The Parliament to some degree functions in this way, but doing it twice every five years feels much too simple, it needs to infuse the system in other ways as well.
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The Parliament to some degree functions in this way, but doing it twice every five years feels much too simple, it needs to infuse the system in other ways as well.
Thought I'd share. I'm playing EU4 right now. At war with Genoa, and I want to take the island of Chios. They have a superior navy and I have a vastly superior army. Genoa AI refuses to use its navy to protect the passage to Chios (the war goal). I am roleplay restricting myself from blobbing by waiting to beat the Genoese navy, to simulate a half-competent AI.
AI is the unsung keystone of these games. All the flavor or mechanics in the world won't matter if the AI can't handle the game.
AI is the unsung keystone of these games. All the flavor or mechanics in the world won't matter if the AI can't handle the game.
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Would you consider the example of the Mughals after Babur and before Azam Shah (c. 1530 - 1707) comparable to the Ottoman situation (though not similar)? Though there was no necessary system of fratricide to ensure a single ruler, there was certainly enough of it (with Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb representing the zenith of this practice). Along with ancillary ideas like sons gaining favor and prestige through military campaigns or governorships.
I'm sure there are a multitude of factors that differ between the two sets of practices but I am wondering if you would consider them historically comparable.
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Fortunately we have comparisons made by the very rulers. From The Princes of the Mughal Empire:
And from Returning the household to the patrimonial-bureaucratic empire: Gender, succession, and ritual in the Mughal, Safavid and Ottoman empires:
So I'd say the practical consequences are arguably similar, but the ideological basis is not. The Mughals witnessed and summarily rejected the Ottoman techniques of succession management (the Safavids by comparison kept all their princes secluded in the imperial harem, heirs or otherwise), though I don't think they witnessed their own system as a comparable "trial by fire" that it so often turned out to be. Perhaps it would be better described as something akin to a hazing ritual, just on a far greater scale? An awful system of bloody succession that produced rulers that, being borne from the system and seeing what the system drove them to do and accomplish in order to inherit, decided to keep it around in the hopes that their own heirs would be similarly strengthened?
It'd certainly explain the staying power of such a practice. Not sure if "succession by civil war" is the most stable of policies, though.
Still though, I think the ultimate outcome of such a system was to solve a different goal. The Ottomans were pushing towards an extremely centralized, patrimonial state. The Mughals were pushing towards a strong state. Different means were taken to achieve these different ends.
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I finally decided to look at the first TFs and saw that there were around 20 unique stuff per country, and I only looked at 4 of them fully. There have been 24 TF, some covering countries as little as Saxony.
I can't really make a list of advances that stung me the most, but I can focus mostly on government reforms and unique units :
Florence
Why is Florence the only country in the world to have access to militia? What, in the concept of militia, is so uniquely florentine? Maybe there is a "militia" generic unit in the game, but then why should Florence have a distinctly florentine brand, instead of simply applying to it some modifier coming from more general modifiers it would start with and would be closer to get?
Novgorod
I have no qualms against the Veche, if only that I don't see why a similar type of government couldn't be developped elsewhere. The rest of the stuff is a bit annoying, but it doesn't sound over the top. The same comments I made during all this thread applies to them.
Mali
It seems like Mali has a unit with extra initiative, which I take as the D&D equivalent : they fire first and ask questions after. I don't know if those represent a particular way of doing warfare in the African savanna which wouldn't be translatable elsewhere, or a special training. I can see how this should be represented, if true, and how it may warrant a special mechanic. I don't see Meissen suddenly have 7 initiative out of the blue. Though I'm wondering if it shouldn't have to do with terrain, rather than be a stat inherent to the unit. I'm not sure those units would do as well in mountains.
Aragon
Why would Aragon's government reform give it more potential boats and more trade? What gave those advantages to Aragon was its unique position in the mediterranean, and not their political organization. Should England or the United Provinces get the Aragonese Crown government reform? Sometimes it sounds like Tinto put the name of a country next to a government reform name, gave it modifiers that have a link with how those countries were perceived, and called it a day.
We talked about longbowmen, earlier in this thread. There are "Catalan Crossbowmen" (and even "Catalan Galley"), as if they were so unique. I cannot compare with regular crossbowmen and regular galley, but I suppose they are better. Sure enough, the description says they were famous in Western Europe, but really? They don't point to a special organization for the country nor to a particularly remarquable method of production.
Bohemia
What is the rationale behind making the Bohemians uniquely more tolerant to other cultures? They lived next to the germans? Isn't that supposed to be taken care of by the cultural acceptance mechanic? And why should that characteristic be represented by their government form?
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After looking at the first few TF, EUV sounds worst than what I remember of EUIV, but maybe it's just because what used to be in "national ideas" has been ported into government reforms, advances and special units.
Still, it will be difficult to ignore those "unique" stuff if every few country has its version of it. It would also be difficult to come with a way to standardize unique units and government reforms. The Crown of Aragon and Bohemian government sound completely alien to me. And the special forms of militia and crossbowmen are depressingly just "generic unit" + name of the country next to them + bonus because this country was cool, which seems to prevent one to invest in his own type of those units and make them as powerful with efforts.
I can't really make a list of advances that stung me the most, but I can focus mostly on government reforms and unique units :
Florence
Why is Florence the only country in the world to have access to militia? What, in the concept of militia, is so uniquely florentine? Maybe there is a "militia" generic unit in the game, but then why should Florence have a distinctly florentine brand, instead of simply applying to it some modifier coming from more general modifiers it would start with and would be closer to get?
Novgorod
I have no qualms against the Veche, if only that I don't see why a similar type of government couldn't be developped elsewhere. The rest of the stuff is a bit annoying, but it doesn't sound over the top. The same comments I made during all this thread applies to them.
Mali
It seems like Mali has a unit with extra initiative, which I take as the D&D equivalent : they fire first and ask questions after. I don't know if those represent a particular way of doing warfare in the African savanna which wouldn't be translatable elsewhere, or a special training. I can see how this should be represented, if true, and how it may warrant a special mechanic. I don't see Meissen suddenly have 7 initiative out of the blue. Though I'm wondering if it shouldn't have to do with terrain, rather than be a stat inherent to the unit. I'm not sure those units would do as well in mountains.
Aragon
Why would Aragon's government reform give it more potential boats and more trade? What gave those advantages to Aragon was its unique position in the mediterranean, and not their political organization. Should England or the United Provinces get the Aragonese Crown government reform? Sometimes it sounds like Tinto put the name of a country next to a government reform name, gave it modifiers that have a link with how those countries were perceived, and called it a day.
We talked about longbowmen, earlier in this thread. There are "Catalan Crossbowmen" (and even "Catalan Galley"), as if they were so unique. I cannot compare with regular crossbowmen and regular galley, but I suppose they are better. Sure enough, the description says they were famous in Western Europe, but really? They don't point to a special organization for the country nor to a particularly remarquable method of production.
Bohemia
What is the rationale behind making the Bohemians uniquely more tolerant to other cultures? They lived next to the germans? Isn't that supposed to be taken care of by the cultural acceptance mechanic? And why should that characteristic be represented by their government form?
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After looking at the first few TF, EUV sounds worst than what I remember of EUIV, but maybe it's just because what used to be in "national ideas" has been ported into government reforms, advances and special units.
Still, it will be difficult to ignore those "unique" stuff if every few country has its version of it. It would also be difficult to come with a way to standardize unique units and government reforms. The Crown of Aragon and Bohemian government sound completely alien to me. And the special forms of militia and crossbowmen are depressingly just "generic unit" + name of the country next to them + bonus because this country was cool, which seems to prevent one to invest in his own type of those units and make them as powerful with efforts.
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And now you see why I'm not a fan of ditching National Ideas.
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Do you mean by that that national idea were a standardized feature where many of the so-called flavour could be put and allegedly balanced? (That’s playful sarcasm if you wonder. I understand we don’t agree about this)
I would agree that at first glance, the way it’s done now seems more messy. Prior from the announcement of advances, I used to not like NIs (shocking!), but to propose an hybrid system by which they would still exist, but could be replaced according to which actions you did. In a way, that approach would also have benefited from societal values.
I don't mind the societal values, I just don't want them replacing national ideas. I don't think that National ideas should be balanced, in the same way I think the idea of balancing navies in HOI4 is the smoothest brain idea you could have.
I mentioned before, certain nations were more successful than others, and I think this should be portrayed by more than just their starting position (the spreadsheet mentality as I have previously dubbed it).
I think without national ideas then you are left with more limited ways to make nations feel unique, which as you have noted has resulted in weird decisions of handing out unique government types and units to try to portray that uniqueness. Maybe you don't think that Aragon shouldn't have any sort of mechanical naval advantage that couldn't be replicated by any other nation on the map. But I'm sure you and I agree that say a single modifier of 10 that are slowly unlocked through the game, are probably better than a specifically unique government type for Aragon only.
I think the national ideas work best for the most abstract ways you would want to portray a tags history or cultural legacy, that otherwise aren't going to fit in the other 'equalized' mechanics. And societal values by virtue of them being (almost) completely mutable therefore wouldn't suit this sort of abstraction in the slightest.
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We agree on that (and only that
). But I am also able to see how your argument structures.I guess it would be possible for them to handle government types based on Ages or Institutions, which would then partly rebuild the narrative you had with national ideas, but then again giving a modifier directly to the government reform looks very silly, as it seems we agree on that.
As for nations being more successful than others, I talked about that to exhaustion, but in 1337, nobody could tell that Austria would one day dominate Middle Europa, or that Brandenburg's successor state would reign supreme in North Germany. But each country already had a "personality" (if we ignore that many weren't "countries" in the bureaucratic modern sense). Giving initial bonuses to countries (in EUIV) would have made them more distinct, and I have never been against that. I am also not against the idea that countries shouldn't all be equal, but they should have the capacity to become so. A "unique" +5% discipline is a +5% discipline that, all things being equal, other countries won't ever have.
Currently, it seems like EUV will ship with the following sources of divergence at the start : laws, government reforms, estate privileges, societal values and great works. Then countries will get more divergence by choosing advances and changing the former characteristics. On paper, it is a nice system, but there may be a flaw, in that advances don't seem to ever give maluses, or to replace one another. If that's the case, players will keep accumulating modifiers, unlike what was said as the intention (that the game shouldn't be about stacking modifiers).
The proliferation of unique governments also hurts the customization of countries. It presupposes that some people were uniquely predisposed to not only accept, but to form certain types of social organizations. While I understand the English Parliement, the Polish Sejm or the Papacy are government models, they seemed to have jumped the shark by adding to governments things that had no business being there. Not everything is bad, though. When I see the Veche reform, it actually looks like what I expected from a government form. It distributes the power inside the state differently, to the detriment of the clergy and presumably the "crown". The Crown of Aragon just spawn ships from nowhere.
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The main thing I don't like about advances is I don't trust the AI is gonna really focus them down. And therefore will both be worse opponents, and won't really be simulating history properly. Of course- it makes sense that certain techs will be only available to certain regions- Incan Terrace Farming for instance doesn't make sense as a National Idea as it was something physically done with the land, and done by many 'tags' in the region besides the Incans. Ergo that makes sense as something that everyone in the 'Incan' group should have access to.We agree on that (and only that
I guess it would be possible for them to handle government types based on Ages or Institutions, which would then partly rebuild the narrative you had with national ideas, but then again giving a modifier directly to the government reform looks very silly, as it seems we agree on that.
As for nations being more successful than others, I talked about that to exhaustion, but in 1337, nobody could tell that Austria would one day dominate Middle Europa, or that Brandenburg's successor state would reign supreme in North Germany. But each country already had a "personality" (if we ignore that many weren't "countries" in the bureaucratic modern sense). Giving initial bonuses to countries (in EUIV) would have made them more distinct, and I have never been against that. I am also not against the idea that countries shouldn't all be equal, but they should have the capacity to become so. A "unique" +5% discipline is a +5% discipline that, all things being equal, other countries won't ever have.
Currently, it seems like EUV will ship with the following sources of divergence at the start : laws, government reforms, estate privileges, societal values and great works. Then countries will get more divergence by choosing advances and changing the former characteristics. On paper, it is a nice system, but there may be a flaw, in that advances don't seem to ever give maluses, or to replace one another. If that's the case, players will keep accumulating modifiers, unlike what was said as the intention (that the game shouldn't be about stacking modifiers).
The proliferation of unique governments also hurts the customization of countries. It presupposes that some people were uniquely predisposed to not only accept, but to form certain types of social organizations. While I understand the English Parliement, the Polish Sejm or the Papacy are government models, they seemed to have jumped the shark by adding to governments things that had no business being there. Not everything is bad, though. When I see the Veche reform, it actually looks like what I expected from a government form. It distributes the power inside the state differently, to the detriment of the clergy and presumably the "crown". The Crown of Aragon just spawn ships from nowhere.
Anyway I agree that Unique Governments have their place. The Papacy as one example. But I mentioned before how I was thankful that government reforms broke them up- I think probably MOST starting governments should be generic. Novgorod I think is semi-generic if we go off of how it was handled in EUIV (available to all Russian republics). Mandate of Heaven would also be semi-generic (available to anyone who seizes the mantle of the Chinese Empire), and I could also see semi-generic starting governments in India or the Middle East (such as the 'Indian Sultanate' or Iqta). So I think the only one besides those mentioned who would really need a unique starting government would be Byzantium, and even then I'm open to the idea of their unique mechanics being moved around.
But I think you get hung up on the +5% discipline idea, as that's the only example you cite. There's plenty of other modifiers, some stronger some weaker, I really think you much more have a problem with the balancing of these mechanics than their concepts. Though I think you've said before you have a 'burn it all down and let it rise from the ashes' mentality.
What I like about the National Ideas is A. they are a good way of representing the national character of a tag that is otherwise hard to implement, and only really possible to change via tag switching, B. they form a lot of the early-game decisions of WHY you should pick a tag (I forget if you said you only prefer playing the same tags over and over again, vs. trying to explore something new in a new region), C. they help 'de-equalize' the playing field on minute one since every tag starts with a seperate and unique buff, some strong, and some weaker. Regardless if you think that Austria should be 'pre destined for greatness' I don't think you want to argue that gameplay must be completely symmetrical. I think you misunderstood my argument there- I don't just think that EUIV should have winners and losers because that's what we got in history. I think that because that's also what's more fun to play. They inform different strategies and decision making. It's why I've mentioned I don't like Crusader Kings- my decision making as I play the game only slightly changes according to my religion.
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It's kind of a shower thought, but is it me or do "wider scale flavour" mechanics (tied to religion/government type) make the forum boil in disagreement? Horde autoconquest, shogun manpower spawn, Muslim zealots rising (this one to a smaller scale), protestant "construct your own Lutheranism", Catholic building based cardinals and calling your ruler "saint" on a whim
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Those are just badly designed and implemented mechanics, it has nothing to do with it being "wider scale flavour".
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Yes, I agree. As I said, it was more of a shower thought. It just caught my attention that there was an uptick in badly designed and implemented mechanics when the core features were reported
Once again, after I think about it, it's obviously because they had more time polishing the core
Indeed, this is not really what is discussed here, though it could be argued that those mechanics are an example of poorly thought unique-ish mechanics.
One thing that can be said, though, is that it would require care to integrate unique mechanics in the more general fabric of the game. There is indeed a lot of it.
Before the TF started, I was left to believe the simulationist bend of the game was more prevalent than in EUIV. It isn't entirely untrue - there are a lot of things that are simulated in the game - but the flavour is in my view threatening to suffocate it. When you see a bonus for boats for Aragon while its coastlines should suffice, or when the starting position of many countries is affected by unique privileges instead of generally accessible ones, I find that worrying. Then there are the unique units and buildings and all the rest...
But if there is a place to start in trying to consolidate some mechanics, I believe it should be government reforms and privileges. Those are situations which can happen in theory to any polity and are fairly abstract. So with the obvious exclusion of shogunate, mandate of heaven or papacy, I don't see why government reforms and privileges should be so unique.
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I don't see why flavor is being considered as opposed to simulationism— it's a system in place to make different places and cultures feel unique because they were, in fact, unique. If you wanted a fully accurate simulation you would have unique advances and government reforms and privileges and units for every country and culture in the world because in reality they were all different from each other in a staggering variety of ways. And of course it's impossible for even the most complex one size fits all system to come close to simulating the full breadth of diversity of all human civilization on the planet across a 500 year span of time, so country unique flavor is a way of getting slightly closer to accurately simulating that diversity when the regular system doesn't allow for it.
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Tag-locked events and mechanics are opposed to simulation because they don't respect cause and effect, which is the fundamental basis of simulation. If a tag has a special mechanic, say a unique unit, it retains that unit even if the social structures that gave rise to it are no longer in effect, and other tags cannot gain the same or a substantially similar special unit, even if they develop social structures that should allow them to do so.
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But the game can't simulate "social structures" in enough detail to do that in the vast majority of cases, which is why so many things are arbitrarily linked to certain cultures or societies in the first place.
And like Johan has said, they've tried stopping there and focusing on only what can be simulated, and people always complain it feels soulless and empty.
And like Johan has said, they've tried stopping there and focusing on only what can be simulated, and people always complain it feels soulless and empty.
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This goes back to the philosophical core of the argument, which is : to what extent are we different?
Sure, humans are diverse, but we are also, at heart, all the same. We live, eat, die, dream... There are cultural differences. I wouldn't expect a Japanese to act the same way as a French. And it is true those differences are hard to pinpoint.
But I argue that those differences, those national characters, are poorly represented by unique and unchanging buffs.
First, nothing is unchanging. Characters which appeared very rooted in a country's history could disappear. Venice, the merchant republic, lost its trading edge. Prussia was a military behemot for less than a century and was trounced during the napoleonic wars. The janissaries decayed from a special unit into a special interest group. Giving permanent goodies to player don't reflect that at all.
Second, I don't believe the "flavor" that is being shown does justice to history. Instead, it perpetuates the myth that some nations are better than others, that some feats are better left to some than others, because they are "naturally" that way.
What I would love to play would be a game in which it is possible to make of a landlocked nation a maritime superpower, to make of a backwater a trading hub and to make of a weak and bullied people a military power. Of course, all of that has to be taken with a grain of salt. I am not asking for fantasy where you make Siberia the economic heart of the world, but for realistic processes leading to realistic outcomes. And realism is trampled when the game forces outcomes which don't sit well with the state of the game.
Now, I said earlier in this thread, and this is a huge challenge to this idea, that not everything can be simulated. Millenial cultures and complex structures, that were encountered only once, should have their special portrayal. Generally, the game should be able to represent the closest it can the world at the start date, 1337, and to continue what was already in march before that point and looked very likely from that moment. But it does a disservice to the game to be forced to represent, say, the rise of the Habsburg, when in-game another dynasty is on the rise. It breaks causation.
How free should we be to model, over a long period of time, our people so that it takes up traits that were historically other peoples? I would say, a lot. Societal values are one way of doing that. Government reforms used to be about giving more or less power to parts of the State. But advances? Those little bonuses aimed at representing the past and future (as of 1336) history of our countries? Where do they fit on any scale? They are indeed hard to hand over to everyone...
With the addition of pops and societal values and the consecration of estates, I would argue there is more to do on that front than in EUIV.
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Venice lost its trading edge due to a series of wars (starting with the poor decision to cripple the ERE) and the center of trade shifting to the Atlantic, both of which are well simulated.
I'll also agree societal values open things up, I just don't think they open it up to such a degree that the previous ways of delivering flavor should be therefore abandoned.
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I just saw in this video how societal values worked (around 7:30) : societal values push towards their indicated value x100, and then stay there. They are not equilibrium, as I wish they were, with diminishing return as you get closer to the intended value, but they still don't automatically go to -100 or +100, that is, as long as you don't have +1.00 or -1.00 (or higher) as your change rate.
To illustrate, from what the Youtuber said, if you have -0.50 as your designated value, your societal value will go to -50, no further.
The Youtuber point is actually that Parliement bypasses that mechanic and if you get a -10 (for example) societal value from it, even if your change value is still -0,50, it won't go back to "equilibrium". I don't know how I feel about this, but what I see is that the main mechanic is less terrible than I feared, even if it's not perfect.
To illustrate, from what the Youtuber said, if you have -0.50 as your designated value, your societal value will go to -50, no further.
The Youtuber point is actually that Parliement bypasses that mechanic and if you get a -10 (for example) societal value from it, even if your change value is still -0,50, it won't go back to "equilibrium". I don't know how I feel about this, but what I see is that the main mechanic is less terrible than I feared, even if it's not perfect.
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