Let's be honest about what the game really needs

[th3freakie]

...besides a nifty facebook-integration app minigame that gives you bonuses of course.

And that is numbers. Yes, Numbers. Number of individuals living under you, percentage of those who live in cities, percentage of those of Religion Y and Culture Z, tons of resource X traded by your merchants, the gross tonnage of your merchant ships, average life expectancy, number of cannons in your ships, child mortality, GDP and GDP per capita, malnutrition rates, and of course, number of pirate attacks and their consequent loses in lives and money.

All this available both as pie chart and over-time progression.

Make it so Balor.

 

[SirGrotius]

I'd sign this. I was always a little sketchy on the whole, "population in the city vs population in the province vs population in your nation" thing. I like to know numbers, and I like to know revenues from each group, province, city, etc.

 

[Jia Xu]

People have been asking for this for more than half a decade, as far as I know. It's not going to happen. EU is not Victoria. Furthermore, the starting "stats" would be completely based on guesses. There isn't exactly a whole lot of reliable, scientific census data in from the 15th century, as far as I know. Keep in mind that EU is one of those start-at-any-date series right now, meaning they'd have to spend years just trying to fill in pseudo-historical population statistics.

Not worth the grief, IMO.

 

[Buladelu]

This game needs and gets quite the opposite - absence of numbers. Instead of +0.5% of trade you'll get several merchants who get big profits from specific traderoutes, not abstract trade. While I'd like statistics, I'd feel better with sending my Giacomo merchant to the Spice Route while commanding Garibaldi general in battle, not get +16.8% to my trade and use general +10% to army morale.

 

[th3freakie]

I'd sign this. I was always a little sketchy on the whole, "population in the city vs population in the province vs population in your nation" thing. I like to know numbers, and I like to know revenues from each group, province, city, etc.

Yes. Also data on phisical characteristics of your domains. Square miles, highest mountain, deepest point, largest body of fresh water...

 

[Eh up me duck]

GDP already exists. Total national income for the win. I always thought it was weird that EU3 showed your GDP, when Victoria 1/2 never did.

 

[Raczynski]

...besides a nifty facebook-integration app minigame that gives you bonuses of course.

And that is numbers. Yes, Numbers. Number of individuals living under you, percentage of those who live in cities, percentage of those of Religion Y and Culture Z, tons of resource X traded by your merchants, the gross tonnage of your merchant ships, average life expectancy, number of cannons in your ships, child mortality, GDP and GDP per capita, malnutrition rates, and of course, number of pirate attacks and their consequent loses in lives and money.

All this available both as pie chart and over-time progression.

Make it so Balor.

I approve of this message.

 

[th3freakie]

GDP already exists. Total national income for the win. I always thought it was weird that EU3 showed your GDP, when Victoria 1/2 never did.

I always interpreted Total Income as State Income, not National.

 

[Evie HJ]

I completely disapprove of this message.

Either the numbers will be meaningful, or they won't be. If they're meaningful (that is impact gameplay), then what we have if fundamentally Victoria all over again. And while Victoria is a fine game on its own, to me it doesn't come to Europa's ankle as far as being a great game is concerned. So frankly, II'd rather keep Victoria and its complexities ou tof EU3.

Or else, the numbers will be meaningless, and then what's the point? You'd be asking the designers to make a tremendous amount of efforts, and the historical research people to accomplish the impossible, for something that's just a cosmetic business? Not good planning, that.

 

[Earl Uhtred]

For the purposes of immersion it would seem silly if a 15th century tribal despot could pull out something like the CIA World Factbook and know that there were 510 Khoi in Bongo Bongo land increasing at 4.5% per year.

In a perfect world we'd have a kind of 'internal fog of war' which rolls back as technology improves, making more hard data available to the player, but that day is a long way off. (I always thought it was a nice touch in Rhye's Civ mod that you didn't even know the date until developing Calendar.)

I'd support more ambiguity, not less, when this period is concerned. It always feels faintly absurd in CK that you can immediately quantify the capabilities of all your courtiers.