour, and if you manage that, arbitrarily instruct the AI to pursue good-behaviour points? What happens when the player complains that they aren’t getting good-behaviour points for their WC so the game is “unfun”? This is a terrible suggestion, demonstrating why it’s so hard to even decide what to train the AI to do. Leaving aside that it’s extraordinarily hard to train the AI to do things well in general.

The WC players can be pointed to the edition of the game that favors their playstyle.

 

[Zaddy]

The reason its too late for EU4 now is because mappainter have screamed and rallied against peace time mechanics for decades.

And you are by far not the first mappainter the pulls the trick of pretending to be open about peace time gameplay and only taking a stand against it because currently its not "fun" (with fun being of course mappainting) but at the same time being against anything that would make peace fun (or at least give it some more content) as it would by necessity detract from war and one tag world conquest as if it wouldnt it would be of no consequences and thus useless.

Respectfully, I think you're arguing with a person you have in your mind (a "mappainter") and not me. You are not actually responding to what I'm saying in my post. I said in the post you quoted that I wouldn't at all mind seeing a new focus on peacetime mechanics in EU5 if the devs want to take it in that direction.

If you think I'm lying or trying to trick or deceive you (which seems to be the implication of your post?) then I guess there's not much point trying to discuss.

 

[Pavía]

Does anyone else feel like the buffs to major countries in the recent Development Diaries were a bit much? I say this coming from the perspective of someone who likes the game to have a less pre-determined outcome. All of those countries already had big advantages due to their starting position and lucky nation status, as well as their ideas. I am not disputing they could use some flavour. But I think there is a case to be made for moderation. In my opinion the mission trees for some of the Electors and regional formables in the HRE strike a balance between being flavourful, fun and rewarding, and not being too OP. Some of these new mission trees go over the top in my view. It is essentially adding more and more buffs to countries that already have buffs and start out stronger than everyone else anyway due to their geography and development. I am just concerned that the same countries will blob over and over again even more than they do now. To an extent this happens anyway but so far there remained the possibility of countries other than the ones that did well historically doing well without player intervention. Now I worry this will become much more unlikely. I am concerned these changes will make the game more deterministic.

Also, I said this in another thread, I think the Angevin Empire is a bit odd. It feels out of place, like it belongs more to CKII/III rather than EU4. I always understood EU4 about being about the rise of the modern nation state. But here you have this middle ages concept being brought back from the brink of death. I feel like it needs to be reworked a bit more to 'fit in' better with the rest of EU4...and something needs to be done about the ideas. They are a bit much given the ease and earliness at which they can be accessed.

Basically I think more of a balance needs to be struck between making things flavourful and fun and rewarding whilst not making them too OP.

We addressed this in today's DD, but worth repeating it into this thread, which we've been following. The content we present in the DDs is not finished, and sometimes, barely polished. We want to know the community's opinion of the fresh ideas we've got; sometimes it will work, sometimes not, and we use it as one of our quality filters (and one of which Paradox takes much pride in, a close relationship between the game devs and our games' players). Apart from that, we've got other filters for polishing and refining the new content: internal and external QA (the most important!), weekly dev playtime sessions, a Beta Testing program, etc.

That means that the content and numbers showcased in the DDs are not final, that we'll be polishing them until the release, and that we'll keep balancing it after the DLC and 1.35 release.

 

[Blindbohemian]

The WC players can be pointed to the edition of the game that favors their playstyle.

But if you’re pointing WC players to a different version of the game, why bother making a roundabout score-based way of trying to enforce “good behaviour”? Why not just build mechanics that incentivise plausible behaviour because they make it a sensible way to play? I don’t see anything this score idea achieves that can’t be (much) better achieved in other ways.

 

[EUnderhill]

But if you’re pointing WC players to a different version of the game, why bother making a roundabout score-based way of trying to enforce “good behaviour”? Why not just build mechanics that incentivise plausible behaviour because they make it a sensible way to play? I don’t see anything this score idea achieves that can’t be (much) better achieved in other ways.

Besides finishing with the highest one? One reason for separating the sandbox from the arena is that in the latter there will be fewer features, or at least a slower adoption of them as AI competence at handling them would be a limiting factor.

 

[Blindbohemian]

Besides finishing with the highest one? One reason for separating the sandbox from the arena is that in the latter there will be fewer features, or at least a slower adoption of them as AI competence at handling them would be a limiting factor.

But attaching a score to a sandbox is a contradiction in terms. If there’s a score to pursue it’s not a sandbox; if it’s a sandbox then score doesn’t make sense.

I don’t really care about the idea of distinguishing a sandbox vs “arena” version of the game.

 

[ArtFart]

Dunno about V3 yet, but I had great times with V2 just running an economy with no (or at least the historical minimum) expansion.

Well Vic2 had an actually fleshed out economic system for a start...