How will the number of locations affect gameplay for certain regions?

[stryder593]

I'm fairly new to the community. I was introduced to EU4 a few months ago by a friend of mine, and I've enjoyed it very much. I especially appreciated how much detail and flavour was given to areas outside of Europe which was something completely unexpected for me. So many interesting mechanics, national ideas, mission trees, regional breakdowns and so much more. It was almost a dream come true.

Sadly right now, I see EU5 going back on it a lot. One glaring thing I noticed while looking at the Tinto Maps was just how terrible something like the tile density was in China and India: two of the biggest, most populated, diverse and wealthiest areas of the world before the Industrial Age. In India's case, with a great deal of political and regional fragmentation too.

I mean, all of Han China only having ~1800 locations and all of India only having ~1100 while the rest of the Old World being incredibly spoiled by finer depictions and granularity is just... heartbreaking.

From what I've read, locations and development are tied to the potential of a territory. Things like population capacity, buildings count, province sizes, max clergymen (from what I can tell, essential for research) and market control all appear to be very tied to this mechanic. The fact that most of the good territories in these regions when it comes to geographic factors are assigned a ridiculously high development value to allow them to sustain high populations at the start, instead of just breaking them apart and not limiting their future potential, is silly. If anyone would like to clarify or add to this, they'd be welcome to

Sadly, I foresee this as a crippling of these regions. Europe and Catholicism will be destined to remain at top and the players in these other terrible regions will be forced to senselessly expand, get into trade exploits or attempt other cheese strategies. These regions will always fall behind and suffer due to no reason other than implicit European superiority and potential, and that just pisses me off.

For a real-world comparison, China accounts for approximately 6.5% of the Earth's total land area. Using the 27,000 locations as a base, China should have roughly 1,700 locations, compared to their current 1800. Seems like they are being well represented.

 

[prinscky]

For a real-world comparison, China accounts for approximately 6.5% of the Earth's total land area. Using the 27,000 locations as a base, China should have roughly 1,700 locations, compared to their current 1800. Seems like they are being well represented.

Not quite true, most of earth land area is uninhabitable, China accounts for about 25% of the habitable land, seems like China is under represented.

 

[Birdnerd197]

Not quite true, most of earth land area is uninhabitable, China accounts for about 25% of the habitable land, seems like China is under represented.

Well, not really. Not all land is equally usable. China still only accounts for about 6.5% of the total land area, that land just punches way above its weight. Not all locations in EU5 will be equally valuable. China shouldn’t have more locations, its locations should just be more valuable

 

[Life is Comedy]

I can only repeat myself: too many locations arent fun to play with.

Try lunching thé total conversion mod for eu IV meiou and taxes.

And you will quickly notice how having fewer locations/provinces is actually a buff both in terms of gameplay, and as well game mechanics.

Playing "Germany" is just a chore. Especially compared to France and Poland. But thats sadly a case where "realistica Borders and all possibile polities" won instead of gameplay.

 

[Thorum]

It was already a strange discussion with people arguing heartily why rotw should be less important than Europe (and getting loads of likes and agrees for it), but let's not go to stupid stuff like proportioning either all land area, nor current population, please...

 

[Thorum]

I can only repeat myself: too many locations arent fun to play with.

Try lunching thé total conversion mod for eu IV meiou and taxes.

The issues with m&t isn't the amount of provinces.

 

[petertel123]

Doesn't mean it shouldn't be impossible to have good plays elsewhere. EU4 didn't have this problem at all

Load up the 1.0 version of EU4 and get back to us on that.

 

[Stami]

The issues with m&t isn't the amount of provinces.

It is one of the issues. But there is a better example: Beyond Typus. They decided to add a couple hundred (maybe a thousand) provinces, and performance tanked hard. It does have an effect.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

For a real-world comparison, China accounts for approximately 6.5% of the Earth's total land area. Using the 27,000 locations as a base, China should have roughly 1,700 locations, compared to their current 1800. Seems like they are being well represented.

OK, but by this logic Europe is overwhelmingly over represented.

We won't know how much it matters until we play, but it seems like the rest of the world will have worse location variety compared to similar populated parts of Europe. I'm less worried about the amounts produced than I am with the variety of RGO outputs and all I have to compare it to is EU4, where more low dev provinces could wildly outperform the same amount of development in fewer provinces. If we have lots of buildings that give location/province/state buffs, then having more slots will inherently be stronger than fewer and the will snowball as the game goes on.

I hope that's not how that will work in practice, but that is how it's worked in every other strategy game I've played and it's been the main reason wide has always beat tall for playstyle without some pretty intense buffs.

 

[ingenieux]

It makes perfect sense that the location density in Europe is higher than other parts of the world. This allows for greater granularity in e.g. the HRE allowing for interesting game play within the HRE (and Europe more generally),

What's the point if we can't force release every location as its own free city / princedom / fief / peasant republic ?

 

[Chieron]

OK, but by this logic Europe is overwhelmingly over represented.

Well, yeah it is. But it is also extremely fractured politically. As landed tags cannot share a location and must have at least one location, this leads to the locational fracturing in Europe to represent this state of affairs (with unifying those small areas being a big part of the game). Otherwise, we could do with fewer locations.


People seem to be a bit stuck in the EU4 mindset, where additional provinces were nearly always better (given the flat building numbers and effects as well as cheaper development). Higher granularity meant more power in that system. EU5 has a different approach, where population numbers matter as well. There is a balancing act involved, though.

 

[TitaniumMan91]

Well, yeah it is. But it is also extremely fractured politically. As landed tags cannot share a location and must have at least one location, this leads to the locational fracturing in Europe to represent this state of affairs (with unifying those small areas being a big part of the game). Otherwise, we could do with fewer locations.

As other have said, so is India, with the same challenge. Someone less intimately familiar with the HRE could also argue that we don't need that patchwork, they're all part of the same "state" structure and from my limited understanding of India, it's not so different. It might have mostly been under Mughal "control," but local princes still had rivalries and factionalism that allowed European powers to insert themselves and play the one against the other, something we couldn't do in EU4.

People seem to be a bit stuck in the EU4 mindset, where additional provinces were nearly always better (given the flat building numbers and effects as well as cheaper development). Higher granularity meant more power in that system. EU5 has a different approach, where population numbers matter as well. There is a balancing act involved, though.

I guess I'm just not convinced they've actually solved the problem of more granularity meaning more power, I strongly suspect we'll see the same thing in EU5 and it won't be solved until we're multiple DLCs in. There are still many things that are done at a location level, such as RGOs, that make me think we're going to see that same progression as we did in EU4.

 

[Chieron]

As other have said, so is India, with the same challenge. Someone less intimately familiar with the HRE could also argue that we don't need that patchwork, they're all part of the same "state" structure and from my limited understanding of India, it's not so different. It might have mostly been under Mughal "control," but local princes still had rivalries and factionalism that allowed European powers to insert themselves and play the one against the other, something we couldn't do in EU4.

I agree on India at least. A few hundred extra locations shouldn't hurt, given the size of the smaller tags and the near overpopulation of some other locations. The HRE was very decentralized, which the patchwork depicts, with some of the larger statelets becoming major powers during the timeframe, including interior wars.

I guess I'm just not convinced they've actually solved the problem of more granularity meaning more power, I strongly suspect we'll see the same thing in EU5 and it won't be solved until we're multiple DLCs in. There are still many things that are done at a location level, such as RGOs, that make me think we're going to see that same progression as we did in EU4.

I suspect that the optimal population for locations is smaller than the ones seen in India/China and larger than those in the HRE. But we will likely have to wait for confirmation. I'm confident that if the disparity is too great, it will be adjusted. But it will be easier (read: less outcry) to add locations later compared to removing them.

 

[keaswaran]

How childish is this argument? "We got more granularity, but Europe got even more it's not fair". Like what??? Would you be happier if they just reduced the number of locations in Europe to make it more "fair" then?

It’s not about “fair”. It’s about making this more meaningful as a simulation rather than a toy board game. At first, they suggested that location divisions wouldn’t matter because population was everything. But then they revealed that population has nothing to do with land area and everything to do with number of locations. So the imbalance of locations is effectively saying that Europe can support a much larger population than India or China (especially with the game-ified bonus for Mediterranean climates, which makes no sense for the time period of the game).

 

[Stevo76]

It’s not about “fair”. It’s about making this more meaningful as a simulation rather than a toy board game. At first, they suggested that location divisions wouldn’t matter because population was everything. But then they revealed that population has nothing to do with land area and everything to do with number of locations. So the imbalance of locations is effectively saying that Europe can support a much larger population than India or China (especially with the game-ified bonus for Mediterranean climates, which makes no sense for the time period of the game).

When did they ever say that Europe could support a much larger population?

 

[Chieron]

When did they ever say that Europe could support a much larger population?

Technically it can, because the population limits of locations are not scaled by location size. Splitting a location in two will double the carrying capacity.
But that is unlikely to matter, unless the populations of all those locations actually grow that much in a timely manner (and they do start from a lower population as well).
If getting a location to grow from 20k to 100k is a challenge, then the limit is not all that relevant for most places outside of mountains or the arctic.
Europe has pretty high pop limits+location density, so it can theoretically hold more pops than China (which has a similar area). But iirc, China has a headstart in population that will take long to be overcome (which happened historically).

What this does is to limit the potential of already-highly populated locations. But those might actually already be closer to the natural limit anyway (achievable before modern agriculture).

 

[Stevo76]

Technically it can, because the population limits of locations are not scaled by location size. Splitting a location in two will double the carrying capacity.
But that is unlikely to matter, unless the populations of all those locations actually grow that much in a timely manner (and they do start from a lower population as well).
If getting a location to grow from 20k to 100k is a challenge, then the limit is not all that relevant for most places outside of mountains or the arctic.
Europe has pretty high pop limits+location density, so it can theoretically hold more pops than China (which has a similar area). But iirc, China has a headstart in population that will take long to be overcome (which happened historically).

What this does is to limit the potential of already-highly populated locations. But those might actually already be closer to the natural limit anyway (achievable before modern agriculture).

I believe I recall them mentioning in one of the previous TTs that they needed to make some changes to the pop limits in locations like India and China?

 

[MRhuman666]

I agree on India at least. A few hundred extra locations shouldn't hurt, given the size of the smaller tags and the near overpopulation of some other locations. The HRE was very decentralized, which the patchwork depicts, with some of the larger statelets becoming major powers during the timeframe, including interior wars.

I suspect that the optimal population for locations is smaller than the ones seen in India/China and larger than those in the HRE. But we will likely have to wait for confirmation. I'm confident that if the disparity is too great, it will be adjusted. But it will be easier (read: less outcry) to add locations later compared to removing them.

This wasnt always the case, HRE wasnt exceptionally decentralized for its time, and its exceptionality of so is memefied into pop-history (partially based on biased accounts from the french enlightment and later german nationalism). But in 1337 which was during the height of the fragmentation period is still valid to depict the hre that way - despite the issue of actually showing its constituent parts as "countries" pre-territorialization.

 

[Praetorian44]

I meant the dislikers to OP’s post

They dont want India and China to be as detailed as Europe

Or maybe they disliked the post for other reasons? Such as not wanting another thread being made for this same topic that already has multiple other threads discussing it.

Or being tired of seeing this same argument about location density that completely ignores population and its importance in EU5.

Or because of the extreme hyperbole in the OP, claiming that areas outside of Europe will have significantly less detail and flavor in EU5 than in EU4 (the opposite seems true IMO).

Or because they dislike the wording of the OP, such as "that just pisses me off," which isn't constructive or helpful and proves that these arguments are being made from an emotional response rooted in either nationalism or ideology (hence all the accusations of Eurocentrism and general rudeness in OP's replies) rather than a logical one that just wants to ensure EU5 is as good and as accurate as it can be at launch.

Or because they're irritated that someone very clearly created a secondary forum account (against the rules) just to create this divisive thread (considering that you mentioned the number of dislikes multiple times, I wonder if it's yours).

Or they disagree with the claim that only India and China have issues "while the rest of the Old World" is "incredibly spoiled by finer depictions and granularity" (you could argue that there are a number of regions in Europe that are not as detailed as they should be).

But no, according to you, there's definitely no other reason why someone could respectfully disagree with the OP's post besides not wanting India and China to be as detailed as Europe. This is a childish accusation that shows that you're not arguing in good faith.

 

[Gurtannon]

Or maybe they disliked the post for other reasons? Such as not wanting another thread being made for this same topic that already has multiple other threads discussing it.

Or being tired of seeing this same argument about location density that completely ignores population and its importance in EU5.

Or because of the extreme hyperbole in the OP, claiming that areas outside of Europe will have significantly less detail and flavor in EU5 than in EU4 (the opposite seems true IMO).

Or because they dislike the wording of the OP, such as "that just pisses me off," which isn't constructive or helpful and proves that these arguments are being made from an emotional response rooted in either nationalism or ideology (hence all the accusations of Eurocentrism and general rudeness in OP's replies) rather than a logical one that just wants to ensure EU5 is as good and as accurate as it can be at launch.

Or because they're irritated that someone very clearly created a secondary forum account (against the rules) just to create this divisive thread (considering that you mentioned the number of dislikes multiple times, I wonder if it's yours).

Or they disagree with the claim that only India and China have issues "while the rest of the Old World" is "incredibly spoiled by finer depictions and granularity" (you could argue that there are a number of regions in Europe that are not as detailed as they should be).

But no, according to you, there's definitely no other reason why someone could respectfully disagree with the OP's post besides not wanting India and China to be as detailed as Europe. This is a childish accusation that shows that you're not arguing in good faith.

Main point of the thread is lack of detail in China and India, therefore disagree emoji automatically means opposing that,

If you use dislike button for one sentence or minor point in a big post, that is not my problem lol


Also about the frequency of the posts, none of the issues has been resolved, so there is no reason for these type of posts to stop