To Paradox’s credit, Tinto Talks have already addressed most of my concerns with EU4’s design, but one of my few remaining concerns- and something that has always bothered me about Paradox’s historical games- is that countries’ internal administrative divisions follow the borders of pre-defined, static regions.
In other words, the game data utilizes a mostly hierarchical structure with smaller units of land grouped into progressively larger regions. This isn’t inherently bad- there’s utility in defining physical regions this way- but the problem is when this also determines the mechanically optimal political borders, which serves as a major force railroading how history unfolds at the regional level.
This is evident when agnostic geographical terms like “location”, “area”, “region”, etc. are being conflated with terms like “province” that imply a particular political arrangement. “States” are one of the most deterministic, prescriptive aspects of EU4’s game design, and Imperator also had a similar system where it’s more efficient to conquer a single complete “province” than multiple partial provinces.
There are some notable exceptions to this approach- CK has a de jure drift mechanic, but the most interesting one is Stellaris. As Stellaris lacks historical context, “sectors” are entirely dynamic (and were at one point customizable). Project Caesar is already known to have a fairly similar system in the form of dynamic markets, so presumably something like this could be viable from a technical perspective.
Why does this matter? Redrawing borders, changing how territories are grouped, is one of the most political courses of action a government can take. Quell separatist sentiment by giving a cultural minority their own autonomous region? Or crack and pack them into existing divisions to cause assimilation, similar to gerrymandering? Furthermore, this would squeeze even more mileage out of the existing map-based UI, which can be a great canvas not just for conquest but also nation-building.
Assimilating vassals is a key feature of EU4, and in some cases that can act as a visual shorthand for how centralized a state like France is. But the reality is that territory is always divided up for the sake of more efficient administration; the difference is just whether that subdivision is controlled by a quasi-independent hereditary lord or a bureaucrat appointed by the ruler.
In conclusion, I would be interested in seeing a system where we have control of how our territory is administrated internally, and where that changes over time. Starting with pre-defined feudal divisions is perfectly fine, but as states centralize and borders evolve over time, regional associations should begin to diverge.
I imagine that these divisions would be dynamically generated for the AI, but the player would reserve the ability to nudge a given location in between adjacent administrative divisions similar to how you could customize sectors in Stellaris. These decisions could pose interesting trade-offs in terms of economic development and nation-building, affecting the satisfaction of estates and cultural minorities.
In other words, the game data utilizes a mostly hierarchical structure with smaller units of land grouped into progressively larger regions. This isn’t inherently bad- there’s utility in defining physical regions this way- but the problem is when this also determines the mechanically optimal political borders, which serves as a major force railroading how history unfolds at the regional level.
This is evident when agnostic geographical terms like “location”, “area”, “region”, etc. are being conflated with terms like “province” that imply a particular political arrangement. “States” are one of the most deterministic, prescriptive aspects of EU4’s game design, and Imperator also had a similar system where it’s more efficient to conquer a single complete “province” than multiple partial provinces.
There are some notable exceptions to this approach- CK has a de jure drift mechanic, but the most interesting one is Stellaris. As Stellaris lacks historical context, “sectors” are entirely dynamic (and were at one point customizable). Project Caesar is already known to have a fairly similar system in the form of dynamic markets, so presumably something like this could be viable from a technical perspective.
Why does this matter? Redrawing borders, changing how territories are grouped, is one of the most political courses of action a government can take. Quell separatist sentiment by giving a cultural minority their own autonomous region? Or crack and pack them into existing divisions to cause assimilation, similar to gerrymandering? Furthermore, this would squeeze even more mileage out of the existing map-based UI, which can be a great canvas not just for conquest but also nation-building.
Assimilating vassals is a key feature of EU4, and in some cases that can act as a visual shorthand for how centralized a state like France is. But the reality is that territory is always divided up for the sake of more efficient administration; the difference is just whether that subdivision is controlled by a quasi-independent hereditary lord or a bureaucrat appointed by the ruler.
In conclusion, I would be interested in seeing a system where we have control of how our territory is administrated internally, and where that changes over time. Starting with pre-defined feudal divisions is perfectly fine, but as states centralize and borders evolve over time, regional associations should begin to diverge.
I imagine that these divisions would be dynamically generated for the AI, but the player would reserve the ability to nudge a given location in between adjacent administrative divisions similar to how you could customize sectors in Stellaris. These decisions could pose interesting trade-offs in terms of economic development and nation-building, affecting the satisfaction of estates and cultural minorities.
- 42
- 35
- 13
- 3
.png){kind=avatar}
